With For the Sound of His Horn, author Adam Gauntlett returns to the horror genre he is best known for with titles such as The Man Downstairs and Hocus Pocus for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition. This is a scenario set in Barovia, and thus Ravenloft, the preeminent horror setting for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. The scenario is designed for a party of Player Characters of First to Third Level and is set in and around a village in Mordent. The author’s experience with other horror roleplaying games is nevertheless on show here, as the emphasis in For the Sound of His Horn is very much on interaction and investigation rather than exploration or combat.

Subtitled ‘A Haunted Hunting Party in Mordent’, For the Sound of His Horn takes place in Oaksey, a small village in Mordent, once part of the Huntingtower estate, since long extinct. The village has long been known for its fox hunts, and despite the loss of the local lord a century before, maintains the tradition today, keeping a pack of foxhounds and staging regular hunts. There being no lord, the position of Master of Foxhounds is held by Oaksey’s alderman. Recently, the current alderman, Sanders Murdoch, suffered a near-fatal hunting accident. Some say it was due to a riding accident, others his poor horsemanship, still others put it down to something unnatural, whilst Sanders himself suspects foul play and has vowed to severely punish whoever was responsible for his injuries.

The Player Characters may come to Oaksey for several reasons. They may simply have heard some travelers’ gossip and become intrigued enough to visit, but they might be asked by the Church of Ezra to come to the aid of local priest, they might be occultists who have heard of strange goings on in the village, or they may simply be keen huntsmen and women, come to ride with the village hunt. Their visit and thus For the Sound of His Horn is structured around a series of Core and Optional scenes. The Core scenes should provide the initial clues and revelations which point to Optional scenes and yet more clues and revelations—some of which are connected to the scenario’s main plot, others not. Most of these scenes—both Core and Optional—take the form of interviews and interactions with the villagers, meaning that the scenario relies heavily on the Insight, Investigation, and Perception, although there is the possibility of combat either towards or at the climax of the scenario. Ideally, the climax of the scenario should come at or around a festival when true facts of what has been going on in the village for the last century will come to light.

Each of the scenes in For the Sound of His Horn, whether Core or Optional, is presented on its own page and everything is clearly laid out. Thus the nature of the scene, skill involved, goal, and then if an NPC, personality, background, maneuvres—that is, the NPC’s actions in the scene, and lastly his disclosures. The latter are his secrets, hidden information, and true motivations, all to be revealed with a combination of good roleplaying and skill rolls. Location descriptions are simpler, listing and explaining their various features, secrets, and potential encounters.

Given that it is written for use with the Ravenloft setting, the scenario makes use of Haunting Effects and Stress, as well as its many secrets. The Haunting Effects can cause Fear, which can lead to a Player Character acquiring Stress, the Hunting Effects being set off by Triggers. Again, these are clearly marked in each of the locations where they occur. In fact, one of the locations has several! The scenario is not without its own potential triggers either. Obviously, it is a horror story and so it does involve strong themes, but those themes do include child cruelty (though this is very much off camera). The stronger issue may be the fact that the scenario involves blood sports, in particular, fox hunting. It includes a description of the activity and a list of its terminology, and the scenario should culminate in a Meet and a fox hunt. The blood sport is so bound up in the events of the scenario that it would be very difficult to run if the Dungeon Master was to try and remove it from the scenario.

Unfortunately, For the Sound of His Horn is missing a couple of elements which would make it easier to run. The first is that all of the NPCs lack a physical description and the second is that the scenario does not have any maps. The former is more of an issue than the latter, because it is possible to run the scenario with referring to any maps—having them would make it easier though. Fortunately, both are easily rectified by the Dungeon Master. Thus she can write the descriptions herself—though the author should have supplied them, and she can either draw the maps herself or find suitable ones online, even rights free ones. Another issue is that not all of the scenario’s plots are fully explained until they appear in the individual scenes and locations, so a better overview could have been provided. For the Dungeon Master it might be a good idea to draw a plot diagram and perhaps a relationship diagram as part of her preparation.

Physically, For the Sound of His Horn is generally well presented and easy to understand. It is lightly illustrated, mostly with rights free artwork.

In comparison to most scenarios for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, the setting for For the Sound of His Horn is not so much fantasy as one of late Georgian or Victorian England. This means plenty of source material to draw from in presenting the scenario—especially if the Dungeon Master wants images to illustrate the scenario’s NPCs. It also means that the scenario would be easy to adapt—at least in terms of its plot—to other roleplaying games and their settings, whether that is Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, Cthulhu by Gaslight, Victoriana, Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space – The Roleplaying Game, and so on. Overall, For the Sound of His Horn is a highly enjoyable horror scenario, emphasising interaction and investigation in serving up a punch cup, a fruity slice of hand cake, and a rich melodrama!

Been a bit since I did one of these I thought this might be a good time to pull this one out. 

Dragon #125 comes to us from a magical time in ancient history known as the Fall of 1987.  This issue is from September 1987 in particular.  I just met this girl from the dorm next door. She had already kicked everyone's ass in cards in her dorm and now she was over at mine to humiliate everyone here.  So yeah we quickly became friends, then best friends and sis years later we were dating and today is our 26th wedding anniversary.   So yeah, I look back at this time rather fondly. 

Dragon #125's special feature is Chivalry.  Not a bad choice with all the Arthurian movies I have been watching this month.  The cover art by Roger Raupp is a great portrayal of Arthur vs Modred. 

Letters include one to remind us the Wormy has appeared in 100 issues at this point. Sadly the end is near.   Also mentioned is Finieous Fingers which hadn't appeared in Dragon for a long time. There is also a letter about religion in D&D and the DragonRaid game gets mentioned. 

Nice ad for the Science Fiction Book Club.  This would have been around the time I joined for the second time and I see a number of books here I still have.  This was my transition phase of moving out of dark fantasy and into horror proper. 

Forum has the usual collection of deep cuts for the game.  One, in particular, discusses a letter from #121 about parthenogenesis in Amazons and delves into the details of the mating habits of harpies.  Is this Dragon Forum or Penthouse Forum?  Likely to have the same level of "Dear Editors, I could not believe this, but this really happened..."

The first true article comes up and it is a neat one.  Nigel D. Findley gives us The Ecology of the Greenhag.  The central idea revolves around the notion that all hag types are born of the mating of a Night Hag and various humanoid species.  It is a neat idea really.  I like that the Night Hag has a gestation period of 13 months. Greenhags likewise can give birth to an Annis after their "quite frequent" matings with ogres or hill giants. No indication on how the Sea Hags or other hags fit into this.

Ed Greenwood is up with a Realms article.  This was the start of the Golden Age of the Forgotten Realms.  The article, Woodlands of the Realms, covers magical and mundane trees and forests of the Forgotten Realms.  You have to give the guy credit, he came up with some good stuff even in the minutia such as this.  

Our special section of Chivalry begins next.

The Code of Chivalry by Mark Easterday gives us some knightly orders and what to do with them. There are benefits and drawbacks for PC Knights and even a simple system for honor.  It is nothing Earth-shattering, but it has appeal in it's simplicity. It is also something more people should be doing with knights, cavaliers, and paladins. 

Nice big ad for the Time-LIFE Mysteries of the Unkown series, now frustratingly incomplete at your local used book store. 

Thomas M. Kane is next with Meanwhile Back at the Fief...  This one covers all the duties of a feudal lord. There are some details on day-to-day activities and tables of odd occurrences.  I seem to recall some similar rules in the D&D Companion set. These came after that so I wonder how they compare.  

Armies from the Ground Up by James A. Yates is next and deals with the hows and whys of raising an army in an AD&D game specifically.   Again, very useful to have. 

A "new" section that was going to be semi-regular is up, Lords & Legends.  I have no idea how much or for how long it continued. A quick Google search shows it came up at least one more time.  This is entering as bit of a "Dark" time for me and Dragon.  I was in college and any spare money went to food, school supplies, or...other school supplies.  It is "dark" in the sense that it is a period that is unknown to me.  I remember reading this issue back then, but my Dragon purchases would be only for special occasions like the October issues. 

For this Lords & Legends from Katharine Kerr we have three lords of the Age of Chivalry; Count William of Orange, Bertrand (nephew of William), and Count Rainouart of Tortelose.  All from the Chanson de Roland ("Song of Roland").

Our last article in this series is Glory, Danger, and Wounds by Garry Hamlin.  This article also draws on The Song of Roland for inspiration and deals with battle and honor for Cavaliers. Large battles and private duels are discussed.  More importantly how such battles and duels should and should not be used. 

The Best for the Best covers elite espionage agencies for Top Secret and is a rare non-Merle M. Rasmussen article. This one is from William Van Horn and it is more proper for the Top Secret S.I. game that Rasmussen did not develop. 

For our centerpiece, we get a new "mini" game from David "Zeb" Cook, Clay-O-Rama, a miniatures battle game where the playing pieces are made from clay or Play-doh. You get some friends, some dice, some pencils, and some modeling clay (Play-Doh is recommended) and you get started making your Claydonian to do battle. Make sure you leave some clay/playdoh aside for missiles  The rules are really simple, you move, you attack, you calculate damage. The whole thing takes up three page and a cover.  Pull it out of your magazine and you are good to go.  It does look like silly fun, to be honest. 

