Dungeon Crawl Classics #71: The 13th Skull begins in grim, if slightly bonkers fashion. The Player Characters are present at a public execution. The thirteenth Duke Magnussen has condemned a man to death for the prophecies he has made across the city, calling for the death of the duke’s daughter lest the city be beset by a great disaster. As father and daughter watch the condemned man and his executioner climb the scaffolding, both hooded, one by a burlap sack, the other by a black leather executioner’s hood, and the executioner’s axe falls upon the neck of the condemned, everything seems to go wrong. The decapitated head has the face of the Duke himself and the executioner pulls off his hood to reveal a grinning silver skull. As the grinning metallic visage turns to face the Duke, a great winged lizard flaps down out of the sky to snatch up the Duke’s daughter, before the Silver Skulled executioner leaps on its back and leaps into the sky, heading for the Duke’s mountaintop keep. The city is in uproar and the Duke is determined to get his daughter back and will pay any souls brave enough to do so handsomely for it. The Silver Skull and its beast of burden was last seen entering a mountain cave said to be connected to Duke Magnussen XIII’s family crypts, which is why the brave Player Characters find themselves standing before a stout oak door, ready to venture into the Magnussen mausoleum, rescue the Duke’s daughter, and in the process, discover some dark family secrets.

This is as much set-up as there is for Dungeon Crawl Classics #71: The 13th Skull, the fifth scenario to be published by Goodman Games for use with the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. Designed by Joseph Goodman for a group of six to ten Fourth Level Player Characters, it is an important scenario for four reasons. One is that it is the fifth scenario to be written for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game and the fourth to be written for Player Characters who are not Zero level, and the fourth is that it is the first scenario for Fourth Level Player Characters. It is a short affair, designed to be played in a single session or so, so it can be used as a convention scenario. Alternatively, it can be played in a more leisurely fashion and be played through in two sessions rather than the single session. Either way, it is nasty, deadly affair. The eponymous scenario though, is not the only content in The 13th Skull. There is also a second scenario, ‘The Balance Blade’, designed for Second Level Player Characters and a companion piece, ‘Seven Strange Skulls’, both by Daniel J. Bishop.

The Player Characters have the opportunity to learn a rumour or two before they enter the crypts, which can either given out at the start of the adventure or roleplayed for if running the scenario as part of a campaign. The rumours revolve around suggestions that the first Duke Magnussen made a pact with something—though nobody knows what—and that family is somehow connected to the Silver Skull. Once inside the crypts, the scenario proceeds in rather linear fashion. There is really only one direction and that is down. After a dark and deadly encounter with lurking shadows that are a pleasingly creepy twist upon the classic Dungeons & Dragons version of the monsters, the Player Characters will descend to the main stage for the scenario where most of the action will take place.

The grand set piece for ‘The 13th Skull’ is an enormous cave, split in two by a river that flows out of the mountain via a waterfall and which contains both ‘The Stinking Pit of Hell’, a literal hellhole, and a fifty-foot-wide column whose base has been worn thin by the rushing waters, atop which is a magical circle containing the resting place of the Silver Skull. On either side of the river there is a circle of skulls, a pile of corpses, and access to a room containing a book containing pages that will transport the reader to different planes of existence. There is a sense of momentum to the scenario as the Player Characters explore the cave and move from one encounter to another, ultimately to attempt two tasks. One is to defeat and destroy the Silver Skull, and since this takes place atop a column in the middle of the river with a pit to Hell also in the middle of the river, if the Player Characters defeat it, they really are lined up to throw it off the top and into Hellhole, more or less, below. The other is find the Duke’s daughter and rescue her. This is incredibly difficult to achieve—and intentionally so. The Barbed Devil holding her ready for sacrifice has an area attack likely to kill given that she is Zero Level NPC. To that end, there is advice and playtest reports throughout The 13th Skull and what they make clear is the difficulty of saving the daughter and that few of the playtest groups succeeded. If their characters do manage to save the daughter, then they and their players should definitely feel a sense of achievement and their characters will be rewarded by the Duke. If not, he will castigate them for their failure and they will be dismissed without any reward, bar the fantastical magical items that they might have found below the crypts. Ultimately, ‘The 13th Skull’ feels more like a convention or tournament scenario, although in the case of the latter, a table of possible scores would have been useful.

The second scenario in The 13th Skull is ‘The Balance Blade’. It is designed for Second Level Player Characters and is again intended to be played in a single four-hour session. It has particular requirements in the form of a Wizard Player Character with a patron, and a mix of Alignments in the party, as well as index cards and coloured stickers to use in the adventure. In addition, a Thief is an absolute must. The adventure is littered with traps that will kill—or effectively kill—a Player Character if a Saving Throw is failed.

The set-up is that the wizard’s patron asks to retrieve a weapon called The Balance Blade from The Tomb of the Last Colossus, the resting place of the last of a race of cosmic colossi. The scenario is even more linear than ‘The 13th Skull’ and it only works as a convention scenario, as the last two encounters in the scenario are designed to trigger inter-party conflict. The penultimate scene is one which will be viewed differently depending upon the Alignment of the Player Characters. Lawful Player Characters will see a lonely woman sitting on a bed, Neutral Player Characters will see a lonely woman sitting on a bed with a child, and Chaotic Player Characters will see a succubus sitting on a bed with a strange spider-like creature—and none of this will change. The illusion will be maintained until the woman/woman and child/succubus and strange spider-like creature are dead. So, if a Chaotic Player Character attacks the succubus and strange spider-like creature, the Neutral Player Character will see the Chaotic Player Character attacking a woman and child, and the Lawful Player Character will see the Chaotic Player Character (and possibly the Neutral Player Character as well) attacking the woman, but will never, ever see the child. It is a challenging scene to run, one that really is designed to mess around with the perceptions of the characters and their players.

The last scene and thus the scenario ends with betrayal upon the part of the Wizard’s patron and then upon the part of the Wizard as he turns on the other Player Characters. The Wizard and his player have no choice in this and the scenario will end in the Wizard’s death no matter what his player decides to do. His player may well have some fun with his Wizard battling his fellow Player Characters, wielding the powerful blade of the title and the extra power granted to him by his patron, a la Elric and Stormbringer. For the other players and their characters, it is a distinctly underwhelming climax and an underwhelming scenario as a whole. As with the first scenario, there are some remarks about the playtest results and they are probably more interesting then the scenario itself.

The third and final entry in The 13th Skull is not another scenario, but an article vaguely connected to the eponymous scenario. ‘Seven Strange Skulls’ describes seven weird and magical skulls, two of them with their tables that use the thirty-sided die beloved of Dungeon Crawl Classics. The Crystal Skull of the Alien Juggernaut is the skull of a gigantic creature from another world that gives off a glow and a bonus to spellcasting, but has a chance of exploding when it gives this bonus. Grandmother’s Skull is the skull of a matrilineal ancestor which grants various spell effects to the wearer if sacrifices are made to it in the household shrine it also requires. Of course, the spirit in the skull will have demands of her own which a player and his character will find out if the former rolls a one! The Living Skull of the Emerald Enchanter is a weirdly legged skull with a nasty poisonous bite created in conjunction with the Emerald Enchanter, so would be an entertaining callback for any Judge who has run and player who has roleplayed Dungeon Crawl Classics #69: The Emerald Enchanter. Overall, these skulls are entertaining and fun to add to any game.

Physically, The 13th Skull is a very nicely done book. The maps are good—for both adventures—and the artwork is excellent.
Despite the additions of ‘The Balance Blade’ and ‘Seven Strange Skulls’, The 13th Skull is not a satisfying anthology of scenarios for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. Both scenarios are effectively convention or even tournament scenarios, but not presented as such, because otherwise, they are difficult to use in campaign play. ‘The 13th Skull’ is the better of the two scenarios because it is easier to use, it is linear, but not to the point of a railroad, and it has room for player and character agency. ‘The Balance Blade’ has none of these in comparison. Whereas, in comparison, ‘Seven Strange Skulls’ is actually fun and entertaining. Ultimately, The 13th Skull is the first poor release for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. If The 13th Skull was presented as a pair of tournament scenarios and supported as such, that would have been more truthful and made the scenarios easier to use.

The DC Heroes Role-Playing Game 40th Anniversary Kickstarter is still going strong, and new stretch goals are added all the time. I am quite excited for this one to be honest.

While I have a lot of heroes I would love to add, more than a few villains also need my attention. And given how this particular villain got his real-world start, it seems fitting to stat him up now.

Dr. Andreas Gelé, The Refrigerator

You can read the history of this misanthrope here, but he began as a nod to the "Women in Refrigerators" trope as detailed by Gail Simone. 

History of The Refrigerator

Dr. Andreas Gelé was born to wealth and privilege but never to love.  His father was a was a rich industrialist who made his money on the work of others and his mother was a noted and beautiful stage actress.  From his father he gained his intellect and from his mother he learned lessons in cruelty.

As his mother aged she became more and more cruel.  In his mind's eye, he still saw her as beautiful. This was reinforced by all the pictures of her on the wall of their estates, where she was young, beautiful, and happy. Frozen in time.  Gelé began working on a process to keep the beautiful women young forever.  He was drawn to beautiful women, and his prestige later as a doctor and his wealth made that easy.  But he never could talk to or relate to them, having grown up socially stunted.  So Gelé embarked on a plan so he could have his desires met.

His first experiments in cryonics were failures. Animals would not return to life after being frozen, and even when he perfected the process, they still had tissue damage, finally, through a combination of fluids and gases at supercooled temperatures.  He tested it first on his hated father. He died soon after he was free of the ice, but Gelé expected that since the old man's heart was now weak. He froze his mother next. He was overjoyed that the ice preserved her remaining beauty.

All his research, though, has depleted his fortunes, so he robs banks to fund more research and to keep more of his "beauties" on ice. He still has trouble talking to and relating to women, but he finds it much more manageable after he has frozen them. 

Creepy little bastard, huh.

The Refrigerator

Dexterity: 2  Strength:2 Body: 3
Intelligence: 6
Will: 4
Mind: 5
Influence: 2
Aura: 3
Spirit: 4

Initiative: 10
Hero Points: 100

Current Body: 3
Current Mind: 5
Current Spirit: 4

Alter Ego: Dr. Andreas Gelé
Occupation: Former Medical Faculty
Marital Status: Single
Known Relatives: None
Group Affiliations: None
Base of Operations: Gotham City
Motivation: Twisted Obsession
Wealth: 6
Height: 5'6"
Weight: 125 lbs
Eyes: Blue
Hair: White

Skills
Gadgetry 6
Medicine 5
Weapon (Freeze Ray) 5

Powers
Freeze Ray (Gadget)
- Ice Control 6
- Ice Production 6
Thermal Goggles (Gadget)
- Thermal Vision 6

Advantages
Connoisseur [5], Gadget Freeze Ray, Rich Family [15], Scholar: Cryonics [10], Medicine [10]

Drawbacks
Guilt [25], Irrational Attraction [25], Mistrust (women) [50]

Equipment
Freeze Ray

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I am sure my numbers are off here. But it is a start.

Since I am expecting something of a DC Heroes renaissance, here are a couple of sites I really enjoy. 

The Mayfair Games DC Heroes RPG online Character Database

Hundreds of characters for the MEGS DC Heroes game. Heavy on the DC characters, but a few others.

Writeups.org

Lots of characters for both DC Heroes (MEGS) and DC Adventures (M&M 3).

Imagine if you will, that instead of filling your aquarium with fish and crabs and sharks and penguins and boats and mermaids and light houses, you did exactly that, but the fish and crabs and sharks and penguins and boats and mermaids and light houses, were made out of Origami? This is almost, but not quite the theme to Sea Salt & Paper, a beautiful little card game in which every card is illustrated with Origami in delightfully soft pastel colours and uses its own set of folded paper icons to ensure that the game is accessible for any language and also colour blindness. It makes for a strikingly attractive game and although play at first looks simple, there is enough strategy and choice to keep the game being brought back to the table again and again. Published by Bombyx and Pandasaurus Games, Sea Salt & Paper is designed for two to four players, aged eight and over, and combines hand management, open drafting, pushing your luck, and set collection in a lovely little game. Although it did not win, it was on 2023 Spiel des Jahres Recommended list and like Scout before it, this is a little card game which is highly portable and easy to play at the coffee shop as it is at home.

Game set-up is simple. The deck is shuffled and two cards are drawn. These are placed face up to form two separate discard piles. None of the players begin the game with cards in their hand. On his turn, a player can either take a card from either discard pile or draw two from the deck, keep one, and place the other in the discard pile of his choice. He can play ‘Duo’ cards to trigger their effects and if the cards in his hand are work seven points or more, he can trigger the end of the round. In this way, game play is as simple as the set-up. What the cards do though, is where Sea Salt & Paper gets interesting.

Sea Salt & Paper consists of four card types: ‘Duo’ cards, ‘Collector’ cards, ‘Point Multiplier’ cards, and ‘Mermaid’ cards. ‘Duo’ cards are played together as pairs to enable a player to do a particular action. Thus, two ‘Crab’ Duo cards let a player go through one of the two discard piles, select a card, and add it to his hand; two ‘Boat’ Duo cards let a player have a second turn; two ‘Fish’ Duo cards let a player take the top card off the deck; and a combination of the ‘Shark’ and the ‘Swimmer’ enables him to steal a card from another player. A player can play as many ‘Duo’ cards he wants in his turn and is able to. Further, ‘Duo’ card combinations are worth a victory point for the pair, being played on the table.

‘Collector’ cards are the ‘Shell’, Octopus’, ‘Penguin’, and ‘Sailor’ cards. The more a player has of these in his hand, the more points he will score for each particular type of ‘Collector’ card. The ‘Point Multiplier’ cards score points for the other types of card and their icons in the game. ‘The Lighthouse’ scores points for the number of ‘Boat’ Duo cards a player has, whilst ‘The Shoal of Fish’ does the same for the number of ‘Fish’ Duo cards in a player’s hand. The other two ‘Point Multiplier’ cards are ‘The Penguin Colony’ and ‘The Captain’.

Lastly, the ‘Mermaid’ cards score a Victory Point for each of the cards of the single, most common colour in a player’s hand or on the table. Only one ‘Mermaid’ card is applied per colour, so a player might score three Victory Point s because he has a ‘Mermaid’ card and three cards in light pink, but he had two cards in light green and a ‘Mermaid’ card, he would score two Victory Points for those.

From initially having no cards in their hands, players draw cards and begin to build their hands of cards, looking for pairs of ‘Duo’ cards to play and give them an advantage, collecting sets of the ‘Shell’, Octopus’, ‘Penguin’, and ‘Sailor’ cards in conjunction with the ‘Point Multiplier’ cards. Throughout, each player is keeping track of his score. Victory Points will come from the ‘Duo’ cards played and from the ‘Collector’ cards and ‘Point Multiplier’ cards, which will remain hidden in their respective hands. When a player has accrued a score of seven or more Victory Points, he can call an end to the round. This is done in one of two ways. One is to simply call ‘Stop’ and the round will end and the players will add up their total Victory Points for the round. The other is to call out, ‘Last Chance’. This is done when a player thinks he has accrued more Victory Points than the other players and thus will win the round. In this case, the round does not end immediately, but every other player—that is, the one who did not declare, ‘Last Chance’—gets one more turn in an effort to get more Victory Points and potentially outscore the player who brought the round to a close.

Effectively, the player who shouted, ‘Last Chance’ is making a bet that he has outscored the other players. If he has, he scores Victory Points based for cards he has played and also a bonus for the most cards of a single colour he has, whilst the other players only score points for the bonus for the most cards of a single colour they have. However, if he loses, the player who shouted, ‘Last Chance’ only receives bonus for the most cards of a single colour he has, whilst the other players score Victory Points for the cards they played and the cards in their hands as normal.

Play continues like this over multiple rounds until one player has scored a combined total of between thirty and forty points, the target varying according to the number of players. The first player to do so wins the game. The other way to win the game is to have and place all four ‘Mermaid’ cards in the game on the table. When a player does this, he automatically wins the game. This rarely happens, so everyone will likely be amazed when it does.

There are really two issues with Sea Salt & Paper, but they are minor. One is that the card quality could have been slightly better and sturdier. The other is that the game is not that easy to learn because it has multiple icons on the different cards and it is a case the players needing to learn what the multiple different cards do.

