Here we are for the last week of Sci-Fi month, and I wanted to dedicate this week to the game I really wanted to love. Mind you, there is nothing wrong with this game; it just never had the chance to connect properly. But more on that. This week is Alternity week.

Alternity was a noble effort. A new Sci-Fi game that would allow you to play hard sci or science fantasy as you saw fit. It had a core system and there were supplements and campaign guides to extend from the near, and dark future (Dark*Matter) to the stars (Star*Drive).  Even Gamma World was updated to this new system.  It was, honestly, a wonderful idea. 

Sadly, Alternity suffered a fatal blow in the death throws of TSR. Published in 1998 it was the last RPG developed and published by TSR. Wizards of the Coast bought TSR in 1997 (and lets be honest, saved TSR in 1997). In 2000 the Alternity line was dropped. While you can find the Quick Starts online in PDF form, there are no legal PDFs of the Alternity game. There is an online community and a new RPG that uses the same system (more or less), the 1998-2000 version of the game is very much out of print.

For this review, I am going to focus on my print copies.

Alternity Player's Handbook (1998)

by Bill Slavicsek and Richard Baker. Full-color covers and interior art. 256 pages.
Art by rk post, Todd Lockwood, William O'Connor, Dennis Kauth, Rob Lazzaretti.

Released, April 1998.

Let me start with the look and feel of this game. If you are familiar with the later TSR offerings, in particular the Revised 2nd Edition of AD&D, then you will get a good idea for the art and layout here. Picking up the books they feel "familiar." Though I can't help but smile at the "lens flare" in the Alternity logo. Hey, we are all allowed to use a lens flare once non ironically and if you can't do it in 1998 then when can you? This does make me feel nostalgic for late 90s.  

Authors Bill Slavicsek and Richard Baker had grand hopes for this game in 1998, and their love for it shows throughout the book. Whatever other issues I might have with this system (and spoilers: they are minor), their efforts here are not among them. They start be justifiably comparing what they are doing to Dungeons & Dragons. Rereading these rules now, so many years later, the similarities are much closer than I recalled. 

I am breaking out the chapters into sections here since they are largely mirrored in the Gamemaster's Guide.

Introduction

This covers the basics. What is role-playing, what is this game and so on. Veterans can skip this, but there is some good insight here about what they are trying to do. 

Chapter 1: Fast-Play Rules

This covers the game in a very fast-paced and simplified manner. Designed to get everyone up and running right away. Personally, I like the idea, but I wonder if it is not better served with a PDF or a soft-cover freebie alone and not included in this book. Granted, in 1998, not as many people were on the internet, and freebie printed products were likely still too much for a company that had just been rescued from financial oblivion. Still, we are only talking about a handful of pages here, and it really helps set the stage for what is to come. The Gamemaster's Guide also had a free PDF.

Note: The new Alternity also offers this for free for their updated version. 

Chapter 2: Hero Creation

What is says on the tin. We have nine steps in our hero creation, which feels very, very similar to D&D. Even the six attributes are similar. You choose a concept, a species (Fraal, Mechalus, Sesheyan, T'sa, Weren, and Human), and a Career and Profession. Careers are your concept in a few words and Professions are bit like classes, but certain skills and abilities are cheaper/easier to acquire. So anyone can take any skill, some are just easier. It's a good approach. The Professions are Combat Specialist, Diplomat, Free Agent, Tech Operative, and the psionic Mindwalker. Mindwalkers are detailed later.

Ability scores are assigned, largely compatible with AD&D scores. Some species have ability score minimums and maximums. Skills are also bought/assigned. Some species lend themselves to some skill easier. The Mechalus, for example, get computer science for free. Weren get unarmed attacks.

Characters get perks and flaws, a popular game design choice of the later 90s. Choose some attributes, and complete the character sheet. I'll work through an example later this week.

Chapter 3: Heroes in Action 

This chapter covers the basic rules of the game. The basic idea here is to roll a d20, sometimes with some additional dice as a bonus or penalty, and roll under a given margin. The additional dice are called "steps" and they change based on the situation. Trying to reprogram a computer when you are at ease, have all the time in the world and it is a system you know well might be a "Cakewalk" step. So you roll your d20 and then roll a d12, you minus whatever you get on the d12 from the d20 for your final result. Remember rolling low here is good. On the other hand reprogramming the same computer in another language while being shot at might be a "Grueling" step. So roll a d20 and add another d20 to that! There are plenty of examples given in the book.

Which skills and abilities to use in what situation are also covered. 

Combat is a big one and here we have four types of damage. Stun, Wound, Mortal, and Fatigue. Anyone one can incapacitate a character. Ok four damage types is not ideal in my mind, but it works here and that is fine with me. 

Chapter 4: Skills

This covers the skills, how they work and where they are used. As expected for the time there are LOT of skills here. Of course the advantage to this is character customization is great. 

Chapter 5: Perks & Flaws

These sorts of mechanics were very popular starting in the 80s and into the 90s. These also help improve or hinder a character to some degree or provide some role-playing fodder. Many here are common ones you see in other games. Ones to make the character harder to kill (Tough as Nails), lucky (Good Luck), Ambidextrous, Great Looking, and more. These sorts of things are still popular in newer games, but to a lesser degree.  Flaws work the same way. Bad Luck, Powerful Enemy, Fragile, and so on. 

Chapter 6: Sample Careers

The flexibility of this game is baked in. Here we only get a sampling of potential careers. The various supplements can (and will add) more. Not a long chapter, but long enough.

Chapter 7: Attributes

These are character "tags" and descriptors that help round out the character. They include various Motivations, Moral Attitudes, and Character Traits. I can't help but notice that is pretty much all some new games have for their character-building. Also not a long chapter. 

Chapter 8: Achievements

The Achievement Point system works a little different than the typical XP system that many readers of this game would have been used to. These allow the character to advance skills, add a new perk, remove a flaw, and so on. 

Chapter 9: Goods & Services

Our goods and equipment chapter. Important here is the PL or Progress Level of the game and the place where the characters will be buying things. The PL of our current time is PL5 or Information Age. D&D, not counting the effects of magic, is PL 2. Star Trek is PL 7. There is a rough timeline from 4,000 BCE to 5000+ CE. 

Lots of fun things here too. I am not going to gripe about some of the "future tech" projections that are a bit off. Instead I will point out that they do a better job than many other games. Speaking of which...

Chapter 10: Computers

Covers the ubiquitous computers of all sci-fi games. There is a great little overview of Computers through the ages which is a good read. I do like how they try to get cyberware and computers right into the core rules from the start.

Chapter 11: Weapons & Armor

Again, what is says. PL values are given. I didn't see anything to adjust prices based on PL, but I could have missed it. I guess that is the biggest fiction of all here, that standard wages keep up with inflation and supply/demand. This is fine. This is a sci-fi RPG, not an econ textbook.

I am not one to get all gaga over guns, but I do love some sci-fi weapons. Give me lasers, phaser, pulse rifles, I love them all. 

Chapter 12: Vehicles

This covers both personal craft and space ships. There are more in the Star*Drive game. 

Chapter 13: Mutations

I think Gamma World was very much on their minds here. 

Chapter 14: Psionics

Ah, now I look forward to this chapter in every sci-fi game I read. This covers the powers and Mindwalkers. The idea here is to be a really good psionic character who have to train for it. This fits. The feel here is solid Babylon 5 and Catspaw by Joan D. Vinge. Mind you these are good things. 

Chapter 15: Cybertech

It has been threaded through out the game, but this chapter cover cyberware and cybertech (it was the late 90s remember) in detail. 

We end with some compiled tables, an Index and character (Hero) sheets.

Alternity Gamemaster's Guide (1998)

by Richard Baker and Bill Slavicsek. Full-color covers and interior art. 256 pages.
Art by rk post, Charles Bernard, D. Alexander Gregory, Hannibal Kings, Terese Nelson.

Released May, 1998.

Notable, the authors' order is swapped on the cover. While reading this, I felt that this was a full joint effort.

The layout and organization mirrors that of the Player's Handbook. One thing is pretty clear that Game Masters should (maybe "need" is a better word) read both books. 

The Gamemaster's Guide has an Introduction, Chapter 1: Fast-Play Rules, and Chapter 2: Hero Creation, just like the Player's book, but from the Game Master's perspective. This includes what to allow (or not allow) during character creation. The same is true for Chapters 4 and 5, Skills and Perks & Flaws, respectively.  

Chapter 3 is Gamemasters in Action. This is more detail on the rules of play. The GM side of the Heroes in Action chapter in the Player's book.

The biggest changes from the format come in Chapters 11 to 17. 

Chapters 10 and 11 cover Vehicles and Spaceships, respectively. Now I love Starship and Spaceship design. So this is a chapter I kept coming back to, just like I did during my days with Traveller and Star Frontiers. Spaceship design and creation might be more fun than character creation to be honest.

Chapter 12: Alien Artifacts

This would be the "magic items" chapter in D&D-like games. There are some good background details here to add to the campaign chapters (13 and 14) that follow. 

Chapter 13: Campaign Design, Chapter 14: Campaign Architecture, and Chapter 15: Adventure Design

 These chapters detail how to create your own campaigns. They are both about 20 or so pages of material. More details are given in the various campaign settings. Still, there is enough here to keep any sci-fi busy for a while.

Chapter 16: Optional Rules

Mutants, Psionics, Cybertech, AI, and FX are all covered here. FX, which is short for "Special Effects" (here and elsewhere), deals with all the other sorts of things in the game, like magic, miracles, and superscience. Normally, I don't like to mix magic and sci-fi, but in this game, I didn't mind it, really. Maybe it was more due the Dark*Matter setting.

Chapter 17: Creatures & Aliens

People who want to meet or eat you. The stat blocks are similar to PC/NPCs. They remind me a lot of Gamma World in terms of layout and presentation. There are some animals (earth standard) and some templates for alien animals. 

Appendix

This fun appendix covers converting AD&D 2nd Ed Characters to Alternity and back.  It's actually kind of fun and I admit, one of the first chapters I first went to when I first started looking into this game.

We end with an index, spaceship sheets, system sheets, and a bibliography. 

Thoughts

I wanted to love this game. I really did. So here is what works and doesn't for me.

I love what the developers were trying to do here, a system to cover all sorts of different kinds of sci-fi. A way to combine genres like Gamma World, Traveller and Star Frontiers. Plus I love the style of this game. 

While it has a certain "AD&D meets GURPS IN SPAAACE!" vibe, I really like this vibe. This is increased when we bring in the Dark*Matter and Star*Drive settings. 

On the downside, this game suffered from the death of TSR. While reading the history of the company pretty much guaranteed the game was doomed from the start, this was sealed when the d20 system was introduced.  The d20 system did everything the Alternity system was trying to do and then some more. This becomes obvious in the d20 Future book, which includes Alternity and Star Frontiers material.

The system itself, while it takes some of the best of AD&D, also has some of its problems. They tried to patch over them, so some degree of success, but not say as much as the d20 system would later do. 

I know that there was not a lot of love for this system back in the day. Again, I wanted to love it, and Dark*Matter in particular. Well, I discovered the WitchCraft RPG at the same time, and that was pretty much love at first sight. But like many games, I kept coming back to it and thinking, "What if..." 

Re-reading it now, many years later, I still see that it has all of the elements of things I would love. They are all here, but maybe not in the order I need them to be. But there is still a really fun game here, and I am looking forward to exploring it more.

Alternity RPG Today

While the original Alternity RPG is out of print, there are still options for players today.

There is the new Alternity RPG out. Richard Baker, who was half of the original team, worked on this version. I like it and I will try to review it at some point.

There is also a great Alternity RPG website with a LOT of material. There is so much here I might have to spend some time reviewing it as well. 

Looking forward to getting into my other Alternity books.

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

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

—oOo—
Name: The Black PyramidPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author Dante Harrower

Setting: Jazz Age EgyptProduct: Scenario
What You Get: Twenty-four page, full colour 2.40 MB PDFElevator Pitch: The Black Pharaoh will walk the land and you will be there.Plot Hook: An archaeological dig in Egypt promises fame and fortune
Plot Support: Staging advice, six maps, eight NPCs, seven mythos spells, and six Mythos monsters.Production Values: Okay
Pros# Prequel to H.P. Lovecraft’s Nyarlathotep# Atmospheric survival horror # Scoleciphobia# Traumatophobia# Aiguptosophobia
Cons# Needs an edit# Underwritten hook# No handouts# Linear# Pre-generated Investigators would help # Feels like a sequel to a scenario the Investigators haven’t played
Conclusion# Serviceable prequel to H.P. Lovecraft’s Nyarlathotep that will need teasing apart to run with ease# Atmospheric survival horror that has its creepy moments

 A note from Arthur to Quincey

Telegram from Arthur Holmwood to Quincey P. Morris.

“26 May.

“Count me in every time. I bear messages which will make both your ears tingle.

“Art.”

--

Notes

Moon Phase: New Moon

Not much here. But I do want to call out the use of the Telegram.  Later on, we will see Harker trying to pass a note to the Count's servants to get a message back to London. These two methods, telegrams and letters, help show the divide between our heroes and Dracula even more.

I wonder if a tale like this could have been done in any other time and done as well. The Victorian, especially the late Victorian, was on the cusp of a brand-new world. The 20th Century would shrink the world down to just one place in the minds of many. World Wars I and II would later make this painfully and tragically obvious. But for now, in the 1890s, there are still "two worlds," the Old World and the New World. Our heroes are firmly part of the New.

Also, Dracula was published on this day in 1897.

NOTE: This is repost from 2021. My coverage of TSR's Sci-Fi offerings would not be complete without this. Plus I want to do this before tackling Alternity later on.
--
Gamma World might have been TSR's first big entry into sci-fi gaming (Warriors of Mars and Metamorphosis Alpha non-withstanding), but it was not their biggest.  While I don't have any hard numbers in front of me, I am going to have to say that Star Frontiers edges out the later Alternity in terms of popularity.  It was certainly built at the height of TSR's fame with the first edition, simply Star Frontiers, published in 1982 with the new edition and trade-dress Star Frontiers: Alpha Dawn and Star Frontiers: Knight Hawks.

Certainly, in terms of fans, Star Frontiers has Alternity beat.  But more on that soon.

For this review, I am considering the PDFs and Print on Demand versions of both Star Frontiers: Alpha Dawn and Star Frontiers: Knight Hawks. I am also going to go with my recollections of playing the game when it first came out.

The Alpha Dawn book is designed by "TSR Staff Writers" but we know ow that a huge bulk of the work was done by David "Zeb" Cook and Lawrence Schick.  Knight Hawks was designed primarily by Douglas Niles.  The cover art in both cases was done by Larry Elmore with interior art by Elmore and Jim Holloway with contributions by Jeff Easley, Tim Truman, and even some Dave Trampier.  Keith Parkinson would go on to do some other covers in line as well.  

While originally boxed sets (gotta love the early 1980s for that!) the PDFs break all the components down into separate files. Handy when you go to print the counters or the maps.  The Print on Demand versions put all the files together into an attractive soft-cover book for each game.  The maps are published in the back, but you will want to print them out for use. 

Both books are easy to read and really nice.  They have been some of my favorite Print on Demand purchases ever.
Let's look into both games.

Star Frontiers: Alpha Dawn

Alpha Dawn is the original Star Frontiers game.  The box game with two books, a Basic and Expanded game rules, some maps, counters, and two 10-sided dice.  The rules indicate that one is "dark" and the other "light" to help when rolling percentages, but mine were red and blue.  Go figure.

