Frantically working on a lot of updates behind the scenes here. But one I want to address that I am looking forward too is what am I doing with the games I run.

Presently I am still in the middle of three different D&D 5e games. They are all part of my Come Endless Darkness mega-campaign:

• Order of the Platinum Dragon (my 5e run of the TAGDQ series)
• The Second Campaign (my run of other classic adventures)
• Into the Nentir Vale (my adaptation of some 1st ed and 4th ed adventures)

All are presently 5e.

My plan is to convert one to Castles & Crusades and the other to Pathfinder 2e.

The obvious choice here is to convert The Second Campaign to Castles & Crusades since it has a lot of old-school 1st material. The next obvious choice is to convert my Into the Nentir Vale to PF2 since it is a broader mix, and I think it is funny that D&D 4 is once again losing out to Pathfinder.

I am not sure how much I'll talk about them online. BUT I do want to talk about how the conversions go.

So in each case, I will grab a PC or NPC from them and see how they convert. I will post that since that is something people will be interested in. In fact, as I am writing this, I am thinking of two PCs in particular that would really make good examples of conversions.

I also might post the Big Bad for each in their new stats. The Second Campaign is overtly about Demogorgon, but I had always thought they would not actually encounter him.  The Nentir Vale is all about Orcus.

In any case, it should be a lot of fun.

Making another right, we come up on encounter area #19. To your immediate left is an opening to a small room.

In Room 19 there is a glowing portal. From the portal 1d4+2 Goblins are coming through.  These goblins look similar to the previous ones.

The portal opens from a nighttime world with several moons in the sky. Other goblins can be seen in the distance. The portal is one-way, Goblins can come into this world, but they cannot go back. 

Let the characters explore the portal as much as they like, but there is no way to go through it.

The gallery may be closing, but not right away, and there’s still six weeks left to find homes for plants and enclosures before everything shuts down. Hence, with the unusually warm January weather, opening for a Saturday open house just … Continue reading →

Turning right (for now) the PCs enter encounter area #18. The hallway is the same stone as before, but it is somehow darker. The hall is 20 feet wide and extends some 60 feet into deepening darkness. 

Standing in the hall, seemingly waiting for the PCs is a small group of goblins.

The goblins are not waiting, but they are not surprised either. They have come up from the lower rooms to investigate the noise. There 1d4+4 goblins here. They are all 1-1 HD (4 hp each, or 1d6). They have shortswords, short bows, and wear leather armor.

If combat goes against them after the first round, one will flee down the hall to bring back reinforcements that arrive in 2d4 turns.

The OGL 1.1/2.0 drama has thrown me for a loop. Not gonna lie.

My whole "Year of the Monster" was built on a foundation of doing monsters of various types all year. I still can, but I need to pivot.

Case in point. I have been silent for the last few days so I can get at least one of my planned monster books out. I am scraping nearly everything and dumping all the art I would use for other projects into it. Hopefully, I'll have something soon.  

I also admit that my enthusiasm for some other plans that were going to extend into 2024 is critically low. 

Even if WotC/Hasbro does some serious backpedaling, my trust is low, and my expectations are non-existent.  This is disappointing because I have enjoyed all editions of D&D. I have also enjoyed writing for all editions of D&D. But I am, right now, not willing to support Wotc/Hasbro and the new version of D&D and my support of 5e is going to be minimal here.

I am though looking forward to some Pathfinder 2nd Ed discussions and deep dives. Also, I am going to try to feature more smaller publishers here. See what they have to offer. Even ones still doing 5e. It's not their fault that Hasbro is doing what they are doing.

So bear with me in this pivot phase.

Past the last two rooms, the grand hall splits left and right.

There is a grand statue of the Vampire Queen. Inspection will reveal that the statue is made of newer material than the surrounding walls.

 Going down either hallway, there is a 1 in 6 chance that characters will notice the slope of the flow is taking them down.  The slope is not enough to send the characters down a full level, but enough to concern them.

