What marks Tome of Terror: Transylvania—as well as the rest of The StoryMaster’s Tales series—as being different is that it a solo adventure book best played by more than one player and that each and every scene in its story contains a QR code. Scan this and click on the link and the reader will automatically be taken to the narration for the location, which provides a description, some possible actions, and some suitably ominous music. It certainly ups the atmosphere as the stalwart heroes set out to investigate tales of vampires, werewolves, ghosts, and other monsters in the lands of Transylvania and the castle itself. It consists of some fifty locations, comes with four pre-generated Investigators, a means for a player to create his own, maps—some blanks so that the adventures can be played again, a list of potential rewards, and its own neat twist on the dice on the page flipping mechanic. Tome of Terror: Transylvania is inspired by the classics of the genre such as Dracula and Frankenstein, as well as the Hammer Horror films, and so takes place sometime in the nineteenth century.

Published by StoryMaster’s Tales, Tome of Terror: Transylvania is intended to be played by between one and five players—preferably the latter—aged seven and over. Given its subject matter and the text-heavy format, with younger players, more mature players will be required to play alongside them, perhaps with an adult as StoryMaster. Thus, Tome of Terror: Transylvania can be played as a family game.
An Investigator in Tome of Terror: Transylvania has a Name, Occupation—either Author, Explorer, Priest, and Professor, and several attributes. These include Fighting Skill, Supernatural Insight, Fortune, Study Level, Reflex, Health, and LEU. Of these, LEU is a currency which can be spent during the Investigators’ enquires; Reflex is his dexterity; Study Level is his concentration and curiosity; Fortune his luck; Supernatural Sight his capacity to see and face the forces of the unnatural. Alternatively, a player can create his own. If he does so, he sets his Health at ten and Fortune at four, and then divides ten points between Fighting Skill, Supernatural Insight, Study Level, and Reflex. LEU is also randomly determined. He is also free to decide upon his Investigator’s Occupation rather than adhere to those of the given four. These four include a priest drawn to investigate the supernatural, an authoress in search of authentic background for her next novel, a professor in search of an old student—one Victor Frankenstein, and an explorer in search of the strange, the exotic, and adventure.
Mechanically, Tome of Terror: Transylvania uses a four-sided die and a six-sided die. It does not use a simple type of roll, varying depending upon the situation. Sometimes a player will be asked to roll equal to or under a given attribute on a six-sided die. Combat though, requires a player to roll a six-sided die and add his Fighting Skill, the aim to roll higher than the opposing roll made by the StoryMaster. Whomever loses the roll also loses a point of Health and if the latter is reduced to zero, the combatant is dead. Weapons add to a combatant’s Fighting Skill. When fighting against supernatural creatures, a player adds his Investigator’s Fighting Skill and Supernatural Insight to get his attack total. Group attacks, whether by the Investigators co-operating together or the Investigators and their companions, are done with everyone taking it in turns to attack. Lastly, if the Investigators want to flee a fight, then they can do so, but will lose a point of Health in the process. At other times, a four-sided die is rolled to determine a random outcome and Fortune can be gained and lost throughout the story. So simple enough, but not immediately obvious or easy to grasp, although it is clear that the author is trying to make Tome of Terror: Transylvania easy to run.
Alternatively, an eight-sided die and a ten-sided die can be used instead of the four-sided die and the six-sided die if the players want to make Tome of Terror: Transylvania more challenging. If the players lack dice, a player can instead flick through the pages with his thumb and when he stops at a page, the numbers on the dice immediately above where his thumb is on the page, those are his die results. There are seven combinations of four-sided dice and six-sided dice on each and every page, which provides numerous combinations and plenty of random results.

So how does Tome of Terror: Transylvania play? Although it can be played solo, it is really designed to be played by five participants, one of whom takes the role of the StoryMaster. Essentially then, he takes the role of the Game Master. The other players take the role of the Investigators. Then everyone picks a Tale from the four included in the book. These are ‘Horror of the Vampire’, ‘Mark of the Werewolf’, ‘Curse of Frankenstein’, and ‘Spirits of the Dead’. Each of these presents the players and their Investigators with an objective and a reward, and after this is read out, the story proper begins at the Tavern. Each of the fifty entries in Tome of Terror: Transylvania is several pages long, varying in length between two and six pages. Each has its own illustration, introduction in bold (which matches that of its narration) and then four options. For example, “Ask for something to drink”, “See what there is to eat”, “Talk to a local”, and “Search the tavern”. Each of the four entries is then greatly expanded depending upon what the Investigators are attempting to do. The players are free to choose which options they want, though no more than two options chosen per encounter. The combination of this and the multiple tales means that the Tome of Terror: Transylvania can be played more than once.
Of course, Tome of Terror: Transylvania is intended to be dramatic, and the author actually performs many of these tales as the StoryMaster. The StoryMaster in Tome of Terror: Transylvania is encouraged to make the ending of each tale as dramatic as possible, to put on a performance, and to be fair, a certain degree of performance is required, since there is a lot of text to go through and present.
Physically, Tome of Terror: Transylvania starts poorly, but gets better. The initial explanation and set-up, and the explanation of rules, could all be more clearly presented for ease of play. However, once the tale starts, the writing improves as the author is clearly enjoying himself. The artwork and the maps are all good, and like the writing, the layout of the various entries is far better than that of the first part of the book.
Mechanically, Tome of Terror: Transylvania is simple, but as simple as the rules are, they are also messy and could have been more consistent. Put that aside, they are simple enough to use and they are simple to impart to players not used to roleplaying. Where Tome of Terror: Transylvania shines is in the tales themselves and the exploration of Transylvania and the revelation of its horrors. Unlike other solo adventure books, Tome of Terror: Transylvania really deserves a participating audience and a Storymaster who can ham it up!

You all know I am a huge music fan AND I am a huge fan of Netflix's Stranger Things.

So in celebration of Season 4 here are some songs great for fighting monsters.

These would be the songs on my playlist 1986 that is for sure. Where would I have been on a Friday in July in 1986? Playing AD&D of course!

We need to start with the biggest comeback hit ever. Kate Bush's (who was already a D&D meme) Running up That Hill.

Seriously, could not have happened to a better person.

I grew up in the 80s. I played AD&D. I listened to metal. So I relate to Eddie Munson. I KNEW Eddie Munson, or at least people that had aspects of him.  I thought his "and that is why we play." line about D&D was going to be his signature line.  

No.

His "Chrissy. This is for you." got me where I live.  If "Running Up That Hill" was the song for Part 1, then "Master of Puppets" owns Part 2.

To quote Dustin, "Dude. Most. Metal. Ever!"

Another song from the time, Journey's Seperate Ways, got a spooky sounding remix.  

This isn't a song about two people drifting apart as much as it is now a song about our heroes all fighting their own personal battles.

It is really difficult to express how much "classic rock" was part of the 80s, especially in middle America. I mean think about what was popular vs. to what you were listening too.  For me 1986 was a combination of The Police (who had promised us new songs in 86), Dire Straits, Peter Gabriel, to Beastie Boys, Run DMC, as well as Pink Floyd, The Who, and Joe Walsh. So seeing a couple of classic rock songs make the series feels right.

Now we have to wait nearly two years until the next and final season. The ending credits left us with none other than the transcendent Siouxsie Sioux and The Banshees' "Spellbound."

It’s the beginning of July, which means three things in Dallas: it’s painfully hot, it’s painfully sunny, and nobody will be able to shut up about it until mid-September. The next Triffid Ranch runs on July 9 from noon until … Continue reading →

Released just in time for Independence Day on July 4th—thanks Asmodee (UK)—2022 Valentine’s Day Module: Love in the Age of Gongfarmers is an adventure for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, the first released specifically for Valentine’s Day. Well, there is always 2023 if a Judge wants to run it on Valentine’s Day… Published by Goodman Games, it is a short, love and romance-themed adventure designed to be played by between four and six Player Characters of Second Level. Originally conceived and performed as ‘The Lost Heart of Valentinus in the Funnel Love” for Spawn of Cyclops Con 2021 with the winners of the ‘Love in the Age of Gongfarmers’ contest, it is mostly a puzzle adventure which will see the Player Characters encounter candy heart puzzles, feral fluffees, and other obstacles. However, given the love and romance theme of the scenario, it should be no surprise that it does touch upon the issue of consent. Although thematically appropriate, it is only a very minor part of the scenario, and the Judge is advised to consider her players’ comfort levels when portraying this in game. Another issue perhaps is that scenario has the potential to be bawdy in tone and when combined with the albeit minor issue of consent, 2022 Valentine’s Day Module: Love in the Age of Gongfarmers is probably best suited for mature players.
2022 Valentine’s Day Module: Love in the Age of Gongfarmers takes place at the Festival of Markhall, the demi-god of courtly love, inspirational messages, and mischief, the town of Terni. The scenario begins with the rather gruesome milking of some giant beavers or ‘gicastors’ for their musk before that musk is used as part of a big game well, ‘kiss-chase’. Thankfully the Player Characters only participate in the latter rather than the former and there are benefits in doing so—although only minor and only whilst they keep the romantic partners they gained during the fertility festival alive. There is potential here for the Judge to create some entertaining personalities that the Player Characters can encounter during this game, and it is perhaps a pity that the adventure does not include any. The scenario proper kicks off when the festival is interrupted. First when the now musk-less gicastors break free and go on the rampage and then wailing coming from, wait for it… the Funnel of Love.

The Funnel of Love is the main adventure site in 2022 Valentine’s Day Module: Love in the Age of Gongfarmers. Its title parodies two things. First, the amusement park ride consisting of a dark, narrow, covered passageway through which small cars or boats are mechanically conveyed, usually frequented by couples for romantic encounters. Second, the classic Character Funnel, one of the features of both the Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game and the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game—in which initially, a player is expected to roll up three or four Level Zero characters and have them play through a generally nasty, deadly adventure, which surviving will prove a challenge. Those that do survive receive enough Experience Points to advance to First Level and gain all of the advantages of their Class. Now obviously, being for Second Level Player Characters, 2022 Valentine’s Day Module: Love in the Age of Gongfarmers is not a Character Funnel, but taking place in tunnel it is linear.

