The world of Okkorim was rich and verdant. Then the Empire of Ydrissid rose and fell and so we have the Blighted Lands. The sorcerers of the Empire of Ydrissid commanded great magic and not only established dominion over Okkorim, but also out onto other planes. Key to their power were the ‘eanifisilat’ or ‘dragoncoils’, the focal points where magical power coalesced around slumbering elemental dragons. Yet over time, the power of the ‘eanifisilat’ began to fade, eventually dwindling to nothing and the sorcerer god-kings of the empire sought other means to maintain their arcane power. They could not recreate the ‘eanifisilat’ which had enabled them at their height, to send whole armies across the empire in the blink of an eye, but they could create artifacts imbued with the power of the elemental dragons—air, earth, fire, and water. One of these artefacts is the Occulus of Senrahbah. Like many of its type, it would lost in the years that followed the collapse of the Empire of Ydrissid due to the Wrath which turned its territories into the Blighted Lands and many lesser empires and nations rose and fell. Several factions in the port city of Chentoufi believe they have determined the location of the Occulus of Senrahbah. If there is even the slimmest possibility of holding a sliver of the power of the sorcerer god-kings of the Empire of Ydrissid, then these factions will do their utmost to either obtain it, or prevent it from falling into the wrong hands. Enter the Player Characters…

This is the set-up for OS1 The Eye of Chentoufi, an adventure compatible with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition which saw the Player Characters cross back and forth across the city of Chentoufi and then finally below it in order to locate the ‘Occulus of Senrahba’, also known as the ‘Eye of Chentoufi’. Having outraced several factions either wanting to obtain the Eye of Chentoufi for themselves or deny it to everyone, they encountered and defeated Yusepefesos, the greater water jinn, supposedly protecting the location of the ‘Occulus of Senrahba’ and there the scenario came to a conclusion. OS1 The Eye of Chentoufi is notable for several things. First and foremost, it is set in ‘Luke Gygax’s World of Okkorim’ and thus co-authored by Luke Gygax, the son of E. Gary Gygax, the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons and thus the hobby itself. Second, it is the first part of a trilogy, which will continue with OS2 The Heart of Chentoufi and OS3 The Fate of Chentoufi. Third, it can be run as a tournament scenario, in just a single four-hour session, and there are notes and points awards so that the players’ progress can be tracked and scores compared at the end of the tournament. Alternatively, it can played through in two or more sessions with the addition of the scenario’s optional scenes. Fourth, it was written as a special tournament scenario for Gary Con XIII, the convention held each March in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.
OS2 The Heart of Chentoufi picks up where left OS1 The Eye of Chentoufi off. Designed for a party of Seventh to Ninth Level Player Characters, it is also a tournament scenario, having been run at Gary Con XV. A portal behind the body of Yusepefesos opens up on some stairs that lead deep into the earth under the city of Chentoufi. Across its three acts, the adventure will take the Player Characters not only deeper below the city, but deeper into its past and that of the Empire of Ydrissid and its secrets. The Player Characters first discover an imperial prison followed by a series of giant-worm chewed tunnels, known as the ‘Carve’, and below that, the ‘Dahloom’ or ‘Everdark’. This is akin to the Underdark of the Forgotten Realms and the scenario plays up its alien nature, being damp, even sometimes wet, unlike the Blighted Lands of the surface world above.

The majority of the encounters in the adventure are combat related. The Dungeon Master though, with have fun roleplaying ‘Varneezer’, a crotchety old Halfling adventurer, who is very much out of his depth. He is not, rather just out of his time, and there are some nicely done clues included in his suggested dialogue. The combat encounters tend towards the epic, each of the three parts of the scenario involving or ending in a big fight. Ultimately, the scenario ends with the Player Characters still in the hunt for ‘Eye of Chentoufi’. Their reward for their efforts feels much bigger than that of OS1 The Eye of Chentoufi, they are none the wiser as to the location of the trilogy’s MacGuffin.

Unfortunately, OS2 The Heart of Chentoufi suffers from many of the same issues as OS1 The Eye of Chentoufi. The primary problem is that there is not enough context for the benefit of the players and their characters. There is no background information that is readily presentable to the players, whether on the Blighted Lands or the city of Chentoufi. So, the players will have difficulty getting a feel for the setting as a place, let alone motivation for their Player Characters. This starts with the beginning of the scenario—en media res, and in context of being a direct sequel to OS1 The Eye of Chentoufi, that is fine if the players have played it. Not though as a standalone scenario which it is suggested that OS2 The Heart of Chentoufi could be run as, because not enough attention is paid to why the Player Characters are there and what they are doing. Some of this could have been alleviated with some pre-generated Player Characters, but there are none. Which makes no sense for a tournament scenario, especially one set in a background which is not vanilla fantasy. The background to Okkorim, the Blighted Lands, and Chentoufi all have an Arabic or Middle Eastern feel, much like Al-Qadim: Land of Fate. Some of this information could have been presented in a set of pre-generated Player Characters, which could also been used to provide motivation for the players and their characters and have been used to showcase what can be played in the ‘Luke Gygax’s World of Okkorim’ and its differences between it and Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. This is a missed opportunity—though Luke Gygax does promise that the setting of Okkorim will be presented in a supplement of its own.
The scenario also starts of in an underwheming fashion. Or rather with a puzzle whose solution defaults to either a skill roll or a Comprehend Languages spell. The puzzles were the highlight in OS1 The Eye of Chentoufi, so why not present the first puzzle as a puzzle rather than a mechanical problem which does not serve the story? That way, the players could have been rewarded with points in the tournament for their deductive skills rather than combative skills. Further, whilst the highlights of OS1 The Eye of Chentoufi were its big puzzle encounter, this is really the only puzzle in the scenario, which makes it all the more disappointing. Further, in comparison to OS1 The Eye of Chentoufi, there are far fewer optional scenes in OS2 The Heart of Chentoufi. In fact, there is only one, and arguably, that scene is not optional, since it provides information about what happened to ‘Eye of Chentoufi’ and who was responsible, thus setting up event for OS3 The Fate of Chentoufi.
OS2 The Heart of Chentoufi has some great features, much like OS1 The Eye of Chentoufi. Each of its three acts starts with a summary of the plot for that act; there are suggestions as to what music to play during various scenes (with links to YouTube for the PDF version of the scenario); and both the monsters and the treasures are decently done. opportunity.
Physically, OS2 The Heart of Chentoufi is hit and miss. The artwork is excellent, as is the cartography, and on the whole, the scenario is a fine-looking book. However, the editing is inconsistent.

OS2 The Heart of Chentoufi is simply not as good a a scenario as OS1 The Eye of Chentoufi. It is too linear, there are far fewer optional scenes which helped add detail and colour to the first scenario in the trilogy, the scenes are all combat-orientated, and its lacks the puzzle scenes which were the best feature of OS1 The Eye of Chentoufi. Instead, OS2 The Heart of Chentoufi does have a fun NPC for the Dungeon Master to portray. Some of the issues with the scenario are due to it being designed as a tournament scenario, others not, but ultimately, OS2 The Heart of Chentoufi is the middle part of a trilogy and feels like it, connecting the beginning and end parts of the trilogy, and not necessarily in an interesting way.
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Luke Gygax will be at UK Games Expofrom Friday 2nd to Sunday 4th, 2023.

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

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

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Name: Twelve Black FeathersPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: C.M. Arnold

Setting: 1890s Baltimore
Product: ScenarioWhat You Get: Thirty-two-page, 8.03 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Ravens & Resurrectionists in 1890s The X-Files stylePlot Hook: A murder of ravensPlot Support: Staging advice, four pre-generated Investigators, nine handouts, one map, several NPCs, and one non-Mythos monster, non-monster monster.Production Values: High.
Pros# Scenario for Cthulhu by Gaslight# High production values and excellent photographs# One-shot or an X-Files style campaign starter# Nicely thematic mystery# Non-Mythos, Mythos scenario# Introduces the ‘Department of Concurrence’# Kabourophobia# Pteronophobia# Ornithophobia# Gynophobia
Cons# Needs a slight edit# Clue links not as clear as they should be# The ‘Department of Concurrence’ undeveloped# Baltimore... it had to be ravens.# Non-Mythos, Mythos scenario
Conclusion# X-Files: Life on the Street style one-shot or campaign starter# Solid, but short mystery which needs a little more development beyond its high production values

In all of the eleven roleplaying games based on Star Trek, it is surprising to note that there have exactly three setting supplements between all of them. Of course, it could be argued that the future depicted in Star Trek is a setting in itself, but as to specific supplements which focus on a setting or location for play, well, still three. For FASA’s Star Trek: TheRole Playing Game, the Trader Captains and Merchant Princes supplement introduced the lawless region of The Triangle, caught between the United Federation of Planets, the Klingon Empire, and the Romulan Star Empire, and then developed properly, in The Triangle supplement. For Last Unicorn Games, there was the Starfleet Academy boxed set, which enabled players to roleplay a campaign at the academy and beyond. That then is two of them, but Star Trek Adventures, the Star Trek roleplaying game from Modiphius Entertainment has a setting supplement of its own and it is literally bigger and more expansive than the other two. This is the Shackleton Expanse Campaign Guide.
The Shackleton Expanse Campaign Guide is set far beyond Federation and Klingon space, in the Beta Quadrant. This presents a barely explored region of space, known for its strange spatial phenomena and rumours of an ancient, lost civilisation, which is being opened up to exploration, colonisation, and trade. Here on the edge of the Expanse, the Federation and the Klingons have built and established Starbase 364, also known as Narendra Station in tribute to the Klingon colonists massacred by a Romulan sneak attack at the Narendra III outpost in 2344 and the heroic sacrifice of the USS Enterprise-C in defending them. The Federation and the Klingons jointly run the station. In game terms, this set-up leads to some fantastic campaign possibilities. At its heart, the Shackleton Expanse Campaign Guide is a station-based campaign, much in the mode of Deep Space 9, although the Player Characters are going to have their own starship too. The setting can be run with an all-Federation crew or an all-Klingon crew, or even a mixed crew, further supporting the joint nature of Narendra Station. With some development upon the part of the Game Master, a campaign could be run which does not focus upon a Federation or Klingon crew, but instead around themes such as trade—the Ferengi and the Orions are active in the area, espionage—the Romulans have interest in activities on their border and the technological secrets to be found in the Shackleton Expanse, or even crime—the Orion Syndicate known to be operating in the region. Whichever way a Game Master decides to use the Shackleton Expanse Campaign Guide, the Star Trek Adventures: The Klingon Empire roleplaying game will be useful. Also useful will be the Beta Quadrant Sourcebook which covers the background and broad history of the whole of the quadrant as well as first mentioning the Shackleton Expanse.
The Shackleton Expanse Campaign Guide presents a whole new setting for the Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: The Next Generation periods of Star Trek Adventures. This includes, a region guide and an explanation of the strange spatial, spectral, and gravimetric phenomena which can disrupt ship’s systems or even destroy a ship completely; five new playable species, including four indigenous to the setting and one found everywhere; details of both NPCs and starships to be found in the region; and advice on running a campaign in the setting. The highlight of the supplement is ‘The Tilikaal Saga’, a complete ten-part campaign that spans the Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: The Next Generation eras and through the actions of the Player Characters, will profoundly affect the future of the Shackleton Expanse. All of this is supported with historical excerpts, personal logs, and intercepted communications that add flavour and detail as well as differing points of view—the Klingon security report on the Orions and the Orion Syndicate is most amusing.
The Shackleton Expanse Campaign Guide opens with an overview of the region and its known history, highlighting the lack of knowledge that the Federation has about the Shackleton Expanse, an explanation of the push to explore and open up the region, a description of Starbase 364 or Narendra Station, the spatial phenomena which makes travel so dangerous and exploration so intriguing, and the various factions known to be active in the region. The history begins with the initial exploration by the U.S.S. Lexington in 2269, which would see one world quarantined and limit Federation activity in the region for almost a century. A combination of closer Klingon co-operation and increased scientific interest has spurred the construction of a permanent base and support for further exploration (which is where the Player Characters and their starship come in). The description of Narendra Station is detailed enough to bring it alive, but still leave plenty of room for the Game Master to add extra details, especially if she wants to run adventures Deep Space 9 style on the station. The factions covered include the United Federation of Planets, the Klingon Empire, the Romulan Star Empire, and the Orion Syndicate, as well as four species native to the Shackleton Expanse, which the Federation has either limited contact with or is monitoring under the terms of the Prime Directive. These include the Akaru, a humanoid species which combine the best of Vulcan and Romulan traits and are highly efficient; the Cal-Mirran, a crystalline species which communicates via light and has the capacity to distort time and look into the past or the future; the Qofuari, Otter-like centauroids who can mentally image, model, and test technologies and theories; and the VinShari, a dominate humanoid species with powerful vocal abilities which can be deadly. Full stats are provided for all four species, as well as the Orions later in the supplement, enabling their creation as both Player Characters and NPCs. However, since contact is initially limited with the four native species, they are best used as NPCs at first, and then as possible Player Characters once they have been encountered and reasons developed as why they can become Player Characters. The VinShari are likely to be the aggressive species for any campaign, but all four species are nicely detailed and feel alien to one degree or another.
All this leads up to the Tilikaal and ‘The Tilikaal Saga’. The Tilikaal are an ancient race, akin to the Preservers, Iconians, and Organians, who disappeared long ago leaving behind worlds with strange machinery built deep into their bowels or massive structures that cover the whole of the planetary surface, as well as spectral phenomena which defy known science in 2269, let alone 2371. The Tilikaal themselves and then their known worlds and their technology are described in detail before delving into the campaign. This begins in the Star Trek: The Original Series era with the first two parts, before moving onto the Star Trek: The Next Generation era for the remaining eight. Thus, from the start there is an imbalance to the campaign, particularly for a group playing in the Star Trek: The Original Series era, who get less time in the campaign. There are suggestions for involving the Star Trek: The Original Series era, who are intended to be crewmembers aboard the U.S.S. Lexington, in the rest of the campaign in the Star Trek: The Next Generation era, such as time travel or particularly long-lived characters, such as Vulcans. The methods suggested do feel forced though and whilst the first two parts of the campaign are integral to the whole, they feel like an introduction to the main campaign in the Star Trek: The Next Generation era.
‘The Tilikaal Saga’ will see the Player Characters ranging back and forth across the Shackleton Expanse. They will not only be examining the effects of the spatial phenomena and their causes and following on further clues as to the nature of the Tilikaal and their technology, but they will also be encountering the new species across the Shackleton Expanse and interreacting with both them and members of the other factions with an interest in the region. There are some great scenes throughout the campaign as the Player Characters and their starship travel to pocket dimensions; lead a flotilla simultaneously holding off a Romulan squadron, land a starship on a planet to conduct an evacuation, and delaying one planet from crashing into another—which is all incredibly epic; and more.

