(Background: this essay was one of several columns commissioned for the magazine Gothic Beauty between 2009 and 2011. Since the magazine hasn’t published a new issue in years, it’s time to drag up a few of these old columns so they can … Continue reading →

Eve Tushnet / February 28, 2022

“Oh, I saw a flying saucer last night. It told me to give up the electric, plastic way of life.” 

I first heard about the X-Ray Spex from a Riot Grrrl flier handed out at punk concerts in the mid-’90s. Their one album, Germfree Adolescents, was on a list of woman-led punk music, alongside the Raincoats, the Delta 5, Crass, and Jayne County. I loved the band’s name, so I haunted record stores pawing through the XYZ bin until I found the album on cassette during a beach vacation in the summer of ’95. I stuck it in the player and from the moment I heard Poly Styrene’s inimitable voice—at once forthright and teasing, poppy and punishing, skidding from a husky croon to a paint-stripping wail—I was in love.

And that’s the public story of Poly Styrene, née Marianne Elliott: Poly the pioneer, an Afro-British woman fronting a punk band in the overwhelmingly white and male scene of the late 1970s; Poly the artist, the singer/songwriter/designer whose Day-Glo sensibility was the candy coating over lyrics exploring the convergence of consumer culture and personal identity. Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché, the new documentary co-created by Poly’s daughter Celeste Bell and Paul Sng, gives you plenty of Poly the pioneer. Musicians like Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna cite her as an inspiration; Neneh Cherry says, “I actually started singing because of her.” Poly’s artistic influences and choices aren’t explored in as much depth, but maybe all you have to do is play some footage of her howling into the microphone, in a dress that looks like bacon and eggs, to paint the picture. What I Am a Cliche does that no other documentary could do is close the gap between Poly Styrene and Marianne Elliott.

It would be easy to think that Poly Styrene had a band, and then Marianne Elliott had a baby; that Poly Styrene had insights, and Marianne Elliott had a nervous breakdown. But I Am a Cliché doesn’t just show you life after the X-Ray Spex—Elliott’s brief marriage, the birth of her daughter, her mental health crises, her stints in hospitals and with the Hare Krishnas. Bell’s act of insight and mercy is that she allows us to see that Poly Styrene was her mother all along, and vice versa. The documentary is a moving portrait of, among many other things, someone whose struggles with mental health interweave with her incisive cultural critique. You can talk about this interweaving in many ways: maybe Poly expressed her first break with reality in terms of a rejection of “electric, plastic” consumer culture because that’s what she was thinking about anyway. Maybe she rejected the culture of advertisement and consumption, glitz and fame, because it was making her ill. But this film lets its subject salvage wisdom from the wreckage of reason. It’s rare and precious to find a film that doesn’t glamorize mental illness, but also doesn’t let it discredit the sufferer.

There are a lot of inspirational angles to I Am a Cliché, a lot of things it will make you feel okay about, if feeling okay about these things is something you struggle with. It’s okay to be mixed-race in a world that wants to force you to pick sides; it’s okay to be plump in a world that wants to airbrush you for your album cover; it’s okay to have a council-estate accent and the sweetest smile in punk. It’s okay to be a divorced single mother struggling with mental health. It’s okay if you can’t forgive your mother for abandoning you; and if you find that time, against your will, is wearing you down into forgiveness, that’s okay too. But maybe the most unexpected inspirational message of this film is: if you’ve been given something true to say, it’s okay if you say it while taking your clothes off and explaining to your bewildered bandmates that you heard it from a flying saucer. 

***

As art, I Am a Cliché’s most notable feature is Celeste Bell’s slow, deliberate speaking style. Her quiet retrospective is itself a critique of the high-speed punk life—her mother’s career got started in 1976 and crash-landed three years later. This is mostly a straightforward documentary. Bell’s voice, not the images or storytelling techniques (or the bland instrumental music), is what makes space for meditation. The movie opens, “My mother was a punk rock icon. People often ask me if she was a good mum.” It’s not a question anyone could answer briskly. Bell does her mother the honor, and offers viewers the subtle rebuke, of not even asking it too fast. She lets it sink in: what it would mean to be asked that, and to take on the responsibility of answering.

“Marianne Elliott from Brixton” taught her daughter “to love the sea, because water is the beginning and the end of life on earth.” Elliott spent her childhood in public housing, with “a bath in the kitchen with a lid on.” An early poem, “Half Caste,” describes the violence she faced as the child of a Somali father and a white mother, and the violence others projected onto her: “Do you wanna fight…. Will she cut me with a flick knife.” “I remember her coming home with bruises on her legs where boys had kicked her,” Elliott’s sister Hazel recalls. “She was a fighter.” 

A fighter and a seeker, always. Someone always aware of what others saw when they looked at her; who struggled to see herself in the mirror. Poly was “obsessed with fashion,” and her DIY Space Age, Pop Art look defines her punk image almost as much as her lacerating voice—goggles and helmet, bright blocks of clashing color, braids hiding her eyes and braces flashing on her teeth: Mad Max by way of Lisa Frank. People who have long wished they could dress cool like Poly Styrene will be startled and ruefully delighted by Bell’s complaint, “I pretty much hated everything she wore… especially when she forced me into ridiculous outfits too, like the matching mother-and-daughter Laura Ashley phase she got into.” Poly’s style wasn’t a protective coating: watch her still, sad, hopeful eyes and listen to her silence after a TV interviewer cracks, “With those braces on, she’s hardly Linda Ronstadt.” Fame, for Poly Styrene, meant being handled by other people’s eyes.

The documentary presents the X-Ray Spex’s New York debut as a turning point. In New York, Poly discovered that the commercial apocalypse was now. New York was neon, cocaine, the future punching you in the face every time you turned around. Poly felt that New Yorkers really lived the stuff she sang about, and her reaction was horror: “God, if that’s what it’s gonna be like, I don’t want it.” New York refined Poly’s philosophy, as well as her “perverse fondness” for the plastic, throwaway culture she found equal parts seductive and threatening. New York, obsessed with fame, also provided the spark for her bipolar disorder. It was after New York that people close to her began to notice erratic behavior—like that night she saw the flying saucer. Once she started tipping into mental illness, she fell fast: “The first time she saw herself singing on the telly,” Bell recounts, “she was on the psychiatric ward.”

“Lots of episodes” followed. Marianne Elliott was misdiagnosed with schizophrenia—another false identity imposed from the outside. Bell doesn’t sugarcoat it: “I saw my mum being sedated many times… I was scared of her.” Elliot sought solace with the Hare Krishnas, where she received another new name, Maharani Dasi, and reconciled with Lora Logic, the X-Ray Spex’s first saxophonist. The peace Elliot found with the Hare Krishnas was intermittent at best. She still wasn’t able to care for her daughter, and losing Bell, who was primarily raised by Elliott’s own mother, “broke her heart.”

Yet her belief remained firm and sincere. Toward the end of her life, Poly Styrene returned to the stage, doing a comeback concert in which she called Bell onstage to join her in singing one of the X-Ray Spex’s most famous songs, the feminist provocation, “Oh Bondage! Up Yours!” It’s an edgy song, but there’s nothing but tenderness in Bell’s voice as she recalls, “It was amazing.” Elliott and Poly flow together here; but Elliott was Maharani Dasi too, and Maharani was Poly, the seeker, the rejecter of modern tech-based life in favor of ascetic community. And so the film ends not with the shared concert, but with a different mother-daughter ritual. Bell honors her mother’s last wish, to have her ashes scattered in the city believers consider the birthplace of the god Krishna.

To my surprise, this movie reminds me of nothing so much as Daniel Kelly’s 2014 Living on Fire: The Life of L. Brent Bozell, Jr. Marianne Elliott was a generation younger than the conservative Catholic firebrand and co-founder of National Review, and differed from him on almost every other demographic marker too. And yet their stories resonate with one another: both founded a vigorous cultural critique on personal alienation from contemporary complacency; both were harrowed by bipolar disorder, which disrupted the family they loved; both sought a deeper truth in religion and found it to be no cure for their suffering, but remained true to their faith anyway, at last experiencing reconciliation and peace. Both found wisdom in experiences that, to unsympathetic normal eyes, might look like nothing but symptoms.

Eve Tushnet is the author of two novels, Amends and Punishment: A Love Story, as well as the nonfiction Gay and Catholic: Accepting My Sexuality, Finding Community, Living My Faith. She lives in Washington, DC and writes and speaks on topics ranging from medieval covenants of friendship to underrated vampire films. Her hobbies include sin, confession, and ecstasy.