Our fiction selection is by Lois Tilton titled The Passing of Kings.

Lee Ian Wurn is up with a rare post-Gary Greyhawk article. In the Bazaar of the Bizarre, we have the Magical Maps of Greyhawk.  We get magical maps that more or less are the magical GPSs of their day.  The article though gave me an idea.  What if there was a giant magical Bazaar, like what you find on Deva in the Myth Adventures books by Robert Lynn Asprin.  I could make each article a stall, like you find in those giant flea markets or the vendor's room at Gen Con.  And just to be that guy, the stalls have the same number of the magazine they appeared in.  This shop of magical maps is found in stall #125.

Jeff Grubb is up with Plane Speaking. This time featuring the Positive Quasi Elementals. There are only three, Radiance (Fire-Positive), Steam (Water-Positive), and Mineral (Earth-Positive). The Lightning (Air-Positive) appeared in the Monster Manual II.

The Game Wizards talks about the new Dragonlance Adventures hardcover.  This was a rather popular book with my small group in college. There were a lot of ideas I freely stole from it for my own games.  I also thought it was odd about the hard cap of 20 levels.  Now that is normal. 

A Second Look at Zebulon's Guide comes to us from Kim Eastland and covers all sorts of errata and clarifications.  I was out of Star Frontiers at this point having switched over to FASA Doctor Who and Star Trek. I have heard that Zebulon's Guide changed things but I will admit I do now know to what degree. 

Big ad for Mayfair's updated City-State of the Invincible Overlord

Role-Playing Reviews is next covering three fantasy adventures.  This is another one of the articles that would get WotC into trouble despite their good intentions.  The article is Copyrighted 1987 by Ken Rolston, which means he likely still held the reprint rights. The adventures in question are The Grey Knight for Pendragon, Phantom of the Northern Marches for MERP, and Treasure Hunt for AD&D.  We learn something we had suspected at this time, that the term "Module" was growing out of fashion. So for the adventures Rolston lets us know that the Grey Knight is one of the best he has seen, Treasure Hunt is a fantastic adventure for 0-level AD&D characters, and Phantom is wonderful.

The Role of Books covers some of the new releases for the last quarter of 1987.  There is the Orson Scott Card's Seventh Son, a couple from Harry Turtledove, and the debut (more or less) of Peter David who later go on to be one of America's most prolific authors.  

Jeff Grub's Marvel-Phile is up with some enemies for the Incredible Hulk; Abomination and Zzzax, and an ally, Doc Samson.  I was thinking about Abomination just the other day while trying to decide if I should include the Hulk movies in my Marvel re-watch that I might never get around to.

Gamer's Guide has the classified ads. I wonder how many of these places were still around. 

Convention Calendar covers the cons of Fall 1987.

Three pages of Snarf Quest, a page of DragonsMirth, and three of Wormy.

Some interesting bits to be sure, but nothing that jumps out to me to be used today.  The Greenhag stuff is fun, but I have taken my hags into a completely different direction really.  While everyone talks with glowing nostalgia for the Dragons prior to these (and I do as well) there is a lot between 1987 and 1997 that I never read and only have briefly glanced at.  So that might be my new sweet spot for The Old Dragon.

Time for another round of Boxing Match. Unlike the last Boxing Match of OSE vs. BX RPG where I was comparing more similar systems.  This time I am going with the current big heavyweights in the OSR.  These games also feature somewhat different systems and different rules assumptions.

To start off both games, Old School Essentials and Swords & Wizardry allow you to play the same sorts of games.  You can even assume that an adventure, or supplement, or whatever written for D&D (any Pre-1997 version) can be used with either of these two games with about equal amounts of conversion needed.  In my mind, the conversion is so negligible that I am not going to factor that at all in my comparisons.

Also in terms of the game that these two are drawn from, both games live in a strange liminal space between D&D and AD&D.  That is at least if we are considering OSE Advanced Fantasy.  OSE builds on a base of B/X era D&D and adds some elements of AD&D.   Swords & Wizardry starts with a base of OD&D and what that would become in AD&D but keeps the rule abstraction at the B/X level.

Looking at the total number of pages is not likely to be very helpful here.  Both games have different levels of modularity baked in so adding or subtracting things is very easy for both.

Format

Both sets split their rules up into various books. Overtly there are Player books and Gamemaster books.  Among the player books are also books dedicated to spells and magic.  OSE books are in hardcover format, S&W are soft covers.   There are fewer pages to the S&W books overall, but considering their smaller, sans-serif font I feel that content-wise they are mostly the same. 

Swords & Wizardry nudges ahead in one way. Their set includes a set of seven polyhedral dice. The addition of a GM's/Referee Screen that fits into the box makes it stand out.   

The round goes to Swords & Wizardry.

Classes

Just going with "out of the boxes" classes these two games compare well in terms of "base" classes. 

In the Swords & Wizardry Player's Book, we have the following: Assassin, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Magic-user, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, and Thief.  Classes have a maximum of 20th level.

In the OSE-Advanced book, we get: Acrobat, Assassin, Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Illusionist, Knight, Magic-user, Paladin, Ranger, and Thief.
There are also the "race as class" variants of: Drow, Duergar, Swarf, Elf, Gnome, Half-elf, Halfling, Half-orc, and Svirfneblin.  The level maximum is 14 for humans and variable for others.

S&W has Dwarves, Elves, Halflings, and Humans for races.  OSE has all the above-mentioned race-as-classes as races for other classes as well. 

The clear winner of this round is OSE-Advanced, but in truth, S&W is doing exactly what they set out to do leaving these extra classes and races for others to define. 

Monsters

Oh, I do love my monsters.  All the usual suspects are here with both cleaving very close to their spiritual god-parents. So lots of overlap with the Monster Manual for example.  Part by design, part by nature of the d20 SRD.

By the numbers, Swords & Wizardry Monsters and Moar Monsters have 56 and 62 monsters (118 total) covering 44 and 24 pages respectively. 

Old School Essentials features 205 monsters over 65 pages for their "Basic" book and 327 monsters over 107 pages for their "Advanced" book.

So for these sets, the round goes to OSE, but keep in mind that Swords & Wizardry Monstrosities and Tome of Horrors bring their monster totals to over 1,400. 

The round goes to OSE. 

Game Play

Honestly, the differences here are so trivial. Combat might be faster in S&W, but that can be open to debate.  The modularity of OSE makes it a great game to have at the table where everything is easy to find and the facing page layout makes everything easy to read at a glance. 

You can use just about every classical resource or adventure with either with no issues.

Both games come with two separate adventures. I reviewed the OSE ones here. 

Final Round

So. Who is the winner here?  

We are. That is who.  We live in a time of unparalleled choice and access.  Determining which of these games is going to be splitting hairs at best and even then there are still a dozen or so others that fill their same niche.  Not to mention all the original material still out there. 

While not as hot as in previous summers (compared to 2011 or 1980, North Texas is almost chilly), the heat and humidity were oppressive enough to consider moving the traditional Porch Sale inside, so that’s what we did. We also … Continue reading →

One of the things I am most looking forward to in my Basic Bestiaries is developing new and different demonic lineages. One of these I have spoken about in the past is the Qliphoth.

The Qliphoth are the discarded husks of primordial beings.  It is natural to think of them like the husks or used exoskeletons of cicadas, or even the skins of snakes. Since these beings were more than mortals currently are and became even more ascended, their husks are more than just leftover skins or skeletons.

Case in point the Gamaliel.  

When the Primordials shed their "husks" or "peels" to be the Luminous Beings, one such husk was their dark sexual desires.  As hyper-intelligent immortal and immoral kindred, their desires were particularly dark. As they shed their evil desires their conscious and subconscious sexual desires and yearnings became the Gamaliel.

Gamaliel
Medium Fiend, Qliphoth (demon)

Frequency: Very Rare
Number Appearing: 1 (1d6)
Alignment: Chaotic [Chaotic Evil]
Movement: 120' (40') [12"]
Armor Class: 8 [11]
Hit Dice: 6d8+6*** (45 hp)
Attacks: 2 hands, 1 tongue + special
Damage: 1d6+1 x2, 1d4+1
Special: Cause delirium, Qliphoth immunities
Save: Monster 6 
Morale: 12 (12)
Treasure Hoard Class: None
XP: 1,250 (OSE) 1,280 (LL)

Str: 14 (+1) Dex: 14 (+1) Con: 18 (+3) Int: 12 (0) Wis: 7 (-1) Cha: 2 (-4)

The Gamaliel, or the Obscene Ones, were among the first of the Qliphoth to be formed.  They appear as medium-sized nearly humanoid-looking creatures.  Their hands, feet, lips, tongue, and sexual organs are enlarged to grotesque sizes in comparison to their otherwise small bodies.  They always appear nude as a mockery of the forms their progenitors eventually took on. They may appear as male or female.