Having originated as a Living Campaign released as a series of PDFs, ‘The Tilikaal Saga’ has an episodic structure, enabling the Game Master to slot other scenarios in between the main episodes. To that end, the supplement includes ten one-page scenario outlines or Mission Briefs for the Star Trek: The Original Series era and twenty-seven for the Star Trek: The Next Generation era. Again, there is an imbalance between the two eras, but the inclusion of the Mission Briefs for the Star Trek: The Original Series era does at least offset the short length of the era’s involvement in the campaign. Each of the Mission Briefs is nicely done with suggested spotlight role for each one, plus the story beats—major and minor, NPCs involved, and suggestions as to when to run into between the episodes of the campaign. All of which is supported by general advice on running the campaign and story arcs in the Shackleton Expanse.
To support the Game Master, the Shackleton Expanse Campaign Guide includes details for the various NPCs, adversaries and allies, involved in both campaign and setting. These include the staff aboard Narendra Station, as well as NPCs for the Star Trek: The Original Series era, and then Klingons, Orions, and NPCs from across the Shackleton Expanse. Details are also provided for the various vessels involved. This includes the U.S.S. Lexington for the Star Trek: The Original Series era, and then an Akira-Class, Galaxy-Class, and Intrepid-Class vessel for the Star Trek: The Next Generation era. These are the U.S.S. Thunderchild, the U.S.S. Venture, and the U.S.S. Bellerophon respectively, and each comes its own history and background. There are plenty of other vessels from across the region too. Lastly, there are notes for Game Master if she wants to create her version of the Shackleton Expanse.
Physically, behind the lovely cover, the Shackleton Expanse Campaign Guide has some of the same problems as Star Trek Adventures: The Roleplaying Game core rulebook—the use of the LCARS—Library Computer Access/Retrieval System—operating system as a style template. Again, the mix of white text and pastel colours on black is not easy to read. (This does not apply to the Mission Briefs for the Star Trek: The Original Series era, so they are easy to read.) Nor do the maps look particularly good on the black background and they not particularly interesting maps at that. However, the Shackleton Expanse Campaign Guide does not feel as compact a book in places and so is easier to read.
Noticeable also, is the range of artwork on show. This is a completely new supplement with completely new species and setting and so the supplement gives new artwork to depict both them and the setting. Unfortunately, though, not all of the NPCs are illustrated, which will be a problem for the Game Master to present in play.
The Shackleton Expanse Campaign Guide is Federation-focused and thus Starfleet-focused. Which means that although there is advice for running the campaign and individual scenarios with an all-Klingon crew and starship, this comes off as second best by comparison. It always feels as if Klingon interests are aligned with the Federation interests and that is not always true. Perhaps a scenario or two, or a Mission Brief could have been included designed to be played by Klingons, but with notes for running its using Starfleet Player Characters rather than the other way around. Another area where the Shackleton Expanse Campaign Guide is at its weakest is in advice for the Game Master. The advice on running the campaign and individual scenarios is fine, but there is no advice on running campaigns with a fixed point of reference, in this case, a starbase like that of Deep Space 9. Essentially, the Game Master will need to await a supplement dedicated to Deep Space 9 or starbase-style campaigns for that advice.
The Shackleton Expanse Campaign Guide covers a lot of setting and a lot of adventure. In fact, ‘The Tilikaal Saga’ will provide months’ worth of play, especially if the Game Master includes the numerous Mission Briefs to round out the campaign and structure it more like a season or two of a Star Trek series. After all, with the ten parts of the campaign and the almost forty Mission Briefs there is enough here for that, plus whatever the Game Master adds. In addition, the Shackleton Expanse Campaign Guide and ‘The Tilikaal Saga’ together open up Star Trek Adventures to more than just what is portrayed on screen, not only expanding the setting of Star Trek, but also providing content that is unique to the Modiphius Entertainment roleplaying game.
The Shackleton Expanse Campaign Guide provides Star Trek Adventures with an all-new setting and the epic campaign it has been waiting for. In fact, first campaign for any Star Trek roleplaying game! The Game Master will find everything she needs to run this campaign and her own in its pages for a whole season of Star Trek roleplaying—if not more.
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Modiphius Entertainment will be at UK Games Expofrom Friday 2nd to Sunday 4th, 2023.

The two great features of the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Starter Set were twofold. First, in ‘A Guide to Ubersreik’, it introduced Ubersreik, the fortress-town in the south of the Reikland, and its surrounding duchy that are in turmoil after an announcement from the emperor that unseated the ruling House Jungfreud. It left the town’s burghers and minor members of the nobility spotting an opportunity to take control themselves and much of this was explored in ‘The Adventure Book’, which provided a five-part mini-campaign and more story hooks. This was the second great thing about the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Starter Set—lots to roleplay. Although Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Starter Set was in part designed to set the Game Master and her players up reader for the majestic The Enemy Within campaign—after all, almost everything is in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Fourth Edition is—what if instead of leaping into that campaign, the Player Characters wanted to stay in and around Ubersreik? Fortunately, and almost immediately, publisher Cubicle Seven Entertainment began publishing scenarios set in and around the Duchy of Ubersreik, so the Player Characters could not only continue their involvement in the political upheaval in the town, but also explore its surrounds.

Ubersreik Adventures: Six Grim and Perilous Scenarios in the Duchy of Ubersreik is a handsome hardback which collects the first six scenarios in the series. These take the Player Characters across the duchy, facing monsters and villains, hunting beasts and employment, solving mysteries and secrets, and more. The scenarios are flexible. All can be taken and dropped into the Game Master’s campaign, used in conjunction with the Rough Nights & Hard Days campaign anthology, or again used as a lead into The Enemy Within. Ultimately, Ubersreik Adventures is designed to do that, but not necessarily, since it has a sequel of its own in the form of Ubersreik Adventures II: Grim and Perilous Adventures in the Duchy of Ubersreik, a further collection of scenarios previously published as a series of PDFs. In addition, every scenario in Ubersreik Adventures includes its own ‘Shaking Things Up’ appendix with advice for the Game Master on running the scenario, alternative hooks to get the Player Characters involved, and a list of possible connects to not only the other five scenarios in the volume, but also other parts of the Empire. This gives the Game Master set up each scenario as she wants and tie it into a campaign in and around Ubersreik. Lastly, the six scenarios in Ubersreik Adventures: Six Grim and Perilous Scenarios in the Duchy of Ubersreik can be run on their own, but they do work better in conjunction with the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Starter Set.

The anthology opens with ‘If Looks Could Kill’. The Player Characters are tasked with helping deliver some supplies to the construction site of the new mill down river from Ubersreik. Unfortunately, a miasma has settled on the site and dampened the mood, but the situation turns ugly when the Player Characters are employed to clear some standing stones nearby—because that never goes well—and then one of the partners in the project turns up dead. Tracks point to much feared, legendary Beast of Orschlamm and the Player Characters are directed by the other partner to track it down. However, there is more going on than simple monster hunt as astute Player Characters will quickly work out. There is still the beast though, a fearsome creature, which fortunately is elderly enough that it will not kill them outright! It is a nicely judged and scaled encounter and the scenario fully explores the consequences of its death in no little detail. ‘If Looks Could Kill’ is an excellent starting scenario, with plenty going on, but not too much.

‘The Mad Men of Gotheim’ is the second scenario and although it involves a monster hunt, it is all together a different beast. It starts in classic fantasy roleplaying fashion with the Player Characters coming across a village which has been attacked and a monster remains on the loose, ready to attack again. The village of Gotheim lies in ruins and the villagers have all been driven mad to one degree or another. They hold vital information about the nature of the beast and possibly the means to help kill it, but Player Characters must work hard and fast in order to calm the villagers down, get them to reveal what has happened, and perhaps the means to kill the creature. ‘The Mad Men of Gotheim’ is short and surprisingly complex, and although the Player Characters may not know it, they are up against a time limit before the creature—which intentionally has the feel of Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky (both poem and film)—goes on another rampage. There is a brilliantly Lovecraftian feel to the horror in the devastation and derangement which the monster has left in the wake of its first attack in this scenario which is genuinely grim and perilous.

‘Heart of Glass’ is a murder mystery which becomes a bit of a romp. Ubersreik remains divided between those loyal to House Jungfreud and those favouring the new administration from the capital, Altdorf. So, when a corporal in the new town guard is found dead under mysterious circumstances, the Imperial Herald would like the cause and culprits found lest it leads to further unrest. Enter the Player Characters. Hired—potentially under duress—to investigate. The trail of clues leads in an odd direction, a direction so odd that it puts a Witch Finder on the Player Characters’ trail and then it gets even weirder. This is definitely a scenario where a Wizard, or at least a Wizard’s Apprentice, will have chance to get involved, if not necessarily shine. Like the other scenarios in the anthology, ‘Heart of Glass’ is not necessarily going to end very neatly, if at all, and it does leave a lot of questions unanswered as far as the Player Characters are concerned and a lot of loose ends for the Game Master to develop if necessary.

