After that much-needed hiatus last weekend, the Triffid Ranch Porch Sale returns this weekend, starting at 8:00 am and ending at 1:00 pm to avoid the worst of the weekend heat. After that, it’s back to working on the gallery … Continue reading →

We have a fascination with the antics of little people, whether that is of Goblins, Hobbits, or Kobolds. In gaming this goes all the way back to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and thus Middle Earth Roleplaying, but it really comes into its comedic own with Kobolds Ate My Baby!, published by 9th Level Games in 1999. The latest entry in this comedy subgenre is published by CobblePath Games, best known for Locus: A roleplaying game of personal horror. Stacks of Goblins: A Comedy roleplaying game of camaraderie, stupidity, and spite takes the comedy of the raucous antics of small and bumptious persons and literally puts them on top of another gag—the ‘Totem Pole Trench’ or ‘Two Kids In a Trenchcoat’. In other words, Stacks of Goblins puts one goblin on top of another goblin on top of another goblin, and puts them in a Trenchcoat—of seemingly elastic length—and a fedora, and sends them out to do mischief. The situation is simple. Their Snikittyness the Goblin ruler has a mighty need and multiple Goblin minions ready to see that it is met! Plus every Goblin has his heart set on finding something he desires. The best way to meet both that need and that desire is in a nearby People Place. Of course, Goblins are not welcome in this People Place. Hence the Trenchcoat and the fedora.

Stacks of Goblins: A Comedy roleplaying game of camaraderie, stupidity, and spite is a storytelling game involving multiple wants and multiple roles—roles which switch as the Goblins argue and fidget for dominance in the Trenchcoat and quite literally a higher place in the pecking order. Or rather picking (up) order. Designed for between two and six players, it requires one twelve-sided die, one eight-sided die, and several ten-sided dice. It also requires twenty tokens. The tokens represent the ‘Obliviousness’ of the inhabitants of the town or village to the Goblins who have infiltrated in their disguise and to their shenanigans. Over the course of the game, the number of ‘Obliviousness’ tokens in play will decrease to Goblin actions, first limiting their ability to move and act, and ultimately forcing them to flee the People Place. The ‘Obliviousness’ tokens also represent the game’s timing mechanism, twenty tokens being enough for a standard-length game.
A player and his goblin has one of three roles depending upon his place in the Trenchcoat, either Top Goblin, Middle Goblin, or Bottom Goblin. The Top Goblin is the hands and mouth of the operation. He operates the height of Goblin technology—a grabber in each hand. His player rolls a twelve-sided die when the Top Goblin acts. The Middle Goblin can help or hinder the Top Goblin. His player rolls a ten-sided die and can add or subtract the result from any of Top Goblin’s die rolls. The Bottom Goblin decides where the Trenchcoat goes. His player rolls an eight-sided die when the Bottom Goblin acts. His player chooses which locations in the People Place the Trenchcoat visits and narrates the outcome of the Trenchcoat’s actions. The player of the Bottom Goblin is thus both narrator and player. However, the position and role of each Goblin can change in the Trenchcoat. Consequently, the role of the player and the die size he rolls can also change.
Mechanically, to have his Goblin act, a player rolls his Goblin’s die. The result can either be a ‘Screw Up!’, ‘Good Enough!’, or ‘Goblin Success!’. Both ‘Screw Up!’ and ‘Good Enough!’ result in a complication and with a ‘Screw Up!’, another Goblin can also shuffle around and swap places with the Goblin who failed! A minimum roll of five is needed for a ‘Good Enough!’ and a minimum roll of nine is needed for ‘Goblin Success!’. Which means that the Bottom Goblin with his eight-sided die can never roll a ‘Goblin Success!’.

A Goblin can also shuffle around and swap places if his player removes an ‘Obliviousness’ token from the pile. If multiple Goblins want to change places in a shuffle in the Trenchcoat, their players have a dice off. An ‘Obliviousness’ token can also be removed if a player wants his Goblin’s action to automatically succeed. An ‘Obliviousness’ token is also removed if a Trenchcoat makes someone’s life materially worse and when a Goblin successfully acquires his desire. Ultimately, the pile of ‘Obliviousness’ tokens curbs the maximum result on any dice roll, so the more successful the Goblins are in acquiring their desires, the more material harm they cause, the more obvious their actions become to the inhabitants of the settlement, and the harder the Trenchcoat’s actions becomes.
Stacks of Goblins has tables for defining each Goblin, what their Snikittyness the Goblin ruler wants, and what each Goblin desires. Other tables determine the mission, including the target destination, the Goblin means of escape, and events happening in the destination.
When the number of ‘Obliviousness’ tokens drops below the number of Goblins, the Trenchcoat’s cover is blown and it is time to escape. The Trenchcoat must make its way back through the chaos and disarray left in its wake as it progressed through the People Place. Once the Goblins get home in their Trenchcoat, they count their loot, that is, their desires and whatever it was that their Snikittyness the Goblin ruler wanted. A Goblin succeeds if he brings home both.

Physically, Stacks of Goblins: A Comedy roleplaying game of camaraderie, stupidity, and spite is very green. As you would expect. It is simply and clearly written. The cartoon artwork varies in quality, but some of it is really quite decent.

Stacks of Goblins: A Comedy roleplaying game of camaraderie, stupidity, and spite lives up to its subtitle. It is fun and silly. It is semi-cooperative as the Goblins are forced to work together and no one Goblin is in charge, but forced into conflict with each other in order to assume the three roles in the Trenchcoat, each one necessary to grab both need and desire. It is stupid because dice rolls will fail and a Goblin always thinks he can do better, and to do better means a higher role and thus potential for a higher roll. Then as one Goblin gains his desire and their Snikittyness the Goblin ruler’s need, and the other Goblins do not, desperation and spite kicks in as one Goblin looks like succeeding and his rivals do not. All this would be fun enough, but the shifting roles from Top Goblin to Bottom Goblin and back again, enhances all of this, keeping everyone involved, and giving everyone a turn at each role. It does this through play and through each Goblin’s drive to obtain both desire and need. Which means that without knowing it and without it being forced upon him, a player gets to be the narrator of the Trenchcoat’s progress (and thus the roleplaying game’s storyteller or Game Master).

Stacks of Goblins: A Comedy roleplaying game of camaraderie, stupidity, and spite is simple and idiotic, but that simplicity and idiocy hides some clever little design decisions and a Trenchcoat full of silliness, squabbling, and fun.

Three weeks until the big Triffid Ranch 3.0 gallery reboot, and time tends to get away from me, hence the relative lack of updates. As always, everything runs on Riddell’s Law of Artistic Expression (“All art forms derive from painting, … Continue reading →

Escape the Dark Sector: The Game of Deep Space Adventure brought the brutality of the Fighting Fantasy solo adventure books of the eighties to both Science Fiction and co-operative game play for up to four players in which their characters begin incarcerated in the detention block of a vast space station and must work together to ensure their escape. Published by Themeborne, with its multiple encounters, traps, aliens, robots, objects, and more as well as a different end of game Boss every time, Escape the Dark Sector offered a high replay value, especially as a game never lasted longer than thirty minutes. Now, like its predecessor, Escape the Dark Castle: The Game of Atmospheric Adventure, the game has not one, but three expansions! Funded via a Kickstarter campaign, each of the three expansions—Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 1: Twisted Tech, Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 2: Mutant Syndrome, and Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 3: Quantum Rift—adds a new Boss, new Chapters, new Items, and more, taking the path of the escapees off in a new direction to face new encounters and new dangers. Each expansion can be played on its own with the base game, or mixed and matched to add one, two, or three mission packs that increase the replay value of the core game.
Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 1: Twisted Tech takes the escapees off into the tech-based areas of the station. It includes twelve new Chapter cards which represent the encounters the escapees will have as they flee. They may run into security droids which attempt to detain or destroy the escaping prisoners; find a partially constructed android which can be scavenged for devices like a Medical Beam or a Replicator; discover a logistics terminal which can be hacked to determine the location of the nearest equipment stash; and even find a noodle seller to gain some rest and respite! The single Boss card is for Neuroshima, a technological genius with multiple cybernetic implants, such as automatically hitting in ranged combat or close combat. Fortunately, only one implant works each time he is faced—the particular implant being determined by a roll of the ‘Tech Die’.
Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 1: Twisted Tech has nine new Item cards and three Drone cards. The Drone cards—Replication Drone, Surgical Drone, and Sentry Drone—give the escapees a tactical edge. All three drone models have the one basic function, simple healing, which is always guaranteed to work, but each model also has several advanced functions, which unfortunately not guaranteed to work, and may even harm the characters. The Replication Drone replicates items out of the Discard Pile;  the Surgical Drone restores Hit Points and can even remove a mutation (a feature of Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 2: Mutant Syndrome rather than Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 1: Twisted Tech); and the Sentry Drone inflicts damage on designated targets in combat. However, if a Drone malfunctions, it can inflict damage on a character, and whether it malfunctions or uses a particular advanced function determined by a roll of the ‘Tech Die’. Further, the characters can only take one Drone with them, and of course, a Drone can only be used once per action.
The nine Item cards include a mix of new cyberware, gear, and guns. The ‘Drone Commander Implant’ grants a second use of a Drone’s Basic Function before its card is flipped over. The ‘Chrono Rig’ enables any type or number of dice to be rerolled once per chapter (Escape the Dark Sector is played out in four chapters) and the second result used; the ‘Teleporter’ is used and discarded to gain a flanking attack in combat; and the ‘Nutri-Pill’ heals two Hit Points. Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 1: Twisted Tech also includes three new weapons—the ‘Punch-Gun’, the ‘Sniper Rifle’, and the ‘Flame Thrower’. All three work in slightly different ways. Both the ‘Punch-Gun’ and the ‘Sniper Rifle’ need to be loaded using the ‘Special Ammo’ die, but the ‘Sniper Rifle’ must be then primed before it can be fired. If either hits, the Special Ammo die is rolled and can have an extra effect. This is extra damage for the ‘Punch-Gun’, but removes either the chapter dice of one type in the combat or three chapter dice of any type. This is a powerful effect as it helps negate the effects an encounter or chapter. Lastly, the ‘Flame Thrower’ can fire three bursts of flame of varying length, represented by rolling the ‘Flame Ammo’ dice, either one, two, or three per burst. These can result in inflicting damage on a target, no effect, or even engulfing a character in flames and causing them damage. Lastly, of course, there are the dice—the ‘Tech Die’, ‘Special Ammo’ dice, and the ‘Flame Ammo’ dice. (It will be easy to see the ‘Tech Die’ being used in the other two Mission Packs for Escape the Dark Sector.)

