June is the month I usually dedicate to Basic-era (B/X, BECMI) D&D, but not always. I have D&D-related plans for June, but I am not entirely done with science fiction yet. 

I have been doing a feature most nights, largely without pomp or circumstance, called Dracula, The Hunters' Journals, where I post the entries from the novel Dracula on the day they were recorded.  It has been a odd thing to post all this Dracula and Victorian content in the midst of all the sci-fi material I have been talking about all month.  But it is not unprecedented. 

Vampires in Space

What do Buck Rogers, Doctor Who, Vampirella, and Colin Wilson all have in common? They are all different science fiction media properties that have featured stories of vampires in space.

One of the strong selling points I think of our new Thirteen Parsecs RPG is it's 100% compatibility with NIGHT SHIFT.  Creatures, characters, classes, and more can be lifted whole from NIGHT SHIT and dropped right into Thirteen Parsecs.  You just need to figure out why they are there.

The vampire in NIGHT SHIFT is based on the Gothic vampire of old, which, of course, has roots in mythology, but mostly in Dracula, Ruthven, and Carmilla. It is also flexible enough to allow for various modern re-interpretations against the Gothic archetype. There is no reason why this can't be extended beyond that to space.  And like I said before, I kinda owe it to my 10-year-old self to at least try a Space Vampire. 

So, how have Space Vampires been done already?

Buck Rogers TV Series: "The Space Vampire"

In this episode from the 1979 TV series "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century," Buck Rogers faces a creature known as a Vorvon, a space vampire that drains the life energy from its victims. The episode blends science fiction with classic vampire mythology and powers, as the Vorvon can possess and control other beings. Buck must find a way to stop this menace before it can spread its evil influence throughout the space station. As expected, the Vorvon goes after Col. Wilma Dearing (though it does give Erin Gray a bit more to do). The vampire here can only be destroyed by flying it into a sun.

Doctor Who: "State of Decay"

This 1980 serial from "Doctor Who" features the Fourth Doctor, played by Tom Baker. The Doctor and Romana II and unknown to them, Adric, land on a planet where a trio of ancient vampire lords. These human explorers encountered the last of a race known as the Great Vampires, and have enslaved the local population. The story explores the conflict between the advanced Time Lords and the primitive yet powerful vampires, mixing gothic horror with futuristic elements.  Here the Great Vampires are depicted as an ancient race, as old as the Time Lords themselves, and their wars with the Time Lords. Again, like the Buck Rogers episode, many Vampire mythological elements are re-translated here.

Of note, well at least to me, is a line dropped by the Doctor that every inhabited planet has myths about vampires. We will later see other types of vampires in future episodes. The Haemovores in the 7th Doctor's "The Curse of Fenric," the Plasmavore in the 10th Doctor's "Smith and Jones," and the Saturnyn, another type of vampire (sexy fish vampires, according to the 11th Doctor) in "Vampires of Venice."

I discuss both of these episodes here and more about vampires in Doctor Who specifically here. 

Lifeforce (1985)

"Lifeforce" is a fairly notorious sci-fi horror film directed by Tobe Hooper. The plot centers on a space mission that discovers an alien spacecraft hidden in the tail of Halley's Comet. Inside, the crew finds three humanoid creatures in suspended animation. When brought back to Earth, these beings awaken and reveal themselves to be energy vampires, draining life force from humans to survive. 

The film was a minor hit in 1985, maybe not so much for the plot or story, but because it featured then-newcomer Mathilda May, who appeared completely nude throughout most of the film. It also included Steve Railsback, who would later give a strong and memorable performance as the abductee Duane Barry in the "X-Files" and Patrick Stewart who would the following year go on to star in "Star Trek the Next Generation."

This movie is, in theory anyway, based on the 1976 book by Colin Wilson, "The Space Vampires." I read the book after seeing the movie, and they have a few connections, like some vampires and character names. They are so different. I'll talk about the book separately.

Vampirella

Ah, Vampy. Vampirella is a character from the eponymous comic book series created by Forrest J. Ackerman and artist Trina Robbins, first appearing in 1969. She is an alien vampire from the planet Drakulon, where blood flows like water. After her planet is doomed, she travels to Earth. Blending science fiction and horror, Vampirella fights evil supernatural beings while struggling with her vampiric nature. The character has become iconic, appearing in various comic series, novels, and a 1996 film adaptation. of late she is often paired with Red Sonja in a number of reality spanning adventures. The strangest, and oddly the most fun one? "Red Sonja & Vampirella meet Betty & Veronica." On paper it should never work, yet it does.  Part of this, I think, also is due to the amazing art of Maria Sanapo.

Clark Ashton Smith's Works

Clark Ashton Smith, a long-time favorite here at The Other Side, incorporated vampiric themes into his science fiction and fantasy stories. In "The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis" (1932), explorers on Mars encounter a parasitic creature that drains their life force, functioning similarly to a vampire. His works often feature otherworldly landscapes and cosmic horrors, blending the supernatural with speculative elements.

The Space Vampires by Colin Wilson

This 1976 novel is the basis for the movie "Lifeforce." It follows the story of alien vampires who travel to Earth and attempt to drain the life energy of humans. The novel delves into themes of sexuality, existentialism, and the survival instinct, blending sci-fi with classic vampire lore. 

The vampires, the almost Lovecraftian "Ubbo-Sathla," here, are more like Sex-Vampires. So that much tracks with the movie. The novel takes place in the late 21st century, not the 20th, and the discovery of the alien ship is in the Asteroid belt. 

Shambleau by C.L. Moore

"Shambleau" is a science fiction short story written by C.L. Moore, first published in the November 1933 issue of "Weird Tales" magazine. It is the debut story of her character Northwest Smith, a space-faring adventurer often compared to figures like Han Solo or Conan the Barbarian. "Shambleau" is noted for its innovative blend of science fiction and horror, as well as for its exploration of erotic and psychological themes.

The creature, Shambleau, is an exotic alien beauty with snakes for hair like Medusa. She has a hypnotic effect on those around her and, like Wilson's vampires, drains life energy. In many ways, she is a vampire, much in the same way that the Leanan sídhe is. There is also a scene in the Lifeforce movie where the female vampire (Mathilda May) is created out of the blood of two victims and she bears a passing resemblance to the description of Shambleau. 

Vampires in Thirteen Parsecs

How you do vampires will largely be up to your Thirteen Parsecs campaign. For example, I will likely not have them in my "Space Truckers" games except as a gag. But "Darker Stars" is a different story. 

I would have them as an ancient but dying race. Their homeworld orbits a "Black Sun," a Brown Dwarf star. Their planet would be the last dying remains of a great feudal empire where Vampires were all the nobility. They took to the stars to find new planets to drain, but encountering humanity from Earth, they met their first real resistance in their 10,000-year reign. Part of the Darker Stars camping mode would be this first contact.

I once saw a meme that said you can turn a Gothic cathedral on its side to make a gothic-looking spaceship. That's what the ships of the vampires look like. Something that should look ancient and like it was built as an act of worship to their Vampire masters. 

To give you an idea of what I am doing in Darker Stars, I don't even consider the Vampires to be the biggest threat. 

I can't wait to get this all to you.

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.
What was notable about Goodman Games Gen Con 2018 Program Guide: The Black Heart of Thakulon the Undying was rather than providing a range of support for the roleplaying games published by Goodman Games, it focused on just the one, its flagship, the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, and did so by providing one big single adventure—a tournament adventure. Or rather, a series of three connected and thematic dungeons that were played by multiple teams at Gen Con 50. Not only did Goodman Games Gen Con 2018 Program Guide: The Black Heart of Thakulon the Undying provide the dungeons ready to play, but also the same means of scoring as used for the tournament so that a group playing at home could measure their progress against those who participated in the event itself. It is a format that the publisher for the next title in the series, the Goodman Games 2019 Yearbook: Riders on the Phlogiston.
Goodman Games 2019 Yearbook: Riders on the Phlogiston, though, goes beyond Goodman Games Gen Con 2018 Program Guide: The Black Heart of Thakulon the Undying in terms of format, scope, and scale. In terms of format, it comes not as one book, but five, all contained in a bright and attractive wraparound cover. The five books are ‘Riders on the Phlogiston’, which contains the tournament adventure of the title, ‘Riders on the Phlogiston – Player Handouts’, which provides the visual clues for the adventure, ‘Riders on the Phlogiston – Judge’s Pack’, which provides a guide to running the tournament and more for the Judge, ‘Riders on the Phlogiston – Player Pack’, which provides advice and rules for the tournament for the players as well as the pre-generated Player Characters, and ‘Goodman High Class of 1974 Yearbook’, which contains the community content and overview of Goodman Games attended events in the previous year. In terms of scope, the three parts of ‘Riders on the Phlogiston’ will in turn take the Player Characters to Terra A.D. and the post-apocalyptic future of Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic, then the Shudder Mountains of Dungeon Crawl Classics #83: The Chained Coffin, and finally, the weird world of Dungeon Crawl Classics #84: Peril on the Purple Planet. (It should be noted that none of those are required to run the tournament, but the Judge will enjoy the references, as will her players if they have time between their characters getting themselves killed.) Finally, the scale and brutality of ‘Riders on the Phlogiston’ is turned up to the maximum, as the Player Characters race across three different worlds, attempting to outpace the ever-expanding phlogistonic sphere that will kill them all and survive to the end to face the one responsible for their situation—who they thought dead at the start of the first part, something none of the tournament teams managed to achieve. In other words, they all ended in a ‘TPK’, or ‘Total Party Kill’. Make no mistake, ‘Riders on the Phlogiston’ is designed to be and is a tough adventure.
‘Riders on the Phlogiston’ begins in media res, with the Player Characters about to prevent their arch-nemesis, the vile sorcereress, Haera the White, and her band of crocmen about to summon something unspeakable. Being stalwart heroes, the Player Characters leap into action, but in managing to sop her, they find themselves flung into the first of several increasingly odd worlds. ‘Round 1: The Infinite Phlogistopic Engine Complex’ proper, opens with the Player Characters in an experimental energy complex which has suffered a reactor meltdown exacerbated by the phlogiston explosion caused by their intervention in Haera the White’s summoning. Here the Player Characters must adapt to a highly advanced technological facility—so advanced that magic works here too—and work out how the basic technology works, solve some incredibly fiendish puzzles, and then race to escape. There is a flash-freezing device to get past which could stop them in their tracks, a nuclear reactor to learn control to not only get past, but also on a mutagenic mist, a lake of carbon tetrachloride—also known as energized cold plasma—to cross and try not to get swarmed by nanites, and teams giant mutant rabbits with the ability to use technology and turn anything into orange-coloured cellulose on touch to get past. The path through is linear and far from easy. It is also, at times, quite complex. The Judge really does need to study this section of the adventure as there are some difficult puzzles which she has to understand and be able to impart the effects when the Player Characters interact with them. In comparison with the other two parts, the map in ‘Round 1: The Infinite Phlogistopic Engine Complex’ is not as interesting, nor does it depict its area as well.
‘Round 2: Beneath The Shudder Mountains’ begins at the bottom of a coal mine and it feels very much more like a traditional Dungeon Crawl Classics scenario, full of weird magic and odd creatures. It is purposefully filled with temptations that lead to dead ends and TPKs, like the giant-like coal outcropping which turns out to be an unkillable coal demon if the Player Characters are greedy enough to pull the silver axe out of its thigh, or the suit of mithril plate armour worn by a body which is under rock pile in a room in danger of a rock fall! Despite these diversions, ‘Round 2: Beneath The Shudder Mountains’ is more obviously linear than ‘Round 1: The Infinite Phlogistopic Engine Complex’ and for the characters and their players, a whole lot less weird. It also benefits from some clearer map excerpts that make it much more straightforward to run. The round ends with a highly entertaining encounter with a Hillbilly Hydra—a Ganderbeast—which has multiple honking geese heads and its own nasty, nasty Critical Hit Table.
‘Round 3: Escape From The Purple Planet’ drops the Player Characters at the base of tomb which they must ascend. This first involves being chased through a labyrinthine cave by a growing Orm Swarm, past a psychic resonator which creates objects in response to their thoughts that might kill them, followed by an ascent up a cylindrical tomb with no means of ascent whilst liquid brass from below wants to drown everyone, and then towards the end, a puzzle involving colour combinations which infuriatingly, relies on the way colours are combined in modern computers and thus on player knowledge. Lastly, ‘Riders on the Phlogiston’ comes full circle for a final confrontation with Haera the White and the chance for the Player Characters to escape back home.
As a tournament scenario, each of the three stages in ‘Riders on the Phlogiston’ is designed to be played in a four-hour slot. That is, of course, if the players and their characters are exploring the dungeons in an optimal manner, making best use of their time and resources. This does not mean that their progress is on a tight schedule, but rather that they should not get too distracted. There are some fiendishly difficult puzzles and traps and the whole affair is, as you would expect highly inventive from start to finish. Throughout ‘Riders on the Phlogiston’, there is advice on running it, including a discussion of the advice given E. Gary Gygax on playing tournament adventures in the Player’s Handbook for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition and how that was not applied in many of the cases that lead to team TPKs, and lots and lots of entertaining tales of how many of the teams and even individual players fared.
‘Riders on the Phlogiston – Player Handouts’ provides a set of images to be given out during play as the Player Characters proceed through the tournament, in ‘Round 1: The Infinite Phlogistopic Engine Complex’ in particular. The ‘Riders on the Phlogiston – Judge’s Pack’ begins with a recap of the tournament just as entertaining as the play reports in ‘Riders on the Phlogiston’, before giving a breakdown of the results, TPKs, deadliest rooms and rounds, and even a comparison with the tournament adventure from the Goodman Games Gen Con 2018 Program Guide: The Black Heart of Thakulon the Undying. This is followed by a list of Special Awards and then the ‘Judges’ Rules And Tournament Guidelines’, including general advice, handling the different Classes in Dungeon Crawl Classics, Critical Hits, and so on. Since ‘Riders on the Phlogiston’ is partly set on Terra A.D. and the post-apocalyptic future of Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic, the new rules for 2018 cover the use of ‘Artifacts Of The Ancients’ and how to work out how they are used and mutations. A good quarter of the ‘Riders on the Phlogiston – Judge’s Pack’ is devoted to the scoring for each round and location.
The ‘Riders on the Phlogiston – Player Pack’ gives the player’s guidance for playing a tournament scenario for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, a minimum of background to the scenario, and in the main, the eleven pre-generated Player Characters. These are all Fourth Level.
The ‘Goodman High Class of 1974 Yearbook’ is the longest book in the pack that makes up Goodman Games 2019 Yearbook: Riders on the Phlogiston. It is also the only book to be in colour in the pack and as the title gives it its theme, which is that of a high school yearbook. This begins with entries for all the members of Goodman High, complete with photograph from their high school photograph, which means bad, oh so bad, haircuts! Goodman Games has always brought a physical presence to any event that it attends, such as the Doom Gong, which is banged at the start and end of tournament sessions and even when a Player Character dies! ‘Real Life Adventures: Quest For The Wizard Van’ charts the beginning of the quest for Goodman Games’ Wizard’s Van. The quest does not get very far, but it is start, and there is a happy ending as Goodman Games definitely has a Wizard’s Van now! Where there was no success in hunting for a wizard’s van for Goodman Games, one addition to the Goodman Games booth are the obelisks, complete with shelves and the means to fly the Dungeon Crawl Classics flags. Nicely, complementing the Doom Gong introduced for Gen Con 50 in 2017 whose construction was detailed in the Goodman Games Gen Con 2018 Program Guide: The Black Heart of Thakulon the Undying, ‘Building the Obelisks’ explains how they were made. It is a surprisingly long, but entertaining piece.
The gaming content in the ‘Goodman High Class of 1974 Yearbook’ is quite light and in keeping with the tone of the high school yearbook is somewhat tongue in cheek in places. Thus, ‘The Partial Spellbook Of Dr. Lotrin Von Weissgras-Geisterblut’ describes a Cleric’s spell that strips flesh of a fresh corpse and animates them into different form, whereas ‘The Customer Creature Catalogue’ details thirty-seven monsters based on photographs of certain winners on the Luck Token Redemption Table found at the back of the Goodman Games Gen Con 2018 Program Guide: The Black Heart of Thakulon the Undying. This does lean into the tongue in cheek tone, with creatures like the ‘Fro-Bro’, a slush/snow elemental, or the ‘Gleft’, a combination tadpole, dragon, and ocular bat! All are depicted in a cartoonish style, and fairly silly. The silliness continues with one of the items on sale at Gen Con 51 at the Goodman Games booth was DCC RPG Nunchuks! Putting aside the ridiculousness of them, ‘Nunchaku!’ gives full rules for their use in Dungeon Crawl Classics. This includes the Nunchaku Master as a variant of the Warrior Class and the only Class capable of using the nunchaku without penalty. There are new Mighty Deeds suitable for the Nunchaku Master, such as ‘Nunchaku Intimidation’ and ‘Nunchaku Counterstrike’. This piece of silliness make you wish that there was a pulpy martial arts setting for Dungeon Crawl Classics.
The Goodman Games Gen Con Program Guides have always thrown a spotlight on the artwork that appears as covers on its titles and in their pages. In this volume with ‘Painting The Froghemoth’, Erol Otus shows off his development of his Froghemoth painting that is featured in the endsheets of Original Adventures Reincarnated #3: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. It is fantastic to see the work in progress and the end result, also shown here, is stunning. ‘Erol And The Rubber Monsters’ looks at his collection of rubber monsters is an entertaining addition.
Every Goodman Games Gen Con Program Guide highlights the activities of the Goodman Games community and the ‘Goodman High Class of 1974 Yearbook’ is no exception. It includes a group photograph of the winners of the program guide’s tournament with ‘Meet The RidersOn The Phlogiston’, a full list of the events Goodman Games planned to attend in 2019, and photographs from the thirty-four events it attended in the previous year! This all highlights Goodman Games’ presence at conventions. It returns to ‘Riders on the Phlogiston’ with ‘News Flash! Origins Tournament Update!’ which reports on what happened when the tournament was run at Origins 2019, a nice complement to the ‘Riders on the Phlogiston – Judge’s Pack’ and its big report on the tournament at Gen Con 2018. There are the usual additions such as ‘road crew flyer DESIGN CONTEST 2019’ and ‘2018 – 2019 mailing label artwork’ too.
The ‘Goodman High Class of 1974 Yearbook’ ends on a more serious and actually more interesting note, especially for scholars of Dungeons & Dragons and anyone with an interest in its inspiration as listed in the Appendix N of the Dungeon Master’s Guide for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition. The latter important because of its strong influence on Dungeon Crawl Classics. ‘Comics In D&D’ by James Maliszewski looks at the very obvious inspirations for art in the Original Dungeons & Dragons taken directly from Marvel Comics. The author tracks down the originals and compares with how they appeared in the roleplaying game to show really just how amateurish the beginnings of the hobby were. Michael Curtis’ ‘Adventures In Fiction: Ballantine Adult Fantasy’ is engaging history and examination of the fiction published by Ballatine Books as part of its Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series between 1969 and 1974. Several of the titles would go on to be listed in Appendix N, so this is a nice piece of bibliographic archaeology for Appendix N. Lastly, in ‘Appendix N Archaeology’ spotlights are thrown on authors who might have been included in Appendix N. The three authors discussed—Harold Lamb, Clark Ashton Smith, and William Hope Hodgson—are all interesting and in each case, are given good introductions to their respective works and examinations of their influence on E. Gary Gygax and Dungeons & Dragons. These are all excellent essays and if Goodman Games were to expand this into a book all of its very own, it would a fine complement to the Appendix N.
Physically, the Goodman Games 2019 Yearbook: Riders on the Phlogiston is an odd product with multiple booklets and books, one in full colour, the others not. All though are decently laid out, easy to read, lavishly illustrated throughout, and good-looking both in black and white, and in colour, much in keeping with the other entries in the series. However, the pack as a whole is not quite as durable because it is made up of several parts rather than a whole and is both easier to damage and more difficult to store.
The Goodman Games 2019 Yearbook: Riders on the Phlogiston greatly differs from the previous entries in the series—and even from the Goodman Games Gen Con 2018 Program Guide: The Black Heart of Thakulon the Undying—as it contains only the one scenario and not as much gaming content. Consequently, it is not going to be of interest to anyone who does not play Dungeon Crawl Classics and who does not want what is a very tough tournament adventure. There are points of interest though for the Dungeons & Dragons scholar in ‘Goodman High Class of 1974 Yearbook’ that are worth reading even if the tournament adventure is not to their liking. For the Dungeon Crawl Classics devotee, there is of course, the community content to enjoy, but what Goodman Games 2019 Yearbook: Riders on the Phlogiston really presents is the roleplaying game at its hardest, its most challenging, and even if said devotee never gets to play the tournament adventure, at its most entertaining.
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Goodman Games will be at UK Games Expo which takes place on Friday, May 31st to Sunday June 2nd, 2024.