The source of the wailing is a young woman crouching over the body of a young cleric and would be partner. Devoted to a rival god, the young cleric has offended Markhall and so the vengeful deity has not only ripped out the cleric’s heart, but replaced it with a now blood-soaked mechanical bear who must constantly pump the organ to keep him alive! The clues all point to the Funnel of Love and so the Player Characters need to ride the boat through the tunnel, accompanied by both of the distraught lovers—including the clue-bearing heart-pumping bear. Here the love theme swings into high action. There are encounters with love bugs, a lovelorn bard called Ophelia who really wants to be sung to (and the Judge is encouraged to have the players sing rather than their characters), a giant chocolate bunny, and more. All of these encounters are nicely detailed and include staging advice, which is very necessary because for the most part, the encounters are puzzles to be solved. They can be defeated though force of arms, but the non-combat solutions are both far more inventive and fun than merely swinging a sword at the problem. Along the way, the Player Characters will find clues as to the nature of the adventure’s ‘End of Level’ boss and how to more easily defeat him. This includes various types of Cupid’s Arrows, which along with the cherub’s wee bow form the major treasure in 2022 Valentine’s Day Module: Love in the Age of Gongfarmers.

Physically, 2022 Valentine’s Day Module: Love in the Age of Gongfarmers is as decently done as you would expect for a title for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game. It is lightly illustrated in a cheesy style and the map fine. It needs a slight edit in places, but is otherwise easy to read.

2022 Valentine’s Day Module: Love in the Age of Gongfarmers is linear in structure, which should be no surprise that the bulk of it takes place in a ‘Funnel of Love’. It also expects both the Judge and her players to buy into a theme that not everyone will necessarily be comfortable with and together with the comedic elements of story and encounters, it means that not everyone will be comfortable with playing 2022 Valentine’s Day Module: Love in the Age of Gongfarmers and it is not necessarily suitable as an addition to a campaign. However, as a fun, love-themed one-shot 2022 Valentine’s Day Module: Love in the Age of Gongfarmers is great for a single session in between other games or campaigns.

I like Podcasts. I can't keep up with all of them out there, but I do enjoy them and you get a different feel from them than you get from say a blog post.

Here is one of my new favorites.

Wobblies & Wizards

Run by Shane Thayer aka Logar the Barbarian. It is an old-school, new-school, and all-around cool geek-based podcast.

If anything he leans more into old-school and the OSR scene, but that is a matter of these are the game he enjoys. You certainly get the vibe here that all games are welcome AND all gamers are welcome.

I was on (should be up soon) and we spent time talking about The Misfits and Black Flag. He has some great OSE content, Satanic Panic, and talks a lot about world-building.

Really worth checking out. Give him a listen and follow him on social media.

https://anchor.fm/wobbliesandwizards

https://twitter.com/LogarHailCrom

https://www.facebook.com/wobbliesandwizards

https://www.patreon.com/wobbliesandwizards

A ‘Fantasy Heartbreaker’ is a roleplaying game designed to emulate all that is good in another roleplaying game, but fixing all that is bad in said roleplaying game. Originally the term applied to the number of roleplaying games published in the wake of Dungeons & Dragons which all wanted to be better than Dungeons & Dragons. In DIE Vol. 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker takes the fantasy of Dungeons & Dragons and oh so many other fantasy roleplaying games and breaks both it and our hearts—and the hearts of his protagonists. DIE tells the story of six teenagers who back in the nineties played fantasy roleplaying games and when they were sixteen, on the night of one character’s sixteenth birthday they disappeared. When they returned, there were only five of them and one of them was missing her arm, and none of could talk about what happened. Twenty-five years later and they are adults, coping with adult life and still coping with the trauma of what happened to them in the past when they were missing. Then one of their number—the one on whose sixteenth birthday the roleplaying game session they were playing when they disappeared took place—receives a die on his birthday. A bloodied die. Together they know it can help them search for some answers, and perhaps heal some of their trauma. Yet it means going back to the game they were playing twenty-five years before, revisiting their youths, knowing the terrible truth is that it was never a game, it was real.

DIE Vol. 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker is written by Kieron Gillon, best known for Wicked + The Devine, and published by Image Comics. It is inspired by asking the question, “What happened to the children who were lost in the fantasy world of the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon when they got home?” Whilst the cartoon never got to answer that question, Gillon does with DIE Vol. 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker, which takes the basis of stories such as the Chronicles of Narnia, that of children visiting a fantasy world, and updates them via the vehicle of roleplaying games to ask what happens if a world created by children through their consensual roleplaying was one where they were ready to suffer the consequences of their immature actions, even though their characters were adults? What if they had to go back to that world not only to face the traumas of their past experiences, but also the traumas their actions inflicted upon that world? And traumatised they are… Ash because he took his sister, Angela, to the game to keep her happy and did not have to. Angela, who as a Cyberpunk—in a fantasy setting!—gained her powers through faerie gold, and who must constantly find more to buy her powers, all but making her addicted to gold, and who returned to our reality without her cyberarm or her actual arm. Isabelle, able to summon and call upon the power of the gods like some kind of reverse demonologist, always with a price to pay. Matthew, already heartbroken over the loss of his mother, uses the tragedy to become a mighty Grief-Knight, but in reliving memories over and over again, is literally grief-stricken, to the point where it takes Ash as the Dictator to force him to use them. And even as they return to the fantasy world of their creation to try and heal the trauma of the past, they have something to lose—the lives they have led, and the relationships created in years since their return from their original visit. Which would exacerbate the ordeals they have already suffered…

DIE Vol. 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker is horror-fantasy rather than fantasy. It approaches the latter genre and roleplaying from a different angle, subverting both as well as pulling the rug out from under that sense of nostalgia that so many of us have for the roleplaying games and the time spent roleplaying in their youth. Just as the story forces the protagonists to revisit their past and the consequences of their actions, it is asking the reader to do that same, to think about back to their youth. Yet this does not wholly work unless the reader really is a roleplayer, since the language and the nostalgia of DIE Vol. 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker is very much that of roleplaying and even though the language and ideas behind roleplaying have become vastly more prevalent in the last decade, they are not necessarily familiar to every reader—and certainly not necessarily as familiar as Kieron Gillon is with them. This comes through in the dice assigned to protagonists and their roles in the world, explored in more detail in the essays reprinted at the end of DIE Vol. 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker, of the subtle shift in gender identity of the protagonist (something that roleplaying has always possessed scope for), and of subverting the tropes of the genre. The essays are fascinating reads, exploring in turn the author’s own history with roleplaying and how that influences the story of DIE Vol. 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker, how roleplaying design and theory influences the story, and lastly, the design of a roleplaying game based around the story. These are fascinating companion pieces to the story itself and once it is released to the forthcoming roleplaying game from Rowan, Rook, and Decard.

Of couse, DIE Vol. 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker is a comic book and Stephanie Hans’ artwork is simply gorgeous, switching from the dark tones of both the past and the now to the bright, sunlight lands of the fantasy and the often-fiery nature of combat. So much of the sense of loss and trauma and the emotion of the characters is conveyed through her artwork, whilst at the same time depicting the magic and the wonder of the world that the players and their characters in DIE Vol. 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker create. In addition, DIE Vol. 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker includes her alternate issue covers and many of the character designs. Without her artwork, the story is underwritten in places and the speed at which it is told does undermine the intended emotional impact.

DIE Vol. 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker is not a comic book that will be readily accessible to anyone not steeped in roleplaying or roleplaying lore. Yet there is a powerful sense of anguish and regret that any reader will grasp in its story, let alone the sense of nostalgia misplaced. Where they intersect with roleplaying and roleplaying culture is where the story comes alive and even were there not a forthcoming roleplaying book, DIE Vol. 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker is a story that will be enjoyed and appreciated by many in the roleplaying hobby.

Drive-by today. I backed the Call of Cthulhu Kickstarter a while back and received my books in the mail a few days ago.

I am rather pleased with what I got to be honest.

The box is thick and sturdy.

There is enough material here for a life-time of play.

It also works nicely with my leather Anniversary edition from a couple years back.  

The dice that came with the boxed set even match my leather edition.

This works out well for me.  My son is all about Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition. He has a ton of material for that. I get all the pre-6th edition material.  Sure they are still largely compatible, but it makes for a nice cut.  Plus this is the edition I like to play Cthulhu by Gaslight with.

I can't believe it is July already.  I don't have an overall theme for this month except to get to some games I have wanted to try out.  Not sure if those will be reviews, play reports, or characters.  Maybe a little bit of all the above.

Other updates.

Posting might be light here for a bit. My oldest sister Terrie passed away due to an aggressive glioblastoma. She had already lived longer than the doctors had given her.  I am ok (ish) but I feel bad for her kids and her husband tom.  I also feel sad for my dad and my oldest brother Pat. My older brother Mike died about 10 years ago. He, Terrie, and Pat were all closer in age and very close. Now there is just Pat.  Not sure when the service will be.

Brannans Christmas 1979.
Sadly everyone in the top row except for my oldest brother Pat (beard, glasses) are now gone.

I have some projects I really must get done.  My creativity has been in a serious lull and I need to figure out how to get those ideas flowing again.

I have a thing coming up for Halloween I am excited about. I have picked out a lot of "good" horror movies for my October Horror Movie marathon.  I will also participate in Dave Chapman's #RPGaDay for 2022.

Let's see where the month takes us.