Physically, Sea Salt & Paper is beautifully presented game. The artwork is a delight and the design on the cards is clear and simple. Notably, it is designed to be language independent and through the use of icons also suitable for any player who is colour blind. The rules are neatly explained in a small foldout sheet. There are reference cards for the rules and the colours—including their own icons for the colour blind—to make it easier to learn.

looks simple and its mechanisms are simple. However, there are some subtle choices to the play of the game and they really start with the dual discard piles. The players can see what is on the top of the two discard piles, so they can see what is drawn from each pile and going into everyone’s hands. This can give them some indication of what each player might doing, such as looking for particular ‘Duo’ cards or creating a set of ‘Collector’ cards. When a player has a ‘Duo’ card in his hand, playing it at the right time can really give him an advantage. For example, using the ‘Shark’ and ‘Swimmer’ ‘Duo’ card combination to steal a card from another player in the hope of grabbing the one the targeted player has just drawn which you need or two ‘Crab’ Duo cards to go through a discard pile looking for that card you know is there, but which has since been covered up by discarded cards… Which can be all the more satisfying if a player has drawn two cards from the top of the deck and they are both useful, but of course, one of them has to be discarded. Of course, drawing from the top of the deck keeps a player’s objectives a secret from his rivals.

So, there are some pleasing little nuances to Sea Salt & Paper, which combined with the multiple means of scoring, means that the game can be enjoyed by casual players and experienced players alike. Once the players have grasped what all of the icons mean and do in the game, Sea Salt & Paper plays fairly quickly.

Sea Salt & Paper is a lovely looking game that plays as good as it looks and its looks are good enough to attract players of any experience to play it.

 Yesterday, I talked about my "Can I play it as a witch" character, Esme Valethorne for my Witch Book of Shadows supplement for ShadowDark. Today, I want to share my "played as a witch with no preconceived notions" character, Amaranth Lilis. And since she was "new" I made her a tiefling. 

I say "new" in quotes because she was/is a character I have had in mind for a bit now; she was just never given form. Like Esme, she also had a Baldur's Gate 3 counterpart, but unlike Esme, she, so far, only lives on paper in ShadowDark.

Amaranth Lilis

So, who is she? "Amaranth" comes from the Nightwish song and because her skin is the same color as the flower of the same name. "Lilis" is not just a nod to Lilith, her "mother" and Patron, but also to Sophia Lillis who played Doric, the tiefling druid in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.

Outside of that...I knew nothing about her. In my mind, she was in this demonic pact, but it wasn't so much a pact as it was a, well, family obligation.  The rest I just ran with.

Amaranth Lilis

Ancestry: Tiefling
Class: Witch 4th level (Apprentice)
XP: 20 (need 50 for 5th level)
Alignment: Neutral 
Deity/Patron: Lilith
Background: Born with a Caul (sensitive to certain occult workings)
Familiar: Raven ("Lucifer")

Str: 8
Dex: 11
Con: 12
Int: 17
Wis: 15
Cha: 10

HP: 10
AC: 11

Languages: Common, Diabolic

Talents
+1 to Spellcasting checks (tiefling)
1st level: +2 to Charisma
3rd level: Patron Favor, +1 to any die roll once per rest

Patron Boon: Learn 1 extra Tier 1 wizard Spell: Burning Hands

Spells
Tier 1 (3): Feel my Pain, Glamour, Häxen Talons
Tier 2 (2): Light as a Feather-Stiff as a Board, Scorching Ray

The one thing I wanted to do most with Amaranth is have her be a "Good Witch."  She is essentially a "good girl" with some minor demonic tendencies. I modeled her behavior a lot on "Anita" from Keith Roberts' book of the same name. 

Her raven, Lucifer, is a joke, but it is also a nod to a familiar another character of mine had years and years ago.

I am pretty happy with how she turned out and want to see more of her adventures. Her low(er) Wisdom lets me get her into trouble, and her background, "Born with a Caul," is a great excuse to make those misadventures be based on something "she sensed" or "she felt." Lots of fun potential there. 

I have a lot more characters I could do for The Witch - Book of Shadows, but I think you are getting the idea here. 

 

My new The Witch - Book of Shadows for ShadowDark features a couple of new iconic characters/NPCs: Larina Nix, Amaranth Lilis, and Esme Valethorne. They are not just NPCs or names in the book; they were my playtest characters for the witch rules. 

Now, all of you know Larina, so there is little need to post her first. But I do want to talk about Amaranth and Esme. Since Esme was the first, I will go with her.

Esme Valethorne

Esme is a wizard, but I played her like a witch to first see if it could be done. Very much like I did with Marissia (magic-user), Luna (cleric), and Cara (illusionist) back in the earliest days of my D&D days and when I was first working on my witch class. 

Esme was first brought to life, not in ShadowDark but in Blue Rose. I was playing in a Blue Rose RPG over the summer and Esme was one of my NPCs. She was originally designed to be a foil for the PCs, a local magical expert, but over time I began to invest more into the character. That game ended and I ported her over to ShadowDark and ran her as a wizard learning about witchcraft. 

And of course. I also tried her out in Baldur's Gate 3, also as a wizard. I will likely give her a go in AD&D 1st Edition now, too.

I initially based her appearance and personality on Stacy London, but she (as characters often do) grew away from that.  

Esme is a "by the book" ShadowDark character. 

Esme Valethorne

Ancestry: Human
Class: Wizard 5th level (Warden)
XP: 30 (need 60 for 6th level)
Alignment: Neutral 
Deity: Ord
Background: Acolyte

Str: 8
Dex: 11
Con: 12
Int: 17
Wis: 15
Cha: 10

Languages: Common, Sylvan

Talents: +2 to Int stat, +1 to wizard spellcasting rolls. Additional wizard spell, Tier 1 (Charm Person) 
3rd level: Advantage on Spell (Charm Person)
5th level: Additional wizard spell, Tier 3 (Lightning Bolt)

Spells
Tier 1 (4+1): Burning Hands, Charm Person, Detect Magic, Light, Magic Missile
Tier 2 (2): Hold Person, Misty Step
Tier 3 (1+1): Dispel Magic, Lightning Bolt

I like this character. And I had a lot of fun playing her in Blue Rose and ShadowDark. But she wasn't "witchy" enough for me. There is a LOT you can do with ShadowDark, but in the end I did decide I wanted a proper witch.

Still. I am not done with Esme just yet. 

 New release Tuesday. Earlier this year, I started a ShadowDark Witch book, and now today it is available to buy.

The Witch - Book of Shadows

https://legacy.drivethrurpg.com/product/502244/The-Witch--Book-of-Shadows

The Witch Book of Shadows

Witches have long been a part of Fantasy, from fairy tales to fiction to RPGs. Now, you can bring the witch class to your ShadowDark games. 

Included here is the Witch Class.

• Six new ancestries
• New occult backgrounds
• Basic, Expert, and Advanced witch talents that grow as you level up.
• Thirteen Witch Patrons, from Baba Yaga to Xthluhu the Horror of the Deep! Each with boons and spells.
• 160+ new occult spells for ShadowDark, including special Patron Spells and Ritual Magic spells.
• 60+ Witch-related monsters for your ShadowDark adventures
• 40 new magic items.
• 124 pages

Compatible with ShadowDark and other ShadowDark products.

Art by Javier Charro, Tamas Baranya, Joe J. Calkins, Luigi Castellani, Dean Spencer, and James Thompson.

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This is my first big project using Affinity Publisher 2, and I am very pleased with how it turned out. I am sure some improvements could be made in my process, but all in all I am very happy with it.

I bought that cover art from Javier Charro a while back, and I have been dying to use it somewhere. This seemed like a perfect fit for me.

Order your Print on Demand copy now to get it in time for Christmas.

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 Pendragon, Sixth Edition. This can 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.

—oOo—
What is the Nature of the Quest?The Adventure of the Forester Knight is a scenario for use with Pendragon, Sixth Edition.

It is a full colour, eleven page, 7.51 MB PDF.

The layout is tidy and it is nicely illustrated.

Where is the Quest Set?The Adventure of the Forester Knight is set in one of the remnants of the ‘Wild Wood’, the old forest which once covered the realm, such as the Forest Sauvage or the Forest Adventurous.
Who should go on this Quest?
The Adventure of the Forester Knight does not have particular requirements in terms of its Player-knights as written. However, Player-knights with a good Folklore score will be useful, whilst Pagan Player-Knights and Player-knights with a reasonable score in their Worldly Trait will have an advantage, whereas Christian Player-knights and Player-knights with a higher score in their Spiritual Trait will be at a disadvantage.
What does the Quest require?
The Adventure of the Forester Knight requires the Pendragon, Sixth Edition rules or the Pendragon Starter Set.
Where will the Quest take the Knights?The Adventure of the Forester Knight begins with the Player-knights travelling through one of the older forests in the country. The beasts of the forest seem to huff and snuff around them in the undergrowth either side of the trail they are on, following them all the way to desolate glade where they come upon a fellow knight who has clearly spent the day chopping down the trees all around him. The knight, Sir Hervise, is the Forester Knight of the title, a forlorn figure, who as he later tells the Player-knights, has been cursed by his faerie mother-in-law who thought him an unsuitable match for her daughter. Sir Hervise asks the Player-knights for their help in lifting the curse.

There is some toing and froing, involving roleplaying rather than real investigation, but eventually the Player-knights will learn the answer to the riddle that is the means of the lifting the curse and step over into the faerie realms. There is the issue here that Christian knights will have difficulty doing so and if a player rolls badly, he will find his knight unable to participate in the climatic scenes of the scenario and thus unable to engage in the best part of the scenario which takes place in the faerie realm. This does not mean that they will not earn any Glory at the end of the scenario, but simply not gain the opportunity to use and potentially improve skills and Traits. If successful, at the end of the scenario there is an amazing reward for one Player-knight, especially if his favoured weapon is an axe!

The Adventure of the Forester Knight can be played through in a single session, two at most. It is easy to slip into a campaign as it begins as the Player-knights are travelling and it could easily run in conjunction with The Tree Hazardous, before or after, or even in the middle of!
Should the Knights ride out on this Quest?The Adventure of the Forester Knight is decent mini- or sidequest that does take a while for the story to play out and the Player-knights to become involved in the action. Its easiest use is as mini-quest for a few Pagan Player-knights, since there is a chance that a Christian Player-knight will be stopped from playing out the final scenes, though this does not mean that such a Player-knight could not shine. Overall, The Adventure of the Forester Knight is an engaging quest that the Game Master can prepare and have ready to run when needed.

 This past weekend I went downstate to see my family and celebrate my Dad's 95 birthday. Yeah, he still doing great at 95! I also stopped by my old friend Michael's house, where his widow gave me a bunch of his old D&D stuff.

There is so much here. That black grocery bag is filled with character sheets dating back to 1981. There were a lot of duplicated books too. Much to my surprise and delight, a few of them were mine!

I have always talked about here how in the 1990s I lost a lot of my Basic and 1st Ed AD&D collection in various moves. I know where some of it went. I guess I lent some of it to Grenda back then.  There was my Fiend Folio, Manual of the Planes, Tales of the Outer Planes adventures, a bunch of other modules, and more. My oldest got my replacement copies, and I reclaimed my originals. 

There is so much more here too. 

In addition to a bunch of city books, I found a ton of his notes on our house rules for playing in cities and urban environments. By the way, other than some box damage, that Haven set is in fantastic shape. 

Maybe our "Urban Survival Guide" will see the light of day. 

There are also hundreds of characters here—so many that I don't even know what to do with them all. Some of the main ones, the ones I remember from our time playing, are going to get some airplay here. 

I found maps of our shared world, maps (so many!) of his city, the Riddlemaster, Shadowmaster, Beastmaster, and Starmaster classes—they were so overpowered, but it was a blast when we were teens. Details of his Greyhawk campaigns into CY 800—just so much stuff.

It is also sad. I would have loved to have gotten this stuff out there for others to enjoy while he was still alive. I could have asked him about these complex family histories and the differences in these maps. 

There is so, so much here. It is like walking into a past I only vaguely remember. It is also a reminder of how long ago some of this actually was.  

I tend to think of my University days as being "not that long ago."  Maybe because I am still hanging out with the same girl I was then (best friend. totally married her). But it really was. There is sadness in that. It is sad to know that Warluk, Adnerg, Danis, Finn, Tali, and Alix will never have their stories continue. Well, they can, with me I suppose, but that is really not the same is it?

I do take comfort and joy in the fact that my oldest has been converting over to AD&D 1st ed and will use all of this stuff and my own stuff with his group.

I'll spend more time with all this material and see where it takes me. 

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—
Name: Lost and Found: A Railway Scenario for Call of CthulhuPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: SR Sellens

Setting: Great Britain, 1926Product: Scenario
What You Get: Sixty-eight page, 66.47 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Classic railway murder mystery meets the MythosPlot Hook: “There’s an unexpected item in the baggage area!”Plot Support: Staging advice, six pre-generated Investigators, ten handouts, one map and one train plan, ten NPCs, one cat, three Mythos artefacts, one Mythos tome, one Mythos spell, and two Mythos monsters.Production Values: Ferroequinologically excellent
Pros# Richly detailed scenario# Wonderfully thematic layout
# Easy to adapt to Cthulhu by Gaslight or other periods with trains# Easy to insert into a campaign# Bonus histories# Has notes on adapting it to The Children of Fear, Horror on the Orient Express, Masks of Nyarlathotep, Shadows of Yog-Sothoth, Tatters of the King, The Day of the Beast, and The Two Headed Serpent# Ferroequinology!# Cleithrophobia# Teraphobia# Siderodromophobia
Cons# Ferroequinology!# Warranted a bibliography# Classic trapped with an unstoppable monster scenario
Conclusion# Classic cosy railway murder gets trapped by the Mythos in a richly detailed and thematically presented scenario# Highly flexible and adaptable to multiple periods and actual Call of Cthulhu campaigns!# Reviews from R’lyeh Recommends

1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary, and the new edition of that, Dungeons & Dragons, 2024, in the year of the game’s fiftieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.

—oOo—
It is surprising to think, that even two years after its publication, Call of Cthulhu, was the only horror roleplaying game in the industry. Of course, it had its own particular brand of horror, the Cthulhu Mythos, cosmic horror rather than traditional horror. Even though it was not specifically designed to do more traditional types of horror, stats were included for monsters such as vampires, werewolves, and zombies. Soon though, it was followed by roleplaying games that did do the more traditional type of horror. First, Stalking the Night Fantastic, published by Tri-Tac Inc. in 1983, and then by CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown. It was published in 1984 by Pacesetter Ltd., a company set-up by a number of ex-TSR, Inc. employees, including Mark Acres, Troy Denning, and Stephen Sullivan. CHILL was the company’s first roleplaying game and it was designed to evoke the feel and tone of films from the Hammer and AIP and Universal studios and of television series like Kolchak; The Night Stalker. Together with fairly simple mechanics, this made it both accessible and familiar, and then the roleplaying game itself, published as a boxed set, made it even more accessible by presenting the adventure in the box, ‘Terror in Warwick House’, as being playable after only reading the ‘CHILL Introductory Folder’.
In CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown, the Player Characters are members or ‘Envoys’ of S.A.V.E., ‘Societas Argenti Viae Eternitata’ or ‘The Eternal Society of the Silver Way’. Founded in Dublin, Ireland in 1844, this organisation discovered the existence of a highly disciplined source of evil that was not recognised or perceived by the scientific community and set out to establish proof of its existence. S.A.V.E. launched expeditions to locate and study creatures around the world, including dragons, basilisks, ghosts, ghouls, and more. Many such expeditions were failures, adding weight to S.A.V.E.’s fears about it came to call the Unknown. S.A.V.E. changed to become a secret organisation dedicated to investigating, cataloguing, and ending the threat of the Unknown where necessary. Today, its primary goals remain the same, and it helps its Envoys with information, equipment, financial aid, and where necessary, legal aid. In return, the Envoys report what they find back to the organisation’s headquarters outside Dublin and keep what they report, what they find, and what they do secret from everyone else.

All Envoys of S.A.V.E. are able to perceive the Unknown World to one degree or another. Those that can to greater degree are also aware of the Art, the ability to drawn energy from the Unknown and communicate with it. The founders of S.A.V.E. realised the existence of the Art and their successors have codified it into four forms—Communication, Restoration, Protection, and the Evil Way. All Envoys can detect when the Art is used, the traces left behind by creatures and monsters of the Unknown, and when the Evil Way is used. Some Envoys can do more than this, harnessing the disciplines of the Communication, Restoration, and Protection forms to combat the users of the Evil Way and the monsters of the Unknown.

