When thirteen people vanish along Highway 70 in the Arizona desert in a matter of weeks, a stretch of road that the press calls it the ‘Devil’s Highway’, local enforcement is at a loss to explain the disappearances. This includes both tribal police—because Highway 70 runs through the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation—and state police, and so the FBI is called in. Despite the wariness of the local police and the distrust of the local populace, what the agents discover is trail of bloody terror that stretches along the highway and then back across America. Investigating murder site after murder site reveals a determined monstrousness, seemingly inexplicable by normal standards, and weirdness and one implausibility after another. Do the FBI agents have one of America’s worst serial killers on their hands or is there something else going on?
This is the set-up for Puppet Shows and Shadow Plays, a scenario published by Arc Dream Publishing for Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game. This is the modern roleplaying game of conspiratorial and Lovecraftian investigative horror with its conspiratorial agencies within the United States government investigating, confronting, and covering up the Unnatural—the forces and influences of Cosmic Horror—and long-time fans of Delta Green will recognise Puppet Shows and Shadow Plays. This is because it originally appeared in the Delta Green sourcebook for Call of Cthulhu, published in 1997, and was thus for many, their introduction to the world of Delta Green. Then it served as an introduction to the setting of Delta Green and the conspiracy of Delta Green, as well as a recruitment to the latter, and Puppet Shows and Shadow Plays does all three of these once again with this new version. More specifically, this version of Puppet Shows and Shadow Plays serves as an introduction to the setting of Delta Green and the conspiracy of Delta Green, as well as a recruitment to the latter, but as it was in the late nineties, when Delta Green was an off the books, unofficial, and cowboy conspiracy outside of the government, and its enemy, MAJESTIC, was very much inside. This then is an introductory scenario for Delta Green ‘Classic’, one updated to accompany Delta Green: The Conspiracy, the nineties sourcebook for Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game.

The scenario is designed for a small group, as most Delta Green scenarios are. Here, the Player Characters are specifically FBI agents, almost the default Agent background for Delta Green and certainly the most familiar to players. That is really due to familiarity with a big television series of the period, The X-Files, an influence certainly on how the player and the Handler then approached the setting of Delta Green, though notably, not an influence on the designers, since the creation and appearance of Delta Green as an organisation pre-date that of the broadcasting of the series. Another parallel perhaps is with the film The Hidden, but that is lesser known and if there are parallels, then Puppet Shows and Shadow Plays goes in a very different direction to that film, most obviously in the conspiracy of Delta Green and the Unnatural of Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game.

The investigation is relatively straightforward, but rich in details, and the Agents are soon faced by a wealth of clues, often strangely pointed out to by scavengers. What the Agents initially find is a series of both bloody and bloodless deaths along the highway and nearby, but the investigation then telescopes in and out, as first the Agents discover that the trail of death leads back across the USA, and second, outside agencies—what is actually Delta Green and its enemy—take an interest in the case, the latter a very direct interest in the case, and then the identification of the prime suspect sets up a manhunt across the Arizona desert. The investigation is hampered by the distrust locally—both at large and in law enforcement—and the need to be aware of Indigenous American cultural attitudes, and not just because of native attitudes towards to the Federal authorities. Essentially, if the Agents run roughshod over them, they will find that the local Apache tribe will no longer co-operate with them. This takes some careful roleplaying upon the part of the players.

In terms of the antagonists, the alien threat and the seemingly unstoppable killer of the original Puppet Shows and Shadow Plays from 1997 remains the same in the 2024 version. What is different in the new version is the naming of the horror at the heart of the scenario and the development of the presence of the Unnatural in the scenario. This includes tying the scavenger to a particular Unnatural deity and then to a particular figure in the Delta Green Mythos, one whom only veteran players of Delta Green will recognise. Of course, if the scenario serves as the introduction to a Delta Green campaign, then that figure can appear and serve as a callback to Puppet Shows and Shadow Plays.