Quick-starts are means of trying out a roleplaying game before you buy. Each should provide a Game Master with sufficient background to introduce and explain the setting to her players, the rules to run the scenario included, and a set of ready-to-play, pre-generated characters that the players can pick up and understand almost as soon as they have sat down to play. The scenario itself should provide an introduction to the setting for the players as well as to the type of adventures that their characters will have and just an idea of some of the things their characters will be doing on said adventures. All of which should be packaged up in an easy-to-understand booklet whose contents, with a minimum of preparation upon the part of the Game Master, can be brought to the table and run for her gaming group in a single evening’s session—or perhaps too. And at the end of it, Game Master and players alike should ideally know whether they want to play the game again, perhaps purchasing another adventure or even the full rules for the roleplaying game.

Alternatively, if the Game Master already has the full rules for the roleplaying game for the quick-start is for, then what it provides is a sample scenario that she still run as an introduction or even as part of her campaign for the roleplaying game. The ideal quick-start should entice and intrigue a playing group, but above all effectively introduce and teach the roleplaying game, as well as showcase both rules and setting.

—oOo—

What is it?
Infestation: An Introduction To Maggot Machine is the quick-start for Maggot Machine, a post-apocalyptic roleplaying game set in the 1994 when the world was ruined by Maggot Machines, acid reign began to fall, and mankind was driven deep into the UnderLand when they still pray that they will remain undiscovered.

It is an Old School Renaissance-style roleplaying game of post-apocalyptic horror.

It is designed to be played by four players, plus the Game Master.

It is a thirty-two page, 6.49 MB full colour PDF.

The quick-start is lightly illustrated, but the artwork is excellent, reminiscent of SLA Industries, Second Edition from the same publisher.

The themes and nature of the Maggot Machine Roleplaying Game and thus the Infestation: An Introduction To Maggot Machine, specifically the horror and its bloody nature, means that it is best suited to a mature audience.

How long will it take to play?
Infestation: An Introduction To Maggot Machine and its adventure, ‘Journey into LightHell’, is designed to be played through in a single session.

What else do you need to play?
Infestation: An Introduction To Maggot Machine requires six six-sided dice per player.

Who do you play?
The Player Characters in Infestation: An Introduction To Maggot Machine consist of four Guild Knights which make up a Brigade. The four pre-generated Player Characters consist of two Scrappers and Clashers. Slashers rely on stealth, caution, and experience to creep through the long-abandoned streets and buildings of LightHell in search of lost artefacts. They are noted for their conical helmets. Crashers are the muscle of the Guild Houses, sent out alongside Scrappers to protect them. One of the two pre-generated Scrappers grew up a Sewer Pipe Orphan and wields a fire sword, whilst the other was a Child of the State and can easily traverse rough terrain. One of the two pre-generated Clashers was raised in luxury as Guild Spawn and is a One Person Rumour Mill who can more knowledge of a building to be scavenged, whilst the other is a LightHell Mongrel, a foundling from the surface above, who as a Trusty Canary, can first detect the first traces of the poison winds and the distinctive rotten whiff of Maggot Machines.

How is a Guild Knight defined?
A Guild Knight has six stats—Agility, Cunning, Might, Movement, Presence, and Wyrd. The latter is used to power Weird Abilities. The pre-generated Guild Knights have stats ranging between two and four.

How do the mechanics work?
Mechanically, Infestation: An Introduction To Maggot Machine uses a dice pool system. Rolls of six allow an extra die to be rolled. Rolls of one can simply be rerolled. Once this has been done, all results of one are removed and the remaining dice results compared. Each die of the Reactive Character that is higher than the Active Character’s dice cancels that die, and removes it from the Active Character’s pool. At the end of the process, whichever of the Active Character or Reactive Character has any dice left, they score Victory Points equal to the remaining dice. Victory Points will deal damage in combat, but can mean the winner completes a task faster or better.

How does combat work?
Combat in Infestation: An Introduction To Maggot Machine uses the same dice pool system. Might is used as the Active/Reactive stat for melee combat and Agility is used as the Active/Reactive stat for ranged combat. Once Victory Points are determined, a Soak roll is made for armour. Any roll of four or more reduces the Victory Point total by the amount rolled. Any Victory Points remaining are inflicted as damage. If the damage is inflicted by the Reactive Character, the damage is halved.

Infestation: An Introduction To Maggot Machine does not include the full combat rules. More detail and more tactical options are covered in the core rulebook.

How does ‘Wyrd’ work?
Wyrd is used to active Wyrd powers and gifts. Only one Guild Knight has an ability which requires Wyrd points to be spent.

What do you play?
In Infestation: An Introduction To Maggot Machine, the scenario is ‘Journey Into LightHell’. The House of Wire sends the Brigade from the UnderLand into the LightHell to deal with a Maggot Mite infestation at Sterafill Stop and make repairs to the warning system installed on its rooftop. The Guild Knights discover a map of the immediate area indicating possible danger, but are expected to explore and scavenge the area for artefacts and useful items to bring back to the UnderLand. The area is infested with Maggot Mites, Stab Merchants, and worse, although there is some delightfully grotty, grubby, and British salvage to scavenge…

The background suggests some politics between the Houses of the UnderLand, but this is not explored in Infestation: An Introduction To Maggot Machine.

Is there anything missing?
Infestation: An Introduction To Maggot Machine is complete.

Is it easy to prepare?
The core rules presented in Infestation: An Introduction To Maggot Machine are very easy to prepare. That said, the dice mechanics are not immediately easy to grasp and will take a slight adjustment getting used to because dice of a lesser value are being cancelled rather than the same value.
Is it worth it?
Yes. Infestation: An Introduction To Maggot Machine is easy to prepare and run in a single session. It portrays a grim and grimy future with a British grottiness in which it is always 1994, whilst hinting at more to come in the core rulebook.
Where can you get it?
Infestation: An Introduction To Maggot Machine is available to download here.
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Nightfall Games will be at UK Games Expo which takes place on Friday, May 31st to Sunday June 2nd, 2024.

 Jonathan awakens to a new horror.

31 May.—This morning when I woke I thought I would provide myself with some paper and envelopes from my bag and keep them in my pocket, so that I might write in case I should get an opportunity, but again a surprise, again a shock!

Every scrap of paper was gone, and with it all my notes, my memoranda, relating to railways and travel, my letter of credit, in fact all that might be useful to me were I once outside the castle. I sat and pondered awhile, and then some thought occurred to me, and I made search of my portmanteau and in the wardrobe where I had placed my clothes.

The suit in which I had travelled was gone, and also my overcoat and rug; I could find no trace of them anywhere. This looked like some new scheme of villainy....

Notes

Moon Phase: Waxing Crescent

So where was Jonathan hiding his Journal? If Dracula took everything why not this? I am sure it is because Jonathan would have kept his journal on his person. Everything that Dracula took were things he expected Jonathan to have and things he had use for; the letter of credit, travel documents, and even the suit. 

It will be a bit before we hear from our heroes again.

What happens when the Player Characters have their magical items stolen? They want them back, of course, but they also want revenge. And that about sums up the motivation for Magic Eater, a scenario for Lamentations of The Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplaying. Except that there is a problem with that, because whilst Lamentations of The Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplaying is an Old School Renaissance retroclone, it is not one known for the generosity of its treasure, let alone its magical items. In fact, Lamentations of The Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplaying is renowned for its frugality with regard to such matters. So, what Magic User does instead is suggest that the Player Characters’ employer be the one who has the item, the MacGuffin, stolen and wants it returned. So, if the Player Characters have not actually had something stolen, then they can at least be repaid by someone who has. No matter who the victim of the theft is, a note was left by a notorious thief going by the name of Grimalkin, who works with a Northman, in an obvious nod to the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories of Fritz Leiber. Tracking the Grimalkin is intended to be easy because it gets to the next bit in the story, the fact that Grimalkin’s house has been set on fire, he is dead, and whatever MacGuffin the Player Characters have to retrieve is gone, having been stolen a second. This time by a gang which styles itself as the ‘Loquesymths’, which if any of the players find out how the gang spells its name, is going to result in the players thinking that their characters are dealing with a bunch of pretentious wankers.
This is the set-up for Magic Eater, a scenario for Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplaying published by Lamentations of the Flame Princess. And despite the antagonists having been identified as pretentious wankers, things are going to get weirder from here on in, because it turns out that that yes, the ‘Loquesymths’ are a bunch of pretentious wankers, half of them are arseholes to boot. This is because half of them are now dedicated to the worship of a thing they call the ‘Magic Eater’. Part of this worship involves feeding him actual magical items—so yes, have a good guess as to has happened to whatever magical MacGuffin the Player Characters are after—and then take the great balls of excrement that the ‘Magic Eater’ defecates and brew them into psychoactive tea that grants them certain blessings whilst at the same the magic energies they are exposed to are causing them to deliquesce. Consequently, the thieves and the cultists in the ‘Loquesymths’ are easy to tell apart. The thieves look like thieves, bandits, or just ordinary folk, whilst the cultists are wrapped in cloaks to hide the fact that they have wrapped themselves in bandages. Unlike the cultists, the thieves do not make squishy sounds when they move.

