cut this out for the scrapbook today. 

The Player Characters awake, their minds fuzzy, but their bodies cold and damp, and in pain. They each hang by one arm fettered over stagnant water. The water sloshes and the air is rank with the smell of decay, but there is the sound of snoring too. Light flickers and bobs up and down from below, a candle all but burnt down to the nub floats on the water. In the cells around them, the Player Characters can see each other. They are dressed, but have neither arms or armour, or indeed any of the equipment they brought with them earlier that day. For it was only today that they reached the castle, its tall spire jutting from the landscape, having travelled at the behest of its count, a noble who pleaded for their help in lifting a curse. He promised a great reward in return, yet he did not welcome the visitors kindly. First proclaiming them to be the answer to curse that he could no longer bare to suffer alone, and then pouncing upon the Player Characters.

This is the set-up to The Count, the Castle, & the Curse. Published by Deficient Games, it is a scenario for ShadowDark, the retroclone inspired by both the Old School Renaissance and Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition from The Arcane Library. It is designed for a party of Player Characters of First to Third Level, and is intended to be played through in roughly four or five hours. Thus, it is possible to play through the scenario in a single session, but definitely no more than two.
The Count, the Castle, & the Curse is not only a Gothic horror scenario, but very clearly a retelling of the myths around vampires and Dracula. Further, it is possible to see The Count, the Castle, & the Curse as the retelling of the story of Count Strahd von Zarovich and events in Castle Ravenloft as originally appeared in 1983 in I6 Ravenloft for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons First Edition, but reimagined for Old School Renaissance. It has a Count, who is unnamed, away at war who returns to his lonely wife to discover that she has been unfaithful with his brother and in his jealousy cuts a bloody swathe through the castle.
As the scenario opens, the Player Characters have already arrived at the castle and find themselves trapped within its confines. In a situation in roleplaying that goes all the way back to Escape from Astigar’s Lair from Judges Guild (and beyond), they begin play imprisoned, chained up, and stripped of their equipment. Freeing themselves and recovering their equipment is the first of their goals, for their true aim—set by the Count—is to escape the castle. To that end, he is going to give them every opportunity to do so, all whilst taunting them, stalking them, yet not attacking them. He will only do that when the clock strikes Midnight, and he comes for them. This does not apply to his minions within the castle who will haunt and haunt the halls of the castle in search of their prey, that is, the Player Characters. Until Midnight though, the Player Characters have free reign to explore the limits of the castle and in the process discover its secrets and its past, including how the Count came to be cursed with vampirism and how his wife and brother died, and the ways out. There are multiple ways out of the castle, none of them easy, of course. The simplest are probably the most physically challenging, whilst others require crisscrossing the castle and up and down its tower to obtain the right items to activate an exit. Effectively, The Count, the Castle, & the Curse is a puzzle dungeon, but pleasingly, one with multiple solutions.
The Count, the Castle, & the Curse includes a number of stylistic and mechanical changes to both handle and enforce its Gothic genre. The most obvious is not to map the castle. Or rather not map the castle in its entirety, floor by floor, corridor by corridor, room by room, in two dimensions. Instead, it focuses on the important rooms and showing the links between them, presenting the relationship between them in a side or cut away view of the castle. Combined with detailed descriptions presented as a series of bullet points and the scenario focuses on the individual locations rather than on the time spent between them, that space shrouded by shadow into between the bursts of candlelight found elsewhere. Narratively and mechanically, this makes the navigation of the castle relatively easy, and it is further eased for the Game Master by the clear presentation of the rooms at the top of the page above their descriptions.
Mechanically, the scenario does away with Armour Class and some cases, the traditional Saving Throws. Instead, it replaces both with a floating value called Stress Level. This ranges in value between eight and twenty-two, but begins at ten and can go up and down according to the actions of the Player Characters and environmental factors. Witnessing a horrifying event, becoming frightening or paralysed, a player rolling a natural one or a monster a natural twenty, and being in darkness or split apart—do not split the party—will all increase the Stress Level. Sharing a strong drink, a player rolling a natural twenty or a monster a natural one, finding a trinket from home and narrating it into the story, and more will reduce the Stress Level. Stress Level will rise hour by hour of real. The players are kept fully aware of the current Stress Level, so can work to manipulate it, but also react in despair as it rises.
Each Player Character also begins play under the same curse as the Count—or at least partially under the curse. Throughout the exploration of the castle, he will be tempted again and again by the curse. This is ‘Progressive Vampirism’. The temptation is to consume blood and doing so grants vampiric traits and weaknesses as well as increasing the Player Character’s Hit Points. On the plus side, this also decreases the current Stress Level, but the Player Character is also tempted to feed repeatedly, and if he feeds too much, he not only gains more vampiric traits and weaknesses, but imperils his soul. If the Player Characters have not escaped by then, at the climax of the scenario at Midnight, when the Count appears for the final time, any Player Character who has given into his desire for blood and fed once too often may end up joining the Count in fully embracing the curse and becoming one of his minions.

Physically, The Count, the Castle, & the Curse is clearly and simply presented with an excellent layout. Bar the cover, there are no illustrations in the scenario. That said, given the genre, it is easy for the Game Master to base her descriptions on any number of vampire stories and films. The scenario does need an edit in places.
The Count, the Castle, & the Curse is written for use with ShadowDark and the dark and gloomy halls of its Gothic castle setting chime perfectly with the torch and light mechanics of ShadowDark, with the Stress Level mechanics only adding to the fear and horror of the setting and its genre. (Of course, the scenario can be run with the retroclone of the Game Master’s choice.) Given its story and its genre, there is much that is familiar in The Count, the Castle, & the Curse, but that makes it easier for the players and their character and the Game Master to engage with it, whilst the Stress Level and vampirism mechanics enforce and encourage the engagement. The Count, the Castle, & the Curse is a well-done retelling of an old story that makes for a classic Gothic horror one-shot.

When it comes to legendary role-playing games, few carry the mythic weight of King Arthur Pendragon. Originally created by Greg Stafford in 1985 and in 2016 published in its 5.2 edition. Chaosium owns it again and there is a new (2024) edition out.  I have not picked that one up, so I am sticking with 5.2 for now. Pendragon has always stood apart from its fantasy cousins. Where Dungeons & Dragons gave us dungeons, monsters, and treasure, Pendragon asks us to sit at the Round Table, wrestle with honor and passion, and live out the great romances and tragedies of Arthurian legend. Still, it is an epic RPG and one worth looking into.

King Arthur Pendragon (5.2)

2016. Greg Stafford.

Greg Stafford often called Pendragon his “masterpiece,” and for good reason. He poured decades of study into Arthurian myth, Malory, Chretien, the Welsh triads and built a system designed not just to simulate combat but to embody the ideals and contradictions of chivalry. Over the years, the rules have been polished but never really overhauled. The 5.2 edition (2016) is a refinement of the earlier 5th, cleaning up layout, clarifying rules, and giving new players the most accessible entry point into the game’s deep traditions. I picked up my old 2nd Edition version and it is remarkable how compatible they are with each other. 

The system is similar to Chaosium's Basic Role-playing system. So it has always been sorta-kinda compatible with Call of Cthulhu and RuneQuest, though the years and system assumptions have pushed them all away from the BRP standard. You won't be seeing Yog-Sothoth showing up in Wales anytime soon with this game. No Pendragon is for people who want to play an Arthurian game and respect the scholarship that went into this game. That is not to say there isn't magic in this game; Morgan le Fey is here after all as is Merlin, but it is not a central theme. 

The game itself is a fantasy realized epic Britain of the 5th and 6th centuries, with the style of the High Medieval Periods of the 10th to 15th centuries. You can play it as a strict Dark Ages game or a high-fantastical one, as seen in the popular King Arthur culture. You can do "Excalibur" or even the TV show "Merlin."

I am using the 5.2 version of the rules, which if you asked me, I could not tell you the difference between it and the 5.1 version save for new color art in 5.2, some reorganization, and different cover art. While I think the 5.1 art is more evocative of the game, I can't deny that the 5.2 version is extremely attractive. I have not updated to the full 2024 edition at all, but it looks attractive as well. I do have the Starter Set in PDF, though. Maybe I'll pick it up someday.

Character Creation

Instead of rolling up wandering adventurers, you take up the mantle of knights (and occasionally others) tied to lineage, land, and loyalty. The core stats are familiar, Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Size, but where Pendragon shines are the Traits and Passions. Traits are moral-ethical pairs (Chaste/Lustful, Merciful/Cruel, etc.) that don’t just describe your knight, they drive play. Roll Merciful in the wrong moment, and your knight may act against your intentions, because that’s what stories do. Passions, like Loyalty (Lord) or Love (Family), give bonuses when invoked, but can also shatter a knight’s will if betrayed.

Character creation is as much about heritage as numbers. You’re asked: Who was your father? What did he earn? What land do you hold? Your knight isn’t a blank slate, but part of a saga. And unlike most RPGs, Pendragon expects you to play not just one knight, but their descendants across generations, carrying your family name into the twilight of Camelot. Something that obviously appeals to me.

It is assumed that players will be creating characters together to form some sort of cohesive narrative. There is a lot of freedom here and role-playing is stressed over "roll-playing."

The chapter assumes you are going to be a starting Knight, well, Squire. I am taking a different approach for my characters. 

Chapter Three: Family and Fatherland is notable since it details the experiences of your father and grandfather. If you are so inclined, it can be adapted to any Feudal Fantasy RPG. Just change the years to whatever makes sense in your game. 

The Pendragon Campaign

No review of Pendragon is complete without mentioning The Pendragon Campaign. First published in 1985, and then later as The Great Pendragon Campaign in 2006, this massive tome lays out a year-by-year chronicle of Arthur’s Britain, from the final days of Uther through the rise, glory, and eventual fall of Camelot. That’s over 80 years of history, adventures, and story hooks, meticulously tied to the mechanics of the game.

The brilliance of the Pendragon Campaign isn’t just its scope, but its structure. Each year has events, rumors, and opportunities for your knights (or their descendants) to shape the story. Early sessions might be about Saxon raids and border skirmishes, while later ones touch on the Grail Quest, courtly romance, and the heartbreaking dissolution of the Round Table. Players get to live through the entire legend, sometimes gloriously, sometimes tragically, but always with a sense of being part of something larger than their character sheet.

For Pendragon, the Pendragon Campaign is more than a campaign guide or adventure path, it’s the framework that shows the system’s true purpose. This isn’t a game about “beating the dungeon” or “killing the dragon.” It’s about legacy, dynasties, and the arc of myth. And its influence has quietly rippled into other games. Long campaigns like The Enemy Within for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (1986) or Masks of Nyarlathotep for Call of Cthulhu (1984) were the rage at this time and the Pendragon Campaign shines even among these other memorable campaigns.  Even modern campaign design in games like Pathfinder’s Adventure Paths or D&D’s hardcover campaigns can be seen as walking in the shadow of what Pendragon pioneered.

For me, the Pendragon Campaign is a reminder of what tabletop RPGs can do at their very best: give us not just a night of fun, but a saga, a shared legend that lingers long after the dice are put away.

Johan Werper and Larina Nix for Pendragon

The best way to explore a game is through the characters. Thankfully, I have two that are ready to go! Typically, Johan and Larina were never in the same games. I'd play one or the other. I mixed this up a bit with Pathfinder and had them known to each other. I figured it was an alternate universe.  

I am going to do the same here, but with the intrigue of courtly politics I might consider them as clandestine lovers. Honestly I am basing it on Liam Neeson's and Helen Mirren's roles in Excalibur. 

How does a Roman Catholic Knight from the Continent meet up with a Pagan Welsh girl? Easy, I'll just adapt their meeting in Pathfinder where Larina found the wounded Johan and healed him. He feels indebted to her, he gives her access to a world she would not have normally been allowed in. Everyone thinks she has bewitched him. 

Johan Werper

I can't pick up a game like this and NOT wonder how my Knight-in-Shining-Armor Johan would work out. I had decided way back in High School that if Johan had a culture from Medieval Europe, it would be French, but living in England. Pendragon makes this easy for me since the language of the High Court would be French. I will say that he is from Brittany and traces his lineage back to Saxon invaders. 

Johan Werper II

Age: 22
Son Number: 1
Homeland: Brittany
Religion: Roman Catholic
Lord: Johan I

SIZ: 11
DEX: 14
STR: 16
CON: 11
APP: 12

Damage: 4d6
Healing Rate: 2.7
Movement: 3
Total Hit Points: 27
Unconscious: 7

Personality Traits
Chivalry Bonus: 0
Religious Bonus: 0

Chase/Lustful: 13/7
Energetic/Lazy: 12/8
Forgiving/Vengeful: 13/7
Generous/Selfish: 10/10
Honest/Deceitful: 12/8
Just/Arbitrary: 11/9
Merciful/Cruel: 13/7
Modest/Proud: 13/7
Prudent/Reckless: 10/10
Spiritual/Worldly: 10/10
Temperate/Indulgent: 13/7
Trusting/Suspicious: 10/10
Valorous/Cowardly: 15/5

Passions
Loyalty (Lord): 16
Love (Family): 17
Hospitality: 15
Honor: 15
Hate (Saxons): 10

Skills
Awareness: 5
Boating: 1
Compose: 1 
Courtesy: 4 
Dancing: 2
Faerie Lore: 1
Falconry: 3
First Aid: 10
Flirting: 3
Folklore: 3
Gaming: 3
Heraldry: 4
Hunting: 10
Intrigue: 3
Orate: 3
Play (Lute): 3
Read (Latin): 10
Recognize: 3
Religion (Roman Catholic): 10
Romance: 3
Singing: 2
Stewardship: 2
Swimming: 2
Tourney: 2

Combat Skills
Battle: 10
Horsemanship: 10

Sword: 17
Lance: 10
Spear: 6
Dagger: 5
Bow: 5

Distinctive Features
Long Blonde Hair

Glory: 1,500

Chainmail and shield
Silver arm band

Johan is a good fit for this game. I would do him as an alternate reality version and really dig deep into family events to help define who he is in this game. It would really be a lot of fun to be honest. I could even explore the family's past as part of Pagan Europe. That would have been 350+ years before this game though. Still something to think about.