Open the box for CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown and what you will find is the eight-page ‘CHILL Introductory Folder’ marked ‘READ ME FIRST!’, the sixteen-page ‘Terror in Warwick House’ scenario, the sixty-four page ‘CHILL Campaign Book’, and the thirty-two page ‘CHILL: Horrors from the Unknown’ book. Below this is the double-sided ‘The World of CHILL’ map, a sheet of counters, and a Range Finder. Both map and counters are double-sided. One side of the half-inch square counters depict a range of Player Characters, creatures, and monsters, all in colour, whilst on there are doors, windows, stairs, beds, tables, and other pieces of furniture. On one side of the ‘The World of CHILL’ map is a map of the world marked with various sites of interest like Stonehenge and Tunguska, whilst on the other is a plain squared battle board for handling combat and the floor plans for Warwick House in the introductory scenario. There are also three ten-sided dice in the box.

CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown begins with the ‘CHILL Introductory Folder’. Subtitled ‘Stepping into the Unknown’, this introduces the reader to roleplaying, explains what is in the box, tells him how to use the dice and play CHILL. It includes eight, ready-to-play character cards, and an explanation of the core mechanic. There is a short example of play as well, so that within a few pages, the prospective player is also ready to play, whilst the prospective CHILL Master—as the Game Master is known—is prepared to dive into ‘Terror in Warwick House’ and reader herself to run that. The eight, ready-to-play character cards cover a then diverse range of ages, genders, and races. They consist of a male Caucasian martial arts instructor, a female Asian drama teacher, a Mexican-American college quarterback (infamously with the ‘Throw: Javelin’ skill), a female Caucasian model, a male Caucasian professor of anthropology and archaeology (complete with pipe and safari suit, including pith helmet), a female Caucasian investigative reporter (in the Kolchak: The Nightstalker mode), a male African-American surgeon, and a female Caucasian biology student. One issue here is the terminology, such as using ‘Oriental’ to describe the female Asian drama teacher, which would have been fine in 1984, but is not acceptable as a term now. So, some of the language in CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown has dated, though of course, this is easily addressed in play and it should be made clear that the mix of pre-generated characters was and is well intentioned by the standards of the day.

‘Terror in Warwick House’ is an introductory scenario and the second thing that the CHILL Master needs to look at. The Envoys are all members of S.A.V.E., many of them with links to Severn College. Recently, the college decided that it wanted to knock down a colonial era mansion that has been shut up due to its poor reputation, in order to expand the car park. Unfortunately, two workmen have been killed before the clearance began, and S.A.V.E. suspects that the Unknown is involved. It contacts the nearest Envoys, that is, the Player Characters, and asks them to investigate. The scenario is effectively a nasty haunted house, deadly in places, one which is played like solo adventure, but with the whole group deciding to move between locations or take actions together—and not splitting apart—rather than individually. Throughout, the Envoys will be taunted and haunted, and there are some creepy moments, like the wooden stairs animating as hands and grabbing the ankles of anyone on the stairs, with the players being shown how to roll dice, have their Envoys engage in combat, and detect the Unknown. It is linear and basic, playable in a single session. Which is fine up to a point, as CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown is designed for players aged twelve and up, but there is no other scenario in the box. So, nothing more sophisticated for the CHILL Master to run properly for her players after running ‘Terror in Warwick House’ or simply a proper scenario that an experienced Game Master would want to run.

An Envoy in CHILL is defined by Abilities and Skills. He has eight Basic Abilities. These are Strength, Dexterity, Agility, Willpower, Personality, Perception, Stamina, and Luck. These range in value between twenty-six and eighty. The Basic Abilities have various uses, such as the basic chance to hit a target using a firearm for Dexterity, Willpower as the chance to overcome the fear of seeing a monster, Personality to persuade an NPC, Perception to notice things, and so on. Luck has more uses. First off, only Player Characters have Luck as a Basic Ability—NPCs and monsters do not. It is rolled to avoid certain death, spent permanently to avoid being shot, and of course, how fortunate or not, the Player Character according to the whims of the dice. Several other abilities are derived from the Basic Abilities. These include Unskilled Melee, Health, and more. The Basic Abilities can also grant bonuses to an Envoy’s skills.

Skills range in value between forty-one and one-hundred-and-thirty-five, and have a base value derived from a Basic Ability, such as Dexterity for combat skills and Stamina for Swimming, or a number of Basic Abilities which are then averaged. A skill is ranked at either Student, Teacher, or Master, and each provides a flat bonus to the basic skill value. This is either ‘+15’, ‘+20’, and ‘+25’ respectively (the ‘CHILL Campaign Book’ lists this as ‘+15’ for both the Student and the Teacher Rank, which is clearly an error). Some skills as Martial Arts cost double the skill points to acquire. The majority of the skills listed are appropriate for the eighties when CHILL is set and in terms of combat skills, all the way back to the medieval era. However, the only real technical skill available is Mechanics, and there are no skills for electronics or computers, which would feel odd in 1984, let alone today.

To create an Envoy, a player rolls three ten-sided dice, totals and doubles the result, and adds twenty to get the total for each Basic Ability. After working out the derived abilities, the player rolls a single die to determine the number of skill points the Envoy has, between one and five. If the Envoy has a Perception and a Willpower that are both high enough, then he will have a single Discipline in one of the Art. There are a lot of combat skills—including Boomerang slightly fewer professional skills, and very few common skills. The oddest skill is ‘Modelling’, is not making models or modelling a theoretical situation, but more social etiquette combined with the ability to walk poised fashion down a fashion runway… The skills are quite detailed in their use, especially the combat skills. So, although an Envoy starts off with relatively few skills compared to Player Characters in other roleplaying games, this is offset by a player and the CHILL Master needing to know how they work.

Veronica Puckett
Strength 42 Dexterity 66 Agility 60 Willpower 62
Personality 66 Perception 70 Stamina 58 Luck 64
Unskilled Melee Skill: 51
Current Stamina: 58

Skills
History (Student) 66 (81)
Language, Ancient (Student) 66 (81)

ART
Clairvoyant/Prescient Dream 68

Mechanically, CHILL is a percentile system that really uses two types of roll. A General Ability Check is a simple roll against a Basic Ability to determine whether or not an action succeeded or not. A General Skill Check works the same, but for skill use. A Specific Ability or Specific Skill Check is used whenever a more nuanced result is required and the CHILL Master needs to know how many degrees of success were achieved. To do this, the player has to make a successful roll and the Chill Master consults the CHILL Action Table. She subtracts the value of Basic Ability or the Skill being used from the value of the roll and cross references it in the appropriate column on the CHILL Action Table. This will give an outcome that is either a Limited, Moderate, High, or Complete Success. The specific outcome will vary from one skill to the next.

Combat in CHILL also uses the CHILL Action Table. Initiative is handled with a roll of a single die and the winning side then uses the Art, fires missile weapons, moves, and then engages in melee attacks. The defending side has the chance to return missile fire. Once done, the defending does exactly the same. Unsurprisingly, this feels like a wargame rather than a roleplaying game. Attacks can be Specific Ability Check or a Specific Skill Check, depending upon whether or not the Envoy has any skill ranks in the weapon he is wielding. What this means is that making a Specific Ability Check for an attack will give the Envoy a lower chance to succeed and a lower chance to get a better roll, whilst someone with the skill will have a better chance of both. As opposed to Specific Ability and Specific Skill Checks, there is more nuance to possible outcomes. The attacker is rolling to determine the Attack Margin which will cross referenced on the Defence Column. The Defence Column is determined randomly for missile attacks, modified by the defender expending points of Luck or by the defender’s skill for a melee attacks. Unarmed combat results can be Scant Damage, Medium Damage, Harsh Damage, Crushing Damage, or Knockdown, and most of these inflict a loss of Stamina points, but some of these can also inflict a Scratch Wound and a Light Wound. Armed combat results include Scratch Wound, Light Wound, and Medium Wound, all the way up to Critical Wound. These inflict greater Stamina loss and possibly continued Stamina loss, depending on the severity.
For example, Veronica Puckett, investigating a mausoleum in the town graveyard is confronted by a zombie. Veronica, as a member of S.A.V.E., has read about zombies and knows that they are slow and relentless, and that they can be destroyed by a bullet to the brain or having their mouths filled with salt and the mouth shut. In some cases, when chopped apart, she has read that a zombie’s limbs continue to attack. Unfortunately, Veronica does not have a gun, so she will have to improvise. Fortunately, the CHILL Master tells her player that there is a shovel left nearby by one of the graveyard workers, and that because the zombie goes last in the Initiative, she can snatch it up and attack. However, first Veronica has to overcome her fear and her player make a Fear Check.
The Zombie has a FEAR statistic of five. The CHILL Master consults the fifth Defence Column on the CHILL Action Table and Veronica’s player rolls the dice. He rolls ‘10’, which gives a result of ‘M’. Veronica is ‘Mildly Frightened’. She loses five points of Willpower, but can still act. Veronica is going to thack the zombie with her shovel. Unfortunately, Veronica has no combat skills, so is relying on her Unskilled Melee Skill, which is 51. She swings wildly! Very wildly as she rolls ‘02’! This is not the best result that she can get, but it is very close. The CHILL Master deducts the result of the roll from her Unskilled Melee Skill to give an Attack Margin of ‘49’, or ‘H’. This indicates a Heavy Wound, which means that the defender would lose Stamina from the blow and continue to lose Stamina from the wound. Unfortunately, zombies cannot suffer worlds, so just loses 42 points of Stamina—more than half of its total. Fortunately for Veronica, the zombie misses its attack and she decides that it would be good idea to find another way to deal with the undead creature. For that she needs a gun or some friends help her. Before the zombie can attack again, Veronica flees the graveyard. As well as the individual outcomes and rules for the skills, CHILL includes rules for travel, weather, vehicle movement, poisons, diseases, and more. As a horror roleplaying, it handles scares and their possible outcome through a Fear Check. These are made against an Envoy’s current Willpower and compared to the column on the CHILL Action Table that corresponds to the Fear statistic for the creature or monster. A Failure on the check results in the loss of Willpower and the Envoy fleeing in panic, as do most results to lesser degrees. On an ‘H’ or ‘C’ result, the Envoy is Courageous and overcomes his fear. The rules for animals cover their reaction to fearful situations, especially in reaction to the Evil Way, and also for creating minor and major NPCs, and their possible reactions. This scales up to larger organisations too, in particular, their relation to S.A.V.E. including the civil authorities, the clergy, the press, and more.

The ‘CHILL Campaign Book’ details the Art, the secret weapon has in its arsenal to use against the Unknown and the practitioners of the Evil Way. There are three Forms—Communication, Restoration, and Protection—that members of S.A.V.E. employ, and then there is the Evil Way. Each Form has its own skill, and costs between two and twenty points to use. In addition, a player can also spend points of his Envoy’s Willpower to improve the chances of a Discipline working one a one-for-one basis. The process can be interrupted in combat, and when that happens, the Envoy will also lose any Willpower spent. The amount that can be spent also depends on the Envoy’s current Stamina. Each Form has three Disciplines and each one needs to be learned individually. Although all nine Disciplines are useful, with some like Mental Shield and Sphere of Protection from the Protection Discipline, providing defence against attacks and other dangers, none of the Disciplines are offensive in nature. What this means is the Envoys will need to find another way to defeat the Unknown rather than simply relying upon the Art. In nature, the Art is more psionics than magic.

Penultimately, the ‘CHILL Campaign Book’ provides both a history of S.A.V.E. and a timeline along with an overview of how it operates and how it helps the Envoys. It gives enough details without being overly specific. Lastly, there is advice for the CHILL Master on running the roleplaying games. The advice is decent, covering what the CHILL Master does and what her responsibilities are, plus writing scenarios, maintaining game balance, and using elements of horror. It also suggests using the locations marked on ‘The World of CHILL’ map as potential starting points as they are all sites that S.A.V.E. has sent expeditions to and they failed to return.

The final book in CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown is ‘CHILL: Horrors from the Unknown’. It describes the Evil Way, the dark counterpart to the Art, as detailed in S.A.V.E.’s own Manual 2B: Devices of the Enemy. Over forty disciplines of the Evil Way are given, from Animation of the Dead, Appear Dead (Self and Other), and Blind to White Heat, Wound, and Write. Categorised into two groupings, Distortion and Subjection, they are forceful and dangerous, and in comparison, to the Art, give creatures, monsters, and practitioners of the Evil Way the edge. Like the disciplines of the Art, those of the Evil Way cost the user Willpower to use, but where an Envoy will have a skill value in individual disciplines of the Art, the user of the Evil Way will have a simple ‘Evil Way Score’.

Nearly two thirds of ‘CHILL: Horrors from the Unknown’ is dedicated to the Evil Way and descriptions of its disciplines. The remaining presents it monsters, beginning with simple animals, before going on to describe some ten corporeal, incorporeal, and special creatures. They include the Ghoul, the Mummy, Werewolf, and the Zombie for the corporeal, and the Banshee, the Fetch, the Ghost, and the Hate for the incorporeal. The two special creatures are the Changeling and the Vampire. The latter is a simple Carpathian Vampire, the weakest of its kind. Nevertheless, it is still a tough opponent—and indeed, all of the entries in ‘CHILL: Horrors from the Unknown’ are hardy monsters, drawn from classic horror stories and films, which will be challenging opponents to the Envoys. There can be no doubt that ‘CHILL: Horrors from the Unknown’ is the highlight of CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown. It is easier to read and use than the ‘CHILL Campaign Book’. Both monsters and the Evil Way are nicely detailed and fantastically illustrated and ready to be used to scare the Envoys, if not their players. If there is anything missing from this list it is the Frankenstein’s Monster type creature and the Witch or Wizard, although it would not be that difficult for the CHILL Master to create them.

CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown is something of a misnomer because nothing in its pages and its horror is really ‘unknown’. All of its monsters are known and that is because they are all drawn from common folklore and from their depiction on screen. This gives them a familiarity that potentially makes them less scary and to certain extent breeds the disdain which CHILL would be held at the time as evidenced by the reviews. Of course, Call of Cthulhu was the ‘superior’ horror game. Its Mythos was then unfamiliar, nihilistic, and the protagonists, the Investigators, were fragile amateurs lacking the backing of a worldwide, secret organisation. Yet, what CHILL offered was a broader, though not deeper, choice in terms of its horror. It could do the Gothic horror of classic Americana and Hammer Horror films, it could do ‘monster of the week’, and yes, it could do Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! if you wanted. The familiarity means that in play, the players have to lean into and embrace the genre that much more. They are not necessarily going to be scared by the unfamiliar, but they can roleplay their Envoys being scared by what is otherwise familiar to them as players.

In terms of design, CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown aims for a universal mechanic with its CHILL Action Table, and almost succeeds. The problem is that the results are not themselves universal, varying depending upon if the player is rolling a Specific Ability or Skill Check, an armed or unarmed attack, a Fear check, and so on. Plus, every skill has its own set of results, so that mechanically, CHILL feels overwritten and fussy. However, the CHILL Action Table is printed on the back of both the ‘CHILL Campaign Book’ and the ‘CHILL: Horrors from the Unknown’ books, so the CHILL Master can refer to the table on the back of the latter, whilst the results of various Specific Skill Checks can be consulted in the former.

For a horror roleplaying game, and certainly one written and set in the eighties, there are some odd omissions from CHILL. There is only the one technical skill, Mechanics, and technology is not addressed at all in the roleplaying game. There is neither an equipment list nor even prices given for the weapons it does list. Some of that is due to the fact that S.A.V.E. pays for the Envoys’ expenses whilst they are on an investigation and they each start with standard set of equipment. Nevertheless, from a technological standpoint, CHILL did not and does not feel like a modern-set horror roleplaying game. The advantage to that is that it can easily be shifted from the modern period to earlier periods, and much of the artwork depicts encounters with the Unknown in the Victorian era. Further, CHILL would be just as easy to run in even earlier periods, although that would be outside of the time frame for S.A.V.E.

If ultimately, there is a problem with CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown, it is that it lacks a proper scenario. That is, one that the CHILL Master can run for her players. ‘Terror in Warwick House’ is more like playing a novel—and doing so collectively—than actually playing a proper horror scenario. Without that example scenario to get an idea of what a scenario for CHILL would like, the advice on writing scenarios is consequently underwhelming. That said, the inspirations for the roleplaying game’s designers—the films of Hammer Horror and Universal Monsters—are also inspiration for the CHILL Master and so are a ready source of scenario ideas. This is despite the fact that CHILL does not include a filmography. Instead, its list of suggested reading consists of Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, H. Rider Haggard, Stephen King, Shirley Jackson, Edgar Allen Poe, Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker—and yes, H.P. Lovecraft.