‘Slaughter in Spittlefeld’ is a locked-room affair. Well to be fair, the room is a ramshackle, squalid tenement block and although there is no murderer or murder victim, there is a disease. The scenario begins en media res with the Player Characters waking up in a tenement building in the worst slums in the town and the doors and windows are being nailed shut to keep the plague in! It is a brilliant set-up—even if the players are likely to grumble about their characters getting there—and once the Player Characters ferret a few clues out of the tenement’s tenants, perhaps with help of lumbering and very shouty Ogre landlord, they can work out cause of the disease. The situation is, of course, horribly prescient, but still an entertaining adventure. It will take them to the top of the tenement block and back down in a claustrophobically fraught affair race to save the day.
‘Bait and Witch’ begins with its clever title. ‘Slaughter in Spittlefeld’ could be played through in a single session, but ‘Bait and Witch’ is specifically designed to do that. It takes place in a few streets and buildings of Ubersreik as the Player Characters are asked for a favour by an apothecary—confront the two ne’er-do-wells watching her shop. This is a classic mix-up, if not of identities, then motivations and the Player Characters will have to come to the rescue if they are to untangle them all. If they do and they do save the day, the apothecary will prove a useful ally and contact in the long terms.

The last scenario in the anthology is ‘The Guilty Party’ and it begins with a bang before throwing the Player Characters into a classic Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay situation—a road trip! Or rather, a coach journey. After coming to the rescue of man set upon by some thugs, he offers them a job. Can they find proof of sabotage of the coaches running between Ubersreik and Altdorf? Of course, they can and before they know, they are on a trip into trouble. A coach trip means that the adventure is linear, but there are lots of extra scenarios for the Game Master to throw into the narrative along the way, making every stop an interesting encounter. In this way, ‘The Guilty Party’ prefigures the opening sessions of The Enemy Within campaign and indeed, is designed to get the Player Characters to the beginning of that campaign. Consequently, it feels forced, but climb aboard and this a fun affair, even if ultimately, it leaves them high and dry without really resolving the scenario or even getting paid. In fact, the lack of resolution is the point as it drives the Player Characters to look for other work and so onto one of the greatest roleplaying campaigns in the roleplaying hobby. However, if the Player Characters decide not to pursue that, then the scenario leaves the high and dry without really resolving the scenario to rather unsatisfactory effect. If it had explored the other option, the scenario would have been rounded and easier to use rather than the one application it suggests. (This is even more of an issue given that Ubersreik Adventures II: Grim and Perilous Adventures in the Duchy of Ubersreik is also available.)

Physically, Ubersreik Adventures: Six Grim and Perilous Scenarios in the Duchy of Ubersreik is very well presented. The book itself is a handsome hardback and the book’s artwork—especially in its depiction of the NPCs—and cartography are both well done. The plotting could have been clearer upfront in some places, and although it needs a slight edit in places, the anthology is well written and enjoyable to read.

Ubersreik Adventures: Six Grim and Perilous Scenarios in the Duchy of Ubersreik is a solidly impressive collection of adventures. None of them is overly complex in terms of structure or plot, making them easy to run for anyone new to Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, but there are some pleasingly complex and subtle situations still, such as dealing with the unfortunate survivors of ‘The Mad Men of Gotheim’, driven mad by their encounters with the creature. In addition, the Game Master is given plenty of options to work the scenario into her campaign and in turn is given numerous NPCs, all of whom are decently portrayed, that she can add to her campaign. Ubersreik Adventures: Six Grim and Perilous Scenarios in the Duchy of Ubersreik is a good book of sequels to the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Starter Set and a solid anthology of scenarios for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay in general.
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Cubicle Seven Entertainment will be at UK Games Expofrom Friday 2nd to Sunday 4th, 2023.

Dungeons & Dragons and its various iterations informed our fantasy and showed how explore new worlds, including the virtual ones we can view and interact with via our computer screens and our television screens. In turn the fantasy of those virtual worlds is having an influence upon the roleplaying games we bring to the table—even Dungeons & Dragons in the form of Dungeons & Dragons, Fourth Edition. More recent entries in this computer fantasy game influenced genre have included the Fabula Ultima TTPG and BREAK!! In between, there is a smaller roleplaying called .Dungeon – an alternate reality RPG. This is a fantasy roleplaying game inspired by computer games such as The Legend of Zelda series, the Final Fantasy series—especially the earlier ones, and even World of Warcraft. As much as it takes inspiration from the virtual world of these computer games and MMORPGs, .Dungeon is intended to be influenced by the real world around the World—as the Game Master is known in .Dungeon. What this means is that whilst there is a structure to the world of Annwn, as the setting of .Dungeon is known, and that structure is fundamentally an icosahedron, the World can literally look at the world around her and use it as inspiration. This can be from her bookshelf, her games shelf, newspapers, or even the computer games she is playing, and for each item she takes as inspiration, it is mapped onto one of the twenty faces of Annwn.
.Dungeon is both a virtual world and a shared world. This is perhaps the most important aspect of .Dungeon for there are actually three types of character in the roleplaying game, two of whom share the world. Here is where .Dungeon gets weird and straddles the virtual world and the real world. First, there are the players. They are roleplaying their own avatars in Annwn and are known as the Players. Essentially, they are sat round the table roleplaying a game called .Dungeon. Then there are players who not sat round the table roleplaying a game called .Dungeon, but are playing a MMORPG set in the world of Annwn. They are the equal of the Players and have their own motivations which they bring with them from the real world. They also share the world of Annwn with the Players. Lastly, there are the traditional NPCs of such games, who are almost present with the exclamation and question marks over their heads. The world is also shared in that the Players game together and share the same pool of the equivalent of Hit Points. This is Connection, representing both their internet connection to the game, and ultimately the time they can devote to the game. As play progresses and any time a Player fails a roll, the Players collectively lose Connection, until they have no more Connection, have to stop playing and must go back to school, get a job, and the like…

A Player in .Dungeon is defined by six stats—RNG, Meta, System, Tilt, Charm, and Perception. RNG is a Player’s relationship with the programming of the virtual world and its will, covering reaction rolls, loot, and random chance; Meta is the Player’s knowledge of the world of Annwn; System is the Player’s skill over the game, including fighting and climbing; Tilt is the Player’s capacity to keep calm; Charm is the ability to invoke the player’s real-world presence in the virtual world of Annwn; and Perception the Player’s physical senses. These are rated by die type, from a four-sided to a twenty-sided die. To create a Player, a player assigns a single die to each stat, decides upon his screen name, and notes down the player’s actual job. If ever this comes up in game, it grants a second die to roll and choose from in a task. Depending upon the nature of the world created by the World, this can either be very useful or utterly useless. The players are often going to work hard to apply jobs such as editor or barista or bus driver to the fantasy of Annwn. A player also has to decide upon his Player’s hair, body type, outfit, and other details.
A Player in .Dungeon also has a Class. There are ten given. These are the Knight, the Hacker, the Beast, the Mage, the Witch, the Leader, the Artist, the Troll, the Dungeoneer, and the Bard. These are lightly drawn though highly specialised. These often play around with their archetypes as much they do the virtual nature of the world of Annwn. For example, the Dungeoneer builds on what he learns of dungeons and settlements, gaining an Understanding each time. These can be spent to add details to a settlement or dungeon, but also saved and exchanged for a Rest Die. The Troll can rage and so roll percentile dice for all physical Contests, whilst losing less Connection. The Troll is also encouraged to make exaggerated, if false statements about the world, obliging NPCs and Player Characters, and even other Players to correct him in a patronising manner. This can be played for the humour, but also played to learn information about the world, because after all, the Troll is being corrected. The Leader gives gifts, such as a sincere compliment, a trinket, a hug—consenting, and if accepted also gives that Player a die type to add to a Contest. The Leader can also roll a Meta Contest against anything Annwn. If the player wins, the Leader can find the information he seeks in the manual for game (thus forcing him to do the one thing nobody does and that is read the manual!). There is the sense that a lot of the Classes are playing with aspects within the game and outside of it. A Player also has equipment, which simply adds flavour rather than mechanical benefit, and some gold. This can be spent on further gear, legendary gear if he has enough. Legendary gear can also come from quests. Gold can also be spent to fast travel across a world. Lastly, it is possible for the Players to have skills, but to learn a skill, a Player must find a teacher who willing to teach him.

Mechanically Player actions are handled through contests. Contests are opposed rolls, with the highest result winning the situation. In combat, this can be to deal damage to the opponent’s Connection, equal to difference between what the player rolled and the World rolled. Losing a Contest means two things. First, the action takes more time, and second, the loss of Connection in combat. Player can team up to achieve objectives and combine the rolls, but then so can the opposition! Reducing an opponent’s Connection removes them from the world, there are situations too, which might cause a Player to respawn. For example, this might be in a big boss fight or some other tasks, and is designed to complicate a situation rather than punish a player and his character. Every twenty points of Connection lost grants a Rest Die, which can be rolled to restore Connection.

Advice for the World is relatively light, but does suggest Contest difficulties and suggests ways in which scenarios for roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons can be incorporated into .Dungeon. It also details how to populate the twenty worlds of Annwn. However, the World populates the various faces, each has its own settlement, complete with common knowledge, history, and secrets, quests, and both a Princess and a Knight, each of whom is also a Player Character. Player Characters are other players in the game and do not have to act as supinely as NPCs do. They can act however they want and they have reasons to be playing which can influence their portrayal in game by the World. Further, each Player Character has hidden depths, represented in play by a mini-dungeon of shared moments and experiences that the player is not necessarily aware that he is exploring alongside his exploration of Annwn. This organises and elevates emotional interaction and exploration within the game as well as the virtual. Rounding out .Dungeon are notes for solo play, which feel more complex than the rest of the roleplaying game does.

Physically, .Dungeon is notably for being a small, slim book presented in landscape rather than portrait format. The cover has strong colours which are also used inside the book’s pages. The book uses a bitmapped style font for its titles which are often done in the style of a programming language.

.Dungeon – an alternate reality RPG is a storytelling game, but it hides this and its potential for emotional engagement under the familiarity of its double genre of a roleplaying game and a computer roleplaying game and virtual world format. However, the simplicity of .Dungeon in terms of mechanics and inspiration make running the roleplaying game not only easy to run, but also easy to run with a minimum of preparation. It requires knowledge of the language and play style of certain type computer or console fantasy games, but most players in coming to .Dungeon will have a familiarity with both, making itself easy to grasp. However, with that knowledge there is definitely a sense of a world shared, not just between the Players, but also the Player Characters. Every roleplaying game is a shared experience, but .Dungeon extends that by making us draw upon already shared references and experiences in the World’s creation of her Annwn and then not only share its exploration around the table, but literally share an exploration of the lives and emotions of others exploring the same world—just not at the table.