Larina Nix

Of course, I had to try translating Larina into this framework. She doesn’t sit easily in Arthur’s world, but that’s half the fun. Larina as a mystical advisor? A Welsh witch standing at the edge of history? She’d never pass as a proper knight, but as an enchantress, wise woman, or secret Pagan counselor to Arthur’s court, she fits perfectly into the tension between the Christian and Pagan worlds that Pendragon thrives on. Plus, it is a theme I love to come back to time and time again: Pagans vs the rising tide of Christian conquest.

When working on Larina one of the first things I run into is how women characters are treated differently than men. Now is 100% it is emulating Arthurian legends and tales, so just like Call of Cthulhu has a Sanity system, this has different rules more men and women characters. Grated you can grab something like Pagan Shore for older versions to even things out, but I want to try this with the version in front of me. Now there is nothing in the rules saying I can't female knight, and there are examples given, but they are exceptional examples. Fine, Larina is a Pagan anyway and wouldn't be a knight. There is a "witch" detailed (such as it is) on page 179. "Witch" is only mentioned four times in the whole book. I mean I know I can grab something from say Basic Roleplaying or Advanced Sorcery, but that is not the point of Pendragon is it? Plus there is no POW score for these characters. 

Larina ferch Lars

Age: 19
Daughter Number: 1
Father: Lars Nicholson 
Homeland: Cymru
Religion: Pagan
Lord: Johan I

SIZ: 9
DEX: 10
STR: 10
CON: 16
APP: 18

Damage: 3d6
Healing Rate: 2.5
Movement: 2.5
Total Hit Points: 19
Unconscious: 4

Personality Traits
Chivalry Bonus: 0
Religious Bonus: 0

Chase/Lustful: 5/15
Energetic/Lazy: 13/7
Forgiving/Vengeful: 10/10
Generous/Selfish: 13/10
Honest/Deceitful: 13/7
Just/Arbitrary: 10/10
Merciful/Cruel: 10/10
Modest/Proud: 7/13
Prudent/Reckless: 10/10
Spiritual/Worldly: 12/8
Temperate/Indulgent: 10/10
Trusting/Suspicious: 10/10
Valorous/Cowardly: 10/10

Passions
Loyalty (Lord): 15
Love (Family): 16
Hospitality: 15
Honor: 15
Loyalty (Old Faith): 13

Skills
Awareness: 3
Chirurgery: 10
Compose: 1 
Courtesy: 5 
Dancing: 3
Faerie Lore: 10
Falconry: 2
Fashion: 2
First Aid: 15
Flirting: 11
Folklore: 4
Gaming: 3
Heraldry: 1
Industry: 5
Intrigue: 2
Orate: 3
Play (Flute): 3
Read (Ogham): 10
Recognize: 2
Religion (Pagan): 10
Romance: 2
Singing: 3
Stewardship: 5
Swimming: 1
Tourney: 1

Combat Skills
Battle: 1
Horsemanship: 3

Dagger: 5
Staff: 5

Woman's Gift
Natural Healer

Enchantments
Enchantment
Magical Healing
Glamour

Distinctive Features
Long red hair
Bright, piercing blue eyes
Larger than average nose

Glory: 1,140

There is no INT or POW stat in this flavor of BRP. So there are not really any rules to cover her proficiency with languages. Plus as Welsh pagan girl she would not really have much of chance to learn languages save via exposure. But I did roll Natural Healer for her gift, so that is her "in" to the courts, or at least how she gets noticed.

For magic, the rules are thin. I mean, with a game that has Merlin as a character an appendix on magic would be nice. I gave her "subtle" magic. So, an enchantment here, magical healing, and glamour. All things that can be explained away with deft skill. She has a knack for healing, so she augments it every now and then with some pagan magic, OR is it just her knowledge of herbs and plants? Hard to say. Likely to get her burned at the stake if it were about 1000 years later. 

I love the idea that these versions of Johan and Larina are clandestine lovers. It would add the proper tragedy to the narrative and game. Plus, it is that nice push and pull between the Pagans and Christians I love to explore.

Why Play This Instead of D&D 5e?

D&D 5e is about heroes exploring dungeons, defeating monsters, and gaining power. Pendragon is about knights struggling with ideals, navigating dynastic politics, and finding their place in the grand sweep of legend. It’s a game of story rather than loot.

• If you want to explore chivalry, honor, and tragedy rather than XP and levels, this is your game.
  
  
• If you’re drawn to the romantic, mythic sweep of Arthurian legend, no other RPG captures it as faithfully.
  
  
• If you want to play not just a character, but a family across generations, Pendragon offers something unique.

In short: D&D tells us what it’s like to be an adventurer. Pendragon tells us what it’s like to live and die as part of the great legend of Arthur. 

That is not to say one game doesn't have something to offer the other. As D&D has grown, it has left its feudal medieval roots behind, if it really had any to start with. Yeah, Greyhawk cosplays as feudal lands, but really the place where D&D was always the best is in its name: Dungeons. 

The game is great. It's attention to historical detail is its strongest feature, but also its weakest one for me since I do like to have a bit of magic in my fantasy. No worries, I have a LOT of FRPGs with magic. 

Now in its eighteenth year, Free RPG Day for 2025 took place on Saturday, June 21st. As per usual, Free RPG Day consisted of an array of new and interesting little releases, which are traditionally tasters for forthcoming games to be released at GenCon the following August, but others are support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera or a quick-start. This included dice, miniatures, vouchers, and more. Thanks to the generosity of Waylands Forge in Birmingham, Reviews from R’lyeh was able to get hold of many of the titles released for Free RPG Day.
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As its title suggests, the Exalted Funeral DOUBLE FEATURE! contains scenarios for two of the roleplaying games published by Exalted Funeral. These are for Land of Eem and for Monty Python’s Curricular Medieval Reenactment Programme. The ‘Land of Eem: Curse of the Chicken-Foot Witch – A Quickstart Adventure’, which is for the roleplaying game which describes itself as ‘The Lord of the Rings meets The Muppets’, is not quite a full quick-start in that the Game Master will need to download a set of Player Characters, whilst the content for the Monty Python’s Curricular Medieval Reenactment Programme is a scenario rather than a quick-start and again, the Game Master will need to download a set of Player Characters. The two scenarios are presented as a tête-bêche book, so that one book is upside-down relative to the other. Both scenarios can be played through in a single session or so.
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The scenario for Monty Python’s Curricular Medieval Reenactment Programme is ‘The Brachet and the Black Heart’. This is actually the scenario from the quick-start, so essentially the Game Master is getting with Monty Python’s Curricular Medieval Reenactment Programme half of Exalted Funeral DOUBLE FEATURE! is a version of the scenario with better presentation and artwork. The scenario does have some requirements in terms of which of the pre-generated Player Characters should be used. The Troubadour and the Knight should definitely be included as well as a Lower-Class Player Character such as the Knave or the Churl. The Enchanter will likely also be useful. However, the scenario itself does not make this explicit.

The scenario opens with the Player Characters in the village of Lower Entrails, which is described as quaint, nice, has several chickens, and not too much shit on everyone. There is a festival going on and the Player Characters are encouraged to wander around, gossip,and shop. There are plenty of prompts here for the Game Master to portray various encounters here, but the scenario begins with the Knight being approached by a footman from the nearby manse of Lord Arthur Name who invites him to a grand banquet to celebrate the betrothal of his daughter, Lady Lucky. Once the Player Characters have got past the Gumbys who serve as gatekeepers, they are divided by social class and funnelled into different scenes and activities. The Knight is feted, the Troubadour is expected to work, and anyone lower class is sent to the kitchens to work. There is the chance to pick up some gossip before, in the middle of the banquet, Lady Lucky is abducted by a giant dog chased by a surprisingly large flying mouse! Of course, Lord Arthur Name looks to the Knight to go after his daughter and rescue her.

The second part of the scenario is more traditional, a trek or quest into the Forest Sauvage to locate Lady Lucky. However, this is Monty Python’s Curricular Medieval Reenactment Programme and so the encounters along the way include with French knights and a witch a la Monty Python and the Holy Grail before the confrontation with a dragon that is more Jabberwocky than Monty Python. There is an optional encounter which will reveal the villain behind the whole affair, but like the encounter with the Gumbys, the encounters with the French knights and the dragon are a chance for the Game Master to play up her knowledge of Monty Python and quote from its oeuvre in character. ‘The Brachet and the Black Heart’ is a decent adventure which treats its medievalism in fairly silly fashion. Where it fails is in telling the Game Master what is going on until the very end of the scenario, so she must read to find out rather than the scenario telling her as part of her preparation.

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In comparison to ‘The Brachet and the Black Heart’ for Monty Python’s Curricular Medieval Reenactment Programme, the ‘Land of Eem: Curse of the Chicken-Foot Witch – A Quickstart Adventure’ does actually include an explanation of its rules. This starts with its core mechanic. To have his character undertake an action, a player rolls a twelve-sided die and adds a skill modifier. On a result of one and two, the attempt is a complete failure; a failure with a plus on three to five; a success with a twist on result of six to eight; a success on nine to eleven; and a complete success on a twelve. There is a lot of scope for interpretation in terms of what the twists and failures might be, but there are explanations of each along with the rules for advantage and disadvantage, proficiencies and deficiencies, and the attributes, stats, and skills for the Player Character.

The conflict rules are given an equally straightforward and simple explanation. Notably, conflicts are handled in four phases—‘Parley’, ‘Improvise’, ‘Run’, and ‘Combat’—with the emphasis being that fighting is not the only option. Both melee and ranged combat have their own outcomes similar to those for a standard ability or skill test. Notably for melee combat, instead of success with a twist on result of six to eight, the result is ‘Hit with a Counterattack’. This means that the defender can attack back when hit, but could then roll the result of ‘Hit with a Counterattack’. This could simulate a duel, but it could also lead to the serious inflicting of Dread. Dread is a measure of the mental and physical harm that an attack or effect can inflict, and it is deducted from Courage. Armour will reduce physical Dread. A Player Character reduced to zero Courage is not dead, but unconscious and can suffer wounds, but if Courage is reduced to zero again, a Defy Death check must be made.

The adventure, ‘Curse of the Chicken-Foot Witch’ is described as having the hijinks tone and being “A fun, goofy, and light-hearted Level 1+ adventure’, inspired by The Muppets, Labyrinth, and Adventure Time. A witch, Chara the Chicken-Foot Witch, is causing trouble in the Used T’Be Forest in the Mucklands, including cursing the powerful Gnome, L. Dorothy Sandwich and turning her into a muskrat. Unable to undo the curse as a muskrat and stuck at Wally’s Waffles and Weorgs, L. Dorothy Sandwich hires the Player Characters to enter Chara the Chicken-Foot Witch’s hovel and steal back her Wand of Decursification. The adventure begins with the Player Characters at the Crack, the fissure in Used T’Be Forest that is the entrance to Chara the Chicken-Foot Witch’s hovel. The hovel is presented as a one-page location consisting of seven individual rooms and caves detailed in a list of bullet points. The caves are full of monsters, but also victims of Chara the Chicken-Foot Witch’s ire and jealousy. Some will have to be fought, but in many cases, the Player Characters can parley with the inhabitants or even avoid them all together. Of course, Chara the Chicken-Foot Witch cannot be avoided, but again, she does not have to fought to be defeated and the scenario includes ways in which the Player Characters can successfully Parley with her.
The adventure is definitely goofy and there is a little bit of whimsy to it. A headless skeleton wanders the caves, a ghostly ballerina weeps for her lost career, and an anthropomorphic Wug bakes cookies for his mistress. Depending upon the route taken through the caves, the scenario could be played in less than a single session. It looks like a mini-dungeon, but whilst there are opportunities for combat, the ‘Curse of the Chicken-Foot Witch’ encourages other options than that and is all the better for it.
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Physically, the Exalted Funeral DOUBLE FEATURE! is a colourful affair. The artwork is excellent, and both scenarios are well written, even if the ‘The Brachet and the Black Heart’ does leave it to the end to explain to the Game Master what is going on.
Unfortunately, there is a disjointed feel to Exalted Funeral DOUBLE FEATURE!. Not because of there being content for two roleplaying games within its pages or the tête-bêche format, but because of what is missing and what the Game Master has to do to run either scenario. Both require that the Game Master download the Player Characters rather than giving them to her up front and in the case of ‘The Brachet and the Black Heart’, the Game Master has to download the quick-start for Monty Python’s Curricular Medieval Reenactment Programme, which not only includes the rules to run ‘The Brachet and the Black Heart’, but also ‘The Brachet and the Black Heart’ itself. Which is weird, as in, “So, to get the rules I need to run the scenario you have given me, I need to download the quick-start which includes the scenario you have already given me?” Ideally, Exalted Funeral DOUBLE FEATURE! should have been two books and the Game Master would have had everything needed to play one or both as is her wont. Instead, what Exalted Funeral has provided is a weird, unsatisfying compromise.
Nevertheless, Exalted Funeral DOUBLE FEATURE! does include two very enjoyable scenarios. Although they require a bit more effort to prepare than they really should, both ‘The Brachet and the Black Heart’ and ‘Curse of the Chicken-Foot Witch’ nicely showcase the humour and tone of their respective roleplaying games and present the players with some entertaining challenges for a single session each.