Physically, Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 1: Twisted Tech is as well produced as the core game. The new Chapter and Boss Cards are large and in general easy to read and understand. Each one is illustrated in Black and White, in a style which echoes that of the Fighting Fantasy series and Warhammer 40K last seen in the nineteen eighties. The Item and Drone cards are also easy to use and the dice are clear and simple. The rule book requires a careful read, if only to grasp how the different new mechanics work.

Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 1: Twisted Tech adds new subsystems as well as new encounters with the Chapter and Boss Cards. They add both elements of complexity and luck, though more of the latter than the former. Design wise, this expansion is thematically strong rather than narratively strong, adding new technology that the escapees can use and technology that the escapees must defeat or overcome. What this means is that it has no intrinsic story of its own and is thus easier to integrate with the core game and its other expansions. Overall, Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 1: Twisted Tech is a solid expansion which adds more Sci-Fi theme to Escape the Dark Sector: The Game of Deep Space Adventure.

Normally with my This Old Dragon retrospectives, I talk a little bit about the time when the magazine was published.  This issue was out in July 1982. But that is not the time I associate this issue with. No, the time this issue came out for me was nearly three years later in 1985.  On Tuesday I spoke about my bumpy transition from Basic-era D&D (or just D&D as I knew it) to AD&D.  By 1985 I was fully entrenched into the AD&D camp. My previous DM had just gotten a job working nights (a job he had held until 2021!) so I needed a new group. In a tale as old as...well the 1980s...I fell into a group made up of mostly theatre kids and other science nerds. This issue, Issue #63, was in my DM's collection and I borrowed it one day and was blown away.  

I had already been reading Dragon now for a little over a year, but this one packed more punch per page than any issue I had seen to that point.  So. Come with back, not to July 1982, but June 1985 when I borrowed This Old Dragon.

Let's start with that cover. They say never judge a book by its cover and I extend that to magazines. But in this case, this cover only hints at the great material inside.  The cover gives us two bandits, perfect for the class inside. The cover artist was James Warhola and I can't tell you off the top of my head what other covers he may have done, but I love this one. 

In a preview of things to come, the back cover is an ad from Epyx Computer Games for The Temple of Apshai. For a brief moment there I could consider Epyx my favorite game software company. I had played this and later Rogue (the forerunner to Moria-like games) on my Color Computer 3. 

We jump in head first into this issue with our first article from none other than Gary Gygax himself (the first of a few for this issue).  Featured Creatures gives us some new official AD&D monsters for your game.  This is the first appearance of this feature. Up first, the Devas, servants of the good gods of the higher planes. We know that the "monsters" featured here will later go on be part of the Monster Manual II, which might have been the least controversial update to the hardcover line for AD&D.  The Devas here are depicted as just "Good" aligned and can be Lawful, Neutral or Chaotic as needed. 

Gary hits us with more official official content next with The Big, Bad Barbarian.  Or...Gary really wanted Conan and Fafhrd in AD&D (and we will get more of Gary's opinions on Conan later in the issue). This class looks more or less the same as what we find in the AD&D Unearthed Arcana.  The barbarian would go on to get more life in D&D 3 and D&D 5.  While I appreciate this article for what it is (new content is new content!) I was never a big fan of the barbarian.  I can't even recall if I ever had a barbarian character.

Smile! You're on Fantasy Camera covers how Darlene Kay Blanchard (not that Darlene) takes pictures of miniatures. 

Robert J. Kuntz is next with Greyhawk's World where he covers the events and notes from the Eastern and Southern Flanaess.  This is also accompanied by a map from Darlene (that Darlene) of the Bandit Kingdoms.  I love little bits like this to help expand the game world more.

The Other Side fan and favorite Len Lakofka is up with Leomund's Tiny Hut.  His article is about Charisma in Make Charisma Count for More.  It has what can only be described as a rough draft for the Comeliness score that will appear in Unearthed Arcana and how he proposed Charisma should effect psionics more.

With new monsters, new classes, and now this, it is a wonder that people were not screaming about the oncoming publication of AD&D 2nd Ed or even AD&D 1.5 (as we would eventually call it).

Now on to our cover story. Bandits are an NPC class (snerk...ok, whatever you say) to add to your game. The article comes to us from Tom Armstrong and Roger E. Moore. The idea is very sound, Bandits are thieves that rely on strength and ambush instead of stealth. We toyed with the idea ourselves in the few games were both my highschool DM and my Jr. High DM were both in.  I rolled up a Bandit character for myself. No, he didn't look like Burt Reynolds (though that would have been fun).  It was not long though before we discovered that there was some logic to making this an NPC class. The Bandit has some interesting skills, but in a dungeon crawl setting, he takes a back seat to the thief.  Still the class was rather fun to play.

Roger Moore is back with last of the Demihuman Perspective articles, The Humanoids: Goals and Gods of the Kobolds, Goblins, Hobgoblins, & Gnolls. Again much of the material from this series will end up in Unearthed Arcana, though not this article in particular.  I used this article to help formulate some of my ideas about goblins and how Hobgoblins are different from Bugbears.  The only one I was not happy with here was the gnolls. I was already moving my gnolls to be more demonic.  I had read at some point (likely the Wildlife Treasury Cards we used to get; used the Vampire Bat as a bookmark for my Expert Book) that hyenas are led by an alpha female, so I figured gnolls had to be matriarchal.  This is something that others had grabbed onto as well since I now see it all over.  

The section continues with a few gods for each of these creatures and the Shoosuva the demonic undead gnoll. 

My Dragon goes from page 32 to 49.  So something is missing.  Checking my Dragon CD-ROM (and this rather meta for this issue, more later) I see it is an adventure named Chagmat by none other than Larry DiTillio.  The adventure is for six to eight characters of 1st to 4th levels. Now by my own rules I can't review this piece because it is not in my physical copy.  So...moving on. 

The Man, Myth & Magic ad is interesting since it lists all sorts of Hobby Shops that carry it.  My FLGS is not listed here since it will not open for a bit, but one jumped out at me because it is a.) close to my home and b.) an address that I recognize.  Sure enough The Compleat Gamer in Palatine, IL used to be a game store. Now it is the home of Nancy's Pizza, one of the three pizza places in the Chicag- land area to make the claim of inventing the Chicago-style deep crust.  I mean I used to live just 8 mins away from Games Plus my FLGS, but to have this one here too?  What a treat that would have been.

Ed Greenwood is next with Plan Before You Play. Seems like obvious advice to me but then again right now I have 43 years so of experience. That's 20 years more than Ed was in age at this point, not to mention experience.  BUT I will say this. If nothing else doing these "This Old Dragons" over the years has given me a greater appreciation for the work and scholarship Ed Green brought to the early days of the game.  Gary might get all the glory in this issue, but Ed is here just quietly turning in good material every month. 

An ad/notice from the RPGA.

Gary has a couple more articles discussing the Games Fair 82 convention in London. I should compare this to what White Dwarf was saying at the same time.