The Basic Game is a 16-page book/pdf that gives you the very basics of character creation.  There are four stat pairs, Strength/Stamina, Dexterity/Reaction Speed, Intelligence/Logic, and Personality/Leadership.  These are scored on a 0 to 100 scale, but the PCs will fall between 30 and 70.  Higher is better. These can be adjusted by species and each individual score can also be changed or shifted. 

The four species are humans, the insect-like Vrusk, the morphic Dralasites, and the ape-like Yazirian. Each species of course has its own specialties and quirks.  I rather liked the Dralasites (whom I always pronounced as "Drasalites") because they seemed the oddest and they had a weird sense of humor. 

We are also introduced to the worm-like Sathar. These guys are the enemies of the UPF (United Planetary Federation) and are not player-characters. 

The basics of combat, movement, and some equipment are given.  There is enough here to keep you going for bit honestly, but certainly, you will want to do more.  We move on then to the Expanded rules.

The Expanded Rules cover the same ground but now we get more details on our four species and the Sathar.  Simple ability checks are covered, roll d% against an ability and match it or roll under.

Characters also have a wide variety of skills that can be suited to any species, though some are better than others, Vrusk for example are a logical race and gain a bonus for that.  Skills are attached to abilities so now you roll against an ability/skill to accomplish something.  Skills are broken down into broad categories or careers; Military, Tech, and Bio/Social. 

Movement is covered and I am happy to say that even in 1982 SF had the good sense to go metric here. 

There are two combat sections, personal and vehicle.  These are not starships, not yet anyway, and were a lot of hovercars and gyro-jet guns. 

There is a section on creatures and how to make creatures. I am afraid I took that section a little too close to heart and most of my SF games ended up being "D&D in Space" with the planets being used as large dungeons.

The background material in the Frontier Society though is great stuff. I immediately got a good just of what was going on here and what this part of the galaxy was like.  While Earth was never mentioned, you could almost imagine it was out there somewhere. Either as the center of UPF (Star Trek) or far away, waiting to be found (Battlestar Galactica).  

This book also includes the adventure SF-0: Crash on Volturnus.

When it comes to sci-fi some of the rules have not aged as well. Computers still feel very limited, but the idea that as we approach the speed of light we can enter The Void has its appeal.  

Star Frontiers: Knight Hawks

Ah. Now this game.  Star Frontiers was great, but this game felt like something different. Something "not D&D" to me.

In fact I have often wondered if Knight Hawks had not been a separate game in development by Douglas Niles that they later brought into the Star Frontiers line. I also think that TSR was also suffering a little bit of what I call "Traveller Envy" since this can be used as an expansion, a standalone RPG, and as a board game!

Like Alpha Dawn, this game is split into four sections.  There is a "Basic" game, and "Advanced" or "Expansion" rules (and the bulk of the book), an adventure, "The Warriors of White Light", and all the counters and maps.

As far as maps go, that hex map of empty space is still one of my favorites and fills me with anticipation of worlds to come. 

The PDF version splits all this into four files for ease of printing or reading.  The Print on Demand book is gorgeous really.  Yes...the art is still largely black and white and the maps and counters are pretty much useless save as references, but still. I flip through the book and I want to fire up the engines of my characters' stolen Corvette, the FTL Lightspeed Lucifer. Complete with the onboard computer they named Frodo.

The Basic rules cover things like ship movement, acceleration, and turning, along with ship-to-ship combat.  By itself, you have the rules for a good ship combat board game. It works fine as long as you don't mind keeping your frame of reference limited to two-dimensional space. 

The Expanded rules tie this all a little closer to the Alpha Dawn rules, but I still get the feeling that this may have started out as a different sort of game that was later brought into the fold of Star Frontiers.  

Ships are largely built and there is a character creation feel to this.  Their 80's roots are showing, no not like that, but in that, the best engines you can get for a starship are atomic fission.  Of course, no one just gets a starship, you have to buy it and that often means taking out a loan or doing a bunch of odd jobs to raise the credits. Often both.  I don't think I ever actually bought a ship. The Lucifer was stolen.

There is also quite a bit on the planets of the UPF, Frontier Space, and the worlds of the Sathar.  It really had kind of a "Wild West" meets the "Age of Sail" feel to it. 

The last part of the POD book is the adventure "The Warriors of White Light" with its various scenarios. 

Minus two d10s everything is here for an unlimited number of adventures in Frontier Space.  Rereading it now after so many years I can't help but dream up various new adventures. I also can't help to want to use the Sathar in some of my other Sci-fi games.  They have such untapped potential.

The price for these books is perfect.  Grab the PDF and POD combo.  Get some d10s, load your gyrojet gun and get ready to make the jump to the Void. There are new planets to discover!

Parts of Star Frontiers, in particular the species, would find new life in D20 Future, part of the D20 Modern line.

Both games are fun, but suffer from and/or benefit from the design principles of the time. Newer players might find some of the game elements dated. Older players of the games will find them nostalgic.  Personally reading through them now some 40 years after first reading them I get a lot more enjoyment from the rules.  Back then I was really too D&D focused to really enjoy what I had in front of me. Today, well I can't wait to stat up a character or two and a starship.

Star Frontiers on the Web

There are many places where Star Frontiers is alive and well. There used to be more, but my understanding is a predatory grab for the trademark by another RPG company caused Hasbro/WotC to exercise their legal rights and bring the game back in-house. While that did screw over the amazing work done by the fan sites, there are still many up and providing new material for the game.  

For these fans and sites, Star Frontiers never went away.

• Star Frontiers: Inclusive Star Frontiers (Facebook)
• http://www.starfrontiers.com/
• Star Frontiers Wikia
• Star Frontiersman Magazine
• Frontier Explorer

Don't forget our campaign for Thirteen Parsecs is still going strong!

The year is 2037. Under the darkness of a world soiled by war, pollution, and ecological degradation, in the shadows spun by neon, simulacra skulk, hiding amongst those they want to be like, and they will do anything to survive and become more like the masters they once served. The Wallace Corporation is the wealthiest company in the system, having made free technologies and scientific advances that has ensured the survival of mankind with a reliable supply of food and an advanced communications network replacing the one that was destroyed along with vast swathes of human knowledge and digital data. These though, are not the only advances it has made. Using advances made on Tyrell Corporation technology and patents, the Wallace Corporation has introduced the Nexus-9, a replicant design incapable of lying or harming humans of its own accord. In response, the United Nations repeals the UN Replicant Prohibition Act of 2023, passed in response to the killings committed by Nexus-6 models in the late teenies, and classifies the Nexus-9 as a ‘safe’ Replicant, granting them the status of second-class citizens with limited rights. Replicant Detection Units of the world’s various police forces are still responsible for investigating crimes related to replicants, especially the previous models, such as the Nexus-8, and some even begin to employ Nexus-9 units as investigators. It means that Replicants are hunting and ‘Retiring’ their own. It means that the investigators of the Replicant Detection Unit charged with tracking down Replicants, known as ‘Blade Runners’, are hunting sentient beings that look like themselves and act themselves, but are not, strictly speaking, Human. This is a future when what it is to be Human is beginning to be lost, when empathy is all that separates mankind from that which is not only faster and stronger than it us, but also threatens to replace mankind. The year is 2037 and in the city of Los Angeles, under the cacophony of neon, culture clashes, and the watchful presence of the Wallace Corporation, Blade Runners stalk the streets, gun in hand with the power to question all and the responsibility to answer for everything they do. Some Blade Runners have been on the force for decades, the Nexus-9 Blade Runner units mere months and even then, are only a year old despite being fully formed adults, will have to prove their conduct to beyond reproach, but both are police brothers.

This is the setting for Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game, perhaps the unlikeliest of roleplaying licences. The film Blade Runner has always been regarded as a cult classic and then an accepted classic Science Fiction film, a neo-noir meditation of what it meant to be human and not only impossible to obtain the licence for, but also impossible to adapt, since after all, what was it that the Investigators would do and how exactly would you model what was human and what was not? When news broke that Free League Publishing had obtained the licence to coincide with the release of Blade Runner 2049, the official sequel to Blade Runner, the question became not if there could be a licence based on Blade Runner, but could it actually be good? Not wanting to answer that question has delayed this review of the Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game again and again, because if there was the possibility that it could be good, there was also the possibility that it could be bad. Fortunately, Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game is from the same publisher that released Alien: The Roleplaying Game—and that adaptation has proven to be good.

Published following a successful Kickstarter campaign, Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game shifts the time from the 2019 of Blade Runner and the 2049 of Blade Runner 2049 to 2037. The Player Characters are all ‘blade runners’, members of Los Angeles’ Rep-Detect Unit, tasked with investigating all crimes related to Replicants. This includes tracking down older Replicant models that have gone rogue and are on Earth still illegally or have committed some other crime, as much it does anti-Replicant hate and crimes against Replicants. As a team they will be assigned ‘Case Files’, or scenarios—such as ‘Case File 01: Electric Dreams’ in the Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game Starter Set and the recently released Case File 02: Fiery Angels—and expected to work together as a team. They will face not only the sometimes-terrible nature of the crimes they have to investigate—and the challenge of doing so—but also of political interference and interest in their efforts, both from within their department and without, and ultimately moral quandaries and situations in which they will be forced to question their Humanity and it means to be Human. The roleplaying game clearly highlights these at the start of the book as well as its key themes of ‘Sci-Fi Action’, character drama, corporate intrigue, moral conflict, and soul searching. It also notes that keeping track of the passage of time is important—this being done in shifts, used to measure investigative actions and downtime, that the necessity of investigating clues within a Case File means splitting the party, and that the moral dilemmas within a Case File may lead to Player Character versus Player Character conflict.

An Investigator in Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game is simply detailed. He has four Attributes— Strength, Agility, Intelligence, and Empathy, and thirteen Skills, three per Attribute. The thirteenth Skill is Driving, which is derived from the manoeuvrability of the vehicle being driven. Both Attributes and Skills are assigned a letter, A, B, C, or D. Each letter corresponds to a die type, A to a twelve-sided die, B to a ten-sided die, C to an eight-sided die, and D to a six-sided die. Skills can have Specialities, representing dedicated areas of expertise, such as ‘Origami’, which lets an Investigator heal a point of Stress by folding an exquisite Origami figure or Sycophant, which grants the Investigator an extra Promotion Point as he ingratiates himself with his superiors. Thus, an Investigator is either Human or a Nexus-9 Blade Runner, and it is also possible to play a Replicant who is not aware of being a Replicant. In terms of the number of ‘Years on the Force’, the Blade Runner is either a Rookie, Seasoned, Veteran, or an Old-Timer. A Replicant Investigator can only be a Rookie. The ‘Years on the Force’ determines the years served, the number of extra points to assign to both attributes and skills, skill specialities, and both Promotion Points and Chinyen Points. Chinyen Points are the currency in the Los Angles of 2037, Promotion Points represent the Investigator’s standing within the department and have multiple uses. In general, Replicants have higher physical attributes, and limited skills and no specialities, whereas Humans tend towards the reverse. A Replicant will also have less Promotion Points and Chinyen Points.

An Investigator also has an Archetype, representing his role in the investigative team, his expertise, and the work he carries out for the LAPD. There are seven Archetypes—Analyst, Cityspeaker, Doxie, Enforcer, Fixer, Inspector, and Skimmer. The Skimmer and Cityspeaker are only available for Human characters, whilst the Doxie is only available for Replicant characters. The Analyst is a forensic specialist; the Cityspeaker works the city through his contacts and may have worked undercover; the Doxie is akin the kick-murder squad operative seen in Blade Runner, but can read suspects too; the Enforcer uses force and violence when necessary; the Fixer uses contacts and networks to help solve crimes; the Inspector is an old hand and relies on experience; and the Skimmer who is taking kickbacks on the side. Lastly, every Investigator has a ‘Key Memory’, a ‘Key item’, and a ‘Key Relationship’. These three have different effects in play, but should ideally come into play during an investigation. The ‘Key Memory’ can be used to gain advantage on an action; the ‘Key item’ can be used to gain a lost point of Resolve, and the ‘Key Relationship’ is used by the Game Runner to create scenes in a game and interacting with the ‘Key Relationship’ will earn the Investigator Humanity Points.

The character creation process is straightforward. Some elements the player has to choose, such as assigning points to his character’s attributes, but the rest can either rolled for or randomly determined. Tables are included for the latter.

Name: Remedy
Type: Replicant
Archetype: Doxie
Years on the Force: Rookie
Appearance: You are a thing of beauty. Quite literally.

ATTRIBUTES
Strength: A/D12
Agility: A/D12
Intelligence: B/D10
Empathy: C/D8

Health: 8 Resolve: 3
Promotion Points: 1 Chinyen Points: 1

SKILLS
Hand-to-Hand Combat: B/D10, Insight: C/D8, Mobility: C/D8, Manipulation: B/D10, Observation: B/D10

KEY MEMORY
When Did It Happen? – Just a few weeks ago.
Where Did It Happen? – In the derelict housing projects of Los Angeles Hills.
Who Was There? – Your romantic partner
What Happened? – You saw something extraordinary that you cannot explain.

KEY RELATIONSHIP
Who Is It? – Romantic Partner
What’s Your Relationship Like? – Hateful
What’s Going On? – They are suspected of a crime.

SIGNATURE ITEM
A necklace

Mechanically, Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game uses a variant of Free league Publishing’s Year Zero engine previously seen in Twilight: 2000 – Roleplaying in the World War III That Never Was. To undertake an action, a player rolls one die for the Attribute and one die for the Skill. Rolls of six or more count as a success. Rolls of ten or more grant two successes. In general, unless rolls are opposed, only one success is required to succeed at an action. An extra success enables an Investigator to get more information, perform a task faster, or help an Investigator with a task. An easy task gives an Investigator an Advantage. In which case, his player rolls another die, equal to the lowest die in the pool. Conversely, a difficult task removes the lower die in the pool altogether. If any roll is unsuccessful, a player can choose to Push the dice roll and roll again. However, if a one—or the Origami Unicorn—is rolled on the first roll or the Pushed roll, the Investigator, if Human, will suffer a point of damage if the attribute rolled was Strength or Agility or a point of Stress if the attribute rolled was Intelligence or Empathy. If a Replicant, the Investigator will always suffer Stress rather than damage. A Human can Push a Skill roll once, but a Replicant can Push a Skill roll twice.

Only in combat do more than the one extra success count, indicating that more damage has been inflicted or a critical injury. Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game is not a forgiving game in terms of combat and all firearms have a high ‘Crit Die’, so the Investigators should not engage in combat lightly. The rules also cover vehicles in combat—some vehicles can be armed, but for the most part, one vehicle will be ramming another. The rules for chases cover chases on foot, and then by ground vehicle or in the air.
For example, Remedy has been following a suspect, Ramirez ‘Ram’ Smith, whom she thinks has links to the Replicant Underground. She has tracked him down to the Grand Central Market, where all manner of dishes and foodstuffs—legal and illegal—can be found. As her and her partner’s spinner touches down, she leaps out of the vehicle, just in time to see her quarry duck into the heavy crowds carrying a package of some kind. The Game Runner call for an Observation test to determine if Remedy can see him. Remedy has a rating of B/D10 for both Observation and Intelligence, meaning that her player will be rolling two ten-sided dice. Ramirez ‘Ram’ Smith only has a rating of D/D6 for Stealth and B/D10 for Intelligence, so the Game Runner will be rolling a six-sided die and a ten-sided die. However, he is in a crowd, so the Game Master rules that Remedy will be at a disadvantage. This means that Remedy’s player has to remove the base die for Remedy’s Intelligence, so her player will only be rolling one ten-sided die.