 This is the first issue from the Eric C. Harshbarger collection. I did have a copy already, but it is in rather sad shape. I have had a copy of this issue for a bit. I was hesitant to review it since it not exactly the same as reviewing a proper issue of Dragon. This is a curated collection, or as it says on the cover, a Best of. Part of the fun of This Old Dragon is reflecting on the issue, what I was doing at the same time it was out, and finding the gems, or lumps of coal, in each one. But, I am very willing to make an exception for Best of The Dragon vol. 1 and Best of Dragon vol. II for various reasons. First, I am not likely to find the older issues they cover, especially from Vol 1. Secondly, these issues were part of my D&D experiences growing up. I remember getting my copy of Best of Vol. II at the same time I picked up Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. My old high school DM, Grenda, and I agreed he would buy the odd-numbered ones and I the even-numbered ones. So there is some added nostalgia for me. So lets get into it.

I should note that this issue is really just "Best of The Dragon." There no other volumes to be a Vol. I for yet. But it will come soon.

Best of The Dragon

This best-of collection was initially published in 1980 and was edited by Tim Kask. It covers the Strategic Review and The Dragon vols I and II, or the first two years of The Dragon. So, from 1975 to 1978. Game-wise, this also covers the era of Original D&D and the dawn of AD&D.  

What I want to get from this is a feel for what was going on then. 1975 to 1978 is a great time since this predates my own involvement in the game. I would not start playing until 1979. So the Best of Dragons were like hidden treasures of a bygone age. These were my "Glamdring" and "Orcrist" treasures. That is, if Gygax was Turgon and Lake Geneva was Gondolin. 

This reads like a White Paper for AD&D. You can see how, where, and even why AD&D was made here with the various additions and rule guidelines. To expand on this further to my own interests, the lack of inclusion of the witch class seems a little odder. 

There are a lot of articles here and they are packed together. I will mention them all, but some might not get much more than that. Others though are very interesting.

Section 1: Design/Designer's Forum

This all reads like rough drafts of the AD&D game presented from the D&D point of view. I should also add that Metamorphosis Alpha also gets some coverage.

Planes by Gary Gygax gives us our first look at what will become the famous D&D "wheel" cosmology. The color-coded planes of this article make it slightly more useful than its Player's Handbook counterpart.

How Green Was My Mutant, also by Gygax, gives us some random human mutation tables. I note these can be used in conjunction with the the random demons tables in the back of this issue. More on that later. 

What follows are some more MA articles, Some Ideas Missed in Metamorphosis Alpha by James M. Ward and An Alternate Beginning Sequence for Metamorphosis: Alpha (note the colon) by Guy W. McLimore, Jr. It is easy to see the ideas brewing that would transform MA into Gamma World. 

Hints for D&D Judges is a three-part series from Joe Fischer helping what will be called Dungeon Masters. I like the use of "Judge" here, very much old-school and the original idea for DM. Part 1 covers towns. Part 2 is Wilderness, and Part 3 is the Dungeon itself.

The amazing Lee Gold has a rare Dragon appearance with her article on Languages or Could You Repeat that in Auld Wormish? Given the discussions I have had here on languages, you know this is one that I have gone back to many times. 

Tony Walston is up with The Development of Towns in D&D. It covers two pages and is packed really. I think some of this morphed into future articles about towns. Like all articles from this time, it is largely "here are your tools, go build it," which is great and works well for me. I am fairly sure that Grenda used some of this for all the cities he built and we adventured in.

On the other side of this is Let There Be A Method To Your Madness from Richard Gilbert. This article details how you should design your dungeons from the ground up, er, down. Followed by Daniel Clifton with Designing For Unique Wilderness Encounters. There is an assumption here, I think, that this is largely for a hex-crawl sort of adventure. 

Jim Ward is back with two more MA-related articles, Deserted Cities of Mars and The Total Person In Metamorphosis Alpha. 

Ok, now this one is an odd one. How Heavy Is My Giant is overtly a good article. It is a math-intensive guide on how much a giant-sized human should weigh. The article was "written" by Shlump Da Orc. Seriously? The article is good and whoever wrote it should be taking credit.

Rob Kuntz is up with Tolkien in Dungeons & Dragons. Knowing what I know now, this article hits a little differently. Though there is one solid point that was very true then and very true now. While there are similarities between Tolkien and D&D, they are not the same thing. The best example is the elves. D&D elves are not the immortals of Tolkien, nor should they be.

Jim Ward, our MVP of this collection, is up again with Notes From a Semi-Successful D&D Player. It is a bit of his reflections on playing as long as he had been at that point. He continues these thoughts on Some Thoughts on the Speed of a Lightning Bolt. This is less about how fast a lightning bolt moves, and more about how fast the wizard can cast the spell. 

The Meaning of Law and Chaos in Dungeons & Dragons and Their Relationships to Good and Evil is next. It sounds like the title of a Master's Thesis, and in a way, it is. It was from Gary Gygax himself and it is in my opinion required reading. The graph of the soon-to-be AD&D alignment system is more complex than what we see in either Holmes Basic D&D or the AD&D Player's Handbook. There is a sense of "degree" or "intensity" in this. So, Demons are the most Chaotic Evil, then followed by Red Dragons (back then, yes), Trolls, and moving closer to Neutral, Orcs, Efreeti, Wereboars, and more. So not all creatures of the same alignment experience or act the exact same way. I think this distinction was lost later on. Suggesting that a Chaotic Evil creature can only act as chaotic evil. 

This is the start of a series of articles by Gygax. There is a short article, Gary Gygax on Dungeons & Dragons which covers how Gary says he started the game. We know now of course it was much more involved that the handful of paragraphs here. This is followed by D&D is Only as Good as the DM. This is the first mention in this magazine of the "Dungeonmaster" (one word).

The Dungeons & Dragons Magic System is next from Gary and covers how the D&D magic system evolved out of Chainmail.

Section 2: Dragon Mirth

This section covers some of the "funnier" articles from TSR/The Dragon.

There is a Monster Reference Table Addition for a bunch of creatures they just made up for this. Sort of amusing I guess. 

Jake Jaquet is up with The Search for the Forbidden Chamber. A bit of fiction. 

Omar Kwalish (really Tim Kask) is up with What To Do When the Dog Eats Your Dice. Which is actually helpful, in a silly premise way. What to do if you don't have dice handy. Granted this is an artifact of the time. Everyone has a phone with access to dice rollers. But he also provides some solid 20th-century solutions like chits, cards, numbered straws/sticks, spinners, and even calculators with random functions. I used to use that one a lot. 

Excerpt From An Interview With A Rust Monster from Michael McCrery is honestly best ignored. But I am sure someone out there enjoyed it. 

While Sturmgeschutz & Sorcery is a silly idea from Gary Gygax, it has some practical uses. Namely, how much damage can a WWII tank do in D&D terms? The emphasis here is more Chainmail in origin than D&D, but it is still fun to read. 

Section 3: Variants

Ok, now this section is much more interesting and gives us what The Dragon did the best: providing us with new material for our games.

Peter Aronson has two articles about Illusionists. The first gives us the class to 13th level and 5th level spell ability, and the next extends this to 14th level and 7th level spell ability. Both include a bunch of new spells. It honestly looks perfect to add to my Expert Set box.

Jim Ward is back with treasures found in Tombs & Crypts.

Gary is also next with Halflings, Dwarves, Clerics & Thieves in Dungeon! In this case, the Dungeon board game. I am going to make copies of this one and put it in all my copies of Dungeon. Not only are there new rules for these player types, but there are also new treasures and new monsters. 

Doug Schwegman has a classic one for me next, the original Bard class in Statistics Regarding Classes: (Additions) - BARDS. I have played this Bard in the past and it works out great. The feel is more OD&D + Greyhawk, but that also means it would work well in Basic D&D and even AD&D. This is the one I used for my 1st Ed version of Nida. 

Joe Fischer has a "new" Ranger class in The Original Ranger Class. Again, the presentation makes it look perfect for Basic D&D.

Charles Preston Goforth, Jr. is up from The Dragon #5 with Wizard Research Rules. This expands the rules covered in OD&D and again in The Dragon #2. It is a pretty solid set of rules for spell and magic item research. I'd have to compare it to later editions, but what strikes me about it is the simplicity of it all. 

Ah. Next is the first version of the venerable Dragon Magazine Witch class in Witchcraft Supplement for Dungeons & Dragons. There is no author listed, not even Tim Kask knows who wrote it, but it is quite well written. It is overtly for OD&D Prime. Even before Greyhawk was released. The "Best Of" format has it neatly confined to 5 pages of text with some art. There is a lot to love about this article and class, really, and I am still puzzled why we never got an official witch class in old-school D&D.  Though, I suppose if we had I'd be over here droning on about something else. 

An ad for Fantasy Games Unlimited. 

John M. Seaton is up with Monkish Combat in the Arena of Promotion, or how monks gain levels officially.  It has diagrams that remind me of old martial-arts manuals. 

Two pages of tables for Solo Dungeons & Dragons Adventures by Gary Gygax, with contributions from George A. Lord and play testing by Ernie Gygax and Robert Kuntz. I mean, it looks like it could work. I know for certain if I had seen this I would have tried to write a BASIC program to mimic this. I mean it would not be very difficult at all. 

George Rihn is up with Lycanthropy - The Progress of the Disease. Which is basically discussing lycanthropes and XP progression for lycanthrope levels. It also looks pretty solid and I wonder why it didn't catch on. Though as I have mentioned many times, my Appendix N is more Hammer Horror than it is Pulp Fantasy; playing a werewolf is something that was going always come up in my games.

The Japanese Mythos are next by Jerome Arkenberg. This appeared originally in The Dragon #13 from 1978 and uses the format laid out by 1976's Gods, Demigods, & Heroes. There are three and half pages here and there are more entries than seen in the Japanese Mythos section of Deities & Demigods. 

Paul Montgomery Crabaugh and Jon Pickens have two similar articles, Random Monsters and D&D Option: Demon Generation, respectively. With a few dice rolls you can create any sort of monster; living, undead or demon, to fill your dungeons. Combine these with the How Green was my Mutant article above and you can generate thousands. Again, this is exactly the sort of thing I would have tried to program in BASIC on my old TRS-80 Color Computer 2!

I said this was packed, right?

Ok, so a lot of great articles here that hit heavy on the nostalgia, but also still have some use today. I might try that random monster generator, or more to the point recombine it all and see what I can come up with. Maybe Python or something. Could be fun.

The Witch, of course, is the star for me. Love going back and looking at this older version. 

One of the big issues I have with this collection is that while I can lump it all into a specific time, the time before I played, I miss the nuances of the times. I mean, I was very different from 1975 to 1978, and so was our hobby. I would have liked to see the date and issue each of these was published originally, like Best of Dragon Vol II does. I do miss the ads and the commentary from that time, though. 

Still, it is a fascinating, if brief, glimpse into a time that remains a foreign country to me. 

Should I do Best of Dragon Vol II? Have to think about that. 

 I mentioned a bit back that I need want to revise my War of the Witch Queens. The first idea was to redo it all for Wasted Lands. Good so far.  Plus I found some other adventures I want to add, namely The Folio Black Label #3 White Witch and Black Stone from Art of the Genre.

I also found this resource online that details all the adventures from Dungeon Magazine issues #1 to #100. These are all AD&D 1st ed, 2nd ed, and BECMI adventures with some 3rd edition. So, I went looking for all the "witch" adventures.

Here is what I found.

• Added: "Monsterquest" by Vince Garcia, Issue #10, Levels 1-3, AD&D 1st Ed.
• "The Wards of Witching Ways" Issue #11, Levels 3-5, AD&D 1st Ed.
• "Things That Go Bump in the Night" Issue #38, Levels 3-6, AD&D 2nd Ed.
• "The Price of Revenge" Issue #42, Levels 4-6, AD&D 2nd Ed. Ravenloft
• "The Witch of Windcrag" Issue #51, Levels 2-3, BECMI
• "The Witch's Fiddle" Issue #54, Levels 2-5, AD&D 2nd Ed.
• "Witches' Brew" Issue #67, Levels 3-5, AD&D 2nd Ed Forgotten Realms
• "Visiting Tylwith" Issue #77, Level 1, AD&D 2nd Ed.
• "The Witch of Serpent's Bridge" Issue #95, Level 3, D&D 3rd Edition

Now I just need to find these issues! Thankfully, I have a game auction coming up, and old Dungeon magazines always come up. Yeah, I know they are probably somewhere online, but I don't want those; I would rather have physical copies.

Once I review these (when I get them), I'll need to see how to integrate these into the large adventures.

I also just found out about this one, La arboleda de la Bruja Muerta (The Dead Witch's Grove). A new witch adventure AND a chance to practice more Spanish! It is not out yet.

But this one was just released!

Witch and Stone from Pacesetter Games. Grabbed it this morning. 

Looks like War of the Witch Queens will be back on!

 I got another email from Eric Harshbarger recently offering to send me some more Dragon Magazines for my "This Old Dragon" reviews. I mean, how could I say no.

Well, the package I got was beyond my expectations!

I have not checked if I have duplicates yet, nor have I checked which ones already have posts. But I will say this, they are in far better shape than the one I know I have duplicates of.

Looking forward to getting these out to you all.

Thank you, Eric for sending these along! 

If you can, check out Eric's website.

 The 1st Pufflumi Musketeers allowed me to accompany them on a long hike North of the Snootstream near Vinalville.  The autumnal weather was delightful as the cheery troops swung in a loping stride towards the Vindsoc fort.  The smoke of cigarettes and happy banter of our well fed fellows was a charming contretemps to the leafy snap of the air and the neighs of the Officer's horses.

       Major Melon of the Musketeers was jovial, and  only needed a bit of prodding to find the proper road by the antiquated garrison map.  I'm left in no doubt that the professionalism of our officers is well fitted to the task of holding the Oppressorbad border. 