As quite a few artists have impressed upon me in the past, there’s “finished” and there’s complete. In the past seven years since signing the original lease on the old space, the Triffid Ranch gallery has never been complete, as … Continue reading →

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

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

—oOo—
Name: Cat’s CradlePublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Aaron Sinner, Todd Walden, and Christopher Olson

Setting: Jazz Age BostonProduct: Scenario
What You Get: Fifty-four page, 31.62 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Suffer the little children’s wrathPlot Hook: Nightmares linger in the wake of your descent into the Corbitt house. 
Plot Support: Staging advice and two Keeper aids, twenty-four handouts, four new spells or spell variants, three NPCs, and one Mythos creature.Production Values: Decent.
Pros# Sequel to The Haunting# Deep investigative dive into the backstory to The Haunting
# Advice on making the horror personal# Advice for the Keeper to run Cat’s Cradle with other sequels to The Haunting.# Focused investigative sequel# Creepy, creepy children
Cons# Needs an edit# Scenario does involve children# Better aids for the Keeper than handouts for the players?# Photographic anachronisms?
# Good clue links to locations, but not from locations# Better sequel than standalone scenario

Conclusion# Solid sequel to a classic scenario, The Haunting, which both explores the backstory to the scenario and personalises the consequences of the Investigators’ actions in the Corbitt house.# Creepy, creepy children should leave the Investigators with paedophobia

A few months back I went through a number of the AD&D 2nd ed Monstrous Compendiums and talked about the advantages and disadvantages it had over the 1st ed Monster Manual. Also at the time, I mentioned the design choices made that also separated them from their 1st edition counterparts. 

Since today is the 4th of the month, I figure it is a good time to talk about the Fourth Edition Monster Manuals and what also made them special.  

To begin with, I was and am a fan of 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons. I know it was not everyone's favorite edition, to put it mildly, but there are some really great things about it.  For starters, I applaud the design team for daring to try something new and different with the D&D game. Of course, most fans don't want new. They want the same thing, but even for the open-minded D&D 4 was a bridge too far.  Secondly, D&D 4 was a masterwork of modular design. You could take out and move around sections of it as you needed.  Yes, everything worked together, but many of the pieces could be swapped out for other pieces.  This design notion extended to the layout of the books. Nowhere is this better seen than with the Monster Manuals.

To me it seemed that 4th edition took the design elements that had made the Monstrous Compendiums successful; namely one monster per page, and all sorts of information on the monster's habitat, environment, and variations.  It is also one of the main reasons I still keep my 4th edition monster books. There is so much information here that I have been using them to inform details in my 5th edition game. 

In all cases here, I am considering my hardcover books and the PDFs from DriveThruRPG.

Monster Manual for D&D 4e

Hardcover and PDF. Color covers, full-color interior art. 288 pages.

This was the third book published for D&D 4th edition, though that is a mere technicality since all books were published at the same time in June of 2008. I picked mine up as a boxed set at the midnight release.

Much like AD&D second edition, the monsters for D&D 4th edition are presented as one page per monster. More or less. Sometimes the monster runs two or four pages, but always a complete page.  Where 3e had monsters built exactly like characters, 4e monsters have their own rules, much like how 1st and 2nd Ed built them. 

Fourth Edition was most certainly a "miniatures" game or, as it was hoped, to have a lot of online support and content. That did not materialize in the way Wizards of the Coast wanted and strong sales of Paizo's rival "Pathfinder RPG" kept D&D sales low for the first in the history of RPGS.  Make no mistake, D&D still sold well, it just wasn't out selling everything else.  

That was too bad really.  D&D 4 had a lot about it I liked and still like.

The 4e Monster Manual is 288 pages with over 170 monster entries. Many entries have multiple monsters. For example, there are three different types of Aboleth, six types of kobolds, and seven types of orcs. Along with the stat blocks, we get an idea of the role each monster plays in combat, like Controller, Brutes, Skirmishers, or Leaders, and what tactics they can employ. All the monsters have Lore with appropriate DCs for learning more about them or what a particular die roll will bring up.  The monsters also include plot hooks and ideas for using them in adventures.  

Some interesting changes happened in 4e.  For starters, some major demons, like our cover guy Orcus here, got their own entry outside of the demons category.  He also had major henchmen listed with him. 

Also, a conscious effort was made to redesign the cosmology of D&D. The effect here was to have Succubi now listed as "Devils" and not "Demons." 

This caused some interesting in-game fluff with books like Erin M. Evans' "Brimstone Angels" trying to explain this "in-universe" from the perspective of the Forgotten Realms.  This lives on in 5e with succubi as now independent evil outsiders. Other changes were made to various monsters, Daemons/Yugoloths we moved over to the demons, including making them Chaotic Evil.  This might have messed with ideas of the Blood War, but there is no reason why there needs to be continuity between editions, it is just nice.

One of the things that irritated some people was not the monsters it had, but the ones it did not have.  It particular Demogorgon is nowhere to be found and many of the named devils are also not here. 

Monster Manual 2 for D&D 4e

Hardcover and PDF. Color covers, full-color interior art. 224 pages.

This book was published about a year later in May of 2009. This book also has over 170 monster entries. Some are expanded, like Giants (and I love what they did for giants in this edition) and more demons. This book also gives the impression that many monsters were held back for a second book.  Unlike previous books with the same name, Monster Manual 2, this one doesn't feel like added-on monsters. This feels more like the Vol 2 of the AD&D Monstrous Compendium.  In addition to some that are expected, there are some new monsters too.

Our cover guy this time is Demogorgon. He and all his minions get 9 pages. 

Monster Manual 3 for D&D 4e

Hardcover and PDF. Color covers, full-color interior art. 224 pages.  This is also the only book of the three that you can also buy as a Print on Demand softcover. 

This book was released in June 2010, another year after the MM2. Lolth is our cover girl this time. It would have been interesting to see Graz'zt, but Lolth makes sense too. Eclavdra also shows up in Lolth's entry.

Page for page, this one has a lot more new monsters. Not just new to D&D 4, but new to D&D.  These include the new Catastrophic Dragons which I had been looking forward to. There are a lot of new monsters and some additions to MM1 & MM2 ones, like new Fire Giants.  That is one of the features of this edition, each variation of a monster needs a new stat-block.  To be fair, D&D 3 and D&D 5 also did this a fair bit. 

The layout is such, that like the AD&D 2nd Edition Monstrous Compendiums, the D&D 4th Edition Monster Manuals PDFs can be printed out with just the monsters you want and organized in a binder.  The modularity of the design is so well planned out that it really makes me want to print out these PDFs and just make my own Monstrous Compendium style binder for it. Sure the page numbering will be wonky, but that would not matter, everything will be perfectly alphabetized.  I could even re-integrate demons like Orcus and Lolth back to where they belong under demons. 

The art is amazing really. The visual style of the monsters flows from the 3rd Edition monster books to provide a sense of continuity even if the worlds do feel different. 

I am not currently playing D&D 4th Edition, but I find these monster books still so incredibly useful even in my D&D 5th Edition and Basic/Expert edition games.  They are also just great-looking books.  

If you are curious, there is a list of all the 4th Edition monsters. 

For all that the major role they play in so many scenarios and campaigns for Call of Cthulhu and other roleplaying games of Lovecraftian investigative horror, the cult is too often, never quite their focus. Whether it is the Hermetic Order of the Silver Twilight from Shadows of Yog-Sothoth, Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh and Cult of the Bloody Tongue from Masks of Nyarlathotep, or the Brotherhood of the Beast from Day of the Beast (Fungi from Yuggoth), the cult itself seems to get lost in the Mythos itself and its various so-called ‘gods’ and entities and ‘alien’ species. Where such ‘gods’ and entities and ‘alien’ species and their motives lie beyond mankind’s grasp and can never be truly understood, once its secrets are revealed, what the cult represents is an enemy that stalwart Investigators into the Mythos can understand and whose motives can be grasped. For in serving the Mythos and its forces a cult is likely betraying mankind and for whatever reason that may be, it reveals a true, all too human face of evil. In the return, the cult and its members are likely to understand the Investigators in ways that the things they serve do not, and so have ways and means of retaliating against the Investigators. Which makes for dangerous villains—and all the more so because of their lack of humanity.

Cults of Cthulhu is a supplement which at last explores the role of cults in Call of Cthulhu. Published by Chaosium, Inc., the supplement for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition explores a particular type of cult, the signature cult in both Call of Cthulhu and H.P. Lovecraft’s own fiction. That is the cult of Cthulhu, the cult dedicated to “That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die.”, the dread alien being which lies dreaming, trapped beneath the Pacific ocean in the strange city of R’lyeh, waiting for that time when the stars come right and he can be released to have dominion over the Earth once again. In doing so, it draws extensively upon H.P. Lovecraft’s seminal story, The Call of Cthulhu, as well as The Shadow Over Innsmouth, and The Whisperer in the Darkness, as well as delving back into the history of Call of Cthulhu, most notably Shadows of Yog-Sothoth and Masks of Nyarlathotep. From this, the authors develop a history of the Cthulhu cult, detail five individual cults, provide a means for the Keeper to create her own Cthulhu cults,* describe various new spells, monsters, and artefacts, and give three scenarios. The resulting volume is not just for use with Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, but also with Pulp Cthulhu: Two-fisted Action and Adventure Against the Mythos, and it also carries a ‘For Mature Readers’ advisory because, well, cultists are evil, and do evil things. Cults of Cthulhu is anything other than explicit when it comes presenting the evil of its cultists, but it does not shy from doing so either.

*In the game.

Cults of Cthulhu opens with a discussion of the ‘History of the Cthulhu Cult’. Initially, this is presented as the collected writings of the journalist, Mildred Schwartz, who comes into possession of Professor George Angell’s infamous box containing his papers concerning the Cthulhu cult and continues both his research and that of Francis Thurston. This begins in prehistory, but quickly comes up to date to detail the events surrounding the awakening of Cthulhu in 1925 (as told in Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu) and beyond. Besides describing the beliefs of the Cthulhu cult, the history presents a timeline of Cthulhu worship not year by year, but cult by cult, beginning with the Cult of Sumer in 2000 BC and going round the world from civilisation to civilisation. This includes the now lost city of Iram, as well as other familiar cults such as the Louisiana Swamp Cult and the Esoteric Order of Dagon, also drawn from Lovecraft’s fiction. Mildred Schwartz’s papers similarly discovered in the twenty-first century and continued by David Eberhart, who identifies and describes numerous post-war modern cults, such as the Church of Perfect Science. Cults are also identified as being behind events like the Paradise Massacre and the Oregon standoff. With the modern cults, and in some cases the events associated with them, it is easy to identify the parallels that the authors are drawing with certain organisations and cults.