The Game Runner rolls an eight and a two, giving ‘Ram’ Smith one success. Remedy’s player rolls a four, so she has no successes. Remedy’s player decides to Push the roll and describes how she leaps up one of the streetlights that a food stand has tapped into illegally for power and onto the food stand’s roof. Remedy’s play takes up the ten-sided die for her Observation skill. This time though, she rolls an Origami Unicorn, meaning that not only has she failed, but she also suffers a point of Stress as even from this elevated height she cannot see her quarry. In the meantime, the proprietor of the food stand yells at her in Cityspeak to get off his roof! The Game Runner tells Remedy’s player that although she cannot see ‘Ram’ Smith, she did see someone else moving purposely through the crowds and that she was fairly certain that it was her partner! This is the cause of the Stress.In addition to gaining Stress because rolls of one or the Unicorn Origami are made on pushed rolled, it can come from working more than three Shifts without a Downtime Shift and simply from Stressful situations. When the number of Stress points is equal to, or greater than an Investigator’s Resolve, the Investigator is broken and will suffer from randomly determined Critical Stress effect. The tables are different for Humans and Replicants. A Replicant will generally begin play with lower Resolve than a Human and react in a more extreme manner than Human would, though this can be a negative reaction or a positive one. In addition, if an Investigator is broken by Stress, his Resolve can be reduced by one, and should his superiors become aware of it, a Replicant would have to take a Baseline Test.

In terms of background, Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game is firmly placed between Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049. Its focus is primarily on the city of Los Angeles, now a mega-city that extends up to San Francisco and down to San Diego, and to the irradiated edge of Las Vegas. It does include some details about the places beyond the confines of Los Angeles, such as The Archipelago, what was Santa Barbara, now voluntarily flooded to turn its wealthy estates into heavily guarded and isolated compounds. There are details of Off-World and even the idea of getting Off-World is discussed, but it remains a dream for nearly all of the remaining citizenry on Earth. Even when it comes to Los Angeles, it concentrates on the main sectors of the city’s Downtown, noting particular locations such as the LAPD Headquarters, DNA Row where the best bioengineers and tech vendors can be found, and Animoid Row for the robot animals in the city. This is accompanied by descriptions of life in the city-climate, technology, communications, and so on, which the Game Runner can use to describe world around the Investigators.

A companion chapter looks at the powers that be, though concentrating on Los Angeles. This includes various corporations, the LAPD, numerous United Nations organisations, criminal gangs—including the Replicant Underground, and of course, Niander Wallace and his corporation. Seen as the saviour of mankind, he remains a mysterious figure, though a newspaper interview with him adds a nice sense of verisimilitude. The aims and relationships with the Wallace Corporation are examined, as they are likely to clash if the Investigators’ inquiries get to close, and this includes a discussion of the various models of Replicant, from the Nexus-1 all the way up to the Nexus-9. Another in-game newspaper highlights the divide in views on the acceptance of Nexus-9 Replicants in general society, despite their official recognition as individuals with limited rights. Many believe that Nexus-9 Replicants are part of a corporate effort to steal jobs and act accordingly. Others, such as members of the Replicant Underground, object to Replicants being Second Class citizens and campaign for better rights for them, and more. The assignment of Nexus-9 Blade Runners to the Replicant Detection Unit has its own issues, as each Nexus-9 Blade Runner has to prove that it is capable of fulfilling the role, which includes hunting its own, without showing the signs of emotional and mental stress that drastically affected earlier models.

Much of this modelled by two of three points which can be earned over the course of play. Chinyen Points represent an Investigator’s income and are primarily used for purchases beyond normal expenses in combination with a Connections skill roll. Promotion Points are earned by investigating a Case File efficiently and by Replicants passing a Baseline Test, but can be lost for misconduct or poorly investigating a Case File. A Replicant Blade Runner whose Promotion Points is reduced to zero must make a Baseline Test. Promotion Points are spent to gain Specialities for an Investigator’s skills, to gain access to specialised equipment from the LAPD, or exchanged for a Chinyen Point, representing a pay rise. Humanity Points are earned as determined by a Case File, as well as an Investigator bringing his Key Memory and Key Relationship into play, and by a Replicant Blade Runner failing a Baseline Test. Humanity Points are used to raise an Investigator’s skills. Of the two it is easier to gain Promotion Points rather than Humanity Points, so consequently, it is easier for an Investigator to improve via Specialities rather his skills.

The LAPD’s Replicant Detection Unit is presented in some detail, fans of Blade Runner will be pleased to note that Dave Holden, now known as ‘Iron Lung’ due to the injury suffered at the start of the film, heads the unit after Harry Bryant retired. This covers its organisation, departments, resources—including those provided by the Wallace Corporation, and day-to-day operations including standard procedures and the perils of being promoted or decorated too often. Complementing this a section on standard and non-standard Replicant Detection Unit equipment. There are old standbys detailed, such as the Voight-Kampff Machine, the Pfläger-Katsumata PK-D 5223 Blaster, and the ESPER Machine, and these are joined by the Post-Traumatic Baseline Test, the PK-D FKM890 Blaster, and Digital Companions. Plus, of course, there are the Spinners. All of this equipment is nicely detailed in a fashion that fans of both films will appreciate. All covered is shopping in general and buying goods on the black market.

For the Game Runner, there is general advice on running Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game, setting the scene, setting the mood, and so on. The bulk of it is dedicated building and running Case Files, the investigations that the Replicant Detection Unit assigns to its Blade Runners. Broad actions within a Case File are split across four Shifts each day, with one of them being designated a Downtime Shift when the Investigator will rest and see to personal details. It will be necessary to split the Investigators up over the course of a Case File—and the roleplaying game encourages the players to do so—as there is invariably far more to a Case File than they can cover just going from scene to scene. Fortunately, the Blade Runners can stay connected and even be involved in a different scene, if only remotely, via the KIA—or Knowledge Integration Assistant—that they all carry as routine. However, the number of leads and sperate scenes is exacerbated by a Countdown, which means that the Investigators will be working against the clock, which can trigger events and even bring a Case File to a close before an investigation has had time to be completed. However, as important as Case Files are to the play of Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game, solving them is not the point of the roleplaying game. Rather, they are a means by which the Blade Runners can be challenged by difficult personal and moral dilemmas, can be confronted by who and what they are, and be forced to make choices.

Unfortunately, there is no Case File included in Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game. So just from the core rulebook it is difficult to see either the game play or the moral dilemmas in practice. For that, the Game Runner will need either Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game Starter Set or Case File 02: Fiery Angels. Although disappointing, there are good reasons as why there is no Case File in Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game, and that really is due to the handouts required, since as an investigative game, Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game is dependent on visuals. Just as in Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049. That said, there is a set of tables for creating the basics of a Case File that the Game Runner can then flesh out.

Beside the lack of a Case File, there is the issue of the divide in Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game in the focus on Human and Replicant Blade Runner—more on the latter than the former. This is intentional, since Replicants are the focus of the setting in general. It shows in their physical capability versus their emotional capacity, which hinders their response to Stress and potentially their ability to work as a Blade Runner. It shows in their need to prove themselves as Blade Runners by gaining Promotion Points lest they be seen as less than ideal additions to the Replicant Detection Unit. And the best way of gaining Promotion Points will be to successfully investigate a Case File and that is unlikely to be to the benefit of other Replicants. This is the core moral quandary in Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game. Yet mechanically, the way to prove that that a Replicant Blade Runner is emotionally capable of undertaking the role is to improve his Empathy Attribute, and that requires Humanity Points. The primary ways of gaining these are to engage with his Key Memory and Key Relationship, the others being to investigate a Case File in a more humane fashion, often against the Replicant Detection Unit’s directive and interests and fail a Baseline Test, indicating to his superiors how he is not suitable for the role. In comparison, the Human Blade Runner is not faced with this near constant balancing act, either mechanically or narratively, and most of the moral dilemmas the Human Blade Runner will be part of Case File’s story as well as with his Key Relationship, and so narrative based rather than mechanical.

Physically, Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game is stunning book, its artwork bringing the energy and sense of movement of the streets of Los Angeles to life contrasting with the almost sepulchral atmosphere and stillness of its interiors. Everything is swathed in darkness, broken by blasts of neon shining off the ever-present rain. The book is also well written and engaging and well organised.

Despite not being set in the period of Blade Runner or Blade Runner 2049, but somewhere in between, Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game is going to satisfy fans of both, by detailing the world and exploring its core moral questions. The only downside is that without a Case File of its own, it cannot best showcase how those core moral questions can examined, or some of the nuances present in the setting. For that, the Game Runner will need a Case File of her own or an official one from the publisher. Nevertheless, Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game is a very good adaption of a licence previously thought unadaptable, let alone available, and a very good introduction to both the world and the questions it raises.
—oOo—
Free League Publishing will be at UK Games Expo which takes place on Friday, May 31st to Sunday June 2nd, 2024.

 Our three suitors for Lucy's ill-fated heart arrive on the scene. We are also introduced to R.M. Renfield. 

Dr. Seward’s Diary.

(Kept in phonograph)

25 May.—Ebb tide in appetite to-day. Cannot eat, cannot rest, so diary instead. Since my rebuff of yesterday I have a sort of empty feeling; nothing in the world seems of sufficient importance to be worth the doing.... As I knew that the only cure for this sort of thing was work, I went down amongst the patients. I picked out one who has afforded me a study of much interest. He is so quaint that I am determined to understand him as well as I can. To-day I seemed to get nearer than ever before to the heart of his mystery.

I questioned him more fully than I had ever done, with a view to making myself master of the facts of his hallucination. In my manner of doing it there was, I now see, something of cruelty. I seemed to wish to keep him to the point of his madness—a thing which I avoid with the patients as I would the mouth of hell.

(Mem., under what circumstances would I not avoid the pit of hell?) Omnia Romæ venalia sunt. Hell has its price! verb. sap. If there be anything behind this instinct it will be valuable to trace it afterwards accurately, so I had better commence to do so, therefore—

R. M. Renfield, ætat 59.—Sanguine temperament; great physical strength; morbidly excitable; periods of gloom, ending in some fixed idea which I cannot make out. I presume that the sanguine temperament itself and the disturbing influence end in a mentally-accomplished finish; a possibly dangerous man, probably dangerous if unselfish. In selfish men caution is as secure an armour for their foes as for themselves. What I think of on this point is, when self is the fixed point the centripetal force is balanced with the centrifugal; when duty, a cause, etc., is the fixed point, the latter force is paramount, and only accident or a series of accidents can balance it.

Letter, Quincey P. Morris to Hon. Arthur Holmwood.

“25 May.

“My dear Art,—

“We’ve told yarns by the camp-fire in the prairies; and dressed one another’s wounds after trying a landing at the Marquesas; and drunk healths on the shore of Titicaca. There are more yarns to be told, and other wounds to be healed, and another health to be drunk. Won’t you let this be at my camp-fire to-morrow night? I have no hesitation in asking you, as I know a certain lady is engaged to a certain dinner-party, and that you are free. There will only be one other, our old pal at the Korea, Jack Seward. He’s coming, too, and we both want to mingle our weeps over the wine-cup, and to drink a health with all our hearts to the happiest man in all the wide world, who has won the noblest heart that God has made and the best worth winning. We promise you a hearty welcome, and a loving greeting, and a health as true as your own right hand. We shall both swear to leave you at home if you drink too deep to a certain pair of eyes. Come!

“Yours, as ever and always,
“Quincey P. Morris.”

--

Notes

Moon Phase: Waning Crescent

Here, we see that our trio are actually old friends. 

Some copies of Dracula were shipped with a misprint on the date of Dr. Seward's journal. You can still find some that say "25 April" and some that say "25 May." May 25th is the obvious correct date. My copies are about half and half.

Seward talks about Renfield, but most of what he says is actually nonsense even by Victorian standards of psychotherapy. However, I suppose the point here is that Seward can see that Renfield is focusing on something outside of himself. How is it that Dracula already has a hold on him? The movies have taken it to mean that Renfield was the first to visit Dracula, but we have no evidence of that here. It is more likely that in Renfield Dracula found a willing disciple. 

On to Arthur, Quincey and John. So all three know each other, and all three have had some adventures together all over the world, it seems. Again, Dracula scholars have seized on this and suggested that the three had had encounters with the supernatural before. This is intriguing but very unlikely. They are too caught off guard for them to have seen anything akin to this. No. Our three would be vampire hunters represent what is best about the Victorian time; the young and rising Lord (Holmwood), the rich adventurous American (Morris), and our brilliant Doctor (Seward). They are also part of the new world, and they have not yet been tarnished by anything from the old world. 

At the end of the street stands a house behind a crumbling wall. People who pass it, look at it askance, wondering why it stands empty after so long and why nobody has bought it. They only half remember it from their childhoods and if they did, they would realise that the building has been in the same state for decades. The children whisper that the house is haunted, that some kid went in there, and never came out. Even so, they dare each other to climb the wall and break in… just as their parents once did. They go in to see what treasures or secrets they can find. The one that has gone unlived in for years. Sometimes a few hearty souls creep in, it is said, Most find nothing—just an empty old house. Some return shaken. A few never come out at all. The house is thus a lurking presence, perhaps not in this town, but in the next, or the next one over? Or perhaps in all of them? And if the house has been lurking all that time, what happens to it when it sits alone for so many long years? What jealousies and hatreds does it quietly nurture? What secrets does it contain, waiting to be discovered within its dark walls, crouched within its dank and dreary rooms, hungering for the return of life?

This is The Darkest House. It is a horror scenario sent in a grand house, fallen to ruin, riven by madness, stained by trauma and emotional scars. Those it draws in, it torments out of hate and spite, and even as they discover some of the house’s secrets and its origins, perhaps the best outcome they can hope for, is to escape it confines, though not the same as they were when they crossed its threshold. Published by Monte Cook Games, The Darkest House is something different, a horror scenario originally designed to be played online and with any game system. As the former, it was originally designed and delivered as an app and a set of electronic documents, combining details of the ‘Darkest House’ itself, a set of handouts in terms of texts, images, and sound files, all richly detailed. As the latter, it comes with its own ‘House System’ which allows Player Characters to be adapted from any game system run The Darkest House using the ‘House System’, the simplified nature of its mechanics making it easier to run online. A Game Master—not calling the Game Master the House Master really is a missed opportunity—could even run The Darkest House with the different Player Characters from different systems and settings if she is ambitious enough.

The Darkest House is now available as a book, which presents all of this information in physical format, but marked with QR codes to link to handouts and downloads. It enables the artwork to shine and as the Game Master to see the motifs and flow of the scenario in one place.

A Player Character in The Darkest House is measured as a Rating on a ten-point scale. Between one and two, they will need to employ stealth and avoid direct confrontations with the dangers of the house; between three and six they will still be danger, but can still survive; and seven and up and they can survive with only minor difficulty. The aim though, is not to create Player Characters particular to The Darkest House, but rather draw them in from other game systems. This points to its intended universality and is underpinned by a conversion guide that adapt those Player Characters from other roleplaying games and fit them on the ten-point scale of the House System. This is whether a Player Character’s level or primary attributes are measured on a twenty-point, six-point, or percentile scale. Thus, it would work whether the Player Character comes from Monte Cook Games’ own Cypher System, Chaosium, Inc.’s Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, or Free League Publishing’s Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying. The process is more rough and ready then exact, and will very likely require the Game Master and the players to adjust as necessary to account for particular abilities, powers, spells, or skills. This is done by awarding Boons rather than adjusting a Player Character’s base Rating. Further, some spells and abilities and their effects can be applied narratively rather than mechanically. This is likely to be easier than working out the exact effects even on the limited scale of the House System and the overall effect of the House System is one that is rough and ready rather than exact or elegant.