There is a mini-section next starting with some Phil Foglio art about Computers in D&D.  Micheal Brian Bently is up first with Computers Games Have a Way to Go.  He talks about how computers for simulating D&D games are not there yet. While the article is interesting as a historical perspective, I don't think the author, or any of us really, knew then how fast computer technology was going to explode.  There are typically two types of software commonly discussed in and around D&D circles; the DM's assistant and the immersive RPG experience type.  By 1986 the DM I had borrowed this Dragon from and I had already written a piece of software for the TRS-80/Tandy Color Computer we called "BARDD" that handled many of the tasks needed to simulate combat.

In fact it was this very computer:

I can only imagine what I would have thought of Skyrim back then!

Speaking of computers even not more than 15 years or so later would Dragon see another breakthrough in computers when Wizards of the Coast released the Dragon Magazine CD-ROM, the same one I mentioned above.  Unfortunately, it was because of articles like this one from Micheal Brian Bently that would be the reason we never saw any updates.  Why?  Because Micheal Brian Bently retained the copyright on his article (as was his prerogative) and TSR and thus WotC did not own it and could not reprint it. 

We get a note on Dragon's Policy on Programs. 

The Electric Eye from Mark Herro gives us two BASIC programs for Top Secret.  Developed for the TRS-80 Model I, Level II BASIC it should be usable by the Apple II or Atari 400/800.  I know from personal experience that the BASIC interpreter shipped with IBM XT machines at the time was a bit different and all programs would need tweaking to your particular machine. Don't even try it on an IBM PC Jr.

David Nallo has an interesting article on coinage with historical examples in For the Sake of Change. We played around with different coinage ideas a bit back then.  I tried to set up a silver-based economy vs. a gold-based one at one point after a discussion in history class about the US using a Silver standard in its early history. But in the end it never really made that much of a difference in the day-to-day lives of adventurers. 

Gary is back one more time in his role as a film critic in A Couple of Fantastic Flops. He reviews and rather hates the new Conan the Barbarian movie and The Sword & The Sorcerer.  We get more about the D&D movie coming out in 1984 or 85 and it is going to be better than Star Wars or Raiders of the Lost Ark!

We end with What's New? with Phil and Dixie talking about computers in RPGs and Wormy.  Dragonmirth has some comics. One, titled Charisma Roll has a player dreaming that the rolls will give him "Richard Chamberlin, Robert Redford, Harrison Ford..." but the dice are thinking "Ernest Borgnine."  Now I am going to say this, after the article we had from Len I would say Ernest Borgnine had a very high charisma. He was a funny, likable guy with a wonderful personality.  

In the end a pretty solid issue of Dragon punching WAY above its weight class here.  The material introduced here is still being used today and it is all good stuff.

 the National Museum of Illustrious Arts has spent 750,000,000 zlotys this month acquiring the original Battle of Pidwiddle. 

 ABeLs Masterpiece will be on permanent display in the Historical Profiles gallery in the main building basement. The general public is encouraged to visit; the 3rd day of every month is Free Admission, however a special premier Evening Viewing will be given at 8pm on the First of Swimuary; the event to feature a question and answer period with the Curator of Historical Art, and a rare appearance by the Artist, who is famously reclusive. Refreshments will be served.  This Gala is limited in attendance; for tickets inquire with the Director's Office, Phone 555-2368.

 

The Plaster  and Plastic Worker's Union was formed at the end of the Silver Wars, and was important in overthrowing the Tyrant and establishing the events that led to the Modern Freestate with it's representative republican government.  The Plaster in the name is the resource from the Plaster Alps from which many Ornian items are manufactured...the Plastic Workers is the junior Union; being more recent... in former times the industry was larger, but it has dwindled these days as lead has become more available in Ornrian manufactures. 

     The Union is powerful in Polyesterine politics, especially in the Capital; Polyesterdelphia.  In Roach Harbor, however,  it often conflicts with the Brotherhood of Print, Paper, and Cardworkers; and the Gluemixers, Clayformers and Longshorefolk United Labor Front...sometimes leading to street battles in times of unrest.

      These unions are powerful in Roach Harbor because the Ship building Concerns and Port facilities are industries based in Paper ship-building, needing skilled paper-modeler labor.   Labor and Capital have made a mutually agreeable pact in Roach Harbor, which the Plaster and Plastic Workers have not quite emulated in the great factories of Polyesterdelphia and Bad Mouldings.  Plastic Worker strikes are a frequent feature in the Capital, since the beginning of the Chocolotl Crisis they are almost weekly.  Posters like this, however,  prove that the Union is nevertheless dedicated to patriotically supporting the Republican way of life.

There is one other major Union in the Second Polyester Freestate that has a major influence in the National Discourse; the Paintsloppers, Brushscrubbers, and Gluebrewers Chemical Labor Combination. The PBGCLC is in many ways the quietest Politically, with a great emphasis on workplace safety, education, and public works.  The large and united brotherhood  is  deeply embedded in managing Pactraplant's great amalgamation of chemical manufactures, blurring the lines between labor,  management, and capital to near indistinguishability.  However, though mostly a quiet bunch: a strike hasn't been seen in four decades, they carry enormous weight with the Pactraplant Metropolis political machine.  It's a classic case of being quiet but holding a gigantic stick.  Recently the GCLULF has become very active in Pactraplant with the recent government interest in upgrading harbor facilities on both 2PFS coasts.

 

Less of a full review but more along the lines of reveiw/my thoughts on what was essentially the Unearthed Arcana of D&D 5th Edition.

Why this particular book now?  There are a few of the classes that I am considering back-porting over to B/X era D&D that my kids have expressed an interest in playing.  I may or may not post those.  They are not OGC and I have no plans to even "file the serial numbers off" to try an post them.  Sometime I do things just for me or for fun.

Xanathar's Guide to Everything

2017, Hardcover. 192 pages. Full-color covers and interior art. 

I called this book the "Unearthed Arcana" of D&D 5 and that is more or less on point. Much of the material here appeared in the pages of the online version of Unearthed Arcana.

The book has a wide variety of tools for Players and the DM and all are listed as being optional. This was published in 2017 so there is no hint here of anything that might be "5.5" or "5r" related.

The book is divided into an introduction, three chapters and two appendices.

Introduction

This covers what the book is about, and its origins from the online Unearthed Arcana. Wizards of the Coast has worked to get the layout of their D&D 5th ed books to be one of clean efficiency.  Maybe not as much as say Necrotic Gnome has with OSE, but still really nice.  For example their Table of Contents fits on a single page.

We get a (tiny) bit of background on who Xanathar is. Not being a huge FR fan I did not know but figured it had to be the same beholder from the 1st Edition AD&D Waterdeep and the North.

There is a page on "The Core Rules" which is really nice to have. There are ten rules that cover most situations.  These are all from the PHB and DMG, but nice to have them repeated here.

Chapter 1: Character Options

We start with a listing of the 31 new subclasses for the twelve base character classes.  Now before someone start screaming "rules bloat" these are not subclasses in the way that AD&D 1st Ed meant them.  These are archetypes of the main twelve classes. So for example the Cleric has the Life and War domains (among others) in the PHB now gains the Forge and Grave domains here.  Each subclass is tailored to the main class. So with Clerics they are "Domains" for Bards they are "Colleges" and Warlocks have "Pacts."   So they are more like the AD&D 2nd Edition Kits.  Both in good and bad ways. There is not much power creep yet. 

This chapter covers about 65 or so pages, so a third of the book. Each main class gets some details that worked for any subclass of that class (Bards get more instruments, clerics have more details on their temples for example). There are a lot of classes in this book. I am not going to get into every subclass here. But I would like to point out a few.

The Bard College of Swords is the spiritual descendent of the AD&D 2nd Bard kit known as the Blade; aka the moment I knew 2nd Ed Power Creep was happening.  The Blade Kit sucked. The fiction for it sucked and the NPC they used as their iconic Blade REALLY sucked. The College of Swords Bards are also called Blades. Their AD&D 2nd ed origins are very plain, BUT there is none of the power creep and thankfully the edgy NPC "Dark" is also gone.

Grave Domain Clerics are the other side of the coin of the Life Domain Clerics.  Where the Life Cleric (PHB) tries to preserve life, the Grave Domain Clerics make sure the dead stay at rest. They are the "good" option of the Death Domain Clerics (DMG).  Cleric Domains have their origin in 2nd Ed and were expanded greatly in 3rd Ed.

Fighters now have an Arcane Archer subclass (known as a Martial Archetype here). This is the 5e update of the 3rd Edition Prestige Class.   Monks (Monastic Traditions) get a Way of the Drunken Master and a Way of the Kensei. Paladins get new Oaths. Rangers get new Archetypes including the Gloom Stalker, a Ranger adept at working in dark places but my favorite is the Monster Slayer.  Rogues get the Mastermind and Scout Archetypes.