Five of the cults identified in the ‘History of the Cthulhu Cult’ are greatly expanded upon—Elevated Order of Morpheus, the Louisiana Swamp Cult, the Society of the Angelic Ones, the Esoteric Order of Dagon, and the Church of Perfect Science. Together, these cover the Purple Age of Cthulhu by Gaslight, the Jazz Age of Call of Cthulhu, and the modern age too, with two of them, the Louisiana Swamp Cult, the Society of the Angelic Ones and the Esoteric Order of Dagon being drawn from Lovecraft’s fiction. These all come with extensive backgrounds, descriptions of their goals, structures, financing, and means of recruitment, along with full stats for their leading members, and suggestions as to where and when else the Keeper can shift the cult. Also included is a pair of scenario ideas for each cult, which along with the recruitment means provided further means of the Investigators getting involved, perhaps even getting recruited themselves. The first, Elevated Order of Morpheus, is a classic Victorian Age cult modelled on Freemasonry, whilst the second, the Society of the Angelic Ones, has all the feel of a Los Angeles evangelical church between the wars. Perhaps the one that players of Call of Cthulhu will have the most fun with is the Church of Perfect Science, mostly because it most readily parallels a modern religious organisation begun by a Science Fiction writer. The Louisiana Swamp Cult and the Esoteric Order of Dagon are ones that the Keeper and players have the most familiarity with from Lovecraft’s fiction, and the authors do as good a job of extrapolating from the fiction as they do developing the entirely new cults. Whether new or old, all five cults are well written and thus easy to use.

The five cults are not the only ones detailed in Cults of Cthulhu. Three others are developed as fully worked examples of ‘Creating a Cthulhu’. This guides the Keeper through the step-by-step process of creating an organisation devoted to Cthulhu, whether for a single scenario or for a campaign. At every stage, from the basic concept behind the cult and creating a leader to developing the enemies of the cult, the Keeper is constantly prompted with questions and given three examples. There are tables too, which the Keeper can roll on or pick from, but the end result is that the Keeper three fully detailed and worked out cults, even down to the filled in examples of the Cult Worksheet included in the supplement. Although the questions all relate to the Cthulhu cult, there is nothing to stop the Keeper going through the same process and asking the same questions, but substituting the ‘gods’ and entities and ‘alien’ species of her choice to create the desired cult.

The selection of ‘Cultists, Monsters, & Artifacts’ further supports the cult creation process. This includes numerous examples of Cthulhu’s Blessings, such as Throat tentacles or Give pain, which are as creepy as you would expect. Notable amongst the various cultists given here are the Deathless Masters. Cults of Cthulhu presents its subject matters as primarily being sperate and different. They all have their worship of Cthulhu in common, but how they worship him and to what end, differs. This need not be the case, the authors leaving it up to the Keeper to decide if she wants to keep them apart or if she wants to connect them up in a greater, conspiracy. One way of doing that is through Deathless Masters or Undying Ones, potentially the ultimate villains when it comes to Cthulhu cults, their being able to move from one cult to another and so have a greater idea—if anyone does—of what the various cults are doing and what Cthulhu himself, might want. Full guidelines are given for the Keeper to create her own, but included are stats for Carl Standford, the immortal sorcerer who first appeared in Shadows of Yog-Sothoth.

The three new cults in Cults of Cthulhu are further supported by a single scenario each. ‘Loki’s Gift’ is set in Victorian London in 1896 and has the Investigators as mostly Middle Class or Upper-Class characters asked to look into the apparent suicide of a young composer. The second scenario is ‘Angel’s Thirst’ and is set in Los Angeles in 1922 with the Investigators asked by a young woman to search for her missing father whom she thinks is still alive after seeing him in a dream. Unfortunately, he has been caught up in the activities of the Society of the Angelic Ones. The scenario has a slightly woozy and weird feel to it, but is infused with sense of noir. Lastly, ‘God’s Dream’ is set in modern-day Chicago and sees the Investigators being pulled to look into the strange events concerning a detective friend who suddenly finds himself in Antarctica. It all ties back to strange land grab in metropolitan Chicago. There is a common, physical thread which connects all three of the scenarios and they can be run as a loose trilogy or as standalone affairs. All are good strong horror scenarios which deal with mature themes, and all are well organised.

Rounding out the supplement is a pair of appendices. One provides an overview of the various tomes which might have content pertaining to Cthulhu and his worship, whilst the other is decent little bibliography which should provide entertaining further reading and viewing.
Physically, Cults of Cthulhu is up to the expected standard that Chaosium, Inc. currently sets for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition. The book is well written, the illustrations are excellent, and the cartography good.
The first reaction to Cults of Cthulhu is to wonder why it is has taken forty years for Call of Cthulhu to receive a book like this? The importance of the role of the cult and seminal nature of Cthulhu would suggest that such a book—other either aspect—would be very useful, and indeed, Cults of Cthulhu, very much proves the point in providing a much needed exploration of the nature of both together. Ultimately, Cults of Cthulhu takes the Keeper back to Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu to look at some of the roleplaying game’s fundamentals and inspirations with fresh eyes. The result is an excellent examination of both cults and Cthulhu, supporting the Keeper with advice and the means to create her own cults and cultists, as well as backing everything up with examples and scenarios.

The Anyworld Tabletop Roleplaying System is a generic system designed to handle any genre and any setting using quick, dicepool mechanics and handfuls of six-sided dice. Published by Netherborn following a successful Kickstarter campaign, the complete rules to play the game all the way up to mass battle rules and miniature skirmish rules, along with rules for generating unique magical items and creatures and enemies. The core rules also come with six introductory adventures, one each for the zombie apocalypse, post-apocalypse, superhero, fantasy, space opera, and modern horror genres, as well as an omniversal setting that allow for Player Characters to visit any world. All packed into a one-hundred-and-eighty-page book. It is designed as a toolkit and as written, to support both player-driven and Game Master-driven play.

The Anyworld Tabletop Roleplaying System very quickly gets down to explaining its rules. A Player Character has six attributes—Strength, Toughness, Agility, Precision, Mind, and Spirit—which are rated between one and ten. If a player wants his character to undertake an action, he rolls a number of six-sided dice equal to the attribute and each result of a four, five, or six is counted as a Success. Results of six explode and can be rolled again to possibly generate yet more Successes and even more sixes and more exploding dice… One of the dice is counted as the Fate die and is a different colour. If the result on the Fate die is a one, the outcome of the action is accompanied by a Setback, whilst if it is a six, it is a Critical Success. It is possible to succeed and still suffer a Setback or fail and roll a Critical result. A Critical Failure occurs when a Setback is rolled, and the result is failed. Advantage reduces the target number to be counted as a Success, whilst Disadvantage increases the target number. A player can also spend Edge to negate Disadvantage or gain Advantage, and also can expend Skill points to add a die to a roll. The number of Successes required for an action vary from a Target Number of one or Easy up to Epic or seven or more, with two being Routine and three being Challenging.

Combat—which Anyworld Tabletop Roleplaying System slides into without any demarcation—uses the same mechanics. The Target Number to hit an opponent is equal to his Evasion score, derived from his Agility attribute, a Player Character has a move action and an attack action per round, and initiative is determined with Agility tests. In Close Combat a defender can attempt a single Dodge and a single Counterattack. Strength or Precision is rolled depending upon the type of attack. Damage is a combination of the weapon’s base damage plus the extra Successes rolled beyond the Target Number. Armour reduces the Damage, and the remaining Damage value becomes a Target Number against which the defender’s player rolls his Toughness attribute. If successful, the defender shrugs off the damage, but if not, the defender’s player rolls three six-sided dice and deducts the Damage value from the result which is compared to the Damage Table. A critical hit reduces the roll of three six-sided dice to two six-sided dice, the results ranging from staggered or stunned all the way down to wounded or wounded. Wounds reduce a character’s Health Level (of which he has five) and injuries necessitate a roll on the Injury table for even greater effects. Rules also allow for stun damage, unarmed combat, two-weapon fighting, and more.

Madness is gained by failing Spirit checks following encounters with the horrific or the traumatic, including being in combat. Fail means gaining points of Madness and if a subsequent Spirit is failed against the points of Madness, the Player Character gains a mental trauma, rolled on the Trauma Table. Unless the Trauma is permanent, it can be overcome should the Player Character’s points of Madness are reduced to normal.

Character creation in Anyworld Tabletop Roleplaying System consists of choosing an array of values—Balanced, Mixed, or Specialist—to assign to attributes, and then selecting an Archetype. Each of the Archetypes—Gifted, Flexible, or Skilled—grants Experience Points to spend on Traits and Ability and Ability Upgrades, Gear Points (or GP) to spend on equipment, and both Skill and Edge points. A Player Character also has an ‘Essence’ which describes the core of the character, such as ‘Cybernetic Enforcer’ or ‘Wondering Swordsman’ (sic). Once per session, this can be used to gain Advantage on a check and is also used by the Game Master to award Experience Points. Similarly, a Player Character has a Flaw such as ‘Mean’ or ‘Outcast’, which can be triggered to add Disadvantage to a check once per session. This gains the Player Character an Experience Point.