Physically, CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown is very nicely presented boxed set. The cover to the box is eye-catching and the artwork is excellent, imparting feelings of dread and terror for the poor fortune stuck those situations. This is done by Jim Holloway throughout and it gives the roleplaying game a highly consistent look. The writing, and consequently, the rules, suffer in places from being overwritten unfortunately. The ‘CHILL Campaign Book’ could have slightly organised as certain chapters do feel as if they should be adjacent to each other.
—oOo— CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown was reviewed in ‘Horribly simple to learn: CHILL will leave you shivering for more’ by Jerry Epperson in Dragon #90 (October 1984). Although critical of the economics rules—or lack of them, and for not exploring options outside of being members of S.A.V.E., his main issue with the included scenario. “Experienced role-players will find that “Terror in Warwick House” is much like a guided tour of a national monument. While it portends to be a dangerous place, one gets the feeling that those who fell victim to the sinister occupants before the player characters were called to the scene were either idiots or invalids. The clues required by the characters to dispose of the evil are practically spoon-fed to the players.” Despite these issues, his conclusion was much positive: “At the risk of seeming to contradict all of the above complaints, it must be said that these problems are not major flaws in the game’s design; any CM should be able to alter them with little effort. All things considered, the CHILL game does just what it sets out to do. It doesn’t stall play with unwieldy rules or sub-systems, and it allows the CM to pace the storyline and preserve the intensity of a situation thanks to the game’s elegant simplicity. As an alternative to dungeon delving, superheroing, or chasing after Cthulhu, the CHILL game is something you can really sink your teeth into.”
As was a common occurrence, CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown was reviewed not once, but twice in the pages of Space Gamer. First by William Barton in the ‘Capsule Reviews’ in Space Gamer Number 71 (November/December 1984). He said, “Chill is an impressive and professional first release for Pacesetter and an excellent addition to the genre.” He criticised the turn sequence in combat and did not think that Player Characters started with enough skills, but praised the roleplaying game for its innovations, including the CHILL Action Table. He finished his review by saying, “Still, Chill is a viable alternative in supernatural gaming for those who desire less gunplay than is typical in Stalking or prefer more conventional creatures than the sanity-blasting horrors of CoC.”
Then, as part of an overview of the complete output from Pacesetter Ltd., Warren Spector reviewed CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown in ‘The Pacesetter Line’ as a ‘Featured Review’ in Space Gamer Number 75 (July/August 1985). He highlighted the inclusion of the adventure, ‘Terror in Warwick House’. “This adventure is worthy of comment. Many roleplaying games come packaged with adventures but, as far as I know, Chill is the first to include an introductory folder advising players to begin playing that adventure before they’ve read the rules of the game! To begin, players have only to read a four-page, READ-ME-FIRST! introduction to the rules, pick up the 16-page adventure booklet, and begin playing! And, sure enough, the cockamamie scheme works! The adventure itself is too straightforward and contrived (with CM instructions like “Don't let the players go upstairs yet!” How do you stop them?). But what the heck? At least you don’t have to wait for days while everyone learns the rules.” Although he felt that the mechanics needed work, Spector finished with, “Though superficially simpler than Call of Cthulhu, the clear leader in the horror field, Chill falls somewhat short of the mark.”
No less than Keith Herber reviewed CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown in ‘Games Reviews’ in Different Worlds Issue 37 (November/December 1984). As with other reviews, he paid particular attention to ‘Terror in Warwick House’, saying that, “For ease of use, this scenario offers a set of pre-generated player-characters that can be used and the adventure itself provides but limited choices for the players the results of these choices being clearly spelled out for the benefit of the novice gamemaster. While this does lead to a more or less predictable conclusion, the purpose of the adventure is to demonstrate the rules of the game and this it does admirably. It also proved to be one of the best introductions to role-playing games I have yet seen. While I might question the saleman’s [sic]claim that a group of beginning gamers can be playing within fifteen minutes of opening the box, it is certain they could enjoy an exciting first time with roleplaying on the same evening that they purchased the game.” Although he was critical of the low number of monsters in the books, especially given that once they have been defeated, the Envoys are no longer subject to Fear effects from them, he was positive about the game overall. “I found Chill to be a well thought-out, well-presented game that simulates the world of horror as represented in (particularly) the movies. The rules are flexible enough and complete enough to allow a gamemaster to set whatever tone or mood he desires his campaign to have and there is a large amount of written and filmed material from which to draw adventure designs.” Lastly, he awarded CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown three stars out of five.
Angus McLellan reviewed CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown in ‘Open Box’ in White Dwarf Issue 61 (January 1985). He too, was critical of ‘Terror in Warwick House’, saying that, “Even for an introductory scenario it's rather slow and distinctly lacking in excitement.” and found the creatures in the ‘CHILL: Horrors from the Unknown’ to be, “…a rather drab bunch of werewolves, vampires, ghouls, etc.” Before award CHILL a surprising score of seven out of ten, he finished with, “To sum up, Chill is ideally suited for beginners, the rules are not crystal clear, but the examples give a good idea of how it all fits together. The horrors are, alas, merely scary, the excitement soon palls, as the players expect more than the trick and tease style terror of Chill. Some hard work from the GM would help but for the money I'd want more than this. With both Call of Cthulhu and Daredevils available at the same sort of price why bother. A few years back this would have shaken the RPG community, now it’s second rate.”
In ‘Game Reviews’ in Imagine No. 23 (February 1985), Paul Mason was similarly critical of ‘Terror in Warwick House’. “Unfortunately, the introductory scenario just doesn’t make the grade. Not is it full of arbitrary manipulation (eg ‘Do not allow the players to go up the stars at this time’), but it has omissions, unnecessary repetition and poor explanations in places. I’m dubious of its merits as a means of introducing newcomers to roleplaying.” Nevertheless, in spite of this and objections to sometimes jokey side of the writing, he the review up with, “Still, if you fancy a game of investigation with gothic horror overtones, and you don't much care for H P Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos, then Chill would be the game to buy.”—oOo—
CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown is a horror roleplaying game aimed at younger players, in terms of its horror and tone, its choice of monsters and creatures. This makes its horror more accessible and more familiar, which combined with core ease of the rules and CHILL Action Table, make the basics of the game easy to learn and play. CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown emphasises this aspect by having it so that the CHILL Master and her players can open the box, read through the ‘CHILL Introductory Folder’ and then CHILL Master also read through ‘Terror in Warwick House’, and be playing in thirty minutes. However, beyond this, CHILL is not as complete or easy as it should be. The mechanics to the roleplaying game do feel fussy with lots of different skill and action outcomes depending on that the Envoys are doing, which hinders ease of play, and that despite the universal nature of the CHILL Action Table. The existence of S.A.V.E. suggests that CHILL can be played as campaign game, but what that might look like is barely touched upon and worse, the possible foundation for longer term play, a proper, starting scenario is not included.

Ultimately, if CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown feels lighter and tonally different, it is only in comparison to cosmic horror of Call of Cthulhu. It is still a horror roleplaying game, one that deals with the classic monsters of horror, and just as those confronting those can still be enjoyed in prose and on screen, so can confronting those can still be enjoyed in a roleplaying game. As a design, CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown is not quite as good as it could be, in terms of mechanics or content, but all of the elements are there to make it both playable, enjoyable, and incredibly, initially, highly accessible. Although it deals with classic horror, CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown is a very playable horror roleplaying game that falls short of being a classic.

Since 2013, Goodman Games, the publisher of the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game and Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic has released a book especially for Gen Con, the largest tabletop hobby gaming event in the world. That book is the Goodman Games Gen Con Program Book, a look back at the previous year, a preview of the year to come, staff biographies, community content, and a whole lot more, including adventures and lots tidbits and silliness. The first was the Goodman Games Gen Con 2013 Program Book, but not being able to pick up a copy from Goodman Games when they first attended UK Games Expo in 2019, the first to be reviewed was the Goodman Games Gen Con 2014 Program Book. Fortunately, a little patience and a copy of the Goodman Games Gen Con 2013 Program Book was located and reviewed, so since 2021, normal order has been resumed with the Goodman Games Gen Con 2016 Program Book, the Goodman Games Gen Con 2017 Program Book, and Goodman Games Gen Con 2018 Program Guide: The Black Heart of Thakulon the Undying, and Goodman Games 2019 Yearbook: Riders on the Phlogiston.

With both Goodman Games Gen Con 2018 Program Guide: The Black Heart of Thakulon the Undying, and Goodman Games 2019 Yearbook: Riders on the Phlogiston, the series had begun to chart a new direction. Each volume would contain a mix of support for the various RPGs published by Goodman Games and the content recognising the Goodman Games community, but the major feature of each volume would be a tournament scenario, staged the previous year at Gen Con. Unfortunately, events caught up with the eighth entry in the series, intending to highlight the presence of Goodman Games at Gen Gen in 2020, which would cancel Gen Con and every other event as well as face-to-face gaming. It meant that Goodman games had to adapt and adapts its by now traditional Gen Con Program Guide. The result was Goodman Games Yearbook #8: The Year That Shall Not be Named, a slimmer affair that would alter the direction of the series as whole and also see the traditional Gen Con Program Guide becoming a ‘Yearbook’ instead.
The Goodman Games 2021 Yearbook also marked the twentieth anniversary of Goodman Games, celebrating it with a cover that referenced numerous releases and events from the publisher’s history. The issue proper opens with a moment or two for reflection upon the part of Michael Curtis and Harley Stroh, looking back at how Goodman Games was forced to change as a result of the pandemic and how through online contact and play, the community came together like never before and kept gaming, all before diving into the gaming content of the yearbook. This is a pattern repeated later in the book by Brendan LaSalle and Chris Doyle. Where the previous three talk about Dungeon Crawl Classics, the latter focuses on the development of Dungeon Denizens, Goodman Games’ bestiary for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, as well titles in the ‘Original Adventures Reincarnated’ series, such as The Temple of Elemental Evil and Dark Tower.

As with the previous Goodman Games Gen Con 2018 Program Guide: The Black Heart of Thakulon the Undying, and Goodman Games 2019 Yearbook: Riders on the Phlogiston, what the Goodman Games 2021 Yearbook also offers is a tournament scenario, though to be fair, it is more tournament than scenario. ‘Pits of Lost Agharta’ by Harley Stroh is a winner takes all series of arena ‘battle royale’-style battles that take place on a ziggurat deep underground to the amusement of foul Aghartan slave lords. Everyone roleplays a Warrior, First Level at the beginning, but who will acquire more Levels as he survives more rounds, but always begins a round armed only with a club. His aim is to survive. To do this, he can search corpse mounds for better equipment, gain strange boons from touching the Malachite Crystals which contain an aged and withered sage or wizard, take control of the ballistae mounted on the ziggurat, and so on. Once their characters have all acted in a round, the players get to decide what action the Slave Lords take, which might be to “Release the man-bats!” or command “Forward, feasters of flesh!”. The latter is important because the Player Characters have been held captive for quite some time and been fed on a diet of vile gruel, which consists of either mushrooms or mushrooms and the flesh of their dead comrades. Those Player Characters who turned cannibal get more Hit Points, but are in danger of falling under the influence of the slave lords during the battle.
‘Pits of Lost Agharta’ details and illustrates in full colour the various parts of the tournament and suggests how it might be used in campaign play. One way would be to tie it into the setting of Lost Agharta, as detailed in Dungeon Crawl Classics #91: Journey to the Centre of Áereth and then Dungeon Crawl Classics #91.1: The Lost City of Barako and Dungeon Crawl Classics #91.2: Lairs of Lost Agharta. There are also notes on how the tournament was run and who the winners were. There is a certain tongue in cheek battling charm to this, a way to run a tournament online which can then can also be run face-to-face.
Mike Bolam adds to the tournament with ‘Pits of Lost Agharta Variant Rules’ which suggests a way in which it could run as a board game and without a Judge, as well as setting it in an arena as in Dungeon Crawl Classics #84C: Escape from the Purple Planet from Dungeon Crawl Classics #84: Peril on the Purple Planet. It is an intriguing idea, though it would probably take almost as much time to set up as would running the proper tournament version.
There is a delightful sense of fun in the ever so bonkers ‘The ’Stashe Stash II: ’Stashe of the Titans!’ by Brendan LaSalle. This is a sequel to ‘The ‘Stache Stash: Magic Moustaches for DCC RPG’ from the DCC Annual Vol. 1 and presents yet more magical facial hair. These include ‘The Walrus or ‘The Ubermensch’, ‘The Handlebar’ or ‘The Rollie Fingers’, and even more hilariously, ‘The Hairy Mole’. They have odd magical powers like that of ‘The Antenna’ or ‘The Dali’ to cause any non-magical object to melt without any heat, to stop time whilst the bearer floats away, or catch an opponent in a time loop and so force him to repeat the action from the previous round. Amusingly, the modifier to the Saving Throw to shrug off this effect involves at least one cat. It is clear that both the author and the illustrator, Brad McDevitt, have had a lot of fun with this article.

‘Black Mountain Lights’ is a scenario for Second Level Player Characters for Dungeon Crawl Classics by Michael Curtis. It takes place in the Shudder Mountains, an Appalachian-style fantasy setting with elements of horror originally published as Dungeon Crawl Classics #83: The Chained Coffin. The Player Characters are staying as guests overnight at a remote farm during their travels when strange luminous figures creep out of the night, snatch up the farmer’s infant son, and carry him up the mountain. The Player Characters are implored to rescue the kidnapped boy, an attempt which takes them up the mountain where a witch is said to lurk. There is a dark threat to found up and, in the mountain, but it is not what the Player Characters may think. The scenario is a Shudder Mountains twist upon the classic Dungeons & Dragons-style set-up of goblins threatening the locals and can be played in a single session, so will work as a convention scenario. It is also easy to add to a Shudder Mountains-set campaign.
Although Goodman Games is best known for its content for its Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game and Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic, but it publishes content for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition as well. The support for it in the pages of The Goodman Games 2021 Yearbook includes entries from Dungeon Denizens, the bestiary that the publisher is just now funding on Kickstarter, a scenario, and a look at a Twitch channel, all by Chris Doyle. The scenario is ‘The Monastery of the Dawning Sun’, written for Fifteenth Level Player Characters for use with the version of Crypt of the Devil Lich for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition (there is also a version for use with Dungeon Crawl Classics). The scenario is designed to be played as a tournament and as a campaign play scenario, but the introduction to the scenario favours the former rather than the latter. ‘The Monastery of the Dawning Sun’ is designed to offer an alternative opening suited to campaign play. It provides a creepy location, containing ancient defences and signs of bloody violence and destruction, despoiled by evil and marked by hints as what lurks beyond in the ‘Crypt of the Devil Lich’, all ready for the Player Characters to discover its horrors.
‘What is Talking TSR?’ is show livestreamed on the Goodman Games Official Twitch channel. It introduces the backgrounds of the presenters Chris Doyle and Rick Maffei, who together get to highlight their favourite episodes and also provide an episode guide. The article highlights the move that Goodman Games has made into supporting its releases online as does the addition to the usual series of photographs taken at various conventions. Not just Gen Con 2021, the Goodman Games Road Crew, and other in-person events, but also on-line events such as Spawn of Cyclops Con and Empire of the Cyclops Con for lots of screenshots of Judges with their players. Further support for the Goodman Games community takes the form of ‘The Goodies’, the awards given for supporting and contributing to the community, plus there is a list of the winners of the ‘Pits of Lost Agharta’ tournament. Lastly, there is a gallery of the ‘Road Crew Stickers’ from the previous year.
Physically, the Goodman Games 2021 Yearbook is well presented and easy to read. It does need an edit in places, but the artwork and the cartography are as good as you would expect for a Goodman Games release.
There is a certain sense of adjustment having been made with Goodman Games 2021 Yearbook after the Pandemic and its effect on the Goodman Games Yearbook #8: The Year That Shall Not be Named. The inclusion of online content alongside in-person content is more assured, even if that content is restrained and not as ambitious as that of Goodman Games Gen Con 2018 Program Guide: The Black Heart of Thakulon the Undying, and Goodman Games 2019 Yearbook: Riders on the Phlogiston, what the Goodman Games 2021 Yearbook. The result is that the content is both easier to use as well as enjoyable as it tracks the move to a more normal existence than the year before.

Imagine being in a cave. Deep underground. In the dark and the damp and the cold. It is easy to imagine. What though, if you were trapped there? What if there had been an accident and now you simply could not retrace the steps that led you into the depths of the earth and so make your way to feel free again under the light and warmth of the Sun and the vast openness of the sky? What will you do? How will you react? You are not alone. You have friends and colleagues with you, but what will they do and how will they react? You know you will survive and find your way out, right? Not everything is lost, and of course, people know you came down here, so the alarm is sure to be raised soon, right? So put a plan together, check on your resources, and set out to find a new route to safety. Then the sounds starts. The skittering of movement. The moans of something that has your scent. A shadow that seems to move out of your headgear lamp. The sense you are being followed… Does the fear rise? Are you terrified at being trapped here with it? Is that the sound of your friend’s screams or your own? This is the set-up for Squeeze: A Tabletop Game of Subterranean Claustrophobic Horror.