Puppet Shows and Shadow Plays is designed to introduce the classic period of Delta Green for Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game to the players, and introduce new Agents to the conspiracy of Delta Green. To that end, the Agents are both hounded by NRO DELTA Agents of MAJESTIC and recruited by Delta Green. That said, Puppet Shows and Shadow Plays can be played as a one-shot. For campaigns set in the contemporary period of the core rules for Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game, then it could possibly be run as a flashback, especially if one of the Agents is a veteran of Delta Green. There are notes on running the scenario if the Agents are already members of Delta Green, although sadly, not for adapting it to the modern period of Delta Green.

Physically, Puppet Shows and Shadow Plays is well done. Now in full colour rather than black and white as in the original Delta Green sourcebook, all of the scenario’s illustrations, handouts, and maps have been redone.

Puppet Shows and Shadow Plays has aways been regarded as a classic scenario for the Delta Green setting and after twenty-five years since it was originally published, it still stands up as a great scenario. It has fantastic cinematic pacing to it, especially in the often-desperate action scenes against its antagonist, but it gets up close and personal—especially in the autopsy scenes—where it becomes really creepy and unsettlingly, before leading to desperate action scenes once again. In many ways, Puppet Shows and Shadow Plays set Delta Green up, and it is good have it doing that job once again for the nineties for Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game.

In life, you were one of society’s reprobates or worse. You were evil, villainous, even. You committed murder. You committed acts of fraud. You stole. You dealt drugs. Your actions hurt people. In life you did one, more, or even all of them. You were a vile bastard and did not care. You got rich. You got high. It did not matter. In death, it is another matter. Ultimately, deep down, you knew what you were doing was wrong. Immoral. Evil. In death, the consequences are worse than might even have imagined, that is, if you thought about it. What matters now is that you are dead and you are in pain, lying bound under a blood red, burning sky, your lips sewn up. You hear many words, but understand only one, “Rectify.” Spoken by an oily, black thing that can only be a demon, it points towards an opening in the rocks of a giant black skeleton, an archway that could be a mouth, but is more like a drain or sewer… As you drag your desiccated body over jagged rocks that tear at your skin, you enter and work your deeper and deeper, almost as if lowering yourself down a throat, and ultimately, into the bowels… of Hell. Perhaps as the begins somewhere else anew, you will have the chance to ask yourself, “What did I do wrong?” and in answering that question, find a way to answer another, “What can I do to make amends?” In other words, is there a way for you to ‘Rectify’?
Rectify is published by Hansor Publishing, best known for The Gaia Complex – A Game of Flesh and Wires. Rectify though, is a journalling game in which the Player Character is a faced with the five trials of hell, undergoing excruciating punishments for past sins, and constantly being asked to atone for the transgressions. It differs from other journalling games in a number of ways. It is systemless. In fact, it uses no mechanics whatsoever. This is both in terms of character creation and action resolution. Most journalling games provide a means of creating a character, but in Rectify, a player really only needs to know what his character’s crimes were and to able to understand why he committed them. Similarly, most roleplaying games employ a range of prompts and ideas, randomly selected through either roll of the dice or drawing of a card. Rectify does neither. Instead, it asks only a handful of questions from start to finish, the most at the end of each trial—of which there are five—The Mouth, The Throat, The Gut, The River of Blood, and The Pit. Each is a well-done vignette that asks the player to contemplate the actions of the character, preferably in a cool dark place. This though is not whole of the Reflection which Rectify asks the player to undertake, and it is here that Rectify is the most radical.

Rectify is designed as an immersive solo roleplaying game. In Rectify, the immersion comes about because the player and the character are inexplicably connected. Not because the second is the creation of the first, though that is undeniably true, but because at each of the five stages of the character’s journey to atonement, the act, or Pledge, that the player must undertake for the character to ‘rectify’, is a physical one. This comes after a moment—or even longer—of ‘Reflection’, but it is an act that as written, is carried out in the real world rather than the fantasy of Rectify. The player is recording his experiences both at the start of a period of reflection and after, and this includes the experience of carrying out the Pledge and the experience of its consequences. It those consequences that radically shift Rectify away from a fantasy, because the consequences can be life changing.