Gamaliel lives for one thing only, sensory stimuli. They want to feel everything, touch, taste, smell and hear everything they can.  Yes, when possible they also try to copulate with anything and everything they can.  They lack the subtlety of the Liliam or Baalseraph or even the guile of Calabim or Shedim.  They are nearly mindless beasts that take no heed of anything but their own twisted desires.

They can attack with their huge hands for 1d6+1 points of damage each.  They may also attack with their tongues at 1d4+1.  Their saliva is such that anyone exposed to it via an attack or touch must save vs Paralysis or become delirious.  This state lasts for 2d6 turns in which case the victim is completely unaware of what is going on around them.  There is a 1 in 6 chance that if they were in a combat situation they will keep on fighting with melee attacks. Targets are chosen at random.

Gamaliel can be easily distracted by auditory and visual illusions. They save at a -2 penalty against such magics and can be effectively distracted long enough to be attacked. 

Like all Qliphoth Gamaliel have the following adjustments to damage types: 
Immune: Mundane/Cold Iron/Silver weapons, Poison
Half Damage (save for none): Acid, Cold, Electricity, Fire (Dragon/Magic/Mundane), Gas
Full Damage: Magic Missile, magic weapons, holy/blessed weapons

Unlike other Qliphoth death (their's or others) is not the goal of the Gamaliel.  A dead foe might have an interesting smell or touch, a live one is more interesting and you can do more with them.  For this reason, the Gamaliel are sometimes considered to be not as evil as other Qliphoth; this is a very erroneous and dangerous assumption. They are every bit as evil.  A quick death is far more merciful than being captured and becoming the plaything of a Gamaliel.

--

The mental image I had of the Gamaliel was immediate. They were life-sized versions of the "Sensory Homunculus" we used to talk about back in cognitive psychology undergrad days.  I always knew I aw going to make a monster out that one day.

They are the Qliphoth counterparts to the succubi with roughly the same HD and some powers.  As I define the Qliphoth more I might increase or decrease various abilities, powers or HD/hp. I might even make them Small sized.  Still working out all the details, but that is where the fun is!

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

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


—oOo—
Name: The Haunted Place Or The Witch of West ProvidencePublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Andy Miller

Setting: Jazz Age New England
Product: The Haunting, take two?
What You Get: Fifty-Six page, 29.09 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Some hauntings never get old...Plot Hook: Providence brings a haunted man into the path of their oncoming automobile.Plot Support: Detailed plot, ten decent handouts, five maps, four NPCs, two Mythos tomes, and six pre-generated Investigators. Production Values: Excellent.
Pros
# Inspired by H.P. Lovecraft’s ‘The Shunned House’# Inspired by Sandy Peterson’s ‘The Haunting’# Simple, but highly detailed set-up# Clue rich# Lots of historical detail# Easily adapted to other periods# Suitable for one or two Investigators# Suitable as an introduction to Lovecraftian investigative horror# Easy to drop into a campaign (or start one with)# Playable in a single session# Not ‘The Haunting’, but like ‘The Haunting’# Has its own bed frame-window moment.
Cons
# Not ‘The Haunting’, but like ‘The Haunting’
# Potential information overload# Challenging NPCs for the Keeper to roleplay# Challenging NPCs for the Investigators to interact with# Scope for conflict between the Investigators# Potential Total Party Kill
Conclusion
# Not ‘The Haunting’, but like ‘The Haunting’# Simple, but highly detailed set-up# Suitable as an introduction to Lovecraftian investigative horror# Loving tribute to Sandy Peterson’s ‘The Haunting’

Although there is no denying that the preeminent roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative roleplaying is Call of Cthulhu, there can be no denying the kinks between the Cthulhu Mythos and the world’s preeminent roleplaying game, Dungeons & Dragons. They go all the way back to the original version of the Deities & Demigods, the pantheon guide for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition. The connection would come to the fore at the end of the millennium with Death in Freeport from Green Ronin Publishing. It moved back and forth with Realms of Crawling Chaos for Labyrinth Lord and other retroclones and with adventures like Carrion Hill for Pathfinder, before coming up to date with a supplement and set of campaigns for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition written and published by Sandy Petersen, the designer of Call of Cthulhu no less!

Ghoul Island Act 1: Voyage to Farzeen is the first part of a four-part campaign for use with Sandy Petersen’s Cthulhu Mythos. Published by Petersen Games, this Mythos-inspired campaign as a whole takes the Player Characters from First Level up to Fourteenth Level, via milestones, with Ghoul Island Act 1: Voyage to Farzeen taking them from First Level to Fourth Level. The campaign makes extensive references to Sandy Petersen’s Cthulhu Mythos, and ideally, the Game Master should run the campaign using its rules to get the fullest out of it for her players. However, it is possible to run Ghoul Island Act 1: Voyage to Farzeen without reference to Sandy Petersen’s Cthulhu Mythos, but some details and nuances representing the corrosive influence of its Yog-Sothothery will be difficult to implement, if not lost. Either way, Ghoul Island Act 1: Voyage to Farzeen and the Ghoul Island campaign is a combination of heroic fantasy with horror, rather than the other way around. That said, some players may find that the heroic fantasy is not as supported in Ghoul Island Act 1: Voyage to Farzeen as it could have been given the dearth of physical rewards or treasure to be found. There is advice to counter that though, and the downplaying of such rewards means that the Game Master and her players can instead concentrate on the adventure and the story.

Ghoul Island Act 1: Voyage to Farzeen begins with a sea voyage. The Player Characters are aboard the Hazel’s Folly, carrying a cargo for the far-off Farzeen, a city on a distant volcanic isle. This may be as investors or as crew—there are several plot hooks given, and they have plenty of opportunity to bond with the crew and potentially make friends before the action kicks off. This is with a calamitous storm which threatens to batter the ship to pieces and all but throw them ashore. The calamities continue once they are ashore as the rest of the crew turns unexpectedly nasty and potentially, the Player Characters, find themselves in trouble with the local law! Once in Farzeen, the Player Characters should be able to straighten their circumstances out and then explore the town. It is strangely clean and tidy, standing on the shore all but surrounded by jungle over which towers the volcano. The plot kicks up a notch and some of Farzeen’s secrets are revealed when the commander of the city watch requests their aid. Bodies have been disappearing—including the mutineers! As the title suggests, there are ghouls on Farzeen Island and they provide a vital mortuary service for the city. Could they be responsible for the disappearances?

Ghoul Island Act 1: Voyage to Farzeen is a fairly strongly plotted and linear first part of a campaign. Throughout there are opportunities for action and roleplaying and some investigation, with options for exploring a little of the city as well. There are suggestions also to expand the campaign in other directions and full stats for all of the crew of the Hazel’s Folly (oddly bar one) and the various other NPCs in Farzeen. The best of these is Upton, quite literally a downtown Ghoul dressed for a night out on the town! Certainly, the Game Master should have fun portraying him. As generally easy and straightforward as this opening part of the campaign is, it is very much an introduction and never gets beyond hinting at the greater plot behind it all. Also included are the stats for a magical item or two—including one fantastic weapon which will draw comparisons with Elric’s Stormbringer, which sadly, the Player Characters are unlikely to get hold of in this act of the campaign. Another issue with the campaign is that it is missing rules from Sandy Petersen’s Cthulhu Mythos which would have made it easier to run. Now this is deliberate and understandable, because obviously, the publisher wants the Game Master to buy a copy of Sandy Petersen’s Cthulhu Mythos in order to get the most out of the campaign. Arguably though, the publisher has gone too far. Options are discussed which consider the possibility that one or more of the Player Characters could be a Ghoul or have Ghoul blood, but that is an option, and absolutely not necessary in order to play and complete the campaign. Yet rules for Dread—the mechanic for handling the Player Characters’ reaction to Yog-Sothothery—are pertinent, almost intrinsic, and if it is a case of their definitely not being included, then at least some designer notes could have suggested ways of handling the horror and the fear that is very much part of the campaign if the Game Master does not have access to Sandy Petersen’s Cthulhu Mythos. Or at least discussed in terms of the rules on horror and madness in Chapter Eight of the Dungeon Master’s Guide? 

Physically, Ghoul Island Act 1: Voyage to Farzeen is slim hardback, done in full colour and very well presented in the Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition style, although with much darker, Mythos-infused artwork. It needs an edit in places, but is generally easy to read and to prepare from.

Ghoul Island Act 1: Voyage to Farzeen should provide four and eight sessions of play, it being possible to play through each of its four chapters in a single session each. It could work as a crossover between Call of Cthulhu and Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, perhaps as a variant upon a Dreamlands-set series of adventures? Or just simply as an introduction from one game to the other? It is fairly straightforward in terms of its plotting and story, so it should be fairly easy to run. It does take a while for it to really drop any of hints as to what is going on, at least in play, and hopefully they will be more explicit in the next act. Overall, Ghoul Island Act 1: Voyage to Farzeen is a solid start to its campaign and a solid introduction to facing the Mythos in a fantasy setting.