Henry Brinded
Essence: Stalwart, But Nervous Classics Scholar
Flaw: Deafness
Archetype: Skilled
Strength 2 Toughness 3 Agility 3 Precision 3 Mind 5 Spirit 5
Traits: Expertise (Classics), Leadership, Skilled
Skill: 4
Edge: 3
Gear Points: 20

Traits are divided into Mental, Social, Speed, Brawn, Combat, Shooting, and Unique categories, and further divided into basic, advanced, and special traits in each category. For example, Insight is a basic Social Trait which grants a Player Character Advantage when his player rolls a Mind check to detect lies or read body language, whilst an Advanced Shooting Trait like Killshot grant all aimed attacks the Deadly quality which means that the attack deals a critical hit if the Fate die rolls a Success. Abilities push the Anyworld Tabletop Roleplaying System into the realms of the fantastic, with powers such as Bolt, Flight, Might, Morph, Phasing, and more, all the way up to Immortality and Impervious. In addition, each of the Abilities upgraded not once, but three times. Gear is purchased using Gear Points or ‘GP’. There is an emphasis in the Anyworld Tabletop Roleplaying System on arms and armour, and especially the qualities that either can have to give the wielder an advantage or extra bonus, all the way up to being sentient. There are a few limitations too, but not as many qualities. In general, there is the means here to create some individual weapons and armour, and so help make each Player Character different.
For example, Henry Brinded and his team have located a secret cult temple in Rome. As a result of the ensuing fight with the cultists, the temple is about to collapse, but Brinded knows he needs to study the invocation on the wall, an invocation to the abominable god the cultists worship. His player will be rolling five dice for his Mind attribute. The Game Master tells him that he needs to roll four Successes because the task is formidable due to the poor condition of the invocation. She also points out that the task is being done by torchlight and Brinded is in a hurry, so applies Disadvantage not once, but twice! So now Brinded’s player need to roll not four, five, or six to gain a Success, but a six only. However, Brinded has the Expertise Trait of Classics, so gains Advantage on translating the Latin of the invocation, reducing the number needed for a Success from six to five. His player spends a point of Edge to reduce it even further, back to four, five, and six, and then, because Brinded has the Skilled trait, adds two Skill dice to the roll instead of one. So now Brinded’s player is rolling seven dice and attempting to roll four, five, and six. He rolls two, three, five, five, five, and six, plus six on the Fate die. That is five Success, plus the critical result on the Fate die, which means that Brinded not only succeeds, but spots the intentional error in the invocation. Which means he will be better able to reverse the invocation and at the right time, cast it to dismiss the cult’s terrible mistress…For the Game Master there is advice on handling challenges and NPCs, and preparing a game. This includes both one-shot and campaign games, and it shows how the Game Master can create random adventures or collaborate with her players to create a campaign setting. The advice is decent and supported with several introductory adventures, each one in a different genre and each one suitable for a one-shot or even a convention game. Each comes with a background, some points of interest, and in some cases one or more alternate ways of play It begins with ‘Diner-Bite’ in which the Player Characters stop at a diner whilst the USA is caught in the middle of chaos. This arrives at the diner in the form of on-the-run, undercover crooks, with a dead policeman in the bus who will soon turn into a zombie as will the poor little boy who looks sick, but whose family is hiding the cause of his sickness. The optional way to play is have one group take the roles of the crooks and another be the diner patrons. Typically, each of these six introductory adventures is two or three or so pages in length, presenting a decent outline and possibly a campaign starter. ‘Rise from Ruin’ is a post-apocalypse setting much like the Mad Max films, whilst ‘Fallen Heroes’ is a stand-up-knockdown confrontation with a supervillain who has captured the city’s premier superhero team. Of course, the Player Characters can come to their rescue or even play villains who want to take kill the superheroes themselves, or there could be one group of players roleplaying the supervillains whilst the other plays the superheroes. ‘Ghosts in the Flesh’ is a bloody horror romp a la Hammer Horror, whilst ‘The Thing in the Woods’ is a straightforward monster hunt in a fantasy setting. ‘Red Colossus’, the last scenario in the Anyworld Tabletop Roleplaying System is the Space Opera genre and the longest in the book. After being attacked by pirates, the Player Characters and their space freighter take refuge at the nearest mining base only to find it also threatened by the pirates and terrible outbreaks of radiation sickness.

Penultimately, the Anyworld Tabletop Roleplaying System includes a description of ‘The Outer Realm’, an in between network of routes and places between multiple worlds. Certain persons, known as Travellers, can detect the routes between places, whilst others, Shapers, can modify the reality around them. There is the chance that the Player Characters can become Travellers or Shapers, the latter gaining abilities such as teleport or telekinesis. The downside to the latter is that can become a Reaver, lusting for ever greater power and ability. Several strange locations are also detailed, and there is overall a weirdness and an unreality to the whole of this in-between place. Rounding out the volume is a bestiary and a set of ready-to-play characters, for use as examples, Player Characters, or NPCs.

Physically, the Anyworld Tabletop Roleplaying System is decently presented and illustrated, all in black and white. However, its organisation does hamper ready play even as the system is relatively straightforward and easy to understand. There is no index or even a glossary, and for actual ease of play, many of the roleplaying game’s tables could have been reprinted at the rear of the book instead of multiple blank character sheets. Similarly, an example of character creation, as well of actual play and the rules would all have been useful. In fact, all of these are inexcusable omissions by any standard, let alone those of modern roleplaying book design.

Overall, the Anyworld Tabletop Roleplaying System, issues with organisation aside, is straightforward and easy to run and play. The result is that Anyworld Tabletop Roleplaying System provides cinematic and pulp action style roleplaying across a variety of genres without getting too complex and by keeping play fairly fast with handfuls of six-sided dice.

For fifteen years the Latterdyne estate has stood empty ever since the family, including two children, vanished without a trace. Behind its walls, the house has stood shuttered up against the elements whilst the surrounding grounds have been left unattended, long since overgrown and abandoned to grow wild, including extensive woods. To the locals, the estate and its mystery, the estate has become a looming presence down the lane as well as the source of much speculation. They say that the family suffered a great accident and subsequently vanished during a storm, but then no one really knows for certain, and so when the fate of the Latterdynes is discussed it is done in whispered speculation and rumour. Both are fuelled by stories of hikers and other travellers going missing on the estate. Some dismiss this as mere rumour or even embellishment to already idle speculation, but others will swear blind that such tales are true. True or not, the locals avoid the estate, though they all know of the broken wall which can be clambered over to gain easy access to the grounds. Now word of both ramblers having gone missing on the estate and the missing Latterdynes has reached the Society for Psychical Research, which has duly despatched a team to investigate the grounds of the Latterdyne estate.

This is the set-up for Sticks and Stones: A Story of Betrayal and Sorrow for the Locus Horror Tabletop Roleplaying Game. Published by CobblePath Games, this is the first scenario for Locus: A roleplaying game of personal horror, a horror roleplaying game in which the Player Characters bring as much horror to a location as they will encounter there. It is a roleplaying game about Broken Places, locations where the line between reality and the horror and emotional truth of a story has thinned to the point that they have become damaged or broken and transformed into something else. Each is or has a Genius Locus, that in becoming damaged or broken, is transformed into a Malus Locus, a bad place which feeds off negative energies and emotions. The Malus Locus draws in outsiders and residents alike, using reminders of their old wounds and bad memories to inflict fear, terror, and pain. It manifests Monsters which remind the victims trapped inside the Malus Locus of their dark secrets and feelings of guilt, and if the monster can kill them, they leave behind Echoes of their guilt that the Monster can feed off for years. Echoes are likely to be interpreted as ghosts, and when the Player Characters enter a Malus Locus, it may already be inhabited by Echoes.

A Malus Locus consists of a single location and is actually composed of layers. The location can be large or small, and might be a single house, a neighbourhood or housing block, an oil rig or space station, or even a whole town. The layers are Layers of Reality, each layer a reflection of the one above, the same but different, darker, weirder, scarier, and worse… The deeper the Player Characters venture into the Malus Locus, the further away from reality they move, the closer to the heart of the Malus Locus they get, the greater the manifestations and signs of the unreal and the Player Characters’ Haunts—or guilty secrets—appear, and the more openly the Monster will move against them. Each Layer is separate, but bleeds into the one above and the one below, though they become more and more distinct as the Player Character descends through them.

Sticks and Stones: A Story of Betrayal and Sorrow for the Locus Horror Tabletop Roleplaying Game presents one such Malus Locus, an area of woodland on the Latterdyne estate. Here the Society for Psychical Research investigators will find themselves caught between three locations in Latterdyne Dell, each connected by ever changing paths through the woods. As they explore these locations and are pulled down through the layers of the Malus Locus, the weather and the ground underfoot both worsen, the wind grows and carries strange voices, and something begins to stalk them… However, that something is not the only monster that the Player Characters will face in Sticks and Stones, as they bring their own monsters with them. Each of these four monsters is associated with the acts of betrayal committed by each of the pre-generated Player Characters, these acts and their associated monsters accentuating the horror in Sticks and Stones, making the horror all the more personal even as they confront the personification of the Malus Locus in the dell on the Latterdyne estate.

Although Sticks and Stones is intended to be played using pre-generated investigators, and to that end comes with its own quartet of partially pre-generated Player Characters. The four—the Custodian, the Dilettante, the Fabricator, and the Sleuth all have their own goals, base attributes, haunts, virtues, and more, including base backstories, virtues, and items. Each player is then free to assign further attribute points and answer some questions in order to customise the character to his liking. Notes are included should a player want to create a character of his own from scratch, but ideally, Sticks and Stones should be run and played using the given quartet.

As well as a starting script and a handout or two, Sticks and Stones comes with details of and clues for its primary mysteries—the fate of the Latterdynes and what is exactly going on in the Latterdyne Dell—and suggestions as to how the events of the scenario might play out… lastly, the scenario also includes the cards for its characters, items, and monsters. They are perhaps somewhat fuzzy and it would probably better for the Game Master to download and print them out. If there is perhaps an issue with the scenario, it is that the set-up of the scenario could have been stronger and easier to present to the players and their characters—essentially how they get involved. It is fine once they reach the Latterdyne estate, but the Game master will need to put something together herself.

Physically, Sticks and Stones is grey and dreary. That though is entirely keeping with the tone of the scenario and the terribly British weather that the Player Character will face as they delve deeper and deeper into the mysteries of what happened on the Latterdyne estate. Barring the cards for its characters, items, and monsters, Sticks and Stones is nicely illustrated with photographs that hint at the ombrophobic and the Xylophobic, imparting a sense of the unease which will grow and grow over the course of the scenario.