Much like the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, the Jonstown Compendium is a curated platform for user-made content, but for material set in Greg Stafford’s mythic universe of Glorantha. It enables creators to sell their own original content for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, 13th Age Glorantha, and HeroQuest Glorantha (Questworlds). This can include original scenarios, background material, cults, mythology, details of NPCs and monsters, and so on, but none of this content should be considered to be ‘canon’, but rather fall under ‘Your Glorantha Will Vary’. This means that there is still scope for the authors to create interesting and useful content that others can bring to their Glorantha-set campaigns.

—oOo—

What is it?
Jallupel Goodwind presents an encounter with a ‘monster’ for use with RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha.

It is a fourteen page, full colour, 1.94 MB PDF.
The layout is clean and tidy, and its illustrations and cartography are decent. It does need a slight edit in places.

Where is it set?
Jallupel Goodwind is set in the Valley of the Blight near the village of Greenhaft on the lands of the Greenhaft Clan of the Cinsina Tribe.

Who do you play?
No specific character types are required to encounter Jallupel Goodwind, but Orlanthi and Lunar characters will find it interesting. A Lankhor Mhy may prove useful for his research skills.

What do you need?
Jallupel Goodwind requires RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, the Glorantha Bestiary, and The Red Book of Magic. 
What do you get?
The second volume of ‘Monster of the Month’ presents not monsters in the sense of creatures and spirits and gods that was the feature of the first volume. Instead, it focuses upon Rune Masters, those who have achieved affinity with their Runes and gained great magics, mastered skills, and accrued allies—corporeal and spiritual. They are powerful, influential, and potentially important in the Hero Wars to come that herald the end of the age and beginning of another. They can be allies, they can be enemies, and whether ally or enemy, some of them can still be monsters. However, Jallupel Goodwind differs from this pattern in presenting a mini-scenario rather than an NPC and his entourage.
The Player Characters are asked to investigate and kill an evil red whirlwind, known as the ‘Whirling Moon’, which has been stalking a nearby valley at night since Dragonrise. This is a simple enough set-up, but everything else is far from it. The monster appears to be tougher and weaker than at first seems and if the Player Characters can communicate with it or possibly conduct some research, they can learn that it might be connected to a local tribal hero who fought a battle and died in the valley long ago and the ‘Whirling Moon’ might not be one thing, but two. Finding the former out should not be too difficult, whilst finding out the latter will be only slightly more so, but the really challenging aspect of the scenario is actually deciding what to do about the ‘monster’...
Jallupel Goodwind presents the Player Characters with an interesting problem—how do you seperate two souls which have been entwined with each other for centuries? The primary method discussed is physical, that is combat, in part because this will be hampered by the cyclical nature of the ‘monster’ and in part because it is likely to be the obvious—or at least, the initial—solution for the Player Characters. However, alternative solutions to the problem are not explored in depth and ultimately it really is down to the players and their characters to come up with an idea of their own and see if it works. This may be an issue if neither the players of their Game Master have sufficient experience with either the roleplaying game or the setting.
If Jallupel Goodwind does not explore any solutions to any real degree, it at least provides plenty of support and storytelling potential around the situation, which is a clever personification of the relationship between the Orlanthi and the Lunars. This includes the event which created the ‘Whirling Moon’, the reaction of the locals to it at the time, and the reaction of the locals now. The latter includes the possibility of the Player Characters gaining a reputation for not doing a proper job if the situation goes awry...
Designed to be played in a single session, Jallupel Goodwind is also easy to relocate elsewhere and the authors include a number of options to that end. These include Prax as well as being asked by the City Ring of Jonstown to look into the problem, meaning that Jallupel Goodwind could be run in connection with the RuneQuest Starter Set (although the Game Master will still need access to the other supplements).
Is it worth your time?Yes—Jallupel Goodwind presents an intriguing challenge, nicely tied into the background for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha which can be set almost anywhere and be played in a single session.No—Jallupel Goodwind presents an intriguing challenge, but does not really help the Game Master with sufficient advice as to how to deal with it and this may leave both her and her players floundering.Maybe—Jallupel Goodwind presents an intriguing challenge, but does leave the handling of any solutions to the challenge in the hands of the Game Master. If she is fine with that, then okay, but if not...

I am continuing my dive into the AD&D 2nd Ed Monstrous Manuals and today I am reviewing three that are nominally under the Forgotten Realms umbrella.  

There is no doubt that the biggest game world for AD&D 2nd Edition was the Forgotten Realms.  I was fairly anti-Realms back then.  I felt it was a cheap imitation of Greyhawk and I was a little irritated that Greyhawk got pushed to the side.   The 3rd Edition Forgotten Realms setting book did a lot to change that for me and now, especially with my investigations around my This Old Dragon posts, I have come to better appreciate the Realms for what they really are, not for what I thought they were.

That all being said I still bought Realms-related products like these because, well, I love monsters.

MC11 Monstrous Compendium Forgotten Realms Appendix II (1991)

My series This Old Dragon has served me well for this one since many of the creatures here have appeared in the pages of Dragon Magazine, most authored or edited by Ed Greenwood himself.

This PDF is listed at 64 pages + the dividers. The interior art is all black & white with blue accents. The list price is $4.99. There are a total of 76 monsters (with sub-types) here Alaghi to Tren (a troglodyte/lizard man crossbreed).  The Peryton, one of my favorites from the original Monster Manual finally makes its 2nd Ed debut here. Likely due to the "Ecology of" article. I went back to look over some old favorites, namely the Saurial.  I always kind of liked the Saurial since there had been some articles in pop-science magazines about what would a humanoid race evolved from dinosaurs look like.  I was a big fan of the Silurians and Sea Devils from Doctor Who and this was the "Paranoid 90s" when X-Files was about to reign.  So reptiloids, dinosauroids, and more were on my mind.  The entry here says that "Saurials are not native to the Realms, but originate from an alternate Prime Material Plane."  This reminds me of what authors would later do with the Dragonborn in the Realms; have them come from Toril's twin planet of Abeir.  I see in more recent Realms lore they are still from an unknown realm but I like this idea. 

While these monsters are "generic" enough to be used anywhere, most (like the Saurials above) are tied a little more to the lore of the Realms, so extracting them can be done, but they will need some edits.

MC13 Monstrous Compendium Al-Qadim Appendix (1992)

The Al-Qadim Monstrous Compendium had been the only product I ever purchased for the Al-Qadim setting back when it was new.  Again the reasoning was I loved monsters. But while reading it over I discovered there was a very interesting setting here.  

Like the Kara-Tur setting, Al-Qadim was pulled into the Realms. It was added to the Realms quickly after its release but the campaign setting box was designed a bit more for a general placement anywhere.

This PDF is listed at 74 pages and has a $4.95 price tag.  The art is typical for the time color covers and color dividers with black & white pages. Interestingly the accent color here is gold and not blue.  Ravenloft used red so I wonder how it would have been if all the settings had a different accent color to help separate them.  A dark-gray for Greyhawk, burnt orange for Dark Sun, and so on. 

There are 58 monsters from Ammut to Zin. This includes a large number of various Genie/Gin types. 

Divorced from their setting the monsters certainly lose some of their best flavor, but I do plan on using these in a desert-based campaign I have coming up and I think they will work fine.

MC6 Monstrous Compendium, Kara-Tur Appendix

Kara-Tur did not begin as a Forgotten Realms land. Quite the contrary it was designed to be used as part of Oerth in the 1st Edition Oriental Adventures.  This Monstrous Compendium brings the creatures listed in the 1st ed book, and more, into the 2nd Edition game. 

This PDF is listed at 64 pages (more with binder dividers) and a price tag of $4.99.  The cover and dividers are full color (including Easley's Oriental Adventure cover) and the interior art is Black & White. There are 76 monsters from Bajang to the Yuki-on-na.

Interestingly enough the Eastern Dragons from the Original Fiend Folio are not here.  They appeared in the MC3 Forgotten Realms one, but I thought they should appear here instead.  Likely to solidify the claim of Kara-Tur in the Forgotten Realms or maybe to give the 3rd MC some popular dragons.

There are some very unique monsters here. This is one of the few that I keep separate and do not integrate into my larger monster sets.

We are at a point with the Monstrous Compendiums where we get a bit of overlap.  For example, the Ashira (MC13) has a lot in common with the Hamadryad (MC11).  And the Black Cloud of Vengeance (MC13) is very much a larger, more evil version of the Tempest (MC11).  

Which is which? You tell me.

This is not a surprise, there are over 2100 monsters created for AD&D 2nd Edition, there are bound to be places where they overlap.

The scans for all are pretty crisp and clear. I certainly can see printed out a couple of pages and using them in a smaller binder for a specific AD&D 2nd Ed campaign.  Like I have said before, these PDF are fulfilling the promises made by the Monstrous Compendiums in the 1990s.