The ‘Loquesymths’ hide out in a base in the boglands close to the city where the Player Characters or their employer resides. Infiltrating this base, the remnants of a Roman fort that has been used over the centuries and since fallen into a state of disrepair, is the focus of the scenario. (That said, it could be any old fortress, so need not be set in the default period of the Early Modern era for Lamentations of The Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplaying.) The fortress of thieves consists of three parts. First, the above ground ruins, consisting mostly of the remaining towers and partially repaired walls, then the damp cellars, and the cult temple, a mixture of caves and tunnels and worked corridors and tunnels. The cult temple stinks like a hot, sweaty toilet, areas marked with weird colours due to the arcane seepage from the Magic Eater. There is the possibility here for any spells or magic to fail here, and when it does, it is suggested that the Game Master use either Vaginas Are Magic! or James Raggi IV’s Eldritch Cock as a means to handle this failure, and probably the most entertaining. That said, it would have been just as easy and as easy to create a table of results that could have been included.
The end of the scenario, against the semi-gigantic thaumaphage that is the Magic Eater of the title, is essentially an end of level, big boss battle. The battles against the thieves in the upper parts of the fortress are going to be fairly normal, whilst the ones against the cultists are going weird and creepy with their bandaged hands and faces and their squishy sounds, let alone the odd powers imparted to them by imbibing the excrement-infused tea they brew. The battle against the Magic Eater is going to be a big brawl of all against the hulking, lumbering grump, enlivened by the fact that his consumption of magical items has given him random magical powers. The randomness does rely on the Game Master rolling a natural twenty, so the powers may not even change over the course of the battle. Which is a pity and the Game Master might want to alter the odds to make it all the more fun for herself, if not the players and their characters.

There are some suggestions too, as to what might happen to the Player Characters actually decide to drink that tea—definitely not a good idea; what they might do with the fortress afterwards, because possession is possession; and what actual treasure might found if the Player Characters search the fortress above ground and below. There are suggestions to determine if the MacGuffin that the Player Characters were attempting to retrieve is still here and has not been eaten and what might be found if the players and their characters decide that a colonoscopy is in order. It might be the MacGuffin, or it might be one of the most useless magic items ever created. It really is useless—and intentionally so.
Also included in Magic Eater is the bonus scenario, ‘Another Rough Night at the Dog & Bastard’. If that sounds like the author’s author’s tribute to ‘A Rough Night at the Three Feathers’, the classic scenario for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, recently updated as Rough Days & Hard Days, then you would be right. In this scenario, the Player Characters take refuge at the eponymous inn on the same night as a trio of nuns who are not as innocent as they look, a bounty hunter, a thief, and a pair of sex cultists, because after all, this is a scenario for Lamentations of The Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplaying. And the cultists would not mind having sex with everyone and if that is done in front of their cult idol, it releases what can only be best described as ‘Jizz Pixies’. In addition, the inn and its staff have secrets of their own, randomly determined. The scenario primarily works off a relationship map which connects ten NPCs. The players will need to actively involve their characters in the relationship map to get the most out of the scenario, which is both roleplaying and NPC interaction heavy. As a one-night, one session affair, ‘Another Rough Night at the Dog & Bastard’ is pruriently serviceable.
Physically, Magic Eater is well-presented. Both artwork and cartography are decent, the maps being very clear and the depictions of the cultists a little creepy. It does need an edit in places.

Magic Eater is a daft scenario that punishes the Player Characters for being too attached to their possessions and then rewards them with a nice piece of real estate if they try to get them back—if they survive. That does not mean it is not entertaining though and Magic Eater is easy to drop into any campaign.
—oOo—
DISCLAIMER: The author of this review is an editor who has edited titles for Lamentations of the Flame Princess on a freelance basis. He was not involved in the production of this book and his connection to both publisher and author has no bearing on the resulting review.

—oOo—
Lamentations of the Flame Princess will be at UK Games Expo which takes place on Friday, May 31st to Sunday June 2nd, 2024.

 This Sci-fi month was a lot of fun. I got to look into the history of Gamma World, reminisce a little on Star Frontiers and Star Wars, and finally spend some quality time with Alternity. 

All fun games that I enjoyed, but none really hit the mark I am looking for. Now to be fair, this is largely about me and not the games themselves.  Next year I am going to cover a bunch of d20 based games, but in the meantime I have a solution to my sci-fi game problem, and it is one I knew I had to do for a very long time.

I am just going to have to do my own. 

With Thirteen Parsecs, that is exactly what I am doing. 

This game uses the same O.G.R.E.S. game system that you find in NIGHT SHIFT and Wasted Lands. Also, like NIGHT SHIFT's "Night Worlds," this one has new "Solar Frontiers."

At least for me, I want to make a game to fill the hole in my life that Star Frontiers, Star Wars, and Alternity would have filled. 

Thirteen Parsecs will be hard sci-fi for people who like that (me!), Space Opera for people who like that, and futuristic military in space. It will also fill my need for horror in space. Something that Dark•Matter was also doing. 

You can combine Thirteen Parsecs with NIGHT SHIFT for all sorts of horror in space or even just horror sci-fi.  If you also like this sort of thing, I recommend the "No One Hears You Scream" pledge level. 

We are very close to offering hardcovers and leather-bound editions, and I really, really want to see that become a reality. 

If you want to know more, beyond the funding page information, then check out this Q&A Jason, Derek, and I did with Dan Davenport. 

• Jason Vey, Tim Brannan, & Derek Stoelting (Thirteen Parsecs: Beyond the Solar Frontier)

I can even begin to tell how excited I am for this game and to get it into your hands.

Recently I saw copies of Wasted Lands at my FLGS and they told me it was selling great. Tim Kask gave us praise on his post-Gary Con wrap-up show. We have a lot of great things for you and can't wait to get them all to you.

Back Thirteen Parsecs if you can!

Under the Seal of Solomon is a scenario for Into the Bronze: Sword & Sorcery RPG in Bronze Age. Published by Lantern’s Faun, as the title suggests, it is set in the Bronze Age in Mesopotamia on the plains between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Here the first city states were founded, here the first men and the women strode forth to explore the lands between the first two great rivers known to mankind, to enter the silent, gloomy valleys where demons and their acolytes hid and devised their evil plans, here they would encounter the very gods of Sumer, and here they would build the first great civilisations. As those first men and women to stride the land, the Player Characters are Sumerian ‘Bounty Hunters’ , those willing to go forth and undertake dangerous tasks—explore the unknown, hunt down criminals, kill monsters, and more… In Under the Seal of Solomon, the Player Characters have a greater calling—killing demons!

In Under the Seal of Solomon, the king, Solomon himself, has selected the Player Characters for a great task. Whether the Player Characters are augurs, astronomers, sorcerers, priests, or warriors, you have been given a new role—exorcist. Demons run rampant across his kingdom, and King Solomon has chosen them to rid them from his lands. However, this is no easy task since demons cannot be killed. Instead, their physical manifestation must be defeated, the demon captured, and then conveyed to the Temple of Solomon where it can confess its corruptions. Only then will the kingdom be free of that one demon. There are seventy-two demons. If though, a demon cannot be killed, how is this task to be achieved? In addition to blessing the Exorcists with an oath to capture the demons, King Solomon bestows them with three other gifts. These are the Keys of Solomon, the Seal of Solomon, and the Jar of Solomon. The Keys work in similar fashion to the Magic Words in Into the Bronze, being written down on tablets or sheets of vellum and used against a demon. However, unlike the tablets of the Magic Worlds, the Keys of Solomon do not break, only the implements using them do. The Seal of Solomon is a ring engraved with his sigil used to seal the written Keys, whilst the Jar of Solomon is used to trap a demon before taking it to the Temple of Solomon. So think of this as Ghostbusters, but with Demons and set in Ancient Mesopotamia and not New York.

The bulk of Under the Seal of Solomon is dedicated to describing its seventy-two demons who are ranked as Kings, Dukes, Princes, Marquises, Counts, Knights, and Presidents—and some can hold more than one rank. A pleasing presentation places the hierarchy of the demons upon the steps of a ziggurat! Each demon is described in terms of its Manifestation, its Domain, and what Invocations it knows. The Domain is the power it holds over other demons and the Invocations are the powers it tempts sorcerers with. For example, Bael, King of the East, holds the Rank of King, manifests as a three-headed conglomeration of cat, toad, and man, has the Domain of “66 legions of demons”, and his Invocations include the teaching of science, bestowing of Invisibility, and the teaching of love. Attributes, Hit Points, and Damage are determined by the demon’s Rank.

In terms of support and advice, Under the Seal of Solomon suggests that a demon might be hiding amongst the population or tempting them openly as a false god, or colluding with a sorcerer. It suggests having a single demon dominate or take over a single hex, creating a location around it, in the process turning Into the Bronze into not so much a hexcrawl, but a hex clearance. The other factor that the Under the Seal of Solomon makes clear is that seventy-two demons is a lot and so the Player Characters are not the only ones to have received the blessings of King Solomon. This enables the Game Master to bring rival Exorcists into play. Lastly, Under the Seal of Solomon notes that it is set during the end of the Bronze Age, at the dawn of the Iron Age.

Physically, Under the Seal of Solomon is nicely presented, although the use of red text on black in places is not easy to read. It does need another edit.

Unfortunately, Under the Seal of Solomon is at best very light, at worst underwritten and underdeveloped. For example, it is not quite clear whether one Exorcist is holding the Keys of Solomon, the Seal of Solomon, and the Jar of Solomon and using them to fight demons or if they are divided between several Exorcists. Nor is it really clear how the Keys of Solomon work against the demons and what the user is actually dealing with them. Similarly, there is no actual adventure in Under the Seal of Solomon as its cover claims. Instead, what it gives the Game Master is a campaign set-up. It is not even a campaign framework, because there is only a beginning, and not a middle or an end. After all, what happens when the Exorcists have defeated all of the demons?

Ultimately, there is no denying that Under the Seal of Solomon is a great set-up for Bronze: Sword & Sorcery RPG in Bronze Age Mesopotamia (and indeed for any roleplaying game set in Bronze Age Mesopotamia). Unfortunately, it simply does not support the Game Master as fully as it should and leaves her with more concepts to develop and questions to answer than it really should.
—oOo—
Soul Muppet Publishing will be at UK Games Expo which takes place on Friday, May 31st to Sunday June 2nd, 2024.

 It's time to put everything together and see how it works. Since this is a modern horror sci-fi game, I'm going to use my standard character for these things. But first, I should at least talk about how I'm going to do it all.

I knew I had to use both the Alternity Core rules as well as the Dark•Matter campaign setting. I also looked into two of the other books I have here, Mindwalking: A Guide to Psionics and Beyond Science: A Guide to FX. Both books are good, but they are designed with Star*Drive in mind. Plus the rules for Psionics and FX, in particular Arcane and Miracles, have been updated in the Dark•Matter book. The designers even mention there are differences. So as fun as those too books look, I am going to not use them for this build.  

Now, one of the things I have had for Dark•Matter, well, forever, it seems, is this download on Witchcraft FX. While I am not 100% sure where I got it originally, it can still be downloaded from the alternityrpg.net site. 

• Witchcraft in Dark•Matter by Christopher West and Rod Bedison

I like it. I have liked it for many years now*, and I really wanted to use it. Instead of explaining it, you can download it for free yourself.  Here Witchcraft is a Faith-based FX. I like this. It tracks with what I was doing with Larina and all my witches at the same time. My own 1999 Complete Netbook of Witches & Warlocks had witches as a type of priest using wisdom. 

I began my base stats for Dark•Matter Larina using her AD&D 2nd Ed stats as a base. I used the guidelines in the Alternity Gamemaster's Guide for conversion. For her "back story" well, I used the version I was using at the time in WitchCraft. Here she is, a 29-year-old divorcee living in Chicago and working in the library of a major university. She is a librarian and linguist by training but an occultist "by night."  This gave me a good idea of who this Dark•Matter Larina was going to be.

Larina "Nix" Nichols

Human Female, Age 29 (1998)
Height: 5'4"  Weight: 125 lbs

Level: 10

Profession: Diplomat
Career: Occultist

Attributes
Motivation: Find the truth
Morals: Ethical / Just
Traits: Curious

Allegiance: Independent

Ability
Strength 8  (Res. Mod. 0)
Dexterity 9  (Res. Mod. 0)
Constitution 9
Intelligence 14  (Res. Mod. +2)
Will 14  (Res. Mod. +2)
Personality 14

Stun 9
Wound 9
Fatigue 5
Mortal 5

Last Resorts 3

Action Check Score
Marginal 13+
Ordinary 12
Good 6
Amazing 3

Combat Movement Rates
Sprint 8
Run 6
Walk 2
Easy Swim 1
Swim 8
Glide (8)
Fly (16)

Armor: None

Special Abilities: Witchcraft (Faith) FX

Perks: Great Looks, Second Sight

Flaws: Obsessed (+2)

Social Class: Middle Class

Contacts: Scott Elders (Psychic), Heather McHael (Seer). 

Enemies: Eric MacAlister (ex-husband, former IRA operative)

Attack Forms
Unarmed 4/2/1 LI/O Personal d4a/d4+1s/d4+2s
Athame 8/4/2 LI/O Personal d4w/d4w+1s/d4+2w

Skill Points Spent: 91  Stored: 6

Skills

Skill    CostAbility RankScoreAthletics3STR
842Vehicle Operation3DEX
942Land Vehicle3DEX11052Stamina3CON
942Knowledge3INT1473Lang. English1INT31784Lang. Latin1INT31784Lang. Greek1INT31784Lang. Hebrew1INT11573Lang. Russian1INT11573Medical Science3INT11573Psychology5INT21684Physical Science7INT11573Astronomy3INT11573Social Science6INT11473Anthropology3INT21684Linguistics3INT21684Awareness3WIL1473Intuition3WIL11573Perception2WIL11573Investigate7WIL11473Research3WIL31784Lore6WIL11473Conspiracy Theories3WIL11573Occult Lore3WIL21684Psychic Lore3WIL11573Entertainment4PER11473Sing2PER11573Interaction3PER
1473Charm3PER21684Seduce3PER11573

Bolded skills are Free. Skills in Purple are from Dark•Matter.

FX

SpellCostAbilityRankScoreWitchcraft13Glamour4INT11573Cast the Circle2WIL21684Divination3WIL31784Earth's Harvest2WIL31784Part the Veil4WIL31784Spellbind2WIL21684Ward of Protection3WIL21684Call Familiar3PER11573Crone's Curse4PER11573

I went ahead and gave her Glamour even though it is not on the witchcraft list—it should be.

--

So I REALLY like this build. A few notes.

Levels in Alternity are treated differently than they are in *D&D games. In D&D games, you gain a level, and that helps define how powerful your abilities and skills will be. In Alternity, it is the other way around; your skills and powers help determine your level.