Squeeze: A Tabletop Game of Subterranean Claustrophobic Horror is a micro-game published by Parable Games, the British publisher best known for the horror roleplaying game, Shiver – Role-playing Tales in the Strange & the Unknown. It was funded as part of the publisher’s Parable Games ZineQuest RPG Buffet on Kickstarter. It pitches ordinary men and women who have delved deep underground and due to an unfortunate accident become trapped—and trapped with something else what will hunt them as they try to find a way back to the surface. It provides a set of tables for determining why and where the Player Characters, or Explorers, have ventured underground, as well as the nature of the accident, plus a table of environmental threats that they might have to overcome and a set of ten different monsters that will react to their presence. Combine this with a simple set of rules and means of character generation, and what Squeeze: A Tabletop Game of Subterranean Claustrophobic Horror provides is short, handy roleplaying game that can be pulled off the shelf and readied to play with very little preparation. It does require several four-sided per player, but other than that, this is a very imagination driven roleplaying game for the Game Master and her players who are happy to improvise.

An Explorer in Squeeze has four traits: Head, Heart, Lungs, and Hands. They represent in turn, intelligence and experience, compassion and charisma, health and stamina, and strength and dexterity. They are rated between one and four. An Explorer also has a Health stat and a Calm stat. To determine the value of the four traits, a player either divides nine points between them or they can be rolled for. Lastly, a player rolls for two items of equipment.

Tony Wroe
Head 2 Heart 3 Lungs 3 Hands 2
Health 11
Calm 6
Equipment: Rope, Rucksack

Mechanically, to have his Explorer undertake an action, a player rolls a number of four-sided dice equal to the appropriate trait. The aim is to roll as many successes as possible, in order to beat a difficulty ranging between one and five, with five being considered impossible. A result of two is a failure, but three is a success. A roll of one is a critical failure and reduces the total number of successes rolled by one, whereas a roll of four is critical success and lets the player roll again and again as long as four is rolled each time. In combat, each success rolled inflicts a single point of damage. There will also be bonuses for damage from claws, mandibles, and so on (or even sharp rocks if the damage is environmental in nature.)

Squeeze gives guidance on how to use the mechanics to model the environment, such as using the Hands Trait to handle climbing, the Head Trait to identify safe routes up the climb, and even the Heart Trait if the climb itself is that high… It also shows how it might be used as a timing and distance mechanism, such as swimming and attempting to avoid the danger of drowning. However, what Squeeze does not do is really fully show how Panic works in the game. When an Explorer loses all of his Calm, he suffers Panic and loses a point from one of his Traits. If the Explorer can make a Lungs check, he can draw a deep breath and restore points of Calm, but another Explorer can also calm another panicked Explorer down and also restore points of his Calm. This is the mechanical aspect of losing Calm and it is really only what Squeeze covers. So, there is no advice on roleplaying this and worse, there is no guidance on how Calm is actually lost. It is a major oversight. What it means is that the Game Master is going to have to work out how this works herself. For an experienced Game Master this should be no problem, especially given how simple it is to run and play Squeeze.

In terms of creating a story, Squeeze includes a table of four story hooks and a table of four accidents, along with a table of eight settings. All the Game Master do is roll on these and she has the basics of the starting point for a game of Squeeze. Thus, the Explorers have descended into an abandoned mineshaft in order to search for a missing child, but are cut off from their route down by a cave-in, or be archaeologists looking for a sunken civilisation in some catacombs when someone sabotages the team’s way back. Environmental threats include falling stalactites or an underground lake, whilst the list of horrors includes Stone Spiders, Wall Crawlers, a White Wyrm, and the Shadowman. Overall, there are enough options here for a handful of games of Squeeze.

Physically, Squeeze is decently laid out and quick and easy to read. It is easy to learn and set up, and though it relies on a great of improvisation by the Game Master, it is not difficult to run. Or rather, it should not be difficult to run. The lack of rules on how Calm is lost so that Panic can be triggered is a major omission upon the part of author and publisher. It is not an insurmountable omission, especially for an experienced Game Master, but annoying, nonetheless. All it would have taken was another page to explain the rules and that would also have allowed space for a bibliography of horror films about being trapped underground far below the surface. Alas, Squeeze: A Tabletop Game of Subterranean Claustrophobic Horror is simply not complete and not what the publisher intended.

The rumours have been spreading for weeks now. The Archbishop of Radiant Vitela has excommunicated the Duke and Duchess of Isla Requia, declaring them heretics and sorcerers, foul worshippers of Chaos, and most recently he sent a fleet to land an army on the island and assault the Obsidian Keep, home to the Duke and Duchess. Word has it that as the Radiant Fleet anchored in Isla Requia harbour, the only part of the island where it is possible to land, a great storm of strange, red lightning descended on the ecumenical ships and shattered one vessel after another. The Duke and Duchess of Isla Requia remain in the Obsidian Keep, protected by the weird storms that some say the Duchess is responsible for, the dark walls of Obsidian Keep, and the distance across the Sakeen Sea to the island. There have been calls put out by Archbishop of Radiant Vitela for brave adventurers to sail to the mouth of Isla Requia harbour and there a launch a rowing boat to explore the harbour and shore for survivors and relics—and if such adventurers put an end to the reign of Duke Avito and Duchess Forza (literally Duke ‘Ancestral’ and Duchess ‘Force’), then there will be an even bigger reward. Similarly, there have been whispers put out by Master Argento of Radiant Vitela for treasure hunters to break into the Obsidian Keep and steal its treasures, with a bonus if the treasures happen to belong to the Duke or Duchess.

This is the set-up for Raiding the Obsidian Keep, an ‘Adventure Module for Characters 2-4’ for use with Old School Essentials, the retroclone based on the 1981 revision of Basic Dungeons & Dragons by Tom Moldvay and its accompanying Expert Set by Dave Cook and Steve Marsh. Originally published as The Obsidian Keep by Dungeon Age Adventures for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, like the author’s well received Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow, this edition of the scenario has been expanded, adapted, and transformed by The Merry Mushmen—best known for the Old School Renaissance magazine, Knock!, and the excellent A Folklore Bestiary—following a successful Kickstarter campaign. And what a transformation it is! The digest-sized scenario comes as a thick, seventy two-page booklet in a wraparound card cover. The trade dress echoes that of classic TSR, though the artwork is more cartoonish. The cover has been purposely distressed and inside has been drawn the map of the temple, again in the style of classic Dungeons & Dragons modules. The cartoonish style of artwork continues throughout in a greyscale, depicting the devastation which has been wrought upon the Radiant Vitela fleet and the gothic weirdness that permeates the Obsidian Keep and its inhabitants.

Structurally, Raiding the Obsidian Keep is linear, organised into four stages, one after the other, but within those stages, the Player Characters have plenty of freedom of movement. These are in turn, ‘The Harbour of Death’, ‘Survivor Beach’, ‘At the Foot of the Obsidian Keep’, and ‘Inside the Obsidian Keep’. Each of these stages contains a mix of encounters with survivors—initially from the Radiant Vitela fleet and then from the Obsidian Keep, signs of the recent storm, and other strangeness. There is a distinct atmosphere to each of the four stages. ‘The Harbour of Death’ is a sea salt-encrusted battlefield, strewn with shattered and capsized hulls, with survivors desperate for help among the dangerous waters patrolled by harbour sharks and the leathery black and bewinged Vulgranes. ‘Survivor Beach’ is a shanty town of fishermen, Radiant Vitela sailors and soldiers washed ashore, and servants that have fled from the Obsidian Keep, the narrow area split down the middle by a lava stream. ‘At the Foot of the Obsidian Keep’ is a fractured courtyard split by lava filled vents, marching obsidian skeletons, and a floating cottage, all under an ash-laden sky. ‘Inside the Obsidian Keep’ is decadence and luxury smashed by lightning and Chaos, populated by the mutated lords and ladies of the ducal court acting as if everything was perfectly normal and littered with corpses, many with wrinkled skin, eyeless, and missing their left arms, robed in red.

Throughout Raiding the Obsidian Keep there are some fantastic encounters. some of the most notable include Angelica the Ursaloth, half-woman, half-octopus, in ‘The Harbour of Death’, who welcomes a kiss and gives a boon in return for the gift of a finger; on ‘Survivor Beach’ with the charred and frozen naked skeleton of Prince Orsino, who might tell you his story in return for a promise; in the stables ‘At the Foot of the Obsidian Keep’ with a shining back stallion with a skull for a head, that despite being Chaotic, just wants to be friends; and ‘Inside the Obsidian Keep’ where Pavnutia, vampire alchemist from outer space just wants to be rescued (so she can enthrall the world!). There is plenty of treasure to be found, all artfully designed, like billiard balls of sapphire in the games room or the individual model ships each sailing on a worked sea of silver in Prince Orsino’s room. That though, is just the treasure of artistic or monetary value, for there are numerous magical items to be found and delightfully, not a single one of them actually boring!

As the Player Characters progress through the adventure, both it and their focus will change. In ‘The Harbour of Death’, they will be rowing from wreck to wreck, rescuing people and learning about what happened in the bay, whilst on ‘Survivor Beach’, they will begin to learn about what happened in the Obsidian Keep before entering the courtyard of the keep and then the keep itself to really discover the truth of what happened. As a result, there is tonal shift from one half of the scenario to the other, initially an open water tale of bracing adventure and danger, and then a dark gothic story inside the ruined black castle with echoes of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death via Roger Corman and Vincent Price.

For all of its atmosphere and its details, where Raiding the Obsidian Keep disappoints is in the set-up. Unless starting the scenario en media res, right at the mouth of Isla Requia Harbour, being launched into the long boat, the scenario requires quite a bit of set up in terms of its back story and setting. All necessary to provide context to the reasons why the Player Characters might become involved. The given set-up in underwritten and there is a lot more going on in the scenario some of which the Player Characters will be aware of. Some of this can be facilitated via the included rumour table, but even that feels out of context. Also one thing that cannot easily be done with Raiding the Obsidian Keep is run it as a sequel to either of the earlier scenarios from the publisher, Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow or The Horrendous Hounds of Hendenburgh, whereas The Horrendous Hounds of Hendenburgh has links indicating that it could be could be run as a sequel to Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow. To be fair, Raiding the Obsidian Keep is not written as a sequel to either, but neither does it have links suggesting that it could be.

Physically, Raiding the Obsidian Keep is very well presented. The writing is succinct and laid out in an easy to grasp style, whilst the artwork is entertaining throughout. If there is anything disappointing it is that the cartography of both the courtyard and the keep is are clean, tidy, but dull. Especially in comparison to that of the harbour and the beach. That said, the descriptions of the various locations in the courtyard and rooms in the Obsidian Keep more than compensate for their uninteresting cartography. None will hinder the Game Master running Raiding the Obsidian Keep, but none really help their locations come to life either.

Raiding the Obsidian Keep is self-contained. This means that it is easy for the Game Master to drop into her own campaign world or an existing one she is already using. Similarly, although Raiding the Obsidian Keep is written for use with Old School Essentials, the scenario is easily adapted to the retroclone of the Game Master’s preference.

Raiding the Obsidian Keep is a scenario for more experienced players, being challenging and dangerous. It has a fantastic gothic atmosphere of ruin and tragedy in the face of overweening ambition. However getting to that ruin and tragedy will take some effort upon the part of the Game Master to set-up and get the players and their characters motivated. Once they are, they will discover that Raiding the Obsidian Keep is another fine scenario from The Merry Mushmen and the author of Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow.

Welcome to Arkham: An Illustrated Guide for Visitors to the Town of ARKHAM, MASSACHUSETTS, and Environs Including DUNWICH, INNSMOUTH, and KINGSPORT is just that little bit more than a simple guide to the city at the heart of the H.P. Lovecraft’s stories and the Cthulhu Mythos. In one way it is a simple exploration of the city and its strange history and places as presented in the Arkham Horror family of games published by Fantasy Flight Games, including of course, the Arkham Horror board game and Arkham Horror: The Card Game, and more recently, the roleplaying game Arkham Horror, and in another, it showcases the great artwork from the games. Seriously, the artwork is very, very good. Then in another way, it presents the city and its environs, including the towns and villages of Dunwich, Innsmouth, and Kingsport, in a way that could be used with any horror roleplaying game. Which means that it could works as a companion to the recently released Call of Cthulhu: Arkham for Call of Cthulhu.

What it actually is though, is a reprint of the Arkham gazetteer that was originally in the Arkham Horror Deluxe Rulebook, published separate to the board game, along with expanded details of Lovecraft Country. Yet it is also more that than that. It is a copy of Welcome to Arkham, the introduction to the city published by the Arkham Historical Society after having been updated, revised, and expanded by the society’s curator, Reginald Peabody. Further, it is his personal copy, complete with notes that he compiled in order to update it, and then, now in hands of his niece, Myrna Todd, it has been annotated with her notes and correspondence with a friend in New York, after she begins investigating Arkham and beyond following her uncle’s disappearance. What this means is that there are multiple layers to this book, on one level a simple guide or artbook, on another a story and mystery. Which means that it can be enjoyed on multiple levels…

Published by Aconyte Books, also responsible for a series of novels set in the world of Arkham Horror, this outwardly guide to Arkham and inwardly the mystery of the disappearance of the guide’s author, begins with a letter to young Myrna Todd from the Miskatonic Valley sheriff, informing her of her uncle’s disappearance, and a letter to her friend in New York, before welcoming the reader to Arkham proper. Starting with downtown, the volume takes the reader from one district of the city to another, visiting in turn, its highs and its lows, its weird and its wondrous. The highs include Independence Square with its balmy tranquillity that contrasts sharply with the Gothic grandeur and tenebrosity of Arkham Sanatorium, with its patients receiving the very best care, but so many lost to a stranger madness. Similarly, the newly opened restaurant, La Bella Luna, offers the wonders of Italian cuisine brought to small town New England, but hides an entrance to the Clover Club, the city’s premier speakeasy, whilst the Palace Movie Theatre brings the best of Hollywood to its big screen on which some moviegoers have begun to see odd shadows at moments when the big feature is not show. The description of the Palace Movie Theatre is accompanied by a fantastic film that never was, Mask of Silver. Meanwhile, the Ward Theatre is going to stage a much-anticipated performance of The King in Yellow, following its premiere in Paris! In rougher Eastown, Hibb’s Roadhouse might claim to be ‘dry’, but it is where the city’s less than reputable citizens go to get a shot of booze, whilst Velma’s Diner, a classic railcar diner, might serve good food, but it where the patrons of Hibb’s Roadhouse go after it shuts for the night.

French Hill is home to the even stranger parts of Arkham. There is Silver Twilight Lodge, the meeting place of the Order of the Silver Twilight, headed by one Carl Sanford, known for its generous charity work, but suspected by some for conducting very dark rituals behind its closed doors. This is, of course, a pleasing nod, to ‘The Hermetic Order of the Silver Twilight’ from Shadows of Yog-Sothoth. (These are not the only nods to the source material beyond that of H.P. Lovecraft, as Welcome to Arkham also draws from the pages of the various novels in the ‘Arkham Horror’ range.) Then there is the infamous ‘Witch House’, once home to the reviled witch, Keziah Mason, but now a series of poky apartments let to students at Miskatonic University who complain of strange rodent that stalks the building with its weirdly human face and hands. These are only the start of the strange locations to be found in Arkham, others including ‘The Unnamable’, a collapsed mansion in the Merchant District that Arkhamites strive to avoid, the Black Cave in Rivertown with its odd geology and fungi and the spelunkers often lost within its depths, and Ye Olde Magick Shoppe in Uptown, a cramped premises stuffed with mouldering books, maps, and artefacts linked to places that geographers have no knowledge of.

Of course, Miskatonic University gets a section of its own, including the Miskatonic Museum and the Orne Library, and as a bonus, a working draft of ‘Book of Living Myths’. This is almost a Mythos tome of its very own, penned by Miskatonic University scholar Kōhaku Narukami, which explores the parallels between classic folklore and the Mythos. Beyond this, Welcome to Arkham draws both the reader and Myrna Todd up and down the Miskatonic Valley, visiting in turn Dunwich, Innsmouth, and Kingsport, for similar treatments as that accorded to Arkham. Throughout, the locations are given both a fantastic illustration and a description, but this is not the only artwork in the pages of Welcome to Arkham. There are newspaper front pages reporting on important events such as the widespread, horrific destruction that beset Dunwich and the raid by Federal authorities on Innsmouth. There are also photographs, official reports, tickets, business cards, and plain postcards, the penned by Myrna charting the course of her investigation in the disappearance of her uncle, destined for New York, but not yet sent. Some are illustrated as if to appear attached to the pages by a paperclip, but others intrude into the pages, cut off by the neatness of the pages of Welcome to Arkham: An Illustrated Guide for Visitors to the Town of ARKHAM, MASSACHUSETTS, and Environs Including DUNWICH, INNSMOUTH, and KINGSPORTT. Their creation is so good though, that you wish they were real and that every one of them would stick out between the pages and make the book bulge with the many things, artefacts, and documents stuffed between those pages.