Much like the Jonstown Compendium for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and The Companions of Arthur for material set in Greg Stafford’s masterpiece of Arthurian legend and romance, Pendragon, the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition is a curated platform for user-made content. 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—
There is a balance to find between knowing enough to be able to fight evil, versus not knowing enough and having it kill your or send you mad or knowing too much and having it send you mad, and worse have you betray society. This is the dilemma at the heart of heart of the Impossible Chamber, a secret society that knows just enough to know that what it knows is probably not enough and yet knowing more will compromise its mission. The tomes that it has had access to go back millennia, perhaps even more, but it is likely that its origins are only a few hundreds of years old. In more recent times, it may be connected to the Luminary Brotherhood of St. Joan which was established in Paris in the wake of the Affair of the Poisons that beset the city in the late seventeenth century. The Impossible Chamber was founded a few short years after the dissolving of the Luminary Brotherhood, just prior to the French Revolution. It managed to survive the turbulence of the years following the revolution and was even funded by Napoleon Bonaparte before his defeat at Waterloo and exile to St. Helena. By then, chapters had been established in both England and the United States of America. To its agents it provides the means to inform them of what they need to know to face the true horror of the universe and the means to fight it. Of course, it is never enough, despite the agents being the best informed and the best equipped to do so.
The Impossible Chamber is a supplement for Regency Cthulhu: Dark Designs in Jane Austen’s England which presents the Impossible Chamber as an organisation and benefactor for its Agents. It details its history and gives a timeline as well as descriptions of its organisation, some of its facilities—from Paris to Ohio, the arms and equipment it gives its agents, how it communicates, and how its upper echelons decide what its members investigate. Several campaign set-ups are suggested, perhaps with one Investigator an agent of the Impossible Chamber or all of them. Either way, an agent needs to have the Mythos skill and may even know a spell. In an age when conspiracies are rife—or at least appear to be, it is of paramount importance that an agent keep his membership of the Impossible Chamber a secret lest he lose Reputation, though the Impossible Chamber can help an agent gain Reputation too. That said, the Impossible Chamber is egalitarian in that it recruits from all levels of society to ensure it has access to all strata. Several Mythos artefacts that the Impossible Chamber holds in its library are detailed, like the Balthazar Pistols, which fire bullets capable of affecting things that ordinarily cannot be harmed by the unnatural, but which also have a high chance of killing their wielder and Lady Ostend’s Parrot, a seemingly ancient Greek automaton capable of speaking in several languages, including ones unknown to most scholars. This is alongside numerous Mythos tomes and several new spells.
A ‘Agents of the Impossible Chamber Experience Package’ enables a player to create an Impossible Chamber. He automatically gains five points of Cthulhu Mythos knowledge, loses Sanity for it, has encountered one Mythos creature at least once and is thus partly inured to its appearance, is suffering from a phobia or mania consequently, and has reduced Reputation, Sanity, and or Power as well. If the players do not want to create their own Agents, then six pre-generated Agents are provided, although their mechanical details do need to be checked.
For the Keeper there is a handful of adventure seeds, each with multiple options that the Keeper can develop. These are set in Scotland and the United States as well as across Europe and ate back roughly fifty or so years. ‘The Catch Me Who Can Affair’ is a complete scenario involving the Impossible Chamber and which can be played using the earlier pre-generated Agents. It is set in London in 1808 and intended to be played by two to three players, though more may be added. The inventor and steam engineer Richard Trevithick opened his Steam Circus in Bloomsbury, in the St. Giles district of London in July of 1808, but within months it closed and reopened twice. Now it has closed a third time and the Impossible Chamber suspects that something strange is the cause. The Investigators quickly discover from the foul smell and the coffin being removed that someone ‘died’ at the venue, whereas the previous causes had been subsidence under the circular track layout. Research in the library of St. Giles-in-the-Fields reveals some of the history of the district, that it was once a site of regular executions before they were moved to Tyburn. As the investigation progress, it becomes clear that someone other the Impossible Chamber is interested in what has happened at the Steam Circus and the corpse removed from deep underneath it. The final scenes will take the Agents deep into the Rookery of Seven Dials, potentially chased in and perhaps beyond… The scenario is nicely detailed and there is a slightly grimy, seedy fell to it.
Physically, The Impossible Chamber is well presented. The artwork is decent as is the cartography. It does need an edit in places.The Impossible Chamber is a combination sourcebook and scenario that shifts how Regency Cthulhu: Dark Designs in Jane Austen’s England is played. In Regency Cthulhu, the Investigators are as much concerned with their Reputation as they investigating and thwarting the forces of the Mythos. As evidenced in the scenario, ‘The Catch Me Who Can Affair’, The Impossible Chamber moves the play back to a more traditional style of play—Call of Cthulhu rather than Regency Cthulhu—with less of an emphasis upon Reputation because the Agents are not actually as involved with the Bon Ton as they typically are with Regency Cthulhu scenarios. Without that emphasis, The Impossible Chamber is easier to run using standard Call of Cthulhu, while the organisation, the Impossible Chamber, lends itself to a campaign set-up where the Agents are more mobile and less concerned with their immediate neighbourhood.

 I have mentioned it here many times, but Greek Mythology was my gateway to Dungeons & Dragons. I just finished watching The Blood of Zeus, formerly known as Gods & Heroes. It was great and I loved the 1st and 2nd seasons, much of the 3rd. I just didn't like how it ended. Though one of the things I loved was the Titans.  They reminded me of the Gargantua I had created back in 2013, and it was cool to see a similar idea animated.

While there were many great examples I could use as specific Gargantua, it was the depictions of the Titans and Tartarus that I really enjoyed. It did get me thinking about my Thanatonic Titans, most recently from The Left Hand Path.

In my Left Hand Path my Demonic classifications include the inhabitants prisoners of Tartarus are the Tartarians aka the Demondands and their lords the Titans.

I didn't detail the Thanatonic Titans, but they are pretty much the Greek Titans and the Norse Giants mixed together. One of my favorites was Typhon.

Typhon (Tartarian)
The Chthonic Titan, Father of Monsters

Armor Class: –5 [24]
Hit Dice: 24+24 (132 hp average)
Move: 180’ (60’), fly 120’ (40’)
To Hit AC 0: 6 [+13]
Attacks: 2 claws (2d12+6), bite (6d6) or breath (see below)
Special: Fire/poison breath, storm control, magic resistance 75%, spell-like abilities, telepathy 300’, see below
No. Appearing: 1 (Unique)
Saving Throws: Fighter 24
Morale: 12
Treasure Type: Hx2, I, N
Alignment: Chaotic (Chaotic Evil)
XP: 25,000

Genius intelligence

Typhon is a colossal, serpentine titan with a hundred dragon-heads writhing about his shoulders, each belching storms, fire, or venom. His vast wings blot out the sun, and his voice shakes the earth like thunder. Taller than any titan or storm giant, Typhon is said to have once challenged the very gods for dominion over creation, only to be chained in the deepest abyss of Tartarus. From there, he still thrashes in hatred, spawning demodands (the Tartarians) as extensions of his rage.

Typhon relishes combat and throws himself in with bloody, violent abandon. He attacks with claws and a bite but also horrible magical attacks.

Breath Weapon. Once every 3 rounds, Typhon can unleash one of two breath attacks:

• Fire: 100’ long cone, 60’ wide at end, 20d10 fire damage (save vs. dragon breath for half).
• Poison Gas: 50’ radius cloud, 12d10 poison damage (save vs. dragon breath for half).

Storm Control. At will, Typhon can summon hurricane winds, torrential rain, or lightning storms in a 2-mile radius. Within the storm, visibility drops to 10’, ranged weapons are useless, and creatures must save vs. Spells or be blown prone.

Spell-like Abilities (3/day each, as 24th-level caster): Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Call Lightning, Control Weather, Earthquake, Dispel Magic.

Typhon also has formidable defenses. 

• Magic Resistance: 75%, as demons.
• Weapons: Only artifacts or +3 or better weapons can harm Typhon.
• Aura of Dread: Any mortal within 120’ must save vs. Spells or flee in terror for 2d6 rounds.

Typhon is unique. He cannot be permanently slain -if reduced to 0 hp, his form dissolves into storm clouds and writhing serpents, reforming in Tartarus within 1d100 years. He is the father of countless monsters, including demodands, chimeras, and hydras. Some sages whisper that earthquakes and great volcanic eruptions mark the struggles of Typhon beneath the earth, forever trying to break his bonds.

Encountering Typhon on the mortal plane is a sign of great calamity or anger of the gods. 

Typhon and the Demodands

When Typhon roamed the mortal world, he was the father of monsters with his mate Echidna. When Typhon was imprisoned, Echidna was dead. Typhon set out to create a new set of offspring to destroy those who had imprisoned him and killed his mate. These new monsters were the demodands.

Much like the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition and the Jonstown Compendium for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, The Companions of Arthur is a curated platform for user-made content, but for material set in Greg Stafford’s masterpiece of Arthurian legend and romance, Pendragon. It enables creators to sell their own original content for use with Pendragon, Sixth Edition. This can be original scenarios, background material, alternate Arthurian settings, and more, but none of this content should be considered to be ‘canon’, but rather fall under ‘Your Pendragon Will Vary’. This means that there is still scope for the authors to create interesting and useful content that others can bring to their Pendragon campaigns.

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What is the Nature of the Quest?The Strange Oak is a short encounter for use with Pendragon, Sixth Edition.

It is a full colour, six page, 4.28 MB PDF.

The layout is tidy, though it does need a slight edit.
Where is the Quest Set?The Strange Oak is a scenario for Pendragon, Sixth Edition. It can be set in any year and is easily added to any rural or forest location.
Who should go on this Quest?
Any type Player-knight can go on this quest. The encounter is not recommended for a solo Player-knight as the situation could kill him.
What does the Quest require?
The Love and Labours of Sir Cauline requires the Pendragon, Sixth Edition Core Rulebook and the Pendragon: Gamemaster’s Handbook.

Where will the Quest take the Knights?
In The Strange Oak, the Player-knights come across an odd a situation. A great tree standing in the woods around which exudes an area of calm suggesting that it is a suitable place to camp. Yet there are no sounds of wildlife around and what look at first to be a profusion of stones upon the ground turn out to be bones, some of them animals and some of them clearly men, and by then, it is possibly too late. The tree has the Player-knight (or Player-knights) in its influence.
The Strange Oak presents a simple situation. Can the Player-knights deal with a benign threat before they fall prey to its influence? What is happening here is that the Player-knights have encountered a fae tree and if they stray too close, there is the chance they will fall asleep and not awaken, starving to death in their slumber, and their flesh feeding the tree. A young boy will warn the Player-knights as to the danger as he has already lost his family (what happens to the now orphan is left to the Player-knights to decide.)

The situation as written is an endurance test for the Player-knights until either they chop or burn the tree down. Encountering and destroying the tree will earn the Player-knights Glory.

However, The Strange Tree offers a number of encounters to flavour the whole affair. This includes a ghost for a supernatural element, a starving wolf-pack for a combat sequence, and even a magical encounter with a pupil of Nimue, the Lady of the Lake, who will issue further warnings. Ideally, the Game Master should one or two of these to add a little more detail to the encounter.
Should the Knights ride out on this Quest?The Strange Oak is a serviceable encounter easily added to any campaign. It can played through in a single session, very likely much less.

Mythic Bastionland – Before Into the Odd starts by committing a cardinal sin. It does not tell the reader what it is. It is clearly a roleplaying game and it does at least tell the reader that, but there is no explanation of what the players and their characters do in Mythic Bastionland. There is no explanation of what sets this apart from any other roleplaying game in its genre. Instead, it leaps straight into setting up a game and creating characters and more. Without this context, Mythic Bastionland leaves the reader and the Referee with more work to understand what the roleplaying game is and what it is trying to do. Now there is some commentary at the rear of book which through a combination of examples of play and commentary upon them does provide some of the context that Mythic Bastionland is missing at the very beginning of its book and throughout the presentation of the rules. Yet this comes in the ‘Oddpocrypha’, almost one-hundred-and-seventy pages after the end of the rules presentation, and since there is no introduction to the roleplaying game to tell the reader that it is there and what it does, there is every possibility that the reader is going to be mystified as what he has in hands and the Referee daunted at the prospect of running Mythic Bastionland.

And yet, check online, such as the DriveThruRPG page for Mythic Bastionland – Before Into the Odd and clear and simple explanations as to what this roleplaying game is and what it is trying to do, can be easily found and understood. The fact that such an explanation—or something similar to it—is not given in Mythic Bastionland is both mystifying and profoundly unhelpful.

So, what then is Mythic Bastionland – Before Into the Odd? Mythic Bastionland is an Arthurian roleplaying game inspired by British folklore, Arthurian legends, and more modern interpretations of both. This includes Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant comic strip, the films Excalibur and The Green Knight, the roleplaying game Pendragon, and the computer game, Elden Ring. It is published by BastionLand Press following a successful Kickstarter campaign and as its title suggests, it is a roleplaying game set sometime in the past of Into the Odd, an Old School Renaissance adjacent microclone of Dickensian horror and industrialisation. This also means that it is also set in the past of Electric Bastionland: Deeper into the Odd, the roleplaying game of incomparable debt and failed careers amidst a very modern and almost incomprehensible city. Mythic Bastionland even suggests ways in which Player Characters from one roleplaying game can go to another as well as several ways in which they are connected, all of which are true, and it even hints that it may not actually be in the past either…

In Mythic Bastionland – Before Into the Odd, the players take the role of Knights, each different and knighted by a different Seer, seeking Glory, exploring a Realm, and confronting Myths, all having sworn the same oath—‘Seek The Myths, Honour The Seers, Protect The Realm’. Theirs is a world of brutal and bloody medievalism, but by gaining Glory, whether through the resolution of Myths, public duelling or jousting, entering tournaments, and fighting battles that history will remember, they will prove themselves worthy of rank, first of taking a seat in Council or at Court, next of ruling a Holding, and then of ruling a Seat of Power. Ultimately, as a Knight-Radiant, a Knight will prove himself worthy of undertaking the final task, fulfilling the City Quest. This will likely bring a campaign to an end as the Knights confront and deal with a series of omens.