Every city is built on the ruins of a previous city. Buildings are torn down and new ones built in their stead. As the decades pass, a city changes. The torn down buildings are forgotten and their histories lost, and the new city continues to build upwards and over. What is left underneath are cellars and tunnels and sewers and the imprints of the previous buildings. Deep in the bowels below the ancient city of Galgenbeck lies the sunken chapel that houses Niduk, the Troll King, exiled long ago and driven into the darkness, to rot, wither, and be forgotten. Whilst the existence of the Troll King has passed into legend, the existence of his treasure has not. Whether you are dying and believe a cure to your malady might be found amongst his hoard, you have a debt to pay and his hoard is ready source of coins, you leapt into the sewers and ran into Niduk by mistake, or you simply want to rob him, somehow, you found your way into the foetid, stinking tunnels below the oldest parts of the city of Galgenbeck, in the land of Tveland, hemmed in by the tunnel walls and the ordure from the city above, but desperate and determined to find the chapel of Niduk, the Troll King, and get out again.
This is the set-up for Treasures Of The Troll King, a sewer-crawl and dungeon for use with Mörk Borg, the Swedish pre-apocalypse Old School Renaissance retroclone designed by Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell and published by Free League Publishing. The adventure itself is published by Loot the Room, following a successful Kickstarter campaign and is a relatively short, one or two-session scenario keyed around five locations—one major and five minor. The five minor locations include a collapsed building where the Player Characters are likely to encounter Niduk for the first time, a well, a graffitied gallery, and a hanging garden—the latter consisting of roots hanging down from the ceiling. The majority of these described in a succinct style, but the well is expanded upon to brilliant effect. It is not just a well, but a wishing well and a wishing with a pile of coins each with an associated unfulfilled wish. If any of the Player Characters pilfer the coins, then they become responsible for the wishes and are cursed to fulfil them. This carries on after the Treasures Of The Troll King has been played through, potentially setting up a campaign of the Player Characters being forced do ‘good’ things as they attempt to deal with all of the wishes. There is a table to randomise the wishes, but this almost deserves a book of its own.

The main room area consists of the chapel where Niduk has been hiding out all of this time. This has the feel of a dungeon, an ancient ruin strewn with the dead and detritus, half-haunted temple, half-charnel chapel. It consists of just eleven locations each described in detail, but without overwhelming the Game Master. The chapel is damp, dank, grim and grimy, haunted by ghosts and the undead, its slide into sewage-soaked ruin transcends the traditional depiction of the gothic church. There are hints of its former grandeur and gothic edifice behind all of the dirt and the decay, but they are long faded and despoiled. With only a few rooms, there are relatively few encounters to be had in the chapel, and even fewer random ones, but the ultimate encounter is of course, with Niduk, the Troll-King, himself. He receives a two-page spread of his, as does his den, for he may encountered slumbering there, or if their activities have alerted him to their presence, stalking the Player Characters. He is a great behemoth of a beast with feats capable of pulverising a Player Character in one blow. The Player Characters will be very lucky to defeat him—and that is on their second encounter.

If the Chapel of Niduk, the Troll King, is the ultimate destination in Treasures Of The Troll King, the first part of Treasures Of The Troll King is all about getting there. The route is not mapped out. In fact, there is no route. Instead, the Player Characters engage in a point-crawl—or even ‘sewer-crawl’—with even the points, or rather, the ‘spaces’ as Treasures Of The Troll King calls them, randomly encountered. The spaces of the point-crawl themselves are the aforementioned minor locations, the collapsed building where Niduk’s Banquet can be found, the graffitied gallery, the hanging garden, and the well. Of these, only Niduk’s Banquet is mandatory as an encounter, intended to provide the Player Characters with a foreshadowing of the nature of the creature they hunt. In between the spaces, the Game Master rolls for random encounters, with two small tables providing a mix of reusable and once-only encounters. Effectively, Treasures Of The Troll King is a linear adventure, though it will not feel like that in play.

In addition, Treasures Of The Troll King provides tables of reasons for the Player Characters to go looking, rumours, treasures to be found, new scrolls—both clean and unclean, and a table of sewer features to add flavour and detail to the tunnels as the Player Characters explore.

Physically, Treasures Of The Troll King is surprising. It approaches the artpunk style of Mörk Borg, but never steps over the line into the artpunk style. Consequently, the scenario is actually a little less busy and a lot more accessible, and thus easier to run from the page. The scenario is also written with some fantastic descriptions and details that add to the muck and the mire, and then twist it further in short fashion.

Treasures Of The Troll King combines the doom-laden artpunk style Mörk Borg with the pairing of a flavoursomely procedurally-created point crawl and some loathsome locations. The chapel itself is signature location of course, but the brilliance of the well of unfulfilled wishes almost equals it in terms of play potential—though that play will become apparent after the ‘Treasures of the Troll King’ have been stolen and the Player Characters have returned to the surface. Treasures Of The Troll King is an excellent and easy to run mini-dungeon, atmospherically foul, and easy to run in any Mörk Borg campaign.

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

—oOo—
Senet—named for the Ancient Egyptian board game, Senet—is a print magazine about the craft, creativity, and community of board gaming. Bearing the tagline of “Board games are beautiful”, it is about the play and the experience of board games, it is about the creative thoughts and processes which go into each and every board game, and it is about board games as both artistry and art form. Published by Senet Magazine Limited, each issue promises previews of forthcoming, interesting titles, features which explore how and why we play, interviews with those involved in the process of creating a game, and reviews of the latest and most interesting releases.

Senet Issue 5 was published in the Summer of 2021 and heralded the then return to a degree of normality following the extended periods of lockdown and limited social interaction due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The elaborate lock and key cover hints at this, but the editorial expands upon it, highlighting how the pandemic kept us apart and kept us from socialising through the play of board games and in that welcoming everyone back to the gaming table, it should be that everyone is welcome. As is usual, the issue opens with ‘Behold’, a preview of some of the then-forthcoming board game titles. Unlike in Senet Issue 4, none of the titles truly stand out, although League of the Lexicon from Crazy Clever Games looks to be least interesting if you like your words as it explores the history of words, letters, and punctuation, whilst Keymaster Games’ Caper: Europe could be a decent filler game after the depth of the publisher’s well received Parks.

‘Points’, the regular column of readers’ letters, calls back to the editorial and the sense of community and togetherness that playing games engenders. The first letter discusses whether or not it is appropriate to call the end regular department in Senet the ‘Shelf of Shame’ or not. The correspondent makes the point that she does not associate the gaming hobby with a sense of shame, and whilst possible to sympathise with her, it is clear that the use of the term is lighthearted and other than exclusionary. It is also clear that, whilst he listened and symphonized with her, the editor has not made the change in subsequent issues, although this is the first real point of contention in any of the issues to date. Were it not revisited later in the actual ‘Shelf of Shame’ it might not been have rated as even that. In ‘For Love of the Game’, Tristian Hall continues his designer’s journey towards Gloom of Kilforth. In previous issues he explored how the game became a vehicle for roleplaying and storytelling and used the mechanics to bring the game and its background to life, but in this issue, he looks at marketing and how his friends helped him market the game. In so drawing upon his community contacts as the basis of his marketing campaign, it matches with the theme’s issue of togetherness.

Each issue of Senet explores a theme found in board games, its history and the the games that showcase it to best effect. This issue, the theme is one that refuses to stay dead—zombies! In ‘Turn of the Living Dead’, Own Duffy explores the origins of the genre in George A. Romero’s 1968 classic, Night of the Living Dead, before looking at the appearance of the genre in board games, beginning really with Twilight Creations, Inc.’s Zombies!!! Although Night of the Living Dead got its own board game in 2020, it clear that the dominant game line since 2012 has been the Zombicide series, and even the Night of the Living Dead game is a Zombicide game! Zombicide also highlights zombie-themed games tend to be action orientated and so the author has to pick and choose with some care to really to look for something deeper and finds it in Dead of Winter, the 2014 game from Plaid Hat Games, where survival involves negotiation with the survivors as much as building barricades against the zombie attack and attempting to stop them. Duffy works hard to explore the genre in board gaming, but the thematical limits of the genre are quickly reached.

The first of the two interviews in Senet Issue 5 is with artist Catherine Hamilton, whose near death reaction to the oil paints she had been using lead to a change in mediums and subject matters. Now painting in water colours, her works have been best showcased in the board game Evolution, but here we not only see some of Hamilton’s favourite pieces, each and every one receives a short commentary too. Senet as a magazine has really given a space for board game artists to show off some their board game illustrations, and in ‘Call of the Wild’, Senet Issue 5 is no exception. Her art stands out all the more because it is done in an unfamiliar medium for the hobby, but is no less stunning than if had been done in oils. The second interview is in ‘Boxing Clever’ and is with Isaac Childres, the creator of Gloomhaven, one of the most popular board games of recent times. The interview explores the development of and comparisons with Gloomhaven and its sequel, Frosthaven, as well as Childres’ history with board games and working outside of the ‘Havneverse’ setting. The interview is interesting and informative and overall, a decent read.

For its mechanic, having done deck-building in Senet Issue 2, ‘Roll-and-Write’ in Senet Issue 3, and tile-laying in Senet Issue 4, Senet Issue 5 turns to a lesser device—the ‘rondel’—in ‘Full Circle’ by Alexandra Sonechkina. The rondel is a wheel-shaped game mechanism which provides numerous options, but limits player choice by forcing them to move around the rondel and onto to other options instead of repeatedly performing the same option again and again. It turns out that this device is relatively recent, having been invented in the early eighties by designer, Walther ‘Mac’ Gerdts, and really implemented for the first time in the civilisation style game, Antike. Whilst it is interesting to explore the history of a mechanic so new and have a chance to discuss it with its creator, writing about the rondel proves to be slightly difficult. This is because as a design it has not caught as a possible mechanic and its use to date has been limited. This does not stop the author examining as many games that do use it as she can, not only including Antike and its sequel, Antike II, but also board games like Vikings and Shipyard. The feeling is that author had to dig deep to find these and much like the earlier ‘Turn of the Living Dead’, ‘Full Circle’ feels as if it exhausts the limits of its subject matter, whereas previous articles on game mechanics have felt more expansive.

As ever, the ‘Unboxing’ section of Senet Issue 5 covers only a relative handful of games, but the choice is as ever interesting and covers a range of games, not just the big Euro-style titles. The big review is saved for Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile, which is rated as ‘Senet’s Top Choice’, a sprawling civilisation style game designed to be played again and again if its depths are to be fully reached. Other interesting games include Surrealist Dinner Party, a drafting game with an off-the-wall theme and absolutely beautiful artwork, and Cryo, a worker placement game about the crew of crash-landed spaceship that must survive on an icy world. None of the reviews are unnecessarily long and they are all beautifully illustrated with shots of the games and their components, and again, the issue manages to maintain a decent balance of titles and types of game being reviewed.

Rounding out the issue is Sara Elsam’s ‘From Turntable to Tabletop: How to Playlist’, which looks at the idea of using music to enhance game play. This is common enough in roleplaying, but board games? It turns out to be the case, with not only board games receiving their soundtracks, such as Escape the Dark Sector: The Game of Deep Space Adventure, but players putting together their own playlists for particular games and genres. The article is a solid introduction to the concept with some suggestions and handy hints. Lastly, in the ‘Shelf of Shame’, the hosts of Our Family Plays Games pull a game off their shelf that they have not yet played and try it out. The game is Paris: La Cité de la Lumière, a game which once on the same table, they enjoy. However they make the point that no game of theirs sits on a ‘Shelf of Shame’, but rather a shelf of opportunities to learn something new. 

Physically, Senet Issue 5 is very professionally presented. It looks and feels as good as previous issues of the magazine.

Yet again Senet Issue 5 contains an excellent mix of articles, interviews, previews, and reviews, but much like the Senet Issue 4, the articles often feel limited in their subject matter. In the previous issues, the reader always knew that he could go beyond the subjects matters explored in the issue and make discoveries for himself. With Senet Issue 5 that is not necessarily the case, whether that is true of the mechanic explored or the theme. Nevertheless, the quality of the magazine and its writing continues to be excellent, maintaining its place as vehicle to show off and explore some of the best ideas, contributors, and games in the hobby.

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Senet magazine will be at UK Games Expofrom Friday 2nd to Sunday 4th, 2023.

 I am now coming up on the next wave of Doctor Who RPGs. All from Cubicle 7. 

While there are technically three RPGs, they are all related.

First is the Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space. This is the one I have talked about here a lot already.

Second is the new Second Edition of the RPG, now just The Doctor Who Roleplaying Game.