Mechanically, the House System measures a Player Character’s Rating versus the Rating of the task involved. The Rating of the task is added to seven to give the target number for the player to role for his character to succeed. The player rolls three six-sided dice, one of which is called the House Die. The Rating of his character is added to the result of the two ordinary dice and not the House Dice, the aim being to roll equal to or higher than the target number. If the task Rating is six or higher than the Player Character’s Rating, the task is impossible to achieve, whilst if it is six or lower than the Player Character’s Rating, the task is impossible to fail. Under the House System, the player always rolls, which means that the player rolls for his character to act and rolls for his character to avoid actions against him. Boons and Banes make a task harder to achieve, respectively, and if a Player Character has one or more of both, they cancel each other out until either the Player Character has none, or a Bane or a Bane leftover. Whether the Player Character has a Bane or a Boon, his player rolls an extra die in addition to the two six-sided dice and the House Die. If a Boon, the player discards to die with the lowest result, and if a Bane, he discards the highest result.

What then does the House Die do? In general, nothing. Under special circumstances, it comes into play. This occurs when it is the highest result on any die rolled and when the player, in desperation, has his character ‘call upon the House’ for help. Neither of these are good. When the highest result on any die rolled is the House Die, the House Acts. This begins with creaking sounds, footsteps, or similar noises being heard by the Player Characters, a figure associated with the section of the House the Player Characters are in suddenly appearing, and so on, but that is only the beginning. It escalates each time the House Acts, step-by-step, up through ten steps, and starts again at one, recycling round and round as the Player Characters explore more of the house, and roll the highest result on the House Die again and again. When a player has his character ‘call upon the House’ for help, the House Acts just if the player had rolled the highest result on the House Die and the character gains a Doom. Doom affects a Player Character in a number of ways, such as if he is wounded and falls unconscious, the number of points acting as a penalty to the player’s roll to see if the character dies. However, what a player can do is ‘spend a Doom’, which gives the Game Master permission to do something terrible to his character. Whatever happens, though, it must be significant, be bad for the character, and at the time of the Game Master’s choosing—and the Doom points can be saved as well. Worse though, the Doom Effects can linger if the Player Characters leave the House…

Harm in The Darkest House is also kept simple. The Rating of the attack is added to a roll of a six-sided die, whilst the defender’s Rating is deducted. If the result is a positive number, that is wound that the defender suffers. The House Die is not rolled for damage, a Banes and Boons can be. Physical armour will reduce this damage. Mental damage is suffered in the same way. Wounds also mean that the rolls for all actions are made with Banes.

Effectively, what the House System is a meta-system, a set of rules and ultimately guidelines since it cannot cover every eventuality and every nuance from every system. It is that lack of nuance, at least mechanically, where The Darkest House is going to be lacking. What this means is that the Game Master is going to have to pick up the slack of the House System and shift what is nuance in another game system over to more narrative, even more storytelling resolution and outcome in The Darkest House.

The last thing to note about a Player Characters is that they enter the Darkest House with a truth or a lie. This essentially is weaponised as part of the play of The Darkest House, the House using it against the Player Character, attempting to shake his faith as part of the story rather than to victimise him. The Game Master should be building these truths and lies into arcs that will run throughout the Player Characters’ exploration of The Darkest House. In terms of advice, The Darkest House suggests reasons for the Player Characters to enter the house, stories that can be told in the House, and some of the objectives that the Player Characters might work towards, intentionally or not. It highlights how the house contains anachronisms even if fantasy characters venture inside, and there is magic to be found too within its walls. The House also isolates the Player Characters, making contact with the outside world technically impossible, though this will not be apparent to the Player Characters. The Game Master can instead use this against the Player Characters, deceiving them through the figures that they would otherwise trust. There is good advice on both running The Darkest House and on the challenges of running The Darkest House, all of which readies the Game Master for the campaign and the details of the House itself.

The House is described Room by Room in a lengthy series of two-page spreads that make up the bulk of the book. These come complete with a floorplan, description, overview, an illustration, and a QR code. The latter opens up a website with images and handouts that the players and their characters can view and peruse. It can include sounds too, their presence marked with an icon of its own. The commitment to the format even includes a darkened hallway, which follows the first location. Divided between areas of the House labelled father, mother, dining room, sister, lover, and ultimately, the Original House, voices whisper to intruders, a Mother figure lurks with her skeleton children in her arms ready to rebuke the Player Characters for their lack of love for her and ready to launch her children at them, a father figure looms over the Player Characters ready to deal out a beating, a door has been plastered over with notes telling the reader not to open the door, but someone keeps knocking from the other side, a clockwork child stalks the halls with a knife clutched in its hands, and so on. It veers from the little unerring uneasiness to grand theatre of the guignol and back again, always unsettling, weird, and worrying as the Player Characters edge their way from one Room to the next, picking at puzzles, poring over possible clues, and wondering what might happen next.

Lastly an appendix lists and details all of the handouts that the Player Characters might find in the House. The Game Master will still need to download these and again, they come with their own QR code. It means that even playing The Darkest House offline, the Game Master will still need Internet access and may want her players to have it to best access the scenario’s handouts and downloads.

In terms of play, The Darkest House can be played as a single big scenario, but it is really designed to be slotted into an ongoing campaign. Almost any campaign in which a ‘haunted house’ could appear. Nor is it necessarily designed to be played in one go. The Player Characters can leave and they can be pulled back in, plus there are ongoing consequences for leaving the House, especially if a Player Character has unspent Doom points. So, the Player Characters may enter the House explore some of it, escape, but re-enter the House at a later point in the campaign. Once the Player Characters have entered the House and come out, it is going to remain a lurking presence until they decide to return and deal with it.

Physically, The Darkest House is very well presented in rich dark colours, the text in red and white. The artwork is excellent, much of it seeming to lurk in the background with its repetition serving to enforce that sense of things and people lurking, ready to leap out and scare the Player Characters. It is well written and it is liberally littered with quotes from authors such as Stephen King and Shirly Jackson.
However, what must be stressed is what The Darkest House is not. It is not a traditional haunt house and it is not a traditional mystery. It means that there are not the ghosts to be found, their origins to be discovered, and their bones laid to rest, problem solved. There are ghosts, but neither ghosts nor the House are ever really going to go away until the Player Characters find a way to make the House go away and never come back. In terms of a mystery, this is a dark, haunted house, and whilst there are secrets to be revealed and aspects of the House’s history to be discovered, much like the ghosts there is no clear beginning, middle, and end, in which its origins can be discovered and the House completely dealt with as a threat. The author of The Darkest House even goes so far as to state that there are secrets to the House that he has not and will not reveal. What this means is that The Darkest House is pervaded with a sense of the ineffable and the unknowable, and whilst there is a mystery to The Darkest House, it is not a mystery to be solved and that may confound some players. This does not mean that The Darkest House cannot be played and cannot be completed. Rather it means that the expectations of what The Darkest House is and is not, are going to be different from the traditional haunted house.

The Darkest House is an audacious creation, a product designed in response to the Lockdown under COVID-19 and thus specifically designed to be played online and with any type of character from any game system. It is both grand and intimate, the great sweep of the House contrasting with the disturbing intimacy of the detail to be found in the individual Rooms, its horror lurking at the edge of the senses before cavorting at the Player Characters and then retreating… Like any big scenario or campaign. The Darkest House demands much of the Game Master, but The Darkest House demands more both mechanically because of the need for adjudication of its House System and because The Darkest House is campaign that is going to directly needle and work at the Player Characters. This also demands players mature enough to accept that this is part of the genre that v falls into.

Perhaps still best played online, The Darkest House is an ambitious design, a fantastic perturbation of puzzles and perils, torments and terrors, which combine to make a great roleplaying horror story.
—oOo—
Monte Cook Games will be at UK Games Expo which takes place on Friday, May 31st to Sunday June 2nd, 2024.

Beyond the walls of your hometown or village lie the Roomlands. A vast castle that covers the whole of the known world and beyond, whose individual rooms, corridors, stairs, and rafters contain whole environments of their own. Mountains, lakes, deserts, forests, caves, and ancient ruins. Oceans stretch across rooms as far as the eye can see and beyond. Desert sands whip and whirl down long corridors. Forests climb the stairs that seem to rise to nowhere. Rooks—walking castles—lurk, a constant danger. Stone giants that seem to have no purpose, other than to wander aimlessly until something captures their attention and then they erupt in incredible aggression. This is world of a near limitless castle known as Colostle, into which brave adventurers set forth, perhaps to undertake tasks and quests for the Hunter’s Guild, perhaps to explore on their own, to hunt Rooks for the precious, often magical resources they contain, or simply to protect a village or settlement from rampaging Rooks or bandits. What though if a door from one room to another, led not to another, but another realm? One where the earth is broken and chunks of it float in the sky and the great pillars that hold up the ceilings of the Rooms are painted in once bright, but now fading lacquer. One where the Rooks with multiple, red-tiled roofs, stalk Rooms on thin, finely balanced legs and wield weapons with deadly finesse than the brute force of at home. One where sky ships, their hulls carved from Rook husks cross overhead. Where Imperial soldiers stop and search everyone for Rookstones. One where fallen Rooks have been turned into temples where you can rest, recuperate, and even research to gain new skills and spirituality. One where the Red Emperor rules with an iron fist. This is the land of Kyodaina and it is nothing like you have seen before.

Colostle – Kyodaina expands Colostle: A Solo RPG Adventure, definitely the prettiest solo journalling game on the market, by taking it to the furthest east of its lands where the artwork is at its most Ghibli-esque. Kyodaina is also a sequel to Colostle – The Roomlands, the first supplement for Colostle: A Solo RPG Adventure. However, a player need not have adventured through Colostle – The Roomlands to play, but narratively, it helps if he has. Much like Colostle: A Solo RPG Adventure, what Colostle – Kyodaina does is introduce a new realm for the player and his character to explore and within that several lands or ‘Zones’, a new character type, and a directed campaign. The latter shifts the play of v away from the open world exploration of Colostle: A Solo RPG Adventure towards a journalling game with a ‘choose your own adventure’ book feel, consisting of story sections rather than numbered paragraphs which work like cut scenes for video games, and map areas which can be more freely explored and have keyed descriptions elsewhere. The result is that Colostle – Kyodaina is designed to tell a particular story, though of course, how that story plays out is of course, up to the draw of the cards and the player.

The new character Class is The Spirited, which also introduces a new stat—Spirit. The Spirited Class represents someone who has grown up in or studied at one of the temples or monasteries to be found across Kyodaina. Radically, the Spirited begins play without any connection to a Rook, no augmentation provided by a Rook-part, but instead must rely upon his training and the secret arts learned at the temple or monastery. Each aligned with an element and a suit from an ordinary deck of playing cards—such as those used in the play of Colostle: A Solo RPG Adventure—these powers include ‘Rook’s Power’, which lets the character flood his feet with his spirit and in stomping hard on the ground, causing a ripple that surges through the ground and knocks opponents to the ground and temporarily reduces their Combat score by one, and ‘Rook’s Senses’, which enables the character to fill his vision with spirit and see more than any ordinary person could, effectively doubling the number of cards the player can draw during the game’s exploration phases. The Spirited Class is intended to be played as a character native to Kyodaina, rather than as someone who has come from the regions and Roomlands explored in Colostle: A Solo RPG Adventure and Colostle – The Roomlands. However, if the character does come from either the Colostle: A Solo RPG Adventure or Colostle – The Roomlands, during the play of Colostle – Kyodaina, the character has the opportunity to rest, heal, and learn at the same temples and monasteries, and so learning these Spirit powers. Each temple or monastery offers a different range of Spirit powers. This gives the visiting character the Spirit stat too, which is used to activate the Spirit powers. Unlike other stats in Colostle: A Solo RPG Adventure, Spirit can be depleted and restored without the character dying.

Mechanically, the differences between Colostle: A Solo RPG Adventure and Colostle – Kyodaina are relatively minor. Kyodainan Rooks are different, faster and more precise, and unlike Rooks elsewhere, can make critical strikes against the Player Character. Imperial Soldiers will constantly hunt for Rookstones, the magical stones that power Rooks, operating in squads of three that will want to search the Player Character, whilst the Player Character might face wave after wave of Imperial Soldiers if he tries to infiltrate Imperial Fortresses. If successful, the Player Character will find all manner of information.
The play of Colostle – Kyodaina begins at one of its temples, the Temple of the Stone Fist. From here, the player will set out and explore the new realm. This consists of four zones—the Spirit Forest, the Fangs of the Mountain Range, the Hori Archipelago, and the Skylands. Each has its own temple, its own set of encounter and NPC tables in addition to the general ones given for whole of the realm, and above all, its own character. The Spirit Forest is serene and quiet, its donjon trees towering so high that the majority of Kyodaina’s inhabitants can live here in safety from the Rooks below; the Fangs of the Mountain Range consists of ancient Rook husks fused with the rock, laced with tunnels and rooms, and sometimes transformed into a volcano; the Hori Archipelago are tropical islands in a shallow sea where Rooks have adapted to the environment and the lands are pierced by towering swords, hammers, and axes; and the Skylands where chunks of earth—both uninhabited and inhabited—float like islands in the sky and can be reached by climbing or travelling via a skyboat. Each also has specific locations where events take place, for example, the village of Eda is in the Spirit Forest and faces an attack by Imperial Soldiers. The Player Character has the opportunity to defend the village.

Once the Player Character has explored three or more of the zones in Colostle – Kyodaina, an encounter with an NPC—previously encountered in Colostle – The Roomlands—will open up the end game for Colostle – Kyodaina. This involves the Player Character in the Resistance against the Emperor and his Imperial Soldiers and exploring the Imperial City of Shiro. It will lead to the infiltration of the city itself and a confrontation with the Emperor and his Rook servitors, both infiltration and confrontation playing out as sub-games in their own right. In the process of playing through Colostle – Kyodaina there are secrets to be discovered—or at least hinted at—and lastly, a suggested sequel to come which takes Colostle: A Solo RPG Adventure below.

Physically, Colostle – Kyodaina is as stunning as both Colostle: A Solo RPG Adventure and Colostle – The Roomlands. The artwork is superb, beautifully depicting the wonder of this new realm and its zones. However, the writing is not quite as good as it could have been and Colostle – Kyodaina does need an edit here and there.

Colostle – Kyodaina is a beautiful book. Its artwork alone—just as with the previous two books—is enough to draw the viewer into wanting to explore this world. The play of Colostle – Kyodaina differs greatly to the simple open-world exploration of Colostle: A Solo RPG Adventure, though there is scope for that, instead offering a specific story to play out, one which feels much more like a video game. As a video game experience, Colostle – Kyodaina gives the player a more immersive and reflective experience as he plays out and records in his journal his character’s exploration of the new realm. Fans of Colostle: A Solo RPG Adventure will welcome this return to the Roomlands as it takes them beyond and into Colostle – Kyodaina.
—oOo—
Colostle will be at UK Games Expo which takes place on Friday, May 31st to Sunday June 2nd, 2024.

 We learn more about Lucy's suitors and how she got three proposals in one day!  We meet our three fearless vampire hunters as well. Though they are not vampire hunters just yet.

“My dearest Mina,—

“Thanks, and thanks, and thanks again for your sweet letter. It was so nice to be able to tell you and to have your sympathy.