Five years ago this week, the last vestiges of the old Valley View gallery moved to the current locale, and Dallas hasn’t been the same since. The fifth anniversary celebration of that move became decidedly bittersweet with the surprise move … Continue reading →

A public service announcement for upcoming open house attendees: the original plan was for Caroline Crawford Originals/Tawanda Jewelry to stay in the front of the gallery until the beginning of May 2022, but apparently the timeline was moved up. As … Continue reading →

In the year 2150, the Great Nuclear War wipes out 70% of Britain’s population and results in a huge increase of mutant births due to exposure to the nuclear fallout of strontium-90, the children typically afflicted with one or more physical deformities. As the number of mutant births grows, so does the adverse reaction to them until the prejudice against them is open and adverse, with politicians, in particular, Nelson Bunker Kreelman of New Britain and his anti-mutant police force known as the ‘Kreelers’, actively campaigning on an anti-mutant platform. The prejudice would grow to the point where the Mutants banded together and formed a Mutant Army that would lead a Mutant Uprising in 2167. Although the rebellion fails, Kreelman is forced to resign and the Kreelers disband and whilst they continue to face prejudice, there are no pogroms against them. Most either move into the segregated ghettos set up for them, such as the large settlement of Milton Keynes, or because their work and business opportunities are severely limited, leave Earth all together.

The surviving members of the Mutant Army are also forced to leave Earth. They are also given a pardon in return for their joining the Search/Destroy Agency as galactic bounty hunters, tasked with hunting down criminals and threats deemed too dangerous to be handled by ‘norms’. The combination of their mutations being the result of strontium-90 radiation and the distinctive ‘S/D’ (for ‘Search/Destroy’) badges they wear, means that they are nicknamed Strontium Dogs, and their orbital base the Doghouse. This is set-up for the Strontium Dog comic strip from the pages of 2000 AD, which tells the tales of one of the most famous S/D bounty hunters, Johnny Alpha, a former leader of the 2167 Mutant Uprising, including going back in time to collect a bounty on one Adolf Schicklegruber! The comic strip, which originally appeared in the pages of Starlord in 1978 before transferring to 2000 AD in 1980 ran until 2018 with the death of its artist, Carlos Ezquerra. It is also the basis for Strontium Dog, a roleplaying supplement for Judge Dredd & The Worlds of 2000 AD.

Strontium Dog, published by En Publishing, is not the first roleplaying treatment for Strontium Dog. Mongoose Publishing released a version using the Traveller mechanics, and before that, there was a version from Games Workshop based on Judge Dredd: The Role-Playing Game, but which was never published. In Strontium Dog for Judge Dredd & The Worlds of 2000 AD the players take the role of Mutant Search/Destroy Agents, collecting bounties on the scum of the universe, travelling in the cargo hold from system to system, and suffering prejudice against Mutants along way—and not just from Norms, but from other Muties too. This can be because the Muties are criminals or simply because they hate the idea of Muties acting against other Muties. And although Strontium Dog is all about bringing in the scum of universe—dead or alive—and sometimes of the scum of other dimensions and other time periods, it is also possible for the players to take the roles of the scum of the universe and play criminals rather than bounty hunters! This would use the rules for creating criminals from Judge Dredd & The Worlds of 2000 AD, which can also be used for potential Strontium Dog/Judge Dredd crossovers—just like the comic—as they share the same universe.

Strontium Dog leaps straight into creating a character for the setting, beginning with options for Species. These include Humans and Mutants as well as Gronks, the intrepidly cowardly aliens known for their timidity and medical skills, whilst the Mutants, there are tables for physical, cosmetic, and metabolic/metaphysical mutations. Thus it is possible to play a mutant with boils or warts, tentacles, a rubberised body, acidic blood, an ice-cold metabolism, shimmering skin, a rash of fake eyes, a face full of teeth, and more. All of these individualise a mutant and should suggest a possible nickname, not necessarily a serious one, in addition to their skills and exploits. An option is included for the selecting the cruel and identical Strix as a species, and there is a guide to including robots in the setting too (although they do not appear in the comic strip as bounty hunters). Outlaw and Civilian careers includes everything from the Animal Rights Activist, Anti-Mutant Enforcer, and Bandit to the Theme Park Staffer, Vis Presenter, and Xenodiplomat, whilst specific Mutant Careers include Mutant Cultist, Mutant Stalker, and Sideshow Freak. Many of these could be used in the Judge Dredd and other settings for Judge Dredd & The Worlds of 2000 AD. Less easily adapted are the S/D Careers, which cover both recruitment and actual careers with the agency. The former include Born to It, mentored by an Older Dog, and Score to Settle, whilst the path for every S/D Agent is the same from Rookie S/D Agent to Veteran S/D Agent, with a choice of Agent in Time, Dimensional Agent, and S/D Agent in between. These are accompanied by a choice of Exploits such as ‘Nux for All’, which causes extra damage when using Electronux, ‘Making a Name for Yourself’ which grants a bonus to REP (reputation) checks because the rookie is trying to make a name for himself, and ‘I’ve SEEN Things’ (in other dimensions) enables an S/S Agent to initially ignore the Afraid condition!

The life of an S/D Agent means collecting bounties and making, hopefully big, money, but it also means paying out too. A Mutant gets nothing for free, and that includes his equipment. Strontium Dog includes a lengthy list of guns, grenades, and gadgets. These start off with the ubiquitous Westinghouse Variable-Cartridge Blaster and the dreaded ‘Der Happy Sick’ Warhammer wielded by Johnny Alpha’s friend, Wulf Sternhammer, and go from there… Some of the devices and bombs are extremely powerful, such as Dimension Warp which opens up a rift to another dimension, the Pocket Nuke (Throwing) capable of levelling a city, the Time Drogue for rewinding time on a victim or target, interrogating them, and then letting them die a second time, and the Time Shrinker, which speeds up time for the target to the point of death and beyond. It is suggested that the Player Characters only have access to these as plot devices rather than being readily available, but in general, they will have access to a lot of the gear and guns presented—if they have the credits, but then so are the criminals!

For the Game Master, there is a lot of support in the pages of Strontium Dog. This begins with advice about setting the tone, which is very much that of a Sci-Fi Spaghetti Western with blasters, mutant powers, and heavy prejudice. The latter runs throughout the setting and the players will need to have a thick skin when playing a campaign set in this twenty-second century. That said, their characters are armed—often heavily armed—and they have a lot of agency. Similarly, this future is not one in which there is a lot of trust, not even with the Player Characters’ fellow Muties, especially if they are rival bounty hunters. The notes on describing the world of Strontium Dog are pleasingly evocative, and this is backed up with descriptions of typical locations and then the various locations visited by Johnny Alpha in the pages of the comic strip. Both are really quite detailed and give the Game Master plenty to work with when taking her Player Characters there. Plus, there is a timeline for Johnny Alpha and the comic strip running from 793 AD to the 37th Century.

Almost a fifth of Strontium Dog is devoted to a series of Bounty Contracts. There are six of these, which can either run standalone, but they really work as a full campaign—the ‘En System’ Campaign. The campaign begins on Weaver’s Rock with a bounty of the Wispa gang, who have gone from robbing cargo trucks to murder! The first bounty is fairly simple and once completed, there are plenty of hooks if the Game Master wants to expand the Player Characters’ time in the backwaters of Weaver’s World. The second bounty takes the Player Characters to the planet’s big settlement, Paradise City, where they can continue tracking down the remaining members of the Wispa gang. Besides the main bounty, the Game Master is given another list of bounties available in the city, but once on the main trail, they become involved in a big chase across the city skyline. The third takes a darker turn when on the trail of an assassin, the Player Characters are inadvertently diverted—or are they?—to another planet and probably the best pun in what is a campaign packed with puns as they have to assault the ‘Merlock of Firestop Mountain’! The final encounter turns up the gonzo and the Merlock theme for an underwater, shark-infested big fight. In the fourth part it quickly becomes clear that the authors are really big fans of Doctor Who as the names and references fly thick and fast when the Player Characters are tasked with tracking down the creator of a gas which quickly grows anyone who breathes it into a zombie! They accidentally get dumped into an alternate dimension in the fifth part after they have to deal with a Mutie who has been terrorising Gronks—there is a bonus if no Gronks die during the apprehension of this bounty, so good luck with that!—and then fight their way out of it in readiness for the final showdown in the last part of the campaign. As the Player Characters have bounced from one bounty to the next, it has become clear that someone has been monitoring their actions and there they learn that it has been much more than that—the real villain has been broadcasting them across the galaxy! Cue lots of television jokes and shenanigans which bring the campaign to an entertaining close.

The ‘En System’ Campaign is not just a lot of fun, but it is clear that the authors had a lot of fun writing it. The jokes are as silly and as groanworthy as you would expect and they should be, and both Game Master and her players will appreciate the campaign even more if they get them. The Strontium Dog supplement is rounded with a lengthy section of Allies and Enemies, including Johnny Alpha, Wulf Sternhammer, the Gronk, Durham Red, Middenface McNulty, and a whole cast of criminals. This is the only section where the black and white artwork from the comic strip’s early days is seen, which is a pity. However, it is the ‘En System’ Campaign which pulls everything together and gives a playing group something to get started with.