And finally, we have Doctors & Daleks, a game based on the previous two, but using the 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons OGC rules.

One thing that strikes me is despite all I have said about this game line over the years I have never really given it a proper full review.  Well I will change that next week.

In the meantime, here are some characters I have stated up for the Doctor Who RPG (1st Edition so far).

• Sherlock Holmes and John Watson (from Sherlock)
• Madam Vastra and Jenny Flint (before we had official stats)
• Mary Poppins
• Willow and Tara

I'll spend the rest of May with this system.

 One of the "bed rooms" (Room #17) has a larger open corridor that leads to another similar room. This room however only has one bed in the very center.  

Pressing any buttons will cause different colored lights to shine with an accompanying tone. If the characters are within the 10' area (with the central bed in the center) then the following happens:

White - Sanitizing, everything becomes clean, dirt falls to the ground.
Green - Healing, minor wounds are healed for 1d6+1 hp of damage
Red - Warming, gets uncomfortably hot. 
Orange/Yellow - very bright, blinds as per the Light spell.

There are no creatures or treasures here.

--

This a surgery center. The lights are great if you are an Ophidian, not so much for humans.

The rules for the Time Lord game are lite on character creation, but that doesn't mean it can't be done. The Appendices in the Print and PDF versions give some guidelines but with 7 Doctors, 29 companions and more NPCs, putting together a new character is not very difficult.  Let's see how this game fares in recreating two characters we have already seen; Jenny Everywhere and my witch Larina.

Jenny Everywhere

Again, I am having Jenny stand in for our Time Lord character. The Time Lord RPG is thin on character creation and even thinner on creating new Time Lords and Gallifreyians.  Jenny makes a good stand-in. Again I am making the claim here that this Jenny is Gallifreyian/Human, raised mostly as a human. I am also going to speculate that there are other Gallifreyian/Humans out there, this may explain Henry DeTamble of "The Time Traveler's Wife" (It can't be a coincidence that Henry was born in 1963.)

As always, I must include her license:

"The character of Jenny Everywhere is available for use by anyone, with only one condition. This paragraph must be included in any publication involving Jenny Everywhere, in order that others may use this property as they wish. All rights reversed."

Jenny EverywhereJENNY EVERYWHERE

Apparent age: Mid-20s
Species: Gallifreyan/Human
Equipment: Scarf, Cool Goggles, bike messenger bag

Strength: 3, Cheat Death 2, Iron Constitution 2, Regenerative Powers 3
Control: 4, Escapology 1,  Blunt Weapons 2, Brawling 2, Edged Weapons 2, Marksmanship 2, Sleight of Hand 2, Stealth 1
Size: 3
Weight: 3
Move: 3, Running 1
Knowledge: 5, Computing 1, First Aid 1, MacGuffin 2, Pseudoscience 3, Science  3, TARDIS 1,  Temporal Science 2
Determination: 5
Awareness: 4, Bureaucracy 1, Resourceful Pockets 2, Serendipity 1, Striking Appearance 1

Attack: 4, 6, 6, 6, 6
Basic Defense: 3

I am unsure if this is the same Jenny from the FASA game. This one feels a little different, but I can't explain why. I mean they could be different and yet aware of each other all the same. 

Larina "Nix" Nichols

As with the FASA game (and every game I try her out in), I go outside the strict rules for character creation. Based on what I did for the FASA game, this is Larina after she had been in contact with one of the blue crystals from Metebelis 3. This was the start of her adventures. The Larina for the FASA Who game was a Welsh girl. Since this game takes place in 1991, I will use a version of her that I was using in back in the 1990s, an American foreign exchange student living in Scotland at the time. 

Edited to add: OR if this takes place in 1996 this is an older (25 years old) Larina back in the US. In my timeline for her, this would be right after her divorce. 

Larina "Nix" NicholsLARINA NICHOLS

Apparent age: Early/Mid-20s
Species: Human
Equipment: Small knife, tarot cards,

Strength: 3, Cheat Death 1, 
Control: 3, Edged Weapons 1, Stealth 2
Size: 3
Weight: 3
Move: 3, Running 1
Knowledge: 4, First Aid 2, History 2, Occultism 4, Science 1
Determination: 5, Independent Spirit 1, Psychic Shield 2, Telekinesis 1, Telepathy 1
Awareness: 4, Striking Appearance 2

Attack: 3, 4
Basic Defense: 3

Ok. I do like these builds much more than I thought I would when I picked this one back up. Jenny is a very flexible character and any differences between this version of her and others is honestly part of her character design. That is, there are supposed to be differences. 

For Larina, well, her job is to stick as close to the Rules-As-Written as I can and yet still get the character I want. My concept of her is a "witch", writ large, and maybe even stereotypically. How can I make that work in a game where so far everything has a scientific explanation.  Though I will point out that this game has an "Occultism" ability and it says this:

Occultism [Knowledge]

A character with Occultism knows about the white and black magic practices of witches, druids and the like. The ability also implies a familiarity with superstitions and old sayings.

So there is a solid hook here, AND I will point out that no other characters (companions, NPCs, or monsters) have this skill on their sheets. 

The real question now becomes, are these two traveling together? I like the idea of the Doctor being involved, particularly Sylvester McCoy's Seventh Doctor.  That is if I go with 1991, when the rules were in print. I could very easily go with 1996, the year that the game was released on the Internet, AND when the Paul McGann Doctor Who movie came out. That is also the same year that "The Craft" came out so using the logic of the TV series, the Eight Doctor is traveling with a young American witch. I don't hate the idea, certainly. 

Yeah...I don't hate this idea at all really. Maybe the bike messenger bag that Jenny has in my build above she gives to the Eighth Doctor for his Big Finish audio dramas. The Eighth Doctor's time is ripe for all sorts of shenanigans to be honest.

I'll have to consider this one more, but I like these builds and would use them to give the Time Lord rules a go. 

 Going back and this time taking the far left hallway leads to another corridor and collection of connected rooms.

These four rooms are larger than the ones on the far right. There are plenty of flickering lights with writing that doesn't not translate. There are plenty of beds in these rooms. One has a skeleton of the snake people on it.

There are no creatures, but there are more (1d10+10) more of those "healing wands" here but only 1d6+3 still work.

--

This is the ship's sick bay. It is designed for Ophidian life, so even if anything was working it would not be good for humans.

The year is 1991, and the FASA Doctor Who game is out of print. Equally less likely to see a resurgence is the Doctor Who series. In 1989 Sylvester McCoy, who had signed on as the 7th Doctor in 1987, was featured in the last "Classic" Doctor Who episode, "Survival."  The Doctor's future on BBC Television was in serious doubt.  

The Doctor had seen something of a resurgence in the Sylvester McCoy years leading to Virgin Books (founded by Richard Branson) to continue the story of the Doctor and Ace in the "New Adventures" series. The novels were very popular among Doctor Who fans, even if they took some liberties with the established lore of the show. Though some ideas (like the Time War and Other) would find new life in the 2005 reboot of the series.  But that is for another discussion.

While Virgin saw success with the novels, they found getting into the RPG market a little more difficult. They released Doctor Who Time Lord with the subtitle Create your own adventures in time and space in 1991. The book was in an A5 (148.5 x 210 mm or 5.8 x 8.3 inches) format as a novel. The authors were Ian Marsh and Peter Darvill-Evans. Both of whom had solid RPG and Doctor Who credentials.  The game has been out of print for a while, but the authors had released a copy of it online. You can still find it if you know where to look. I compared it to my print copy, and they were identical save for some updates to include the then-new Eighth Doctor. 

Time Lord

1991. 288 pages, A5. Color covers, black & white interior art and photos.

The presentation for this game is an odd one, since it came from a novel publisher rather than an RPG one. 

PART ONE: DOCTOR WHO: A Legend In Its Own Primetime

This covers the history of the Doctor Who programme from 1963 to 1989. It gives us details on the seven actors to play the Doctor. We are introduced to some concepts in Doctor Who like the TARDIS and the Companions as well. There is also a short story, The Necromancers, that is referred too later in examples. 

PART TWO: Role-Playing: What It Is And How To Do It

This covers the basics of RPGS including a history lesson complete with nods to Dungeons & Dragons. It is not a bad overview really. Designed mostly I think for Doctor Who fans that are not roleplayers already. There is a solitare adventure you can play, Switchback, with the characters Jamie and Tegan as your examples. I am just trying to imagine a situation where these two would be working together. It is more or less like a "Choose your own Adventure" sort of deal. Similar to the one found in the D&D BECMI Basic book, but you won't be carrying Tegan's lifeless body back when you are done.

PART THREE: How To Role-Play A DOCTOR WHO Adventure

This covers the basic rules of Time Lord. The system uses two six-sided dice (like the other DW RPGs) but in this one you take the difference to get your number.  So the results will be 0 to 5, with 5 (6-1) being the best role. You compare an ability to a difficulty set by the Referee. If your Ability score is lower than the difficulty score then you must roll and score higher than the difference.  So if your ability is Strength 3 (average) and the difficulty for a test of strength is a 5 then you need to roll a 2 or better. Difficulty can be adjusted as the Referee needs. There are some examples given in the book and appendix.

The Abilities include Strength, Control, Size, Weight, Move, Knowledge, Determination, and Awareness.  All (save Weight) have special abilities attached to them. The special abilities are all detailed and work like a combination of skills and advantages. 

Combat is covered, though Doctor Who is not a combat-focused game in any iteration, there is some here. It should be noted that in Time Lord, unless you are the Doctor, death is permanent. 

PART FOUR: The Cast of Thousands

This section might be where Time Lord shines above FASA's Doctor Who game. Here we have stats for all Seven of the Doctor's incarnations and all 29 of his companions, from Ace to Zoe. We also get a lot of aliens andvillains (though not sure why Sabalom Glitz is here, he is more of a comic-relief character). The Master and the Monk are two separate figures in this game.

There is some coverage on various vehicles including space and time travel ones. Special attention is given over to the TARDIS as expected. 

There is even a section called "500 Year Diary" (something that just popped up in a recent Doctor Who episode I was watching too!) that briefly covers a few topics.

PART FIVE: The Never-Ending Script

This covers running a game. It also gives good examples of what the various levels of Abilities are. While humans range from 1 to 5, with 3 being average, the scale does go to 10. So for example a "comic book superhero" has Control 7 and a Time Lord like Rassilon has Knowledge 9.

There are plenty of examples of Difficulty modifiers and relative percents. So really there are some really great details here.  There are details and tips on creating your own adventures and a sample adventure The Templar Throne (or Curse of the Cyclops in the PDF) is provided.

APPENDIX 1: CREATING COMPANIONS

There are no character creation rules really in this game. The rule expects you will be playing the parts of one of the Doctors and his various companions. This Appendix though does give you guidelines on how to create your own companions. A sample companion, Alison, is given.

APPENDIX 2: SAFE COMBAT

This covers how to tone down the lethal-ness of combat.

APPENDIX 3: DESIGNER’S NOTES

Now this is pretty interesting. The designers talk about why the made the game the way they did and how to want to appeal to both sorts of fans, Doctor Who and RPG players. 

APPENDIX 4: ADVANCED CHARACTER CREATION

Now this is from the PDF version only. The print version does not have this. This addresses the original criticism that the game did not feature character generation rules. This takes the guidelines found in Appendix 1 and expands them to includes combined a point spread generation and a random number generation. This produces characters that are all roughly of the same sort of spread with some exceptional abilities thrown in. Much like the companions themselves.

Note: There are still no rules here for generating a Time Lord character. Unless that character is a Gallifreyian and a companion of the Doctor, like Susan or Romana. 

Both end with blank character sheets. The book also includes blank sheets for Aliens and Villian NPCs. 

I had grabbed this PDF back in the dawn of the Internet and held on to it for years, not really knowing what I had had. It wasn't until I saw the Virgin book on sale that I finally put it all together.