If perhaps, there is anything missing from the pages of Welcome to Arkham, it is a map. Arguably, a book which is ostensibly designed as a guidebook, warrants a map. Perhaps the modular nature of the book’s source material, the Arkham Horror board game, and more specifically, Arkham Horror: The Card Game, means that like the source material, the book needs no map. However, if not coming to Welcome to Arkham via either of those games, the conceit of it begs for a map.

Welcome to Arkham: An Illustrated Guide for Visitors to the Town of ARKHAM, MASSACHUSETTS, and Environs Including DUNWICH, INNSMOUTH, and KINGSPORT is the chance to explore the familiar, but from a different angle, that of source material from a board game and a card game of Lovecraftian investigative horror, rather than a roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror. Though all draw from the same sources, there is sufficient divergence perhaps that Welcome to Arkham is ever so slightly odd, slightly less familiar. That said, fans of the Arkham Horror board game, Arkham Horror: The Card Game, and the ‘Arkham Horror’ series of novels, will much that they will recognise and enjoy, as will the devotees of the writings of Lovecraft and of Lovecraftian investigative horror roleplaying. Welcome to Arkham: An Illustrated Guide for Visitors to the Town of ARKHAM, MASSACHUSETTS, and Environs Including DUNWICH, INNSMOUTH, and KINGSPORT is an engaging combination of enticing artwork and literary conceit that constantly hints at the dangers to be found in poking around in places and the doings of people that are best left secret.

Features / November 27, 2024

In my mind and in my car
We can’t rewind we’ve gone too far
Pictures came and broke your heart
Put the blame on VCR

—The Buggles, “Video Killed the Radio Star” 

ROBERTS: I saw this on Facebook the other day and had to call an emergency round robin. I don’t know the original image source but I’ve seen it on several clickbait nostalgia pages at this point. The amount of “sad but true” comments is staggering, made more perplexing by the fact that most of these comments are from people who claim to have lived through the ’60s and ’70s. The image is important because it captures something desperately tragic about where we’re at and how we see ourselves. It is, quite simply, Big Brother level propaganda. This version of 1974 never existed (we’ll get to 2024 later). Nothing about it is right. Where are the cigarettes and ashtrays? Where are the beer bottles? Why is everyone bronze-white? Where are the tablecloths (is this 1974 or 1874?)? Why the fuck is that giant window there? Is that a chess board on the table? The answer is so ironic that I can hardly stand it: the cartoon was generated by AI, which is the product of the (alleged by the second panel) grim and joyless and mercenary technological age that the cartoon attempts to condemn.

GRASSO: Yeah, we can very safely put aside all the aesthetic elements of this atrocity that are attributable to the fact that it’s AI: the color grading, the inimitable and easily discernible Escherian uncanniness to all the visual elements, the kitsch factor, the utter lifelessness of the art itself. That’s all baked into the material reality of AI art. We’re dealing with a nostalgia meme made for Facebook here, for Christ’s sake—of course it’s going to bore a hole of distilled banality into the viewer’s skull. But still: someone, some actual human somewhere had to feed this thing a prompt. Some part of it came from an actual human mind. And what that mind wanted to convey with this thing is “wasn’t it better when social spaces were truly social and we weren’t all sitting around on our phones, isolated from each other?”

Leaving aside another grand irony—the fact that this meme ended up finding fertile ideological purchase on the internet, on those very same phones—there is a certain libidinal thrill in all these generational memes, whether visual or textual: a violent, agitated staking of psychological territory, projected in a threatened, growling voice onto the younger generations on the internet, a statement of misplaced solidarity and pride: “REMEMBER WHEN WE DRANK FROM THE GARDEN HOSE, GENERATION X? REMEMBER HOW WE USED TO SPEAK TO EACH OTHER AND LAUGH IN PUBS? NOT LIKE THESE MILLENNIALS AND ZOOMERS, ALWAYS ON THEIR PHONES.” The implied distance between the “good old days” and today is shrunk down to the most elemental of caveman emotional urgings: “then happy, now sad; we from then, we better than you.” 

The vibe here is almost poignantly desperate in a way, giving the impression that the older generation is almost glad things are this bad in 2024, because it allows them to stand in smug superiority against those “young people always on their phones.” When the past is a frozen tableau, painted by AI, nothing can harm it anymore or expose the truth about those 1974 pubs and bars: they weren’t all limned in golden sunlight, full of happy people singing and chatting. In fact, they were often grotty, violent, and full of alcoholics just as hypnotized by their beers as the millennials and Zoomers are by their phones in the 2024 image.

MCKENNA: At a guess, this is from my side of the pond, because us Brits—or more specifically us simple English folk—just love this kind of shit. And if that is the case, a few of the incongruities do kind of make sense. Even the absence of any ethnic minorities can probably be explained by a combination of extra-urban demographics, varying cultural attitudes to boozing, a general diffidence towards outsiders, as well as pretty widespread bigotry. To be honest, in the late eighties the majority of pubs outside metropolitan Bohemian zones weren’t all that welcoming even to your average random straight white male, so anyone not belonging to that group would have been forgiven for thinking twice before popping in for a disgusting pint of Skol or Harp ten years earlier. As would anyone who spoke with an Irish accent, given that the Provisional IRA had begun carrying out attacks in mainland Britain the year before—1974 was in fact the year the Birmingham Pub Bombings happened—so suspicion of strangers was through the roof. The whole year in the UK was pretty fucking horrible, to be honest. Bagpuss debuting on TV was about the only good thing that happened. 

But though pubs like this do—or did—sort of exist, the vibe feels more like a wish-fulfilment melding of the atmosphere of some twatty village pub in the Cotswolds, where the farmhands still live in some Wicker Man-esque idyll of rural submission to the local landlord, with that of a working men’s club, places which I remember as having a much more balanced mix of the sexes and a very different and more cheerful mood. To give you an idea, the only picture I have of my dad drinking a pint (of shit lager, natch), he was in a working men’s club: the man won’t set foot in a pub. And as Mike says, pubs could be hostile places, full of aggro alkies looking to start on anyone who looked a bit odd. 

Anyway, the main things missing are the dense cloud of acrid smoke and the bitter cold, which is my abiding memory of the few times I entered a pub before I was ten, and the frequent air of lurking threat from some pissed-up yobbo, which is my abiding memory of pubs in the ’80s and ’90s. Oh, and the stench, which is admittedly hard to render in pixels. Most pubs got fitted carpets at some point post-WWII, and most pubs never changed them, so years of absorbing revolting yeast-heavy spilled beer—and probably a surprising amount of urine—meant that the places often fucking reeked. A friend and bandmate very kindly got us some occasional work cleaning the pub his stepdad ran in a small provincial town on our dinner breaks from school, and the reek of sour beer in the place was fucking nuclear. I actually preferred cleaning the toilets, because at least the urinal cakes drowned out the various other stenches. And this was not a smelly pub, it was a well-looked-after one! So yes, this is a combination of good-old-days nonsense with the kind of idyllic, cozy vision of pub life CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale) was aggressively pushing in opposition to the increasingly corporate mindset governing what had visibly become an industry.

ROBERTS: The question of where it comes from is an interesting one. Many of these nostalgia sites are run out of Europe (several from the Netherlands), but they generally target American clicks. The pint glasses would explain the absence of bottles if these weirdly Stepfordian people were in Britain, but look at the “band,” at least two of them clutching instruments that don’t exist in the real world! And look at all the gleaming wood, and the curtains! Add a couple of cowboy hats and we might be in the small-town world of Little House on the Prairie, which was itself a nostalgic idealization of American frontier life in the late 19th century. It was a hugely successful TV show that premiered in—you guessed it—1974, a little over a month after Nixon resigned. The year also saw mile-long gas lines, stagflation, smog sieges, kidnappings, hijackings, and parents were still smoking cigarettes in cars with the windows rolled up. For a lot of Americans, 1974 was less like a country band jamboree and more like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

Listen, I do lament the fact that so many people, including me, are buried in their phones for too much of their lives. We don’t, as societies, talk as much as we used to. We don’t have the physical spaces that we used to have that gave us common ground and a shared reality that actually resembled reality. But the most Orwellian thing about 2024 is not people looking at iPhones, it’s Trump, whose slogan is the fuel behind this poisonous meme. 

GRASSO: A few weeks ago comedian Conner O’Malley and a cohort of fellow millennial comedians put out an hour-long film called Rap World. Set in January 2009, right before the Obama inauguration, and shot on period-appropriate equipment, it tells the story of a single night in the lives of a bunch of aimless young people in the Pennsylvania exurbs recording an “intelligent” rap album. Much of the commentary on this very funny film came in the form of younger millennials and Zoomers enviously noticing how much “simpler” and less distracting life was, or at least seemed in… 2009! Cell Phones existed, but most of them didn’t give us full access to the internet; there was more of an overarching monoculture, more opportunity and desire to be social in real space. Think about how many of the most beloved nostalgia pieces of the past half-century—American Graffiti, Dazed and Confused, hell, even the music video for the Beastie Boys’ “Hey Ladies”!—mine the cultural and social touchstones of only a decade or so in the past! Juxtaposed with this Boomer/Gen X AI atrocity… Well, I guess what I’m getting at is that every generation can fall into their own traps of thinking things were cooler and better and easier, that they just missed out on the Best Era Ever. One can always locate a perfect moment in the past, even as that distance between idealized history and harsh present shrinks more and more as technology peddles nostalgia to keep us from asking the very pertinent question, “What is to be done?”

Obviously we’ve talked a lot about nostalgia at We Are the Mutants over the years. One could even argue it’s all we’ve talked about in one way or another. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about nostalgia myself recently; nostalgia and Trumpism, nostalgia and political reaction, nostalgia and dissatisfaction with the world we’ve handed down to ourselves (because ultimately, we’re all responsible for the atomized world we’ve inherited). If things were so much better “back then,” why do we collectively find it so hard to make a world we do want to see and live in now? We have a blueprint, after all, thanks to this idiotic AI image and countless thousands of others just like it. What elements of our present world are so irrevocable and irreversible that we can’t just pick ourselves up, put our phones away, and go to a pub and hang out with our friends? What, substantively and specifically, are the obstacles to a better, more meaningful life with richer, more fulfilling social experiences? If we were to start asking deeper, more specific questions like these, answers might emerge that some people—the ones who profit most from our current system—might not like us to have awareness of: economic and employment precarity, a deliberate closing down of public third spaces, sky-high rent that prevents working- and middle-class people from opening their own third spaces, less free time because of the demands of a 24/7 workplace, and the lack of energy that comes along with it that discourages us from planning and attending social events. One can blame technology, “phones,” for all of this, but that’s only identifying the symptom of the underlying disease. That disease is within us all and it’s called capitalism, kids. Sorry to be the kind of strident communist bore you’d probably slowly disengage from down t’pub.

MCKENNA: Of the three of us, I’m probably the one least irked by nostalgia. Partly because of a desire, however clumsy, to maintain a link with your past and your past emotions in a world where commerce demands that things change constantly seems pretty natural. And partly because—perhaps too forgivingly—I tend to see nostalgia more like a repressed acknowledgement of how terrifying the passage of time is than something more worrying. Seeing the past reminds us of the diminishing amount of future we have left, and that’s distressing, so instinctively we cling onto it. So there’s a part of me—namely most of me—that does empathize with the nostalgic. But then there are these scumbags eager to channel that distress into the hideous pipelines they’ve constructed with the goal of getting attention, or clout, or power, or just riling people up or whatever. People like the dickheads who made this picture.

That said, go into any pub, at least in the UK, and I am fairly certain you won’t see anything like the bottom scene. I mean, you’ll 100% see horrible, soulless structures all painted grey or whatever modish color scheme is currently in vogue—it’s got that right. And you’ll see a few people on their phones, ignoring everyone else. But you don’t need a phone to ignore everyone else—the world’s full of people who are quite capable of ignoring you even while they sit across from you and pretend to have a conversation with you. If you go into a pub, though, I’d say most of the people will be engaged, be it with each other or with getting absolutely rat-arsed on revoltingly overpriced IPAs. They’ll be talking shit, much of which will be stupid and possibly offensive, but they’ll be talking. So, while I agree that phones are unhealthy and we spend way too much time on them, I’m unwilling to subscribe to the phonophobia the pic wants to elicit. Without phones I’d be far, far less in touch with friends and family. I’d never have met you two. Wouldn’t have done the website. And the implicit presumption that people doing something on their phones is supposedly less—productive? Worthy?—than them just staring into space, or reading some shit book, also seems a bit optimistic, as if reading is axiomatically valuable even if what you’re reading is absolute dog turds, while whatever appears on a phone screen is automatically drivel.

Basically, I’d be lying if I said that the top pic, despite everything fake and stupid about it, didn’t pluck faintly at my heartstrings—because I’m exactly the kind of idiot this shit is designed to hook. At the same time, the comparison with the bottom pic is exactly the kind of fraudulent bollocks this stupid meme wants you to believe it’s railing against.

ROBERTS: I’ll tell you why this image made me so angry. Because at first glance, I bought it. I thought to myself: “Jesus, life was so much better in ‘74.” And then I saw the “singer” with the microphone stand jutting out of his wrist, and the zombified faces of the old men in the band, and the distorted dart board, and the non-existent musical instruments, and so on. We’re all susceptible, especially those of us born before the internet took hold. I’ve said before that nostalgia is a fantasy, and I enjoy it as such. But unchecked, it becomes something much worse: delusional Golden Ageism that’s often empowered by contempt for people who are different than you.

I don’t know what’s to be done. I think we have to start by being honest with ourselves about a lot of different things. I think we are always going to look back and yearn for the glory days—it’s part of getting older and being human, and every generation does it. But we have to recognize that this idea of looking backwards for a way forward has become a pernicious social and political obsession. I can’t say I’m a communist, Mike—I know you’ll forgive me. I’m a boring old RFK (the good one, not the shitty one) Democrat. I do believe that when money controls the tools that can make life better for everyone, it’s a good bet that life will only get better for those with money. And when the combined technology of AI and smartphones and social media is leveraged to venerate a time before the technology of AI and smartphones and social media, you can be sure that making life better for everyone is an idea whose time has come.

 A fantastic Mail Call Tuesday today! I got my copies of Thirteen Parsecs.

I am very pleased with how these turned out. 

The leathers look great and great with NIGHT SHIFT and Wasted Lands.

I even grabbed a new dice bag!

Can't wait to share more of this with you all.

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—
Name: The White CirclePublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Jonas Morian & The Yellow Hand

Setting: St. Paul, Minnesota, 1921Product: Scenario
What You Get: Thirty-eight page, 26.47 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Sometimes having morals extends to having a conscience too.Plot Hook: “Out of sight, out of mind… Out of memory.”Plot Support: Staging advice, four pre-generated Investigators, three handouts, two maps, six NPCs, one Mythos spell, and one Mythos tome.Production Values: Excellent
Pros# Richly detailed background# Socially challenging to resolve# Open-ended# Swedophobia# Kenophobia# Depersonalisation
Cons# Needs a slight edit# Violence may be the only means of resolution# Socially challenging to resolve
Conclusion# Richly detail scenario of moral cleansing horror with excellent production values
# Socially challenging to resolve and the Investigators may not get away with it

Stefan Meunch is dead. Died three days ago, between weekly visits. Part of the local catalogue round of check-ins for useless and washed-up old spies with nowhere to go and no future beyond a meagre pension, the bottle, and having lived out their usefulness, such as it was, getting by without bringing themselves to anyone’s attention. Only this time he has. The Factory went in and cleaned up as normal, confirmed the death was a heart attack, and was all ready to close the file when an analyst discovered that Stefan Meunch, a retired ex-spy, eighty-five years old, living on a not an entirely unreasonable state pension in a flat over an empty shop in a town in the West Midlands, had quarter of a millions pounds squirrelled away in off-shore accounts. How the hell did he get away with it, where did he get the money from, and who was paying him? More importantly, how did the fuck-ups whose job it was to do the weekly run of the catalogue of hand-me-downs like Stefan Meunch miss the fact that he managed to save quarter of a million pounds?