Sticks and Stones: A Story of Betrayal and Sorrow for the Locus Horror Tabletop Roleplaying Game contains everything necessary for the Player Characters to bring their own horrors to the woods and get lost in the horrors already there…

While it may not feel like it in Texas, today is Canada Day, and this entails the now-obligatory trip to Dallas’s best Canadian restaurant with the flower emblem of Newfoundland and Labrador. After that, it’s back to getting the gallery … Continue reading →

Paperback: A Novel Deckbuilding Game is a clash of the old and the new. It combines concept of classic word games like Scrabble with the very modern playstyle of the deckbuilding mechanic from games like Dominion and Star Realms. In Paperback, each player is novelist, desperately writing one novel after novel, jumping from one genre to another with titles such as The Chinatown Connection, Dead Planet, and The Angel of Death, all to satisfy the voracious demands of their editors. Pump out enough of this pulp fiction and perhaps the novelist will get a bestseller and make a mint! That though is the extent of the theme in Paperback, the game being more mechanical than thematic, since what each player will be doing is spelling out words using Letter cards and generating a score which can be used to buy both more Letter cards and Fame cards, which will be used to spell out more valuable words and so on and so on until the end of the game when the player with the most Fame points from his Fame cards wins the game. Paperback is published by Fowers Games, best known for the heist themed Burgle Bros. and Burgle Bros 2: The Casino Capers. It is designed to be played by two to five players, aged ten and up, and has a suggested playing time of forty-five minutes.

Each player begins play with a deck of ten cards—five Wild cards and the letters ‘T’, ‘R’, ‘S’, ‘L’, and ‘N’. On his turn a player will five cards from his deck and attempt to spell a word using both the cards drawn, whether letter cards or Wild cards and the current Common card, which anyone can use, typically a vowel. If it is a viable word—it cannot be a name, place, or proper noun—then it generates a score. Whilst Wild cards can substitute for any letter and so help spell a word, they do add to the Score value of the word. The value of this score be used to either purchase a new letter or letter combination card (such as ‘ST’ or ‘ER’) or a Fame card. Letters purchased will all generate a greater score than the base cards in a player’s deck, but they often have special abilities. For example, the letter ‘M’ costs seven cents to purchase and generates a score of two, but if the word is correctly spelled, it doubles the total score value of the word. It also has to be placed in the trash after use. The ‘V’ costs seven cents to purchase and generates a score of four, but if the word is correctly spelled, it allows a player to draw an extra card on his next and potentially spell out a bigger word. Some letters are Attack cards, which means that their special ability affects other players. For example, the ‘H’ letter costs six cents to purchase, and generates a score of four, but if the word is correctly spelled, its attack is that the other player cannot purchase anything with a value of greater than eight cents. The ‘Q’ letter costs eight cents to purchase and generates a score of five, but if the word is correctly spelled, its attack restricts another player to just using the ability on the one his next turn.

Alternatively, a player can purchase a Fame card, each of which has a cost and depicts the cover of a fairly pulpy book from various genres. For example, The Angel of Death is a pulp novel, whilst Dead Planet is Science fiction. These generate four, seven, ten, or fifteen fame points, so generating enough score from the correctly spelled words is the aim of the game. When added to a player’s deck, the fame cards work like Wild cards in that they can be used to substitute for any letter, but do not add to a player’s score.

Game play continues until either of two conditions are met. One is to exhaust two stacks of the fame cards, each being organised by price and adjusted according to the number of players. The other is when the last Common letter card is taken. Throughout play, the current Common letter card can be used by all of the players to help them spell their words, but if a player spells a word of sufficient length, he can add the current Common letter card to his deck. This will bring in a new Common letter card into play and if a player wants to add it to his deck, then he needs to spell an even longer word. There are only four Common letter cards available throughout the game and the length of word required to add them to a player’s decks goes from seven to eight to nine, and then ten letters long. Once the end of the game is reached, each player adds up his Fame points from both the Wild cards and the fame cards in his deck, and the player with highest total wins the game.

The play of Paperback is about increasing word length. Increase the length of the words that he can spell, and player has a greater Score with which to buy better or more letter cards and fame cards, and potentially more abilities to bring into play. It entirely possible that a player can spell a word and bring two, three, four, or more abilities into play. Balanced against keeping an eye out for letter cards with special abilities, a player needs to keep an eye on the letter cards available and what he thinks he can spell with them. He also needs to bear in mind that the higher the score a word will generate, the more difficult it will be to successfully spell a word with it is. He will also want to maintain a good mix of consonants and vowels too, along with the two-letter combinations on some letter cards. Favour one letter type over the other and a player will have difficulty finding words that he can spell. It is also possible to combine special abilities for enhanced effects, but these are not as common as in other deck-building games.

In comparison to other deckbuilding games, Paperback is not necessarily all about trying a way to find a way to get rid of the initial cards in a player’s deck. This is because there are special abilities which work with the Wild cards in a player’s deck and all of the cards in a player’s deck, whether Wild cards or starting letter cards, are useful throughout the game. Nor is Paperback as adversarial as other deckbuilding games. There are elements of it with the attack cards, but these impede player for a turn rather than directly attacking him. Rather it is competitive, not combative.

Beyond the base game, Paperback adds various options and extra rules. These include adding a reward if a player helps another who is stuck on what word he can spell out using his current hand, adding awards and themes as bonuses to towards a player’s final score, playing in simultaneous mode, and even a co-operative mode played against the game itself. These all change the game in various ways, but do not stray too far from the core mechanics of spelling words, purchasing further letters and Fame cards, and so on.

As clever a combination as Paperback is, it does suffer from the problems of both game types. As a word game, players with greater word knowledge and vocabularies will be at an advantage and often, players with lesser word knowledge and vocabularies will sometimes lead to slower play as they try and work out what they can spell. The deckbuilding means that it can be more adversarial and fiddlier with a lot of cards than a word game like Scrabble. Yet, Paperback does not rely on needing to know lots of short, high-scoring words or needing to have to put them on a board building from what is already there, and as deckbuilding games, the focus is on the letters rather than the special abilities per se. However, the use of the special abilities on the cards do go towards countering the spelling, so that a player who is more used to word games such as Scrabble can still play against players more used to deckbuilding games.

Physically, Paperback is well produced and well designed. The cards are colour-coded according to cost making them easy to tell them apart, the artwork on the Fame cards—each is done as a pulp novel—is excellent, and the cards are all easy to ready. The rulebook is also decently done. Lastly, it all fits into a neat little box which comes with dividers so that everything is neatly organised and easy to find.

Paperback: A Novel Deckbuilding Game is a novel clash of two game types that surprisingly, work well together and can be used to introduce the fan of one type to the other. So, a fan of word games can be introduced to a deckbuilding game (that fan of word games also likely to be used to family games too), and the fan of deckbuilding games to word games. As a word game Paperback forces a player to strategise beyond the spelling to gain extra abilities through latter cards’ special abilities and as a deckbuilding game, it forces a player to think about what he can do—rather spell—right now rather focus on the strategy. Paperback: A Novel Deckbuilding Game is a witty, wordy game, that as hybrid deserves a place on your shelf between the traditional and the modern game designs.

Dyson’s Book of Swords is exactly that, a book of swords from a writer best known for his cartography, especially his fantasy cartography. However, over the course of September and October 2021, he wrote and illustrated a series of entries on his blog under the labels ‘#Swordtember’ and ‘#Choptober’, each one describing and depicting a blade which could be added to the fantasy roleplaying game of your choice. Now following a successful Kickstarter campaign, all fifty entries in the series have been collated into the one volume and published as Dyson’s Book of Swords by Squarehex, better known as the publisher of The Black Hack. This little volume comes in an odd size—six inches square—and each sword is given a two-page spread consisting of a full-page illustration opposite its description. None of the descriptions run to more than two paragraphs each and the descriptions concentrate on telling the reader what the sword looks like, its history, and what its capabilities are. The numbers amount to no more than each blade’s to hit bonus, damage bonus, and against what, although some cases a special ability will also be referenced. In the main though, the language is not so much systems neutral as systems adjacent, meaning that any one of the fifty swords in Dyson’s Book of Swords will work with the fantasy roleplaying game of your choice.

Dyson’s Book of Swords is not arranged in alphabetical or indeed, nay kind of order, but flip through its pages and you find Spite, a gladius-style currently wielded by the Elven mercenary, Rhador. It is a Short Sword +1 which becomes a flaming blade upon command and when it is aflame is +2 versus trolls, pegasi, hippogriffs, and rocs, and +3 versus treants and the undead. It casts light and ignite things as a torch. Rhador wields this weapon until he regains his family blade from his nemesis. Flip to another and the illustration and description is of the Last Blade of the Lich Shogunate, the last ‘perfect’ blade to be forged by the master swordsmith of the final Shogun. It has no name of its own, but is a +2 sword which also grants a bonus on saving throws versus all effects, spells, and abilities of the dead. Of the two, Spite is the more difficult blade to include, in part because it is wielded by a particular NPC and in part because it has such a wide range of enemies which it can affect. However, it raises the questions, “Where did Spite come from?”, “Who is Rhador?”, “Who is his nemesis and how he did come into possession of Rhador’s family blade?”, and ‘What are the abilities of Rhador’s family blade?” All these point to story possibilities, as does the Last Blade of the Lich Shogunate, but they are perhaps a bit more straightforward. These include “What was the Lich Shogunate?”, “Who wielded the Last Blade of the Lich Shogunate?”, “Who was the Last Blade of the Lich Shogunate made for?”, and “Who wields it now and where did she find?”

Dyson’s Book of Swords harks to the noughties and the slew of books for the d20 System with its supplements dedicated to just rings, just spells, just monsters, just swords, and so on. Fortunately, with the advent of Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, or even with the Old School Renaissance, there has not been the avalanche of books and supplements dedicated to singular aspects of Dungeons & Dragons-style gaming, and so Dyson’s Book of Swords does not fall into that. Fundamentally, Dyson’s Book of Swords just keeps everything simple—illustration, description, and minimal stats. This means that its contents are compatible with just about every Old School Renaissance roleplaying game and retroclone, including Old School Essentials, Mörk Borg, Whitehack, and more. They would also work with 13th Age and the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, and even Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition!

Physically, Dyson’s Book of Swords is clear, simple, and easy to read. It is a little book of weapons that the players will want their characters to wield, the Game Master to arm her NPCs with and inspire or scare her players and their characters, and lastly, Dyson’s Book of Swords is a little book of inspiration.