“My dear, it never rains but it pours. How true the old proverbs are. Here am I, who shall be twenty in September, and yet I never had a proposal till to-day, not a real proposal, and to-day I have had three. Just fancy! THREE proposals in one day! Isn’t it awful! I feel sorry, really and truly sorry, for two of the poor fellows. Oh, Mina, I am so happy that I don’t know what to do with myself. And three proposals! But, for goodness’ sake, don’t tell any of the girls, or they would be getting all sorts of extravagant ideas and imagining themselves injured and slighted if in their very first day at home they did not get six at least. Some girls are so vain! You and I, Mina dear, who are engaged and are going to settle down soon soberly into old married women, can despise vanity. Well, I must tell you about the three, but you must keep it a secret, dear, from every one, except, of course, Jonathan. You will tell him, because I would, if I were in your place, certainly tell Arthur. A woman ought to tell her husband everything—don’t you think so, dear?—and I must be fair. Men like women, certainly their wives, to be quite as fair as they are; and women, I am afraid, are not always quite as fair as they should be. Well, my dear, number One came just before lunch. I told you of him, Dr. John Seward, the lunatic-asylum man, with the strong jaw and the good forehead. He was very cool outwardly, but was nervous all the same. He had evidently been schooling himself as to all sorts of little things, and remembered them; but he almost managed to sit down on his silk hat, which men don’t generally do when they are cool, and then when he wanted to appear at ease he kept playing with a lancet in a way that made me nearly scream. He spoke to me, Mina, very straightforwardly. He told me how dear I was to him, though he had known me so little, and what his life would be with me to help and cheer him. He was going to tell me how unhappy he would be if I did not care for him, but when he saw me cry he said that he was a brute and would not add to my present trouble. Then he broke off and asked if I could love him in time; and when I shook my head his hands trembled, and then with some hesitation he asked me if I cared already for any one else. He put it very nicely, saying that he did not want to wring my confidence from me, but only to know, because if a woman’s heart was free a man might have hope. And then, Mina, I felt a sort of duty to tell him that there was some one. I only told him that much, and then he stood up, and he looked very strong and very grave as he took both my hands in his and said he hoped I would be happy, and that if I ever wanted a friend I must count him one of my best. Oh, Mina dear, I can’t help crying: and you must excuse this letter being all blotted. Being proposed to is all very nice and all that sort of thing, but it isn’t at all a happy thing when you have to see a poor fellow, whom you know loves you honestly, going away and looking all broken-hearted, and to know that, no matter what he may say at the moment, you are passing quite out of his life. My dear, I must stop here at present, I feel so miserable, though I am so happy.

“Evening.

“Arthur has just gone, and I feel in better spirits than when I left off, so I can go on telling you about the day. Well, my dear, number Two came after lunch. He is such a nice fellow, an American from Texas, and he looks so young and so fresh that it seems almost impossible that he has been to so many places and has had such adventures. I sympathise with poor Desdemona when she had such a dangerous stream poured in her ear, even by a black man. I suppose that we women are such cowards that we think a man will save us from fears, and we marry him. I know now what I would do if I were a man and wanted to make a girl love me. No, I don’t, for there was Mr. Morris telling us his stories, and Arthur never told any, and yet—— My dear, I am somewhat previous. Mr. Quincey P. Morris found me alone. It seems that a man always does find a girl alone. No, he doesn’t, for Arthur tried twice to make a chance, and I helping him all I could; I am not ashamed to say it now. I must tell you beforehand that Mr. Morris doesn’t always speak slang—that is to say, he never does so to strangers or before them, for he is really well educated and has exquisite manners—but he found out that it amused me to hear him talk American slang, and whenever I was present, and there was no one to be shocked, he said such funny things. I am afraid, my dear, he has to invent it all, for it fits exactly into whatever else he has to say. But this is a way slang has. I do not know myself if I shall ever speak slang; I do not know if Arthur likes it, as I have never heard him use any as yet. Well, Mr. Morris sat down beside me and looked as happy and jolly as he could, but I could see all the same that he was very nervous. He took my hand in his, and said ever so sweetly:—

“‘Miss Lucy, I know I ain’t good enough to regulate the fixin’s of your little shoes, but I guess if you wait till you find a man that is you will go join them seven young women with the lamps when you quit. Won’t you just hitch up alongside of me and let us go down the long road together, driving in double harness?’

“Well, he did look so good-humoured and so jolly that it didn’t seem half so hard to refuse him as it did poor Dr. Seward; so I said, as lightly as I could, that I did not know anything of hitching, and that I wasn’t broken to harness at all yet. Then he said that he had spoken in a light manner, and he hoped that if he had made a mistake in doing so on so grave, so momentous, an occasion for him, I would forgive him. He really did look serious when he was saying it, and I couldn’t help feeling a bit serious too—I know, Mina, you will think me a horrid flirt—though I couldn’t help feeling a sort of exultation that he was number two in one day. And then, my dear, before I could say a word he began pouring out a perfect torrent of love-making, laying his very heart and soul at my feet. He looked so earnest over it that I shall never again think that a man must be playful always, and never earnest, because he is merry at times. I suppose he saw something in my face which checked him, for he suddenly stopped, and said with a sort of manly fervour that I could have loved him for if I had been free:—

“‘Lucy, you are an honest-hearted girl, I know. I should not be here speaking to you as I am now if I did not believe you clean grit, right through to the very depths of your soul. Tell me, like one good fellow to another, is there any one else that you care for? And if there is I’ll never trouble you a hair’s breadth again, but will be, if you will let me, a very faithful friend.’

“My dear Mina, why are men so noble when we women are so little worthy of them? Here was I almost making fun of this great-hearted, true gentleman. I burst into tears—I am afraid, my dear, you will think this a very sloppy letter in more ways than one—and I really felt very badly. Why can’t they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her, and save all this trouble? But this is heresy, and I must not say it. I am glad to say that, though I was crying, I was able to look into Mr. Morris’s brave eyes, and I told him out straight:—

“‘Yes, there is some one I love, though he has not told me yet that he even loves me.’ I was right to speak to him so frankly, for quite a light came into his face, and he put out both his hands and took mine—I think I put them into his—and said in a hearty way:—

“‘That’s my brave girl. It’s better worth being late for a chance of winning you than being in time for any other girl in the world. Don’t cry, my dear. If it’s for me, I’m a hard nut to crack; and I take it standing up. If that other fellow doesn’t know his happiness, well, he’d better look for it soon, or he’ll have to deal with me. Little girl, your honesty and pluck have made me a friend, and that’s rarer than a lover; it’s more unselfish anyhow. My dear, I’m going to have a pretty lonely walk between this and Kingdom Come. Won’t you give me one kiss? It’ll be something to keep off the darkness now and then. You can, you know, if you like, for that other good fellow—he must be a good fellow, my dear, and a fine fellow, or you could not love him—hasn’t spoken yet.’ That quite won me, Mina, for it was brave and sweet of him, and noble, too, to a rival—wasn’t it?—and he so sad; so I leant over and kissed him. He stood up with my two hands in his, and as he looked down into my face—I am afraid I was blushing very much—he said:—

“‘Little girl, I hold your hand, and you’ve kissed me, and if these things don’t make us friends nothing ever will. Thank you for your sweet honesty to me, and good-bye.’ He wrung my hand, and taking up his hat, went straight out of the room without looking back, without a tear or a quiver or a pause; and I am crying like a baby. Oh, why must a man like that be made unhappy when there are lots of girls about who would worship the very ground he trod on? I know I would if I were free—only I don’t want to be free. My dear, this quite upset me, and I feel I cannot write of happiness just at once, after telling you of it; and I don’t wish to tell of the number three until it can be all happy.

“Ever your loving
“Lucy.

“P.S.—Oh, about number Three—I needn’t tell you of number Three, need I? Besides, it was all so confused; it seemed only a moment from his coming into the room till both his arms were round me, and he was kissing me. I am very, very happy, and I don’t know what I have done to deserve it. I must only try in the future to show that I am not ungrateful to God for all His goodness to me in sending to me such a lover, such a husband, and such a friend.

“Good-bye.”

--

Notes

Moon Phase: Waning Crescent

Here we see more contrast between Lucy Westenra ("Light of the West"?) and Mina Murry.  Mina and Lucy are the same age but Mina seems older, or at the very least more mature. This is best seen in the Francis Ford Coppola movie "Bram Stoker's Dracula."  Sadie Frost embodies everything that Lucy is in this book and she does it well, 

We are introduced to Dr. John Seward, who becomes key when bringing in Van Helsing later on. However, I have to ask why he is carrying a lancet with him. Note that all the men in this tale carry edged weapons. The phallic connotations of these is played up well in the FFC movie. 

We also meet the Quincey P. Morris, the Texan. Now why has Stoker included this character? Largely I think due to the fascination the Upper Class Victorians had with Americans, especially rich Americans, at this time. Arthur, Lucy, even Seward to a degree, were all very well off. It is possible that Quincey had more money than all of them. He furnishes supplies later on when it is time to track Dracula, though Arthur does his share as well. 

We do know that Stoker was something of an Americanophile. He was friends with Mark Twain and Walt Whitman. He authored a pamphlet, A Glimpse of America, where he praised Americans. He contrasted them with the British, noting how they were nearly identical in all respects, language, laws, religion, social norms, and yet America was doing so much more.  This has been Stoker's thesis in Dracula all along. The New World vs. The Old World. If Dracula had had a sequel by Storker, then I can see Dracula going to America.

Quincy is largely a stereotype of Americans by and for the British, but he works well enough here. 

Ragnarök came to pass and the world as it was known came to an end. Yet the world did not end, it was only broken, the gods of the Aesir and the Vanir missing or dead, Jörmungandr dead and flensed, the Jotunn forced to flee back Jotunheim. Yet as broken as the world is, and as full of dread and danger as the Nine Realms are, there are heroes who would stand alone against the darkness, to defend villages against roving bandits, hunt a creature stealing children, reclaim a family cairn overcome by the dead, retrieve a great relic lost to the ages, broker peace between warring clans, protect a caravan passing through dangerous lands, and search lands old and new for secrets and mythical beasts. Such activities are dangerous, but these heroes are strong of heart and even when they die, they will find their way back to bonfires that warm the soul and give life and never dwindle—and even link the Nine Realms. A great hero’s failure is only temporary, until it isn’t. Until then, a hero can try again and again to overcome the danger he faces, to find another way now that he is forewarned.

Runecairn: Wardensaga is the most complete version of Runecairn, the Norse fantasy tabletop roleplaying game published By Odin’s Beard, collecting the Runecairn Core Rules, the adventure ‘Beneath the Broken Sword’, and Runecairn: Advanced Rules into one handsome volume. Like the publisher’s We Deal In Lead: A Weird West Wanders Game, it is inspired by minimalist Old School Renaissance roleplaying games such as Cairn, Into the Odd, and Knave. It is specifically designed to be played by a single Game Master—or Warden—and a single player. However, the advanced rules gives options for reducing the players to one and turning Runecairn: Wardensaga into a solo roleplaying game or increasing their numbers for a more traditional roleplaying game.
Runecairn: Wardensaga begins with general advice and then advice for Warden and player alike. It does this as a series of principles presented as bullet points. The general advice states that the Warden’s role is one of neutrality, that the roleplaying game is Classless—the abilities of an Adventurer relying on equipment and experiences, that the possibility of death is ever present though never without warning, that fiction comes before the dice, that an Adventurer has opportunities to grow through his experiences, and that the player should always be presented with choices. For the Warden these include design philosophy—that she is helpful and honest as conduit of information, the context and realism determine difficulty, that the world changes and sometimes changes because of what the Player Character does, the narrative should support the emerging story, that danger is everywhere and obvious, that the player and his character should always have and be presented with choices, and when all that fails, there is occasionally, just luck. For the player, the principles advise agency, exploration, talking, caution, planning, and ambition, and if one path leads to defeat, then he should look for an alternative path. For the most part, these will be familiar to adherents of the Old School Renaissance, but here are not elucidated upon, but rather kept short and to the point. Similarly, the world of Runecairn: Wardensaga has its own principles.
An Adventurer in Runecairn: Wardensaga has four abilities—Strength, Dexterity, Wits, and Spirit, rated between three and eighteen; Vigour and Vitality, which are rated between one and six; and Resilience which is a total of Vigour and Vitality. Vigour is the Adventurer’s self-determination, which Vitality is how hale and hearty he is. A player rolls dice for all of these, and can swap two of the abilities. The player then picks a Class. This can be Warrior, Skald, Scout, or Seer. Each Class provides a range of equipment and skills or special actions that will give the Player Character many of their initial abilities.

Gertrud
Warrior
Strength 17 Dexterity 15 Wits 11 Spirit 12
Vigour 6 Vitality 5 Resilience 11
Def 3
Linden Wood Shield (+1 Def), Chainmail (Bulky, Def 2), Bearded Axe (d8), Ash Wood Spear (d6, 20’), Memento of Defeat, (Free Slots: 4)
Skills: Block (Shield), Parry (Axe), Disarm (Axe), Hack (Axe), Thrust (Spear)

Mechanically, Runecairn: Wardensaga is straightforward. When a player wants his Adventurer to act or react-and it is dramatically appropriate—he rolls a save versus either Strength, Dexterity, Wits, or Spirit, needing to roll equal to or lower than the value. A one always succeeds and a twenty always fails. Standard rules are used for advantage and disadvantage, and can apply to damage as well as standard actions.

In terms of combat, Runecairn: Wardensaga uses the same core mechanic, but in terms of rolling dice, combat in the roleplaying game is all about damage and reactions. Fundamentally, every attack made by an attacker will hit the defender and inflict damage. That is, unless the defender can do something as a reaction. Every Adventurer can ‘Roll’ away from the attack or ‘Withdraw’ from the combat, but each Class adds its own options in terms of Reactions. These require ‘Key’ items, pieces of equipment, that without, the Adventurer cannot perform the Reaction. For example, the Scout’s Key item is a pair of hunting knives. These are light enough that the Scout can perform a ‘Dash’ as a Reaction, which requires a save versus his Dexterity, the Scout able to avoid all damage if successful or impairing it and reducing it to a four-sided die if it is unsuccessful. Attack actions also require an item of equipment and increase the amount of damage inflicted or another effect. For example, the Seer Class has the ‘Clobber’ action. This requires a staff and has the Seer smashing a defender over the head with his staff, granting the Seer advantage for the damage roll, and the defender being forced to roll a save versus Strength or be dazed. Many of the actions and Reactions force the Adventurer to suffer ‘Fatigue’. Each point of Fatigue fills a slot in the Adventurer’s Inventory.