FATE of Cthulhu added two elements to Lovecraftian investigative roleplaying—time travel and foreknowledge. Published by Evil Hat Games, the 2020 horror roleplaying game was built around campaign frameworks that cast the Player Characters as survivors in a post-apocalyptic future thirty years into the future, the apocalypse itself involving various aspects and entities of the Mythos. Not only as survivors though, because having entered into a pact with the Old One, Yog-Sothoth, they have unlocked the secret of time travel and come back to the present. They have come back aware of the steps along the way which brought about the apocalypse and they come back ready to fight it. This though is not a fight against the Cthulhu Mythos in general, but rather a single Old One and its cultists, and each thwarting of an Old One is a self-contained campaign in its own right, in which no other element of the Mythos appears.

The five campaigns, or timelines, presented in FATE of Cthulhu in turn have the Investigators facing Cthulhu, Dagon, Shub-Nigggurath, Nyarlathotep, and the King in Yellow. Each consists of  five events, the last of which is always the rise of the Old One itself. The events represent the roadmap to that last apocalyptic confrontation, and can each be further broken down into four event catalysts which can be people, places, foes, and things. The significance of these events are represented by a die face, that is either a bank, a ‘–’, or a ‘+’. These start out with two blanks and two ‘–’, the aim of the players and their investigators being to try to prevent their being too many, if any ‘–’ symbols in play and ideally to flip them from ‘–’ to blank and from blank to ‘+’. Ultimately the more ‘+’ there are, the more positive the ripple will be back down the timeline and the more of a chance the investigators have to defeat or prevent the rise of the Old One. Conversely, too many ‘–’ and the known timeline will play out as follows and the less likely the chance the investigators have in stopping the Old One.

Each of the five timelines comes with details of what a time traveller from 2050 would know about it, more detail for the Game Master with a breakdown of the events and their Aspects, Stunts, Mythos creatures, and NPCs. Most of these can serve as useful inspiration for the Game Master as well as the advice given on running FATE of Cthulhu and her creating her own timelines. After all, there are numerous Mythos entities presenting the prospective Game Master ready to create her own timeline with a variety of different aspects, purviews, and even degrees of power, but nevertheless capable of bringing about an apocalypse. However, Evil Hat Games has already begun to do that with its own series of timelines, each again dealing with a different Mythos entity and a different downfall for mankind. The first of these is The Rise of Yig.

Darkest Timeline: The Rise of Basilisk is different. Really different. To begin with, this second of the new timelines would appear to be barely connected to the Mythos at all—but it is, if that is, the Player Characters go digging deep enough into the world-side infosphere that Basilisk has planned for the whole of humanity. If not the universe. In Mythos terms, its closest parallels is with Hastur and the Yellow Sign, a memetic infection of occult nature which encourages artistic endeavour, but in Darkest Timeline: The Rise of Basilisk, that memetic infection is technological in nature, once shared often encouraging the monomaniacal exploration of fields of study and the need to understand them to their utmost. This often leads to the withdrawal of the infected from societal norms, ultimately leading to their deaths through lack of self-care and dehydration. Its origins lie in the Google Books project to digitise and make available all human knowledge. Thirty years later and Google’s Thinking Hat technologies enabled humanity to connect to digital neural networks and solve its most complex of problems—including climate change, whilst Google Physical Assistant enabled humanity to upgrade its body with cybertechnology. The combination provided a platform upon which Basilisk could survive and prosper and spread, the weakness of flesh bolstered by technology, pushing those connected to it to greater depths of understanding, for ultimately, its aim was a technological and scientific ‘Godthink’—not the idea that ‘All religions lead to the same thing’, but that the study of the universe leads to an understanding of both its and everything in it. If it had to turn the planet into the United Mind Of Humanity, a hungry, all-devouring hivemind of man and machine intertwined, it would and it did.

Where most timelines deal with known Mythos threats, or variations upon them, Darkest Timeline: The Rise of Basilisk does not. It is a fight against an idea, not a thing or an entity, but all quickly an idea given form and physicality. This timeline combines elements of The Terminator—more so than other timelines—with The Matrix, mapping them back onto current developments in information theory, digitalisation, robotics, artificial intelligence and machine learning, the Internet of Things, and other cutting-edge technologies before pushing forward into a dystopia that is definitely Science Fiction rather Occult in nature. The technological nature of the setting means that the way time travel works in this timeline is also different. There is no corruptive pact with Yog-Sothoth to facilitate the way between and thus the means to travel back from 2050 to 2020 (or earlier), rather it is technological in nature, developed by Basilisk. The Resistance has gained access to it in 2050 to travel back in time, and there is the possibility that they may able to use the time travel apparatus to jump to other pivotal points within the timeline. This gives Darkest Timeline: The Rise of Basilisk a little more fluidity in terms of campaign structure. Instead of leaping into the past to a point from which they can moving forward and acting to undermine the threat at the heart of the timeline, the Player Characters may be able to jump up and down it, with agents of the Basilisk in hot pursuit, or even aware of approximately when the Player Characters will appear. After all, the extent of Basilisk’s understanding and knowledge means that it has a very good idea of just what the Player Characters are trying to do…

As with other timelines for FATE of Cthulhu, the Player Characters are jumping back in time to locate the four events which led up to if not the apocalypse of Basilisk, then the dystopia it ushers in. As with other timelines, there is no direct confrontation with the existential threat it represents, but primarily its agents and progenitors. And unlike those other timelines, the cosmic threat to humanity is not an unknowable Elder God, but a still inhuman mind that unfortunately humanity can understand—and that is the existential threat that the Player Characters face, avoiding understanding Basilisk. Further, Basilisk has agency (and agents).

As with the timelines in the core rules, Darkest Timeline: The Rise of Basilisk details the history of its apocalypse and the four events which led up to it for the benefit of the Investigators who will be aware when they jump back from the future. It is accompanied by a more detailed timeline for Game Master along with their four event catalysts (which can be people, places, foes, or things) and their die face settings which the players and their Investigators will need to change by making enquiries and working to defeat the cult of information. There are details of threats and situations, including Thinking Hats Experts, biomechanically-altered humans, capable of temporarily enhancing particular skills to the pinnacle of understanding, Boston Dynamics-derived cyborgs, Hunter-Killer Experts, and more. 

The Basilisk’s agenda is discussed in detail, along with its mechanisms and advice for the Game Master on how to run Basilisk. This is absolutely necessary because of the complexity involved in running this timeline because of its complexity of ideas, the flexibility offered by time travel, and the greater agency possessed by Basilisk. If the previous Darkest Timeline: The Rise of Yig was more complex, not as straightforward, and involved multiple factions across the timeline, then Darkest Timeline: The Rise of Basilisk is more so—time travel, existential memetics, and deep conspiracy, all set against a contemporary world.

Physically, Darkest Timeline: The Rise of Basilisk is cleanly presented. It is easy to read and the lay out is tidy, though it needs an edit in places. The artwork is good also.

Although Darkest Timeline: The Rise of Basilisk is specially written for use with FATE of Cthulhu and very much built around the Investigators coming back from the future forearmed with knowledge of the past, there is nothing to stop a Game Master from using the timeline to run a campaign from the opposite direction and from a point of ignorance. That is, as a standard campaign a la other roleplaying games of Lovecraftian investigative horror, whether that is actually for FATE of Cthulhu or another roleplaying game. It would be different to other campaigns, presenting more of a modern conspiracy campaign, possibly hackers or activists against the rise of the machines rather than classic Lovecraftian Investigators confronting entities of cosmic horror. This way, the Investigators can encounter the threats featured in Darkest Timeline: The Rise of Basilisk without the benefit of foreknowledge.

Darkest Timeline: The Rise of Basilisk is a very different campaign framework for Lovecraftian investigative horror, a radical technological departure that in effect is a non-Mythos campaign, but ultimately one involving existential horror. However, the technological aspects of the framework mean that it is complex and will take some effort to really run right. Ultimately, by drawing upon contemporary events and technologies, Darkest Timeline: The Rise of Basilisk presents a scarily prescient timeline which showcases how FATE of Cthulhu can do more than just the traditional Mythos.

At the risk of sounding really old, I adore Camelot.  Back when I was young I ended up with a second bout of chickenpox.  My parents had a laser disc player back then and this one of the movies they had. I think I watched it a dozen times.  Not a lot of choice really, but it was still good.  I can still recall all the songs.

I have to admit I often judge my Athurs, Gueneveres, and Lancelots based on the examples set by Richard Harris, Vanessa Redgrave, and Franco Nero.  Let's be honest. Vanessa Redgrave is adorable here.  I am not 100% convinced that she did not contribute to me having so many blue-eyed, redheaded characters.

Arthur's meeting with Guenevere is one of my favorites. And I fully admit I still hum "Camelot" whenever I watch another movie about Arthur.

The story here follows, more or less, the T.H. White "Once and Future King" novel.