A couple weeks back I posted a One Man's God using the AD&D 2nd Edition Legends & Lore.  I mentioned at the time that this falls outside of the scope of the original concept of my OMG posts; that is can I take creatures from the Deities & Demigods and re-classify them as AD&D 1st Edition demons. Not historical demons, not mythological demons, but 1st Edition demons.

Since I have spent this week discussing Castles & Crusades I have often talked about how this game is the spiritual successor to AD&D.  Do their books on gods also follow?  Or to be more precise, can I do a One Man's God post on the C&C god books?

When it comes to discussing gods, demigods, and heroes Castles & Crusades is really second to none here. There Codex series, written by Brian Young, is some of the best-researched material for an RPG ever produced.   

Gods and Demons in Castles & Crusades

You are not going to find stats for gods in C&C.  They are not meant to be fought. There are however plenty of gods to encounter. I covered many of these in the various Codex books by Brian Young.

• Codex Celtarum, 1st Printing
• Castles & Crusades Codex Classicum
• Castles & Crusades Codex Nordica
• Castles & Crusades Codex Germania
• Castles & Crusades Codex Slavorum
• Castles & Crusades Codex Egyptium
• Castles & Crusades Codex Celtarum, 2nd Printing

There is also the Gods & Legends book which I'll cover here and use as my basis for this One Man's God.  

Demons are well covered in the Tome of the Unclean from Troll Lords.  Tome of the Unclean follows pretty close to the AD&D standard demon with what I often refer to as "the Usual Suspects," so all the "Type" demons and succubi.  So while I could more properly compare the C&C gods to the proper C&C demons, I think everything is close enough that I can continue with my original purpose of comparing these gods to the AD&D demons.  If there are any differences they are so minor as not to be an issue.  Besides. These are gods and demons we are talking about, there will always be exceptions to the rules.

Gods & Legends

For the purposes of this review, I am considering the PDF from DriveThruRPG. 

PDF. 144 pages. Color covers, black & white interior art. Bookmarked and hyperlinked.  Written by Davis Chenault with contributions by Steven Chenault, Brian Young, Jason Vey, and Todd Gray.

This book largely replaces the Of Gods & Monsters book from a few years back, though it is smaller in size, 144 pages vs 162. I say replaces, but this is a new set of work. The original Of Gods and Monsters was written by James Ward of Deities & Demigods fame.  There are similar gods in both books but this new version is a rewrite of the older work with new entires to work better with the Codex series.

This book is divided into three(ish) large sections.

The Anvil of the Gods

This section covers how gods work in a Castles & Crusades game, how the Castle Keeper can play them, and how the characters can relate to them. This section also gives advice on designing a pantheon. Unlike the original Deities & Demigods that seemed to want to shy away from religion, this book acknowledges it and all the myriad combinations (within the space of this book) religions can take.  The focus here though is not a religious academic text (and Troll Lords has at least two people, Young and Vey, on staff with graduate degrees in religious studies, literature, and history) but more on how these manifest and work in an RPG, and in Castles & Crusades in particular. To this end there is advice on how to run and play gods and how they should interact with the PCs. 

Common deific abilities are defined with Greater, Lesser, and Demi-god statuses. Details are given to how the gods relate to the clerics and paladin classes, alignments, and other archetypes.  Holy symbols and characters with divine traits are also covered. Divine traits include the healing touch.

Of the Gods

This is the largest section of the book, detail-wise. This covers what could properly be called the Gods of Aihrde, the Castles & Crusades campaign world.  A brief overview of the basic deity characteristics is first. Up first are the human gods of Aihrde. This is the section that is most like the older Of Gods and Monsters book.

Some sections are the same as in the older book, many do look to be rewritten.  The art is used from the older text but I do not see an issue with that. Many gods here get more text as well.  Many of the Aihrde gods take cues and ideas from Earth gods. This is also not a big deal and in fact no different than the gods of the Forgotten Realms. In fact I am going to go out on a limb here and say the process to create these gods (from the Chenault home games no doubt) was very similar to what Ed himself did when he created the Forgotten Realms Gods.  Maybe one day I need to go through this pantheon and the Forgotten Realms ones and see what gods they have in common.  The obvious "Earth" gods are the All Father (Odin), The moon sisters (Diana, Artemis), Frafnog (Fáfnir, Midgard Serpent), Tefnut, Toth, Unklar (Chernbog), and Wenafar (Titania).  Again, I like seeing this stuff. It immediately gives me a hook.  If Frafnog is the god of dragons and there is a Fáfnir connection beyond the surface then there is a great reason why dwarves hate dragons more than just the Hobbit connection (which is of course drawn from the story of Fáfnir and The Ring of the Nibelung). There is deep religious animosity here. Is this what the Chenaults do in their home game? No idea, but this is what is happening in mine.

Following humans, we get the gods of the Dwarves, Elves, Halflings (LOVE the art of the halfling gods!), Gnomes, and then the humanoids (bugbears, gnolls, goblins, orcs, hobgoblins, lizardmen, giants, ogres, and trolls) there are even dragon deities, fey deities, and gods of mermen and sahuagin.  It is a wide variety and shows some original ideas beyond what we typically think of in the Deities and Demigods, but not quite the level of detail as found in the very focused Forgotten Realms Demihuman Deities book.

All the Other Gods

This "section" is actually many sections, but they are mostly the same format. They cover the various gods and pantheons found in our world and are covered in detail by the Codex series.  Where the Codecies give us a lot of details on the myths and stories of those pantheons, this section just covers game based stats. No stats as in hp and AC, but alignments, worshipers, granted attributes, preferred weapons and the like.  No details on the gods themselves, for that you will need the Codies.

Covered are the gods of the Celts, Greeks, Egyptians, Germans, Norse, and Slavs.

Who should buy this book?  Anyone playing Castles & Crusades and wants to go deep into the mythologies of Aihrde.  Also, anyone that owns the Codies and wants more game content. 

I also say this is a good book for the AD&D (first or second eds.) player/game master that wants a bit more detail on the gods in their Deities & Demigods/Legends & Lore books. Or who just want a different set of or more gods than they currently have.  Indeed the title of the book, Gods & Legends, seems to state that it is a book with the AD&D books in mind.

One Man's God - The Demons of Aihrde

As I mentioned the Demons of Aihrde are already the Demons of AD&D.  But what about the monsters and gods here in Gods & Legends?  Let's see what we have here.

The obvious choices will be the Lesser Gods and the Demigods in terms of the power level near that of the Demon Princes. But I am not going to ignore the odd Greater God if they fit.

For the Aihrde human gods, Frafnog might fit the bill, though he is really powerful. Onduhl is the god of evil beings and has a strong Lucifer or Loki vibe to him.  Unklar looks like a demon and has the Chernobog connection I mentioned above, but he seems more devil-like than demon-like. 

The gods of the Dwarves, Halflings, and Gnomes do not have anyone.  The Elves have Talahnatilia but that is something other than a demon or devil really. 

It is not really to we get to the gods of the humanoids that we find good candidates.

Jarga the Bloodless is worshiped by many humanoid types (gnolls, kobolds, orcs). He is a lesser god and chaotic evil. He is a god of blood and battle. He might or might not be a demon, but he will certainly has their hatred of life. His plane is listed as The Wretched Plains, one of only three gods to claim this plane. 

Bugbear gods here are Chaotic Evil. Hobgoblin gods are mostly Lawful Evil.  This detail tracks with my own personal use of them. Bugbears are goblins with demonic ancestry and Hobgoblins are goblins with diabolic ancestry. So. If I am searching for demons I am going to look towards the Bugbears first. The bugbear gods are both greater gods and don't really fit the AD&D notion of demons. Same is true for the hobgoblins.

Gnolls have been long associated with demons in AD&D through Yeenoghu. Most of these gods are either too powerful (Greater) and/or Lawful Evil.  Here is one of the issues of trying to apply the "rules" of one game on to another. They don't have to follow the same logic or premises. 

Among the Goblins, Beerkzurd could be a demon, a powerful on to be sure. He is Lawful Evil, but he feels more Chaotic Evil really.  He is also one of those gods people pray to not so much to get boons from him, but in order for him to leave you alone.

The Orc gods are quite war-like and many are Lawful Evil. They mostly seem like larger, more powerful versions of orcs. Which I guess can be said about most gods. They are just larger more powerful versions of the people that worship them.

Vasser of Lizardmen is another good choice. Lesser God, chaotic evil, looks like a demon. The same is all true for Grudznar of the Kobolds and Barg of the Trolls. In fact, all three do feel very demon-like. The lack of proper stats are really the only thing keeping me from deciding a definitive yes or no.  Barg though is such an interesting being in a demented sort of way. I wish I had knew of him during my Troll Week a while back.

I am not considering the Dragon gods. They are really their own thing and many listed here do not fit the idea of a demon well. Yeah...I know I have both Tiâmat and Leviathan as eodemons. Plus I mentioned Frafnog above as a potential demon.

Same with the Fey. They are really their own thing. Though in my personal campaign the Fey do war against the demons. So it could be possible a "fallen fey" is a demon (fits what history did to them in our world).  Not an evil fey. A "good" faerie still has more in common with an evil faerie than they do a demon.

Flathin of the Sahuagin also is a good choice as a demon. If we take the myths of Flathin and his sister Trimon it could be that Flathin was "cast down" as the patron of mermen and now is the patron of their evil counterparts, the Sahuagin. He is a chaotic evil lesser god and looks like a giant octopus with 10 tentacles (a decapus?). He grants little to his followers, save for what they get at their religious/war ceremonies.  

Again. I might be extending my One Man's God to the point of breaking.  Let this be a lesson in how scope creep or extending your theories beyond your testable hypotheses is a bad thing.

Other gods from Earth mythologies have been covered in previous postings of One Man's God.

It has been a while since my last Class Struggles post.  Since I featuring D&D this month and focusing on Castles & Crusades, in particular, this week I thought a look into the Castles & Crusades classes was in order. I am going to focus my attention on the Castles & Crusades Player Archive, but I will talk about more than just that.