The Sorcerers are next.  Their subclasses are known as Arcane Origins, or essentially how you became a sorcerer. In addition to these are some tables on various supernatural marks (think witch mark) and other weirdness due to your bloodline. The one I wanted to convert is the Divine Soul. You have a bit of divinity in your blood.  I would convert these as a B/X Magic-user and allow them to have some free cleric spells based on their divine blood. Cure Light Wounds and Bless for Lawful for example.  Their Charisma would need to be high, like 14 and that would be their Prime Requisite ability too.  While they get the spell for free, they can only still cast it once per day. At the 14th level, they gain their Otherworldly Wings.  There is also the Shadow Magic Sorcerer. This feel like it is from the Shadowfell Player's book from 4e. 

Warlocks also get new marks and new invocations. There is a Celestial Pact for people that want to play "good" warlocks.  Before anyone dismisses this idea remember that Aleister Crowley had a pact with an angel he called Aiwass and believed was his personal guardian angel to who he made invocations to every day. 

Wizards have Arcane Traditions that more or less equated to "Schools of Magic."

The next section of this chapter covers a variety of character background ideas such as origins and life events with lots of random tables. Like an Old-School collection of random tables.  ALL of them are also perfectly adaptable for use in ANY version of D&D.  They remind me a lot of the tables from the 1st Ed AD&D Unearthed Arcana.  

There are some new racial feats, but unlike 3e or even 4e, 5e is not feat centric. You can even have a character that never takes a feat at all.  These are largely mechanical rule manifestations of possible background ideas.  Have weird eyes? Ok, you have weird eyes, jot it down on your sheet. Do these weird eyes do something special? Well, you might need to take a feat for that then.

Honestly, I did not see anything in this chapter that I could not easily convert to an earlier edition of and D&D. 

Chapter 2: Dungeon Master's Tools

This chapter covers a wide variety of topics but mostly expands on material already in the DMG. Topics like Falling, Sleep, Tying Knots, Adamantine Weapons, and Tool Proficiencies are all discussed. Lots of tools. 

Spellcasting gets a bit of special treatment here. The area of effects on a grid is detailed. d6s are used as visual aids to show how to set up on a grid. 

Some more detail on building monster encounters is also discussed, including single and multiple different types of monsters. There is an eye towards balance, but there is no requirement to do so. The only real advice is "avoid monsters that can drop a character in a single hit."  I have seen more than a few TPKs in D&D 5e. 

Again we are treated to what I can only describe as pages of old-school-style random encounter tables. 

There is also a section on Traps that while not quite as gleeful as a Grimtooth product, will still make that Chaotic Evil DM smile. How much?  One trap has a save DC of 20 and does 24d10 damage.

There is a discussion on downtime and the reason why my youngest bought this book, magic item creation rules. More magic items are also detailed.

Chapter 3: Spells

This last full chapter covers new spells. About 30 pages worth. The spell economy of 5e is different. There are no Cure Light Wounds, Cure Moderate Wounds, and Cure Serious Wounds spells for example. There is only Cure Wounds and it is a low-level spell for Bards, Clerics, Druids, Paladins, and Rangers.  IF you want a more powerful version you cast it at a higher spell level. So instead of a 1st level spell, it is treated as a 5th level spell for example. This means less print space is needed for spells. 

Appendix A: Shared Campaign

This covers working on interlinked campaigns and working details out.  Not everything you need to know is here, some more could have been written, but it is a great start.

Appendix B: Character Names
This section is just tables and tables of names. Various cultures (English, French, Egyptian, and more) as well as other nonhuman ones ( Elf, Dwarf, Dragonborn, and more).  The nonhuman includes a personal name and a family or clan name as well.  I did notice that two Tieflings from "Brimstone Angels," Farideh and Havilar, are listed under the Dragonborn names.  Why? Well their adoptive father Mehen (51-52 on a d100) was a Dragonborn so he gave them Dragonborn names. 

So. I picked up this book for the various subclasses, but found a wealth here for many of my other D&D games.

I would say that most of this book is easily adaptable to any version of D&D you choose to try it with.  The exception might be 4e. There are some seriously interlinked mechanics there.

Xanathar's did quite well for a splat book and was even listed as one of Publisher's Weekly best-selling books for December of 2017. 

Despite his name and picture on the cover there is not a lot of material on Xanathar himself outside of the sidebars.  Wizards would later do a much better job with Tasha in her book.

The art is amazing as to be expected.  The layout is a step up from the Core Rules and shows what the design team has learned in the last few years.

You can see bits and pieces of D&D's DNA from all editions here, though this is largely true for 5th edition in general. 

It's June and I have mentioned that it is D&D month around here. 

The natural question then is, "Which D&D?" All of them! "Even that one?" Yes. Even that one.

I was going through a bunch of material I need to review and Review (reading for my own benefit vs. a full review) and it got me thinking about a bunch of topics.  Should I play more Castles & Crusades? What should I do with all this Pathfinder stuff? Where did my copies of Dungeoneer's and Wilderness Survival Guides go? (seriously. where are they??).

This got me thinking about the various editions and edition wars.  I want to share the story of my first skirmish in the never-ending edition wars, but first I want to talk about the latest side battle in it and my point of view on this in general.

D&D Edition Wars

I am not sure if this will be a regular feature or not.  Typically I avoid edition wars and find them remarkably pedantic to be of any actual use. Don't like a particular edition? Fine. Don't play it.   BUT every so often something bubbles up that takes my notice and I want to comment on it.  The latest one comes to us courtesy of Stranger Things.

If you have not seen the new Season 4 of Stranger Things, please do. It is back to form and good drama.  Sure there are a LOT of characters now and no one is getting the spotlight for very long, but the last episode of Part 1 did a great job of tying together many of the seasonal arcs to set us up for the epic finale.  

They also get to play some D&D.  There is a bit where they deal with the Satanic Panic of the 80s.  I would talk about that now, but I have done that already and most recently back in April. So no real need for me to do that. But in the same milieu of edition wars we are getting some nagging from older gamers like myself complaining that Erica Sinclair's character should have been a Thief and not a Rogue. Well. That is technically correct yes. It was supposed to 1986 and the Rogue does not come into play until 1989. Lots of people are claiming this is a mistake.  Here is my point of view on that.

The Duffer Brothers did not make a mistake. 

Look in the very next scene of their game Dustin (played by the wonderful Gaten Matarazzo; seriously this kid is going to be a hell of an actor someday) drops lines about Vecna (the focus of their game and the season) having been destroyed by Kas. They already mentioned the lack of an eye and hand.  This is not deep lore to us, but to the causal viewer, it is.  And that's the thing. This show has to appeal to all viewers. Those that know D&D but mostly the vast majority that do not.  Here is her line.

"My name is Lady Applejack, and I'm a chaotic good, half-elf rogue, Level 14. And I will sneak behind any monster you throw my way, and stab them in the back with my poison-soaked kukri."

Remember the character is Chaotic Good (which we all understand) and supposed to be a heroic character.  IF she had said "Thief" it would not have the same level of understanding to the causal viewer as "Rogue" does.  Han Solo was a rogue. Robin Hood was a rogue. The normies get what a rogue is. A thief is someone who steals. Yes, yes, it has a different connotation in D&D but that is not the majority of the audience.  I posit that the Duffers knew exactly what they were doing. 

It reminds me of when my main character at the time was a Paladin.  I'd explain to others, who I was trying to get into the game, that my character was a Lawful Good Paladin. Which would ALWAYS be followed by "what's a Paladin?"  Eventually, I gave up and just started saying "Knight."  This is the same thing.  Also it is a nice segue into my next section.

Why CAN'T I Play a B/X Paladin?

The 80s were an amazing time for a lot of reasons. Even in my small home town there were multiple independent D&D groups and clubs happening all the time.  I got invited to a game by a friend one evening. This had to have been either very late in Jr. High I am guessing summer of 82 or 83.  In any case, I was going with my regular DM, he got to play for a change, and a bunch of people I never met. The DM called me ahead of time and asked if I would be willing to play a Lawful Good Paladin. I said sure! I was already playing a Lawful Cleric in my other game so this seemed like a good fit (and it was, but more on this).  Now is the time to be pedantic.  See I was playing a "Lawful Cleric" as in B/X D&D. My regular DM played AD&D and we ran our games as an unholy mix of the two. Not uncommon from what I know now and we had a lot of fun. My first experience with D&D was Holmes Basic and the AD&D Monster Manual.  My new DM just told me to bring my Expert book.

Well...that was a mistake. I brought my Expert D&D book to an Advanced D&D game and you would have thought I had brought a D&D Coloring book instead with the reactions I got.  Thankfully my DM was still cool about it, even if the other players held their noses in disgust.  

Nowadays of course people talk about their B/X days with pride and fond memories. Especially me.  But that was a contributing factor to me not picking up the BECMI sets when they came out soon after.  I was all in on AD&D from that point on.  No "kiddie" D&D for me! 

That was the first salvo in what I would later come to know as "The Edition Wars." There were many skirmishes between the Basic and Advanced folks back then. Nothing major, I can recall though.  The next battle was fought over the fields of "Unearthed Arcana" and then the "Proficiency Battles" connected with Dungeoneer's and Wilderness Survival Guides (seriously, where the hell are mine??) 