Notes: Things should start picking up. 

I have seen lots of great maps online for others, and I thought maybe I could share mine. ;)

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: Stolen GriefPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Stuart McNair

Setting: 1920s North of England
Product: ScenarioWhat You Get: Forty page, 46.38 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: There are blacker hearts than those that are grievingPlot Hook: A forced stop reveals a village in sadness behind which hides ancient horror
Plot Support: Staging advice, six pre-generated Investigators, six NPCs, eight handouts, three maps, one Mythos spell, and four Mythos monsters.Production Values: Decent.
Pros# Bucolic horror one-shot# Enjoyably vile villain# Potential side adventure for a campaign# Not Omar Shakti’s cat, but…# Easily adapted to Cthulhu by Gaslight# Ailurophobia# Wiccaphobia# Speluncaphobia# Dendrophobia
Cons# Needs an edit# Slightly underpowered hook to motivate the Investigators to act# No area map# No NPC portraits for the players
Conclusion# Decently described English village forms the setting for a horribly bucolic scenario in which grief is co-opted by greed and desperation
# Solid scenario slightly undone by underpowered Investigator motivation in the second act

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—

Hometown Horrors, Volume 1: A Collection of Unique Locationsfor Call of Cthulhu is an interesting attempt to do something different for the Miskatonic Repository, the community content programme for Chaosium’ Inc.’s Callof Cthulhu, Seventh Edition. The majority of the releases on the Miskatonic Repository have consisted of scenarios, many of them horror one-shots, typically set in the roleplaying game’s default period of the Jazz Age  or in the here and now of the modern day. Behind its superb subversion of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, some fifteen contributors to the Miskatonic Repository take us on a visit to their hometowns and each give a little bit of their histories, their oddities, their personalities, and more. These take the reader from east to west from Martha’s Vineyard on Cape Cod on the Atlantic Coast to Decatur, Tennessee, and from north to south, from across the border in Montreal, Canada to across the Gulf of Mexico, and the capital of Cuba, Havana. Presented as reports of some redacted team from the Archives and Research Division of the US Department of Defense, the anthology takes the reader to places both familiar and unfamiliar and puts some of their hometown’s secrets on show, all ready for the Keeper t o develop, whether she wants a mystery that can intrigue her players and their Investigators as they pass through or a tale of horror that will entice them to visit the towns properly.

Hometown Horrors, Volume 1: A Collection of Unique Locations opens with a visit to the Jersey Shore, taking the reader along the boardwalk of Atlantic City to the infamous sideshow display called the ‘Infantorium’ which puts premature babies on show and then off the coast to suffer a rash of sharks (or is that something bigger?) or deal with some of the strange dealers of prohibition booze on Rum Row. In land, of course, the Pine Barrens are dark and inhospitable, its inhabitants unfriendly to outsiders. Then of course, there is the danger of the Jersey Devil—whatever that is… There is no explanation or indeed stats for William McCoy, this entry’s notable NPC, a real-life figure who built yachts that were much sought after by the gin runners. Locust Valley, New York is popular with the wealthy, and if invited perhaps an Investigator might suffer a strange experience at a séance or stay at the hotel run by ‘The Largest Man in America’, a friendly ready to spill the gossip—with a drink or two inside him. Binghamton, New York is the hometown of Rod Serling as well as New York State Inebriate Asylum which would later become a mental asylum and the Endicott Johnson Shoe Company which brought prosperity to the town as well as the carousels it is also famous for! Hometown Horrors, Volume 1: A Collection of Unique Locations proceeds like this through location after location, often offering interesting snippets, such as ‘The Blue Eyed Six’, the half dozen took out insurance on a neighbour in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and conspired to kill him when he did not die soon enough and it is reported that pairs of blue eyes have been seen floating near where the victim was buried. Just what are the eyes? Plus of course, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania is home to Three Mile Island, the site of the nuclear power station which infamously suffered a partial meltdown in 1979 and shutdown. What if the sensors indicate that it has started again? There are lots of these little snippets throughout the descriptions of Hometown Horrors, Volume 1: A Collection of Unique Locations.