So Larina here would be a lot more skilled if she had dumped all of those skill points she spent on FX  (65 total) on more skills. 

She is not a combat person. She has no combat skills to speak of, and I am not likely to add much more to her for that. She can read a lot of languages and is a good researcher. More importantly, she has magic. I should give her some sort of blasty magic, but she is a support character for the most part. 

She compares well to her WitchCraft and AD&D 2nd Ed versions. I should get her WitchCraft version up sometime.

I will admit this build took me a while. A lot of it was my unfamiliarity with the system. It still took a bit. Going between multiple books is never really ideal. But this is a character I would play.

Now, if I were to get serious about Alternity Dark•Matter, I would likely work up my go-to psychic character, Scott Elders. He is a good choice since it would allow me to use all of the Mindwalking rules. He has alternates in AD&D, Modern times, and the Far Future so that also makes him a good fit.

*In the process of re-reading this to post today I found my original Dark•Matter sheets for Larina AND the printout of the Witchcraft Faith FX.

I started working on her back in March of 2000.

It only took me 24 years to finish.

 Ah. Now, this one is hitting me where I live. By 1999, Alternity was already interesting to me. I had, of course, seen bits of it online and knew about it from the internet and talking to other gamers. But it was 1999's Dark•Matter Campaign Setting that REALLY got me interested. 

Dark•Matter came out at a time when Dark Urban Fantasy was my drug of choice, and I was an addict.  I had played Chill off and on (mostly off) through the 80s and I had picked up a new copy of Chill 2nd Edition. It didn't have enough magic in it for me. Oh the Art and the Evil Way were fun, but I wanted something more.

I will get into what was going for me in 1999 a bit later on and talk about how Dark•Matter almost made the cut, but didn't. But first lets talk about what it is and what was good about it.

Dark•Matter (1999)

by Wolfgange Baur and Monte Cook. Full-color covers and interior art. 288 pages.  Wizards of the Coast logo.

Like all the books in the Alternity line, Dark•Matter is out of print and not available on PDF.

By this time, the Alternity line has given over completely to Wizards of the Coast, with the TSR logo only seen in ads on the back few pages.  Reading through this book, its layout, and its art make me think of the early d20 Modern books and the d20 Call of Cthulhu book Wizards would later do. They share some artists. 

Ok stop me if you have heard this one before, Dark•Matter takes place on Earth, but not the Earth we know. This is an Earth with a hidden history where monsters, aliens, psychic powers and even magic are real. 

Now I freely admit, I love the name. It is sci-fi and yet spooky at the same time. I mean what is not to love really?

Chapter 1: An Introduction to Dark•Matter

Like our previous books, this is an introduction and some fast-play rules with a sample adventure. Nice way to do it. Maybe it is because it is Baur and Cook, but this seems a little more readable to me.

Chapter 2: Welcome to the Hoffmann Institute

Ah, now we get into some in-world background on what is going on. The Hoffmann Institute is our BPRD, our SAVE, our SPC, our Sanctuary, our in world organization to help our character push back against the night. 

Unlike Star*Drive, which didn't grab me, this grabbed ahold of me pretty hard. I remember reading websites on the Internet dedicated to the Hoffmann Institute and thought it was great. Yes, I had read similar things about SAVE back in the days of Chill, that doesn't matter. The fact was this stuff was new and it was out there and I was enjoying it. This fluff, as much as anything else made me want to play this game more.

Chapter 3: Heroes of Dark•Matter

This is our hero creation chapter. The rules for hero creation are still in the Alternity Core rules, this just adds some additional skills, perks, flaws, and careers. As expected most of the high tech or advanced sci-fi stuff is out. No alien heroes, no cybertech (well...limited). But Mindwalking is now a "core" profession. 

Chapter 4: Arcana

Now this is something new! In the Dark•Matter world, magic is real. There new FX rules here that replace the FX rules from Alternity and the FX book (more on that). There is Arcane Magic in the form of Diabolism, Enochian, and Hermeticism. And Faith magic in the form of Monotheism, Shamanism, and Voodoo. Really fun stuff. Magic FX is taken like a broad skill with skill-specific "spells" chosen under each one. The spells are powered by a limited resource of FX points. So, magic-using characters will not be the magical powerhouses seen in D&D, or even Mage or WitchCraft, but they are more powerful than the ones found in games like Chill.  Honestly, this worked GREAT for me since my own home campaign was based on the idea that as we approached, the new Millennium magic was going to increase. 

Chapter 5: History of the World

Dark•Matter was released between two great paranormal TV shows; The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It manages to capture the zeitgeist of both of them well. This chapter feels like it could have come from the series bible of either show. 

There is a timeline of the world that manages to incorporate some sort of malignant, evil force, the arrival of aliens, and the rise and fall of Atlantis. There is the expected involvement with the Egyptians, and then later the Olmecs, Mayans, Aztecs and Incas. Tesla gets name-dropped, as do the Templars and Masons. Nazis, Roswell, New World Order. It's like we all read the same books! Even the rising "Dark Tide" to the new Millennium. I would say I read it here, but it was something I was doing in Chill 2nd ed. 

There is no "game" information here, but it is a great read.

An aside: I wonder how this timeline tracks with the one from TSR's Masque of the Red Death. I have no expectations they are the same on purpose save that they both are drawing from the same sources of information. It might be fun (yes I said fun) to see how they line up. 

Chapter 6: The Illuminati

With conspiracy theories, the Illuminati will inevitably be brought up. This covers a bunch of topics related to the Dark•Matter world. We get a bunch of groups that are vying for control of knowledge of the world. These include The Free Masons, the Rosicrucians, The Hidden Order of St. Gregory, The Invisible College, the Knights of Malta, The Final Church, The Bilderbergers, and of course the Hoffmann Institute. All of these factions are trying to control and all of them will either try to stop or recruit the heroes. There are also plenty of governments, the UN, and other organizations involved. 

It reads like a who-who of conspiracy theories. 

Chapter 7: Places of Interest

A trip around the globe starting in Africa and giving the Congo, Sahara, and Egypt their due. Lots of locations in America. I was happy to see a local favorite while growing up, the Cahokia Mounds, get some good ink as well as a place more local to me now, Lower Wacker Drive in Chicago. All the expected sites are here. Groom Lake (Area 51), Rosewell, Los Alamos. Moving on to Asia, Australia and Europe. There is even coverage of Atlantis, Earth Orbit, and Mars. 

Chapter 8: Xenoforms

Or our Monster chapter. We get all sorts of creatures here including aliens, demons, trans-dimensional travellers, Elohim, Ghosts, Men in Black, Sasquatches, and Yeti just to name a few. No vampires though. 

Chapter 9: Running a Dark•Matter Campaign

This is all pretty good advice for a lot of modern supernatural/conspiracy style games. Non of this is game specific and would work well for WitchCraft, Chill, Conspiracy X, and yes even NIGHT SHIFT.  There is a huge list of topics on page 240 that is a fantastic starting place for any intrepid Game Master. 

Chapter 10: Campaign Options

This chapter covers various ways to see up a campaign and give the characters (and players) a focus. There are even nots here on playing a Grey, Kinori, Mothman, Sandman or even a Sasquatch hero. 

Chapter 11: Raw Recruits 

This is a sample adventure where the characters are new recruits to the Hoffmann Institute. 

Thoughts: 1999 to Now

1999 was a pivotable year for me and gaming. I wanted a new modern supernatural game. I had flirted with Vampire: The Masquerade off and on for years. I played Chill 1st Ed, and had made the drive out to Mayfair Games (which was now local to me) to buy one of the apparently "hundreds" of Chill 2nd edition books they still had laying around. But neither Vampire nor Chill were giving me what I wanted. 

Enter the Dark Trio.

Around the same time, I discovered Mage: The Ascension (and Dark Ages Mage), C.J. Carella's WitchCraft, and Dark•Matter.

All three of these games can do very similar things. They all draw on a lot of the same history, myths, and legends. In my mind, all were very good games.

I love Mage. But there is a lot going on there. Dark•Matter had nearly everything I wanted, but at the time, I had a new baby on the way and not a lot of readily disposable cash to drop on three hardcovers to play a game. WitchCraft though. Man, that game hit me hard and never stopped. 

You can play the same game with all three rule sets. I think even that each of these has Roscrucians, Hermetics, and stats for the Comte de Saint-Germain.

Dark•Matter is excellent. It really is, but it also suffers from the same Alternity system that bogs it down. Also, I am partial to Roll-Over Mechanics and not Roll-Under. Mage is Dice-Pool. 

A lot of these arguments against Dark•Matter go away when you consider the 2006 d20 Dark•Matterreleased by Wizards of the Coast. But that is a discussion for next year.

All three are at least thematically compatible with each other. You can move characters between the games with some effort, and as expected, I have done so. 

Let me restate it. Dark•Matter is excellent. It is a wonderful game that, in the end, fell just a little short of perfection. At least for me. In another world, a world where I didn't find the Unisystem WitchCraft, I'd still be blogging about this game today.  I am looking forward to covering the d20 version next year when I take on the 25th Anniversary of the d20 system.

Harker sends his letters before the trap closes and a plan is foiled.

28 May.—There is a chance of escape, or at any rate of being able to send word home. A band of Szgany have come to the castle, and are encamped in the courtyard. These Szgany are gipsies; I have notes of them in my book. They are peculiar to this part of the world, though allied to the ordinary gipsies all the world over. There are thousands of them in Hungary and Transylvania, who are almost outside all law. They attach themselves as a rule to some great noble or boyar, and call themselves by his name. They are fearless and without religion, save superstition, and they talk only their own varieties of the Romany tongue.

I shall write some letters home, and shall try to get them to have them posted. I have already spoken them through my window to begin acquaintanceship. They took their hats off and made obeisance and many signs, which, however, I could not understand any more than I could their spoken language....

 

I have written the letters. Mina’s is in shorthand, and I simply ask Mr. Hawkins to communicate with her. To her I have explained my situation, but without the horrors which I may only surmise. It would shock and frighten her to death were I to expose my heart to her. Should the letters not carry, then the Count shall not yet know my secret or the extent of my knowledge....

 

I have given the letters; I threw them through the bars of my window with a gold piece, and made what signs I could to have them posted. The man who took them pressed them to his heart and bowed, and then put them in his cap. I could do no more. I stole back to the study, and began to read. As the Count did not come in, I have written here....

 

The Count has come. He sat down beside me, and said in his smoothest voice as he opened two letters:—

“The Szgany has given me these, of which, though I know not whence they come, I shall, of course, take care. See!”—he must have looked at it—“one is from you, and to my friend Peter Hawkins; the other”—here he caught sight of the strange symbols as he opened the envelope, and the dark look came into his face, and his eyes blazed wickedly—“the other is a vile thing, an outrage upon friendship and hospitality! It is not signed. Well! so it cannot matter to us.” And he calmly held letter and envelope in the flame of the lamp till they were consumed. Then he went on:—

“The letter to Hawkins—that I shall, of course, send on, since it is yours. Your letters are sacred to me. Your pardon, my friend, that unknowingly I did break the seal. Will you not cover it again?” He held out the letter to me, and with a courteous bow handed me a clean envelope. I could only redirect it and hand it to him in silence. When he went out of the room I could hear the key turn softly. A minute later I went over and tried it, and the door was locked.

When, an hour or two after, the Count came quietly into the room, his coming awakened me, for I had gone to sleep on the sofa. He was very courteous and very cheery in his manner, and seeing that I had been sleeping, he said:—

“So, my friend, you are tired? Get to bed. There is the surest rest. I may not have the pleasure to talk to-night, since there are many labours to me; but you will sleep, I pray.” I passed to my room and went to bed, and, strange to say, slept without dreaming. Despair has its own calms.

--

Notes

Moon Phase: Waxing CrescentWaxing Crescent

The "Szgany" or more likely "Tzigane" are a Romany people common to the area at the time. 

Harker tries to bribe them with a French gold coin, the "Travelers Checks" of the Victorian age. The Tzigane though know what was asked of them since it is likely they were multi-lingual, but Harker (and maybe even Stoker) doesn't know that.

 The new cover for the new 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide is now out and features some fan favorites.

So we got Venger, Warduke, and favorite of the Other Side, Skylla!

When I started posting about Skylla years ago, she was a relatively unknown character save for some Old School gamers like me. Now, she is moving up in the world.

I like the red spine. Help differentiate them from my 5.0 books.

Skylla is looking good. I am hoping we will be getting some more of her.  Greyhawk will be the core setting so I am expecting more Tasha/Iggwilv material too. 

I'll keep you posted on this new 5R version of D&D. 

Continuing on with Alternity, I am turning my attention to the Star*Drive Campaign Setting. Before I go too deep into it I have to say that I think TSR, before their purchase by WotC was on track to making the same mistakes with Alternity that they were making with AD&D Second Edition. That is having a core system and too many campaign settings. Now, to be 100% fair here, Alternity only has two different but linked campaign settings; Star*Drive and Dark*Matter. Two and a half if you also count Gamma World. Two and two halves if you add in the Starcraft material too. But the seeds are here. Sadly, they never fell into fertile ground, and even the ones that did were not well tended to.

Star*Drive Campaign Setting

by David Eckelberry and Richard Baker, 1998. Full-color covers and interior art. 256 pages. 

This book still features the TSR logo, but all details of the company that produces it is Wizards of the Coast. I only point this out because it is a weird transitional time for the company and I can't help but think this as much as anything else sealed the fate of this game.

As with the rest of the classic Alternity material, this is out of print and there are no PDFs availble. 

Chapter 1: The Star*Drive Campaign

This covers what this setting is about and some basics and a timeline of contact with the Fraal to the modern day of the 26th century (2501).  Interestingly we are 100 years away from constructing the first Star Drive tech. This is roughly comparable to the timeline we would later see in Star Trek.  This chapter also discusses different ways to play this game. The feel is somewhere between Star Frontiers and Traveller, with dashes of Star Trek and/or Starship Troopers added in. 

Chapter 2: The 26th Century

An aside. Are we in the 26th Century because it is not the 25th century of Buck Rodgers? 

Anyway. Here we get an overview of what our setting is like now. Science, Technology which includes cybertech and biotech, mutants and psionics, medicine, and even religion, is covered here. There is not a lot of game text here, this is all an overview.  The religion section is interesting since it usually gets ignored by most sci-fi games. Unless it is Star Wars.

Chapter 3: Stellar Nations

This takes us into more detail of the who, what and where of this campaign setting and feels most like an extension of the Alternity rules. Note, not a lot of mechanics, but more information on material presented in the core rules. All of the species from the core are here, with their home worlds. Also, the various "Nations" in space, including the Solar Union (oddly not established in 2112). 

Chapter 4: The Verge

This is the area of unexplored space and the part that gives me the "Star Trek" vibes.  We are introduced to "The Lighthouse" which I will get into more detail about later on. Plenty of new worlds and systems are detailed, but the obvious thing here is that GMs will create their own worlds and systems. Still, though, there is plenty here to keep you busy. This section is the bulk of the book; over half. Game stats are largely limited to NPCs, some ships, and planets. 