Physically, Strontium Dog is a bright and breezy affair, which lots colour artwork drawn from the comic strip. It needs a slight edit in places, but is an easy read otherwise.

Strontium Dog is an impressive supplement for Judge Dredd & The Worlds of 2000 AD that with the addition of the ‘En System’ Campaign the Strontium Dog feels complete and succinct. It gives the Game Master and her players everything necessary to play an entertainingly gonzo, over the top game of hunting bounty on the scum of the universe and more!

Rogue Trooper: Tour of Nu-Earth 1 is a supplement for Rogue Trooper. Which itself is a supplement for Judge Dredd and the Worlds of 2000 AD. Published by En Publishing, Rogue Trooper is based on the 2000 AD comic strip of the same name, set in the far future. Two great empires, the Greater Nordland Republic and the Southern Cross Confederacy constantly clash, in particular on Nu Earth. In the past fifty years, this has become a world war, the planet divided between the two factions, known as the Norts and the Southers, and turned into a nuclear, biological, and chemical ravaged wasteland. In order to break the stalemate, Milli-Com of the Southern Cross Confederacy develops elite clones known as G.I.s or Genetic Infantry. When they are deployed in the year ’86, most of the G.I.s are killed in the Quartz Zone Massacre. There would be only one survivor, Rogue, who accompanied by his former squad mates, Bagman, Gunnar, and Helm, downloaded onto biochips and slotted into his gear, would ultimately unmask the traitor responsible for the massacre. With obvious parallels between with the American Civil War, but also drawing on other modern conflicts, especially the First World War and the Vietnam War, Rogue Trooper has been running as an ongoing if irregular series since 1981 and has been developed into a board game from Games Workshop and a computer game. Like many series that appear in the pages of 2000 AD, there is an element of satire to many of the stories, though not as strong as that found within the Judge Dredd stories, and the humour in the stories veers towards the gallows. Rogue Trooper from En Publishing is the first roleplaying treatment of it and enables the players to take the roles of Genetic Infantry or ordinary conscripts and get shipped down to Nu Earth as part of the war effort. The blue-skinned G.I.s are designed to survive in the toxic landscape of Nu Earth. Anyone else will need to wear a chemsuit…

Rogue Trooper: Tour of Nu-Earth 1 is sadly, the only supplement for Rogue Trooper. Like Judge Dredd: Case File Compendium 1 it is an anthology of scenarios. The seven scenarios or ‘Mission Reports’ within its pages are all set on Nu-Earth, the toxic hellhole and battleground which is the main setting for the Rogue Trooper series. Each scenario comes with a full explanation of its plot, clues, NPC stats, details of its aftermath, and a discussion of possible extra plots and developments which can be added or might come about because of the actions of the Player Characters. Many include suggestions on how to use the scenarios with the Judge Dredd setting for Judge Dredd and the Worlds of 2000 AD or the other roleplaying setting, Strontium Dog.

The anthology opens with ‘Horror At Camp Vlad’, the first of three Mission Reports by John White. The Player Characters are a team of Nort military investigators working for the Office of Public Truth sent to Camp Vlad to find out why so many Prisoners of War have been shot making escape attempts. Other options are discussed, including making Camp Vlad a mutant detention camp in Judge Dredd or Strontium Dog. Camp Vlad is located in a stifling jungle far from the frontlines and apart from the escape attempts, everyone is bored stiff and none too happy to see the Player Characters. This is a solid piece of investigation involving an interesting mystery and a fun scenario which gives the Game Master some good NPCs to portray and plays up a few clichés. Plus the players get to roleplay Nort investigators which means they have latitude in how they conduct themselves, which can be fun to roleplay.

It is followed by ‘Killer in the Night’, also by John White. The Game Master has a few NPCs to portray in this Mission Report when the Player Characters, a Southern combat team is an obvious routine mission—guard a group of Nort Prisoners of War being moved from the frontlines to internment elsewhere. The scenario is intentionally linear, since the Player Characters have to travel along a set route, but along the way, something begins to strike at the prisoners—and if not the prisoners, then the guards. Rumours fly around the convoy about ‘Baba Yaga’ stalking both prisoners and guards and so fear mounts. Backed up with random events, this is a creepy game of ‘Ten Little Indians’ on the move across hostile territory (well, almost everywhere is hostile on Nu-Earth).

Benjamin Rogers’ first Mission Report in Rogue Trooper: Tour of Nu-Earth 1 is not so much a ‘Mission Report’ as a campaign concept, but it does include a short scenario. ‘Unlucky 7s’ provides an alternative to the standard campaign set-up in Rogue Trooper which has the Player Characters as ground pounders, or infantry types. Instead of infantry, the Player Characters are the crew of a Hopper, a VTOL vehicle used for a variety of purposes. This discusses the various roles aboard the Hopper, including Commander, Medic, Engineer, EWS/SIGINT (Signals Intelligence) officer, Gunner, Navigator, Pilot, and Sysop, and suggests the skills for each of them. Equipment and several variants are listed too, as well as a table of vehicle traits and the description of the 29th Assault Hopper Squadron, 7th Souther Air Cav, which as the Unlucky 7s, has an ‘unlucky’ reputation. The sample encounter, ‘Relieving Squad Costa’ is a evacuate under fire mission which would get an air cavalry style campaign off to a good start.

‘Deep Trouble’ is John Rogers’ third and final Mission Report in Rogue Trooper: Tour of Nu-Earth 1 and it is designed for use with the previous Mission Report, ‘Unlucky 7s’. When a Souther flier vanishes near Klumpflot Lake in a remote part of the Hell Hunt Jungle with an important intelligence officer aboard, Milli-Comm assigns the recovery mission to the Unlucky 7s and the Player Characters’ vehicle. This mission ups the ante by inverting the environment and making the Player Characters explore the depths of a lake in order to find the wreck of the crashed VTOL. Since this is a lake on Nu-Earth, this is not a pleasant experience and is made all the more challenging by the local flora and fauna and the danger of Nort patrols and possible intervention. ‘Deep Trouble’ is an enjoyably inventive scenario and its inclusion suggests that a campaign revolving around air cavalry and air support could be a lot of fun.

Ben Rogers’ third and final Mission Report in Rogue Trooper: Tour of Nu-Earth 1 is ‘Black Market Shenanigans’ and it continues to support the author’s ‘Unlucky 7s’ campaign set-up. When a fellow soldier is beaten up, the Player Characters go to his aid and in doing so, bring them to the attention of the base’s black-market dealer, ‘Big Moxie’. It turns out the soldier they helped is in debt to the dealer and effectively, so are the Player Characters. Do the Player Characters help him out, and if so how? How do they deal with ‘Big Moxie’—do they pay her off, get into debt themselves, or even end up working for her? This is an entirely base set scenario. Its one weakness is whether or not the Player Characters decide to get involved—and if not, the scenario has ‘Big Moxie’ come after them until they are forced to act. Alternatively, the victim of the thugs sent by ‘Big Moxie’ could have been set up as an NPC earlier in the campaign, perhaps even be one of those rescued in the earlier ‘Relieving Squad Costa’. Apart from this, ‘Black Market Shenanigans’ makes for a nice change of pace, primarily involving social interaction skills and when combat does occur, brawling.

The final Mission Report in Rogue Trooper: Tour of Nu-Earth 1 is ‘Assault on Nu-Everest’ by Adrian Smith. This is another ‘Unlucky 7s’ scenario, more Where Eagle’s Dare than anything else as the Player Characters are assigned a covert extraction mission which turns into an assault and rescue up a mountain whilst being hunted by monsters! The Player Characters can be as loud or as quiet as they want and it should all climax in a chase back down the mountain in order to escape back to their VTOL. If the Player Characters are successful, they have the chance to redeem the reputation of their regiment. This is an entertaining scenario let down by the fact that its plot is explained in the reading rather than at the start, so the Game Master is not forewarned.

Rogue Trooper: Tour of Nu-Earth 1 is in general well written with decent maps as needed and illustrations taken from the comic. It does need an edit in places.

Rogue Trooper: Tour of Nu-Earth 1 is a solid selection of scenarios for Rogue Trooper. One issue is that the majority of the Mission Reports are for the ‘Unlucky 7s’ campaign set-up, so they are difficult to use in a general campaign set on Nu-Earth. If perhaps all of the Mission Reports in the anthology had been written for the ‘Unlucky 7s’ campaign framework, the supplement could have had more focus and some of the scenarios would have been easier to set up. In fact, the other two scenarios could have been moved elsewhere and made way for more scenarios and more development for the ‘Unlucky 7s’ campaign framework. Ultimately, Rogue Trooper: Tour of Nu-Earth 1 is one third one thing, a scenario anthology, and two third another, a campaign. Consequently, it does not as if it is one whole thing. Nevertheless, Rogue Trooper: Tour of Nu-Earth 1 does contain some entertaining and inventive scenarios, and it does come with a decent campaign starter and if a Game Master for Rogue Trooper does not have this supplement, she should definitely buy it as quickly as she can.