I still have my Paladin from that game. He went on to great glory in the Bloodstone series. I would also roll up my own paladin later, he was the son of my B/X Cleric. 

Now thanks to the OSR scene I have a lot of options to play a B/X Paladin.

If Johan II was my Advanced D&D Paladin and son of D&D Cleric Johan I. Then maybe I need to make a Kara Foke II as an OSE Paladin, son of Kara Foke that AD&D Paladin I played so long ago. 

I have been in a bit of a creative slump here lately. By "lately" I mean the last few months.  I do want to get my various monster books done though.  So here is a guy been rattling around in my brain now for a while.  I am combining a couple of different ideas here that I have wanted to explore for a bit.

Faerie Lords

I have been working on a number of Faerie Lords for the Basic Bestiaries and the High Witch book.  These lords provide a number of interesting background NPCs and are also the various Powers that both Faerie Tradition Witches and Fey Pact Warlocks can honor/serve.   I have already detailed a few here, Titania, Queen of Faerie, Nicnevin, Faerie Queen of Witches, the Queen of Lies, and the Prince of Beasts.

My focus lately has been building the court of Nicnevin (also known as Nic an Neachneohain).  Hers is not a court of deep intrigues like Mab's or Titania's, but a powerful court all the same. Since those Courts are typically (if somewhat incorrectly) described as the Dark and Light courts (more properly Winter and Summer) I need a few independent "Shadow" Courts.  Nicnevin is the Queen of the Autumn Court.  Not a major court to be sure, but still powerful.  

Shadow Elves

There are more than one "Shadow Courts."  Last year I did a big series on Shadow Elves and various other shadow fey.  I was trying to come up with a good idea for Shadow Elves in my world and I looked to the Shadow Elves of Mystara and the Shadow Fey from Kobold Press and even into the ideas of the Shadowfell from D&D 4th Edition.   This lead me to do an adaptation of Kobold Press' The Dusk Queen.  But she is PI so I won't be using her in my books, save for maybe as a special guest in my home games. 

While reading more about the Shadowfell, the mortal world, and the Feywild for D&D 4 and 5 I came up with an idea of my own.

Just as the Mortal World (the Prime Material) intersects with the Shadow World (Shadowfell) and the World of Faerie (Feywild) they also intersect with each other.

So less this:

And more this: 

Excuse my lack of artistic ability here.

All three worlds intersect.  The intersection point of the Mortal and the Faerie is already detailed in many D&D books as the Feywild.  The intersection of the Mortal and Shadow is the Shadowfell.  The Shadowfey is the intersection of the Realms of Shadow and the Faerie Realms independent of the mortal world.  This is the area I am working on.  This is the home of the Umbral Elves.

Last Bits

Among other things I also needed a Faerie Lord, or at the very least a high level Faerie/Elf to be the father of a particular character.  I needed to have that character spend 13 years "stuck" in the faerie realms while she was getting instruction by her "faerie godmother" (Nicnevin).  And finally, I needed to develop a group of Elven Cavaliers for various reasons.  This particular group of Cavaliers is linked to witches and witchcraft.  Essentially they are the Elven Cavaliers from Dragon Magazine #114 tied more closely to the witch class that appears in the same issue. 

I also wanted a character that recalled the B/X Elf class that used sword and spell with equal proficiencies. 

Putting all of this together a new Faerie Lord emerges.

Scáthaithe, The Umbral Lord
Faerie Lord

Frequency: Unique
Number Appearing: 1 (1)
Alignment: Neutral [Chaotic Neutral]
Movement: 120' (40') [12"]
  Fly: 240' (80') [24"]
Armor Class: 2 [17]
Hit Dice: 13d8+52*** (111 hp)
To Hit AC0: 6 (+13)
Attacks: Sword +2 x3 or by spell
Damage: 1d8 +2 x3 or by spell
Special: Attacks three times per round, darkvision, harmed only by cold iron and magic weapons, 30% magic resistance, Wizard spells (12th level) 
Languages: Common, Elven, Sylvan, Giant, Abyssal
Size: Medium
Save: Magic-user 13
Morale: 12 (NA)
Treasure Hoard Class: U (VI) x10, See below
XP: 5,150 (OSE) 5,300 (LL)

Str: 16 (+2) Dex: 18 (+3) Con: 20 (+4) Int: 20 (+4) Wis: 16 (+2) Cha: 24 (+5)

The Faerie Court of Autumn is ruled very loosely by Nicnevin the Faerie Queen of Witches.  Her sometimes consort and Cowan is a being known in court as the Knight of Swords. He is also known as Scáthaithe ("skaw-he"), the Umbral Lord.  He is the melancholy lord of the Shadow Elves. 

Scáthaithe appears as a tall (7') tall elf-lord.  His skin is pale with an almost bluish tint to it. His hair is long and black and often tied back.  His eyes are bright green and his pupils are slitted like that of a cat's.  He wears the armor of a knight and carries a long darkened sword he calls "Moonblade."  He is often astride a black warhorse with large black wings.  The barding of this warhorse makes it at first appear to be some dark unicorn but is more akin to the pegasus.

When not in the court of the Witch Queen he will be found with his six sons, the Umbral Knights, patrolling the lands of the Shadowfey.  His sons act as 8-10 HD versions of their father. Their role is to patrol the Shadowfey and keep intruders out. This includes mortals and creatures of the outer planes.  Elementals can be found here if they have the leave of the local lords or ladies. 

Scáthaithe will attack intruders to the Shadowfey with both sword and spell.  He will use a long-range spell, such as magic missile to start with and then switch to his sword which he can attack three times per round.  He can cast spells as a 12th level magic-user.

The Umbral Lord has a keep deep in the Shadowfey, Scáthchoimeád where he resides with his sons. He had a Lady, his sons' mother, but that was long ago and he never speaks of her.  Presently he has taken up with a young human witch. It is also rumored that he is the son of a great lord of the Summer Court and a great lady of the Winter Court, possibly even Oberon and Mab. 

Scáthaithe as a Witch/Warlock Patron:  By agreement with his Queen Nicnevin, Scáthaithe does not take on witches as part of the Faerie Tradition. Though he can be invoked by these witches through Nicnevin.  He does however work as a Patron for warlocks. He can be used as a Fey Pact Patron and is particularly well suited as a Pact of the Blade warlock.  His warlock can manifest a dark sword similar to his one Moonblade.  He is also favored by half-elf warlocks who see themselves as being a member of two different worlds and also being of neither; like a shadow.

No Security: Horror Scenarios in the Great Depression is an anthology of five horror scenarios notable for three things. First, they are written by Caleb Stokes, best known as the author of Lover in the Ice, a horrifyingly adult body horror scenario for mature audiences for Delta Green, but which was originally released as part of the No Security Kickstarter. Second, they are systems agnostic, meaning that the Game Master, or Keeper, can and will have to adapt them to the roleplaying game of their choice, typically a roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror, such as Call of Cthulhu or Trail of Cthulhu. As an aside, it would be possible to the quintet straight from the page, but that would take a well-prepared Game Master. Third, they are all set in the Desperate Decade of the nineteen thirties, a period of turmoil and uncertainty as the banks crashed, the soil turned to dust, and the Great Depression drove millions into poverty, which is relatively unexplored in terms of Lovecraftian investigative horror, at least in terms of the preceding Jazz Age of the nineteen twenties.

No Security: Horror Scenarios in the Great Depression is published by Hebanon Games following a successful Kickstarter campaign. All five scenarios are available as ‘Pay What You Want’, but have been collected into the No Security anthology. In addition, the anthology does address the social iniquities of the period and gives advice on how to handle them in play. Even though the author does give the suggestion that the disparities and attitudes be ignored in favour of ‘game fun’, his preferred option is to include them in play, but of course, handle them with sensitivity and care. In some scenarios, he also suggests that the Player Characters (or Investigators) be from a mixed background—for two reasons. First, it enables them to access all levels of society, both African American and White. Second, it enhances and contrasts the horror of society and its disparities in the Desperate Decade against the Cosmic Horror of the anthology’s monsters and madness. It should also be noted, that as a consequence of being systems agnostic, No Security does not use of the traditional Mythos monsters or entities. Which means that whatever Cosmic Horror threat that the Investigators find themselves facing in No Security, their players will have as little clue as they do.

The anthology opens with Wives of March. This is longest scenario in No Security and takes place in Barefoot Crossing, a sharecropping community on the rural outskirts of Savannah, Georgia, in the early part of the decade. Here the Unifying Word Revival Church preaches to the community and brings much needed relief to its parishioners, but the community is sent into uproar when the pastor, Dashell March, is murdered, and worse, an African American is the prime suspect, an African American who is also suspected of corrupting a young White girl! The set-up for the Investigators’ involvement really works best with their being hired by different parties, each with an interest in solving looking into the murder, though not necessarily solving it. Local lawyers want the pastor’s will investigated, a rival church wants to prevent any retaliative violence against its African American congregation, an heir wants his claim to the will confirmed, and lastly, the local sheriff’s office do want the crime investigated, again, primarily to prevent an outbreak of violence.