Chapter 5: Hero Creation

This is the most rules heavy section of the book, but that is not say a lot. It is largely additional information to what is found in the Core Rules. The additions here include Homeworld or Nation and a few new careers. Though there are a lot of new details here that can affect every career. 

While there is a lot of material here, it is really all "World Building" material. While it is interesting, I don't find it compelling. Chances are very, very good that if I had played this game in the late 1990s, I would have converted it all to some sort of Star Trek-like game and used that background. In truth, I also find it less compelling than Star Frontiers, which tried to do something similar 15 years prior. I mean the Fraal are interesting, but they are no Vrusk!

Still I can't fault the game for what I want it to be, only what it is. It is somewhere between a fully realized campaign setting and a toolbox. Maybe if it had been allowed to continue on we could have seen more growth. Certainly, sites like Alternityrpg.net give credence to this idea. Their Star*Drive section certainly has enough to keep anyone busy for a long time. 

Select Supplements

I don't have a lot of material for the Star*Drive Setting, but I have some. Here are a few.

Game Masters' Screen
This is lighter card stock. Not too different than some of the early D&D 3.0 screens. 

Gamma World

Softcover, 192 pages. Color cover, black & white interior art. 2000. This one has a TSR prefixed product code (as did Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition) but the logo and company information is all Wizards of the Coast.

I briefly discussed this one in my discussion of post-TSR-Gamma World offerings. This softcover book by Andy Collins and Jeff Grubb takes us back to Gamma World—or at least, a Gamma World. It is still Earth, and it is still post-apocalyptic. 

This book uses, but doesn't require, the Alternity Core. Also it feels like Gamma World. I think this is because the design of Alternity had Gamma World in mind. Mutants and the like are already baked in to the core so no extra rules are needed to add them, just some extra options.  

While the rules are 100% Alternity, the background sort of precludes Star*Drive. Unless of course you want the Galaxy to have moved on without humans and Earth is this wasteland, OR, this is different, very Earth like planet. Imagine the shock when space travelers from Earth/Solar Union find this planet out in the Verge and there is a colasping Space Needle in a town called Seatle. This is something that would work, and work well, in Alternity. 

I would say that if you like Gamma World and Alternity is your system of choice then this is the version of it to play. 

Starships

by David Eckelberry. 96 pages, color covers, monochrome interior. 1999.  This one has the TSR Silver Anniversary logo on the cover. Listed as copyright 1999 TSR.

This one is fun. Not only do we get some cool spacehips (always a plus in my mind) but there are alternate FTL systems listed here so you can have the kind of game you want. Me? I would have seen the section on Warp and never looked back. Though there are some other good options here including relativistic travel with time dialation effects. And get out your scientific calculators, because in relativistic flight you will need to caluclate gamma changes. Yes. This is a selling point to me. 

We cover basic spaceship operations, technology, some skill uses and most importantly Spaceships!  The last third of the books covers ships and deck plans with costs. Again, not sure how acurate the costs are, but who cares! Spaceships!

The Lighthouse

by David Eckelberry. Color covers, mono-chrome interior. 1998. 64-pages. Features the TSR logo of the late 90s. Contact information is all Wizards of the Coast. 

This is the space station mentioned in the Campagin setting. The cover come free (like the old adventure modules) and has deck plans for all (well most) 200 decks. The feel is a cross between a Star Trek Starbase and Babylon 5. 

The history of the lighthouse is discussed including why it was built. We get some details on it's various systems and who lives there. It is be necessity a broad overview, but there is enough here to let me really dive into it. 

One of the reasons I have kept this one around becuse the plans are really perfect for my various Ghost Tower/Ghost Station of Inverness ideas [1][2][3]. For this reason alone I am glad I have held on to this.

--

Alternity Star*Drive has a lot going for it. If you are a fan of the system then I think this is a must aquire set of books. It doesn't do anything above and beyond what we have seen in Star Frontiers, Traveller or many other games, BUT it has a great flavor and the oprotunity to add material from Gamma World, Starcraft and even their other campaign setting, Dark*Matter. 

Sadly all of this was superceded by the d20 system. Much of Star*Drive (and Dark*Matter) would go on to live in d20 Modern and d20 Future. I will deal with those in another time. Likely next May.

I can't say for sure, but I have the feeling that Alternity was never given the chance it needed to survive. Cut off early and not supported. We saw the leel of support WotC could give to d20, which was in truth their darling. Alternity was the lost and forgotten older sibling of d20.  I am happy to see it has support online and that it still has fans out there.

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

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

—oOo—
Name: Hospital IslandPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author Jane E Cooper

Setting: Jazz Age EnglandProduct: Scenario
What You Get: Twenty-three page, 12.36 MB PDFElevator Pitch: Hospital horror in the fog of isolationPlot Hook: A mysterious telegram calls for help.
Plot Support: Staging advice, four handouts, three maps, five NPCs, and eight Mythos monsters.Production Values: Plain
Pros# Can be run using Pulp Cthulhu: Two-fisted Action and Adventure Against the Mythos# Easy to adapt to other times# Nice sense of isolation# Combines the cosy and the consternation# Mycophobia# Homichlophobia# Autophobia
Cons# Needs an edit# Are an Investigator and the prime villain related?# Feels like a solo adventure for a party of Investigators
Conclusion# Atmospheric, isolated sense of foreboding and something lurking.# Solid scenario that needs a polish to make it stand out.

 Here we are for the last week of Sci-Fi month, and I wanted to dedicate this week to the game I really wanted to love. Mind you, there is nothing wrong with this game; it just never had the chance to connect properly. But more on that. This week is Alternity week.

Alternity was a noble effort. A new Sci-Fi game that would allow you to play hard sci or science fantasy as you saw fit. It had a core system and there were supplements and campaign guides to extend from the near, and dark future (Dark*Matter) to the stars (Star*Drive).  Even Gamma World was updated to this new system.  It was, honestly, a wonderful idea. 

Sadly, Alternity suffered a fatal blow in the death throws of TSR. Published in 1998 it was the last RPG developed and published by TSR. Wizards of the Coast bought TSR in 1997 (and lets be honest, saved TSR in 1997). In 2000 the Alternity line was dropped. While you can find the Quick Starts online in PDF form, there are no legal PDFs of the Alternity game. There is an online community and a new RPG that uses the same system (more or less), the 1998-2000 version of the game is very much out of print.

For this review, I am going to focus on my print copies.

Alternity Player's Handbook (1998)

by Bill Slavicsek and Richard Baker. Full-color covers and interior art. 256 pages.
Art by rk post, Todd Lockwood, William O'Connor, Dennis Kauth, Rob Lazzaretti.

Released, April 1998.

Let me start with the look and feel of this game. If you are familiar with the later TSR offerings, in particular the Revised 2nd Edition of AD&D, then you will get a good idea for the art and layout here. Picking up the books they feel "familiar." Though I can't help but smile at the "lens flare" in the Alternity logo. Hey, we are all allowed to use a lens flare once non ironically and if you can't do it in 1998 then when can you? This does make me feel nostalgic for late 90s.  

Authors Bill Slavicsek and Richard Baker had grand hopes for this game in 1998, and their love for it shows throughout the book. Whatever other issues I might have with this system (and spoilers: they are minor), their efforts here are not among them. They start be justifiably comparing what they are doing to Dungeons & Dragons. Rereading these rules now, so many years later, the similarities are much closer than I recalled. 

I am breaking out the chapters into sections here since they are largely mirrored in the Gamemaster's Guide.

Introduction

This covers the basics. What is role-playing, what is this game and so on. Veterans can skip this, but there is some good insight here about what they are trying to do. 

Chapter 1: Fast-Play Rules

This covers the game in a very fast-paced and simplified manner. Designed to get everyone up and running right away. Personally, I like the idea, but I wonder if it is not better served with a PDF or a soft-cover freebie alone and not included in this book. Granted, in 1998, not as many people were on the internet, and freebie printed products were likely still too much for a company that had just been rescued from financial oblivion. Still, we are only talking about a handful of pages here, and it really helps set the stage for what is to come. The Gamemaster's Guide also had a free PDF.

Note: The new Alternity also offers this for free for their updated version. 

Chapter 2: Hero Creation

What is says on the tin. We have nine steps in our hero creation, which feels very, very similar to D&D. Even the six attributes are similar. You choose a concept, a species (Fraal, Mechalus, Sesheyan, T'sa, Weren, and Human), and a Career and Profession. Careers are your concept in a few words and Professions are bit like classes, but certain skills and abilities are cheaper/easier to acquire. So anyone can take any skill, some are just easier. It's a good approach. The Professions are Combat Specialist, Diplomat, Free Agent, Tech Operative, and the psionic Mindwalker. Mindwalkers are detailed later.

Ability scores are assigned, largely compatible with AD&D scores. Some species have ability score minimums and maximums. Skills are also bought/assigned. Some species lend themselves to some skill easier. The Mechalus, for example, get computer science for free. Weren get unarmed attacks.

Characters get perks and flaws, a popular game design choice of the later 90s. Choose some attributes, and complete the character sheet. I'll work through an example later this week.

Chapter 3: Heroes in Action 

This chapter covers the basic rules of the game. The basic idea here is to roll a d20, sometimes with some additional dice as a bonus or penalty, and roll under a given margin. The additional dice are called "steps" and they change based on the situation. Trying to reprogram a computer when you are at ease, have all the time in the world and it is a system you know well might be a "Cakewalk" step. So you roll your d20 and then roll a d12, you minus whatever you get on the d12 from the d20 for your final result. Remember rolling low here is good. On the other hand reprogramming the same computer in another language while being shot at might be a "Grueling" step. So roll a d20 and add another d20 to that! There are plenty of examples given in the book.

Which skills and abilities to use in what situation are also covered. 

Combat is a big one and here we have four types of damage. Stun, Wound, Mortal, and Fatigue. Anyone one can incapacitate a character. Ok four damage types is not ideal in my mind, but it works here and that is fine with me. 

Chapter 4: Skills

This covers the skills, how they work and where they are used. As expected for the time there are LOT of skills here. Of course the advantage to this is character customization is great. 

Chapter 5: Perks & Flaws

These sorts of mechanics were very popular starting in the 80s and into the 90s. These also help improve or hinder a character to some degree or provide some role-playing fodder. Many here are common ones you see in other games. Ones to make the character harder to kill (Tough as Nails), lucky (Good Luck), Ambidextrous, Great Looking, and more. These sorts of things are still popular in newer games, but to a lesser degree.  Flaws work the same way. Bad Luck, Powerful Enemy, Fragile, and so on. 

Chapter 6: Sample Careers

The flexibility of this game is baked in. Here we only get a sampling of potential careers. The various supplements can (and will add) more. Not a long chapter, but long enough.

Chapter 7: Attributes

These are character "tags" and descriptors that help round out the character. They include various Motivations, Moral Attitudes, and Character Traits. I can't help but notice that is pretty much all some new games have for their character-building. Also not a long chapter. 

Chapter 8: Achievements

The Achievement Point system works a little different than the typical XP system that many readers of this game would have been used to. These allow the character to advance skills, add a new perk, remove a flaw, and so on. 

Chapter 9: Goods & Services

Our goods and equipment chapter. Important here is the PL or Progress Level of the game and the place where the characters will be buying things. The PL of our current time is PL5 or Information Age. D&D, not counting the effects of magic, is PL 2. Star Trek is PL 7. There is a rough timeline from 4,000 BCE to 5000+ CE. 

Lots of fun things here too. I am not going to gripe about some of the "future tech" projections that are a bit off. Instead I will point out that they do a better job than many other games. Speaking of which...

Chapter 10: Computers

Covers the ubiquitous computers of all sci-fi games. There is a great little overview of Computers through the ages which is a good read. I do like how they try to get cyberware and computers right into the core rules from the start.

Chapter 11: Weapons & Armor

Again, what is says. PL values are given. I didn't see anything to adjust prices based on PL, but I could have missed it. I guess that is the biggest fiction of all here, that standard wages keep up with inflation and supply/demand. This is fine. This is a sci-fi RPG, not an econ textbook.

I am not one to get all gaga over guns, but I do love some sci-fi weapons. Give me lasers, phaser, pulse rifles, I love them all. 

Chapter 12: Vehicles

This covers both personal craft and space ships. There are more in the Star*Drive game. 

Chapter 13: Mutations

I think Gamma World was very much on their minds here. 

Chapter 14: Psionics

Ah, now I look forward to this chapter in every sci-fi game I read. This covers the powers and Mindwalkers. The idea here is to be a really good psionic character who have to train for it. This fits. The feel here is solid Babylon 5 and Catspaw by Joan D. Vinge. Mind you these are good things. 

Chapter 15: Cybertech

It has been threaded through out the game, but this chapter cover cyberware and cybertech (it was the late 90s remember) in detail. 

We end with some compiled tables, an Index and character (Hero) sheets.

Alternity Gamemaster's Guide (1998)

by Richard Baker and Bill Slavicsek. Full-color covers and interior art. 256 pages.
Art by rk post, Charles Bernard, D. Alexander Gregory, Hannibal Kings, Terese Nelson.

Released May, 1998.

Notable, the authors' order is swapped on the cover. While reading this, I felt that this was a full joint effort.

The layout and organization mirrors that of the Player's Handbook. One thing is pretty clear that Game Masters should (maybe "need" is a better word) read both books. 

The Gamemaster's Guide has an Introduction, Chapter 1: Fast-Play Rules, and Chapter 2: Hero Creation, just like the Player's book, but from the Game Master's perspective. This includes what to allow (or not allow) during character creation. The same is true for Chapters 4 and 5, Skills and Perks & Flaws, respectively.  

Chapter 3 is Gamemasters in Action. This is more detail on the rules of play. The GM side of the Heroes in Action chapter in the Player's book.

The biggest changes from the format come in Chapters 11 to 17. 

Chapters 10 and 11 cover Vehicles and Spaceships, respectively. Now I love Starship and Spaceship design. So this is a chapter I kept coming back to, just like I did during my days with Traveller and Star Frontiers. Spaceship design and creation might be more fun than character creation to be honest.

Chapter 12: Alien Artifacts

This would be the "magic items" chapter in D&D-like games. There are some good background details here to add to the campaign chapters (13 and 14) that follow. 

Chapter 13: Campaign Design, Chapter 14: Campaign Architecture, and Chapter 15: Adventure Design

 These chapters detail how to create your own campaigns. They are both about 20 or so pages of material. More details are given in the various campaign settings. Still, there is enough here to keep any sci-fi busy for a while.

Chapter 16: Optional Rules

Mutants, Psionics, Cybertech, AI, and FX are all covered here. FX, which is short for "Special Effects" (here and elsewhere), deals with all the other sorts of things in the game, like magic, miracles, and superscience. Normally, I don't like to mix magic and sci-fi, but in this game, I didn't mind it, really. Maybe it was more due the Dark*Matter setting.