A Knight is very simply detailed. He has a type and a rank, three Virtues, Guard, some property, an Ability, and a Passion. The three Virtues are Vigour, Clarity, and Spirit and they range in between in value between seven and eighteen initially, but can never go above nineteen. Guard is a Knight’s ability to avoid Wounds, whilst property is what a Knight owns, an Ability is a talent unique to the Knight, and the Passion is his means of restoring his Spirit. Both Virtues and Guard are rolled for as standard for all knights, but the property, Ability, and Passion are all defined by what type of Knight he is. This can be chosen or rolled for from amongst the seventy-two knightly types that Mythic Bastionland gives. The process is quick and easy.

Sir Wedell
Type: The Salt Knight
Rank: Knight-Errant
Glory 0

VIRTUES
Vigour 12 Clarity 11 Spirit 10
Guard 4

Property: Spined mace (d8 hefty), javelin (d6), coraline mail (A1), Everflask (contains an endless supply of fresh water), Scaled steed (VIG 12, CLA 8, SPI 5, 3GD), dagger (d6), torches, rope, dry rations, camping gear
Ability: Inspire Ire
Passion: Mettle
Knighted by: The Bright Seer

Mechanically, Mythic Bastionland is simple, though more complex than either Into the Odd or Electric Bastionland. To have his Knight undertake an action, a player rolls a Save against the appropriate Virtue. Beyond that, combat adds some complexity. In a turn, a Knight can move and attack—in that strict order, and instead of rolling to attack, a player rolls the damage his Knight will inflict. Combatants can attack the same target and their players roll their dice together. The highest die result counts, while the remaining dice that have rolled four or higher, can be discarded to perform Gambits. These start with ‘Bolster’ to increase the damage inflicted by one, but also enable a combatant to move after the attack, repel a foe, stop a foe from moving, trap an opponent’s shield, dismount a foe, and so on. There are greater Gambits for rolling eight or more. All Knights have access to Feats—‘Smite’, ‘Focus’, and ‘Deny’, which they can use in combat. ‘Smite’ adds an extra, larger die to the combat roll; ‘Focus’ lets a Knight use a Gambit without sacrificing a die; and ‘Deny’ blocks or rebuffs the attack before it lands. All require a Save against a Virtue lest the Knight become fatigued.

Armour worn and shields carried will reduce incoming damage, whilst the ‘Deny’ Feat will enable a Knight to avoid damage all together. A Knight’s Guard is reduced first, and as long it is one or more, a Knight can evade attacks. If his Guard reduced to exactly zero, the Knight gains a scar, but if the damage exceeds a Knight’s Guard, it is deducted from his Vigour and he is Wounded. If a Knight’s Vigour is reduced by half, he is mortally wounded and will die in the hour, but can easily and quickly be given first aid to prevent this. If a Knight’s Vigour is reduced to zero, he is dead. The other Virtues can suffer similar damage, often from Scars, but whilst some are debilitating, other Scars can also increase a Knight’s Guard. The rules for combat also cover unarmed combat, ranged combat, and mounted combat, as well as duels, jousts, shieldwalls, and spearwalls. They scale up quickly to include running warbands, the use of artillery, and handling sieges.

Combat in Mythic Bastionland is thus brutal. However, Knights do have the advantage of having the initiative in combat—unless surprised—and they and their players have the time to plan accordingly. Tactical use of Feats and Gambits will keep a Company of Knights alive longer than if they simply charge into combat.

For the Referee, beyond the basic rules, there is simple guidance on how to set up the game and its scope—how many sessions everyone wants the game to last, goods and trade, descriptions of the people and the realms, and setting up a Realm. This involves creating and populating a hex map, typically a twelve-by-twelve grid, that will mostly consist of wilderness. To this is added four Holdings—castles, walled towns, fortresses, or towers, held by Knights or influential Vassals of the King—one of which is the Realm’s Seat of Power, and six Myth Hexes, each one clearly affected by the presence of their Myth. The details of the various hexes, excluding the Myth Hexes, can be generated using the ‘Spark’ or prompt tables presented later in the book.

In terms of advice, Mythic Bastionland emphasises the ‘Primacy of Action’, that past actions and their consequences supersede content generated by prompts of the Spark Tables (and the bottom of almost all of the pages in the book) and the rules, ensuring that the players and their Knights have enough information to act, and using a simple procedure to determine the outcome of any action. There are also guidelines for improvisation, using prompts, handling luck, and how to end a session. The latter is important because every session should end with a discussion of what the players and their Knights want to do next. This can be to pick up where the current session has ended, but the players can also decide to end the Season or the Age, allowing for months or years to pass or even enough time for a Knight to mature from a young Knight or a mature Knight to become an old knight. There are numerous activities that the Knights can undertake in between—effectively off camera—but the passing of an age forces a player to reroll his Knight’s Virtues and accept the new result, even if lower. The result of which might be that a Knight has learned from his experiences and matured, or he could have been wounded and suffered a debilitating injury or entered his dotage. Further rules cover travel, exploration, and ultimately, dominion and authority. In the case of dominion and authority, a Knight comes to rule a Holding—or even a Seat of Power. At either level, what Knight will be trying to do is maintain and improve his Holding, deal with crises from within his realm, and see to his succession, and also crises from beyond his realm should a Knight hold a Seat of Power. This though is more for long term play than short term play.

All of which runs to sixteen pages. In other words, the rules to Mythic Bastionland are concisely presented in sixteen pages for everything! Which begs the question what exactly does the rest of Mythic Bastionland consist of given that that rules take up three-fortieths of the book? Over two thirds of the book is dedicated to two things. One is the Knights and one is the Myths, equally divided, for a grand total of seventy-two entries each. The Knights are what the players choose from, or ideally, roll for, and they include The True Knight, The Trail Knight, The Story Knight, The Rune Knight, The Mask Knight, and The Silk Knight, and every single one of them is different and interesting and will present a different way of playing a Knight.

The Myths are what the Referee uses to populate the Realm. They include The Wurm, The Tower, The Spider, The Toad, The Hole, and The Rock, and every single one of them will present the players and their Knights with a different challenge. Each is simply presented with simple description, a set of omens that trigger as the Knights discover more signs of the Myth, a set of NPCs, and a table of random details that the Referee can use to detail parts of the Myth. For example, ‘The Wall’ is described as “Cutting through the land, a wonder two storms tall Guarding from invasion, or built to cage us all”. Its Omens begin with, “Crumbling outpost. A band of labourers sharing a meal on their way to begin work repairing the Wall. They think Knights are being sent to stop them.” and will escalate to, “Two giant magpies, stealing shiny things. They nest in the trees that root among the Wall’s oldest stones.” The cast includes stats for Wall Wardens, Brin, Catrona, and Elish, a Wall Knight, the giant magpies, and empowered refugees.

So how then, is Mythic Bastionland actually played and what do the Knights do? Quite simply, they explore the wilderness map that the Referee has created, looking for signs of Myths. When they have found them, the Knights will look for the source, root it out, and resolve it. There is no set way to resolve any of these Myths. Ultimately, whether or not a Myth is resolved comes down to whether or not it remains a threat to the Realm. The typical six Myths of a Realm is enough to support a mini-campaign at least, though more can be added to extend the campaign once one set of six is done, whilst the mix of seventy-two different Knights and seventy-two different Myths means that no two campaigns are going to be alike because whilst the Myths provide the adventures to play, they also give and flavour to a Realm. Once the Referee has set up her Realm, Mythic Bastionland is very definitely designed to be played from the page with a minimum of preparation.

The last part of Mythic Bastionland is devoted to the ‘Oddpocrypha’. This consists of thirty pages of examples of ‘Play’ and ‘Thoughts’ upon those examples of play. From ‘Start & Scope’, ‘Character Creation’, and ‘Teaching the Rules’ to ‘Council & Court’, ‘Crises’, and ‘Delving into Tomorrow’, the ‘Oddpocrypha’ explores and examines numerous examples of the rules and their ramifications. In many ways, actually providing much of the context that the rules section at the start of the book lacks. Consequently, it is a lot easier to read, but there is dichotomy to the writing. Essentially, the ‘Play’ examples are written in one tone and the ‘Thoughts’ on the examples are written in another. So, what you have is the author writing the examples of ‘Play’ and then commenting upon them as if he had not written them in the ‘Thoughts’. It is weird. That said, the examples of ‘Play’ really do help the reader and potential Referee understand the rules and how the game is intended to be played and the thoughts‘Thoughts’ do explore what the designer thinks of his game.

Physically,Mythic Bastionland – Before Into the Odd is a stunning looking book with every Myth and Knight fully illustrated, meaning that there is a profusion of artwork in the very big middle of the book. The tones are primarily earthy greens and oranges with splashes of red, blue, and purple and the whole look of the Knights and Myths section is as if Mythic Bastionland was not a roleplaying game, but a deck of Tarot cards. The layout of the book is tight in places and bar the ‘Oddpocrypha’ at the back of the book, the writing is very concise, the aim being to fit all of the rules for each aspect of the roleplaying game onto a single page each.

It is debateable how Arthurian a roleplaying game Mythic Bastionland – Before Into the Odd is. There is no doubt that it is inspired by Arthurian legend and it certainly lists numerous Arthurian inspirations. In play though, the Knights are not engaging in the Arthurian legend and they are not going on quests such as the Quest of the White Hart or the Quest for the Holy Grail. Instead, they are going on their own quests, perhaps hunting down ‘The Wyvern’ or delving into ‘The Forest’ in search of a lost, but beloved Seer, only to discover darker, primordial secrets. The Knights are questing knights, ultimately if they prove to be glorious enough worthy to undertake the ‘Quest of the City’, but they quest more for their Realm than a mythical figure such as King Arthur and theirs is a world that is more one of bloody brutalism rather than one of romance and chivalry.

Mythic Bastionland – Before Into the Odd is not an introductory roleplaying game. The rules are too concisely written, there is a lack of context to the roleplaying game, and play relies a great deal on improvisation, whether that is working from the prompts from the ‘Spark Tables’ or working the Myths and the Knights’ reactions to those Myths into the world of the Realm. However, armed with some context and Mythic Bastionland begins to hint at its possibilities with simple, clear rules that emphasise the brutality of the world that the Knights live in, before charging the reader and the Referee down with its gloriously fantastical Knights and Myths that demand their stories to be told. Mythic Bastionland – Before Into the Odd is the film Jabberwocky with a seventies Prog Rock soundtrack, built not so much on rules light mechanics, but rules intense mechanics.

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

—oOo—

Technically Interface RED: A Collection for Cyberpunk RED Enthusiasts Volume 3 is not a magazine. It collects some of the downloadable content made available for Cyberpunk RED, the fourth edition of R. Talsorian Games, Inc.’s Cyberpunk roleplaying game. So, its origins are not those of a magazine, but between 1990 and 1992, Prometheus Press published six issues of the magazine, Interface, which provided support for both Cyberpunk 2013 and Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0. It this mantle that Interface RED: A Collection for Cyberpunk RED Enthusiasts Volume 1, Interface RED: A Collection for Cyberpunk RED Enthusiasts Volume 2, and future issues is picking up in providing support for the current edition of the roleplaying game. As a consequence of the issue collecting previously available downloadable content, there is a lot in the issue that is both immediately useful and can be prepared for play with relative ease. There is also some that is not, and may not make it into a Game Master’s campaign.