The Time Lord game is very much a product of the 90s and the Virgin New Adventures here really shine through. Granted that could just be me reading into it all. I had a rather nice collection of those books, and it colored my view of the Seventh Doctor (for the better really). 

The game is not groundbreaking by any stretch, but it is much better than I originally gave it credit for and would have been great fun in the dry years following the Fox Doctor Who movie. 

Given the use of two d6s instead of grabbing them from your "Monopoly or Risk" games as the book suggests you can borrow some from it's sibling games that also use d6s.

Taking the far hallway on the right leads to another corridor with four doors. Each door opens to similar rooms.

Each room is dark with a large vat full of green liquid as the centerpiece.  In two of these, the vats are empty of liquid and there are skeletons at the bottom.  The glass is broken.

In room 16a there is a vat with a Saurian floating inside. If the glass is broken and the liquid drained the saurian will revive in 1d4+1 turns. The saurian (a Warrior) will be enraged and quite insane. It will attack the party right away.

In room 16c the vat has a human male. If this vat is drained the human will revive in 1d6+1 turns, scream incoherently at the party and then promptly die.

--

These are abductees of the Ophidians. They have been here for centuries kept alive and awake for all this time. The Necromancers kept these two to come back to later but never did.  The controls for the life support are damaged, so there is no way to put the victims back.

Another sci-fi staple today and one that also fits in well with Doctor Who, Star Trek, and yes D&D.  Today I want to discuss the Saurians. 

Now these guys go by a variety of names, saurians, saurials, reptoids, reptilians, and more. But for the sake of argument I am making a distinction between these guys and the Ophidians of last week. While I typically cast the ophidians as typically all evil and descended from human snake cultists, the saurians (just to use one name) are mostly neutral, cold and calculating, and largely descended from the same era that gave us dinosaurs.

I do admit that I took a lot of notes from Professor Dale A. Russell's idea of a "Dinosauriod" creature.  IT hit me at a very fertile time in my imagination; my growing love of all things science, my curiosity about UFOs and alien abduction theories, and of course, my love for D&D which was at an all-time high then. Throw in healthy amounts of Doctor Who (Silurians, Sea Devils, Draconians), Land of the Lost (Sleestaks), and Star Trek (Gorn, Saurians), and it makes a heady brew.  I also discuss them, or their near-kin, in my various posts last year on Conspiracy Theories (Ancient Aliens, Cryptoterrestrial Hypothesis, Extraterrestrials on Earth).

D&D already had Lizard Men and, to a degree, other reptilians. They would later move Kobolds over to be more reptile-like (something I have worked around) and introduce more reptilian races that are even closer to this idea (Saurian, Saurial).  We also get one of the "Big Bads" of the BECMI D&D line, the Carnifex, who works with this idea.

I used these guys for years but mostly just used Lizard Man stats. Over time I adapted them and changed them to what I mostly use today.

Saurian

Saurians are a reptilian race that came about around the time dinosaurs walked the world. They appear to be humanoid, but this is a case of convergent evolution; they have no biological relationship to the other humanoid species found in the world. 

Saurians are divided into castes based on their roles in society. These castes are purely functional in nature, and while each caste feels they contribute more to their society than the others, all are required to make their society function.

• Workers - These are the vast bulk of the Saurian society. They perform the labor and all the tasks needed. They average 5' to 5½' in height and weigh 80lbs to 100lbs.
• Warrior - These Saurians are dedicated to battle and defending the Saurian tribes. They are prone to battle frenzy and blood lust. They average 7' to 8' in height and 250lbs to 325lbs.
• Noble - The ruling class of Saurians. Stand around 6' high and weigh 150lbs.
• Scientist - nearly indistinguishable from the Noble caste. Noted for the high intelligence.
• Psionicists - on the surface, they look like a Worker or Noble but are characterized by advanced psionic powers.

All saurians are reptilian with large forward-facing eyes. They have three fingers and a thumb on each hand. They also have broad, three-toed feet. Their skin tones can vary from green to pale to even near-pink. There is no color combination between castes; any color saurian can be born to any caste. 

Females are slightly larger than males. There are no mammalian sexual characteristics, Saurians do not nurse their young, and males do tend to be more brightly colored. In the vision range of the Saurian eye these color differences are far more pronounced. Creatures with infravision can see these differences.

While many perceive the Saurians as evil, they are, in truth just very amoral when it comes to other life. They see all mammals as potential enemies and/or food.

Saurians are ancient enemies of the Ophidians and the Dragonborn. 

Saurian Minds

Saurian reptilian brains work differently from that of mammals. This has a few effects when in regards to other creatures. 

This makes giving them an alignment trickier. Slaughtering a group of humanoids, including the very young and very old, would be seen as an evil act by most creatures, but for the Saurians, it would be a necessary part of remaining alive and providing for their own tribe; an act they would view as good, even lawful.  Many humanoids would chafe under their rigid caste system, but to a Saurian, it ensures that individuals are living up to their greatest potential. No Saurian would want a Scientist as a Warrior or a Noble as a Worker since they would all be very ill-suited for the jobs. 

The other effect is one of magic.  All saurians, regardless of caste, have a +2 bonus to saving throws on all mind-affecting magics. This includes Charm, Hold, Illusions, and Sleep spells. It also means they have a +1 on all saves on other magic except for those that deal direct damage. Even a healing spell cast on a Saurian must first be subject to a saving throw. If they make the save they are not healed.

Consequently, Saurians are not able to take levels in any magic using classes like Cleric, Magic-user, or Witch.

Saurian (Worker, Scientist, Noble)

Armor Class: 7
Hit Dice: 2+2 (11 hp), 3+3 (17 hp), 4+4 (22 hp)
Move: 120 (40)
Attacks: 1 by weapon
Damage: 1d6
No. Appearing: 2d10, 1d8, 1d6
Morale: 8, 10, 10
Treasure Type: None
Alignment: Neutral (True Neutral/Unaligned) 

Saurians are a reptilian race of humanoids. They are born into a rigid caste system based on their biology. Each caste feels they contribute the most to their society, so inter-caste conflict is much rarer than intra-caste conflict. 

The Worker, Scientist, and Noble castes are largely indistinguishable from each other to outsiders. The worker caste is the most numerous, and the nobles are a little taller. 

Workers: These laborers handle all the labor in a Saurian tribe. This includes everyone from the ones that build homes to healers to those that care for eggs and hatchlings.

Scientists: Generalized by their higher intelligence and pursuit of ways to improve the Saurian people.

Nobles: The ruling caste of Saurians.

Since all saurian eggs are kept in hatcheries, there are no parent-child bonds but hatchmate bonds. So in this manner, a worker can claim kinship to a noble and visa-versa. These bonds are just as strong as any mammalian parent or sibling bond.

Saurian, Warrior

Armor Class: 7
Hit Dice: 8+2 (56 hp)
Move: 120 (40)
Attacks: 2 by weapon
Damage: 1d8+3 x2
No. Appearing: 1d8 (3d6)
Morale: 12
Treasure Type: None
Alignment: Neutral (True Neutral/Unaligned) 

Saurian warriors are a caste unto themselves. The largest and healthiest hatchlings are trained from birth to be warriors whose only purpose in life is to defend the Saurian tribes. Warriors will fight among themselves to establish dominance and access to resources, but they will never attack anyone of the other castes. They find such ideas repugnant.  

However, a Saurian warrior will have no qualms attacking a group of humanoids; young or old, as they only see mammals as potential food. 

Hatchmate bonding is the strongest among the Warrior caste, with warrior Saurians dedicating their lives to protect their hatchmates.

Saurian, Psionist

Armor Class: 7
Hit Dice: 4 (18 hp)
Move: 120 (40)
Attacks: 1 by psychic attack
Damage: see below
Special: Psychic powers
No. Appearing: 1 (1d4)
Morale: 12
Treasure Type: None
Alignment: Neutral (True Neutral/Unaligned) 

Psionic Saurians are the rarest and sit somewhat outside the Saurian caste system. They look like Noble or Scientist Saurians, if somewhat smaller. They are identified early, taken from their hatcheries, and raised only with other Psionic Saurians. Thus they have the weakest hatchmate bonds of all Saurians, and intra-caste violence between psionics is the highest of all castes. 

Saurian Psionists have the following powers. These are not magic powers but instead are psychic in nature.  

• At will: Detect thoughts & emotions
• 3 times/day: Detect Invisible, Detect Magic
• 1 time/day: Charm Person, Clairvoyance, ESP, Telekinesis (up to 100 cn weight)

There are stronger psionists with more powers.

Note: The powers are not magical and cannot be detected or countered by magical means.

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 Well of All FearPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Kat Clay

Setting: Regency Cthulhu: Dark Designs in Jane Austen’s England
Product: ScenarioWhat You Get: Eighty-two-page, 15.98 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Sometimes it is not enough to take the waters, sometimes you have to give backPlot Hook: A missing brother, and of course, scandal!Plot Support: Staging advice, five pre-generated Investigators, eighteen handouts including five maps and floor plans, and nine NPCs.Production Values: Excellent.
Pros# Fully plotted, period piece# Well written mystery# Excellent handouts# A spa town other than Bath!# Non-Mythos, Mythos scenario# Derbyshire without the lycanthropy!# Kefalitemnophobia# Aquaphobia# J9dobphobia# Gynophobia# Arithmophobia
Cons# A spa town other than Bath!# Needs a slight edit# Buxton underwritten# All spa’d out# Non-Mythos, Mythos scenario
Conclusion# Stravinsky has nothing on this scandal—though the scandal and its scenario has much to recommend it!# Bounders, blackmail, and badasses in Buxton in a thorough,  Austentatiously detailed and enjoyable investigation which takes Regency Cthulhu up north

 Going back to Room #10 and going straight. This hallway opens into a large open chamber with hallways leading away from the corridor. There are also several doors (8) in this room. 

There are skeletons of same snake-like creatures here.

The rooms are all nearly identical. These rooms appear to be living quarters of some sort.  Each one is about 20' by 20. In each one is a bed, a closest and table. Some still have their inhabitants, though long since dead.  Scouring the rooms will reveal about 1d8 x 10 gp worth of various bits of good metal.

--

These are the crew quarters for the junior officers. Not all of them made it out. 

Titan City reaches beyond the sky and deep into the planet. Its soaring Empyreal Spires are home to the Plutogia, the ruling families, who know only a life of glittering beauty and untold wealth. At its heart is the Great Cannon, the greatest machine on the planet, capable of launching starships laden with rare and valuable minerals mined by the innumerable tunnels which bore into the planet’s crust. The limits of Titan City are marked by the walls of the impossibly large crater and beyond lies radioactive deserts, inhabited only by mutated beasts and half-life bandits capable of surviving the death-grey sands and poisoned atmosphere, all under a sky marked with three moons. Ten billion humans live in Titan City, many in the Undercity, amidst industrial ruins which stretch for miles and miles up and down as well as in any other direction. Here such humanity and other such outcasts—mutants and psions, survive as best they can. Enforcers ruthlessly break up any dissent or uprising from here in the Guts of the Titan City, but that is only an intermittent threat to inhabitants’ lives, their purses bled dry by the hyper-corporations and the air they breath wrapped in smog poisoned by the waste output from barely regulated factories. Under such grinding conditions, some of these Guts-dwellers make what purpose and hope they can. They join gangs, cults, rebellions, churches, anything to give them both purpose and hope. The gangs are everywhere, staking their claims to territories, making money from crime, dealing with rivals through ‘honourable’ agreements and bloody violence, trying to get bigger, better, and richer, grab all the power they can to be crime lords, not just petty gangs.