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. 
The Beyond the Borderlands trilogy of fanzines is different. Beginning with Beyond the Borderlands Issue #1, this is a systems neutral regional hexcrawl inspired by B2 Keep on the Borderlands, most recently implemented by Goodman Games’ Original Adventures Reincarnated #1: Into the Borderlands. The setting for the Beyond the Borderlands, like B2 Keep on the Borderlands before it, is the edge—or just beyond it—of the civilised lands, the frontier outside of which lies untrammeled wilderness, barbaric tribes, and Chaos run rampant. Here a solid fortress has been established as the last outpost of civilisation, to provide a degree of protection to travellers making the journey beyond and against the possibility of an incursion from the ghastly Goblins, horrible Hobgoblins, obnoxious Orcs, grim Gnolls, and more, which lurk just out of sight, ready to strike…
Published by Swordfish Islands LLC (but also available in PDF from the author), best known for publishing Swordfish Islands: Hexcrawl Adventures on Hot Springs Island, the first part of a trilogy detailed the last bastion of a civilisation on the frontier, Stronglaw Keep, and the surrounding Wicked Palovalley. What was particularly noticeable about Beyond the Borderlands Issue #1 was that all of its maps were presented in isometric format, which when combined with their bright, vibrant colours, make them leap off the page. This feature is continued in Beyond the Borderlands Issue #2, which when combined with spare nature of the text makes the descriptions and details given nicely accessible and easy to run from the page.

Beyond the Borderlands Issue #2 takes both Dungeon Master and her players into that den of evil which so threatens the Keep, the Caves of Chaos! Or rather, it does not. For in Beyond the Borderlands Issue #2, the Caves of Chaos become The Bloody Ravine, a sharp valley whose walls are pockmarked by cave entrances, beyond which many different tribes of Humanoids find their home. Traditionally the Caves of Chaos have always been presented from right to left with the head of the valley to the left. Here, it is turned ninety degrees, so that when the Player Characters enter the valley, it is more obvious that they are ascending its dangers. The Game Master is given simple rules for handling the Alert Level from one cave to the next, starting at ‘Off Guard’ to ‘Can’t be Surprised’ and comes with a trio of Adventure Hooks, two out of the three potentially leading to the doom of Stronglaw Keep!
One big difference between the Caves of Chaos and the Bloody Ravine is that there are only six caves instead of ten. These consist of the Kobold Lair, the Bugboar Quarters, the Goblin Labs, the Hynoll Chambers, and the Owlbear Den. Notably missing from the range are the Orcs and the Minotaurs, though Hobgoblins can be found in the Goblin Labs. Two of the caves—Rockfall Range and the Empty Cave—are left undetailed and unmapped, currently under construction. If the Player Characters explore these, they will lead to random locations. The other caves are each given a two-page spread, with an Encounter Table, behaviour notes, and a list of potential loot on the left, and individual room descriptions on the right. Most rooms are given no more than a couple of sentences’ worth of description. That does not sound very much, but it should be enough for the Dungeon Master and her players to get a feel for each location. Each of the six cave networks is sufficiently different from their inspiration. For example, the Goblins of the Goblin Caves are under the thumb of both Hobgoblins and a Troll—who normally lives in what would be the Ogre’s Cave—and often plays marbles with the Goblins! The Goblins farm Mushrooms, who do try to run away, and then mash and distil them in a potent spirit. Another difference is the length of the Encounter Table for each cave, which adds flavour and detail and suggests that there is a lot going on in each cave. Despite all that though, the map of each cave feels exactly like its inspiration, but brought to live in three dimensions and little details.
At the head of the Bloody Ravine is the infamous Chaos Temple. This is noticeably different in that it is not as such an active Chaos temple. Rather, it has the feel of an abandoned temple that has been taken over by another Chaos faction. It has a weird, creepy feel and a tense atmosphere, all succinctly captured in just a two-page spread and all very much different to previous iterations of B2 Keep on the Borderlands. Also very different is the addition of the Elven Catacombs below the  Bloody Ravine, which is full of skeletons and other undead threats, but there is plenty of treasure to be found. However, the map is not as easy to navigate or read, and its design is drier than that of the other caves in the Bloody Ravine.
Rounding out Beyond the Borderlands Issue #2 are write-ups for forty-eight of the NPCs and monsters encountered in both Beyond the Borderlands Issue #1 and Beyond the Borderlands Issue #2. The stats have been stripped back to a minimum and are actually written for use with Dungeon Reavers, a Micro Retroclone designed to handle Dungeons & Dragons-style play, which is also included in the issue. What this points to is that the Beyond the Borderlands Issue #2—and thus Beyond the Borderlands Issue #1 before it—can not just be played with the included Dungeon Reavers, but other Micro retroclones too. The language and terminology of Dungeon Reavers is still that of Dungeons & Dragons, so a gaming group can still play through this fanzine trilogy with the retroclone of its choice. Every entry is accompanied by a thumbnail illustration which matches the style of the maps. They include monsters and inhabitants of Stronglaw Keep, as well as possible NPC Hirelings and even potentially, replacement Player Characters. The illustrations are fiercely cute!  
All of the maps in Beyond the Borderlands Issue #2 are presented in isometric format, which when combined with their bright, vibrant colours, make them leap off the page. The writing needs an edit in places, but everything is well organised and packs a lot of information into relatively limited amounts of space. The format of the two-page spread used for each location and mini-region makes the contents of Beyond the Borderlands Issue #2 very easy to run from the page. If there is an issue with Beyond the Borderlands Issue #2 as a physical object, it is that like Beyond the Borderlands Issue #1, the issue lacks a sturdy card cover.
The Beyond the Borderlands series is intended to be a trilogy, but together Beyond the Borderlands Issue #1 and Beyond the Borderlands Issue #2 provide everything that the Dungeon Master and her gaming group needs to explore the Wicked Palovalley and climb the slopes of the Bloody Ravine to descend into the various caves along its walls. That does not mean that Beyond the Borderlands is totally complete, for there are dungeons yet to be detailed, but the contents of Beyond the Borderlands Issue #1 and Beyond the Borderlands Issue #2 are sufficient to play through a solid campaign inspired by B2 Keep on the Borderlands. The third issue will be worth waiting for though and not just for the as yet undetailed dungeons. Beyond the Borderlands Issue #3 will be taking a leaf out of Original Adventures Reincarnated #1: Into the Borderlands and include the author’s version of B1 In Search of the Unknown. That will be worth the wait, but in the meantime, Beyond the Borderlands Issue #2 caps a charming and engaging take upon the classic B2 Keep on the Borderlands.

It’s back on schedule: the Fifth Anniversary (At This Location) Open House is on for this Saturday, starting at noon and running until 5:00 pm. Over the next few weeks, the flytraps and North American pitcher plants will be waking … Continue reading →

Judge Dredd: Case File Compendium 1 is an anthology of investigations, scenarios, and adventures for Judge Dredd & The Worlds of 2000 AD, the fourth roleplaying to be based on the famous character from the long running weekly comic, 2000 AD. Published by En Publishing, it compiles the five previously available titles in the Judge Dredd Case File series—named after the compilations of the comic strips—and adds two new ones for a total of seven. Some come ready to play, some need a bit of preparation, some are full scenarios, other vignettes, but all are relatively easy to slot into a campaign. All can be run as scenarios for the other options in Judge Dredd & The Worlds of 2000 AD that have the Player Characters as either Civilians or Perps in Mega-City One, but primarily, the contents of Judge Dredd: Case File Compendium 1 are intended to be played using Judges, typically of Grade 5 and above.
The analogy opens with Judge Dredd Case File #1: Monkey Business by Russ Morrissey. This is a fairly uncomplicated affair, intended to be run as a one-shot or convention scenario, preferably with the pregenerated Player Characters from the core rulebook. That said, it is easy to run with Judges of the players’ own creation, or even with Civilians dealing with the problem because the Judges are busy or with a gang of Perps looking to take down their rivals. Bronson & Sons, a small and not very modern department store, has been taken over by a gang of apes. One is atop the roof, armed with a bazooka and causing mayhem, whilst the rest are inside awaiting the rival of the Judges (or their rivals). This includes a Gorilla ready and waiting in full football gear to bat up, and the rest of the gang all in Prohibition-era suits and fedoras. There is a wrinkle or two, and the Game Master will have fun hamming it up with the Ape gang, but otherwise, this is easy to run and drop into an ongoing campaign.