Interface RED: A Collection for Cyberpunk RED Enthusiasts Volume 3—as with the previous issue—is by James Hutt and/or J Gray and starts on a hard note, or rather, on a ‘hardened’ note. In the previous issue, two connected articles—‘Hardened Mooks: break glass in case of powergaming’ and ‘Hardened Lieutenants: break glass in case of powergaming’, provided tougher versions of the standard threats, mooks, and lieutenants. With ‘Hardened Mini Bosses’ the series with increased stats for Mini-Bosses in the core rulebook, including ‘Hardened Arasaka Assassin’, ‘Hardened Militech Veteran’, and ‘Hardened Pyro’. This is a mix of the old and the new, so should keep the Player Characters on their toes. Plus, they come with a little commentary on how to best use them.
If ‘Hardened Mini Bosses’ gives the Player Characters someone to fight, then ‘Digital Dating in the Dark Future’ gives them someone to love—and then, since almost nobody lives happily ever after, someone to fight. Romantic entanglements have always been part of Cyberpunk through its ‘Lifepath’ system of Player Character generation, and Cyberpunk RED is no different. However, what about now, because those relationships are likely to have been in the past and may be long over? To let a Player Character go dating now, the article gives a ‘Datepath’ system which enables the Game Master to determine how the match describes themselves in their dating profile, where the date will take place and what the significance of that location is—for example, if in the Watson Development, the date might have a connection with SovOil, what the date activity will be, how the date goes, and what the after date review will be. This can be rolled as is or played out, and if the latter, it means that a player gets a chance to roleplay another aspect of his character and explore another side of the game that is not necessarily all guns and combat. This is a fun addition if the playing group wants to expand the lives of their characters and would work every well for one-on-one sessions between a single player and the Game Master.
‘Salvaging Night City: A New Downtime Activity’ also gives the Player Characters more to do when away from typical adventures or missions. Although this is primarily for the Tech character type, but any character could engage in this, exploring Night City’s Hot Zone, Combat Zones, and scrapyards, not just for scrap to sell, but items to repair and use and sell. The article also goes through the possible dangers that a scavenger might face, including pollution, radiation, rival scavengers and gangs, unsafe structures, and more. This is an article that can be used to generate, with a bit of effort upon the part of the Game Master, encounters and even scenarios. Plus, like ‘Digital Dating in the Dark Future’, this activity works well for one-on-one sessions between a single player and the Game Master and also for sessions where there are only a very few Player Characters.
Cyberpunk RED is a roleplaying game that focuses on a lot of gear—equipment, weapons, cyberwear, and cyberware—and its use in play, and if there was a criticism of Cyberpunk RED, it was that it was genericised and therefore not interesting. Issues of Interface have been changing that with names and describes a wide variety of items, and Interface RED: A Collection for Cyberpunk RED Enthusiasts Volume 3 is no different. ‘Woodchipper’s Garage: Weapons That go Boom!’ is an interview with a Nomad who purchases weapons scavenged by Nomads in the Badlands and brought into Night City to fulfil the demand for the weapons that deliver a bang! This includes rocket launchers to suit all budgets and attitudes to safety standards, flare guns, flamethrowers, and odd weapons like an air cannon and harpoon launcher! ‘Midnight with the Upload: New Cyberdecks and Hardware’ provides a wide range of decks and new items of hardware, each with own benefits and effects. For example, the ‘Raven Microcyb Phoenix’ is an expensive deck that has six slots to install either Programs or Hardware and protects any programs the Netrunner uses, restoring any that were destroyed during a run, when the Netrunner jacks out. ‘Must Have Cyberware Deals’ details the new chrome that might be purchased from Mr. A-MAAAZE at Dock 13 in sunny South Night City. Want to keep that figure trim or low on rations, install an ‘Appetite Controller’, whilst ‘Lead’s Turn-On-Show-Off Nails’ is the perfect set of programmable, lighted fingernails, and if that shoe does not fit, then the ‘PerfectFit Cyberfoot’ adjusts perfectly (and if the user wants to run in heels, then these are even more perfect!). There is a certain superficiality to these entries, being as they are mostly fashion cyberware. All three of these articles come with no little flavour too. ‘Woodchipper’s Garage: Weapons That go Boom!’ is the most straightforward, primarily focusing on how the weapons that Woodchipper sells are got hold of in the interview, whilst the ‘Midnight with the Upload: New Cyberdecks and Hardware’ gives lots of commentary and feedback that suggests a certain lack of humanity with interacting with the seller and perhaps that they might be a cultist of some kind or a Netwatch Agent. Lastly, ‘Must Have Cyberware Deals’ is all about the slick sales pitch from Mr. A-MAAAZE.
‘Collecting the Random: Ideas, Thoughts, and Lists from the CP:R CREW’ is the second longest article in Interface RED: A Collection for Cyberpunk RED Enthusiasts Volume 3. It is a collection of new rules, such as complementary skill checks, and ideas that how Cyberpunk RED is played, fortunately without the need for any mechanical changes. Roles are a big focus for the article. It suggests ideas for reskinning them, like turning the Netrunner into the Thief or the Exec into the Mobster, all with simple adjustment of the flavour of the mechanics rather actually than changing the Roles. Multiclassing ideas suggest ways in which each of the Roles works with the other nine Roles. For example, the Rockerboy/Media becomes an Influencer, the Netrunner/Fixer the Information Broker, and the Lawman/Media the Psychic Detective. There are some great ideas here that again shift how a Role is played. Campaign ideas making the Player Characters ‘Guerilla Gardeners’, ‘Librarians’, and ‘Food Truck War’ participants and come with some very simple mission ideas. All of these set-ups require no little development, but they all change the focus of a campaign from a more standard set-up. ‘Cyberpunk RED Fashion’ suggests styes such as ‘Bag Lady Chic’(!) and ‘Asia Pop’. This is mostly flavour, of course, as are the article’s final ‘Twenty Random Kibble Flavors’—fizzy kibble anyone? This is just a plethora of fun ideas that a playing group can pick and choose from.
Interface RED: A Collection for Cyberpunk RED Enthusiasts Volume 3 takes an odd, even cynical turn with ‘Elflines Online the TCG: Battle for the Elflands’. Previous issues of Interface RED have explored the number virtual game world in Night City, ‘Elflines Online’. Effectively a game world within a game world, ‘Elflines Online is a hobby that a Player Character or NPC can play during his downtime, but it can become something that the players can roleplay their characters playing in the world of Cyberpunk RED, a fantasy roleplaying game in the cyberpunk roleplaying game. ‘Elflines Online the TCG: Battle for the Elflands’ does not expand to any great degree, but rather introduces a trading card game that the Player Characters can play offline and some of the cards will provide bonuses and benefits in the online game. Full rules are included so that the players can play it too, though using an ordinary deck of playing cards. Accompanying the article is a commentary that highlights the disappointment of some ‘Elflines Online’ players when ‘Elflines Online the TCG: Battle for the Elflands’ was launched and since. There is a brilliant cynicism to the whole exercise that feels as if it mirrors certain MMORPGs in the real world.
‘Spinning Your Wheels: A New Way to Ride the Edge’ adds an old technology to the streets of Night City and updates it. This is the bicycle, whose reintroduction is presented in an interview with the head of Yang’s Wheels, the city’s leading manufacturer of bicycles, skateboards, and inline skates. Their introduction brings a cheaper form of transport to both the city and Cyberpunk RED. Of course, they are cheaper to buy then a car, more manoeuvrable, and take up less space. They are all muscle-powered, so require the use of the user’s Athletics skill rather than Drive and, of course, they can be upgraded. Fit cycle armour or a gun mount to the handlebars, or even an enclosure to turn it into a trike. The article also details the type of tricks that can be performed on a bicycle, skateboard, or inline skate.
‘The 12 Days of Cybermas: A Cyberpunk RED Holiday Sequel’ returns with a Christmas carol suitable for the ‘Time of the Red’ and twelve classic pieces of cyberware from days of Cyberpunk past. Want to tear your enemies apart, then install the ChainRip, the original cyberweapon of mass destruction in your cyberarm or look really cool with one cyberoptic, then the Kiroshi MonoVision installs your cybereye in a single band. Whilst the stats update the descriptions, the illustrations feel intentionally dated.
The last and longest article in the issue is ‘Going Metal: full body conversions in Cyberpunk RED’. The article moves on from the fears from cyberpsychosis due to full body conversions to suggest that there is a culture all of its own around full body conversions. This does not stop the opening between someone who has undergone full body conversion to somebody who is about to from being just a little bit creepy. It is followed by complete guide to undergoing a full body conversion in game terms and keep as much Humanity possible, up to a maximum of fifty. Some thirteen standard full body conversions are detailed, like the ‘Cybermatrix Inc. Copernicus’ for work in space, the ‘Dynalar Brimstone’ fireproofed for fighting fire, the ‘Militech Dragoon Revised War Platform’ updated from the full body conversion so successful in 4th Corporate War, and even if the ‘Raven Microcybernetics Gemini’ if you do not want to look like a cyborg! Added to this are numerous pieces of cyberware and gear, which break down the numerous items that go into the design and construction of the earlier full body conversions. The full body conversions come with commentary from the interviewer at the start of the article. There are lots of options here, good for NPCs as well as the Player Characters who want to take a radical step and have the EuroBucks to spend! The article brings Interface RED: A Collection for Cyberpunk RED Enthusiasts Volume 3 to a close with big fully borged options.
Physically, Interface RED: A Collection for Cyberpunk RED Enthusiasts Volume 3 is cleanly, tidily laid out. The artwork is decent too and everything is easy to read.

Although much of it was originally available for free, with the publication of Interface RED: A Collection for Cyberpunk RED Enthusiasts Volume 3 it is nice to have it in print. All of it is useful in some ways, though ‘Elflines Online the TCG: Battle for the Elflands’ is very much less useful then the other content. Together, ‘Digital Dating in the Dark Future’ and ‘Salvaging Night City: A New Downtime Activity’ really do bring greater roleplaying opportunities to the play of Cyberpunk RED, whilst ‘Collecting the Random: Ideas, Thoughts, and Lists from the CP:R CREW’ brims with interesting ideas for both the player and the Game Master. Everything else is tech and cybergear-based, adding numerous options and greater choice to the world of Night City and beyond. Interface RED: A Collection for Cyberpunk RED Enthusiasts Volume 3 is the best issue to date and there is something for every Cyberpunk RED campaign in its pages.

You are not dead, but you could be. You hover somewhere between life and death, unable to take the bony grasp of the Grim Reaper and take the next step to the beyond. Perturbed at this state of affairs, it is possible that this has happened before for instead of leaving you, Death gives you a job. A job as well as your night job. A job you will do after your night job. Every night you perform on the stage, playing cool, cool tunes in set after set at the jazz club, and then, when the last of the audience has gone and the lights are up, you find a scrap of paper at the bottom of the tips jar. On it is a name. The name of someone who died at the wrong time and without permission. A name and a death that you have until sunrise to investigate to determine the cause and what happened. You are an agent of the Department of Unauthorized Deaths and in the dark of the night you become a sleuth for the supernatural, using Death-given spectral abilities to slip into the darkest of shadows, seeking the souls of the wrongly departed and bring harmony to them. To aid you in your investigations, the Department of Unauthorized Deaths grants certain supernatural gifts, each of which calls upon different notes in your repertoire, including being able to talk to with the spirits, passing through walls, and even glimpse echoes of the past or the future. Yet rely too much upon such Blue Notes and you may be pulled too close to death…

This is the set-up for Midnight Melodies, a solo roleplaying and journaling game in which you play a jazz pianist recruited by the Grim Reaper. It is inspired by Pixar’s Soul and DC Comic’s John Constantine, but this is a roleplaying game which could be inspired by series such as Tru Calling, Dead Like Me, and Johnny Staccato. It is published by Critical Kit Ltd, best known for Be Like A Crow – A Solo RPG and to play the game, a player requires a six-sided die, a twelve-sided die, a journal or notebook, a cool jazz playlist (the book suggests Ambient Soundscapes – Private Eye Moods: Smooth Film Noir Jazz Mix), and a piano. The latter can be an online piano and Midnight Melodies does not require the player to be able to play said piano.

A Player Character in Midnight Melodies has a name, a set of six Actions, unique Talents, and a Blue Note reserve. There are five Actions—Talk, Move, Force, Handle, and Discern—two of which Dominant, meaning that the Player Character is good at them, and one Diminished, which means he struggles with it. Creating a character is fast simple, rolling for a name and deciding which Actions are Dominant and which one is Diminished.

Skylar ‘Mist’ Monroe
Talk+ Move Force– Handle Discern+
Blue Notes 6

Mechanically, Midnight Melodies is simple. The player selects the appropriate Action, rolls a six-sided die, and adds one if the Action is Dominant and deducts one if it is Diminished. The result varies from one and ‘No, and…’ to six and ‘Yes, and…’, with ‘No, but…’ and ‘Yes, but…’ in between. These are clear simple prompts for the player intended to help him interpret and then write about the results of his character’s actions. Each of the Talents in Midnight Melodies is tied to a particular Action and their use involves a standard roll. One element not explored is what happens if the Player Character employs too many of his Blue Notes, which does undermine the threat at the heart of every investigation.

The actual play of Midnight Melodies is about conducting investigations. The Player Characters has an extra gift that will help him when it comes to investigating deaths. Each death leaves a series of Tones that the Player Character can hear and will help him find out what has happened. Each death consists of nine Tones divided into three Chords. Collect all nine Tones and give the Reaper the three Chords before sunrise and the night’s investigation is done. The victim is initially known by his or her name and occupation, but will also later be revealed to have had a secret too. The Tones set a pattern for an investigation and in turn reveal the victim’s identity, the death scene, the first clue, an unexpected twist, signs of the supernatural, hints of something stranger, the discovery of the entity responsible, what their motive was, and an insight into the death.

Midnight Melodies suggests three styles of play for any investigation—‘Freeform’, ‘Challenges’, or ‘Story Beats’. Freeform requires the random selection of six motifs for Drive, Descriptor, Role, Action, Mood, and Theme—for example, ‘Embrace’, ‘Rustic’, ‘Spectator’, ‘Risk’, ‘Melancholic’, and ‘Trust’—which then the player is encouraged to riff from to tell the story of the investigation. ‘Challenges’ makes use of the Action mechanics supported by a set of tables, one each for the five Actions, whilst ‘Story Beats’ is tied to the three Chords and the nine Tones, which actually follow the structure of a detective story, whether on television or not. Ultimately, the Player Character will confront a supernatural entity, such as ‘Vlokkriat’, “A patchwork of various materials—stone, cloth, metal, all moving in a sinuous manner.”, with the Trait of “Can drown victims in its embrace; reflects distorted versions of reality.” and Motivation of “Seeks to balance its own ancient debt, where each death offsets a life it once inadvertently saved.” Midnight Melodies is then a roleplaying game of monster hunting and saving the world against the supernatural.

Once how the victim was killed has been discovered and who or what committed the murder is determined and confronted, the Player Character can communicate the information to the Grim Reaper. This can be simple matter of the player writing down in the journal that his character has done it, but Midnight Melodies includes the pass this on through the motif of the Chords and Tones. The player does this by randomly rolling for the investigation’s nine Tones and playing them on a piano (on or offline). It brings each investigation to a discordant, mournful close as the sun seeps over the horizon and perhaps, gives the Player Character some respite in the normality of daylight… Before another jazz set and another name at the bottom of the tip jar.

Physically, Midnight Melodies is decently presented. It is well written, and the artwork is good too, combining a sense of music and noir in its stark tones.

Midnight Melodies is great for the player who wants to write tell stories of investigation and supernatural horror and it provides some great prompts to do that as its Tones sound and Chords play out. However, it really is only set up for single investigations. The continuation of story elements from one investigation to another is very much left to the player to do and there are tables to create story elements except the investigation itself. There is also no resolution to Midnight Melodies beyond the individual investigations, so now way to know if the Player Character will ever be free of his obligation to Department of Unauthorized Deaths? The only way in which Midnight Melodies ends is when the Player Character has dealt with all twelve Entities and that is not satisfying.