This is the set-up for the scenario, For A Rainy Day. Published by Just Crunch Games, this is a scenario for Sanction: A Tabletop Roleplaying Game of Challenges & Hacks, which describes itself as a set of “Universal Rules for Challenge-driven Games”. Specifically, For A Rainy Day is a scenario for the second Genre Set-Up in Sanction. This is ‘Agency: Outlet Work’, an espionage setting inspired by the grim, grimy, and pathetic espionage of the Slow Horses series by Mick Herron with dash of John Le Carré. The Player Characters are ex-agents, failures and fuck-ups, washed out of active service, but not out of the service. Reassigned to small towns and cities like Wolverhampton or Grimsby, the Agents do data processing, combing through reports and archives, and so on, before sorting it and sending it back to head office, with no explanations as to why or what the information is for. It is make-work, a window job, and that is all that the Agent will have until he retires. Yet the Agent hopes, and worse, he cannot help but want to apply his tradecraft. Part of the work involves the catalogue run. Just one more part of their tedious day in their tedious week in their tedious no-career between now and retirement. Probably a bit like Stefan Meunch, but without the quarter of a million. It’s their fuck-up and they have to find out what Stefan Meunch did to make them look like even more of bunch of fuck ups, and how he got away with it.
‘Agency: Outlet Work’ is one of the best things in the Sanction rulebook—more so if you are a fan of the Slow Horses series—and For A Rainy Day is an introductory scenario for it. Just as ‘Agency: Outlet Work’ is inspired by the Slow Horses series, it should be noted that For A Rainy Day is inspired by a pair novellas that run parallel to the main novels in the series—The Drop and The List. Although a player may be familiar with the series and with both novellas, For A Rainy Day is only inspired by their set-ups, rather than the whole of their plots. In fact, For A Rainy Day is not a scenario in the traditional roleplaying sense, an adventure with a plot that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Rather, it has a beginning—a very good beginning with the Player Characters being given a bollocking for their failure and their players a chance to introduce their characters and their very ordinary lives, and a middle, where all of the investigation takes places, with its grubby scrutiny and possible future for the Player Characters. The end is very much down to the players and what their characters think is going on. For A Rainy Day does tell you what is going on, but the players and their characters may get other ideas… Which is fine, since they are fuck-ups…

For A Rainy Day is heavy on investigation and tradecraft, though there are opportunities for violence too—though only for the Game Master, who is accorded good advice on running the scenario. This includes running it as an episode of a television series, using the provided table of prompts when appropriate, such as when a scene drags or is going nowhere, and reacting to the Player Characters and their actions as it is primarily a player-driven scenario. In addition, five pre-generated Agents, one for each of the standard Lifepath archetypes in ‘Agency: Outlet Work’ are provided for quick set-up and use with the scenario.

Physically, For A Rainy Day is short and simple. The layout is clean and tidy, everything is easy to grasp, and the artwork has a suitably drab, drizzled upon kind of feel.

For A Rainy Day can be used in conjunction with the espionage-themed roleplaying game of the Game Master’s choice, but of course, Sanction suits the desperate, down-at-heel grottiness of both ‘Agency: Outlet Work’ and For A Rainy Day. The good news is that For A Rainy Day is the first in a series and it will get sequels, which is probably the most that the Player Character fuck-ups deserve. In the meantime, For A Rainy Day is a delightfully seedy introduction to the wretched world of ‘Agency: Outlet Work’ and its no-hopers.

It has been eight hundred years since the fall of the mythic Dragon Empire and ten years since mankind returned to the Misty Vale, the remote valley known for the thick haze that often lies over its deep forests, hemmed in by the Kummer Mountains to the south and the Dragonfang Peaks to the north. Adventurers brave the broken imperial road over the high pass to enter the Misty Vale to explore the extent of the valley, search out its secrets, and hopefully come away with the great treasures that might still remain unplundered from the Dragon Empire. They are not the only ones interested in the secrets that the Misty Vale. There rumours of Demon-worshipping cultists moving quietly to work to bring about the revival of their vile masters of Chaos and their priests, Orcs and Goblins are seen patrolling the Misty Vale more regularly, and monks and knights of religious order that reveres the great Dragons of Law have been seen entering the valley. This is the set-up for Dragonbane, and more specifically, the Dragonbane Core Box, a fantasy roleplaying game which promises “Mirth & Mayhem Roleplaying”. Published by Free League Publishing, best known for Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying, The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings, and Alien: The Roleplaying Game. It is reimagining of Sweden’s first fantasy roleplaying game, Drakar och Demoner, originally published in 1982.

Dragonbane: Mirth & Mayhem Roleplaying, funded by successful Kickstarter campaign, comes as boxed set which contains a ‘Getting Started’ sheet which tells the reader what is in the box, a one-hundred-and-twelve ‘Dragonbane Rules’ book, a one-hundred-and-sixteen page ‘Dragonbane Adventures’ book, the twelve-page ‘Alone in Deepfall Breach’ solo adventure, two maps, including one of the Misty Vale, five pre-generated Player Characters, five blank character sheets, and forty-one full colour standees with plastic stands. Plus, there is a set of polyhedral dice in crystal green, including two twenty-sided dice, and illustrated decks of cards for combat initiative, improvised weapons, adventures, and treasure. The roleplaying game includes rules for creating Player Characters, but whether the players create their own or use the pre-generated ones, with ‘The Secret of the Dragon Emperor’ campaign that lies at the heart of the boxed set, Dragonbane: Mirth & Mayhem Roleplaying offers multiple sessions of play.

A Player Character is defined by six attributes, Kin, and his Profession. The six attributes are Strength, Constitution, Agility, Intelligence, Willpower, and Charisma, which range in value between one and twenty, but the highest they can be at the start of play, is fourteen. The Kin are Human, Halfling, Dwarf, Elf, Mallard, and Wolfkin. The Professions are Artisan, Bard, Fighter, Hunter, Knight, Mage, Mariner, Merchant, Scholar, and Thief. In addition, a Player Characters has Heroic Abilities. These come from the Player Character’s Kin and Profession, although not for the Mage, who starts play with the ability to cast magic. A Player Character has sixteen skills, ranging in value from one to eighteen. Various factors are derived from the attributes, notably different damage bonuses for Strength-based weapons and Agility-based weapons, plus Willpower Points. Willpower Points are expended to use magic and abilities derived from both Kin and Profession.

To create a character, a player can chose the options or roll for them, except for attributes, which are rolled for and trained skills, which are chosen. These include the Kin, Profession, Age, Name, weakness, gear, memento, and appearance. A Player Character will have scores in all of the skills in Dragonbane, but his age will determine the number he is trained in and have greater scores in.

First Name: Tym ‘Halffinger’
Kin: Human
Profession: Thief
Age: Old
Appearance: Balding

ATTRIBUTES
Strength 14 Constitution 11 Agility 15 Intelligence 17 Willpower 14 Charisma 11

Damage Bonus: +1d4
Willpower Points: 3
Hit Points: 11

SKILLS
Acrobatics 12, Awareness 14, Bartering 10, Bluffing 10, Evade 12, Knives 12, Languages 14, Myths & Legends 14, Sleight of Hand 12, Sneaking 12, Spot Hidden 14, Swimming 12

HEROIC ABILITIES
Adaptive (3), Backstabbing (3)

GEAR
Knife, lockpicks (simple), torch, flint & tinder, D6 food rations, D10 silver

MEMENTO
A ragged old journal

Mechanically, to have his player undertake an action, a player rolls a twenty-sided die. The die is marked with a ‘Dragon’ on the one face, and a ‘Demon’ on the ‘twenty’ face. The aim is roll equal to or lower than the skill or attribute. A roll of one is called ‘rolling a Dragon’ and is treated as a critical effect, such as giving an impressive performance, rolling double damage, the action takes less times, and so on. A roll of twenty is called ‘rolling a Demon’ and indicates a critical failure, possible effects including damaging yourself, someone else, or an object, making a lot of noise, and more. Banes and boons are the equivalent of advantage and disadvantage, meaning that the player has to roll more twenty-sided dice, counting the lowest one if there are more Boons than Banes, and the highest one if there are more Banes than Boons. Opposed rolls are won by the player who rolls the lowest.

If a roll is failed, a player can choose to push the roll and reroll. The result supersedes the original. In pushing a roll, the Player Character acquires a Condition, for example, ‘Dazed’ for Strength or ‘Scared’ for Willpower. The player has to explain how his character acquires the Condition and his character can acquire a total of six—one for each attribute—and the player is expected to roleplay them. Mechanically, a Condition acts as a Bane in play. A Player Character can recover from one or more Conditions by resting.

Initiative is determined randomly by drawing cards numbered between one and ten, with one going first. A Player Character has two actions per round—a move and an actual action such as a melee attack, doing first aid, or casting a spell. Alternatively, a Player Character can undertake a Reaction, which takes place on an opponent’s turn in response to the opponent’s action. Typically, this is a parry or dodge, and means that the Player Character cannot take another action. If a Dragon is rolled on the parry, the Player Character gets a free counterattack! If the damage inflicted would exceed the durability of the weapon, it is damaged and requires repairing.

Combat takes into account weapon length, grip, length, and so on. The effects of a Dragon roll, or a critical hit, can include damage being doubled and a Dragon roll being needed to parry or dodge this attack, making a second attack, or piercing armour. Damage can be slashing, piercing, or bludgeoning, which determines the effectiveness of armour. Armour has a rating, which reduces damage taken. Helmets increase Armour Rating, but work as a Bane for certain skills. If a Player Character’s Hit Points are reduced to zero, a death roll is required for him to survive, which can be pushed. Three successful rolls and the Player Character survives, whilst three failures indicate he has died. A Player Character on zero Hit Points can be rallied by another to keep fighting. Fear is covered by a Willpower check, and there is a Fear Table for the results.

Mages power their magic through the expenditure of Willpower Points (similarly, Heroic Abilities cost Willpower to activate). Typical spells cost two Willpower Points per Power Level of a spell, but just one Willpower Point for lesser spells or magic tricks. Willpower Points are lost even if the roll is failed, but rolling a Dragon can double the range or damage of the spell, negate the Willpower Point cost, or allow another spell to be cast, but with a Bane. Rolling a Demon simply means that the spell fails and cannot be pushed, although there is an optional ‘Magical Mishap’ Table to roll on if that happens. A spell cannot be cast if the Wizard is in direct contact with either iron or steel. There are three schools of magic, each with an associated skill, plus General Magic. These are Animism, Elementalism, and Mentalism. A beginning Mage has only been able to study the one school, but the General Magic spells are available to him as well.

The ‘Dragonbane Rules’ book includes a short bestiary of sixteen creatures. Each is given a page that includes an illustration, a short description, its stats, and its attacks. There are always six attacks per monster, such as “Threatening Cackle! The harpies shower the adventurers with terrible descriptions of what they will do to them. Everyone within 10 meters must make a WIL roll to resist fear (page 52).” Or “Excrement Attack! The Harpies open their cloacae and mouths and release a rain of vomit and excrement on the player characters. Everyone within 10 meters must choose a condition. The attack can be parried with a shield.” for the Harpy. The Game Master can chose or roll which attack the creature uses, but they are never repeated twice in a row. Plus, they always hit, so it up to the players to decide to have their characters dodge an attack (or parry when an attack allows it). This feels very similar to the monsters in Forbidden Lands – Raiders & Rogues in a Cursed World, also published by Free League Publishing. The result is that monsters are tough and brutal and a player needs to take more care in how he decides his character will engage with them. The only entries in the bestiary which differ from this are for Orcs and Goblins, which are treated like normal NPCs, complete with their own aims and the capacity to be interacted with. The latter is an important aspect of the campaign in the ‘Dragonbane Adventures’ book.

The ‘Dragonbane Rules’ book is rounded out with rules for travel, basic advice for the Game Master, creating NPCs, and a quick guide, including tables, for creating adventures. These are built around ‘adventure sites’ and travelling to them, much like the play of Forbidden Lands – Raiders & Rogues in a Cursed World. The advice and the guide to creating adventures are basic, but sufficient to serve as starting points.

The ‘Alone in Deepfall Breach’ booklet provides the means to play Dragonbane in solo mode, enabling a player or prospective Game Master get an idea of how the game plays before the full campaign. This is not the traditional ‘choose your own adventure’ style adventure, but instead a set of tables for generating delves into a scar in the land—Deepfall Breach, and for generating the randomness needed for solo play. This includes a ‘Fortune Table’ for determining the answers that a Game Master would normally give, random effects for rolling a ‘Dragon’ or a ‘Demon’, and how an NPC attacks the Player Character. Categorised as either a melee, ranged, sneaky, or magic attacker, this is similar to the monster attacks in the bestiary section of the ‘Dragonbane Rules’ book. Given the often-brutal nature of play in Dragonbane, the solo adventurer is also given some help. Primarily, this consists of being allowed an extra Heroic Ability with two being given for this purpose. ‘Army of One’ lets a player draw two Initiative cards instead of one, whilst ‘Sole Survivor’ lets him push a roll without suffering a condition.

As well as the means to create custom missions, ‘Alone in Deepfall Breach’ includes a complete solo mini-campaign of five missions. Each of the missions in ‘The Reforged Shard’ consists of a series of way points which the adventurer must pass and then return to the surface. Not only that, but each mission has its own looming threat that the player keeps track off and will happen if triggered, whether through delay, inaction, or failure. Both the means to generate missions and ‘The Reforged Shard’ are intended to be played solo, but ‘Alone in Deepfall Breach’ also suggests that a small group of players could use or play both as an alternative. In addition, there is nothing to stop the Game Master from using the tables to generate her own adventures for normal play or add Deepfall Breach as a specific location to the Misty Vale.

The ‘Dragonbane Adventures’ book contains a total of eleven adventures, which together form the ‘The Secret of the Dragon Emperor’. Apart from ‘Isle of Mist’, which is the campaign finale, these can be tackled in any order, although the Game Master can give nudges via rumours, represented in play by cards from the roleplaying game’s Adventure Deck. These are great handouts, reminding the players of what their characters might have heard so far. The Player characters will be based in the village of Outskirt, interacting with the various NPCs and picking up rumours before journeying to one of the adventure sites that they have heard off. Threading through this is the hunt for four items, which together unlock the resting place of an ancient magical sword. From the start, the Player Characters learn that someone is looking for “four pieces” which will reveal the “secret of the dragon emperor!” and soon after arriving in Outskirt, will be asked to look for the missing items. So initially, the campaign will be player driven as they decide which locations to visit and explore, but as they learn more, they will be drawn into the search and come into contact with the various factions that are part of that search. Of course, not all of them can be trusted, but surprisingly, there are some that can be in a way that runs counter to their traditional depiction in this roleplaying game’s style of fantasy.

The ‘Dragonbane Adventures’ book also includes a detailed description of Outskirt and its inhabitants, tables of random encounters to use in conjunction with the journeying rules in the ‘Dragonbane Rules’ book, and a table of ‘Demonic Omens’ which the Game Master can use to building the impending sense of doom that pervades the Misty Vale as the campaign continues apace. It also includes the general background to the campaign. It describes how a vile demon, Sathmog, entered the world and established a demonic realm, before a hero arose and summoned the ancient dragons that protect the world from demonic presence, before leading his dragon-riding knights to defeat Sathmog and imprison his high priest. The hero established the Dragon Empire, but in old age spurned the dragons and, on his death, the empire collapsed as his sons squabbled. It is very broad and although it obviously applies to the wider world, it is very specific to the Misty Vale and ‘The Secret of the Dragon Emperor’ campaign, which leaves the wider world unmentioned, let alone developed. Some information would certainly have been useful, at least to help the players get a feel of the wider world and the place of their characters in that world, rather than simply dropping them into start of the campaign at the entrance to the Misty Vale as ‘The Secret of the Dragon Emperor’ does.

Lastly, the Dragonbane: Mirth & Mayhem Roleplaying core box includes a set of standees and several decks of cards. The standees are done in full colour and depict the pre-generated Player Characters and the monsters they will face over the course of the campaign, and are, of course, designed to be used with the maps in the box. The various decks include the ‘Initiative Deck’, an ‘Adventure Deck’, a ‘Treasure Deck’, and an ‘Improvised Weapons Deck’. The ‘Initiative Deck’ is used in combat, whilst the others are used throughout the game and play. In particular, the ‘Improvised Weapons Deck’ is a lot of fun to use, the items being depicted potentially doing a lot more than being smashed over the head of another brawler before breaking. They will make the Game Master want to run a classic barroom brawl!