Chapter 17: Creatures & Aliens

People who want to meet or eat you. The stat blocks are similar to PC/NPCs. They remind me a lot of Gamma World in terms of layout and presentation. There are some animals (earth standard) and some templates for alien animals. 

Appendix

This fun appendix covers converting AD&D 2nd Ed Characters to Alternity and back.  It's actually kind of fun and I admit, one of the first chapters I first went to when I first started looking into this game.

We end with an index, spaceship sheets, system sheets, and a bibliography. 

Thoughts

I wanted to love this game. I really did. So here is what works and doesn't for me.

I love what the developers were trying to do here, a system to cover all sorts of different kinds of sci-fi. A way to combine genres like Gamma World, Traveller and Star Frontiers. Plus I love the style of this game. 

While it has a certain "AD&D meets GURPS IN SPAAACE!" vibe, I really like this vibe. This is increased when we bring in the Dark*Matter and Star*Drive settings. 

On the downside, this game suffered from the death of TSR. While reading the history of the company pretty much guaranteed the game was doomed from the start, this was sealed when the d20 system was introduced.  The d20 system did everything the Alternity system was trying to do and then some more. This becomes obvious in the d20 Future book, which includes Alternity and Star Frontiers material.

The system itself, while it takes some of the best of AD&D, also has some of its problems. They tried to patch over them, so some degree of success, but not say as much as the d20 system would later do. 

I know that there was not a lot of love for this system back in the day. Again, I wanted to love it, and Dark*Matter in particular. Well, I discovered the WitchCraft RPG at the same time, and that was pretty much love at first sight. But like many games, I kept coming back to it and thinking, "What if..." 

Re-reading it now, many years later, I still see that it has all of the elements of things I would love. They are all here, but maybe not in the order I need them to be. But there is still a really fun game here, and I am looking forward to exploring it more.

Alternity RPG Today

While the original Alternity RPG is out of print, there are still options for players today.

There is the new Alternity RPG out. Richard Baker, who was half of the original team, worked on this version. I like it and I will try to review it at some point.

There is also a great Alternity RPG website with a LOT of material. There is so much here I might have to spend some time reviewing it as well. 

Looking forward to getting into my other Alternity books.

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

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

—oOo—
Name: The Black PyramidPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author Dante Harrower

Setting: Jazz Age EgyptProduct: Scenario
What You Get: Twenty-four page, full colour 2.40 MB PDFElevator Pitch: The Black Pharaoh will walk the land and you will be there.Plot Hook: An archaeological dig in Egypt promises fame and fortune
Plot Support: Staging advice, six maps, eight NPCs, seven mythos spells, and six Mythos monsters.Production Values: Okay
Pros# Prequel to H.P. Lovecraft’s Nyarlathotep# Atmospheric survival horror # Scoleciphobia# Traumatophobia# Aiguptosophobia
Cons# Needs an edit# Underwritten hook# No handouts# Linear# Pre-generated Investigators would help # Feels like a sequel to a scenario the Investigators haven’t played
Conclusion# Serviceable prequel to H.P. Lovecraft’s Nyarlathotep that will need teasing apart to run with ease# Atmospheric survival horror that has its creepy moments

 A note from Arthur to Quincey

Telegram from Arthur Holmwood to Quincey P. Morris.

“26 May.

“Count me in every time. I bear messages which will make both your ears tingle.

“Art.”

--

Notes

Moon Phase: New Moon

Not much here. But I do want to call out the use of the Telegram.  Later on, we will see Harker trying to pass a note to the Count's servants to get a message back to London. These two methods, telegrams and letters, help show the divide between our heroes and Dracula even more.

I wonder if a tale like this could have been done in any other time and done as well. The Victorian, especially the late Victorian, was on the cusp of a brand-new world. The 20th Century would shrink the world down to just one place in the minds of many. World Wars I and II would later make this painfully and tragically obvious. But for now, in the 1890s, there are still "two worlds," the Old World and the New World. Our heroes are firmly part of the New.

Also, Dracula was published on this day in 1897.

NOTE: This is repost from 2021. My coverage of TSR's Sci-Fi offerings would not be complete without this. Plus I want to do this before tackling Alternity later on.
--
Gamma World might have been TSR's first big entry into sci-fi gaming (Warriors of Mars and Metamorphosis Alpha non-withstanding), but it was not their biggest.  While I don't have any hard numbers in front of me, I am going to have to say that Star Frontiers edges out the later Alternity in terms of popularity.  It was certainly built at the height of TSR's fame with the first edition, simply Star Frontiers, published in 1982 with the new edition and trade-dress Star Frontiers: Alpha Dawn and Star Frontiers: Knight Hawks.

Certainly, in terms of fans, Star Frontiers has Alternity beat.  But more on that soon.

For this review, I am considering the PDFs and Print on Demand versions of both Star Frontiers: Alpha Dawn and Star Frontiers: Knight Hawks. I am also going to go with my recollections of playing the game when it first came out.

The Alpha Dawn book is designed by "TSR Staff Writers" but we know ow that a huge bulk of the work was done by David "Zeb" Cook and Lawrence Schick.  Knight Hawks was designed primarily by Douglas Niles.  The cover art in both cases was done by Larry Elmore with interior art by Elmore and Jim Holloway with contributions by Jeff Easley, Tim Truman, and even some Dave Trampier.  Keith Parkinson would go on to do some other covers in line as well.  

While originally boxed sets (gotta love the early 1980s for that!) the PDFs break all the components down into separate files. Handy when you go to print the counters or the maps.  The Print on Demand versions put all the files together into an attractive soft-cover book for each game.  The maps are published in the back, but you will want to print them out for use. 

Both books are easy to read and really nice.  They have been some of my favorite Print on Demand purchases ever.
Let's look into both games.

Star Frontiers: Alpha Dawn

Alpha Dawn is the original Star Frontiers game.  The box game with two books, a Basic and Expanded game rules, some maps, counters, and two 10-sided dice.  The rules indicate that one is "dark" and the other "light" to help when rolling percentages, but mine were red and blue.  Go figure.

The Basic Game is a 16-page book/pdf that gives you the very basics of character creation.  There are four stat pairs, Strength/Stamina, Dexterity/Reaction Speed, Intelligence/Logic, and Personality/Leadership.  These are scored on a 0 to 100 scale, but the PCs will fall between 30 and 70.  Higher is better. These can be adjusted by species and each individual score can also be changed or shifted. 

The four species are humans, the insect-like Vrusk, the morphic Dralasites, and the ape-like Yazirian. Each species of course has its own specialties and quirks.  I rather liked the Dralasites (whom I always pronounced as "Drasalites") because they seemed the oddest and they had a weird sense of humor. 

We are also introduced to the worm-like Sathar. These guys are the enemies of the UPF (United Planetary Federation) and are not player-characters. 

The basics of combat, movement, and some equipment are given.  There is enough here to keep you going for bit honestly, but certainly, you will want to do more.  We move on then to the Expanded rules.

The Expanded Rules cover the same ground but now we get more details on our four species and the Sathar.  Simple ability checks are covered, roll d% against an ability and match it or roll under.

Characters also have a wide variety of skills that can be suited to any species, though some are better than others, Vrusk for example are a logical race and gain a bonus for that.  Skills are attached to abilities so now you roll against an ability/skill to accomplish something.  Skills are broken down into broad categories or careers; Military, Tech, and Bio/Social. 

Movement is covered and I am happy to say that even in 1982 SF had the good sense to go metric here. 

There are two combat sections, personal and vehicle.  These are not starships, not yet anyway, and were a lot of hovercars and gyro-jet guns. 

There is a section on creatures and how to make creatures. I am afraid I took that section a little too close to heart and most of my SF games ended up being "D&D in Space" with the planets being used as large dungeons.

The background material in the Frontier Society though is great stuff. I immediately got a good just of what was going on here and what this part of the galaxy was like.  While Earth was never mentioned, you could almost imagine it was out there somewhere. Either as the center of UPF (Star Trek) or far away, waiting to be found (Battlestar Galactica).  

This book also includes the adventure SF-0: Crash on Volturnus.

When it comes to sci-fi some of the rules have not aged as well. Computers still feel very limited, but the idea that as we approach the speed of light we can enter The Void has its appeal.  

Star Frontiers: Knight Hawks

Ah. Now this game.  Star Frontiers was great, but this game felt like something different. Something "not D&D" to me.

In fact I have often wondered if Knight Hawks had not been a separate game in development by Douglas Niles that they later brought into the Star Frontiers line. I also think that TSR was also suffering a little bit of what I call "Traveller Envy" since this can be used as an expansion, a standalone RPG, and as a board game!

Like Alpha Dawn, this game is split into four sections.  There is a "Basic" game, and "Advanced" or "Expansion" rules (and the bulk of the book), an adventure, "The Warriors of White Light", and all the counters and maps.

As far as maps go, that hex map of empty space is still one of my favorites and fills me with anticipation of worlds to come. 

The PDF version splits all this into four files for ease of printing or reading.  The Print on Demand book is gorgeous really.  Yes...the art is still largely black and white and the maps and counters are pretty much useless save as references, but still. I flip through the book and I want to fire up the engines of my characters' stolen Corvette, the FTL Lightspeed Lucifer. Complete with the onboard computer they named Frodo.

The Basic rules cover things like ship movement, acceleration, and turning, along with ship-to-ship combat.  By itself, you have the rules for a good ship combat board game. It works fine as long as you don't mind keeping your frame of reference limited to two-dimensional space. 

The Expanded rules tie this all a little closer to the Alpha Dawn rules, but I still get the feeling that this may have started out as a different sort of game that was later brought into the fold of Star Frontiers.  

Ships are largely built and there is a character creation feel to this.  Their 80's roots are showing, no not like that, but in that, the best engines you can get for a starship are atomic fission.  Of course, no one just gets a starship, you have to buy it and that often means taking out a loan or doing a bunch of odd jobs to raise the credits. Often both.  I don't think I ever actually bought a ship. The Lucifer was stolen.

There is also quite a bit on the planets of the UPF, Frontier Space, and the worlds of the Sathar.  It really had kind of a "Wild West" meets the "Age of Sail" feel to it. 

The last part of the POD book is the adventure "The Warriors of White Light" with its various scenarios. 

Minus two d10s everything is here for an unlimited number of adventures in Frontier Space.  Rereading it now after so many years I can't help but dream up various new adventures. I also can't help to want to use the Sathar in some of my other Sci-fi games.  They have such untapped potential.

The price for these books is perfect.  Grab the PDF and POD combo.  Get some d10s, load your gyrojet gun and get ready to make the jump to the Void. There are new planets to discover!

Parts of Star Frontiers, in particular the species, would find new life in D20 Future, part of the D20 Modern line.

Both games are fun, but suffer from and/or benefit from the design principles of the time. Newer players might find some of the game elements dated. Older players of the games will find them nostalgic.  Personally reading through them now some 40 years after first reading them I get a lot more enjoyment from the rules.  Back then I was really too D&D focused to really enjoy what I had in front of me. Today, well I can't wait to stat up a character or two and a starship.

Star Frontiers on the Web

There are many places where Star Frontiers is alive and well. There used to be more, but my understanding is a predatory grab for the trademark by another RPG company caused Hasbro/WotC to exercise their legal rights and bring the game back in-house. While that did screw over the amazing work done by the fan sites, there are still many up and providing new material for the game.  

For these fans and sites, Star Frontiers never went away.

• Star Frontiers: Inclusive Star Frontiers (Facebook)
• http://www.starfrontiers.com/
• Star Frontiers Wikia
• Star Frontiersman Magazine
• Frontier Explorer

Don't forget our campaign for Thirteen Parsecs is still going strong!

The year is 2037. Under the darkness of a world soiled by war, pollution, and ecological degradation, in the shadows spun by neon, simulacra skulk, hiding amongst those they want to be like, and they will do anything to survive and become more like the masters they once served. The Wallace Corporation is the wealthiest company in the system, having made free technologies and scientific advances that has ensured the survival of mankind with a reliable supply of food and an advanced communications network replacing the one that was destroyed along with vast swathes of human knowledge and digital data. These though, are not the only advances it has made. Using advances made on Tyrell Corporation technology and patents, the Wallace Corporation has introduced the Nexus-9, a replicant design incapable of lying or harming humans of its own accord. In response, the United Nations repeals the UN Replicant Prohibition Act of 2023, passed in response to the killings committed by Nexus-6 models in the late teenies, and classifies the Nexus-9 as a ‘safe’ Replicant, granting them the status of second-class citizens with limited rights. Replicant Detection Units of the world’s various police forces are still responsible for investigating crimes related to replicants, especially the previous models, such as the Nexus-8, and some even begin to employ Nexus-9 units as investigators. It means that Replicants are hunting and ‘Retiring’ their own. It means that the investigators of the Replicant Detection Unit charged with tracking down Replicants, known as ‘Blade Runners’, are hunting sentient beings that look like themselves and act themselves, but are not, strictly speaking, Human. This is a future when what it is to be Human is beginning to be lost, when empathy is all that separates mankind from that which is not only faster and stronger than it us, but also threatens to replace mankind. The year is 2037 and in the city of Los Angeles, under the cacophony of neon, culture clashes, and the watchful presence of the Wallace Corporation, Blade Runners stalk the streets, gun in hand with the power to question all and the responsibility to answer for everything they do. Some Blade Runners have been on the force for decades, the Nexus-9 Blade Runner units mere months and even then, are only a year old despite being fully formed adults, will have to prove their conduct to beyond reproach, but both are police brothers.

This is the setting for Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game, perhaps the unlikeliest of roleplaying licences. The film Blade Runner has always been regarded as a cult classic and then an accepted classic Science Fiction film, a neo-noir meditation of what it meant to be human and not only impossible to obtain the licence for, but also impossible to adapt, since after all, what was it that the Investigators would do and how exactly would you model what was human and what was not? When news broke that Free League Publishing had obtained the licence to coincide with the release of Blade Runner 2049, the official sequel to Blade Runner, the question became not if there could be a licence based on Blade Runner, but could it actually be good? Not wanting to answer that question has delayed this review of the Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game again and again, because if there was the possibility that it could be good, there was also the possibility that it could be bad. Fortunately, Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game is from the same publisher that released Alien: The Roleplaying Game—and that adaptation has proven to be good.

Published following a successful Kickstarter campaign, Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game shifts the time from the 2019 of Blade Runner and the 2049 of Blade Runner 2049 to 2037. The Player Characters are all ‘blade runners’, members of Los Angeles’ Rep-Detect Unit, tasked with investigating all crimes related to Replicants. This includes tracking down older Replicant models that have gone rogue and are on Earth still illegally or have committed some other crime, as much it does anti-Replicant hate and crimes against Replicants. As a team they will be assigned ‘Case Files’, or scenarios—such as ‘Case File 01: Electric Dreams’ in the Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game Starter Set and the recently released Case File 02: Fiery Angels—and expected to work together as a team. They will face not only the sometimes-terrible nature of the crimes they have to investigate—and the challenge of doing so—but also of political interference and interest in their efforts, both from within their department and without, and ultimately moral quandaries and situations in which they will be forced to question their Humanity and it means to be Human. The roleplaying game clearly highlights these at the start of the book as well as its key themes of ‘Sci-Fi Action’, character drama, corporate intrigue, moral conflict, and soul searching. It also notes that keeping track of the passage of time is important—this being done in shifts, used to measure investigative actions and downtime, that the necessity of investigating clues within a Case File means splitting the party, and that the moral dilemmas within a Case File may lead to Player Character versus Player Character conflict.