One damage is suffered, the ‘Def’ or Defence value, reduces the amount of damage suffered. Both Classes and monsters and NPCs have a base ‘Def’ and this can be augmented by any armour worn or shield carried. Damage is then deducted from Resilience. If an Adventurer’s Resilience is reduced to exactly zero, he will receive an Omen, a message from the spirits, or gods, or… which can be good or bad. If reduced below zero, damage reduces Strength and counts as a critical strike. This requires a save versus critical damage on Strength, and if failed, the defender dies.
For example, as Gertrude struggles through the last of a snowstorm to get to the next village, she hears yells and screams from up ahead. Over the rise, she sees a caravan which has been ambushed during the storm. It is in disarray as several figures fight the surviving guards and others drag off merchants. Gertrude spots two of the rough-looking fellows attempting to abduct an old woman. Unlimbering her Linden Wood Shield and readying her bearded axe, she charges down the hill. The Warden rules that since the battlefield is noisy and the old woman is screaming, neither of the cultists will spot her charging down the hill and will grant her Advantage on the damage roll. This means that Gertrude’s player will rolling two eight-sided dice instead of one and taking the best result. Gertrude’s player rolls a five and an eight. He chooses the latter and inflicts eight points of damage. The Cultist has a Def of one, reducing the damage he is about to suffer by one to seven. However, the Cultist only has Resilience of six, so it is reduced to zero and the Cultist takes a point of damage to his Strength. It also means that the Warden has to make a Critical Damage save. The Warden rolls against the Cultist’s Strength of ten and rolls a sixteen! The Cultist yelps at the sudden blow and drops dead… At this point, it triggers a special ability which means that when the Cultist dies, a black tentacle bursts out of him and inflicts damage on the nearest person. This requires a roll of one on a twenty-sided die. The Warden rolls seven, so nothing happens.
The other Cultist looks round in surprise. He reacts by throwing the old woman down and drawing his seax, advances on Gertrude. He stabs at the mighty warrior and rolls six for the damage. Gertrude has a high enough to stop a lot of this damage, but his player decides on a Parry Reaction. This enables Gertrude to deflect the attack and riposte with advantage on the damage roll. Gertrude’s player rolls fourteen, which is under Gertrude’s Strength. Gertrude smashes the seax stab aside and the Cultist suffers enough damage to reduce his Resilience to zero, but not inflict any damage to his Strength. The Cultist screams in pain. This attracts the attention of the other cultists attacking the caravan. They stop what they are doing and move to take down their attacker. She will make a worthy sacrifice.Two of the Classes—the Skald and the Seer—are capable of casting various forms of magic. These are Runestones and Sagas. Runestones are polished stones into which spells are inscribed, whilst Sagas are memorised tales that are recited to channel the power of the gods. Both Runestones and Sagas take up an Inventory Slot in total and when either a Runestone or a Saga inflicts damage, it bypasses non-magical armour. There is a decent list of spells for the Seer, such as Cloak of Knives or Spectacle, as well as one for the Skald like Laughter or Sense Evil.
As the mighty warrioress comes to her aid and attacks the cultists who would have kidnapped her, the old woman, Tove, finds herself thrown into the snow. She is now free to act, and as Skald, she reaches into the folds of her tunic to pull out her Runic Focus. Concentrating on the key item, she recalls the story in which Thor called down the power of lightning on his enemies. With a crackle of energy, a dagger of lightning appears in her hand. From where she lies, she throws it at the Cultist still standing in front of the unknown warrioress. This inflicts three damage, reduced by one for the Cultist’s ‘Def’. This means the Cultist suffers Strength damage and triggers a Critical Damage save. The Warden rolls eleven for the Cultist, which means that with a zap, the Cultist is blown off his feet. The Warden rolls for the Cultist’s post-death ability. This time she rolls a one and a black tentacle emerges from the dead Cultist and inflicts a six-sided die’s worth of damage on Gertrude! If an Adventurer dies, it does not necessarily mean that play is over. The Adventurer simply reawakens at the last Bonfire he rested at. He loses all Souls found—Souls are remnants of the power of the gods scattered and hidden across the Nine Realms, that if returned to a Bonfire whilst alive can be used to imbue an Adventurer with power and improve his abilities and Vitality—and has his Strength and Resilience restored to full. However, when this happens, it also reduces his Vigour by one. If his Vigour is reduced to zero in this fashion, the Adventurer truly dies and rises as a Shade… Lastly, any enemy that the Adventurer killed before dying is also returned to life!

This is the extent of Runecairn in terms of its basic rules. What is interesting about Runecairn: Wardensaga is that it shifts what would be the inherent abilities of a Player Character because said Player Character has a Class in another roleplaying game from the internal to external. Much of what a Player Character can do is down to the equipment that he carries and packs into his inventory, and many of them enable the use of skills. What that means is that an Adventurer in Runecairn: Wardensaga could snatch up a spear and carry a ‘Thrust’ attack as per the Warrior Class, enabling him to lunge forward ten feet and make an attack, but suffering from fatigue in return, or after obtaining a Runic Focus, learn spells as can a Skald. In addition to finding Souls and spells, an Adventurer can also find Relics and Rings. Relics are items imbued with magic or spells, often one-use items, which when used do not inflict Fatigue, and sometimes can be recharged. For example, a Skull Beacon, a charred and crumbling skull with faintly glimmering eye sockets, which glows brightly when held. It can be used to light up and area, but only once. To recharge it, it needs to be burned on a roaring bonfire. Rings typically grant a better benefit, but always at some cost. For example, the Iron Ring is wrought of dense metal grants a point of Defence, but at a loss of Speed.

The Advanced Rules of Runecairn: Wardensaga provide two extra Classes, alternate ways of playing the roleplaying game, and a Delve Generator. The two extra Classes are the Berserker and the Pyre. The former is a warrior who calls upon his animal spirit to fight with great ferocity, whilst the latter draws upon fire to burn his enemies and even shield against their attacks. The first of the alternate methods of play is solo play. This suggests playing Runecairn: Wardensaga as a Journalling game, suggesting that the player use an ‘Oracle’ as a means to draw meaning from the randomness of play, such as that created using the Delve Generator. This ‘Oracle’ can be a Tarot deck, but the guidance for solo play in the Advanced Rules of Runecairn: Wardensaga provides a set of tables to roll upon. The co-operative play gives a way of bringing another player into a session, the Adventurer using an effigy stone at a bonfire to summon a fallen hero—from either the past or the future—who will fight alongside the Adventurer, until one of them dies. Conversely, the Adventurer might face a ‘black fetch’ instead of a fallen hero, intent of stripping him of his humanity and vigour. The ‘black fetch’ can be run as a normal NPC by the Warden, or if both players do not object to the situation, by another player, setting up an adversarial situation. Alternatively, the ‘black fetch’ might actually be a fallen hero who believes the Adventurer to be the ‘black fetch’!

The Delve Generator creates locations for play in Runecairn: Wardensaga. This includes locations such as cairn or stronghold, objectives such as infiltrating the mercenary group at a stronghold and convincing its members to join the Adventurer or hunting a cairn for the rock troll that killed the adventurer’s family is hiding out in the family tomb. An extensive set of tables provides encounters within these locations, NPC reactions and actions, and a countdown mechanic which determines how close the Adventurer is to his objective after each encounter. Thus, the Adventurer need not explore the whole of the location to achieve his objective. The process is neatly handled through a flow chart that makes the solo play proceed with ease.
Penultimately, Runecairn: Wardensaga provides a complete delve, ‘Beneath the Broken Sword’. This is designed as an introductory adventure which showcases how to play and how the Adventurer lives and dies. It begins with the Adventurer waking up not know where he is and what he should possess, so the first part is really looking for both, though the inevitable death within the first few locations will teach the player the transient nature of life and death in the roleplaying game and then reinforce the importance of the Adventurer’s possessions as they really are key to his survival. Lastly, the appendices consist of a short, but useful bestiary, and some player options as well as a pronunciation guide.

Physically, Runecairn: Wardensaga is well presented and the artwork is excellent. However, the writing does feel succinct in places, leaving the reader wanting a little clearer explanation. However, there is a good example of Adventurer and a good example of combat. Both do a good job of showing how the roleplaying game works. If there is anything missing from the pages of Runecairn: Wardensaga, it is details of the wider world, of the Nine Realms, which the Warden will have to develop. Another issue is that there is no differentiation within each Class, so that the only difference one Warrior and another is their core abilities. That said, Runecairn: Wardensaga is not designed for that style of play where these are multiple players. Nevertheless, when there are two players involved, they should ideally have their Adventurers each be of a different Class.

Runecairn: Wardensagaa is the complete version of Runecairn, containing everything needed to play, including a beginning scenario, and then more to play further, whether that is just one player and the Warden, as is standard, solo play, or more players. There is a fantastically brutal dynamism to the play of Runecairn: Wardensaga, combined with a strong player agency that the Warden is encouraged to support through the roleplaying game’s principles. In particular, the thrust back and forth of combat is desperate and gruelling, a player whose Adventurer has his equipment, always having choices in terms of how he attacks and he reacts. This reliance upon equipment emphasises the power of these choices and makes the Adventurer feel mortal—even though this is not the case as death returns him to the last bonfire—rather than like some fantasy superhero. Yet the heroic aspect of Runecairn: Wardensaga means that the Adventurer can return from the dead, to come back with the knowledge of what killed him and perhaps be better prepared for the next attempt.

Above all, Runecairn: Wardensaga is a really enticing roleplaying game for two that gives the Warden a set of solid tools with which to create the situations and delves for the Adventurer to get involved in, whilst for the player, there are some great Adventurers to play and bring to life and use their skills, and together the means to explore a broken world. Ultimately, Runecairn: Wardensaga is like a computer game in its one-on-one play-style, but its post-Ragnarök action has all the advantages of a tabletop roleplaying game—player agency, the varied and more reactive world created by the Warden, and the fierce and feisty actions, reactions, and decisions of the Adventurer.
—oOo—
By Odin’s Beard will be at UK Games Expo which takes place on Friday, May 31st to Sunday June 2nd, 2024.

 Dipping into the box of mildewy Dragons under my desk, I find this gem in February 1991. Ok, again, I did not pull this one out completely at random. And compared to some of the others this one is in rather great shape. Let's see. February of 1991. I was an undergrad, living in an apartment with three other guys. Graduation was still a year or so off. My computer at the time was my aging Color Computer 3 that, while I loved it, was showing me its limitations in an increasingly IBM-PC-compatible world.  The number song on the radio was "The First Time" by Surface. No I don't remember them at all. The number one movie was "Sleeping with the Enemy" staring Julia Roberts. And on tables and shelves everywhere was Issue #166 of This Old Dragon.

Again, this is a sci-fi-themed edition, so let's see what we have here.

Our cover this month is from E. M. Gooch. I admit I don't know them and my quick internet search pulled up nothing.

Letters covers the topics of the month from all over the world. An Israeli reader provides some names for creatures in Hebrew. A Canadian reader has Griffon questions. 

The Editorial by Dale A. Donovan covers a lot of good non-TSR games for various genres. 

In Time for Tomorrow is our Sci-Fi themed section. Up first is Michael LaBossiere with Wired and Ready a guide to running a cyberpunk-style RPG. The 90s were a great time for cyberpunk games. I had tried out several in the first half of the decade, with Mike Pondsmith's Cyberpunk and FASA's ShadowRun as my two favorites. Ithink Shadowrun edged it out for me since I was always a fan of magic. His 5 page article covers a lot of ground and was required reading back then. Today, well many of the things that seemed like fantasy then are all too real now. Large, above the law, corporations. Dark futures. cyber slang. All feels like history and current events instead of some future time.

Mike Speca has some BATTLETECH advice in Tricks of the Trade. Now I never played BATTLETECH though I do see the appeal. 

Up next is an article that to me at least feels like "what happens if we adapt Paranoia's biggest gag to GURPS Autoduel?" Edward Goldstein gives us A Clone of Your Own for GURPS Autoduel. It reads like one of the "Ecology of" articles; set in the world of the game and reporting what they know with game details interspersed.

Breaking up the sci-fi is TSR PREVIEWS for February and March 1991. Among the listings are The Complete Psionics Handbook, which I just dug up for my new Forgotten Realms campaign. Some Buck Rogers XXVc accessories. Ship of Horror for Ravenloft, which I think I picked up right away, and some more. 

Three pages of the Convention Calendar is next. Lots of international ones here too. The Egyptian Campaign '91 is listed for March 1-3. Despite being there, I am pretty sure I missed it. Lots of little cons back then, I don't find as many of these now.

The Lessers (Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk) are back with The Role of Computers. This time they cover Wing Commander, which they give 6 stars out of 5! That's quite a review. The requirements are also pretty high for 1991, s Roland sound board and VGA graphics. No indication on RAM but I am betting at least 8 or 16 megs, which was top notch back then.

The Game Wizards from Timothy B. Brown is up with a preview of the new Dungeons & Dragons set subtitled "An Easy-To-Learn Introduction to Role-Playing." Like all Game Wizards entries it is half sales pitch, half preview. 

Friend of the Other Side, Bruce Heard is up with another installment of The Voyage of the Princess Ark.

Superstar Tom Moldvay is next with a new game, Dino Wars! A very clever game of army men vs toy dinosaurs. Honestly, it looks fun. There is quite a lot of detail, and it looks like something everyone could play with, given how ubiquitous toy soldiers and dinosaurs are.

Our fiction section is Rest Stop by J.W. Donnelly.

Scott Waterhouse is up with Arcane Lore: More Pages from the Arch Mages. Not the subtle title change. This covers new spellbooks and spells for AD&D 2nd Edition.

Sage Advice answers our burning questions and errata. 

Jim Bambra reviews Torg and Rifts in Role-Playing Reviews. Is there any game that is more early 90s than Rifts? Almost every designer I know has developed something for it. 

Marlys Heezel "reviews" some new novels for the Novel Ideas column, which I have never seen before. Both books are from TSR Books, so it really feels more like an ad.  In fact a full page ad for them follow.

Forum covers some deeper topics from Dragons #155 and #156.

Robert Rinas gets in on the Top Gun craze and gives us The Navy Wants You! for the Top Secret/S.I. RPG. It covers naval officer training as a character creation option.

Dragonmirth has our comics including Yamara. One day I will track these all down and read them in order.  The Twilight Empire is next. The art is good and I am sure the story is too. HAve to read it from the start to be sure. 

Through the Looking Glass by Robert Bigelow has the latest on new miniatures. 

So not a great issue by any stretch, but there are some gems. This feels like a transition issue before Dragon becomes a TSR game only show.  I was hoping for more sci-fi material to be honest.

In the mile-high tower of the Spire, the Aelfir—the High Elves—enjoy lives of extreme luxury, waited upon by the Destra—the Drow—whom they have subjugated and continue to oppress the criminal revolutionaries that would rise up and overthrow them. In the City Beneath, where heretical churches have found the freedom to worship their forbidden gods and organised crime to operate the drug farms that supply the needs of the Spire above, the Aelfir find themselves free of conformity, the Destra free of repression. They are joined by Gnolls and Humans. Some simply live free of the stifling Aelfir control, whether by means lawful or unlawful, others are driven to beyond the Undercity, delving ever deeper into the bowels of the world in search of the fabled Heart, or perhaps their heart’s desire. There are those though, who find themselves exiled to the city below, cut off from the world they once knew and they once fought for. Once you were members of the Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress, both a faith and a revolutionary movement, and outlawed for both reasons. As the Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress foments and funds rebellion and unrest in the Spire above, some it casts out and if they are lucky, they find themselves in the City below. Perhaps someone made a mistake. Perhaps someone took more than they gave. Possibly secrets were revealed. Perhaps by someone else or perhaps by you. It does not matter, for then the misgivings began to spread. Rumours about betrayals and bribes and worse, and so you became a hindrance rather than a help. Your only use to the cause was as something to placate the authorities, and so you were betrayed.
Were you sent on a mission, your handlers knowing you were going to fail? Were simply traded away to give the high priests of the Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress an advantage? Were you set up as a lesson to others? Does it matter? You became a traitor and you ran.

Burned and Broken is a supplement for Heart: The City Beneath, a roleplaying game that explores the horror, tragedies, and consequences of delving too deep into dungeons. Published by Rowan, Rook, and Decard Ltd., like the other supplements for Heart: The City Beneath—Sanctum and Vermissian Black Ops—explores other ways in which to roleplay in its world underneath. For Burned and Broken, this is to translate the spies, killers, and revolutionaries of Spire: The City Must Fall to the lawless nightmare of Heart: The City Beneath. This, though, is not done by simply adapting the Player Characters’ stats from one roleplaying game to another. Instead, Burned and Broken will chart the events that lead to the collective fall of the ex-operatives of the Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress, which ultimately, will prepare them for life in the City Below.