Judge Dredd Case File #2: Nobody Expects the SJS! by Benjamin Rogers is intended as an interlude. The totalitarian nature of the regime governing Mega-City One comes to the fore when the Judges are pulled from an investigation, whether in the middle or at the end of a shift and told to report to another station house. The Judges are stripped of their equipment and interviewed and interrogated by Judge Mordant of the Special Judge Squad to determine if they are guilty of misconduct. Several methods of interrogations are provided for Judge Mordant, up to and including ‘The Random Physical Coercion Test’ or Corporal Punishment. Consequently the scenario includes warnings about the content and rightfully so. The scenario is highly adversarial, involving harsh interrogation and psychological and physical abuse, with essentially the Game Master acting directly against the players’ Judges, who depending upon if they are guilty of misconduct, may end up sentenced to Titan and thus out of the campaign. Other outcomes are also discussed and both these and the situation itself, are interesting to roleplay if the group is not too uncomfortable with it. Lastly, ‘Judge Dredd Case File #2: Nobody Expects the SJS!’ does feel too early to run in campaign.
Judge Dredd Case File #3: Night of the Living Dredd by Richard August has a lovely pun for a title and takes the Judges (or other character types) below Mega-City One and onto the banks of the Big Smelly. Occasionally, the Justice Department sends Judges down below of a sweep of the underground area and the player Judges might be on such a sweep or another case, when they are best by a horde of zombies and forced to take refuge in the dilapidated remains of a suburban house. This is the end of Night of the Living Dead played out with daysticks and Lawgivers in which the Judges have to survive a terrible night in hope of rescue, all the while wondering what was the cause of the corpse cortege.

Judge Dredd Case File #4: Obstructing the Law by Benjamin Rogers presents a big challenge for the Judges when a Citi-Block is thrown into disarray when the local eating champion gets stuck on the way out of his apartment in Gordon Ramsay Block on the way to a local eating competition. This is fantastic situation which requires careful intervention by the Judges, not just in freeing the Fattie from where his stuck, but in dealing with the consequences if they fail. This includes dealing with citizens from the rival Jamie Oliver Block, the chances of the situation escalating into a Block War, Gordon Ramsay Block residents rioting, and more. This is a fun roleplaying situation which makes inventive use of the Judge Dredd setting.

Judge Dredd Case File #5: Red Dredd Redemption by Richard August is more of a set-up than an actual adventure or investigation. It is, however, a classic set-up. A Perp whom the Judges previous put away has been released from the Iso-Cubes and wants to revenge. To do this, the Perp conducts a reign of terror against the Judge (or his family if he has one), which should culminate in the kidnapping of an ally or a family member, perhaps a particularly reliable informant. For the Judges, the scenario should start with them coming to the rescue of the victim and the apprehension of the Perp. There are some nice suggestions as where this should take place, but it should be isolated and it will require some development upon the part of the Game Master. Like the earlier ‘Judge Dredd Case File #2: Nobody Expects the SJS!’, the set-up for ‘Judge Dredd Case File #5: Red Dredd Redemption’ means that it is better suited for Judges with more than a few cases and arrests on their record.
‘Judge Dredd Case File #6: All Boxed Up’ by Shaun Cook is a longer scenario in which the philanthropist Quququey, an alien trader, wants to redevelop one of Mega-City One’s shanty towns, Cardboard City, as part of a trade deal. The Judges are tasked with assisting him and keeping him safe, which means checking the area prior to his visit. There are lots of opportunities for investigation into minor crime, dealing with members of the Anti-Alien League who object to Quququey’s presence, and interacting with the citizens of Cardboard City. The Game Master will certainly have a lot of fun portraying the ordinary citizenry and oddballs that the Judges run into. There is scope also for Perp Player Characters in particular, their objectives being at odds with those of the Judges, of course. This will require a little adjustment upon the part of the Game Master. This is another solid slice of Judges working the streets and will probably take a session or two to play. If there is an issue with the scenario, it is that it could have done with better organising to make the various plots and motivations clearer.

‘Judge Dredd Case File #7: The Future of Law Enforcement’ by Marc Langworthy is the last scenario in the anthology. Where many a Judge Dredd campaign begins with the Player Characters as Cadet Judges on their Hot Dog Run or Eagle Day, here the Judges are summoned by Judge Dredd himself and assigned to oversee the latest batch of Cadets on their Hot Dog Run, a test run of their capabilities and training into the Cursed Earth. In particular, this Hot Dog Run is targeting a band of mutant raiders, ‘Cherpo’s Crusaders’, which has been active recently in the Alabama Morass. The Judges, accompanied by the Cadets, will need to search the area around Sausage Tree Farm, which is where most of the convoys that ‘Cherpo’s Crusaders’ has targeted, has come from. Along the way there are random encounters and the Cadets to keep an eye on. They take a supporting role mechanically and there is a random chance that they will mess up in one encounter. Each Player Character Judge is expected to take charge of one Cadet and it is suggested that each player also roleplay one of the other Cadets. The scenario includes rules and guidelines for this. This is solid, meaty little scenario which will culminate in the Judges giving assessments of their charges.

Physically, Judge Dredd: Case File Compendium 1 is nicely presented and well written. The scenarios do vary in quality and some of them do require development upon the part of the Game Master. Some though really are good and will be fun to both run and play as part of your Judge Dredd & The Worlds of 2000 AD campaign.

A bunch of great Kickstarters this week so let's get to it.

The Valley Out of Time series for S&W DCC MCC

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/science-wizard/the-valley-out-of-time-series-for-sandw-dcc-mcc?ref=theotherside

This one looks like a lot of fun. Has a whole "Lost World" vibe to it and I love that shit. It was already planned for DCC, MCC, and S&W and now with the first stretch goal Pathfinder 1st Edition.

Zweihander Fantasy Horror RPG Starter Kit

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zweihander/zweihander-rpg-starter-kit?ref=theotherside

I don't know a lot about Zweihänder. I know it is a clone in a sense of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying.  So I have been told to try this instead of Warhammer.  Creator Daniel Fox also takes credit for (rightly or not) taking down The Trove so that is a good thing in my mind.

This starter kit looks like a lot of fun and I think I am a good choice as a customer. 

The Sands of Despair: a D&D 5E and PF side trek

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dlimedia/the-sands-of-despair-a-dandd-5e-side-trek?ref=theotherside

Recent seismic events unearth a long buried tomb in the desert, and the locals fear that a long dead tyrant's last words may come true.

Sounds fun to me! Plus I have been wanting to do more desert adventures. 

And the big one of the week!

Old-School Essentials Fantasy RPG Box Sets

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/exaltedfuneral/old-school-essentials-fantasy-rpg-box-sets?ref=theotherside

Ok we all know what this one is. It's the biggest kid on the OSR block right now and after 2-3 days it is sitting on half a million dollars.  Not too shabby really.

I have everything for this already. But damn this is attractive.

Enjoy!

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. Another choice is the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game.
Ninja City is different type of fanzine for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. Published by Get Haunted Industries as part of ZineQuest 3, adapts the roleplaying game from Goodman Games to run adventures inspired by the Ninja movies and craze of the eighties, cheap straight to VHS tales of crime and retribution, and just a little bit, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. In Ninja City, the streets of the Player Characters’ hometown have been taken over by Bad Guyz—drug lords, street gangs, crooked cops, and worse—and nobody is doing a damned thing about it! Fortunately for the town and the Player Characters, they have rediscovered the Lost Secrets of the Ninja, found a sensei, set up a Clan in a secret hideout, and at the end of the day, when their day jobs are over, sneak out to strike at the Bad Guyz! Disrupt their operations, destroy their product, free the cheap labour they employ, rescue victims held hostage, defeat the Big Boss and unmask him, ultimately, free the town for good folk everywhere!
A Ninja in Ninja City uses the SWORDZ Attribute System—Stealth, Wisdom, Offence, Respect, Discipline, and Z-Force—instead of the standard set of attributes found in Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. Of these six, Wisdom covers knowledge and technology use, Respect includes Leadership, Connections, and Trust; Discipline a Ninja’s use of Kuji-in; and Z-Force both his Luck as per Dungeon Crawl Classics and Super Moves. A Ninja has the same Hit Points as every other Ninja, and a Melee Weapon and a Ranged Weapon which defines him. He also has a day job, anything from a Sponsored Skateboarder, Bartender, or Aerobics Instructor to Street Performer – Portrait Artist, Street Performer – Musician, or Telephone Psychic. To create a Ninja, a player rolls four six-sided dice and keeps the best three for each attribute, selects his two weapons, and rolls for his Day Job on the lengthy table of options.
Jeanette SomersLevel 1 NinjaDay Job: MechanicArmour Class: 12 Hit Points: 10Stealth 14 (+1) Wisdom 12 (+0) Offence 15 (+1) Respect 13 (+1) Discipline 16 (+2) Z-Force 16 (+2)Weapons: Bo Staff, ShurikenUnarmed Strike: +1/1d4+1 Damage 
Mechanically, Ninja City uses the rules from the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, but with a tweak or two designed to make it cinematic. First, a Ninja can use Force of Tiger, Force of Monkey, and Force of Butterfly to do amazing things, each of which costs a point of Z-Force. Force of Tiger grants access to the Fighter Class’ Mighty Deed of Arms; Force of Monkey enables a Ninja to climb sheer surfaces and leap over obstacles; and Force of Butterfly lets him descend falls in freefall. A Ninja can inflict greater damage in unarmed combat, even a single point of damage if he misses in combat!