Midnight Melodies is a thematic delight, exploring a classic story and roleplaying game set-up in stylish fashion and giving the player scope to tell good stories. Yet the lack of long-term resolution means that Midnight Melodies feels like a cancelled television series.

The world stands on the brink of a turning point. The end of the Third Age of Man nears and the beginning of the Fourth Age of Man looms. In the First Age of Man, man was like unto the gods and ruled as titans upon the earth. Yet the titans were split between those sworn to Law and those sworn to Chaos, and when they clashed, their blood was spilled upon the ground the First Second of Man was brought to an end. From this spilled blood a new, lesser race sprang forth, lesser, yet still giants, given the gift of peerless intellect and ageless beauty, which went forth and erected many great temples in honour of the titans of the First Age of Man, even though they were but a shadow of their former divinity cast upon the wall of creation. Yet even the Ur-Lireans, as they were known, could not withstand the fall of the sands of time and as the waters of the Empyrean Ocean rose, city after city was inundated and washed away, the inhabitants drowned or forced to flee. In the Third Age of Man, the tribes of Ur-Lirea are all but forgotten, the divine spark of humanity that was the gift of the original titans, obscured by emotions, sullied by vice, and caked with the stinking flesh of the fallen. The Ages of Man are regarded by most as heresy, but many say that the temple-city of Stylos is a forgotten remnant of a bygone age, whilst some whisper that the city was home to the last Atlantean tribes of Ur-Lirea. If so, it has slumbered for untold eons, through the icy march back and forth of glaciers, the rise and fall of the seas, and the rise of man in the Third Age of Man.

If the Ages of Man are regarded as heresy and the legends of the temple-city of Stylos as no more than myth, what is in no doubt, lost Stylos has awakened from its deathless sleep and its hordes have arisen to sweep down on civilisation. A wizened crone babbles about the army of beautiful giants that swept through her village, she the only survivor; a gigantic statue stands at the city gate, white marble with its eyes aflame and announcing that the end of days have come and that the city will be razed on the new moon; and clerics and wizards cry out the terrible omens as lightning crashes down, on the spires of the city’s temple, strange stars appear in the sky and vanish again, sacrificial bulls are cut open only to discover pools of black bile in the place of entrails, and the seventh son of a seventh son is born with the mark of Cadixtat, the Champion of Chaos from the First Age of Man.

This is the set-up for Dungeon Crawl Classics #76: Colossus, Arise!, the ninth scenario to be published by Goodman Games for use with the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. Designed by Harley Stroh, this is a rare scenario for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, one designed for a group of six Eighth Level Player Characters. Most scenarios for line published to date are for low- and mid-Level Player Characters, no more than Sixth Level. So having a scenario for Eighth Level is a rarity. The resulting dungeon is as detailed as you would expect a dungeon for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game to be, but it is also deadly. Not just in terms of the foes that they will face, but also in the traps and puzzles they will face. In places, think S1, Tomb of Horrors, but Dungeon Crawl Classics #76: Colossus, Arise! is no deathtrap dungeon. Yes, there are moments where ‘total-party-kill’ is a possibility, perhaps more so than in other scenarios for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, but rather, it is a dungeon designed—in just thirteen locations—to very much challenge the players and their characters.

Inspired by the legend of Atlantis and the occultism of Doctor John Dee and Madame Blavatsky, Dungeon Crawl Classics #76: Colossus, Arise! begins big and gets epic, all in keeping with the high Level of the Player Characters. Very quickly, the Player Characters find themselves at the doors to the Temple of Cadixtat, having sneaked through the ruins of lost Stylos past an army of hundreds of the Sons of the Second Age, ten-foot tall humanoids bound in service to the Daughters of Cadixtat, camped out, ready to sweep away the civilisations of the Third Age. There are some good hooks to get the Player Characters involved and to that point, especially given that by Eighth level, they should have ties to the very civilisation that the Sons of the Second Age wants to destroy to help trigger the beginning of the Fourth Age of Man, and thus reasons to stop this threat. There is scope for the Player Characters to explore the ruins, neatly handled with a roll on an encounter table.

Inside the temple itself there are weird ceremonies, a room with a cage in which human sacrifices are burned to fuel the divinations of prophetess of the Daughters of Cadixtat—and she will even divine the Player Characters’ future once they find her on the lower level, and even a trap worthy of Grimtooth. The lower level takes the Player Characters to the edge of Chaos and potentially even beyond. In the upper level, the Daughters of Cadixtat are transforming men into the Sons of the Second Age, bolstering the army it will unleash on the Third Age of Man, but in the lower level, the cult is incubating the Worm-Men that will help scour away the Fourth Age of Men, and so usher in a new beginning. The lower level actually takes the Player Characters through the four Ages of Man and into some truly epic encounters. Not just the incubation chamber of the Worm-Men, but also a ‘Chapel of Elemental Chaos’ where the very walls are melting upwards into raw elemental chaos—there is, of course, a chance that a Player Character can be drawn into the walls and upwards—and Player Character Wizards will suffer for the Corruptions they have accrued; a very nasty trap that should teach the players and their characters to leave well alone; and an almost final battle to prevent the Daughters of Cadixtat from summoning something from the First Age of Man! Which is, of course, the massive brain from the front cover of the scenario. Along the way the Player Characters have the opportunity to gain a divination and also find some incredible magical items that echo those of Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion. If the Player Characters succeed, they are very well rewarded, especially if they are Lawful. Chaotic Player Characters will also receive a reward, but only if they are very lucky...!

Physically, Dungeon Crawl Classics #76: Colossus, Arise! is very well presented. The scenario is decently written and the artwork is good, with several pieces that the Judge can show to her players. The Judge is given seven decent handouts that illustrate various locations above and below ground. The cartography is too tight in places and it is not as easy to read the map as it should be.

Dungeon Crawl Classics #76: Colossus, Arise! is a truly epic scenario that will test both the players and their characters the deeper they go into the depths of the Temple of Cadixtat. It calls for careful, considered play, and what that really means is that this scenario is better suited to play towards the end of a campaign, rather than being run as a one-shot. If played as a one-shot, the players are not going to care as much about their characters and so are going to take greater risks rather than if they had invested time and effort into the play of their characters. Dungeon Crawl Classics #76: Colossus, Arise! is a rarity, a scenario that effectively showcases what the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game can do at higher levels.

It is 1870. In Hofwasser Village in Styria, the eastern region of Austria that borders Hungary, a strange affliction has struck many young women, the symptoms mysterious and often fatal. One day they are bright, energetic, and full of life, then the next their skin pales as white as milk and they become lethargic, losing their appetites, and gaining a sensitivity to light such that they dare not venture out of doors. Already one young woman has died from this strange sickness and there are two more girls in the village showing symptoms. What is this dreadful illness which has struck the village? Many of the village’s older residents have begun to recall the folktales of the region they learned as children, of black beasts in the darkness, of forest demons that lure innocents to their doom, worse, of the much-feared Upir, a soulless monster that preys on the blood of its victims. Hofwasser Village is also home to Colonel Daniel Morton, a former British attaché to the Austrian service, who has retired and now lives in the schloss, Karnstein Hall. He too has grown concerned about the illness, fearing that it will come to infect both his teenage daughter, Laura, and the young charge, Carmilla, he is looking after.
If all this sounds familiar, then it probably means that you have read Carmilla, the Victorian-era novella by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. Predating Bram Stoker’s Dracula by twenty-five years, this is a classic tale of Gothic romance and vampiric horror with a strong female antagonist, which is now the direct—very direct inspiration for Carmilla, a scenario published by Yeti Spaghetti and Friends. Part of the publisher’s ‘Frightshow Classics’ line, it is ostensibly written for use with Chill or Cryptworld: Chilling Adventures into the Unexplained, the percentile mechanics of the scenario mean that it could easily be adapted to run with Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition and similar roleplaying games.

Carmilla opens with the Player Characters at Karnstein Hall. They are there with Colonel Daniel Morton to assist him in determining the cause of the malady that has beset the young women of Hofwasser and been cause of one death so far. After some tea—there is actually a lot of tea consumption in the scenario as Karnstein Hall is a bastion of the British Empire in ‘Mitteleuropa’—and the first of several listless encounters with Colonel Morten’s daughter and recent charge, Laura and Carmilla, he asks for the Player Characters’ help. The initial investigation takes place in the nearby village at the homes of the affected women, but later there is scope for research in the library at Karnstein Hall, which reveal some oddities that suggest that the mystery lies closer at home. The Player Characters’ suspicions will be confirmed following the funeral of one of the young women in the village and that will lead to a nasty confrontation in the confines of the Karnstein family mausoleum.
The advice for running Carmilla states that, “As an adaptation of a fairly popular story, players should be willing to suspend their knowledge of plot for the sake of playing their characters more accurately (offering Experience Points for roleplaying can help encourage this).” This is either a challenge or a problem depending upon your point of view, due because what the scenario is asking the players is to roleplay characters who do not know what a vampire is and unlike the players, are not steeped in over a century’s worth of vampiric lore. This is in the face of a situation where the players are fully aware that Laura is the victim of a vampire and that vampire is Carmilla. Literally, aware players could end the scenario in fifteen minutes by going to Carmilla’s bedroom, breaking down its door, and kill her. The scenario does not want the players to do that, but wants them to play through the investigation and experience the effects of the vampire’s predation and determine its cause. The scenario also admits that it proceeds in linear fashion and it does, very much keeping the players away from directly investigating either Laura or Carmilla.
As with other scenarios in the publisher’s ‘Frightshow Classics’ line, Carmilla includes eight pre-generated Player Characters. They are divided between visitors and staff at Karnstein Hall. The staff consist of Madame Raquel Perrodon, governess to Laura Morton; Mademoiselle Beatrix De Lafontaine, the French finishing governess to Laura; and Frau Franziska Pichler, the cook at Karnstein Hall. The visitors include General Gerhard Spielsdorf, a former colleague and new friend of Colonel Morton; Fraulein Johanna Bauer, a young hunter who lives in the nearby woods; Dr. Hans Hartog, a laudanum-addicted medical doctor with an interest in eastern mysticism; Father Augustus Koellerer, the local Catholic priest; and Baron Maximilian Vordenburg, a local noble with a fascination for folklore. Only one of the eight, Mademoiselle Beatrix De Lafontaine, has any Paranormal Abilities and so might give the Player Characters a slight advantage in certain situations.
The scenario is supported with two good maps, one of the village of Hofwasser and the other of the mausoleum where the final confrontation with Carmilla takes place. There is no map of Karnstein Hall, which is slightly disappointing, but its inclusion might have encouraged further exploration of the Morton family home which the scenario would prefer the players not to do. The back cover blurb for the scenario also serves as a handout and there is one handout in the book, which is plain.
Physically, Carmilla is well written and has excellent artwork. The combination of a linear structure and a clear layout means that the scenario is going to be easy to run.
As written, Carmilla is not a challenging scenario to run. As written, Carmilla is going to be a challenging scenario to play. This is because it demands that the players suspend their self-knowledge, locking it away for the length of the scenario, and roleplay characters who have no knowledge of the threat they face and have to learn about it, bit by bit. It does help that ‘Carmilla’ is not a wholly traditional vampire in the style of Dracula and it does help that it is intended to be played in a single session. As an adaptation of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s short story, Carmilla, the scenario is decently done, but as a scenario, Carmilla is making big demands of its players and keeping a straight face because of those demands and not being able to rush off and always investigate where a player might want to, makes it hard work. And this in a scenario designed for casual, one-shot play. If the players are able to do this—or they have not read the original short story, then Carmilla is a serviceable one-shot, easily prepared and run.

Last time I talked about my adventures in Forgotten Realms, which was all about the urban adventures of Waterdeep. This week, I’m going to flip that lens outward, into the wilds, and take a look at a supplement that’s equal parts field guide, lore dump, and DM toolbox: Elminster’s Ecologies (1994).

Now, a small caveat. I don’t own the original boxed set with all its booklets. What I do have is the DriveThruRPG PDF bundle and the print-on-demand softcover, which compiles the whole thing into one thick book. No box, no handouts, but all nine 32-page booklets are there, and honestly, the POD version is probably easier to read anyway since this is written like an in-universe resource.

Another small caveat, one that affected my perspective. I have known about this boxed set for years. But I thought it was a collection of the various Ecology of articles from Dragon Magazine. So if you hear a subtle bit of disappointment in my tone here, that is why. Look that is no fault at all of the product in front of me. It is my fault for not setting my expectations appropriately. It *IS* objectively a good Realms product. Just not the one I thought it was all these years. 

Elminster's Ecologies (2e)

1994. by Rick Swan, Monte Cook, Eric Haddock, Anthony Pryor.

Note: For an "Elminster" themed book, there is no Ed Greenwood in this as far as I can tell. 

Elminster’s Ecologies does something a little unusual for TSR at the time. Instead of another city box or adventure series, this one focuses entirely on environments. The conceit is that Elminster (and his “field correspondents”) are writing in-character about the natural world of the Realms. It’s like Volo’s Guides, but instead of inns and alehouses, you get trees, rivers, beasts, and bogs.

The box contained nine booklets:

Explorer’s Manual. The “master key” of the set, with Elminster’s musings, excerpts from his ongoing natural history of Faerûn, color-coded encounter tables, and the enigmatic “Rules of the Rabbit.”

Cormanthor. The ancient forest, its trees and mystical wildlife, and the rumors that still drift beneath the boughs.

Anauroch. A deep dive into the desert: the shifting sands, the High Ice, the Plain of Standing Stones, even the Underdark beneath it all. Survival, monsters, and lost secrets abound.

Coastal Aquatic Lands – The Sea of Fallen Stars. The largest inland sea in the Realms gets its due, from fish to krakens, with sea stories and notes on the cultures clinging to its shores.