Arthur's conversations with "Jenny" are really fantastic. I mean the attitudes are more modern, but that is fine since the setting is more Ren Faire than post-Roman Britain. I find Richard Harris' Arthur enthusiasm infectious. 

Also if you ever wanted a better depiction of an AD&D Paladin then you can't do much better than Camelot's Lancelot. The scene where Lancelot is jousting with Sir Dinadan, accidentally mortally wounds and then heals him has stuck with me for years as the example of laying on hands.  I can't help but think this is what Gygax had in mind when he wrote the Paladin class.  

The movie does drag on a bit, it is nearly 3 hours, but I am hesitant to suggest any cuts. 

The scene where Lancelot rescues Guenevere is both profoundly heroic and profoundly sad at the same time.  Give this to Richard Harris, he makes you feel Arthur's pain. 

Arthur, "For what? Revenge. The most worthless of causes."

I might lack the historical gravitas of Excalibur and have nearly nothing in common with real history but I don't care.  

Much like reading Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, I think this is a must-view for any fan of the myths and tales of King Arthur.

Gaming Content

Nothing directly here save what all the tales of Arthur can give us.  BUT given the musical nature of this movie, it does make me wonder if a game where everyone is a bard might work.  Lusty Month of May indeed.

This Lancelot, maybe more than any other, is a great example of a Paladin in D&D.

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Tim Knight of Hero Press and Pun Isaac of Halls of the Nephilim along with myself are getting together at the Facebook Group I'd Rather Be Killing Monsters to discuss these movies.  Follow along with the hashtag #IdRatherBeWatchingMonsters.

The traditional solo roleplaying experience has been with solo adventure books like those of the Fighting Fantasy series or for Tunnels & Trolls, but there are other formats too. For example, letter writing, whether through an exchange of missives such as the Diana Jones 2002 Award Nominated De Profundis or even solo, such as Quill: A Letter-Writing Roleplaying Game for a Single Player, the Indie RPG Awards Best Free RPG of 2016. In recent years, there has been a trend in experiencing solo roleplaying through journaling. That is, the keeping of a journal a la the gentleman or lady of the nineteenth century recording his or her daily or experiences. On one level a diary, but often a vehicle to tell a story—and perhaps emulate the style of certain authors, such as H.P. Lovecraft. A journaling roleplaying game typically involves a deck of cards or dice to generate random events which serve as prompts for the player, who will record the reactions of his character in the journal, creating and telling a story in the process—a story whose plot and events will only become clear once the dénouement has been reached and its aftermath told…

Perhaps the most well known of the format is Thousand Year Old Vampire, which explores the immortal life of a member of the undead. It also showcases a popular genre for the Journaling format, that of horror, though there are alternatives. One such alternative is English Eerie: Rural Horror Storytelling Game for One Player, published by Trollish Delver Games, also responsible for Merry Outlaws: A roleplaying game of folk ballads and justice. Inspired by the works of M.R. James, Arthur Machen, and Algernon Blackwood, as well as the English country and English folklore—such as the Black Dog and the Barghest, Boggarts and Bloody Bones, Church Grims and Jack Frost, Grindylows and Redcaps, Shug Monkeys and Sooterkins, and more. It is also inspired by a fear of the English landscape itself, with its deep history drenched in tradition, shame, and blood, the bleak emptiness of its moors and mountains, the cold and the damp of its weather, and the ruins and ritual sites where great ceremonies and great acts of bloodshed were enacted to unknown, unchristian gods… Long haunted by the past, it is a bucolic idyll hiding great evils and great secrets until some foolish visitor, scholar, or official stumbles across something best left far, far away from his urban refuge.

To emulate such tales of fear and loathing, and of creeping tension, Eerie: Rural Horror Storytelling Game for One Player employs simple mechanics and a specially prepared deck of ordinary playing cards. The player creates a simple character and draws from the deck to determine events that will beset the character, revealing rising tensions, and in turn the player will record his character’s response to each one and how he overcomes them (or not), uncovering further clues hopefully to survive to complete his recounting of events. All of this is recorded in his journal—Eerie: Rural Horror Storytelling Game for One Player is ideally played and recorded in a proper journal with a proper fountain pen—in the light of a flickering candle. Thus it might also be an exercise in penmanship and storytelling as much roleplaying. To play, in addition to the pen and journal, a player will also need a set of tokens in two colours—ten of each, and a ten-sided die.

To set up Eerie: Rural Horror Storytelling Game for One Player, a player creates his character by dividing ten points between Resolve and Spirit. Resolve is a Player Character’s determination to continue his investigations, rationalise the weirdness around him, and to keep their wits about them. It is spent to help a Player Character’s capacity overcome obstacles in scenes. Spirit is a Player Character’s thoughts, feelings, and physical well-being. Its reduction represents a Player Character’s spiral into horror, harm, and doubt. Player Character background and occupation is usually indicated by the scenario, of which there are five in the roleplaying game. The tokens are used to represent the Player Character’s Resolve and Spirit. The playing deck needs some preparation to create the Story Deck. This consists of the four, five, six, and seven cards from all four suits, plus three Queens, or ‘Grey Ladies’. The ‘Grey Ladies’ represent the ghosts of English folklore and a rise in Tension whenever one is drawn.

Game play is simple. The player draws a card, resolves the scene type it indicates, and writes an entry in his character’s journal explaining what happened, how he felt, and so on. Each of the four suits represents a different type of scene—a Hearts card indicates that a secondary NPC is hurt; Clubs that a secondary NPC acts as an obstacle for the Player Character in some way; Diamonds that the environment acts as an obstacle for the Player Character in some way; and Spades that a minor clue has been discovered. Each drawing and resolving of two cards represents a day in the life of the Player Character. If the card drawn is an obstacle—a Clubs or a Diamond—it needs to be overcome. In which case, the player rolls the die and attempts to equal to or greater than the value of the card drawn. If failed, the Player Character loses a point of Spirit, but his player can spend Resolve to reroll and each point spent is added to the subsequent roll. However, for each Grey Lady drawn, the Tension rises by one and adds one to the total value of each obstacle card the player has to roll against. 

When the third and final Grey Lady is drawn, it indicates the end of the story. At this point, the player compares his character’s remaining Spirit points with the Conclusion Table the scenario he is playing. This suggests how the player will write the last entry in his character’s journal. If the character has Spirit points left, the ending of the story will be positive, but if he has none left, the ending will be much, much darker. There is no simple bad ending.

Play of Eerie: Rural Horror Storytelling Game for One Player revolves around the play of individual scenarios. Each of the five in the roleplaying game include tables for secondary characters, minor clues, environmental and NPC obstacles, and a tension table. Each also begins with a set-up and ends with a Spirit table for determining the final outcome. The five include mysteries set in the nineteenth and twenty-first century, but most are set in the twentieth century. They take place in Derbyshire—twice, once to check on a friend, the other an inheritance, on a boating holiday in Cumbria, at a digital detox camp in the Yorkshire Dales, and into the Cotswolds in search of property! Essentially what each scenario represents is a series of prompts and spurs to the player’s imagination. How one player would approach telling a story and what exactly it involves will be entirely different for another.

A scenario can be played through in a single session, but in fact, the intent is that a player plays it day by day, drawing and resolving a pair of cards each day, then coming back to the scenario the following day to continue adding to the journal. This allows time for the player to mull over the day’s events and come back to the story afresh as if the character himself had gained a night’s rest. It adds a degree of contemplation not typically found in other roleplaying games, and played this way, it only takes a few minutes or so each day. Plus, it also extends the tension across episodes making it a marathon rather than the sprint of a single session. Eerie: Rural Horror Storytelling Game for One Player includes rules for campfire, or group play, and has the players telling the same story, taking turns to be the storyteller. This is essentially telling stories but with a few extra rules for determining aspects of the plot.

Physically, Eerie: Rural Horror Storytelling Game for One Player is a clean and tidy PDF. It is lightly illustrated using images in the public domain. It comes with an extensive example play, which is actually best not to read until after a player has completed writing his first journal lest he be influenced by the given example. 

Eerie: Rural Horror Storytelling Game for One Player and roleplaying games like it seem the perfect antidote to our times. When we cannot get out to game together face to face, whether that is with our regular group or at a convention, having other options for solo play seems like a perfect solution. The mechanics in Eerie: Rural Horror Storytelling Game for One Player not only serve to drive the story forward, they also serve to drive up the tension—not necessarily too far, but enough to make the survival of a player’s character matter and if played over days rather than the single session, to draw that tension out over and over… 

Then there is the act of the journaling, which brings a physicality to the play, and if done using a fountain pen and a journal, two further effects. One is the artfulness of penmanship, the other is actually aches and pain, because how many of us sit down and actually write in long form any more in this digital age? For many, playing or journaling Eerie: Rural Horror Storytelling Game for One Player will mark a return to a skill that has long fallen out of use and employing again may require the reworking of some very lazy muscle memory.

Eerie: Rural Horror Storytelling Game for One Player is mechanically simple, but it pushes us to be imaginative and to go back directly to the telling of stories that we drew upon for inspiration when we first began roleplaying. Of course, all good Journaling games should do that, and as well as being no exception to that, Eerie: Rural Horror Storytelling Game for One Player provides an easy way into a different, but equally imaginative way of roleplaying.