This all sets up and opens numerous paths of investigation—paths that might be closed or difficult if the Investigators are not from diverse backgrounds—and leads them into multiple levels of local society. What they discover, at least initially, is that the March family, and the Unifying Word Revival Church, are incredibly interested in helping them out beyond the mere murder investigation, as well as how helpful the March family is in the community and how pervasive their presence is. Yet oddities soon become apparent—the March family and their church seems impossibly wealthy; so many of the family appear alike (perhaps due to inbreeding?); and there is a preponderance of oddly deformed people in the community. As the scenario progresses, these oddly deformed people will begin to take an intense interest in the Investigators’ activities, to the point later on in the scenario where it becomes insanely intense!

At the heart of ‘Wives of March’, which has a The Midwich Cuckoos feel, is conspiracy between a husband and wife, one which is currently confined to the immediate area, but which has tendrils which can be traced around the world and back into prehistory… The truth of the matter is that they are effectively immortal, bound to each other, but loving and loathing each other after millennia of being together. They have died again and again, but been reborn each time remembering both how they died and what they learned in their previous lives. They cannot have children together, for any offspring would be an inhuman Un-thing, due to bargains they struck with not-Gods in their original lives, and so have children with others, but these children also remember their immortal parents’ history and have their knowledge, and so are born as insane as they are. Thus the Marchs cannot effectively die and cannot truly be together lest they unleash monsters into the world. They and their family are a brilliantly intense, psychotically focussed foe—especially if the players prefer their Investigators to take a more direct or combative approach, they are really going to scare the Investigators—as well as being actually a sympathetic foe. They are monsters true, but theirs is a burden which has made them so even as they stopped worse entering the world.

‘Wives of March’ has a strong set investigative threads, each built around the four different ways of involving the Investigators and each taking the Investigators into different strands of Georgia society. The scenario also goes into some detail about how the antagonists live and operate, explaining how they became the inhuman monsters that they are, how to portray them, and more, ultimately depicting them as victims of themselves. They are very much monsters we can sympathise with to a degree—but monsters, nonetheless. However, ‘Wives of March’ is not going to be an easy scenario to run. First, the investigative strands could have been better organised, and it does not help that it fails to explain what happened to initiate the events of the scenario until four-fifths of the way into it. Which is frustrating for the Game Master. Second, the antagonists are an almost impossible threat to deal with—even they do not know how to deal with themselves and their predicament. So how are the Investigators expected to solve it? 

Ultimately, ‘Wives of March’ requires a fair degree of effort upon the past the Game Master to prepare and run effectively. It has the potential to be an incredibly intense affair, but also a frustrating one primarily because there is no real solution to the larger problem at the core of the scenario. It also has the scope to be expanded if the Game Master wants to take the March conspiracy beyond the confines of ‘Wives of March’.

‘Bryson Springs’ is the second scenario in the anthology and shifts from the Deep South to the border of California, the destination for many escaping the Dust Bowl, and actually takes place on a stop on that route, the declining town of Byron Falls. Here, ‘Okies’—farmers and others fleeing the Dustbowl in the Midwest—have established a Hoover-town around a WPA built washhouse, as they try and find work and a way to survive. Here a Chinese ex-railway worker has been found bloodily battered to death just as the Investigators arrive, perhaps as State Police or the FBI sent to investigate the murder, bank robbers being transported to Leavensworth, relatives of the ‘Okies’ in town, Socialist labour organiser trying to rally the transient population, journalists with an interest in the Hooverville or the murder, and so on. The Game Master will probably want to develop more of the ‘Okies’ than the scenario does, and prepare carefully. Again, the scenario is not presented for ease of use—for example, the initial murder scene is described at the end of the scenario rather than at the start—and portraying that information to the players and their Investigators will be challenging. This is a much shorter scenario and more confined investigation which will probably reveal some nasty secrets other than what is necessarily going on. Like ‘Wives of March’, the ‘monster’ in the scenario also is also similar implacably unstoppable, which will likely frustrate the players. Ultimately, the solution to the problem in ‘Bryson Springs’ feels opaque, but not as much as in ‘Wives of March’, and is likely to be slightly easier for the players and their Investigators to work out. ‘Bryson Springs’ does make good use of its setting and it has some horrifyingly deadly moments. 

The third scenario, ‘Revelations’, is set in the Illinois town of Toil in 1938. The town has managed to weather the effects of the Depression and the Dust Bowl due to the local farms being able to grow soybeans, but times are still hard. They get harder still as a rash of strange events—axe heads floating in the river, a teacher in school spewing water as she teaches multiplication, sacramental bread in the town’s church turning to flesh, and much, much more. The rash becomes an onslaught as the vents turn stranger and weirder, never letting up. Responding to the incidents are members of the Toil City Police Department, who the players will roleplay, directed by the voice of the elderly, but kindly police despatcher. The scenario is inspired by the Bible—as the title might suggest, unleashing a barrage of apocalyptically biblical events each given a horribly entertaining and clever modern interpretation. This potentially leads to two problems. First, is the Biblical theme, which some may find offensive or inappropriate and second is that the players may not necessarily be aware or as knowledgeable of Biblical scripture as others, and so miss some elements in the scenario. These are not the only issues. The Game Master is handed a lot of events to throw at her players and their Investigators, so unless the Investigators decide to split up and look into different reports, it is unlikely that they will get to encounter them all. It is also unlikely that they will survive them all, for whilst they are not all necessarily deadly, the near constant onslaught does stretch and strain at the Investigators’ Sanity. The players may also not necessarily be aware of the scenario’s Biblical inspirations, so may so miss much of its religious overtones. Lastly, identifying the solution is not an easy task either, and the scenario needs staging advice as to when the Game Master should being dropping clues to that solution, or at least clues that lead to it. Ultimately, Revelations takes its cosmic horror in an unexpectedly weird direction and then ramps up the weirdness and the cosmic horror again and again. For the Game Master and players who understand and appreciate its inspiration—and who do not take offence—this is likely to be a fascinating and unnerving playing experience, just wondering what is going to happen next, and how it happens next. 

‘Red Tower’, the penultimate scenario in No Security takes place in Chicago in 1931, in and around its infamous Meatpacking District in the wake of Al Capone’s arrest. It is not a gangster scenario, although the Mob is involved tangentially. Like the earlier ‘Wives of March’, the scenario has multiple means of entry—a reporter from a Socialist newspaper looking for a missing colleague, Bureau of Investigation agents looking for associates of Capone, agents of the newly formed FDA wanting to check on the local slaughterhouse operations, mobsters looking to take down rival operations that have stepped up following’s Capone’s arrest, and more. Consequently, only a few of these Investigator concepts will work together, so the Game Master will have her work cut out as she switches back and forth between players as their Investigators follow different or similar paths of enquiry. This does mean that sat round the table the players are likely to learn more than their Investigators until either they follow the same lines of enquiry or they meet up and share knowledge. That is likely to come about as they penetrate a slaughterhouse which does not seem to be quite there, but which appears to purchase a lot of cattle for slaughter, but without producing any meat… If they meet earlier in the scenario they are likely to be odds with each other rather than co-operative. One advantage of the Investigators working separately, at least initially, is that they are more likely to find the solution to the situation inside the slaughterhouse which is not there (whether they are prepared to share is another matter), but descriptions of the final encounters which would involve that solution are underwritten and not as well described as they could have been. Getting to that point and dealing with the threats surrounding the slaughterhouse is the more interesting and the more horrifying—and longer—part of the scenario though.

The last scenario in the anthology is ‘The Fall Without End’, in which the Player Characters team up in pairs to climb Mount McKinley—more recently renamed Denali—as a great story that the American government can use as a distraction from the ongoing effects of the Depression. There is advice for both players and Game Master on the types of character to create and on the skills required to climb mountains, which both will need to understand as obviously very technical in nature. Beyond a few encounters around the base of the mountain, ‘The Fall Without End’ is a linear affair, that is, straight up the mountain, via two routes. There is a plan of the chosen routes up Mount McKinley, but no illustration of the mountain, which is disappointing. In comparison to the other four scenarios in this anthology, there very little investigation involved and the scenario is primarily action-orientated. It is also much shorter, but no less deadly. This both due to the monsters and secrets to be discovered and the environment to overcome and survive as the Player Characters climb the mountain. This combination, together with the competition to be the first to reach the top of Mount McKinley, is reminiscent of Chaosium, Inc.’s Beyond the Mountains of Madness, but as a short one-shot rather than a full campaign. One advantage of this scenario is that it could be run using the rules of a non-Lovecraftian investigative horror roleplaying game so as not to forewarn them of the horrors to come up the mountain…

Physically, No Security: Horror Scenarios in the Great Depression is a black and white book, so one advantage of the PDF is that artwork is clearer and in colour. The book does need an edit in places and many of the scenarios could have been better organised.