For example, the first scene takes place in The Mouth, where the theme is one of accepting your fate and being silenced. In the period of Reflection, the player calms his mind, sets aside his fear, embracing what Hell is tormenting him with, and then swallowing his (character’s) guilt, ignites his senses. This is combined with the Pledge, of which there are three options. One is eat a handful of chilli peppers, including seeds and without drinking any water; another is to fill your mouth with as many ice cubes as possible, and keeping the mouth shut until they have completely melted; and third, have the tongue pierced (by a professional). Pledges at the end of later scenes include the player confessing to something that he has kept hidden for a long time; have sex with someone (consensually) or masturbate, but always be in the moment; go and get some dental work that you have been putting off; face your biggest fear head on; and so on. Some these can have cathartic, even beneficial effects, such as such as volunteering for a helpline or support group, like the Samaritans or a food bank, or watch a film that makes you cry and enables you to express your emotions, but most are not. The problem is that although these are often thematic, such as numbing the throat through chillis or ice cubes after the character has swallowed his guilt, the physicality of these actions is going to be uncomfortable at the very least, painful at the very most.

Effectively, the immersion at the heart of Rectify is too immersive. It negates the power of the imagination and it punishes the player for his imagination. Of course, the player has not committed murder or defrauded anyone or stolen anything, and so is not being punished with a fine or a prison sentence by the authorities. He is, however, being punished for thinking about having done those things. Rectify does carry a warning about it being for mature players. That though, may not be enough.

Physically, Rectify is well presented. Done in stark black and white throughout, with pages borders that seem to squirm. The look of the journalling game is constrictive and oppressive, though the art is decent.

Rectify feels more like therapy then roleplaying game, more like a punishment than a pleasure. It blurs the line between reality and fantasy, possibly dangerously so. There is scope to explore the atonement of the guilty and the wicked in roleplaying games, but that is best left to the fantasy and a line drawn between it and the reality. Something that Rectify fails to do.

Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #9: Grave Matters is a scenario for Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game and the ninth scenario for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set. Scenarios for Dungeon Crawl Classics tend be darker, grimmer, and even pulpier than traditional Dungeons & Dragons scenarios, even veering close to the Swords & Sorcery subgenre. Scenarios for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set are set in and around the City of the Black Toga, Lankhmar, the home to the adventures of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, the creation of author Fritz Leiber. The city is described as an urban jungle, rife with cutpurses and corruption, guilds and graft, temples and trouble, whores and wonders, and more. Under the cover the frequent fogs and smogs, the streets of the city are home to thieves, pickpockets, burglars, cutpurses, muggers, and anyone else who would skulk in the night! Which includes the Player Characters. And it is these roles which the Player Characters get to be in Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #9: Grave Matters, small time crooks trying to make a living and a name for themselves, but without attracting the attention of either the city constabulary or worse, the Thieves’ Guild!
Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #9: Grave Matters is a short, one or two session scenario which takes place over the course of a single evening. Designed for two or three Player Characters of Second Level, it opens with them being approached by Faukel, an elderly, though still tough warrior and ex-member of the Slayer’s Guild. He has a job for them which requires both their skills and their discretion. Something belonging to his employer—a respected figure in the more shadowy parts of the city—has been stolen and he wants the Player Characters to recover it. Which for experienced burglars like the Player Characters sounds easy enough, but unsurprisingly, there are complications. First, there is a deadline. The stolen item is due to be smuggled out of the city in the next two days and is currently in the possession of the smugglers. Second, Faukel’s employer wants it done without resorting to killing anyone and offers to pay the Player Characters a bonus if they manage that. Third, there is the nature of the item that Faukel’s employer wants recovered—it is a sarcophagus. So quite a hefty item, and yes, it does have a body still in it! Fourth, the smugglers, the ‘Grave Men’, who were the ones to hire the thieves who stole the sarcophagus, are connected to the Thieves’ Guild. The latter is possibly the most dangerous aspect of accepting the task. The Thieves’ Guild does not take kindly to freelance thieves, those who do not operate according to its rules or pay their dues, more so if the freelance thieves either steal from or kill actual members of the Thieves’ Guild.