First though, Burned and Broken expands upon Derelictus, described as the ‘City Between’ Spire and Heart. In Heart: The City Beneath, this is just one Landmark that the Player Characters can visit, here it is broken into multiple Landmarks, beginning with Haven Station, the starting point for most people’s entry into Heart, and multiple Delves, like a Pig Farm that the Player Characters accidentally wander into, a warren of half-starved pigs that feed on who knows what and the pigs know the Player Characters are just something to feed on, although a very mobile something… Neither Delves nor Landmarks are safe, especially for newcomers, but Delves are far more dangerous. For the Player Characters from Spire: The City Must Fall, ‘the burned and broken’, their progress into Heart is tracked via Fall. In Heart: The City Beneath, the Player Characters each have Callings, which keep them in the Heart, but also push them to Heart. ‘Fall’ in Burned and Broken is shared between the Player Characters, who each pick a story beat from one of three categories—‘Leave’, ‘Acclimatise’, and ‘Become’. These respectively, get a Player Character out of Spire, help them adapt to its unfamiliarity, and lastly, begin to make connections with the peoples and places of the City Beneath. Fulfilling a beat first gets a Player Character a Calling as per Heart: The City Beneath, and then the abilities and advances from the selected Class.

If the first two sections of Burned and Broken take the Player Characters into the City Beneath and chart their progress, the third looks at their beginnings. Consequently, ‘Origins’ feels out of place, as if should have been at the start. It presents several packages of skills, domains, equipment, and abilities that each represent why the Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress recruited a Player Character and what a Player Character brought to the City Beneath. These are not direct adaptations, as various abilities do not fit the realm of Heart: The City Beneath and not all of them work as well below as they do above.

Despite Burned and Broken telling the Game Master that it is not designed to simply present a means of adapting a Player Character from Spire: The City Must Fall to Heart: The City Beneathh, it does actually give such a means! This, though, comes towards the back of the book and it is a very quick-and-dirty method that will definitely require the adjudication of the Game Master to fix potential issues. The advice on running a Burned and Broken campaign is decent though, highlighting the fact it is designed to tell a particular story, one of translation and change, that predominantly takes place in Derelictus, in the upper part of Heart. After all, the Player Characters are not ready to, let alone capable of surviving, a further descent beyond its confines. Plus, the Game Master is given some adversaries who will be hunting the Player Characters, including the Spire City Guard and Ministry Silence Operative.

Although the Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress is very much focused on fomenting its rebellion and resistance against the Aelfir masters of the Spire and so reclaiming the Destra home, it does maintain action operations in the City Beneath. Most obviously for Burned and Broken, this would actually be to track down agents of the Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress which have gone rogue or it deems to have turned traitor. Of course, the other option would be for the Player Characters to be seen to be disavowed by the Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress and then transition into agents still working for it, but in the City Beneath rather than the Spire. Several ideas are suggested as what operations they might be sent on, including some that involve the weirdness of the Heart: The City Below, such as breaking into the Slumbering Depths to assassinate an Aelfir before it is born in the mortal world and descending to the Maw where anything that is undestroyable elsewhere can be got rid of here! Lastly, Burned and Broken includes Minister as a Calling. This enables the creation of a Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress agent from the start in a Heart: The City Beneath campaign, equal to that of the other Player Characters.

Physically, Burned and Broken is a slim, very well-presented book. The artwork is excellent and the book is easy to read and understand. The order of the various feels slightly odd, but this is a minor issue.

Much as with Sanctum and Vermissian Black Ops before it, Burned and Broken presents a different campaign focus and set-up for Heart: The City Beneath. Unlike those supplements, it sets out to tell a specific story, one of betrayal, survival, and adaptation. It is a classic espionage tale, but here there is little chance of the ex-Minsters—the Player Characters—coming in from the cold. It allows though a campaign to transition from Spire: The City Must Fall to Heart: The City Beneath and gives opportunities for the Player Characters to grow and change in ways they would never have imagined in telling its one story.
—oOo—
Rowan, Rook, and Decard Ltd. will be at UK Games Expo which takes place on Friday, May 31st to Sunday June 2nd, 2024.

 My next Myths & Monsters series is out.  Vol. 2 - The Avenging Angels covers the Dirae, the Erinyes and the Eumenides for your Advanced era games.

Myths & Monsters Vol. 2 - The Avenging Angels

 

“Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels' hierarchies? and even if one of them pressed me against his heart: I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence.

For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure, and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.

Every angel is terrifying.”

- Rainer Maria Rilke

This is the next of a series of myths and legends that began as a thought experiment about gods, monsters, and syncretism of beliefs. 

These aim to provide your Advanced-era game with new gods and goddesses, as well as new monsters, demons, and other adversaries. 

Myths & Monsters Vol. 2 - The Avenging Angels covers the various myths of the Dirae, the Eumenides, the Erinyes, and the goddesses Rhamnusia, Nemesis, and Invidia. Most importantly, how I take those myths and make them work with the devils now known as the Erinyes.

I also have a few holy orders for the various goddesses and devils and plenty of new spells. 

This volume also features the art of Dean Spencer. I wanted one to have full-color art. 

 I am bouncing around a bit here on my cruise through the science fiction games from TSR/WotC to find one that I actually rather like, even though I know many do not. I am discussing the d20 Star Wars RPG from Wizards of the Coast.

I will freely admit that I have not played a lot of the West End Game's d6 Star Wars, though I do know it is widely held in high regard. I also have never played the Fantasy Flight Games edition of Star Wars (though my son has). So, my review might be a touch myopic, and I am OK with this. 

Star Wars and D&D

Before I begin this review I have to talk a bit about my background and why I think d20 and Star Wars was a good fit.

I have talked about Star Wars a few times here, but I am obviously a much bigger Star Trek fan. I had (and still have) a good sized collection of Star Wars toys from the Kenner era in the 1980s and I religiously have seen all the movies. I enjoy the Disney+ shows and find many of the fans to be exhausting. Ok, to be fair many Trek fans are the same way. But I am a causal fan. I had read some of the Extended (or is it Expanded) Universe books and I liked many of them. I thought Grand Admiral Thrawn was a great character and getting Lars Mikkelsen to play him in live-action has to be the most brilliant, or most obvious, casting choice ever.  When the EU went away...well I honestly felt not that much. Sure lots of great stories were gone, but Star Wars had a relationship with their canon that Star Trek novels could only dream of. 

But for me, my Star Wars obsession was in the 1980s. When I had action figures and playing out new scenarios in my head. When I took a Colonial Viper model, some extra action figure guns, and an AMC (or Revel, can't remember now) 1978 Corvette and built one of my first Kitbashes. I could not afford a real Slave 1 back then (so now of course I have three) but I did build "Slave II" and it was quite literally "Fett's Vette." And I was obsessed with D&D.

I have said it before, and I will say it here again, Star Wars, aka A New Hope, is a D&D movie. We have a hero, a villain, a princess (who is also a hero), an old wizard, a rogue, an impenetrable fortress (the Death Star), war, magic (tell me to my face the Force is not magic) and a quest.  There are sword fights, monsters, and interesting locales. It is D&D in all but name. They even meet the rogue in a bar! 

I can't even begin to count the number of times we tried to do "D&D Star Wars" and our attempts were lame compared to others. Do an internet search on "D&D Jedi" prior to 1999 and see all the stuff that was out there, though admittedly not as much now as it was at the time. 

Even later on I often likened the Star Wars EU to another line of novels and quasi-canon material; that of the Forgotten Realms. 

So for me D&D and by extension d20 and Star Wars seemed like an obvious fit.

Star Wars RPG - Revised Core Rulebook

2002, Wizards of the Coast. 384 pages. Full-color covers and interior art. d20 System.

This is the revised version of the Star Wars d20 RPG, first published in 2000. 

This game is very closely related to the D&D 3.0 edition that had been released in 2000. I don't own a copy of the Star Wars RPG from 2000, so I can't comment on what was changed, but there is a "feel" to me that this might be an early draft of D&D 3.5. Much in the same way that Star Wars Saga Edition was an early draft of D&D 4.0.

The game is built on the d20 mechanics, so there are alien species, classes, skills, and feats. The book is divided into a players section and a game master section, so I guess the better comparison here is d20 Modern. Especially once we get in to it in detail.

Characters have a species and class, and the same six abilities as D&D. There are same 3.x era saves of Fortitude, Reflex, and Will. There are also Vitality and Wound Points.  If you can play D&D d20 era or d20 Modern then you know how to play this game. 

Chapters 2 and 3 cover Species and Classes. There are 17 species to choose from, including standard humans and Ewoks (!). Classes cover the expected varieties, including Fringer, Scout, Scoundrel, Force Adepts, and Jedis. There are Prestige classes covered later. 

Chapters 4 and 5: Skills and Feats look and act like their D&D/d20 counterparts. Skills are mostly the same, but the feats take on some new aspects. While there are many that are the same, there are new ones like Force Feats (which does a lot to help explain Jedi Powers).

Chapter 6 covers the final pieces of building heroic characters, including some more "Star Wars" flavor.

Chapter 7 is our Equipment guide and it is a rather fun one. Lots of gear in the Star Wars universe. 

Chapter 8 covers combat, a needed chapter since "War" is practically the last name here. 

Chapter 9 though takes us into new territory with "The Force." This is more complicated than magic, but there are some great ideas here to take back to a D&D game for Game Masters that want to use the corrupting power of magic.

Chapters 10 and 11 deal with Vehicles and Starships, respectively.  Honestly, I could spend all my time on the Starships chapter.

Chapter 12 is Gamemastering. It covers a lot of ground from how to teach the game to new players, to setting challenges, to Prestige classes (Bounty Hunters, Jedi Masters, and more). The GM Characters from d20 Modern also get ported over here as the Diplomat, Expert, and Thug.

Chapter 13 deals with the Eras of Play. Or at least how they looked in 2002 before the Clone Wars series and Revenge of the Sith hit our screens. There are hints of the Expanded Universe here, but not a lot. Now I know that Wizards, with their own Star Wars books, helped expand the Expanded Universe. We even get stats for the poster girl of the Expanded Universe, Mara Jade Skywalker. I am actually really happy about that. I have a soft spot in my heart for Temporal Orphans. 

Chapter 14 covers Allies and Opponents, which, of course, can vary depending on what era you are playing in. This also contains Wizards of the Coast biggest contribution to the Expanded Universe, the Yuuzhan Vong, which I always found kind of cool and wanted to port them back to D&D in some way.

Chapter 15 covers the one area where Star Wars is superior to Star Trek. Droids. 

The game really relies a lot on the players' and game masters' own knowledge of Star Wars. Yes, you can play it without that, but it certainly helps. 

Is this the best Star Wars game? I can't say. It is the best one for me. It has enough to allow me to build a game universe and play. I can add in d20 Future material as I like, including some d20 Gamma World or even d20 Traveller. 

The Wizards of the Coast d20 Star Wars lines are out of print. The new owners of the Star Wars RPG, Fantasy Flight Games (bought by Asmodee in 2014) have their own system. My oldest likes it and has run a few games with it. I'll try it out. I suppose I should also review the d6 West End Games Star Wars at some point as well.

 Got a nice surprise in the mail this past week. My latest adventure in the Frightshow Classics line of "Chilling" adventures from Yeti Spaghetti & Friends.

Golem is my first adventure written to take place in NYC and honestly I really came to understand why New Yorkers love their city so much. I mean, don't get me wrong, I am not moving out of my beloved Chicago. But I do understand them a little better.

You can get your PDF copy from DriveThruRPG.  Or contact the publisher directly for Print copies. 

While you are at it, you can get both of my adventures!

The Nightmare is also available at DriveThruRPG along with other great Frighshow Classics adventures.

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

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

—oOo—
Name: The Curse of PunkPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author Keller O’Leary

Setting: California, 1985Product: One-shot
What You Get: Thirty-five page, 6.08 MB PDFElevator Pitch: Some punks sell out. Some punks never buy-in.Plot Hook: It takes friends to turn a derelict building into a venue to stick fingers up at the man.
Plot Support: Staging advice, four pre-generated Investigators, five handouts, six NPCs, seven mythos spells, one Mythos monster, and one animal monster.Production Values: Okay
Pros# Punks gotta stand together till until someone sells out# What if one underground runs into another?# Tight plotted multi-session one shot# Easy to adjust to other cities# Musophobia# Melophobia# Athazagoraphobia
Cons# Organisation could be clearer
Conclusion# Spikey attitude pervades a telling of a punk perversion# Two undergrounds don’t make a right, especially if one is selling out

Alien girl by Hernán Toro

It's a sci-fi Monstrous Monday and I wanted to talk a little about monsters and aliens in Thirteen Parsecs.

Like our other RPG NIGHT SHIFT, Thirteen Parsecs is a "tool kit" game. That is, we will give all sorts of rules, some sample settings ("Solar Frontiers"), and let you build your own.

Some of our settings will have aliens. Jason has a few he has been working on for his Solar Frontiers. Derek has some others. 

For my Solar Frontiers, aliens are treated very differently.

In "Space Truckers," aliens only add flavor to the game. The eponymous Dixie of Dixie's Truck Stop is described as an "attractive alien girl with blue skin and bug-like antennae."  But otherwise, she is pretty much a human. There are Ursians, bear-like aliens who make up the police force of the "Colony Hyperspace Patrol" or CHyPs. There are Porcines who control most of the Badlands where Space Truckers have their shipping lanes. And finally, there are Lot Lizards, who are lizard people. I have a chimpanzee-like species that are the best engineers on the Frontier and more. But again, these are just for dressing. They still all more or less act human. Maybe exaggerated traits, but human enough to relate to. This is part of the fun of this particular setting. It is meant to feel like a 1970s Trucker movie in space.

"Darker Stars" is very different. 

In this Solar Frontier, humankind has moved out into space and found monsters waiting for them. 

While we will have some monsters in the core rules, my goals here was to re-purpose monsters from both NIGHT SHIFT and Wasted Lands. Indeed this is the source of those monsters. Darker Stars is my "horror in space" setting.

Let's take an example of a typical Darker Stars sort of adventure.

The crew of your starship encounters a derelict spacecraft. You send a landing party to investigate only to be attacked by the crew. The long-dead crew.

Our dead crew, and they could be human or aliens, will use the Zombie stats from NIGHT SHIFT. If you think about it, what are the Borg or even Cybermen but fancy zombies? The commanding officer? A mummy or a lich.

Does this mean there is magic here? Well...I take Arthur C. Clark's view here with his Third Law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." The captain of this ship, knowing his crew was in danger makes a radical adjustment to ship's life support and keeps everyone from not dying. "Not Dying" isn't the same as "Alive" though.

But don't worry. There will be aliens, both as playable races and as creatures to encounter.  

It will be up to you whether your encounter with them is more like Ripley's or Kirk's.