Unfortunately, Hometown Horrors, Volume 1: A Collection of Unique Locations is just not enough by any measure. Every entry for every town or city is too short. A single page is not enough to cover a town’s geography and history, let alone its legends or folklore. Add in a notable personality, rumours, or a story hook and the treatment of too many of these aspects for each of the locations amounts to a paragraph. It is simply not enough information for the Keeper to use without doing a lot of further research and again, in just too many cases, the Keeper could have discovered what is in these pages by conducting her own research. It does not help that once past the history of each of these locations, the entries are inconsistent. All include one or more rumours, but some just that, and some notable NPCs or scenario hooks. Plus the rumours, the scenario hooks, and the notable NPCs vary in period between the seventh century, the Purple Age, the Jazz Age, the Modern Day, and in between, so whilst Hometown Horrors, Volume 1: A Collection of Unique Locations covers a lot of historical ground, it can never quite settle in one period long enough to be of use. The rumours, the notable NPCs, the hooks, and so on, are succinctly described at best.

Consequently, the brevity of the writing and the constraints of space leave many of the authors’ ideas as no more than hints or objects of interest rather than something that is potentially gameable. On almost every page, the reader is left to respond with, “Yes, and…?”, and wonder what ideas the authors had in mind. There is also relatively little attempt to connect any of the mysteries or oddities with the Mythos, but then the authors have almost no space to do that, just as they no space to present the folkloric or even just local horror that they hint at again and again. One more page for every entry would be a good start, but two or three extra pages of developed content would add depth and detail, as well as room for gameable content.

Physically, Hometown Horrors, Volume 1: A Collection of Unique Locations is very nicely presented, with lots of period photographs and a clean layout. It does need a strong edit in places.

Hometown Horrors, Volume 1: A Collection of Unique Locations is an intriguing introduction to a tome of local, often small town, mysteries and rumours and folklore that will provide the Keeper with an array of scenario hooks and ideas once it is finished. Until that happens, Hometown Horrors, Volume 1: A Collection of Unique Locations is a great concept that promises much, but offers only a set of place and placeholder pitches for the bigger, better, and more beguiling book it could have been.

This room is identical to Room 15 across the hall. 

This includes a similar specter with the same warning. Though this ghost seems angrier.  If the ghost is touched or attacked, it will become a bloody specter and attack.  This is a true undead.

Bloody Spectre. AC 7. HD 3 (13 hp). Att# 1. Chilling touch 1d6. Special: Silver or magic is required to hit. Turned as a Ghoul (3 HD). No treasure.

Note: If the PCs encounter Room 16 before Room 15, then swap the contents so that this is always encountered after the first specter. 

 Up from Room #13 is another room of similar shape and size.

Within the room appears to be the glowing specter of a young woman. Her form wavers back and forth.

She warns the PCs from going further into the crypts and to turn back now.  

The specter is not undead but an illusion. 

Across from Room #13 is another room.

Free Art Assets - Grey Gnome Games - Jason Glover
This room is empty save for some bones, a rusted sword, and an empty barrel. There are rats, but they are of the normal sort.

This weekend is another two-night event: it starts Friday with a guest spot at Dallas’s famed goth club Panoptikon, now at Sons of Hermann Hall in Deep Ellum, starting at 7:00 and ending pretty much whenever they kick me out, … Continue reading →