The Cormyrean Marshes. Brother Twick’s journal paints the swamps as treacherous, full of dangerous monsters and stranger rumors.

The Stonelands and the Goblin Marches. Rugged terrain, fading wildlife, the ever-present goblin threat, and a few truly massive beasts.

The Thunder Peaks and the Storm Horns. Two mountain ranges, with their harsh climates, common life, monsters of the peaks, and local legends.

The Great Gray Land of Thar. A bleak, arid region with hard conditions and stranger mysteries—exactly the sort of place Elminster would call “unpleasantly educational.”

The Settled Lands. Farmlands, villages, and the borders of civilization. Here you get a look at the everyday ecologies that brush up against the wilderness.

Each booklet follows a familiar structure: a personal introduction, a survey of the land, detailed notes on monsters and natural life, and then “rumors and legends” that a DM can immediately use as hooks.

What makes this set shine is how it reframes monsters and encounters. You don’t just get “roll d8, 1-2 owlbear.” Instead, you get owlbears in context, how they live, what they eat, how other monsters avoid them, and how a random traveler might actually run into one. A marsh isn’t just a backdrop for lizard men, it’s a dangerous, interconnected ecosystem where the lizard men, the crocodiles, and the giant frogs are all part of the same web.

The encounter tables in the Explorer’s Manual really drive this home. They’re organized by biome and color-coded to match the booklets, making it easy to swap in details wherever your PCs happen to wander.

One thing though. There are no Monstrous Compendium pages. Not only there isn't even a good section to "cut out" and put into my Monstrous Compendium binders. Yes, this has much more to do about me and what I *thought* this product was rather than what it actually is.

The Realms in ’94

The timing of this release is also worth noting. TSR was really leaning into “in-character writing” in the early ’90s: Volo’s Guides, Pages from the Mages, and now Elminster’s Ecologies. Cormyr was getting lots of love, with its own sourcebook, adventures, and now half this box dedicated to its borders and neighbors. The in-character style is fun and gives a lot of Realms flavor. But sometimes the “in-character” voice gets in the way of practical DM info. Still, it is what I want from the Realms; it is what separates it from other fantasy worlds. 

Sinéad, Nida, and Company

And what of my characters in the Realms? Well, Sinéad and Nida are still lingering in Waterdeep, but the pull eastward grows stronger. The road through the Heartlands is long, and as I flip through Elminster’s Ecologies, I can’t help but see it as a ready-made travelogue for their journey.

If they leave the City of Splendors behind, their path east will naturally thread through the Dalelands and into Cormanthor. That’s one of the booklets covered in the Ecologies, and it’s a perfect setting for a side trek. Sinéad, with her pagan background, would be spellbound by the great trees and the old magic of the forest, an echo of her homeland, but deeper and stranger. Nida, more practical, might be the one keeping her eyes on the monsters lurking in those woods.

From there, they could skirt Anauroch. I don’t know if I want them to cross the desert outright, but even brushing its borders could provide some fantastic challenges. The Ecologies gives me survival notes, monsters adapted to the sands, and whispers of the Underdark beneath, just the kind of flavor that could delay their progress, or tempt them off the road with legends of buried secrets.

The Sea of Fallen Stars booklet also feels useful. Even if the party doesn’t cross the sea directly, they’ll certainly pass along its shores. Tales of the Dragonmere or the Dragon Reach could add both color and danger, pirates, sahuagin, or worse. It’s a reminder that not all travel is overland.

And then there are the mountains. The Thunder Peaks and the Storm Horns sit along possible eastward routes, and both regions are detailed here. Jaromir, whom I keep playing less as a “barbarian” and more like a warrior of the Fianna, would feel at home in the high places, testing his strength against mountain predators. I could easily see a ranger path opening up for him here, with the ecology booklets giving me just the right kinds of encounters. The book is fun, and it gives me a lot to think about. While I have said that Fighter with the Barbarian kit is a good choice for him, I might see if I can change him to Ranger. And I need to see if I have a copy of the Complete Ranger's Handbook OR I might cheat and look ahead to see what the Spellbound boxed set has for me. 

Finally, Rhiannon. If she is to embrace her Rashemi witch heritage, then a long journey through these liminal, witch-haunted spaces seems exactly right. The Cormyrean Marshes, with their strange monsters and whispered rumors, would be a fine testing ground for her. She may not yet be home, but the marshes, with their witches’ whispers, could foreshadow what awaits her in Rashemen. More ideas for my Witches' Secret Journey.

So the question remains, will Sinéad and Nida follow Rhiannon and Jaromir eastward? That was always my idea, but Waterdeep’s siren call is strong. And I have so many ideas for Waterdeep.

The Ecologies gives me the scaffolding for either path. If they stay west, they linger in the greatest city of the Sword Coast. If they go east, they’ll wander through forests, deserts, swamps, and mountains that feel alive, thanks to this odd little box set from 1994.

This is their travel guide, their road map, and the background in which the characters grow. 

DriveThruRPG PDF and PoD

The scans of this product are top notch. The PDFs are very clear and very sharp. This translates well into the Print on Demand copy as well. Maybe one of the best I have seen in a while to be honest.

There is a lot of color throughout. It does make me wish I had grabbed this as a boxed set when I had the chance. My opinions of it when from high, to low, back to high now.

Final Thoughts

Elminster’s Ecologies is one of those quirky TSR experiments that I’m glad exists. It’s not essential Realms material, but it makes the wilderness feel alive in a way few supplements ever try to do. If Forgotten Realms Adventures was about the cities, this is about everything in between: the swamps, forests, deserts, mountains, and seas that adventurers must cross to get from one tavern to the next.

This is not a game product you sit down and use in one session. It is a game product you grab in game sessions when the characters are in the right places. It is used throughout your stay in the 2nd Ed Realms. Ok, it can be used in every edition to be honest. Ignore the minor edition-specific material and go with it.

For DMs running wilderness-heavy campaigns, this is a goldmine of ideas. For Realms fans, it’s a snapshot of TSR in the ’90s, trying something a little different. And for me, even just in POD form, it’s another reminder that the Realms isn’t just kings and wizards, it’s owls in the trees, frogs in the marshes, and strange rules about rabbits.

When we talk about the foundations of Dungeons & Dragons, the names that come up most often are the obvious ones: Robert E. Howard, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Jack Vance, among others. But alongside Conan and hobbits stands another set of icons, the roguish duo of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, born from the imagination of Fritz Leiber.

In Appendix N, Leiber's entry is "Leiber, Fritz. 'Fafhrd & Gray Mouser' series; et al." So that leaves me a lot of room to explore his works. 

Leiber’s tales of Lankhmar gave us thieves’ guilds, a decadent city, and sword-and-sorcery camaraderie that would become staples of the game. And a couple of tales where witchcraft plays an important role.

The Snow Women (1970)

Before he became a hero of Lankhmar, Fafhrd was a youth of the cold North, raised among the Snow Women. This community of women was led by Mor, Fafhrd’s mother, who dominates both him and the other men of their tribe through will, manipulation, and a kind of communal witchcraft.

The Snow Women are not cackling hags with bubbling cauldrons; their magic is subtler. It lies in the power of custom, ritual, and fear. Their witchcraft is not just spellwork but social control, and it casts a frost over every relationship in the story. For young Fafhrd, escaping their grip is as much an act of rebellion against sorcery as it is against his mother’s authority.

This tale shows witchcraft not as something learned in a grimoire, but as an inheritance and an atmospher a cold wind that shapes destinies.  In many ways they remind me of tales of Finnish witchcraft. I have a hard time reading about these women and not think of Louhi, the Crone (and Maiden too) of Pohjola. This leads us to Iggwilv, the "spiritual daughter" of Louhi and Mor.

In the Witch’s Tent (1968)

Later, in the story In the Witch’s Tent (collected in "Swords Against Wizardry"), Leiber presents us with another kind of witch. Here, Fafhrd and the Mouser find themselves consulting a prophetess. The scene is thick with atmosphere: the tent filled with smoke, the seeress exhaling her visions like opium haze, the sense that knowledge comes at a cost.

This witch is less about domination and more about liminality. She occupies that familiar role of the oracle, standing at the threshold between worlds. But in true Leiber fashion, she is not a benign guide. Her words are dangerous, her presence uncanny, and the tent itself feels like a trap. The scene could be dropped whole into any RPG session as the archetypal fortune-teller who reveals just enough truth to get the characters into trouble.

Conjure Wife (1943)

If Leiber’s Fafhrd and Mouser stories gave us witches in the context of sword-and-sorcery, it was his first novel, Conjure Wife, that put witchcraft at the center of the narrative.

Or as I have said in the past, “Between Bewitched and Rosemary’s Baby lies Leiber’s Tansy.”

Norman Saylor, a rational-minded professor, discovers that his wife, Tansy, has been secretly practicing protective magic. When he convinces her to stop, he learns the hard way that witchcraft is not merely superstition, and that rival witches have been circling all along.

As I wrote in my earlier review:

Conjure Wife has been held up as sort of a prototype of the modern American Witch tale.  Seemingly normal wives in a small East Coast town married to normal, rational men of science and academia turn out to be powerful witches engaged in a silent secret war of magic.

... They were intelligent (more so than their husbands), clever and some down right evil and all were powerful. By the end of the book, you are left feeling that the men in this tale are really no more than children, a bit dim ones at that.

This is what makes Conjure Wife powerful: the way it sets witchcraft not in ancient forests or ruined temples, but in the kitchens and parlors of mid-century America. The witches here are faculty wives, the battleground is tenure politics, and the weapons are hexes whispered between cocktail parties. It is both psychological horror and social commentary, and it remains one of the most influential witchcraft novels of the 20th century.

It has also been made into three different movies, Weird Woman (1944), Burn, Witch, Burn aka "Night of the Eagle" (1962), and Witches' Brew (1980).

Our Lady of Darkness (1977)

Decades later, Leiber returned to occult horror with Our Lady of Darkness, a novel steeped in the landscapes of San Francisco and the esoteric science of “megapolisomancy,” a fictional occult science that focuses on harnessing the supernatural forces present in large cities. There is even a connection to Clark Aston Smith.

This isn’t a witch story in the conventional sense, but it resonates with the same archetypal power. Its date allows me to make a claim for it as "sliding into home" just barely.

At its heart, Our Lady of Darkness is about the anima, that Jungian figure of the feminine that exists within the male psyche. She is muse and terror, desire and destruction, and in Leiber’s hands, she becomes a literal haunting presence. The Lady of the title is both a psychological construct and a supernatural force, a liminal witch of the soul.

This is a theme I’ve explored myself in the character of Larina Nix. Larina, too, is not just a witch but an embodiment of anima at once familiar, archetypal, and unsettling. She represents how the witch figure can exist in both myth and the inner landscape of the imagination.

While Our Lady of Drakness may not have influenced D&D at all, there are a lot of things here you can find in the RPG Kult. Sadly, this book is nowhere near as good as Leiber's other works, especially Conjure Wife. 

Closing Thoughts

When it comes to witches, Leiber made one significant contribution: Conjure Wife. The Snow Women and the prophetess of In the Witch’s Tent add atmosphere to Fafhrd’s world, but they are more color than core. Our Lady of Darkness circles the same archetypal ground from a Jungian angle, but it isn’t witchcraft in the usual sense.

Yet even if these stories didn’t leave much of a mark on D&D, they left a mark on me. Conjure Wife remains one of the best examples of modern witchcraft horror, and its faculty wives locked in a secret magical war still resonate. The others, Mor’s cold grip, the seeress in her smoky tent, and the anima-haunted towers of San Francisco, add layers to Leiber’s legacy and to my own sense of how witches live in story: sometimes social, sometimes symbolic, sometimes spectral, but always there. 

It was Monday, September 11, 2000.

I actually remember it pretty well. I went to my Favorite Local Game Store and I picked up the new Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition. I grabbed the Player's Handbook, the Dungeon Master's Guide and the Creature Collection, the first OGL monster book released. I had to wait a bit longer for the official Monster Manual.

That was 25 years ago this week.

 When D&D 3.0 hit the game stores in 2000, I was ready for it. I had been away from D&D for several years and was eager to get back into it. So, D&D 3.0 was the right game for me at the right time. In truth, there is still a lot I love about D&D 3.x, and significant advances were made in terms of game design and lore.  

This edition was new. So new that, unlike the past editions, this one was not very backward compatible. This was fine since Wizards of the Coast (now dropping the TSR logo) had provided a conversion guide. The books were solid. All full color and the rules had expanded to fix some of the issues of previous versions of D&D. Armor class numbers got larger as the armor got stronger, as opposed to lower numbers being better. Charts for combat were largely eliminated, the number on the sheet was what you had to roll against. Everyone could multiclass, all the species (races) could be any class without restrictions, though some were better at it than others, and everyone had skills. 

But the most amazing thing about 3rd Edition D&D was that, aside from a few protected monsters and names, Wizards of the Coast gave the whole thing away for free! Yes, the books with art cost money. But the rules, just a text dump, were free for everyone to download. It was called the System Reference Document or SRD. It was all the rules so that 3rd-party publishers could produce their own D&D compatible material. With these rules, you could play D&D without the books. There was no art and no "fluff" text, but everything was there.

D&D 3rd edition had an good run from 2000 to about 2008. 

I played it quite a bit to be honest and there is a lot about it I still love. It was the game system I used to teach my kids how to play and one I still enjoy going back to. It is also one of the few editions of D&D I never really played much. I was always a DM. So other than a version of Larina and Johan Werper IV, I don't have a lot of characters for 3e. The only time I ever got to play it was at conventions, mostly Gen Con.

I loved the 3rd Edition's multiclassing and, honestly, I loved Prestige Classes. But things got ridiculous at high levels. Ever try stating up a high level character from scratch? But I would still play it if given the chance. 

So here is to 25 years of D&D 3.0. You were not the perfect game, but your were perfect for me at the time.