There is also a fifth difficulty. The ‘Grave Men’ are not fools and so they have set up precautions and alarms to prevent their base of operations being broken into by thieves. The Player Characters, as experienced thieves and second storey men, should be used to that, and act and plan accordingly. The base of operations is actually an embalming business, a useful façade that also provides the means to smuggle items out of the city—embalmed bodies have plenty of cavities. ‘Brevak’s Embalming and Funeral Arts’ is still a going concern and is a mapped out and described in no little detail across its several floors. In order to not attract attention, the Player Characters will primarily relying on stealth, but there are opportunities for a fight or two, as well as traps to disarm and locks to be picked as you would expect. The cover of the scenario actually depicts the embalming room, which is an entertainingly weird location to have a fight and it should definitely involve or more of the NPCs or Player Characters being pitched off the walkways in the room and into the stinking embalming vats. Then, when it comes to the getting the sarcophagus out of the embalmer’s building, the easiest method would be to use one of the business’ hearses—and perhaps, if that sets up a chase, with one hearse careering after another through the streets of Lankhmar, it would be a fitting way to end the scenario!
However, ‘Grave Matters’ is not the only scenario in Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #9: Grave Matters. There is a second scenario, ‘The Madhouse Meet’. Originally appearing in Dungeon Crawl Classics: Lankhmar – The Madhouse Meet/Mutant Crawl Classics: The Museum at the End of the Time, Goodman Games’ release for Free RPG Day in 2016, it is an introductory scenario for Dungeon Crawl Classics: Lankhmar, intended as a ‘Meet’ for First Level Player Characters. A Meet’ adventure begins with a situation in which the Player Characters find themselves all together despite never having met before, and forces them to work together to get out of the situation they find themselves in. ‘The Madhouse Meet’ does that with a classic story situation. In this case, it is in the same cell somewhere in the city of Lankhmar, manacled to the wall. The challenge for the Player Characters is to both get out of their predicament and discover is responsible, which the scenario lets them do. The first issue for the Player Characters once they are free is reequipping themselves, since all of their possessions have been taken. This includes weapons, so like the earlier ‘Grave Matters’, this is a scenario where the Player Characters to employ stealth rather than force of arms—mostly because they lack the arms to apply the force.
The dungeon beyond the cell where the Player Characters find themselves waking up is a relatively straightforward and quite small, but it is highly detailed and there is a lot here for the Player Characters to investigate and examine.  Where the scenario as presented originally in Dungeon Crawl Classics: Lankhmar – The Madhouse Meet/Mutant Crawl Classics: The Museum at the End of the Time, felt divorced from Lankhmar and could have been set anyway, here it feels more grounded and it gives the Player Characters, at the end of the scenario, the opportunity to go home to Lankhmar. It also provides the opportunity for the Player Characters to forge relationships and connections with each other, ready for the Judge to run more scenarios using the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set. Part of that is the weirdness of the encounters in the asylum where they had just been held in captivity, which lean into the sorcery of the swords & sorcery genre. For the Judge, there is an alternate ending. This sets up the primary antagonist as a recurring villain, who is weird and creepy himself, rather being killed at the end of this scenario.
‘The Madhouse Meet’ is a solid ‘Meet’ scenario, one which pushes the Player Characters to rely on their skills and abilities rather than their gear. So, this is testing affair, one which will probably take a session or two to play through. In comparison, ‘Grave Matters’ lets the Player Characters use their skills and abilities to the fullest, aided by their equipment, and get them to plan and execute a burglary just as they are expected to in Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set.
Physically, Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #9: Grave Matters is well presented. Both artwork and cartography are good, although ‘Grave Matters’ looks very much more like a scenario for Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar than ‘The Madhouse Meet’.
Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #9: Grave Matters provides an alternative means to get the players and characters involved both with each other and in Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar with ‘The Madhouse Meet’ and a nicely done adventure which the Judge can run after the Player Characters have had an adventure or two. Overall, Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #9: Grave Matters is a sold pair of scenarios for use with the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set.

First broadcast six decades ago, Thunderbirds is a classic of British children’s television, combining the advanced puppetry of ‘Supermarionation’ with superb scale models and special effects. The result still stands up today as exciting television with great music and amazing opening credits. The series told of the daring missions to save life and limb conducted by International Rescue, a secret non-government organisation dedicated to rescuing those that governments cannot. It is equipped with a fleet of advanced vehicles, each with Thunderbird call sign, enabling its operatives to conduct air, land, sea, and space missions from its secret base on an island in the Pacific Ocean. Ex-astronaut Jeff Tracy leads International Rescue, but it is his sons that conduct the missions, supported by Brains, who develops and builds new vehicles, and Lady Penelope, the organisation’s London ‘secret’ agent. Opposing International Rescue is the criminal and terrorist, The Hood, who uses disguises and constantly plots to steal International Rescue’s technological secrets and make a fortune by selling them to the criminal underworld.