This weekend, the Porch Sales return, even if we’re moving them inside for the duration. This weekend, the gallery opens from 4:00 pm to 9:00 pm on Saturday, July 17, and we’ll be open on July 25 and 31, too. … Continue reading →

Today I am talking with Roderic Waibel the creator of Chromatic Dungeons which is in the middle of its Kickstarter. Which you can find here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1693797308/chromatic-dungeons?theotherside

Tim Brannan/The Other Side:  Let’s start at the beginning, who are you and what do you do?

Roderic Waibel:  I started gaming in 1981 with the Basic Set, and quickly fell in love and moved to AD&D.  Been involved in RPGs every day since, from the first map I drew as a kid, to my first game I wrote in 1986 (I still have a copy of that, and it’s...nothing to be proud of lol).  I’m a project manager as a day job, but have been an indie publisher officially for the past 10 years or so.

TB/TOS: You mention in your bio you have been writing RPGs since 1986.  Anything, in particular, you want to share? What are some of your past hits?

RW:  My biggest commercial success would have to be Compact Heroes.  During my time in the military, portability was a big thing.  It’s one of the reasons why MtG took off for servicepeople; you could easily take it with you while full rulebooks were hard to do that.  So I created a card game that played like a traditional role-playing game.  That won DieHard Gamefan’s Best New Game of the Year in 2011 when it came out.  There are other things I’ve created that I like, but most of those were homebrew systems that never took off.  Let’s be honest, most never do.  Why would someone who doesn’t know me want to play a homebrew system when they have so many officially supported systems out there.  They were all pretty much vanity games.  The only other product that has done pretty well is the megadungeon: Depths of Felk Mor.  I wrote that right when the 5e playtests came out, and is 5e compatible.  It’s written in an old school aesthetic, and chock full of 80s pop culture references lol. Kind of a mix between Cthulhu and 80s cartoon hour.  Yes, that’s a thing lol.

TB/TOS: What are some of your favorite games? Why?

RW:  RPGs are my all-time favorite because I’ve always been very creative and love to imagine things.  Strategy games probably come in second place.  I always have a fond soft spot for Axis&Allies in the non-RPG genre.

TB/TOS: Fantastic. Now tell everyone a little bit about your game Chromatic Dungeons.

RW:  Old school D&D was and is my favorite edition.  Not just for nostalgia (admittedly that is part of it, but a small part), but also because of the kind of experience it lends to.  Rulings over rules, speed of play, zero to hero, player creativity and strategy (you can’t assume every encounter should be winnable which is something I see a lot in modern games), etc.  However, it was a product of its time.  That is, catered and marketed to white young males.  As a young white male myself at the time, of course I never noticed anything problematic.  This isn’t a dig at any of the creators of the game, or any of the players of the game.  It was what it was at the time with what we considered socially OK.  But as we’ve grown as a community over the years, we’ve become incredibly diverse.  That diversity should be represented and included.  People other than straight white men like myself should be able to pick up the game and see themselves represented in it.  Studies have shown, over and over, how a diverse group is much more efficient and beneficial than a monocultural one.  I’ve hired a lot of diverse freelancers and editors for this, and I can tell you that the game is much better for it.  

Then you’ve got lessons learned mechanically over the past decades we can rely on that should be applied.  Things like ascending armor class that are more intuitive rules.

These two factors together were the driving force behind Chromatic Dungeons.  Currently there is a lot of drama going on regarding comments some of the folks who call themselves OSR or old school have made with the new re-branding of TSR.  But that isn’t what caused Chromatic Dungeons to come about.  Comments like those folks are making the news now because they are big names, but the fact is that for a long time, the OSR community has had to deal with a large portion of fans who have been espousing exclusionary opinions.  I firmly do NOT believe the OSR itself is like that, or that most fans are like that.  But it’s a problem that needs to be addressed because there is a reputation the OSR is getting, and it’s not good.  We can’t deny that.  And as a fan of the OSR, I will do what I can to show how the OSR can also be welcoming and inclusive.  

Thus, about six months ago, Chromatic Dungeons was born in its first iterations.  It’s basically a game that captures the best things about B/X, 1e, and 2e, while applying modern sensibilities and lessons learned since then, and being presented in an old-school aesthetic that represents how diverse our gaming hobby has become.

TB/TOS: What do you feel makes Chromatic Dungeons a step above or better than say current Clones on the market now?  What do you think makes it special?  Or bottom line, why should people want to buy this game?

RW:  Having fun is the best reason to play a game, right?  That’s the ultimate goal?  Many clones out there try to replicate the rules of those older versions extremely closely.  But as anyone who played back then will tell you, many of the rules got in the way.  We simply ignored them.  Chromatic Dungeons applies some mechanical changes to help alleviate that.  The first and most obvious is the move to ascending Armor Class.  But then you’ve also got a revision to alignment, making it much less impactful in regards to driving a PC’s behavior or moral code.  It’s a cosmic force that acts as an influence, not a strict moral code you have to follow.  Traditional racial traits have been re-done as well.  Now those choices only give a few traits, but there is a heritage system instead that anyone can choose that gives you traditional racial bonuses.  For example, you can choose to play a human with the fey heritage (let’s say they grew up in an elven city), so they can gain resistance to sleep and charm, two traits traditionally reserved only for elves.  Another change is getting rid of dead levels.  While not being a robust customized able system like feats were in 3e (that would defeat the purpose of having a streamlined system like b/x), each class does offer something other than a hit point gain at most levels.

And then of course there’s the presentation.  The game is presented to be welcoming and inclusive of everyone.  Making everyone welcome is always a good thing, as it grows our hobby and keeps it alive. 

TB/TOS: You list a few differences from older games on the Kickstarter site.  What was your driving motivation behind these?

RW: I guess I answered that above.  I tend to ramble lol.  The key goal is to capture the feel of gaming back then, but rules changes can be made as long as that goal isn’t compromised.  You should be able to pick up an old module from the 80s and play Chromatic Dungeons with very little conversion.  You should be able to do it on the fly, actually.  That’s important for me to keep.  People have a plethora of material from the old days, and they should absolutely be able to use it with Chromatic Dungeons. 

TB/TOS: The Character sheet looks fantastic and has a great old-school feel to it.  What things from the older games did you want to retain?

RW: The most important is speed of play and player skill.  Players shouldn’t feel discouraged from attempting something with their PC if they don’t have a skill for it.  The less a player references a character sheet, and the more they go to their imagination to describe what they want, the better.  Keeping players engaged is important. However, if players don’t prefer to use player skill for whatever reason, they can fall back on a skill system that is incredibly simple.  It’s a roll under ability system.  If your PC wants to jump up to the chandelier and swing across the room, they don’t need an acrobatics skill to do that.  Simply roll the d20 and if it’s under your Dexterity score, congrats!  This system also makes every point in an ability count.  A gripe of mine from the current system is that there is no difference between a 14 and 15 ability score.

TB/TOS: What sorts of games do you see others playing with these rules?

RW:  Like all old-school games, I see people taking bits and pieces of this and applying it to their own games.  Most old-school gamers are also big into homebrewing.  Back in the day, we all created our own worlds and adventures, and I don’t see that as much now.  So I can easily see someone taking an old adventure module and playing Chromatic Dungeons with it.  Or taking the heritage system out of CD and using it for their OSE game.

TB/TOS: Who would you say Chromatic Dungeons is for?

RW:  Everyone.  I know that sounds cliche, but it’s true.  It’s a big driver behind the whole project.  Everyone should feel like they can play this.  However, and there’s always a however, I fully understand that some folks might not find the appeal.  And that’s totally OK.  We all have different preferences, and there is no one-true-way to play the game.   For example, because the game is streamlined, optimizers might not be drawn to it because there isn’t the level of customization options as 3e.  If you were to force me to answer, I’d say this game is especially for those who want a classic feel of gaming with modern design sensibilities, and who were traditionally not represented in those older games.  But really, anyone who enjoys the style of old school gaming, regardless of the diversity or lack thereof, should enjoy this game.  Because the game makes a point to represent people of every demographic doesn’t mean it excludes the traditional straight white male (I would be excluding myself!).  Yes, I’ve heard that complaint as well.

I will add this:  Because no intelligent mundane humanoid has a default alignment in Chromatic Dungeons, there are several people who I’ve heard say this game excludes people who just want the old way of doing things, where all orcs are evil.  I want to be very clear that in CD, you absolutely can still do that.  I’m not showing up to anyone’s house to “cancel” them.  It’s just not the default assumption anymore.  But you as a GM can do whatever you want, and play them however your table feels like.  That’s still a perfectly valid way to play the game. 

TB/TOS: What are your future plans for this game?

RW:  The immediate plans are to put out a monthly Zine that offers new material.  Think of it like a mini-Dragon magazine from back in the day.  The first four are already done, and part of the Kickstarter as a matter of fact.  Writing the fifth one now (really expanding on orcs, their various cultures, etc).