The primary problem with No Security: Horror Scenarios in the Great Depression is that it is a set of systemless scenarios with a great deal of detail which means that it is going take a great deal of effort upon the part of the Game Master to adapt any one of the five to the roleplaying game of her choice. The primary advantage with No Security: Horror Scenarios in the Great Depression is that it is a set of systemless scenarios with a great deal of detail which means that the Game Master can freely adapt to any one of the five to the roleplaying game of her choice, and adjust them as necessary. Overall, No Security: Horror Scenarios in the Great Depression is a solidly scary set of one-shots which takes excellent advantage of their period setting and brings Cosmic Horror to the Great Depression without involving Lovecraft, which will take effort upon the part of the Game Master to prepare and run.

Condemned to time in chokey. Put behind bars. Going down for a crime you definitely did not commit. Doing a stretch or bird. Serving time in prison can lead to some great opportunities for storytelling, whether it is The Count of Monte Christo, films such as The Shawshank Redemption or Escape from Alcatraz, or even television series such as Oz. In terms of roleplaying, prisons are typically somewhere to break out of, probably because the Player Characters have been wrongly imprisoned. What though, if they had not been wrongly accused, tried, convicted, and sentenced to term in prison, perhaps a life sentence, or even a death sentence? What if you were guilty? Did you get caught? Did someone rat you out? Perhaps you got sloppy in the end? It makes no difference now. You are in the system, and only the sentences are longer than the shadows and the grudges held in this god forsaken place...

This is the situation in Life & Death at Freedom Penitentiary, a Swedish roleplaying game published by FantastiskFiktion. It is set within the grey walls of Freedom Penitentiary, the most notorious prison in Sweden. It stands amidst the tundra ten miles from the nearest town, home to over a thousand inmates, who serve out their sentences under the watchful and shadowy presence of the hated Warden and his often-corrupt Corrections Officers.

An Inmate in Life & Death at Freedom Penitentiary is defined by his General Features, Talents, Archetype, Crime, and Job. He has six General Features—or attributes—Muscle, Sense, Smarts, Acting, Notoriety, and Precision. Talents like ‘Hiding’ or ‘Dialects’ or ‘Killing Blow’ each increase a General Feature’s modifier by one, whilst an Archetype adds two or three adjustments to modifiers and determines the Inmate’s Hit Points. The Crime adds further modifiers, two Talents to choose from, and options in terms of an Inmate’s Sentence Level. The latter ranges between one and four, and represents the Inmate’s sentence length, security level, and extra Talents and modifiers, if any. For example, a Sentence Level of three has a sentence length of fifty years to life and a security level of High, as well as two extra Talents and an extra modifier of one. The Archetypes include Member of the Family, Good, Activist, Professor, and more, whilst the Crimes include Assault, Murder and Mass Murder, Drug Trafficking, Money Laundering, as well as others. The Job is the work that the Inmate does whilst incarcerated, such as Wood Shop or Canteen. Again, this adds another modifier.

To create an Inmate, a player assigns an array of values to his General Features, and selects an Archetype and a Crime, as well the Sentence Level. It is quick and easy.

Name: Gudmund Ekerlid
Archetype: Goon
Crime: Manslaughter
Sentence Level: 2
Job: Road Crew
Hit Points: 10
Muscle 4 (+3) Sense 3 Smarts 2 (-2) Acting 2 (+1) Notoriety 3 Precision 3

Talents
Act on Impulse

Mechanically, Life & Death at Freedom Penitentiary is straightforward and simple. It uses a pool of six-sided dice, either two, three, or four, depending upon the Imamate’s General Features. The modifier of the General Feature is added to the total, whilst a Talent lets a player reroll one die. A roll of nine or more is a Conditional Success, twelve or more is a Regular Success, and fifteen or more a Flawless Success. Essentially, a ‘Yes, but…’, ‘Yes’, and ‘Yes, and…’. If any two dice result in Snake Eyes, or rolls of one, the action is an automatic failure. Effectively, the more dice an Inmate’s player rolls, the greater the chance of his rolling Snake Eyes. This is due to the Inmate’s overconfidence.

Combat uses the same mechanics. Brawling inflicts one point of damage, with improvised melee weapons inflicting two or three points.

During play, an Inmate can acquire Nods and Dots. Nods are awarded for good behaviour (and play). Gain three Nods or three Dots and the player can expend them to increase a modifier for a General Feature or gain a Talent. Dots are gained for negative or disruptive behaviour. When an Inmate gains three Dots, also receives a punishment from the Corrections Officers (or even from the other Inmates depending upon the situation). The player describes what the punishment is, but the record is then wiped clean. Nods and Dots are handed out at the end of each session.

For the Game Master, there is a description of Freedom Penitentiary—or ‘Frihetsfängelse’—and advice on running the game. This is to keep up the tension, constantly keeping the Inmates on their toes, with their guard up against threats from either the Warden, Corrections Officers, or the other Inmates. The Inmates are in constant danger, their meagre belongings likely to be stolen, and more. It also advises that unlike the boring reality of prison life, life in Freedom Penitentiary should be eventful, plus it should involve an element of horror. This can play a more prominent role in a campaign in Freedom Penitentiary depending upon the type of campaign that the Game Master wants to run. And of course, the Game Master should be bringing story elements into play which remind each Inmate of the crimes he committed.
Before each session, the Game Master should also roll to see if the Corrections Officers search the cells and if so, if they find any contraband. The other event he should roll for is to see if any Inmate with a Sentence Level of four, that is, a death sentence, has had his execution date brought forward. Lastly, there is a list of NPCs and a short scenario generator.

Physically, Life & Death at Freedom Penitentiary is almost presented as an Inmate’s record. It has a rough, mimeographed quality, although one done on quite sturdy paper. The artwork is rough, but suitably utilitarian. It does need an edit in places, but the main issue
is the organisation which switches back and forth between Inmate creation and rules, often making it difficult to quite keep track of things.

Life & Death at Freedom Penitentiary is not a game for everyone. Its theme and setting is mature in nature, with the players taking the roles of criminals who have done wrong, committed crimes, including murder. And that is even before taking into account the fact that it involves capital punishment. That said, its themes are universal, and it does suggest that the Inmates’ crimes and the effects of those crimes be brought into play and explored in terms of storytelling. Likewise, although Life & Death at Freedom Penitentiary is set in a prison in sub-artic climes, its themes are so universal that the roleplaying game can easily be set in the prison of the Game Master’s choice. The real issue, at least mechanically, with Life & Death at Freedom Penitentiary is that it does not really help the Game Master in running the game in the long term—what is the ultimate story that the players and their Inmates are going to tell? In addition, the Game Master will also need to look beyond the pages of Life & Death at Freedom Penitentiary for further inspiration. As written, Life & Death at Freedom Penitentiary has a very short-term feel and the Game Master will need to work hard to develop it beyond that. Whilst keeping that in mind though, Life & Death at Freedom Penitentiary does have the potential for rich, dark storytelling about the lives of offenders and recidivists.

Here’s hoping everyone in the States is going to have a good post-holiday recuperation weekend. Unfortunately, that includes the Triffid Ranch (this weekend is vital for restocking and repotting, as well as getting work done on the impending Triffid Ranch … Continue reading →

 I know. Redundant.  A few things.

1. I was spending some time going through old posts and I have a bunch of dead links, more or less dead pages, and the like.  So I was thinking a site redesign might be in order.  Nothing confirmed yet.

2. Have you been OUTSIDE yet?  I don't about where you are, but here in Chicagoland it is GLORIOUS! I am thinking of moving my work laptop out to my patio and working there the rest of the summer.

Hardening a few more plants

3. I have an Itch.io profile now.  No idea what I am going to do there.

4. Stranger Things. Watch it. Now.

5. I promise this will get back to D&D.

6. Seriously. Go outside.

A village in peril. The villagers are suffering from a strange curse which leaves them listless and aimless before ultimately killing them. Fields full of sickly looking, ash-coloured crops. A swollen river which smells foul and looks like old blood. Could it be the curse of Ursodiol the Mad, the greatest mind to have ever breached the great Cosmic Void? Ursodiol the Mad who recently died, his body was interred in the nearby crypt of his famous ancestor, G’vane the White, the heroic paladin of Meth, the goddess of justice, judgement, and the soul? This is the set-up for Ominous Crypt of the Blood Moss, a scenario designed to be played with Necrotic Gnome’s Old School Essentials, but easily run with the Old School Renaissance retroclone of your choice. Designed for a party of Second to Fourth Level Player Characters, Ominous Crypt of the Blood Moss starts with the cliché of the village and a nearby source of peril, and goes beyond that to present have them face a threat of Cosmic Horror confined—for now, that is—within the walls of a mini-dungeon.