Castles & Crusades, Players Handbook

One can't really talk about classes and not first look to the core, the Players Handbook.  This book serves the same purposes as the D&D Players Handbooks; it introduces the rules and the classes.  In this case, the comparison to AD&D 1st edition is most appropriate. 

I have repeatedly made the claim that Castles & Crusades is the spiritual successor to AD&D 1st Ed. No slight against 5e or other versions of D&D, but if you want modern rules and a 1st ed feel, your game is Castles & Crusades.  Obviously, the publisher, Troll Lords, feels the same way given the new cover art for the 8th Printing of the C&C PH.  

The classes in the C&C PH are: Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Illusionist, Knight, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Wizard, and the Assassin (a special class).  Compare this to the ones from the AD&D 1st Ed Players Handook: Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Paladin, Ranger, Thief, Assassin, Magic-user, Illusionist, Monk, and a special class for the Bard.  Add in the Unearthed Arcana we get the Barbarian and Cavalier along with the Thief-Acrobat.  So all in all a very, very similar list of options.

In Castles & Crusades, each class has a Prime Attribute which really helps define the class. This is a bit more "hard coded" into the class than say it is in AD&D.

The classes, even with the same name, do have some differences. For starters, all the spell casters can cast spells up to 9th level in C&C.   

A few details.  Bards do not get spellcasting ability here but a number of spell-like powers. Clerics are limited to wielding the weapon their deity favors. So a cleric of Thor naturally gets a hammer, but one of Odin might take the spear. Druids get a lot of abilities and spells. Fighters actually get a few abilities as well, especially involving weapon specialization. As mentioned Illusionists get spells to the 9th level.  The Knight fills the roles of the Cavalier.  Monks are fairly similar to their AD&D counterparts.  Both Paladins and Rangers are similar enough to their AD&D counterparts.  They both have a number of special powers but neither has actually spell casting powers.  At first, I did not like this particular change, but I did not miss it as much as I thought I might with the paladin.  I did in the Ranger, but I tended not to spend a lot of time on spells for my AD&D rangers to even begin with, save for spells that helped their normal ranger powers/skills.  Rogues are very close to their Thief ancestors.  Wizards get a nice boost at the 13th level when they start to get some new powers/abilities. It reminds me, rules-wise, of the BECMI magic users from the D&D Companion set.   The Assassin is a special class that is designed to be added to another class with the C&C Dual- or Multi-Classing and Class-and-half rules. 

Just looking at the classes, C&C can provide an interesting twist on the AD&D experience while retaining the essential feel of these archetypes.

Castles & Crusades Player Archive

The logical extension of the Castles & Crusades class discussion is to go through the Castles & Crusades Player Archive.  

I will give a brief review of this book so people will know what I am talking about.  For this review, I am only considering the PDF from DriveThruRPG. I thought I had the hardcover version of this as well, but I guess I don't.  Will need to remedy this.

PDF, 128 pages. Hyperlinked and bookmarked. Color cover art and black & white interior art.

This book collects most of the classes published in various Castles & Crusades books including the core and the Adventure's Backpack.  What is not here are some of the classes from the various Brian Young Codex books. There are some here, but I would have to go through all the books to know how many are here and how many are not.  I do not see this a miss. Many of the Codex classes are very specific to their time and place and to remove them from that context they would loose something special.

This book covers the basic (levels 1 to 12/13) and advanced (expanded) information (levels 13 to 24) for all the classes.  The classes are:

Arcane Thief, Archer, Assassin, Barbarian, Bard, Chromatic Mage, Cleric, Divine Knight, Druid, Duelist, Dwarf (Heisen Fodt), Elf, High (Oraalau), Ethereal Knight, Fighter, Foresworn, Gnome (Hugrin Dun), Goblin, Eldritch (Ieragon), Halfling (Felon Noch), Illusionist, Knight, Luminary, Magic-User, Monk, Oathsworn, Pacer, Paladin, Pirate, Primal Druid, Ranger, Rogue, Rune Mark, Seeker, Skald, Thief, Warrior Priest, and Wizard.

There is a split between the classes "Basic" entry which covers levels 1 to 12 or 13, and the Expanded entry later in the book for levels up to 24.  This has some immediate consequences. While I am not a fan of my class information getting split up like this, many games only go to about levels 12-14 anyway.  So this would cover the majority of all games played.  It does give us a nice split today port these classes over to any OSR game based on B/X D&D (max level 14) or something Hyborea (max level 12). Then you can pull in the expanded information as it is needed if it is ever needed.

The Core/Players Handbook classes are here as are some classes that only appeared in limited-run products. It is really nice to have them all in one place. Great for anyone playing a C&C game, you just need to make sure that your Castle Keeper agrees on them.

Old School Games based on D&D usually do not handle multi- and dual-classes as well as say more modern versions of D&D. Castles & Crusades makes some vast improvements here with rules on this.  They also add options of "Class Plus" or add some features from another class, Dual classing and Reclassing.  What is missing here is the Class and Half from the Core Players Handbook. While anyone with this book will have the Players Handbook, it might have been nice to see here.

I mentioned in my coverage of the Adventurers Spellbook that the spells can be ported over to other D&D and D&D-like RPGs. In particular, I mentioned the Chromatic Mage being used in the OSR clone Chromatic Dungeons. The class is presented here in the Player's Archive. Yes, this class can be moved over rather easily, maybe even easier than moving it over to AD&D.  Likewise nearly any class here can be used in AD&D or OSR clone.  Want to play a Primal Druid in Old-School Essentials? No problem, they can be added with ease.

Note: Speaking of which the layout here aims to give each class a two- or four-page spread to keep referencing the classes easy to read and view at the table.  The PDF then allows for ease printing of these classes.  Playing a Warrior Priest and don't want to cart your hardcover around? Print pages 90 and 91 back to back and staple them to your character sheet.  Everything you need. This does mean there is some unused white space after each class, but for me, this is well worth it.

With this book and the option within I could spend an entire month creating and posting characters and no two would even be remotely the same.  A must-have for any Castles & Crusades fan.

Yesterday I talked about how well, or more to the point, how easy it is to use the Castles & Crusades Mystical Companions with old-school D&D and in particular AD&D 1st Edition.  I want to do something similar today but a little more focused on bridging that gap.

Today I want to look at Castles & Crusades Adventurers Spellbook as my example, but in truth, this would apply to any C&C spell collection.

I'll do a quick review and then get into my Plays Well With Others.

Castles & Crusades Adventurers Spellbook

For the purposes of this review, I am considering both the PDF from DriveThruRPG and the hardcover I purchased from Troll Lords.

256 pages. Color cover, black & white interior art.

This book covers (mostly) the spells of the four major spell-casting classes in C&C; Cleric, Wizard, Druid, and Illusionist.   There are also two new types of spell-casters in this book, Runic Magic and Chromatic Magic.

The vast bulk of this book is given over to the spells of four classes (170+ pages). The spells are listed by class and then the alphabetic description follows.  Many of these are going to be familiar since they are pulled from various C&C books and the Player's Handbook in particular. This is not a bug, but a feature. I wanted a book that had all of these spells in one place and this is what they advertise it as.

There are minor typos here and there and the art is recycled, but none of that matters to me. I am here for the spells.  Honestly, I have no idea how many spells are here but it has to be upwards of 1,000. For example, there are 379 Cleric spells (0 to 9th level), 366 Druid spells, 437 Wizard spells, 305 Illusionist spells, and over 200 rune magic spells.  That's a lot of magic. 

I mentioned Runic Magic a couple of times. Rune Magic. Anyone can use runic magic, but the character has to master the runes first via an attribute check, this also assumes they have the necessary codices needed in order to learn the runes.  

The spells of the Chromatic Mage is also presented here.  This class is detailed more in the Castles & Crusades Player Archive, which I will cover more tomorrow.

If you are a fan of magic, spells or just have a desire to have a complete set then I would say pick this up.

Plays Well With Others

It has often been said that Castles & Crusades is one of the first professionally published OSR games out there.  It takes the 3rd Edition base, reforms it forms it for a 1st Edition experience and even gave us rules and mechanics that would later be seen in 5th Edition.  Castles & Crusades is essentially what AD&D could have become in the new millennium.

So it is no surprise then that C&C can Play Well with other forms of D&D rather easily. 

1st and 2nd Edition D&D

This one is such a no-brainer it barely needs to be mentioned, but there are some things to consider. C&C uses the same spell casting classes as 1st Edition AD&D, so that conversion is easy. Though it should be pointed out that all classes have cantrips and have spells that go to 9th level.

Converting the spells is so trivial it is hardly an effort. 

C&C spells casting times are in Rounds and saves are based on abilities. Largely you can save vs. Spells in AD&D unless some other sort of save (death, paralysis) makes more sense.

3rd Edition D&D

C&C might be modeled after 1st Edition, but its roots are in 3rd Edition D&D.  Spellcasters get cantrips and 9th level spells in both cases. 

Saves convert roughly like this Reflex = Dexterity (or rarely Intelligence), Fortitude = Constitution or Strength, Will = Wisdom or Charisma.

Likewise both games have focus components that can be used. 

5th Edition D&D

C&C and D&D 5 have so much in common that you can just drop these spells right in. 

Levels are the same. Cantrips are the same. Saves are the same. There is no warlock or sorcerer in C&C nor is there a dedicated Illusionist for D&D5, just the wizard archetype.  But the spells can be spread out well enough.  The Chromatic Mage though would make a good D&D5 style sorcerer to be honest with a little tweaking.

OSR Games

No point in going through all of these. If any of the above work then so do these.  A couple of caveats. 

Basic-Based Advanced Games

Basic D&D does not have the detail of spell descriptions that Advanced D&D does. So a lot of the stat blocks of the spells can be ignored or used as guidelines.  Saves are always vs. Spell.

In the special case of Chromatic Dungeons, all the above applies, but I also think it would work out well if the Chromatic Mage was ported over (even via the OGL) to Chromatic Dungeons.  IT would work well as another, but a different classification of Magic-User.  I would use Wizard level advancement in CD and the spell progression in the Adventurers Spellbook.

I'll discuss this more tomorrow when I do my Class Struggles post.