Kuji-In are powerful Hand Seals which require hand signals and concentration which also require Z-Force points to use. Ten Kuji-In Hand Seals are listed, each the equivalent of a spell—Cleric or Wizard—from the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. For example, Rin or Strength is the equivalent of the Blessing spell and Retsu or Control of Time and Space has the same effect of the Sleep spell. Once expended, Z-Force can be recovered after a full day’s meditation. Ninja are also notoriously hard to kill. In fact, they cannot truly die and if a Ninja’s Hit Points are reduced to zero, another Ninja can share his Hit Points, binding the two together, meaning they share damage taken; ‘Embrace the Darkness’ and recover, but remain in danger of turning to the dark side and attacking his fellow Ninja; and even have his energy transferred into an item or be dispersed into the universe. The first option means that the player can continue playing his Ninja as a possessed item or weapon, whilst the second allows him to play his Ninja as a ghost!
Tables also enable the players to roll for their Sensei—including a Sewer Dwelling Mutant, and Hideout, such as a Movie Rental Shop or a Fireworks Shop. For the Game Master there are stats descriptions given for a variety of Bad Dudez, such as Rival Ninja, Karate Fighters, Renegades, and more, as well as suggestions for the contraband they might be dealing in. Put the entries on these two tables together and the Game Master has a ready set of mission hooks. Advice for the Game Master takes the form of a basic framework, very much based on the Ninja movies which inspire Ninja City. This all comes together in ‘Rise of the Cyborgs’, which takes up a third of the fanzine. The Ninjas’ hometown is beset by a rash of crime carried out by the Aviators mercenary crime gang, backed up with Cyborgs. Where are the Cyborgs coming from and who are the Aviators working for? ‘Rise of the Cyborgs’ includes a large map of the antagonists’ base of operations and is a decent adventure which can be played in a single session, so perhaps could be run as a convention scenario, but should take no more than two sessions to play through.
Physically, Ninja City is decently written and illustrated with a mix of artwork, some of it cartoonish, some of it quite decent. If Ninja City is missing anything, it is a bibliography of inspiration for the fanzine. In fact, the map from the ‘Rise of the Cyborgs’ could easily have been shrunk to a single page and the space used for such a bibliography.
As written, Ninja City deserves some expansion. In addition to the bibliography, it would have been nice for Ninja City to have included the description of a town in the thrall of multiple gangs and criminal organisations, a sort of ‘crime sandbox’ for the Ninja to investigate and take down crook by crook. Essentially, an actual ‘Ninja City’ for the Player Characters to make their own. That could have easily been included without breaking the limits or page count of the fanzine format.
Ninja City is a fun little option for an alternate campaign for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. As presented, it will provide a gaming group with a session or two of cheesy chop-socky action, but the Game Master will need to develop a lot more if the group wants to keep on playing.

A preamble on the enclosure backstories: Not all of Earth’s monsters were myths, and not all of them remained on Earth when they had the opportunity to escape. Of all of the great menaces from humanity’s distant past, a few … Continue reading →

A preamble on the enclosure backstories: A standard physics thought experiment: the gravity well around a black hole is so tremendous that matter or energy cannot escape, but information could possibly escape. The unspoken implication: what kind of information? Merely … Continue reading →

My family finished watching the Amazon Prime series "The Legend of Vox Machina" from Critical Role and honestly it was a lot of fun.

It was funny, exciting, and really just a lot of great gamer humor without feeling like gamer humor.

A big problem I have with most gamer-related fiction is you can often, as I say, "hear the dice rolling in the background."  Not so with this.  Yes there are the expected name drops, the occasional mention of a power (Grog wanting to "rage") or a spell (Keyleth saying she can only do that one once a day) but that all took a backseat to what makes any bit of fiction good; good story and characters you can care about.

I have not listened to any of the Critical Role episodes, but my oldest LOVES them.  So we backed the Kickstarter and honestly, we have been very pleased.  He let me know later how the animated series differs from the actual play episodes.  So now I do want to go back to those older Campaign One episodes and listen to them all.

Also not since the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon has D&D seen this much success in a televised medium.  Amazon already renewed it for a second season before season one even premiered.

It has met with critical success, including a 100% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and a 94% audience score. 

Whether you are a fan or not one thing is certain, Critical Role is one of D&D greatest achievements in terms of getting more people interested in our little game.  Born out of an odd combination of Pathfinder and D&D 5 the World of Tal'dorei has also seen quite a bit of success in the D&D 5 printed world with three (soon to be four) books.

In addition to the series, the actual play episodes, and the gaming material there are comic books, action figures, clothes, and gear.  There is even a 1/6th scale statue of the characters Vex and Vax from Vox Machina coming out.  You know for a fact if there were statues of Keyleth and Jester coming out they would never be able to keep them in stock. Yes even at the nearly $200 price tag.

When was the last time one of your campaigns did all of that?  Ok. I do have 1/6th scale versions of two of my own iconic witches. No, I am not going to share how much I spent on them.

So the show was a lot of fun, maybe a touch adult for some, a lot of swearing some nudity, lots of gore. But seriously, does no one remember gaming when they were 14? 

I wish them the best of luck and hope for their continued success. 

I have been reading more of the late Jason Zavoda's posts about his "Blackmoor Land of a Thousand Witches" and I have wanted to do something with that.  This got me thinking about some ideas I had had for 4e Blackmoor.  Which then got me thinking about my world in a larger sense and how Blackmoor really is the keystone of my Mystorerth world.  

Even before I adopted James Mischler's name for it I was playing in a combined Msytara/Oerth world (and I kinda regret not calling Oestara now).   My world was Mystara/The Know World, my DM's was Oerth Greyhawk.  The central common feature was Blackmoor.

But what even *IS* Blackmoor in my world now?

It has always been some sort of Shangri-La like place of High Magic and High Tech in the Mystara books and place of post-apocalyptic destruction in Greyhawk. 

So I am going back to the sources, the original Blackmoor.

I read on good ole Wikipedia (the unofficial Splat Book for every RPG) that the original Blackmoor campaign setting "include(ed) ideas from The Lord of the Rings and Dark Shadows and applied the Fantasy Supplement rules from the Chainmail game." That sounds like my games!

I also went the best Blackmoor sources on the net, Havard's Blackmoor Blog and the Blackmoor Archives.

To be blunt there is an absolute ton of material in both of those sites to keep me busy for weeks.  But there are a few key points there AND I have Harvard and fellow Mystoerth enthusiast Mathew Fenn to thank.

So I don't need to connect Mystara Blackmoor to Greyhawk Blackmoor physically because they are the same place separated by time.   Harvard tells us that MBlackmoor is set "4000 years in Mystara's past."  For me that means there are two Blackmoors indeed.  Same location, but somehow when their magic-tech devices exploded it trapped a bubble of Blackmoor in time (-3426 CY to be exact) so the PCs can still get to it if they know how.    In this respect Blackmoor become my Atlantis, or at least the Atlantis like the one depicted in the Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee) story The Time Monster.

I have always wanted an Atlantis.  A mythical land/realm destroyed by a cataclysm, maybe one wrought by hubris, BUT there also be enough survivors so we know what the tale is/was.  My version of Mystara's "Known World" has so many different sorts of people living in it because they are the descendants of refugees of the Blackmoor explosion. 

I'd also like to learn more about what sort of "Gothic Horror" and "Dark Shadows" elements were part of the original Blackmoor.  I am not sure that Dark Shadows fits in well with "magic-tech superpower" but it would with the post-apoc Greyhawk-era Blackmoor.  

Blackmoor today is more like what the Greyhawk Gazeteers say it is.  But I also want to add bits of Hyperborea to my version of Blackmoor for that full post-apocalyptic feel and justify high powered magic tech still existing.  Hyperborea's Atlanteans might be what I need to complete this picture.

In any case I do have a lot of reading to do and figuring out what it all means for my world.

So. What DO I know? Well in no particular order.