The world has not so much died as moved on. Landscapes seem to stretch on and on, pockmarked by settlements and the ruins of ages past, as strange machinery rumbles below seemingly straining to keep the sky and the ground moving like they did the day before. Old technology, much of it advanced by the standards of then and now, rusts and moulders where it sits; strange creatures—some said to have been things of legend and myth, lurk, ready to pounce and rend the unwary; and magic weaves a cunning attraction for the studious and the curious, the ambitious and the foolish, its knowledge perhaps lost on this world, but not the next. Figures are seen to stalk this world, sometimes alone, sometimes in the company of beast which seems to understand their every action and word, and never leave their side, sometimes together in brotherly orders, but all wielding the gun, a deadly artefact that they use to kill. To kill the bandit, the robber, the cheat, and the murder, the apostate of their order, and in doing so restore order of society and ensure the men and women of this time can live free of tyranny and banditry. Then they are gone. Perhaps they left with the caravan as a guard, maybe they simply moved on to the next settlement, or they just found the Slip Door they were looking and their Guns knows the location of and stepped through, not to the next settlement, though there is always one, but the next world. This is the life of the Gunslinger, wielder of the legendary gun across the Drifted World and their credo is “We deal in lead.”

We Deal In Lead: A Weird West Wanders Game is an Old School Renaissance-style roleplaying published by By Odin’s Beard. It is set in in the post-apocalyptic dark and weird west of the Drifted World that can step sideways into other worlds and genres and back again as legendary Gunslingers stalk the land, perhaps bringing order to the remnants of society, and then moving on to fulfil quests of their own. Perhaps to kill the murder of their order’s elder, retrieve their lost elder’s guns and take up her mantle, restore their honour, or even slay the demon within. It combines a stripped-down presentation with the mechanics inspired by Cairn, Into the Odd, and Knave and presents the tools and tables to create wildernesses, worlds, and excursions, whether the Warden—as the Game Master is called—is running for a single player, a group, or a player is playing it as a journaling game and thus solo. As a setting and roleplaying game, it is very much inspired by Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series of novels, but also has the feel of a weird Spaghetti Western with genre-hopping possibilities.

We Deal In Lead begins with advice for Warden and player alike. It does this as a series of principles presented as bullet points. For the Warden these include design philosophy—neutrality of the role, that the roleplaying game is Classless, death is always a possibility, the players should always be presented with clear choices, and the players share objectives, and so on, as well as the nature of adventures, content and safety tools, how to handle information, difficulty, narrative focus, and preparation, and present danger, treasure, and choice. For the player, the principles advise agency, teamwork, exploration, talking, caution, planning, and ambition, and if one path leads to defeat, then they should look for an alternative path. For the most part, these will be familiar to adherents of the Old School Renaissance, but are not elucidated upon, but rather kept short and to the point. The same is done when describing the Drifted World, a set of principles that are to the point rather than providing any great detail. On the plus side this means that there are going to be basic elements which will be the same from one Warden’s game of We Deal In Lead to another because the principles are presented in a direct and accessible fashion, whilst leaving plenty of scope for the Warden to develop the details. On the downside, this can leave the Warden with more effort required to prepare and run a game, although the book includes numerous tables designed to help with that. Overall, the sparse nature of these sets of principles reflects the open nature of We Deal In Lead’s Drifted World.

A Gunslinger in We Deal In Lead has three Abilities—Strength, Dexterity, and Heart, ranging in value between three and eighteen. Of the three abilities, Strength and Dexterity are obvious in their use, whilst Heart is used for social interaction, carrying out rituals, and in Gunslinger duels. Grit represents his ability to endure and continue rather than health, plus various physical and mental traits and some equipment. He owns a Gun, a firearm out of antiquity with inlaid stock and engraving. He may also be a member of an order of Gunslingers, led by an Errant. This might be a Player Character or an NPC. To create a Gunslinger in We Deal In Lead, a player chooses or rolls on the tables for name, surname, and background, plus any extra traits, and then three six-sided dice for the Gunslinger’s abilities, followed by two six-sided dice for his Grit. He selects or rolls for the details of his gun and his hat, and then some equipment. The Gunslinger is ready to play.