Ominous Crypt of the Blood Moss is published by Oneiromantic Press and offers one or two good sessions’ worth of play. It is easily adapted to the setting of the Game Master’s choice, needing only the combination of an isolated spot and a river to fit. A simple map of the village is provided, along with a table of random village descriptions should the Game Master be running the scenario as a one-shot and not one, but three sets of motivations to get the Player Characters involved. And if that is not enough, the surviving villagers are throwing the dead onto a funeral pyre when the Player Characters arrive, and three of the corpses get up and start attacking everyone. Including the Player Characters. Opening with burning zombies is one way to get a scenario off to an exciting start!

The scenario is straightforward. The village priest states that the late Ursodiol the Mad and his curse are responsible, points the Player Characters at the nearby crypt where he is buried, and away they go. The crypt itself consists of just ten locations and can be divided into two sections, an outer and an inner section. The outer areas are dusty with nothing seemly untoward going on there, but within the walls of the inner area, it is a different matter. The walls are covered with slime, and everywhere can be found strands of sticky red tendrils… Sticky red tendrils which reach out hungrily for new victims.

At the heart of Ominous Crypt of the Blood Moss is the Blood Moss itself, “…[A]n extradimensional protoplasmic mycelial network of nanofibers that feeds on consciousness and hungers for the experiences of sentient beings.” Which means it not only ensnares its victims, it also infects with its spores and draining their intelligence and if they have it, their magic, in the process gaining in intelligence itself and even becoming able to cast that magic. In the scenario, its tendrils creeps through the G’vane family crypt, layering it in a moss and reanimating its victims as nodes through which it can act. This is a scarlet and scary take upon the zombie genre, creating it as an extension of an otherwise seemly sessile monster.

Ultimately, the Player Characters will encounter the true monster—and victim—of the scenario, changed through his exposure to the Cosmic Void and the Blood Moss. Defeat him, and his greatest (or worst) treasure becomes theirs, a four-dimensional object known as The Crystal Tesseract. This begs to be looked into and in doing so, exposes the viewer also to the Cosmic Void. The accompanying table describing the possible effects of staring into The Crystal Tesseract—and you really, really wants to stare into The Crystal Tesseract—only has the twenty entries, but all are nicely odd. At this point, it does feel like a darker, but mini-version of The Deck of Many Things. The Game Master could have a lot of fun inventing entries for the table and expanding it into a much more significant magical artefact.

Physically, Ominous Crypt of the Blood Moss is decently presented, the environment of the crypt in particular. Everything is described in either short punchy sentences or bullet points that are easy to read with key points in bold. Each of the ten location descriptions includes its maps taken from the larger map of the crypt with any monsters given in grey boxes. The format, typically across a two-page spread for each room, is simple, clear, and easy to read, giving the scenario an accessibility that makes it painless to run with minimal effort. The maps are decent too, although it would have been nice if the map had been reprinted in side the front or back cover. The artwork consists of public domain pieces and are for the most part, well chosen. The scenario does need another good edit in places though.

If there is one single problem with Ominous Crypt of the Blood Moss, it is that naming your primary god in the scenario, ‘Meth’, is simply asking for trouble. There is no way that your players will not rise to taking the mickey out of any Game Master who retains that name. 
Ominous Crypt of the Blood Moss is easy to prepare and run, and relatively easy to adapt to a Game Master’s own campaign. The set-up of the scenario is a cliché, but Ominous Crypt of the Blood Moss takes that cliché in a challenging and creepy direction, to present an enjoyably weird and cosmic experience on a small scale.

 simple to build paper model vehicles from PR MODELS... I've recolored some, and rescaled them to N scale for 1/144 battletech games. 

The last couple of months has been really busy here at the ole' Other Side. I went from the "April A to Z"  right into SciFi month.  I think June is a great time to get back to the bread and butter of this blog; D&D.  Plus watching Season 4 of Stranger Things has really put me back into the mood.

June was always a great D&D month for me.  While in school it meant summer break. After I got married and had a house it was the month when the planting season was mostly over.  My wife has always had a huge garden (+2,000 ft2, that's a lot for the burbs) so in April and May, every weekend is spent outside working.

I have to admit that of late I have been in a sort of creative lull.  Oh I am still picking at the various Basic Bestiaries and I am collecting art for them. My goal/plan/desire is NOT to do a Kickstarter for it. So I am collecting and buying art as I can.  I have not done much if anything on the High Witchcraft book. I have been sorting through the 800+ spells I have written over the years and trying to figure out which ones need to be used.  Both of these projects will be generic OSR, so not tied to any one rule system. I will use my own Compatibility Logos on them.  But the ideas have not been flowing really at all.  Oh I have picked some Fey Lords and a few different types of Angels (both are also discussed in the High Witchcraft book) but that is about it really.   You may have noticed that outside of NIGHT SHIFT I have not produced anything during Covid-Times. You also may have noticed the uptick in reviews here vs. new content.

My friend and day-job co-worker Richard Ruane pointed me in the direction of something going on on Itch.io.  Itch.io is an RPG PDF storefront similar to DriveThruRPG but catering more to the Indie crowd.  All I know about it is the prices of the PDFs are usually twice to three times what I expect to pay on DriveThru, but whatever.  The thing he pointed out to me was the OSR June Jam. 

https://itch.io/jam/osr-june-jam

I have never participated in a Design Jam for RPGs before. I have done plenty at my day job. So I thought I should give it a go.  

This sounds like a fun idea really, and I do have two completely brand new ideas I could do with this. I will talk about them later since I am looking into some details now. But a hint for one is "Halfling Folk Horror."

It is hosted on Itch.io but I have to look at my contract with DriveThruRPG since I think I signed exclusivity. I don't know yet.  Submissions are due at the end of the month so that gives me 28.5 days to get it all in.

I will also use my Compatibility Logos above for these, but my target system is likely to be Old School Essentials Advanced Fantasy and/or Advanced Labyrinth Lord.   Though there are some logos on the site they recommend.

Maybe this is something I need to shake off the cobwebs in my brain.

In the meantime check out all the empty space on my Itich.io profile: https://timsbrannan.itch.io/

It could be the increased circulation in the gallery, especially after discovering that the break room had its air conditioning vent shut off for a very valid reason. It could be that this winter was cold but not THAT cold. … Continue reading →

I can't believe we are at the end of May now.  My plans had been to do a Sci-Fi month featuring Traveller but also doing some other games as well.  The month got away from me and as I started my deep dive I decided to focus more and more attention on Traveller alone. And that is ok. This is something I have been wanting to do for a long time.

I do feel bad I did not get to Starfinder or the Expanse RPGs. I also wanted to review The Lucanii Drift adventure.  I am sure I will get to those sooner or later.

Here is a list of all the Traveller posts I made in May.

• Mayday, Mayday! This is the Free Trader Beowulf... (Introduction)
• Review: Classic (Basic) Traveller
• Review: The Traveller Book (1982)
• Review: The Traveller Adventure (1983)
• Review & Retrospective: Traveller Board Games
• Review: Traveller Starter Edition (1983)
• Review: Traveller Alien Modules (1984 - 1987), Part 1
• Review: Traveller Alien Modules (1984 - 1987), Part 2
• This Old Dragon: Retrospective, The Traveller Articles
• Review: 2300 AD Traveller: 2300 (1986)
• Review: MegaTraveller (1987)
• Review: Traveller: The New Era (1993)
• Review: T4 Marc Miller's Traveller (1996)
• Review: Traveller20 (2002-2007)
• Review: Traveller Main Rulebook (2008)
• Review: T5 Traveller5 Core Rules 3-Book Set (2015)
• Review: Mongoose Traveller 2nd Edition (2016, 2022)
• Review: Traveller and Cepheus SRDs

There is much, much more I could have done. There is 45 years worth of Traveller materials out there and I only scratched the surface.

I do want to thank everyone that came by and commented, shared their own interactions with the various rule systems, gave me advice and corrections.  You helped make this a better series.

I suppose the natural question to ask is "Which edition(s) will I be playing?"  I think it is a toss-up between the Classic 1977 Traveller and the new Mongoose Traveller.  Both seem like they will do everything I want. 

Next May I am thinking of doing Star Trek RPGs. Focusing on the FASA and Mōdiphiüs versions but also looking into the Last Unicorn Games and Decipher versions as well as the various versions of Starfleet Battles.  It would have been great to do that one this year given all the Star Trek we have had on TV of late, but Traveller really had to come first.  Maybe one day I'll do Star Wars.

Moving into June where I want to get back to some D&D!  (Stranger Things is back!) I also want to get more monster book reviews in.  

Soon after that, I have something special planned I am calling "100 Days till Halloween."  So keep an eye out for that.

The first month of Triffid Ranch Porch Sales are done, two years after the whole concept started in the literal corner of the gallery porchway, and they’re now becoming a regular event in the Richardson area. This weekend was an … Continue reading →