• Blackmoor is north.  For the Flanaess it is about as far north as you can go before reaching the Black Ice.  
• The Black Ice is black because Blackmoor blew up. 
• Prior to the explosion Blackmoor was a cosmopolitan utopia. All the races lived and visited here in seeming harmony (there was still tensions here so not all wine and roses) and art, science, and magic were celebrated.  I want it's past to be "far too good to be true" but in fact true.  That is the tragedy of Blackmoor. 
• The differences between the Mystara map of Blackmoor and the Greyhawk version is due to this explosion.
• I am reversing the names of the sea near Blackmoor.  In the past is was known as the "Icy Sea" now it is called the "Black Sea" and it actually black and full of weird mutated sea creatures.
• If there was ever an "Innsmouth" for my world it is here.
• There WILL be ways to travel back in time (or outside of time) to Old Blackmoor.  This will be my chance to pull out some time travel ideas and break my "no time travel in D&D" rule.  In fact it should be the focus of an adventure at some point. 
• Blackmoor of today is considered to be a haunted and desolate land.  The tales of Blackmoor's rise and then destruction are akin to our tales of Atlantis.
• "Not since Blackmoor" is a saying meaning a very, very long time ago. 
• The land is filled with random magic effects and other strangeness.  The barrier between realms is the weakest here.  So this is also where eldritch horrors are most likely to appear. 
• I might try to use the "Temple of the Frog" in some manner, obviously I am going to use this as a cult center of Tsathoggua.  I would change many elements of the adventure, but certainly go with the maps and some of the science fantasy elements.
• I still have to reckon my "Monks come from Blackmoor" notion.  Like I said then these might be psychic ascetics cut from the 70's occult revival cloth.  That would fit with the idea that monks were introduced in the Blackmoor supplement and the Mystics from the D&D Basic/BECMI/RC line. I need a good psychic mystic class to cover them. I have written a bit on Mystics[1][2][3] in the past, so I am sure there is something more I can do with that. 

Obviously I have a lot to consider here. And a lot more to read about before I could come up with any sort of good idea.  My ultimate goal here was to myself to a point where I could talk about Jason Zavoda's "Blackmoor Land of a Thousand Witches" but I am not even close to that yet.  But I can at least see the road map from here.

Links

• The Blackmoor Archives
• Vaults of Pandius
• Using Blackmoor in your Mystara Campaign
• Harvard's Blackmoor Blog
• How Blackmoor ended up in Mystara
• The Last Days of Blackmoor
• Blackmoor 2000
• Using Blackmoor in Your Mystara Campaign (and Greyhawk!)
• Mystoerth discussion
• Building Mystoerth
• Blackmoor map integrated into Greyhawk  (map)
• Mapping Greyhawk on Blackmoor
• Post-Apocalyse Blackmoor

I posted this elsewhere, but I am super busy at work today.  So here it is here.

I get it. Books and Game PDFs are expensive and everyone is on a much tighter budget these days. SO to that end, if you want one of my PDFs and can't afford it just ASK ME. I'll likely send it along with a couple more to spare.

Maybe at least say somewhere that you thought it was cool/fun/informative or made you sick to your stomach, whatever. But at least ask, the worst thing that can happen is I'll say no (which leaves you where you were) or I say yes and you have a new PDF.

It's a Presidents' Day Monstrous Monday.  I am continuing my dive into the AD&D 2nd Edition Monstrous Compendiums.  Today I want to talk about the next three that were important to me in terms of what I call the "core" of the AD&D 2nd Ed monsters.   

It is a commonly held belief that during the AD&D 2nd Ed era that settings were at their height.  The remaining Monstrous Compendiums focused on these settings.  For me it was a perfect systems really.  I could keep monsters in with my core rules, like I did with Greyhawk, Dragonlance and Mystara. Or keep them with my boxed sets of campaigns, like I did with all my Ravenloft stuff.  So let's go with the ones I integrated (to the best I could) into my core set.

MC4 Monstrous Compendium Dragonlance Appendix

Ok, this one bugged me at first. I bought it and it said Draonlance Appendix on the front even though it was the second two-ring binder.  I didn't play Dragonlance, I was doing Greyhawk and would soon be eyeballs deep in Ravenloft.   My irritations were put to rest when I opened and the cover, while having the same art, just said Monstrous Compendium Vol. 2.   For a while I used both alphabetically, vol 1 with A through M and vol 2 holding N to Z and the tables and blank forms.  Today I use vol 1 for my core monsters and vol 2 for everything else.

Dragonlance falls into "everything else" for me.  The monsters are good, and many that have made their way back into my core monsters.

The PDF from DriveThruRPG is 96 pages, 82 monsters and at a price of $4.99. The monsters range from "Anemone, Giant" to "Yeti-kin, Saqualaminoi."  It covers all the various races of Krynn including the various types of dwarves, all the different kinds of elves, the kender and Dragonlance's lizard men and minotaurs. It was the first to include the Death Knight and Skeleton Warriors, though I always felt they belonged in Greyhawk. Certainly worth it for the Draconians and tips on Dragonlance's dragons which help redefine dragons in D&D in the first place. 

The cover of the PDF is a little dark, but the pages inside are sharp and clear.

MC5 Monstrous Compendium Greyhawk Adventures Appendix

Personally I always felt that Greyhawk should have had a Monstrous Compendium long before the others, but I can see why it came out when it did, given all that history.  The Greyhawk Adventures book for 1st Edition had a "preview" of monsters in 2nd Edition format. I remember being quite excited about this and really liking the new stat block even though it was much larger than before.

More so than the other MC Appendices, I tried to integrate these monsters as much as I could into my "core" Monstrous Compendium.  To me Greyhawk was the "home world" of D&D.

The PDF from DriveThruRPG is 64 pages, runs $4.99, and includes 63 monsters; Beastman to Zygom.

Many of these monsters have their origins in the AD&D 1st ed modules and Fiend Folio, but there are few others here from the Monster Manaual II.  The only creatures here that really saw "Greyhawk" to me are the Grell, Greyhawk Dragon, the Sword Wraiths and the Drowned Zombies.  There are some here that are more generic like the hobgoblin (how did that one only make it in in MC5?? Corrected. Hobs are in the core set. Hobgoblin, Norkers are in this set!)

Monstrous Compendium - Mystara Appendix

First Edition was all about Greyhawk. Second edition was synomous with Ravenloft for me.  But Mystara, or before that name, the Known World was where my gaming began.  So the Mystara Appendix for the Monstrous Compendium was one of my "core" core sets.  

The Mystara appendix take a few diversions from the other core world sets.  For starters this one is 128 pages and $9.99 on DriveThruRPG now.  It is also full color, a indication of the change of publishing style at TSR.   This book was also published as a standalone softcover, perfect bound, book.  It seems that by 1994 the loose-leaf era was indeed over.

The PDF though does allow you to go back to that era and print the monsters out as you like.

This set has 174 monsters from Actaeon to Zombie, Lightning.  Many of the old favorites from the B/X and BECMI days are here too.  Living Statues, Kopru, Decapus and the Thoul are all here in their 2nd Edition glory as well as many of the Gem Stone Dragons.

If you were/are a fan of the D&D Creature Catalogs then this really is a must buy. I find it interesting that this Compendium came out just a year after the DMR2 Creature Catalog.  I'd have to go through them page by page to see if there are any differences in the monsters presented, but they feel very much alike. 

The DriveThruRPG scanned PDF is very bright and clear. I would love to see this as a print-on-demand some day. 

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 a Five Go Mad in Egypt, Return of the Ripper, Rise of the Dead, Rise of the Dead II: The Raid, and more...

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

—oOo—
Name: The Curse of Black Teeth KeetesPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Perry Grosshans

Setting: An island off Kingsport, New England (Lovecraft Country) for Pulp Cthulhu: Two-fisted Action and Adventure Against the Mythos in the Desperate Decade of the nineteen thirties.
Product: Scenario
What You Get: Twenty-Eight page, 2.27 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Pirates of the Caribbean meets The Goonies off Lovecraft Country.Plot Hook: A friend has gone missing on a mysterious island off the New England coast.Plot Support: Detailed plot, staging advice for the Keeper, seven handouts, three maps, two NPCs, one Mythos entity, Zombie Pirates, and thirty Dimensional Shamblers.Production Values: Decent.
Pros# Pirates and/or zombies on a ghost island!# Can be run with Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, but better suited to Pulp Cthulhu: Two-fisted Action and Adventure Against the Mythos# Easy to adjust Cthulhu by Gaslight or the here and now# Easy to set off other coasts# Solid, straightforward plot# Very useful staging advice# Excellent illustrations# Good one-shot or convention scenario
Cons# Needs an edit in places# Potential for too much combat# Finale needs careful stanging# Minor Mythos details may not always match
Conclusion# Detailed Pulp one-shot with potential Zombie Squad Action
# Pirates Zombies on a ghost island! (Is that not enough for you?)