Maggie Chambers
Age: 38
TRAITS
Background: Bandit Physique: Short Skin: Pockmarked Hair: Braided Face: Sunken Eyes: Distant Speech: Squeaky Clothing: Colourful
Virtue: Tolerant Vice: Cold Reputation: Driven Misfortune: Heartbroken
Strength 13
Dexterity 16
Heart 15
Grit 9

EQUIPMENT
Three days’ rations, torch, 12 lead, Rifle with ironwood grip and hawk engraving, galloner hat

Mechanically, We Deal In Lead is straightforward. When a player wants his Gunslinger to act, he rolls a save versus either Strength, Dexterity, or Heart, 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. Armour provides some Defence, but only against mundane attacks, not against bullets. Damage is inflicted directly on Grit, then Strength, which can inflict critical damage. When Strength is reduced to zero a Gunslinger is dead. Critical damage necessitates checking on the Scars Table, which depending on the damage suffered, can leave the Gunslinger with concussion, bloodied, touched (and aware of the location of the next Slip Door), or even dead. Gunfire is resolved not through a Save versus an ability, but a roll of two six-sided dice on the ‘Shoot Table’ which might mean maximum damage, a hit or a graze, a miss, or a mishap. It is thus random, but because the gun of the Gunslinger is an artefact or relic gun, it grants certain advantages, including Steel Resolve, in which the Gunslinger draws resolve from his weapon to restore Grit and special attacks. These differ by weapon. Thus, there is ‘Fan the Hammer’ for the six shooter and ‘Give It Both Barrels’ for the shotgun. If a Gunsmith and a forge can be found, a Gunslinger can have his Gun upgraded, although the price is high.

Duels—and specifically duels against other Gunslingers—are even deadlier as you expect. Contests are required to determine who fires first and hitting an opposing duellist necessitates a save versus Heart. Damage is deducted directly from a Duellist’s Strength rather than Grit. Combat can be deadly, especially duels, and opponents will often flee Gunslingers, their morale broken. Gunslingers themselves can also be affected by the loss of morale, though usually only when they lose their Guns or their Errant is killed. Then they are broken.

Beyond the core rules and combat, We Deal In Lead provides for magic and companion beasts. The latter can bond with a Gunslinger and so become a Gunslinger themselves—bar the Gun, of course, a loyal companion who can help a Gunslinger on his quest. The former mostly involves rituals, often cast by groups. No magic itself is described, but rather the rules suggest that it be rare, knowledge of it having been mostly lost, and not without its cost. Unless presented with the means and motive to cast magic, it is likely to remain a narrative aspect of a campaign’s villain and thus the province of the Warden. Further rules cover wilderness exploration, of which there is a lot in the roleplaying game, so turning parts of its play into a hexcrawl, and traversing to other worlds, primarily through Slip Doors. There are threats and legends that stalk the in-between spaces, but a Gunslinger’s Gun never stops working—though he may need to find a world’s alternative to lead. The wilderness rules are supported by a table of wilderness encounter hooks and a lengthier and more detailed set of tables to create excursions, essentially missions on the other side of Slip Doors on other worlds. Both are designed to work with the solo or journaling rules that allow a single player to stalk the Drifted World via his Gunslinger, including a flow chart to track his progress. In addition, the bestiary in the appendix provides nearly forty monsters to face along the way. Some feel drawn straight of Dungeons & Dragons, some have a cryptological bent to them, whilst others like the Mayhem Beast, Serfbot, Skinshift, Ursborg, and Drifted Third are native to the setting. Lastly, in the scenario, ‘Swampwater Shootout’, the Gunslingers go after the turncoat who killed the Errant of their Order. It is a fairly short affair, designed to introduce the game and its mechanics, and should provide a session’s worth of action.

Physically, We Deal In Lead is well presented. For the most part the book is done in cream, but the thick border of every page is colour coded according to the chapter and its subject matter. This makes finding things in the book that little bit easier. The rules are all very clearly presented and surprisingly, for a book of its length, supported by proper examples both of character creation and combat. The latter is quite lengthy, taking up two whole pages and also serving as an example of play.