An Investigator in Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game is simply detailed. He has four Attributes— Strength, Agility, Intelligence, and Empathy, and thirteen Skills, three per Attribute. The thirteenth Skill is Driving, which is derived from the manoeuvrability of the vehicle being driven. Both Attributes and Skills are assigned a letter, A, B, C, or D. Each letter corresponds to a die type, A to a twelve-sided die, B to a ten-sided die, C to an eight-sided die, and D to a six-sided die. Skills can have Specialities, representing dedicated areas of expertise, such as ‘Origami’, which lets an Investigator heal a point of Stress by folding an exquisite Origami figure or Sycophant, which grants the Investigator an extra Promotion Point as he ingratiates himself with his superiors. Thus, an Investigator is either Human or a Nexus-9 Blade Runner, and it is also possible to play a Replicant who is not aware of being a Replicant. In terms of the number of ‘Years on the Force’, the Blade Runner is either a Rookie, Seasoned, Veteran, or an Old-Timer. A Replicant Investigator can only be a Rookie. The ‘Years on the Force’ determines the years served, the number of extra points to assign to both attributes and skills, skill specialities, and both Promotion Points and Chinyen Points. Chinyen Points are the currency in the Los Angles of 2037, Promotion Points represent the Investigator’s standing within the department and have multiple uses. In general, Replicants have higher physical attributes, and limited skills and no specialities, whereas Humans tend towards the reverse. A Replicant will also have less Promotion Points and Chinyen Points.

An Investigator also has an Archetype, representing his role in the investigative team, his expertise, and the work he carries out for the LAPD. There are seven Archetypes—Analyst, Cityspeaker, Doxie, Enforcer, Fixer, Inspector, and Skimmer. The Skimmer and Cityspeaker are only available for Human characters, whilst the Doxie is only available for Replicant characters. The Analyst is a forensic specialist; the Cityspeaker works the city through his contacts and may have worked undercover; the Doxie is akin the kick-murder squad operative seen in Blade Runner, but can read suspects too; the Enforcer uses force and violence when necessary; the Fixer uses contacts and networks to help solve crimes; the Inspector is an old hand and relies on experience; and the Skimmer who is taking kickbacks on the side. Lastly, every Investigator has a ‘Key Memory’, a ‘Key item’, and a ‘Key Relationship’. These three have different effects in play, but should ideally come into play during an investigation. The ‘Key Memory’ can be used to gain advantage on an action; the ‘Key item’ can be used to gain a lost point of Resolve, and the ‘Key Relationship’ is used by the Game Runner to create scenes in a game and interacting with the ‘Key Relationship’ will earn the Investigator Humanity Points.

The character creation process is straightforward. Some elements the player has to choose, such as assigning points to his character’s attributes, but the rest can either rolled for or randomly determined. Tables are included for the latter.

Name: Remedy
Type: Replicant
Archetype: Doxie
Years on the Force: Rookie
Appearance: You are a thing of beauty. Quite literally.

ATTRIBUTES
Strength: A/D12
Agility: A/D12
Intelligence: B/D10
Empathy: C/D8

Health: 8 Resolve: 3
Promotion Points: 1 Chinyen Points: 1

SKILLS
Hand-to-Hand Combat: B/D10, Insight: C/D8, Mobility: C/D8, Manipulation: B/D10, Observation: B/D10

KEY MEMORY
When Did It Happen? – Just a few weeks ago.
Where Did It Happen? – In the derelict housing projects of Los Angeles Hills.
Who Was There? – Your romantic partner
What Happened? – You saw something extraordinary that you cannot explain.

KEY RELATIONSHIP
Who Is It? – Romantic Partner
What’s Your Relationship Like? – Hateful
What’s Going On? – They are suspected of a crime.

SIGNATURE ITEM
A necklace

Mechanically, Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game uses a variant of Free league Publishing’s Year Zero engine previously seen in Twilight: 2000 – Roleplaying in the World War III That Never Was. To undertake an action, a player rolls one die for the Attribute and one die for the Skill. Rolls of six or more count as a success. Rolls of ten or more grant two successes. In general, unless rolls are opposed, only one success is required to succeed at an action. An extra success enables an Investigator to get more information, perform a task faster, or help an Investigator with a task. An easy task gives an Investigator an Advantage. In which case, his player rolls another die, equal to the lowest die in the pool. Conversely, a difficult task removes the lower die in the pool altogether. If any roll is unsuccessful, a player can choose to Push the dice roll and roll again. However, if a one—or the Origami Unicorn—is rolled on the first roll or the Pushed roll, the Investigator, if Human, will suffer a point of damage if the attribute rolled was Strength or Agility or a point of Stress if the attribute rolled was Intelligence or Empathy. If a Replicant, the Investigator will always suffer Stress rather than damage. A Human can Push a Skill roll once, but a Replicant can Push a Skill roll twice.

Only in combat do more than the one extra success count, indicating that more damage has been inflicted or a critical injury. Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game is not a forgiving game in terms of combat and all firearms have a high ‘Crit Die’, so the Investigators should not engage in combat lightly. The rules also cover vehicles in combat—some vehicles can be armed, but for the most part, one vehicle will be ramming another. The rules for chases cover chases on foot, and then by ground vehicle or in the air.
For example, Remedy has been following a suspect, Ramirez ‘Ram’ Smith, whom she thinks has links to the Replicant Underground. She has tracked him down to the Grand Central Market, where all manner of dishes and foodstuffs—legal and illegal—can be found. As her and her partner’s spinner touches down, she leaps out of the vehicle, just in time to see her quarry duck into the heavy crowds carrying a package of some kind. The Game Runner call for an Observation test to determine if Remedy can see him. Remedy has a rating of B/D10 for both Observation and Intelligence, meaning that her player will be rolling two ten-sided dice. Ramirez ‘Ram’ Smith only has a rating of D/D6 for Stealth and B/D10 for Intelligence, so the Game Runner will be rolling a six-sided die and a ten-sided die. However, he is in a crowd, so the Game Master rules that Remedy will be at a disadvantage. This means that Remedy’s player has to remove the base die for Remedy’s Intelligence, so her player will only be rolling one ten-sided die.

The Game Runner rolls an eight and a two, giving ‘Ram’ Smith one success. Remedy’s player rolls a four, so she has no successes. Remedy’s player decides to Push the roll and describes how she leaps up one of the streetlights that a food stand has tapped into illegally for power and onto the food stand’s roof. Remedy’s play takes up the ten-sided die for her Observation skill. This time though, she rolls an Origami Unicorn, meaning that not only has she failed, but she also suffers a point of Stress as even from this elevated height she cannot see her quarry. In the meantime, the proprietor of the food stand yells at her in Cityspeak to get off his roof! The Game Runner tells Remedy’s player that although she cannot see ‘Ram’ Smith, she did see someone else moving purposely through the crowds and that she was fairly certain that it was her partner! This is the cause of the Stress.In addition to gaining Stress because rolls of one or the Unicorn Origami are made on pushed rolled, it can come from working more than three Shifts without a Downtime Shift and simply from Stressful situations. When the number of Stress points is equal to, or greater than an Investigator’s Resolve, the Investigator is broken and will suffer from randomly determined Critical Stress effect. The tables are different for Humans and Replicants. A Replicant will generally begin play with lower Resolve than a Human and react in a more extreme manner than Human would, though this can be a negative reaction or a positive one. In addition, if an Investigator is broken by Stress, his Resolve can be reduced by one, and should his superiors become aware of it, a Replicant would have to take a Baseline Test.

In terms of background, Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game is firmly placed between Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049. Its focus is primarily on the city of Los Angeles, now a mega-city that extends up to San Francisco and down to San Diego, and to the irradiated edge of Las Vegas. It does include some details about the places beyond the confines of Los Angeles, such as The Archipelago, what was Santa Barbara, now voluntarily flooded to turn its wealthy estates into heavily guarded and isolated compounds. There are details of Off-World and even the idea of getting Off-World is discussed, but it remains a dream for nearly all of the remaining citizenry on Earth. Even when it comes to Los Angeles, it concentrates on the main sectors of the city’s Downtown, noting particular locations such as the LAPD Headquarters, DNA Row where the best bioengineers and tech vendors can be found, and Animoid Row for the robot animals in the city. This is accompanied by descriptions of life in the city-climate, technology, communications, and so on, which the Game Runner can use to describe world around the Investigators.

A companion chapter looks at the powers that be, though concentrating on Los Angeles. This includes various corporations, the LAPD, numerous United Nations organisations, criminal gangs—including the Replicant Underground, and of course, Niander Wallace and his corporation. Seen as the saviour of mankind, he remains a mysterious figure, though a newspaper interview with him adds a nice sense of verisimilitude. The aims and relationships with the Wallace Corporation are examined, as they are likely to clash if the Investigators’ inquiries get to close, and this includes a discussion of the various models of Replicant, from the Nexus-1 all the way up to the Nexus-9. Another in-game newspaper highlights the divide in views on the acceptance of Nexus-9 Replicants in general society, despite their official recognition as individuals with limited rights. Many believe that Nexus-9 Replicants are part of a corporate effort to steal jobs and act accordingly. Others, such as members of the Replicant Underground, object to Replicants being Second Class citizens and campaign for better rights for them, and more. The assignment of Nexus-9 Blade Runners to the Replicant Detection Unit has its own issues, as each Nexus-9 Blade Runner has to prove that it is capable of fulfilling the role, which includes hunting its own, without showing the signs of emotional and mental stress that drastically affected earlier models.

Much of this modelled by two of three points which can be earned over the course of play. Chinyen Points represent an Investigator’s income and are primarily used for purchases beyond normal expenses in combination with a Connections skill roll. Promotion Points are earned by investigating a Case File efficiently and by Replicants passing a Baseline Test, but can be lost for misconduct or poorly investigating a Case File. A Replicant Blade Runner whose Promotion Points is reduced to zero must make a Baseline Test. Promotion Points are spent to gain Specialities for an Investigator’s skills, to gain access to specialised equipment from the LAPD, or exchanged for a Chinyen Point, representing a pay rise. Humanity Points are earned as determined by a Case File, as well as an Investigator bringing his Key Memory and Key Relationship into play, and by a Replicant Blade Runner failing a Baseline Test. Humanity Points are used to raise an Investigator’s skills. Of the two it is easier to gain Promotion Points rather than Humanity Points, so consequently, it is easier for an Investigator to improve via Specialities rather his skills.

The LAPD’s Replicant Detection Unit is presented in some detail, fans of Blade Runner will be pleased to note that Dave Holden, now known as ‘Iron Lung’ due to the injury suffered at the start of the film, heads the unit after Harry Bryant retired. This covers its organisation, departments, resources—including those provided by the Wallace Corporation, and day-to-day operations including standard procedures and the perils of being promoted or decorated too often. Complementing this a section on standard and non-standard Replicant Detection Unit equipment. There are old standbys detailed, such as the Voight-Kampff Machine, the Pfläger-Katsumata PK-D 5223 Blaster, and the ESPER Machine, and these are joined by the Post-Traumatic Baseline Test, the PK-D FKM890 Blaster, and Digital Companions. Plus, of course, there are the Spinners. All of this equipment is nicely detailed in a fashion that fans of both films will appreciate. All covered is shopping in general and buying goods on the black market.

For the Game Runner, there is general advice on running Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game, setting the scene, setting the mood, and so on. The bulk of it is dedicated building and running Case Files, the investigations that the Replicant Detection Unit assigns to its Blade Runners. Broad actions within a Case File are split across four Shifts each day, with one of them being designated a Downtime Shift when the Investigator will rest and see to personal details. It will be necessary to split the Investigators up over the course of a Case File—and the roleplaying game encourages the players to do so—as there is invariably far more to a Case File than they can cover just going from scene to scene. Fortunately, the Blade Runners can stay connected and even be involved in a different scene, if only remotely, via the KIA—or Knowledge Integration Assistant—that they all carry as routine. However, the number of leads and sperate scenes is exacerbated by a Countdown, which means that the Investigators will be working against the clock, which can trigger events and even bring a Case File to a close before an investigation has had time to be completed. However, as important as Case Files are to the play of Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game, solving them is not the point of the roleplaying game. Rather, they are a means by which the Blade Runners can be challenged by difficult personal and moral dilemmas, can be confronted by who and what they are, and be forced to make choices.

Unfortunately, there is no Case File included in Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game. So just from the core rulebook it is difficult to see either the game play or the moral dilemmas in practice. For that, the Game Runner will need either Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game Starter Set or Case File 02: Fiery Angels. Although disappointing, there are good reasons as why there is no Case File in Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game, and that really is due to the handouts required, since as an investigative game, Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game is dependent on visuals. Just as in Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049. That said, there is a set of tables for creating the basics of a Case File that the Game Runner can then flesh out.

Beside the lack of a Case File, there is the issue of the divide in Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game in the focus on Human and Replicant Blade Runner—more on the latter than the former. This is intentional, since Replicants are the focus of the setting in general. It shows in their physical capability versus their emotional capacity, which hinders their response to Stress and potentially their ability to work as a Blade Runner. It shows in their need to prove themselves as Blade Runners by gaining Promotion Points lest they be seen as less than ideal additions to the Replicant Detection Unit. And the best way of gaining Promotion Points will be to successfully investigate a Case File and that is unlikely to be to the benefit of other Replicants. This is the core moral quandary in Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game. Yet mechanically, the way to prove that that a Replicant Blade Runner is emotionally capable of undertaking the role is to improve his Empathy Attribute, and that requires Humanity Points. The primary ways of gaining these are to engage with his Key Memory and Key Relationship, the others being to investigate a Case File in a more humane fashion, often against the Replicant Detection Unit’s directive and interests and fail a Baseline Test, indicating to his superiors how he is not suitable for the role. In comparison, the Human Blade Runner is not faced with this near constant balancing act, either mechanically or narratively, and most of the moral dilemmas the Human Blade Runner will be part of Case File’s story as well as with his Key Relationship, and so narrative based rather than mechanical.

Physically, Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game is stunning book, its artwork bringing the energy and sense of movement of the streets of Los Angeles to life contrasting with the almost sepulchral atmosphere and stillness of its interiors. Everything is swathed in darkness, broken by blasts of neon shining off the ever-present rain. The book is also well written and engaging and well organised.