TB/TOS: And finally, for the benefit of my audience, well and me, who is your favorite witch or magic-using character?

RW:  The second fantasy novel I read after the Book of Three was Sword of Shannara.  So Allanon has always had a soft spot in my heart.

I want to add one final note regarding this campaign.  It’s important for me to walk the talk.  It’s one reason why I made it a point to hire diverse freelancers and editors.  This isn’t mentioned on the Kickstarter page because Kickstarter cannot be used as a fundraiser for charities, but I have committed to matching 25% of net profits and donating that to The Trevor Project.  That’s a great charity that helps at-risk LGBTQ youth, and to give them the support they need.  So by supporting this project, you’re not just getting a great RPG, you’re helping at-risk youth who deserve to be treated better than our society does. 

Links

Chromatic Dungeons Kickstarter

Izegrim Creations

• Blog

DriveThruRPG

• Izegrim Creations
• Roderic Waibel, author

The classic hex crawl is an open-ended sandbox-style adventure in which the players and their characters explore a large geographical area, containing various Points of Interest, each of which can be explored individually or perhaps in a sequence determined from clues found at each location. Typically, the Player Characters will have a good reason to explore the area, such as being tasked to find a specific location or person, but instead of knowing where the location or person might be, only know that they are somewhere in that region. Armed with limited knowledge, the Player Characters will enter the area and travel from one hex to the next, perhaps merely running into a random encounter or nothing at all, but perhaps finding a Point of Interest. Such a Point of Interest might be connected to the specific location or person they are looking for, and so might contain clues as to its location, then again it might not. In which case it is just a simple Point of Interest. Initially free to explore in whatever direction they want, as the Player Characters discover more clues, their direction of travel will typically gain more focus until the point when they finally locate their objective. Classic hex crawls include X1 Isle of Dread for Expert Dungeons & Dragons and Slavers for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Second Edition, whilst more recent examples have been Barrowmaze  and What Ho, Frog Demons!.

The Undying Sands is a hex crawl—or sand crawl (sandbox?)—from Games Omnivorous dotted with crumbling ruins, antiquated temples, lost technology, and pristine natural wonders beyond the reach of most. It combines numerous influences and genres, can involve the Player Characters in the factions squabbling for control of the desert, and it leaves plenty of scope for the Game Master to add her own content.

The Undying Sands is however, a hex crawl of a different stripe. First, it is systemless; second, it is improvisational; third, it is random; and fourth, it is physical. Undying Sands consists of four elements. These are thirty hex tiles, Game Master Screen, a double-sided poster, and a cloth bag. The hexes, done in sturdy cardboard and full colour, measure six-and-a-half centimetres across. Their backs are either blank or numbered. The former show simple sand dunes on their front, whilst those have locations on their front. There are fourteen such locations. Twelve of them have three locations, for example, ‘The Eye!’, a spiral of maelstrom of coloured sand long regarded as sacred by both the living and dead, the Bottomless Pit at the heart of the Eye!, and The Dual Inns, establishments which flank the Eye!, one catering to the living, one to the undead. All of which is to be found on hex number two. The thirteenth hex is the location of the Forgotten Pyramids, a tomb and dungeon complex, and the fourteenth hex is the location of The Grand City of Sand, a former seat of civilisation which has long begun to crumble and let the sand drift along its boulevards and alleys… The style of the artwork on the hexes is busy and cartoonish, but eye-catching and gives The Undying Sands a singular look which sets it apart from both other gaming accessories and neighbouring regions.

The Game Master Screen is a horizontal, three panel affair. The front depicts an adventuring party about to flee from a sandstorm after having discovered a strange vehicle and a mechanical man. The back is the meat of the supplement. Here, from left to right, it explains what The Undying Sands is, how to use and the best way to use it; tables of rumours, loot from the body, treasure, encounters, dangers of the land, and curses; details of each the numbered hexes; and of The Grand City of Sand—its history, what the Player Characters can do within its walls, its factions and jobs available, and the Many Shops of the Grand Bazaar. The A4-sized double-sided poster shows the Forgotten Pyramids on the one side, and The Grand City of Sand on the other. Both are easy to read and refer to. Lastly, the cloth bag is big enough to hold all of the hex tiles. One issue with the strong physical presence of The Undying Sands is that there is not really a means of storage for all it, apart from cloth bag for the hex tiles. It does leave you wishing that there was a box for it and your Game Master’s notes.

So that is the physicality of The Undying Sands. What of the random nature of The Undying Sands? Simply, the hexes are placed in the cloth bag and drawn one-by-one, as the Player Characters cross or explore one hex and then move onto the next, creating the region hex-by-hex. If the hex is simple sand dunes, the Game Master might roll on the ‘Encounters in the Sands’ or ‘Dangers of the Lands’ tables to create random encounters. When the Player Characters reach a numbered location, they can explore one or more of individual places there, the Game Master improvising what will be encountered there based on the sentence or two description given for each. There is more detail for both the Forgotten Pyramids and The Grand City of Sand, especially the latter, and thus more for the Game Master to base her improvisation upon. This randomness means that playing The Undying Sands will be different from one gaming group to the next, more so than with other hex crawls or scenarios.

So that is the random nature of The Undying Sands and the improvisational nature of The Undying Sands? What of the systemless aspect of The Undying Sands? No gaming system is referenced anywhere on The Undying Sands, yet there is an assumed genre within its details. So it is weird. There are Necrocamelmancers, raising undead camels, Alligator Ghouls, the undead camel races of the city are easy money, curses are suffered under the irregular Blood Moon Eclipses, spells can be learned from studying a thrumming blacklight monolith (but curses suffered too), and more. Its obvious genre is fantasy, but it is really Science Fantasy. Ancient robots can be encountered, tech-marvels and ancient sand-buggies found, and more. Which lends itself to roleplaying games better than others. Numenera would be an obvious choice, as would Electric Bastionland: Deeper into the Odd, Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm, Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic, and Troika!. It could even be run using Rifts if the Game Master wanted to! A more generic rules system would also work too, as would any number of Old School Renaissance retroclones. Whatever the choice of rules, the Game Master will need to know them very well in order to improvise.

As suggested by the range of roleplaying games which The Undying Sands would be a natural fit for, its influences are equally as diverse. These begin with the Ancient World—Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Greco-Roman world, and these are joined by Mad Max and Jodorowsky’s Dune. The resulting combination depicts a lost, even fallen technological civilisation, its once glorious past infused with a Pulp sensibility. This lends it the possibility that The Undying Sands could be shifted from a fantasy to a planetary Sci-Fi setting, playing up the fantasy elements as weird, technology sufficiently advanced to appear as magic.

In terms of play, The Undying Sands sort of traps the Player Characters within its confines. It keeps them within its limits until the last hex is drawn from the bag and they can find their way out. By that time, the Player Characters will probably have visited every hex and encountered multiple threats and dangers, and if they have engaged with any of the four factions to be found in The Grand City of Sand, they are likely to have found employment too, and that will drive them back out into The Undying Sands again. How or when that will happen all depends upon when the city location is drawn during play. What this means is that The Undying Sands is a mini-campaign in its own right.

The Undying Sands is fantastically thematic and fantastically presented. A Game Master could grab this, set-up the Game Master’s Screen, pull the first tile, and start running a mini-campaign. However, that would take a lot of improvisation and improvisational skill upon the part of the Game Master, who also has to know the game system she is running The Undying Sands with very well to run it easily. All of which is needed because the textual content of The Undying Sands really consists of prompts and hooks with little in the way of detail—if any. Perhaps a better way of approaching The Undying Sands—especially if the Game Master is not as confident about her ability to improvise—is to work through the locations, especially The Grand City of Sand, and prepare, prepare, prepare. Some Game Masters may relish the prospect, but others may wish that there had been more information given in The Undying Sands—even ‘The Undying Sands Companion’ which made the task easier for them.

Ultimately, The Undying Sands gives a Game Master the means to improvise and run a fantastically pulpy campaign in a range of genres against a weird Science Fantasy, lost worlds background. How much improvisation and how much preparation is required, will very much be down to the individual Game Master.

Been a little quiet here I know.  So I figured I'd share an update.

Work is progressing nicely again on my various Basic Bestiaries.   I am still working out the kinks of my semi-universal stat block and work on what looks like will be an obscene number of demons.

The complete column is the number that is 100% complete, ready for the last pass of edits.  Started has everything from just a name to almost everything minus one or two details. It also includes the complete. 

You can see that when I did this screenshot I was at 623 demons.  That number has jumped by three completed demons and 10 more incomplete/started.   The 10 are my Qliphoth demons I talked about way back in April.   The Qliphoth are just one of the man new demonic groups I am going to be introducing in this book.  

If you have been following my work for a while now you know I have Lilim, Eodemon, Shedim, Baalserph, and Calabim fiends among all my "demons."  This book will introduce the Qliphoth, Asura, Tarterian, Yaoguai, and Yōkai demonic lineages.I have a total of 11 lineages so far.  I just need to find a better name for the Neutral Evil Daemons. 