If there is an issue with We Deal In Lead it is in its openness and often its sense of the ineffable and the beyond. It leaves a very great deal for the Warden to fill in and develop, certainly in terms of anything akin to a campaign or long-term play. For some Wardens this will not be an issue, but for others, it may be the case. By comparison, the short term is very well supported with encounters and excursion ideas. This does though mean that there is a flexibility to We Deal In Lead, the Warden being free to run it in the slightly done setting as presented, create her own endless prairie, or even switch genres to a standard Western.

We Deal In Lead: A Weird West Wanders Game takes the Old School Renaissance and the Wild West to an empty, endless frontier, its sparseness and openness often matched by the look of the book. Whilst the origins of We Deal In Lead: A Weird West Wanders Game may lie in micro-clones such as Cairn and Knave, the designers do an excellent job of building upon them to present something new, in a different genre with the sense of a world that really has drifted on.

This issue with the OGL is changing all the time now. I suppose there will be some sort of announcement about the OGL 2.0 today (yes we are on the 2.0 now).

But until then, we have decided to have a big sale on all Elf Lair Games products, including NIGHT SHIFT.

https://www.elflair.com/

For products on our website, use the code DOOMSDAY40 at checkout to get 40% off your sale. 

For our products on DriveThruRPG, all are on sale for 25% off, no code needed.

Again, NIGHT SHIFT and our upcoming new fantasy RPG "Wasted Lands: The Dreaming Age" will break free of the OGL and will be powered by our in-house O.G.R.E.S. 

Interesting times ahead!  Let's all have some fun together and get back to what we have always felt was our #1 job; make fun games for people to enjoy.

It starts with a briefing in Edinburgh. The Caledonian Spy Group (CSG) of Scotland assigns a team of agents to investigate US Senator Jamal Campbell. The senator is ambitious and is on the campaign trail as part of his bid to be elected President of the United States, making large expenditures as part of the process. However, not all of the donations to his campaign appear to be legitimate, one appearing to be far more generous than its stated source would normally donate. The CSG wants to examine Senator Campell’s private financial records, verify the source of the donation, and obtain proof of that source. If the source of the donation and the senator’s finances can be proven to be legitimate, then there is no problem. If however, the source of the donation and his finances prove to be illegitimate, then there is possibility that the next President of the United States will have been corrupted and can be again. The Caledonian Spy Group want to prevent this from happening. The mission will take the agents to Hollywood where they will have to infiltrate a film studio followed by a mansion in the Hollywood hills at the height of a party, before breaking into the headquarters of a petrochemical company.

This is the set-up for The Spy Game: Mission Booklet 2 – Fuelish Endeavour, a mission or short scenario for The Spy Game: A Roleplaying Game of Action & Espionage. Published by Black Cat Gaming, this is the roleplaying game of cinematic Spy-Fi action set in the immediate future chases, subterfuge, high-tech equipment, and more, using the mechanics of Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, but eschewing some of the social attitudes and mores of the genre. The Spy Game: Mission Booklet 2 – Fuelish Endeavour comes with everything that the Game Master needs to run the scenario—plot, NPCs, floor plans, details of the equipment the Player Character agents will be issued with, staging advice, and suggestions as what happens the SOUL agents succeed at certain points rather than the Player Characters.

The Spy Game: Mission Booklet 2 – Fuelish Endeavour is easy to add to a campaign. Unlike the first scenario for the roleplaying game, The Spy Game: Mission Booklet 1 – Deadly Data, this is very much a standard sort of mission rather than one which can be dropped into a campaign between other missions. It emphasises infiltration, investigation, surveillance, counter-surveillance, electronics, and computer use as opposed to combat, although there is opportunity for that during the scenario. Designed for Player Characters of Fourth and Fifth Levels, in terms of character types, Classes from The Spy Game such as Face, Hacker, Infiltrator, and Technician will probably have lots of moments to shine in the scenario, but a Hacker and a Face will definitely be needed. Overall though, the scenario places a strong emphasis on roleplaying.