The is the setting for Gangs of Titan City, a roleplaying game of crime and consequences in a far future underworld—literally and figuratively. Published by SoulMuppet Publishing, it can be best described as BBC’s Peaky Blinders meets Games Workshop’s Necromunda in a Judge Dredd-like Mega-City One, but vertical, in which the players take of the role of Gutters in a gang which wants to grow and be feared. As Gutters, the players will direct and roleplay the lives and development of their gang over three phases of play per session. In the ‘Escalation Phase’, the gang plans its next move. In the ‘Operation Phase’, the gang enacts its plan, and in the ‘Fallout Phase’, the gang suffers the consequences of their actions, for good or ill. Grabbing a Claim will often bring a gang into conflict with a potential rival and as the gang’s domain grows so will its rivalries and the consequences of its actions. How far will a gang go before the consequences threaten to overwhelm it, let alone individual gang members, will be revealed as a Gangs of Titan City campaign progresses. And it is important to note that Gangs of Titan City does require that progress to really work. The roleplaying game is better suited to campaign play than the one-shot because the consequences are not going to be fully explored in the short term, only the long term.

Gangs of Titan City is a storytelling roleplaying game in which the players are encouraged to be bold in their storytelling and their Gutters’ actions, as well as embrace and explore the consequences of those actions. It is player-driven in that there are no set plots and much of the setting can be created during play. However, it is a roleplaying game which deals with gangsters and that means that the players will be exploring the darker, criminal side of human nature. It is not surprise that Gangs of Titan City carries warnings about its violent, traumatic themes that include body horror, injury, and death. Similarly, the inclusion of addiction and drug abuse should be no surprise either. Harm to animals is definitely a surprise, whilst as a Science Fiction roleplaying game which includes psionics, especially one of this nature, the invasion of privacy and mind control are also included as a possible issue. To be clear, Gangs of Titan City does not dwell on these or condone, but instead indicates that they can be part of the game and its play given its dark nature. Thus, the use of Safety Tools is advised, but even so, Gangs of Titan City deals with some surprisingly direct and mature themes.

The players in Gangs of Titan not only create their Player Characters or Gutters, but also their Gang. A Gang has an Archetype, three XP Prompts, which suggest activities and behaviours the gang can engage in to generate Experience Points; various details which will vary between Archetypes and add flavour rather than mechanical benefits; two Aspects or quirks, which again flavour rather than mechanical benefits; a Contact and a Rival; an Advancement, a powerful ability which gives the gang an advantage; and lastly, a Hideout connected to the Gang’s Claim and three Hazards. One hazard comes from the Gang’s Rival, one from its Hideout, and one from its Archetype. There are six Archetypes. A Consortium will make and sell anything because money equals power; a Cult worships something dark and terrible and wants more converts; an Enclave is made up of outcasts and the dispossessed trying to survive, make a space for their own, and even hit back at their oppressors; Mercenaries are guns for hire, the bigger the paycheck, the bigger the boom; Operatives work in secret, stealing, destroying, and keeping secrets; and Overlords just want to rule. Each entry gives lots of options to choose from, including names, so that there is lots of variation and the players can really make their gang their own.

Name: The Party Syndicate
Archetype: Consortium
XP Prompts: Negotiate a favourable price, force a competitor out of business, secure a supply or source
Starting Claim: Stack-Market
Core Product: Vice Peddling
Aspects: Wide-Ranging Suppliers, Catchy Slogan (“Our price, your vice”)
Consortium Gear: Emergency Funds (enough for a small bribe or two), Very Fancy Outfit for each Gutter
Consortium Hazards: City-Wide Shortage
Contact: Hekeret Tine, Corporate Stooge
Rival: Promolium Vol, Spire House Representative
Hideout: Bodega Bill’s Corner Shop
Consortium Advancements: Smugglers
Hazards: Bodega Bill’s Corner Shop gets a lot of footfall (Hideout), got Promolium Vol, Spire House Representative very drunk and got him to invest (Rival), already sold a whole load of filth (City-Wide Shortage)

A Gutter has a Class, three XP Prompts, six Approaches (or methods of dealing with a situation), Aspects (visual descriptors and quirks), Personality Traits (roleplaying prompts), a Contact and a Rival, Specialisms (skills and areas of knowledge), an Advancement, and some Gear. A Gutter always has one piece of Gear with him, plus one item related to a Specialism and one given to the Gutter by his Contact or taken from his Rival. The six Approaches range in value between -3 and +3 and are Overwhelm, Exploit, Dominate, Resolve, Calculate, and Appeal. There are eight different Classes. These are the Aberration, more or less Human; the Broker, ready to make any deal; the Bruiser, who provides muscle and close-up intimidation; Marksman, stealthy gun for hire; Mastermind, gifted liar and clever thinker; Psionicist, whose gift both marks them and gives them power; Spectre, the sneak and knife in the back; and Technomancer, combing man and machine. Like the Gangs, each of the Classes is nicely detailed with lots of elements for a player to choose from and individualise his Gutter, to which the player also assigns an array of values to the Gutter’s Approaches.

Name: Wolter Dabrurgun
Class: Spectre
XP Prompts: Deception, Stealth, Disabling Security
Approaches:
Overwhelm 0 Exploit +2 Dominate -1
Resolve +1 Calculate +1 Appeal 0
Aspects: Pale Skin, Goggles
Personality Traits: Careful, Manipulative
Contact: The Bird’s Foot, Alleged Master Thief
Rival: Horvas, Data-Mind Scavenger
Specialisms: Security measures, Cyber Splicing
Advancements: Are you sure about that?
Gear: Cybernetic Interface, Lockbreakers, Climbing Kit

Mechanically, Gangs of Titan City is simple. If a Gutter wants to undertake an action, his player rolls two six-sided dice and applies the modifier from the appropriate Approach. A roll of ten or more indicates a Full Success, between seven and nine a Partial Success, and six or less, a Failure. Essentially, the equivalent of ‘Yes’, ‘Yes, but’, and ‘No’. Some abilities, including Specialisms, allow an additional die to be rolled, but only two are kept. Circumstances can add a single +1 bonus and rerolls of single dice are possible if the Gutter takes a point of Desperation.

Combat uses the same core mechanic. It tends to favour the Gutters initially; opponents tending only to act or have a Reaction when a Gutter’s player rolls a Partial Success or Failure on an attack. When this happens, the player makes a Resistance roll to avoid or withstand the effects of the attack. Essentially, Gangs of Titan City is player-facing. Once a Gutter starts suffering damage, combat can get nasty. A Gutter only has three Damage Boxes, which are filled in with Scratches and Wounds, and if all three are filled in, it becomes a Critical Wound. Further damage can inflict Desperation, Trauma, or kill the Gutter. If a Gutter has too much Desperation at end of the three phases of Gangs of Titan City’s play, there are multiple consequences that include burning a Contact, suffering a Trauma—which might be a Hatred, an Obsession, or a Weariness, and adding to the Gang’s Danger Table.

Gangs of Titan City’s rules also detail weapons, vehicles, and other gear in quite light detail. More detail is paid to Pharma-Serums, which are readily available across the city. These all have drawbacks, but provide an extra die for certain checks depending upon the Pharma-Serum. In terms of improvement, both Gang and Gutters can acquire further Advancements if they have sufficient Experience Points, which are gained from tagging their XP Prompts under dangerous circumstances. For the Gutter, a player can choose a new Advancement or Specialism from the Gutter’s Class, increase an Approach, or gain an Alteration. Alterations can be Cybernetic Augmentations, Gene-Mods, or Psionic Disciplines. Gaining Alterations can be easier for some Classes rather than others. For example, the Psion will only have access to Psionic Disciplines, but members of the other Classes can obtain the Cybernetic Augmentations and Gene-Mods—for a price and likely some roleplaying too. The players can spend their Gang’s Experience Points to take an Advancement for its Archetype or improve one of its Squads. In addition, a Gang’s Hideout can be improved with a new Feature or have an existing Feature upgraded.

Gangs of Titan City has a distinct Cycle of Play consisting of three phases. In the ‘Escalation Phase’, the gang plans its next move. In the ‘Operation Phase’, the gang enacts its plan, and in the ‘Fallout Phase’, the gang suffers the consequences of their actions, for good or ill. Each phase consists of several steps. For example, in the ‘Escalation Phase’ there are three steps. In the ‘Montage Phase’, the players explore what their Gutters are doing on a day-to-day basis, followed by a roll on ‘The Event Table’ which brings in a Rival or Faction into the story for that Cycle of Play, and then the Gang gets together to decide on its next ‘Gang Moves’. The ‘Operation Phase’ is when the Gutters go out and seize control of a Claim or Asset, launch a pre-emptive strike to remove a Hazard from the Gang’s Danger Table, or perform a job or contract for another Gang or faction, and this is when the Gutters will go out and actively, physically pursue the Gang’s aims. In the ‘Fallout Phase’, the Gutters and their players will resolve objectives, treat wounds, determine if the Gang’s actions has made sufficient ‘Noise’ to attract the authorities, check income, spend Experience Points, and more. All of this is intended to be played within a single session, although it need not be, and fundamentally player driven, with outside elements randomly generated by the Narrator. So, there are no set plots and the players need to be proactive more than reactive.

Gangs of Titan City is played on two levels. One is the tactical, often the individual level, when the Gutters are acting directly and the players are roleplaying them, often in the field. The other is strategic, when the Gutters plan their actions, direct their Squads, handle their Assets and Claims, and so on. Thus, there is a degree of resource management to the play, whether that is dealing with Assets and Claims, but also Debt. Debt represents how far a Gang’s resources are spread out or extended and works the same way as Desperation does for the individual Gutter. If a Gang has too much Debt at end of the three phases of Gangs of Titan City’s play, there are multiple consequences that include burning an Asset, suffering a Hardship—which might be being Watched, Spread thin, or suffering from Loose Lips, and adding to the Gang’s Danger Table. Whilst Desperation and Debt track the consequences of the Gutters’ actions on the personal and collective levels, they both come together in the Danger Table. Entries can be added to the Danger Table because of both, but also due to Noise generated during the ‘Operation Phase’, taking Claims and assets from rival Gangs and Factions or doing jobs for them, and so on. As the Danger Table is filled with Leads, Jobs, and Hazards, these become storytelling elements which randomly come back into play and the Gutters have to deal with immediately. The entries on the Danger Table are never hidden, so there is always a problem or difficulty looming over the Gutters and their Gang, waiting to escalate into something that they must deal with immediately.

However, Gangs of Titan City does require some set-up by the Narrator. Not necessarily a great deal, but it is not obvious from the outset. This includes creating a starting sector or two and then populating it with themes, factions, and a starting dynamic. Plus, an Asset web needs be drawn, connecting the players’ Gang and their Assets to the previous owners of those Assets, because every Asset has a previous owner! This of course, builds connections for the Gang, for both good and bad. As a campaign progresses, this Asset web will grow and grow. Fortunately, the Narrator’s role is strongly supported throughout with almost a third of the devoted to helping her run Gangs of Titan City. The advice is good, including letting the players be cool, be open about the risks that their Gutters and Gang face, and almost in adversarial terms, that the Narrator can always get the Gutters and their Gang later if they are successful in their plans now! This does not mean that the Narrator is expected to be adversarial, but rather the successes of the Gutters and their Gang will come back to proverbially bite them through the Hazards and other entries on the Danger Table. There are also examples of almost everything that the Narrator can bring into play or use as inspiration, including Leads and Jobs. Various sector types are discussed as are the Enforcers who will act when the Gang causes too much Noise, and there are numerous example Gangs and Factions given too, ready to populate the sector.

Rounding out Gangs of Titan City is an overview of the City of Plutogia, its major powers, and its technology. There is high degree of technology and gear being used over and over, and is not that far advanced from that of the twenty-first century. Advances (or not) include the Data-Brains, the brains of both animals and humans preserved and used as motherboards, wired into electronic devices, including computers, as well as A.I.s, laser and beam weaponry, and space travel, but it is unlikely that the Gutters will have access to that.