Despite not being set in the period of Blade Runner or Blade Runner 2049, but somewhere in between, Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game is going to satisfy fans of both, by detailing the world and exploring its core moral questions. The only downside is that without a Case File of its own, it cannot best showcase how those core moral questions can examined, or some of the nuances present in the setting. For that, the Game Runner will need a Case File of her own or an official one from the publisher. Nevertheless, Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game is a very good adaption of a licence previously thought unadaptable, let alone available, and a very good introduction to both the world and the questions it raises.
—oOo—
Free League Publishing will be at UK Games Expo which takes place on Friday, May 31st to Sunday June 2nd, 2024.

 Our three suitors for Lucy's ill-fated heart arrive on the scene. We are also introduced to R.M. Renfield. 

Dr. Seward’s Diary.

(Kept in phonograph)

25 May.—Ebb tide in appetite to-day. Cannot eat, cannot rest, so diary instead. Since my rebuff of yesterday I have a sort of empty feeling; nothing in the world seems of sufficient importance to be worth the doing.... As I knew that the only cure for this sort of thing was work, I went down amongst the patients. I picked out one who has afforded me a study of much interest. He is so quaint that I am determined to understand him as well as I can. To-day I seemed to get nearer than ever before to the heart of his mystery.

I questioned him more fully than I had ever done, with a view to making myself master of the facts of his hallucination. In my manner of doing it there was, I now see, something of cruelty. I seemed to wish to keep him to the point of his madness—a thing which I avoid with the patients as I would the mouth of hell.

(Mem., under what circumstances would I not avoid the pit of hell?) Omnia Romæ venalia sunt. Hell has its price! verb. sap. If there be anything behind this instinct it will be valuable to trace it afterwards accurately, so I had better commence to do so, therefore—

R. M. Renfield, ætat 59.—Sanguine temperament; great physical strength; morbidly excitable; periods of gloom, ending in some fixed idea which I cannot make out. I presume that the sanguine temperament itself and the disturbing influence end in a mentally-accomplished finish; a possibly dangerous man, probably dangerous if unselfish. In selfish men caution is as secure an armour for their foes as for themselves. What I think of on this point is, when self is the fixed point the centripetal force is balanced with the centrifugal; when duty, a cause, etc., is the fixed point, the latter force is paramount, and only accident or a series of accidents can balance it.

Letter, Quincey P. Morris to Hon. Arthur Holmwood.

“25 May.

“My dear Art,—

“We’ve told yarns by the camp-fire in the prairies; and dressed one another’s wounds after trying a landing at the Marquesas; and drunk healths on the shore of Titicaca. There are more yarns to be told, and other wounds to be healed, and another health to be drunk. Won’t you let this be at my camp-fire to-morrow night? I have no hesitation in asking you, as I know a certain lady is engaged to a certain dinner-party, and that you are free. There will only be one other, our old pal at the Korea, Jack Seward. He’s coming, too, and we both want to mingle our weeps over the wine-cup, and to drink a health with all our hearts to the happiest man in all the wide world, who has won the noblest heart that God has made and the best worth winning. We promise you a hearty welcome, and a loving greeting, and a health as true as your own right hand. We shall both swear to leave you at home if you drink too deep to a certain pair of eyes. Come!

“Yours, as ever and always,
“Quincey P. Morris.”

--

Notes

Moon Phase: Waning Crescent

Here, we see that our trio are actually old friends. 

Some copies of Dracula were shipped with a misprint on the date of Dr. Seward's journal. You can still find some that say "25 April" and some that say "25 May." May 25th is the obvious correct date. My copies are about half and half.

Seward talks about Renfield, but most of what he says is actually nonsense even by Victorian standards of psychotherapy. However, I suppose the point here is that Seward can see that Renfield is focusing on something outside of himself. How is it that Dracula already has a hold on him? The movies have taken it to mean that Renfield was the first to visit Dracula, but we have no evidence of that here. It is more likely that in Renfield Dracula found a willing disciple. 

On to Arthur, Quincey and John. So all three know each other, and all three have had some adventures together all over the world, it seems. Again, Dracula scholars have seized on this and suggested that the three had had encounters with the supernatural before. This is intriguing but very unlikely. They are too caught off guard for them to have seen anything akin to this. No. Our three would be vampire hunters represent what is best about the Victorian time; the young and rising Lord (Holmwood), the rich adventurous American (Morris), and our brilliant Doctor (Seward). They are also part of the new world, and they have not yet been tarnished by anything from the old world. 

At the end of the street stands a house behind a crumbling wall. People who pass it, look at it askance, wondering why it stands empty after so long and why nobody has bought it. They only half remember it from their childhoods and if they did, they would realise that the building has been in the same state for decades. The children whisper that the house is haunted, that some kid went in there, and never came out. Even so, they dare each other to climb the wall and break in… just as their parents once did. They go in to see what treasures or secrets they can find. The one that has gone unlived in for years. Sometimes a few hearty souls creep in, it is said, Most find nothing—just an empty old house. Some return shaken. A few never come out at all. The house is thus a lurking presence, perhaps not in this town, but in the next, or the next one over? Or perhaps in all of them? And if the house has been lurking all that time, what happens to it when it sits alone for so many long years? What jealousies and hatreds does it quietly nurture? What secrets does it contain, waiting to be discovered within its dark walls, crouched within its dank and dreary rooms, hungering for the return of life?

This is The Darkest House. It is a horror scenario sent in a grand house, fallen to ruin, riven by madness, stained by trauma and emotional scars. Those it draws in, it torments out of hate and spite, and even as they discover some of the house’s secrets and its origins, perhaps the best outcome they can hope for, is to escape it confines, though not the same as they were when they crossed its threshold. Published by Monte Cook Games, The Darkest House is something different, a horror scenario originally designed to be played online and with any game system. As the former, it was originally designed and delivered as an app and a set of electronic documents, combining details of the ‘Darkest House’ itself, a set of handouts in terms of texts, images, and sound files, all richly detailed. As the latter, it comes with its own ‘House System’ which allows Player Characters to be adapted from any game system run The Darkest House using the ‘House System’, the simplified nature of its mechanics making it easier to run online. A Game Master—not calling the Game Master the House Master really is a missed opportunity—could even run The Darkest House with the different Player Characters from different systems and settings if she is ambitious enough.

The Darkest House is now available as a book, which presents all of this information in physical format, but marked with QR codes to link to handouts and downloads. It enables the artwork to shine and as the Game Master to see the motifs and flow of the scenario in one place.

A Player Character in The Darkest House is measured as a Rating on a ten-point scale. Between one and two, they will need to employ stealth and avoid direct confrontations with the dangers of the house; between three and six they will still be danger, but can still survive; and seven and up and they can survive with only minor difficulty. The aim though, is not to create Player Characters particular to The Darkest House, but rather draw them in from other game systems. This points to its intended universality and is underpinned by a conversion guide that adapt those Player Characters from other roleplaying games and fit them on the ten-point scale of the House System. This is whether a Player Character’s level or primary attributes are measured on a twenty-point, six-point, or percentile scale. Thus, it would work whether the Player Character comes from Monte Cook Games’ own Cypher System, Chaosium, Inc.’s Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, or Free League Publishing’s Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying. The process is more rough and ready then exact, and will very likely require the Game Master and the players to adjust as necessary to account for particular abilities, powers, spells, or skills. This is done by awarding Boons rather than adjusting a Player Character’s base Rating. Further, some spells and abilities and their effects can be applied narratively rather than mechanically. This is likely to be easier than working out the exact effects even on the limited scale of the House System and the overall effect of the House System is one that is rough and ready rather than exact or elegant.

Mechanically, the House System measures a Player Character’s Rating versus the Rating of the task involved. The Rating of the task is added to seven to give the target number for the player to role for his character to succeed. The player rolls three six-sided dice, one of which is called the House Die. The Rating of his character is added to the result of the two ordinary dice and not the House Dice, the aim being to roll equal to or higher than the target number. If the task Rating is six or higher than the Player Character’s Rating, the task is impossible to achieve, whilst if it is six or lower than the Player Character’s Rating, the task is impossible to fail. Under the House System, the player always rolls, which means that the player rolls for his character to act and rolls for his character to avoid actions against him. Boons and Banes make a task harder to achieve, respectively, and if a Player Character has one or more of both, they cancel each other out until either the Player Character has none, or a Bane or a Bane leftover. Whether the Player Character has a Bane or a Boon, his player rolls an extra die in addition to the two six-sided dice and the House Die. If a Boon, the player discards to die with the lowest result, and if a Bane, he discards the highest result.

What then does the House Die do? In general, nothing. Under special circumstances, it comes into play. This occurs when it is the highest result on any die rolled and when the player, in desperation, has his character ‘call upon the House’ for help. Neither of these are good. When the highest result on any die rolled is the House Die, the House Acts. This begins with creaking sounds, footsteps, or similar noises being heard by the Player Characters, a figure associated with the section of the House the Player Characters are in suddenly appearing, and so on, but that is only the beginning. It escalates each time the House Acts, step-by-step, up through ten steps, and starts again at one, recycling round and round as the Player Characters explore more of the house, and roll the highest result on the House Die again and again. When a player has his character ‘call upon the House’ for help, the House Acts just if the player had rolled the highest result on the House Die and the character gains a Doom. Doom affects a Player Character in a number of ways, such as if he is wounded and falls unconscious, the number of points acting as a penalty to the player’s roll to see if the character dies. However, what a player can do is ‘spend a Doom’, which gives the Game Master permission to do something terrible to his character. Whatever happens, though, it must be significant, be bad for the character, and at the time of the Game Master’s choosing—and the Doom points can be saved as well. Worse though, the Doom Effects can linger if the Player Characters leave the House…

Harm in The Darkest House is also kept simple. The Rating of the attack is added to a roll of a six-sided die, whilst the defender’s Rating is deducted. If the result is a positive number, that is wound that the defender suffers. The House Die is not rolled for damage, a Banes and Boons can be. Physical armour will reduce this damage. Mental damage is suffered in the same way. Wounds also mean that the rolls for all actions are made with Banes.

Effectively, what the House System is a meta-system, a set of rules and ultimately guidelines since it cannot cover every eventuality and every nuance from every system. It is that lack of nuance, at least mechanically, where The Darkest House is going to be lacking. What this means is that the Game Master is going to have to pick up the slack of the House System and shift what is nuance in another game system over to more narrative, even more storytelling resolution and outcome in The Darkest House.

The last thing to note about a Player Characters is that they enter the Darkest House with a truth or a lie. This essentially is weaponised as part of the play of The Darkest House, the House using it against the Player Character, attempting to shake his faith as part of the story rather than to victimise him. The Game Master should be building these truths and lies into arcs that will run throughout the Player Characters’ exploration of The Darkest House. In terms of advice, The Darkest House suggests reasons for the Player Characters to enter the house, stories that can be told in the House, and some of the objectives that the Player Characters might work towards, intentionally or not. It highlights how the house contains anachronisms even if fantasy characters venture inside, and there is magic to be found too within its walls. The House also isolates the Player Characters, making contact with the outside world technically impossible, though this will not be apparent to the Player Characters. The Game Master can instead use this against the Player Characters, deceiving them through the figures that they would otherwise trust. There is good advice on both running The Darkest House and on the challenges of running The Darkest House, all of which readies the Game Master for the campaign and the details of the House itself.

The House is described Room by Room in a lengthy series of two-page spreads that make up the bulk of the book. These come complete with a floorplan, description, overview, an illustration, and a QR code. The latter opens up a website with images and handouts that the players and their characters can view and peruse. It can include sounds too, their presence marked with an icon of its own. The commitment to the format even includes a darkened hallway, which follows the first location. Divided between areas of the House labelled father, mother, dining room, sister, lover, and ultimately, the Original House, voices whisper to intruders, a Mother figure lurks with her skeleton children in her arms ready to rebuke the Player Characters for their lack of love for her and ready to launch her children at them, a father figure looms over the Player Characters ready to deal out a beating, a door has been plastered over with notes telling the reader not to open the door, but someone keeps knocking from the other side, a clockwork child stalks the halls with a knife clutched in its hands, and so on. It veers from the little unerring uneasiness to grand theatre of the guignol and back again, always unsettling, weird, and worrying as the Player Characters edge their way from one Room to the next, picking at puzzles, poring over possible clues, and wondering what might happen next.

Lastly an appendix lists and details all of the handouts that the Player Characters might find in the House. The Game Master will still need to download these and again, they come with their own QR code. It means that even playing The Darkest House offline, the Game Master will still need Internet access and may want her players to have it to best access the scenario’s handouts and downloads.

In terms of play, The Darkest House can be played as a single big scenario, but it is really designed to be slotted into an ongoing campaign. Almost any campaign in which a ‘haunted house’ could appear. Nor is it necessarily designed to be played in one go. The Player Characters can leave and they can be pulled back in, plus there are ongoing consequences for leaving the House, especially if a Player Character has unspent Doom points. So, the Player Characters may enter the House explore some of it, escape, but re-enter the House at a later point in the campaign. Once the Player Characters have entered the House and come out, it is going to remain a lurking presence until they decide to return and deal with it.

Physically, The Darkest House is very well presented in rich dark colours, the text in red and white. The artwork is excellent, much of it seeming to lurk in the background with its repetition serving to enforce that sense of things and people lurking, ready to leap out and scare the Player Characters. It is well written and it is liberally littered with quotes from authors such as Stephen King and Shirly Jackson.
However, what must be stressed is what The Darkest House is not. It is not a traditional haunt house and it is not a traditional mystery. It means that there are not the ghosts to be found, their origins to be discovered, and their bones laid to rest, problem solved. There are ghosts, but neither ghosts nor the House are ever really going to go away until the Player Characters find a way to make the House go away and never come back. In terms of a mystery, this is a dark, haunted house, and whilst there are secrets to be revealed and aspects of the House’s history to be discovered, much like the ghosts there is no clear beginning, middle, and end, in which its origins can be discovered and the House completely dealt with as a threat. The author of The Darkest House even goes so far as to state that there are secrets to the House that he has not and will not reveal. What this means is that The Darkest House is pervaded with a sense of the ineffable and the unknowable, and whilst there is a mystery to The Darkest House, it is not a mystery to be solved and that may confound some players. This does not mean that The Darkest House cannot be played and cannot be completed. Rather it means that the expectations of what The Darkest House is and is not, are going to be different from the traditional haunted house.

The Darkest House is an audacious creation, a product designed in response to the Lockdown under COVID-19 and thus specifically designed to be played online and with any type of character from any game system. It is both grand and intimate, the great sweep of the House contrasting with the disturbing intimacy of the detail to be found in the individual Rooms, its horror lurking at the edge of the senses before cavorting at the Player Characters and then retreating… Like any big scenario or campaign. The Darkest House demands much of the Game Master, but The Darkest House demands more both mechanically because of the need for adjudication of its House System and because The Darkest House is campaign that is going to directly needle and work at the Player Characters. This also demands players mature enough to accept that this is part of the genre that v falls into.

Perhaps still best played online, The Darkest House is an ambitious design, a fantastic perturbation of puzzles and perils, torments and terrors, which combine to make a great roleplaying horror story.
—oOo—
Monte Cook Games will be at UK Games Expo which takes place on Friday, May 31st to Sunday June 2nd, 2024.