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

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

—oOo—
Name: The Last Dance of Lola Montez: A Call of Cthulhu Modern AdventurePublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author David Waldron

Setting: Ballarat, Modern dayProduct: One-shot
What You Get: Forty-three page, 11.64 MB PDFElevator Pitch: Who suffers for their art? The artist or the aesthete?Plot Hook: Grief isn’t something to be exploited. Until it is.
Plot Support: Staging advice, five pre-generated Investigators, eight handouts, and three NPCs.Production Values: Reasonable.
Pros# Engaging historically based scenario# Opens with great roleplaying scenes# Great historical handouts# Decent period handouts# Sanguivoriphobia# Hemophobia# Thanatophobia
Cons# Designed for experienced Investigators# Emotionally wrought scenario# Overwhelms the Keeper with documents
# No maps or floorplans# More Hammer Horror than Mythos scenario
Conclusion# An emotionally charged wicked web of a scenario# Narcissism and vampirism intersect in a tale of a Spanish dancer’s revenge

The city is not what it once was. As darkness falls, those that lurk in the shadows by day step out to make the city theirs. The gangs rule. Intimidation and violence are their game. They sell drugs and make millions for their bosses. Anyone who stands in their way is left battered and bruised—or worse, their blood running in the gutters. The police do what they can or just what they paid to do. They are underfunded and undermanned. They are paid to look the other way. They are paid to make it easy for the gangs. The authorities are underfunded and barely listening to the city’s inhabitants. The authorities’ search for improvement and perhaps for regeneration means they listen to the voices of the wealthy, the latest in a succession of ‘great’ developers, men and women who make great promises that only seem to add one more gleaming edifice to the city, and even if their plans come to fruition, their benefits rarely reach the average citizen, let alone anyone on the streets. For the city’s citizens, life no longer feels safe, there is no sense of a future, and if they cannot flee the confines of city, their lives are ones of despair. Behind it all lurks a powerful presence, working the levers of power and pulling the strings, perhaps sat atop one of those gleaming towers… Yet for some, this is too much. They can tolerate the situation no longer and have banded together with like-minded men and women to stand up to the gangs, to protect their neighbourhoods, and to face down the head of the criminal conspiracy that has knotted itself around the city. Can they prevent the Urban Decay?
Urban Decay is a roleplaying game of beat ’em up action inspired by classic arcade video games, movies, and comic-books. Streetfighter and Mortal Kombat, The Warriors and Big Trouble in Little China, The Old Guard and Daredevil. Published by Osprey Games and designed by the author of Jackals – Bronze Age Fantasy Roleplaying, this is an investigation and action roleplaying game that focuses on the brawls and the martial arts, designed for short campaigns in which the Player Characters clean up the streets, take down the thugs and the mooks, punch out the gang leaders, and duke it out with lieutenants, all before confronting the big boss and putting an end to the real threat to their neighbourhood and of course, the city. This is a roleplaying game in which a story of vengeance and vigilantism is going to be told, the action played out in its bloody, bruising glory, and then its pages closed. This is not a roleplaying to play in the long term, but more as a one-off, the occasional in-between popcorn and soda mini-movie marathon as a respite from the longer, more involved campaigns.

A Player Character in Urban Decay has six attributes. These are Damage Bonus, Initiative, Move, Guts, Clash Points, and Wounds Per Row. To this are added twenty-one skills. The creation process is a nine-step process. This begins with deciding upon a concept and recording the basic stats, which includes points in all skills except guns. Urban Decay is a roleplaying game about punches, kicks, sweeps, grapples, two-by-fours, katanas, and so on, but not guns. They have a role in the game and a Player Character can start play with one, but they are not the focus of the game. This is further enforced by the fact that the Guns skill does not have an associated trait, so although the John Wick series of films are an inspiration for the roleplaying game, there is no scope for gun-fu. Once the concept and the basic stats are done, the player then chooses an Archetype, Background, Training, and a Code before customising the character with extra points, selecting some equipment, and penultimately selecting a Crew Type. Lastly, a player answers a few questions about his character to ask why he is getting involved in the story to come. So, an Archetype could be Charismatic or Skilful, a Background Law Enforcement or The Street, Training the Face or the Fighter, and a Code the Agent or the Killer. In each case, these options add bonuses to attributes, skills, and traits, the latter granting various bonuses and effects in play.

The Crew Type represents how the Player Characters work together and how they know each other. Each Crew Type, such as Fighting Stable or Thieves, offers a bonus to a particular skill for one Player Character and a general skill bonus based on the relationship between one Player Character and another. Ideally, the Crew Types are set up for four players, although adjustments can be made if there are more or fewer players.

Maja Wincenty
Archetype: Strong Background: The Street Training: The Finder
Code: The Local Crew Type: Street Squad
Damage Bonus: +1
Initiative: 10
Move: 14
Guts: 11
Clash Points: 4
Wounds Per Row: 6
Traits
Rippling Muscles: Influence for Intimidation
Word on the Street: Streetwise for finding the rumours
A Port in Every Storm: Streetwise for finding people
Home Field Advantage
Skills:
Athletics: 30%, Craft: 30%, Deception: 30%, Dodge: 45%, Drive: 35%, Endurance: 45%, First Aid: 50%, Grappling: 35%, Guns: 00%, Influence: 50%, Kicking: 40%, Mechanics: 30%, Melee Weapons: 25%, Perception: 65%, Scavenge: 60%, Stealth: 35%, Streetwise: 85%, Striking: 75%, Thievery: 30%, Thrown Weapons: 35%, Willpower: 55%
Equipment: Leather jacket (Protection 2), flashlight, mobile phone, $50

Mechanically, Urban Decay employs the Clash system, the same as in the author’s Jackals – Bronze Age Fantasy Roleplaying. This is a percentile system in which rolls of ninety-one and above is always a failure, even though skills can be modified or even raised through advancements above one hundred percent. Rolls of doubles rolls under a skill are a critical success and rolls of double over are a fumble. Opposed rolls are handled by both parties rolling, with the participant who rolls higher and succeeds at the skill check winning. If a Player Character has a trait associated with a particular skill, then his player can roll an extra for the ‘one’s or units die. This enables a player to reroll the dice and turn fumbles into failures and successes into critical on their character’s signature skills.

Between them, the players also have access to a pool of Momentum points. These can be spent to re-roll failed checks, damage rolls, to add narrative twist to a scene, to invoke an Advanced Talent that a Player Character does not have, to prevent death occurring if a Player Character is reduced to zero wounds, and so on. The Momentum pool size is equal to the number of players plus two and resets at the start of every adventure or ‘Level’. It can be earned for rolling criticals.
For example, Maja is looking for a runaway girl. She approaches ‘End Row’ Ernie, a street corner dealer to ask if he has seen the girl. Maja’s player rolls her Streetwise skill. The result is eighty-eight. This is not only above her skill, but a fumble too. Maja’s player invokes her ‘A Port in Every Storm’ trait for her Streetwise skill and rerolls the eight on the ‘one’s die. The result is a six, so the total roll is eighty-six, a failure, but not a fumble. Maja’s presence attracts the attention ‘Endrow’ Ernie’s boss, who draws up at that moment in his car and as he climbs out of the tells her to buzz off…If in terms of skills and skill checks, the Clash system in Urban Decay is simple and straightforward, combat by comparison, is not. Every combatant typically one main action in a combat round, often a standard type of attack, but with the addition of Clash Points, combat becomes more dynamic, more heroic. Attacks are made using the appropriate combat skill—Grappling, Kicking, Melee Weapons, Striking, or Thrown Weapons—and a successful roll means that the target has been attacked and damage will be inflicted. However, the target can spend Clash Points to turn into an exchange of blows or taunts or a Clash of wills. It then becomes an opposed roll. Clash Points can also be spent on minor actions in addition to an attacker’s main action, such as opening or closing a door, switching weapons, diving into cover, and so on. Clash Points can be spent to improve an attack, to make a Feint or Power Attack, to do a Grapple or a Sweep the Leg move with a Kick.
Maja is on the street corner, having got nowhere with ‘End Row’ Ernie, and Ernie’s boss—Dwayne—has arrived by car and wants to get her away from the corner because she is disrupting business. Dwayne also wants to teach ‘End Row’ Ernie about talking to strangers. ‘End Row’ Ernie is a Melee Mook and Dwayne a Melee Soldier. Each has an Initiative of twelve, whereas Maja has an Initiative of ten. ‘End Row’ Ernie has one Clash Point to share with his fellow Mooks—if they turn up—and as a Melee Soldier, Dwayne can have up to five. The Game Master does not rate Dwayne all that highly and gives him two, whereas Maja has four. This is the number that both will have each round to spend.

The Game Master rolls five for ‘End Row’ Ernie and Dwayne and their joint Initiative is seventeen. Maja’s player rolls six, which sets hers at sixteen. Still, Dwayne and ‘End Row’ Ernie. Dwayne acts first. He snarls at Maja and says, “We don’t like people shoving their noses where they don’t belong. We’re gonna learn you a lesson.” The Game Master spends the one Clash Point the two share to have Dwayne draw a club and then she rolls Dwayne’s Attack Line to determine the options that Dwayne will have. She rolls twenty-three and the options are ‘Savage Blow’, which will inflict damage and the target will also possibly lose Clash Points, or ‘Hack & Slash’, which lets Dwayne attack, break from cover, and then retreat. She chooses ‘Savage Blow’ and rolls forty-eight to hit, which is enough. Maja’s player decides to spend a Clash Point and turns it into a Clash. He rolls sixty-three. This is below his Striking skill and higher than the Game Master rolled, so Maja succeeds, and blocks the attack. Now it is her turn to react. Maja’s player selects ‘Strike: Perfect Strike’ as an option. It costs Maja her three remaining Clash Points, but ignores any Protection. Dwayne has no Clash Points to spend until the next round. Maja’s player rolls thirty-three—a critical. This will double damage. An unarmed strike is eight-sided die plus a six-sided die for Maja’s damage bonus. A Critical attack versus a Failure means that Maja inflicts maximum damage—fourteen points—and earns a point of Momentum, and it ignores the three points of Kevlar that Dwayne is wearing. It is a cracking blow and it almost, but not quite reduces Dwayne’s Health by half. With a look of a surprise on his face, he really felt it though…In the long term, a Player Character can advance any skill beyond one hundred. This opens up the possibility of selecting Advanced Skill Talents. These include ‘Kip-up’ for Dodge which enables a Player Character to stand from prone as a free action for a Clash Point or ‘Skilled Fighter’ for ‘Striking’, which permanently reduces the Clash Point cost for a specific combat action, enabling it to become a signature move. There are Advanced Skill Talents for all skills except Guns and there some for Momentum use as well.

For the Game Master there is short, but solid advice on the genre, keeping the action high, having the boss gloat, and so on. In terms of tools, she has the Domination Pool, which is like the Momentum Pool, but for the bad buys. In terms of campaign design, Urban Decay is built around a series of linked districts across the city, which the Game Master seeds with plans and secrets, lieutenants in charge, and clues to the next district. This will all lead to a final showdown with the gang boss. Each district requires further design and choices, and the Game Master is given a ready list of places and people to chose from with which to populate a district, plus effects which the Player Characters can take advantage of or be hindered by. Each district has links to other districts that make them easier to travel to, but travel between district is difficult because the further a district is from home, the more unfamiliar it is. Within each Level/District, the Game Master also designs the path through it, with encounters and all of the opposition. In terms of opposition, the Game Master is given the options to design the Boss for her campaign, much in the mode of Player Characters, including an Archetype, such Rich or Mastermind; Resources including political Power or Esoteric Secrets; Fighting Style like Brazilian Jujitsu or Duellist; and Local Plan, what the Boss plans for the Crew’s neighbourhood. Then the Game Master is given to do something similar with Lieutenants, applying templates such as Alluring or Cruel to a base template, whilst Elites such as Brute, Martial Artist, and so on, all the way down to Soldiers and Elites are all standardised.
Lastly, for the Game Master, there is ‘Blood in the Streets’, a starting scenario. It is really a prelude to a full campaign, taking the heroes through the one path of a Level. It is a showcase for the roleplaying game’s mechanics and gives a chance for the players to show off their moves.
Physically, Urban Decay is very nicely presented. The artwork is excellent of anime punk and really moody painted scenes. It is also well written and easy to read.

Urban Decay is a roleplaying game about getting down and dirty in the streets and taking the fight to the gangs and the scum and working their up the chain. Battling their way through mooks and soldiers and lieutenants, all the way up to finally confronting the boss—and this can be in the players’ home city or the city of their choice. The rules allow for plenty of dynamic action as the Player Characters throw punches, sweep the feet out from under the enemy, and smack down the big boss. Urban Decay is your direct to video, gritty urban thriller that is going make enough to get not one, but multiple sequels, each time going up against a different boss—until an old one decides to come out of retirement. So, pick up Urban Decay, play a campaign, play something else, then come back for the sequel.
—oOo—
Osprey Games will be at UK Games Expo which takes place on Friday, May 31st to Sunday June 2nd, 2024.

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 coming 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 is power and gifts to be found from those old gods, ready to be taken by the willing and commanded by those who would take advantage of the tumultuous times that they live in. Such power and such gifts are to be found in the black box known as the IKHON. It holds four dreads gods from before the rise of the Two-Headed Basilisk, gods of the old ways—the Bilkherd, the Becklure, the Old Dead, and the dreaded Silkfiend. Their gifts are a blessing and curse, they demand much, and they may not give all those that dare commune with them the blessings that they seek. Others around those that commune with them may pay a terrible price too, and that is even before the inquisition has caught the scent of the blasphemy and profanity!

IKHON is an official supplement for 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. It forgoes the signature chromium yellow and the artpunk style of Mörk Borg, but not the physicality of presence of Mörk Borg. Instead, it comes as plain black box containing four black books. This plain black box and its contents, the ‘Profane Profound’, is ready to be discovered by the players and their characters in the play of Mörk Borg, and once they have, the Game Master can literally set the boxed set that is IKHON before them on the table. Then leave it there. Ready for them to touch, handle, and slip open, and be tempted by the contents…

When the book is open, both player and character will discover four, plain black books. They pick one. The first page tells which of the Profane Profound, the “age-old and nigh-forgotten folk gods”, shackled within the Player Character is communing with. The sacrifice of the willing and the sacrifice of one of the Player Character’s ‘significant’ body parts will grant a more potent response.

Mechanically, the player is rolling an eight-sided die and consulting the appropriate entry in the booklet. The sacrifices, whether of a willing human or the Player Character’s body part grants bonuses to this roll. For the Bilkherd, the response may be, “He summons his Herd. He summons his Herd. To the hateful goats, you are the field-poisoners, earth-salters, torch-wielders and slaughter’s heralds. A thousand thousand strong, trampling all in their path and leaving only blood, sorrow and the dust of crushed bones. All is obliterated under spiteful, churning hooves.” For the Old Dead, a sample entry reads, “The Old Dead coughs praise towards anyone wielding two (or more) weapons previously in the act of murder, increasing their maximum HP by d6.” There are sometimes consequences for the Player Characters rather than strangers or enemies. For the Becklure, one entry reads, “The Lure’s grimy ONYX-OMEGA DEATH FISH’s terrible piscine teeth crunch into a nearby kneecap. 1-in-6 chance a PC loses a leg as their patella is relentlessly chewed and shaken until it sickeningly pops. Otherwise, the air-breathing fish floats above with regal, quiet patience until commanded to strike.”

In some cases there are mechanical effects, in others there are none, and it is very much left up to the Game Master to decide the outcome, but the descriptions are never less than evocative and they should be more than enough for the Game Master to narrate an outcome.

Physically, IKHON is starkly, simply presented. It is a 6¼ by 4½-inch black, mat-finish box, with much of its flavour text given on the back, the instructions given on the inside lid of the box. Each god is a book. Each book includes a simple description and ten entries, each a double-page spread that consist of an image on one side, the description of a gift on the other. It is simple, clean, and unlike any Mörk Borg supplement to date.

Described as being for ‘misuse’ with Mörk Borg, IKHON is something that is going to sit on the table. Daring the players to have their characters look at it… It is a profane presence. Waiting.
—oOo—
Free League Publishing and Loot the Room will be at UK Games Expo which takes place on Friday, May 31st to Sunday June 2nd, 2024.