AD&D 2nd ed renamed them the Yugoloths, which I kind of liked to be honest, but the name is not OGC.   Even Pathfinder still calls them Daemons.  I mean it works yeah and it helps make it easier to use my books with your old AD&D ones.  But I think I can come up with something better really.   I mean I already split the devils into two separate lineages of the Calabim and the Baalseraph, so I am certainly not being tied down by tradition or nostalgia here. Not to mention my Qliphoth are quite different than Pathfinder's Qlippoth.

So why are there FOUR Basic Bestairies? Ah.  So back in April (I think) I was beginning to realize that my Basic Bestiary had grown too large.  I had already portioned off the demons (good plan) and the book was growing more and more.  Even right now I am at 387 complete non-demonic monsters.  So, I made another cut.

Basic Bestiary I, Monsters & Maleficarum, covers all the monsters that kept coming up in my research over the years on witches and witchcraft. This includes many of my Monstrous Mondays posts.

Basic Bestiary II, Books of the Dead, covers all the undead.  At least half of the book will be vampires.  

Basic Bestiary III, Demons & Devils, is pretty much what it says on the cover.

Basic Bestiary IV, covers...well, let me hold on to that one a little bit longer.

The goal was to release them all in 13-week intervals over the course of a year.  Though now I am giving thought to BBI and BBII to be released right away.  I suppose it depends on how much art I can buy and how much of BBIV I get done.

Speaking of art, I had some great art for these, but now I am planning on using that elsewhere.

I am still planning on releasing these in both hardcover and softcover formats so they can fit on your shelf next to your Advanced and Basic-era books respectively.

I am going with the Romantic period Goya and Füssli because they capture the mood of these books perfectly.  BBIV also goes with Füssli.  

I am quite excited to get these to you.  There will be some familiar faces here, but hopefully changed a bit to make them feel new.  My undead book for example takes all the undead combat rules I have used and puts them all in one place. I also universally use my new draining rules here too.  Demons get updates across the board and even what I call "the usual suspects" get a boost. 

My hope is you get as much fun out of these as I did working on them!

Six years ago this month, things changed drastically for the Triffid Ranch. That was when we signed the lease for what turned out to be the first gallery space, out at what was Valley View Center in North Dallas, and … Continue reading →

- source

I touched briefly on this with my posts on Building a Darklord, Castle Amber, and Horror Adventures, but one of the key strengths of  Ravenloft has always been its mutability.  It can go anywhere, it be what you need it to be and while some might bemoan its pastiche of horror literature stereotypes, that same familiarity allows it to work in a lot of ways with other books and games.

While I am perfectly happy, indeed happier now, that Ravenloft is more amorphous and less of a "world" there are plenty of sources out there if you want to expand it beyond what lives in between the book covers now to a larger world.

Here are some resources I am planning on using to make my Ravenloft campaign (whenever I can get that going!) a little more personalized.

Ravenloft and Cthulhu

While this seems to be a "no-brainer" just slapping Cthulhu into a game almost never works.  Sure there are some great monsters here, but the real value-add here are the sections on running a cosmic horror game.  This is a great overall resource, and a fantastic one when running an adventure in Bluetspur.

Ravenloft and Fantasy Horror

I mentioned already the utility that Pathfinder's Horror Adventures provides in setting up some details for a Dark Fantasy Horror game.  The 3.x d20 system in Pathfinder is similar enough to the 5e one in Ravenloft to provide plenty of ideas with a minimum of conversion needed.   If you must have them, the Fear, Sanity, and Corruption rules can be ported over to 5e Ravenloft.  Even some of the Feats can be used (but used sparingly).  Spells and Magic items can be ported over almost as is really. 

In fact, I have found it so useful in the last few days that I have moved it from my "Pathfinder" shelf to my "Horror" shelf.

BlackRose

Going back to some of the earliest posts on this blog are my ideas for a BlackRose game.  Now with the new 5e Blue Rose out, it is practically begging me to use it for this.  For me, the ideas behind BlackRose have changed a bit.  I think a Domain that is similar to Aldea, but maybe more of one of sadness.  Not Aldea, but using a lot of the ideas and rules.  Something more akin to my Kingdom of Rain.  Which has one foot planted squarely in Blue Rose and another in a melancholic sort of Folk Horror that would find a home in Ravenloft.  I ran an adventure under the title "Kingdom of Rain" a while back. It was a little Aldea, a little bit Innsmouth, and a little bit Alton, Illinois.  There are some solid Fey elements to it as well; I introduced my River Hags here.  A version of Kingdom of Rain is set to be published under the name "Witching Weather," so watch this space for more on that.

Ravenloft and the Runewild

Speaking of fey lands, the Runewild from Sneak Attack Press also provides a bit of a wilder fey world with tinges of Horror and Dark Fantasy.  If you ever wanted to expand on the Domain of Tepset then this is a fantastic source.  Again, as with the Horror Adventures and Blue Rose, there is material here that can be dropped into Ravenloft "as is" with very little modification.  The Runewild also help build up that "dream-like feeling" I like to use in Ravenloft before hitting characters with the Nightmares.

My Kingdom of Rain lives in the intersection of the triquetra-shaped Venn diagram of Ravenloft, Blue Rose, and Runewild.  I can also use this for expanding my new Domain with The Snow Queen as the Darklord.  Though do I REALLY want my Kingdom of Rain converted to a Dark Domain?  I'll have to suss that one out as I go through my books here.

Ravenloft and Ravenloft

Sounds odd, but most of the grief the new book is getting online is "it's not like the old Ravenloft." Ok, fine. If you must, make it like it.   Most of the Ravenloft books are fluff anyway.  Grab what you want from any of the old books and reuse it.  Want Viktor back instead of Viktra? Ok, do that.  I might create a Domain where they are both there and there is an intense rivalry between them.  I am thinking Father and Daughter.  Their creations of course are caught in this battle.  Rival evil scientists. Using their creations to get at the other.  Both wanting to capture their opponents' creations to learn their secrets. Viktor is intensely jealous of his daughter fearing her creation Else is superior, all the wile claiming she knows nothing that he did not teach her.  Viktra hates her father for never sharing his work and finds Adam to be an abomination.  

The more I type this, the more I like it.  Go all Hammer Horror for Viktor and Giallo horror for Viktra.  Set them on different sides of Lamordia where their minions search the countryside for parts for their experiments and to hopefully capture one of the more successful ones of their rival Darklords. 

It's one part Frankenstein Created Woman (1967), one part Lady Frankenstein (1971), and one part War of the Gargantuas (1966).  All set in Fantasy Gothic Horror Switzerland. Sprinkle in a little bit of Reanimator and I am good to go. 

Horror is my favorite seasoning for most games.  Ravenloft lets me do this with everything.

Ernst Fuchs was one of the first artists shared on this site way back in early 2006.

Goblins are ubiquitous in many game worlds.  In some, they are a constant threat, in others a nuisance. The goblins of Lord of the Rings are pretty far removed from the ones of Labyrinth, or even the fairy tales of Grimm.  But they are always a good foil for low-level parties.  In my games goblins tend to be more Chaotic Neutral. Not evil really, but maybe a little naughty time to time.

No one though will ever confuse the Mad Hatter Goblin for anything than what it is, pure evil.

Goblin, Mad Hatter
Small Humanoid (Fey)

Frequency: Very Rare
Number Appearing: 1 (1)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil [Chaotic]
Movement: 90' (30') [9"]
Armor Class: 7 [12]
Hit Dice: 2d8+2* (11 hp)
  Small 2d6+2* (9 hp)
Attacks: 1 weapon
Damage: 1d6
Special: Cause Fear
Size: Small
Save: Monster 2 
Morale: 8 (NA)
Treasure Hoard Class: None
XP: 35 (OSE) 47 (LL)

Str: 9 (0) Dex: 17 (+2) Con: 14 (+1) Int: 10 (0) Wis: 8 (-1) Cha: 5 (-2)

The Mad Hatter Goblin gets its name from the gruesome way it displays the remains of its kills,  by stacking the severed heads of its victims on top of its own head.   These goblins appear as do other goblins, save for maybe slightly larger.  They have a look in their eyes that speaks of desperation and maybe no small amount of madness.

Each time a Mad Hatter Goblin makes a kill they remove the head from the body.  The goblin then takes the heads of previous victims and ties them to the top of the new head and then all of these are tied to the goblin's own head.  The oldest, and most decayed, heads are at the top.  The sight of a mad hatter is such that anyone under 4 HD/level must make a saving throw vs. paralysis or be stunned in fear, unable to move or react for 1d4+1 rounds.    The mad hatter will go after these targets first.  Creatures greater than 4 HD/level are immune to this effect.

Mad hatters are both reviled and respected in a goblin community.  The number of heads one has is their level of prestige. When one mad hatter encounters another there is usually a duel of some sort.  The loser gets to contribute their head to the victorious mad hatter's collection.

The only treasure kept by a mad hatter is their collection of heads.