Physically, Gangs of Titan City is in general well written and presented. The artwork is scrappy, but works well enough. The writing does suffer from being a little too succinct in places, but the main problem is the lack of index. This might not be an issue in another roleplaying game, but Gangs of Titan City does have a lot of moving parts and interplay between the Gutters, their Gang, other Factions, and the consequences of the actions of both Gutters and Gang. What might have helped is a flowchart for the phases of the roleplaying game’s play that was readily accessible, perhaps placed inside the back cover of the book.

Gangs of Titan City is not a roleplaying game that everyone is going to want to play given its subject matter, dealing with crime and having the Player Characters—the Gutters—commit criminal and direct criminal acts. However, whilst Gangs of Titan City does do that, it never lets them avoid the consequences of committing or directing such actions, and the roleplaying game is about those consequences as much as it is the criminal acts themselves. This balance makes for great storytelling with both the players and the Narrator expected to engage with and encourage actions and consequences, whilst at the same time making the players care their Gutters’ decisions on a broader stage. For the mature gaming group willing to commit to the time it needs, Gangs of Titan City is a great toolkit for telling stories and drama in the dirty underbelly of the tallest city in the galaxy.
—oOo—

SoulMuppet Publishing will be at UK Games Expofrom Friday 2nd to Sunday 4th, 2023.

 Going back to Room #10, going left takes them down a long, poorly lit hallway (lights are flickering) it turns to the left and continues into a long room.

This room looks like Room #13, but it is not damaged. The far wall glows and gives off a slight hum.

Touching anything in this room will give off a strange trilling sound. A light will come on, and then go right out.  

There is no treasure here.

--

This the Port (left) side engine and it is intact. The engine itself is in standby mode and will not reactivate. Thankfully. Reactivating the engine will likely blow up the entire island.

Colostle: A Solo RPG Adventure introduced the Roomlands. A vast castle which covered the whole of the known world and more and whose individual rooms, corridors, stairs, and rafters contained 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. Whatever the environment, there is always a constant danger to be faced—Rooks. These are walking castles, 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. From Parapette, the greatest city in the Known Roomlands which is built into the body of a Colossal Rook, brave adventurers set out alone to explore the near limitless castle of Colostle. Perhaps fulfilling tasks and quests for the Hunter’s Guild, perhaps to explore on his own, hunt Rooks for the precious , often magical resources they contain, or simply to protect a village or settlement from a rampaging Rooks. Rooks are not the only dangers, there are often bandits and other threats as well, but Rooks remain the most feared.

Colostle: A Solo RPG Adventure is a Journalling game in which a player will write and keep a journal telling of the exploits of an adventurer across the ecumenopolis-sized castle of Colostle. As is usual with this type of game, the player will need no more than an ordinary deck of playing cards, pen and pencil, and a notebook of some kind. The scope and size of Colostle’s setting meant it was ripe for expansion and the supplement, Colostle – The Roomlands is that expansion. In particular, it provides and explores new character options, locations, living in Colostle, rules, options, and more. And of course, it does so in a book that is beautifully illustrated, echoing the style and feel of the Zelda computer game series, and both the Ico and The Shadow of the Colossus, with just a touch of Studio Ghibli. Like any good roleplaying game, the artwork sells the setting, making you wonder and want to wander the vast setting of Colostle, let alone the fact that together Colostle: A Solo RPG Adventure and its companion, Colostle – The Roomlands, provide a unique approach to the fairy tale idea of getting lost in a giant’s castle.

Colostle – The Roomlands begins with new Classes. In Colostle: A Solo RPG Adventure, an adventurer can set out with either with a piece of a Rook grafted on to him, accompanied by a Rookling companion, wearing a scrap helm taken a Rook that grants its wearer magic, or riding a mount devised from Rook scrap. The first of the new Classes is the Allied, in which a pair of adventurers team up and rely upon each other to survive the Roomlands. Together they have higher Exploration and Combat scores, rather than a special ability, and there is guidance too, if one of them is unfortunately killed. The second new Class is the Bastion, recently discovered person-sized stone or Rook constructs who have achieved independence from their former roles as the immune system for Colossal Rooks, the city-sized Rooks which are near legend in the Roomlands (although the City of Parapette built into a former Colossal Rook). Although able to speak and fight, Bastions are feared and distrusted because of their connection to Rooks. The Bastion gives the option for a player to explore the Roomlands through the embrasures of an outsider, whilst the Allied opens up interplay between two characters that the player can record and develop in her journal.

Colostle – The Roomlands adds and expands the rooms available to the player to explore. The Tundroom is an icy wasteland that Ice Rooks are at home in, but where the often-nomadic tribes have learned to defeat Rooks and command the resulting Rook husk as a Rooknaught! These require a crew to operate the various parts, commanded by a Helmed—one of the Class who wears a scrap helm taken from a Rook that grants its wearer magic, and Rooknaught often battle each other, besiege camps and villages, fight Ice Rooks, and so on. This adds an element of mecha combat to Colostle: A Solo RPG Adventure, and the Tundroom is supported with rules for its exploration and fighting Rooknaughts—both as an individual Adventurer (very challenging) or another Rooknaught, as well as tables for encounters, village events, and Tundroom characters. If an Adventurer can defeat a Rooknaught, there is the possibility of finding fantastic treasure, including the Carapace, a set of legendary ice armour! Accompanied by their own encounter tables, the Rafters are another environment, or rather environments, each different, high above in the skies over the Roomlands, the biggest threat being the Gargoyles which abduct lone travellers for reasons unknown…

More interesting are the Crackways. These are the cracks in the walls of Colostle, often carved out and expanded, some leading all the way through a wall to the room next door, others not. Some are safe, others not, and these are often marked as such. These add an element of dungeoneering and perhaps a more scaled-down exploration of the Roomlands.

Colostle – The Roomlands expands upon the information given in Colostle: A Solo RPG Adventure on the city of Parapette. Although it provides an overview of the city—and notes that Parapette is the one constant between one player’s experience of journalling across Colostle and that of another, almost like Michael Moorcock’s Tanelorn—this focuses on the Rook’s Rest tavern and the Hunter’s Guild, the former sprawling, the latter palatial. Together the information builds on the idea of Parapette being a ‘Fixed Location’ between campaigns, suggesting ways in which a player can interact with other players and collaborate in shared storytelling, either face-to-face, on-line, or even via the post. There is even the option for doing via the publisher’s Discord channel, and is further supported with rules for two-player co-operative adventuring, including exploration, combat, and more, using a mix of prompts from complication and oracle tables. This brings a degree of interaction to the play of Colostle: A Solo RPG Adventure as well as roleplaying because it is no longer a case of a player simply developing a story for himself from cards drawn and prompts generated, but instead having think about ways to present his character’s actions and decisions to the other player. In this way, Colostle: A Solo RPG Adventure takes on the performance elements of roleplaying.

In addition there are rules for fighting in Rook. This is an option because it is possible for a character to internally defeat a Rook and turn it into a Rookhome. To do this a player needs to use an ‘Onboarding’ action in combat with a Rook and if successful, then fight from the inside. A character only has the one chance to do it per combat. Although a defeated Rook can be stripped of its treasures, turning it into a Rookhome gives the character an ambulatory home that will make travel that much more easy. He will be able to travel further and do so unmolested by other Rooks. However, Rookhomes are not combat machines, unlike the aforementioned Rooknaughts, and a character must leave a Rookhome to explore or fight on foot. They also require maintenance, so once a character has one, he will need to adventure further to pay for that.

Lastly, Colostle – The Roomlands includes something quite different in a Journalling game—a directed campaign. ‘Search for the Seastone – A Solo Colostle Campaign’ combines the standard exploratory play of Colostle: A Solo RPG Adventure with sections where the decisions will be limited like a ‘choose your own adventure’ book, story sections which work like cut scenes for video games, and map areas which can be more freely explored and have keyed descriptions elsewhere. The campaign sees the character explore the legendary island known as Crown Isle and perhaps delve into the labyrinth below. The campaign is more linear than a ‘choose your own adventure’ book would be, primarily because of the limited space, but also because it is more of a scenario than a campaign. However, it does allow the exploration of a small part the Roomlands without the need to generate procedurally in every scene or location. Meaning that the player will recording details in response to given details rather than random ones. It would be interesting to see if this format could be repeated again, not just for single scenarios, but an actual campaign. Of course, one use of ‘Search for the Seastone – A Solo Colostle Campaign’ would be to run it as a traditional roleplaying scenario if the Game Master has adapted the setting to the mechanics of her choice.

Of course, Colostle – The Roomlands builds on Colostle: A Solo RPG Adventure, opening its scope with visits to new locations—the Tundrooms, Rafters, and Crackways, as well as new options in terms of storytelling, like the co-operative play. They are all great options, the new locations worthy of supplements of their own, as is the format of the directed journalling of ‘Search for the Seastone – A Solo Colostle Campaign’. Colostle – The Roomlands is an absolute must for Colostle: A Solo RPG Adventure, enabling a player to explore further and have more interesting adventures, and if a Game Master wants to take the information presented here and develop more of a setting for traditional roleplaying, then that would be fine too.
—oOo—

Colostle will be at UK Games Expofrom Friday 2nd to Sunday 4th, 2023.

You didn't think I would go through all this effort and not at least see how my own Drosophila melanogaster would work. I least wanted to try out a witch. 

In truth, my little witch Larina has a lot to do with Doctor Who, especially the Doctor Who I was watching in the 80s.  My original version of her had bits of Sarah Jane Smith and Jo Grant, but not as "screamy" as they were. And more than a little of Romana II. And many of my favorite episodes had a more horror feel, especially "The Brain of Morbius" and The Sisterhood of Karn.

SO...how does a witch fit into Doctor Who? We have the Sisterhood of Karn in the classic episodes and even the Carrionites in the later "The Shakespeare Code" (2007).  The episode "The Daemons" gave us a White Witch, and "The Stones of Blood" gave us druids. So there is at least some fertile ground here. Humans in rare cases have been shown to develop mental powers like telepathy and tk ("Planet of the Spiders") 

Given my love for the occult 70s revival and British folk horror, I am tempted to set her as a companion to the Doctor (or one of the other PC Time Lords) in 1974 (Tom Baker era). Have her a "white witch" from Wales (because why not) who is trying to figure out what to do with her parents' old spice shop. That is when a Time Lord comes into her life.

Larina Nichols
aka, "Nix"

Human Female
Profession: Spice shop owner, neo-pagan
Approximate Space/Time Coordinates: TNP Earth, 1974

Apparent Age: 20s
Actual Age: 25
Regog. Handle: Bright red hair, blue eyes, thick Welsh accent
Height: 5'4"
Build: Slim/Average
Looks: Striking 

STR: III
END: IV
DEX: IV
CHA: V
MNT: VI
INT: V

Max Op END: 20    Wound Heal: 4
Curr Op END: 10    Fatigue Heal: 4
Inact Save Lvl III: 12
Unc Thresh Lvl II: 6

Special Abilities:  Telekinesis (11), Telepathy (11)

AP: 7

Skills:
Artistic Expression II
Gaming II
Life Sciences II
General Medicine II
General Medicine, Herbal Cures III
Physical Sciences II
Public Performance I
Social Sciences II
Streetwise I
Trivia, Occultism III
Unarmed Combat, Brawling II
Verbal Interaction III

I can see her traveling with her Time Lord roughly parallel to Sarah Jane Smith and the Fourth Doctor's adventures. Maybe in this alternate reality, she got her mental powers from one of the blue crystals from Metebelis 3, turning her eyes from brown to blue, somewhat like they did with Leela.

Travel with her Time Lord until she decides to stay on Karn and join the Sisterhood? No idea, really yet.

As it turns out, I did, in fact, have a character sheet for her. It wasn't complete, but enough to get me going.