The Dragonbane: Mirth & Mayhem Roleplaying core box is undeniably a great package, but there are perhaps two areas where it might have been improved. One is the aforementioned inclusion of a wider background to help give a bit more context to the Misty Vale location and the accompanying campaign. The other perhaps is its possible use as an introductory roleplaying game. It is not an introductory roleplaying game in the sense that it designed to be played by those new to the hobby, but it has a simplicity in its mechanics which suggest that it could have been. Certainly, that simplicity is why Dragonbane is so very easy to learn to play for anyone with roleplaying experience. So, it is a pity that this opportunity was missed. That said, the simplicity of the rules do make Dragonbane easy to teach, so it can be used to introduce new players that way.

Physically, Dragonbane: Mirth & Mayhem Roleplaying is incredibly well presented. All of the books are clean and tidy, and really easy to read. The cartography is excellent, but the artwork and illustrations are superb. They are done by Johan Egerkrans, who also illustrated Vaesen and possess a grim, if comic book sensibility.

Dragonbane: Mirth & Mayhem Roleplaying is comprehensive, but not complex. In fact, the core box not only gives you everything you need to play a complete campaign, but also makes everything easy to play as well. The rules are so straightforward and so easy to pick up, and thus so easy to teach, that when combined with the familiarity of its classic fantasy, Dragonbane is all but begging itself to brought to the table. Dragonbane: Mirth & Mayhem Roleplaying combines the ‘Old School’ style of play with challenging monsters and adventures with slick, fast-playing rules for exciting game play that absolutely makes classic fantasy roleplaying fun again.

Almost immediately after the first roleplaying game was published, someone said that I can do better. The first roleplaying game to do that was Tunnels & Trolls published in 1975 by Flying Buffalo. It was soon followed by one roleplaying game after another, one roleplaying supplement after another, all saying that they could do Dungeons & Dragons better or an aspect of Dungeons & Dragons better. In most cases, they were offering more choice or more realism or more detail. Sometimes one, sometimes a combination of two, and sometimes, such as in the case of Rolemaster, a combination of all three. Rolemaster was originally published by Iron Crown Enterprises, not as a complete roleplaying game, but as a series of supplements which could be used together or used on their own to replace parts of Dungeons & Dragons that a playing did not like. First, in 1980, with Arms Laws, and then followed Claw Law, Spell Law, Character Law, and Campaign Law. In 1984, the first four of these book would be collected in a box as Rolemaster, a roleplaying game of its very own as the first complete edition. It has had three subsequent editions, but across all four, it has always been known for its complexity. It was, after all, published in the eighties when there was a shift in roleplaying design towards complexity and realism, often still in reaction to Dungeons & Dragons. It has likewise been known for its resolution mechanic, a percentile system in which aim is not to roll low and under, but roll high and attempt to get as high as possible above one hundred, and likewise, it has always been known for the number of tables within its books—the critical hit tables in particular.

Rolemaster Unified CORE Law is the newest edition of the roleplaying game. Published by Iron Crown Enterprises, it is the heart of Rolemaster Unified and can be seen as the fifth edition of the venerable roleplaying game. It combines two aspects of the rules—‘Character Law’ and ‘Arms Law’—with ‘Game Master Law’, so that Game Master could create and run a no- or very low magic campaign. That said, there are supplements needed to complete the roleplaying game. The first of these is, of course, Spell Law, but Treasure Law, will also be useful. What Rolemaster Unified CORE Law offers is twenty-two Professions, twenty-three Races, ten Cultures, a system for creating Player Characters with talents, flaws, and potential, streamlined mechanics for resolving actions, magic, and attacks. Combat encompasses melee, ranged and spell combat, complete with thirty-nine attack tables for weapons, animal, monstrous, and spell attacks, plus fifteen critical strike tables for Acid, Cold, Electricity, Grapple, Heat, Holy, Impact, Krush, Puncture, Slash, Steam, Strikes, Subdual, Sweeps, and Unbalance attacks. Then there are the expected rules for healing, social skills, environmental dangers and situations, and much more.
A Player Character in Rolemaster Unified CORE Law has ten statistics, a Race, Culture, Profession, Level, Talents, and Flaws. The ten statistics are Agility, Constitution, Empathy, Intuition, Memory, Presence, Quickness, Reasoning, Self-Discipline, and Strength. These have two values, both of which range between one and one hundred. The two are Temporary Value, which represents the current value for the statistic, and Potential Value, which is the limit to which the Temporary Value can be raised through training or magic. Rolemaster Unified CORE Law offers not just the traditional Dwarf, Elf, Gnome, Half-Elf, Halfling, and Human of traditional roleplaying fantasy as a choice. A Player Character could be a Fair Elf, Grey Elf, High Elf, or Wood Elf, or a Cave Human, Common Human, High Human, or Mixed Human, or a Greater Orc, Grey Orc, Lesser Orc, Scrug Orc, or a Vard Orc—and that just represents the variations upon the traditional Races. It is also possible to play a Gnoll, Goblin, Hobgoblin, Kobold, or Troll, and then on top of that, Rolemaster Unified CORE Law adds Races of its own. These include the frog-like Grator with anti-social tendencies and Gecko-like sight, the Hvasstonn or Giantlings, the lionesque Idiyva, the deer-like Plynos, the jackal-like Sibbicai, and more. There is a degree of anthropomorphism and a surfeit of options, but of course, the Game Master need not include all of them in her world. The ten Cultures consist of Cosmopolitan, Harsh, Highland, Mariner, Nomad, Reaver, Rural, Sylvan, and Urban. The Professions start with the ‘No Profession’, which can either be used as the generic cost of all skills in a setting or for Profession that does not specialise. The Professions are divided in six categories. These start with the Realm of Arms, which includes Rogue, Labourer, Thief, Fighter, Warrior Monk, and oddly, Scholar. The Realm of Channelling, whose Professions draw their power from an external source, typically a god of some kind, includes Cleric, Druid, Paladin, and Ranger. The Professions from the Realm of Essence draw upon the power around them and include Magician, Illusionist, Bard, and Dabbler. The Mentalist, Lay healer, Monk, and Magient—the latter a Semi-Spellcaster combing magic and stealth—come from the Realm of Mentalism. Lastly, the Hybrid Realms include the Healer, Sorcerer, and Mystic.

The statistics provide a straight bonus to skills, whilst each Race gives modifiers to these bonuses, plus modifiers to the Player Characters’ Resistances and Health stats. A Culture provides Ranks in skills, whilst the Professions set skill costs, Professional Bonuses, and Knacks—skills in which they particularly adept. For spellcasters, the Profession provides the Realm for casting spells. To create a character, the player decides on a concept and selects Race, Culture, and Profession. He selects Talents, purchases skills, the costs depending on the profession, and finally purchases equipment and calculates bonuses and so on.

Name: Skulom
Race: Gratar
Profession: Rogue
Level: 1
Culture: Harsh
Size: Medium Height: 5’ 4” Weight: 230 lbs

Resistances
Channelling: +01 Essence: 00
Fear: -01 Mentalism: +02
Physical: +06

Health and Development
Endurance: 4 Recovery Multiplier: ×1
Base Hits: 29 Bonus Development Points: 11
Base Movement: 20’ Defensive Bonus: +15
Initiative: +5
TALENTS
Sight, Gecko (+10 to vision-based Perception Manoeuvres)
Recurved Musculature (+20 Acrobatics, Climbing, Jumping, and Running Manoeuvres)
Ambidextrous
Fast Attack/1 (+5 to Initiative)
Pressing the Advantage/2 (+20 OB after inflicting a critical)

FLAWS
Maths Illiterate

STATISTICS (Temporary/Potential)
Agility 93/97 Bonus +10
Constitution 66/91 Bonus +06
Empathy 61/68 Bonus +00
Intuition 56/78 Bonus +01
Memory 56/78 Bonus +01
Presence 74/81 Bonus +02
Quickness 80/96 Bonus +05
Reasoning 45/88 Bonus -01
Self-Discipline 54/99 Bonus -01
Strength 50/90 Bonus +02

SKILLS
Animal: Riding 1
Awareness: Perception 3, Tracking 1
Battle Expertise: Manoeuvring in Armour 2 (P), Restricted Quarters 3 (P),
Brawn: Body Development 4
Combat Expertise: Blind Fighting 1 (P)
Combat Training: Unarmed 1, Melee Weapons (Blade) 3 (P) (Knack), Melee Weapons (Polearm) 2 (P), Ranged Weapons (Thrown) 1 (P)
Crafting & Vocation: Crafting 2, Crafting 2
Environmental: Navigation 1, Survival (Swamp) 3, Survival (Urban) 1 (P)
Gymnastics: Jumping 1
Lore: Language (Own) 8, Region (Own) 5, Other Lores 2
Medical: Medicine 2, Poison Mastery 1 (P)
Movement: Climbing 1, Running 3
Social: Influence 1
Subterfuge: Ambush 2 (P), Concealment 1, Stalking 3 (P) (Knack)
Technical: Trapping 1

The process is not quick nor easy. For example, to generate statistics, the player rolls percentile three times for each one. The lowest is discarded, the middle value is kept as the Temporary Value, and the highest as the Potential Value. Skills are bought in Ranks, with a cost in Development Points for the first Rank and a higher cost for subsequent Ranks, and these costs vary from Profession to Profession. These costs are the only limitation on the skills that a player could purchase, so that a Fighter could learn to cast a spell or two and an Illusionist could learn to wield a mace. All that is stopping either one is that the Development Point cost will be higher for Ranks in skills outside of the character’s Profession. Initially, this means that a Player Character is unlikely to stray too far from the skills his Profession trains him in, but in the long term, there is plenty of scope for development and change. Plus, there is a lot of page flipping back and forth, and one thing that Rolemaster Unified CORE Law does need is a clearer step-by-step guide to the character creation process.

Mechanically, Rolemaster Unified CORE Law is a percentile system. It uses what it calls a ‘d100OE’ or ‘d100 Open Ended’. Whether it rolling to have his character make a difficult manoeuvre, test a skill, or make an attack, the player will be rolling percentile dice and aiming to roll high. If the roll on the dice, before modifiers, is ninety-six and above, then the player gets to roll again and add the result. To the roll he will add the Ranks of the skill being tested, the bonuses for both statistics associated with the skill and its category, plus bonuses from a Knack or Professional Bonus if appropriate, and any applicable Talents. The Game Master will assign the task or manoeuvre a difficulty. Results below seventy-five are counted as a failure, and if low enough, can result in a Critical Failure. Results between seventy-six and one hundred can be a partial success if that is possible, whilst results of one-hundred-and-one to one-hundred-and-seventy-five are counted as a success. Any roll above that is an absolute success and grants an extra benefit. If sixty-six is rolled, then there is the possibility of an unusual event occurring.
For example, Skulom has been hired by a merchant to intimidate the merchant’s rival. First, he has to deal with the target’s bodyguard and decides to do so after the merchant is returning home from seeing his mistress. This will be an opposed roll between Skulom’s Stalking skill and the bodyguard’s Perception skill. Skulom’s bonus for this is equal to bonus from the associated statistic, which is Intuition, so with only statistic involved, it is doubled; plus, the Ranks for the skill as well as the Professional bonus and the Knack for the skill. This gives a total bonus of +25. The Game Master assigns a total bonus of +20 to the bodyguard for his Perception and grants a bonus of +20 to Skulom because it is dark. The Game Master rolls 38 and adds the bodyguard’s Perception bonus for a total of 58. Skulom’s player rolls 63 and adds the complete bonus of +45 for a total of 108. The bodyguard has definitely not spotted the batrachian thug as he creeps up on him!‘Arms Law’ covers melee, ranged, and directed attack by spells. Combat uses a surprisingly simple Action Point economy. Every combatant has four Action Points, each of which represents an action that can be taken in a combat round’s four Action Phases. Basic movement takes a single Action Point, a melee attack or casting a spell between two and four Action Points. Thus, a combatant might strike twice in a round if his weapon is fast enough or draw a weapon, move, and attack. Some actions, such as loading a crossbow take more than four Action Points—six for a light crossbow and fourteen for a heavy crossbow—so will take more than the one round to complete. Mechanically, the roll is a standard ‘d100OE’ roll to which is added the attacker’s total Offence Bonus, whilst the defender’s total Defensive Bonus is deducted from the roll. Other modifiers can come from the positioning of the combatants. Here the rules cover facing and flanking, restricted quarters, being flatfooted or surprised, cover, parrying, and more. Once per round, a shield can be used to block an attack and also increase the defender’s Defensive Bonus—and they can also be used as a weapon too!

Each weapon or attack type has not one, but three tables to determine the effects of an attack, one table for small version of the weapon, one for a medium version, and one for the large. The result is compared on the appropriate table against the armour worn by the defender. Armour is given an Armour Type value, from one to ten, according to its type, one and none, two and heavy cloth, and three and soft leather to eight and mail, nine and brigandine, and ten and plate. The outcome is either a miss, hits inflicted, or hits inflicted and a critical. In the case of the latter, the result will indicate both the severity and the type of the critical inflicted. Rolling on these critical results tables were always the highlight of playing Rolemasterr as the bloody demise of one villain or monster was played out, and so it is with Rolemaster Unified CORE Law. Similarly, the fumble tables in Rolemaster Unified CORE Law are as entertaining as they were in previous editions of the roleplaying game. The Attack Tables and then the Critical Tables and the Fumble Tables have chapters of their own, and together consist of one fifth of Rolemaster Unified CORE Law.
Previously, Skulom successfully stalked the merchant he has been hired to intimidate and his bodyguard. The bodyguard has not noticed Skulom and is therefore surprised. Skulom will gain a +25 bonus for this, whilst the bodyguard only has Defensive Bonus equal to his Quickness, so +9. Skulom is using a medium-sized dagger and thus his Offensive Bonus is +15 for the Ranks in his Melee Weapons (Blade) skill, +5 for his Knack in it, and +3 for the Professional Ranks in it. To this is added twice the Strength bonus for a total Offensive Bonus of +53. In terms of armour, both Skulom and the bodyguard are wearing suits of soft leather, which is Armour Type 3, which has a penalty of -15 to their manoeuvres, so for Skulom’s attack, his player will adding an Offensive Bonus of +38.

Skulom’s player rolls for his attack and the result is 98! This means that he roll again and add the result. This time, he rolls 97, meaning that he can roll a third time, but only—only—rolls 12. So, the total result is 98+97+12, plus Skulom’s Offensive Bonus of +38 and minus the bodyguard’s Defensive Bonus of +9. That is grand total of the 236! Consulting the damage table for the Medium Dagger, the result for 236 is ‘9CP’, meaning nine hits and a severity C Puncture strike. Rolling on column C for the table, the result of 19 gives the following: “Point tears skin along jaw line” and inflicts another fifteen hits and a heavy fatigue penalty! The bodyguard has a vicious cut under his jaw that if it does not kill him, means he is heavily bleeding, and if he survives, will have a nasty scar to remember Skulom by! The Gratar may have made an enemy. For now, though, he needs to deal with the merchant… The combat rules also cover a variety of special manoeuvres, like called shots, firing into melee, protecting others, and slaying attacks. The various critical effects are explained in depth and there is also a detailed example of combat to help the Game Master understand how it works. Rounding out Rolemaster Unified CORE Law is ‘Game Master Law’, which includes advice on running the roleplaying game along with the rules for healing, psychology and social interaction, fear and morale, and a quick overview of environmental dangers. The advice is decent though not extensive, and the various rules are as detailed as you would expect for Rolemaster Unified CORE Law.

So, what is missing in Rolemaster Unified CORE Law? Although there are rules for creating spellcasters of all types and for using magic as a direct attack, there are no rules for magic or spells. Nor are there monsters or threats (other than NPCs) or treasure or a setting or scenario. However, none of these fall within the remit of this, the core rulebook and they either have or will have, supplements of their own.

Physically, Rolemaster Unified CORE Law is decently presented with lots of generic fantasy artwork. The book in general is well written, more so when it gets to explaining the rules and how they work rather than for character generation. Given its complexity and detail, there is a very welcome index at the end of the Rolemaster Unified CORE Law.

Ultimately, Rolemaster Unified CORE Law has one problem and that is the fact that it is Rolemaster. And the problem with Rolemaster is that it is a technical, detailed, and complex roleplaying game and it has a steep learning curve. This does not mean that it is a bad game by any means. Rather, it offers a lot of choice in terms of characters that players can create and develop and elements such as the different races that the Game Master can decide to use in her campaign world, and it provides for detail in the outcomes of what the characters do. However, this means that it is a game that takes both time and commitment to learn to play. There is nothing casual about playing Rolemaster and that is still after an effective streamlining of the rules by Iron Crown Enterprises for this new edition. For veteran fans of Rolemaster and for those who are looking to return to the game they played in the eighties, Rolemaster Unified CORE Law is undoubtedly a more accessible and welcome new edition. For new players, Rolemaster Unified CORE Law provides all of the rules they need to get started; they just need to provide the time and the commitment that Rolemaster demands.