The nature of its plot and set-up means that The Spy Game: Mission Booklet 2 – Fuelish Endeavour is not as flexible as The Spy Game: Mission Booklet 1 – Deadly Data. The involvement of a US Senator, Hollywood, and the race for the Presidency all suggest that the scenario be run in a US election year, so 2024, 2028, 2032, and so on. That said, it could be adjusted to any country which is a republic and has film studios. For example, France and India would work just as well with some effort upon the part of the Game Master.  However, elements such as the agency that the Player Characters are agents of—here the entertainingly post BREXIT, post-Scottish Independence Caledonian Spy Group—can easily be changed, as the enemy organisations, and this is where the scenario is easiest to adapt to the Game Master’s campaign.

The Spy Game: Mission Booklet 2 – Fuelish Endeavour is divided into three acts, one act for each of the infiltrations—the Hollywood film lot, the Hollywood mansion, and the floors of the corporation. Each is accorded a map, plus various technical details which can often be extracted and sued elsewhere. These include an Espionage R.V., security cameras, non-lethal rounds, and the stats for various NPCs. The floorplans for the three locations are slightly too small small to be read with any ease and perhaps a little plain. Another issue is that none of the NPCs are illustrated, so ideally the Game Master should find and provide suitable images as part of her preparation.

Physically, The Spy Game: Mission Booklet 2 – Fuelish Endeavour is clean and tidy, and easy to read. Bar the front cover, it is not illustrated, but the scenario is short and boxes of supplementary text do break up the main text. The scenario comes with three sets of floorplans. Another issue with the scenario is that it is printed without a card cover, so although printed on good paper, it is not as sturdy as it could be.

The Spy Game: Mission Booklet 2 – Fuelish Endeavour is no shorter than the previous, The Spy Game: Mission Booklet 1 – Deadly Data, but it is much more complex and detailed, with very much less of an emphasis on action and combat. Its greater detail means that it needs careful preparation, but once done what The Spy Game: Mission Booklet 2 – Fuelish Endeavour offers is an excellent investigation and infiltration mission that encourages plenty of roleplaying too as the Player Characters go undercover again and again..

Up from Room 11 is a room covered in bones.

Virgil Finlay

Skeletons equal to the number in the party plus retainers rise up from the ground and attack. They are undead and can be turned. 

There are no usable weapons, but 25 cp can be found among them.

“Welcome back to 2023. Please do not leave your seat until the chronohopper has completed all temporal motion and the time-anchors engage, unless you like losing your last four lunches and your last three haircuts. Please surrender all contraband before … Continue reading →

There is an old saying, "When one door closes, another one opens."

But you know what? I hate that saying.

When a door closes, you open it back up. 

I grew up playing D&D. When you encounter a closed door, you make your "Open Doors" roll and kick it in!

Look. I love D&D, and I likely always will. While Hasbro's choices disappoint me, I am not going to let them stop my fun.

So at home, I am still going to play the games I like. On my blog and for my writing? Well, there are plenty of exciting existing alternatives. It now sounds like there are going to be more alternatives too.

But maybe the "OSR" phase of my game writing is over. It was fun, and I loved doing it. But many other games are out there that need love and attention, and I am excited to try them out.

One of the original purposes of my original "The Other Side" website was to talk about all sorts of games that I enjoyed. So let that continue now.

This room has a faint glow, and there is the smell of roasted meats.

In this space, there is a stone room but also a forest scene of glowing nearly transparent trees as far as the eye can see.  Characters can only walk the 20 feet by 20 feet of the room. In the center of the grows a large tree laden with fruits.

The fruits are oval-shaped and look like mangoes.  The fruits taste like roasted meat.  Characters can eat them with no problems, they are fine if a little bland.  They disappear once removed from this room.

Across from Room 10 is a similarly configured room.

Photo by Pixabay from Pexels

A secret door in the floor reveals a sack of 150 GP.  The coins are ancient and unknown to the PCs.