The Gerry Anderson television series has been the subject of previous board games, most notably, Thunderbirds, designed by Matt Leacock and published by Modiphius Entertainment in 2015. The latest game based on the series is the card game, Thunderbirds Danger Zone: The Game, published by YAY Games. Designed to be played by two to six players, aged ten and up, it is a co-operative game in which the players attempt to complete seven missions. Each of the seven is based on a classic episode—‘End of the Road’, ‘Pit of Peril’, ‘30 Minutes After Noon’, ‘Trapped in the Sky’’, Vault of Death’, ‘Terror in New York City’, and ‘The Impostors’—and the game can be played through in between twenty and forty minutes, depending upon the difficulty and length of a mission. In the game, each player takes turns playing the role of Jeff Tracy, leader of International Resource, who will marshal four types of resource—‘Team Spirit’, ‘Fuel’, Tech’, and ‘Knowledge’—that will get the members of International Rescue on a Journey to the Danger Zone where they can conduct the rescue. If the players get both the right members of International Rescue and the right resources to the right places, they can complete a mission and win the game!

Thunderbirds Danger Zone: The Game consists of several sets of cards. The first are the Danger Zone cards. There are three of these per mission and each shows which resources and character is needed to complete that part of the mission. The Journey cards represents the steps needed to get to the mission, represented by the Danger Zone cards and have their own requirements in terms of resources. The Resource cards show a mix of Resource types, either three or all four, and their number. The Tracy Island cards have countdowns on them of various lengths, from ten to four turns, and are used to set the game’s difficulty, ten being the easiest, , four being the hardest. There are also reference cards for the various Actions that the characters can take, Tokens to represent each character, Journey Tokens to increase the difficulty a bit more, a Countdown Marker to use on the Tracy Island cards, and Tokens used to indicate that a resource has been successfully supplied.

To set up a mission, its three Mission cards are placed in a row and three Journey cards, either those for the mission or three random, are laid out in a row below the Mission cards. A Journey Token is placed on each Journey card, either a resource or The Hood. The Journey Token increases the number of Resources needed to complete the Journey card, whilst the presence of The Hood reduces the number of Resources the players can play. Each of the three Mission cards has an associated character on it, and the Token for each is placed below the corresponding Mission card and Journey card, along with another Journey Token.

Each round, the players each has a hand of three Resource cards. One player is designated to take the role of Jeff Tracy and he will ask the other players to supply him with resources to fulfil one of the Resource requirements, first on the Journey cards, and then on the Mission cards. Each player selects a card from his hand and places it face down. The Jeff Tracy player selects two of these face down Resource cards. If the total number of the resources on the Resource cards selected match the number on the designated Journey card or Mission card—adjusted for the Journey Token or The Hood on the Journey card—then the action succeeds and the Jeff Tracy player can place a Success Token on that Resource. If the players have been unable to supply enough Resources, the Jeff Tracy player can swap one of the Resource cards he choose, with a Resource card of his own. If the Jeff Tracy player cannot match the number of Resources indicated on the Journey card or Resource card, the action fails, the Countdown Marker is moved down one space on the Tracy Island card.

The round ends and all cards played are discarded. Players draw back up to three Resource cards, except the Jeff Tracy player if he swapped one of his Resource cards. In this case, he starts the next round with two Resource cards. The Jeff Tracy token is passed to the next player and the new round begins.

The aim is move all three Character Tokens for a mission through the Journey card and onto the Mission Card. This is done by fulfilling all of the Resource requirements for the Journey card. Once all three Character Tokens have been moved from their respective Journey cards to the Mission cards, play continues in the same fashion until either all of the Resource requirements for each Mission card has been fulfilled and the Mission completed with a successful rescue, or the Countdown Marker runs out of space on the Tracy Island card, in which case, International Rescue has failed to complete the mission and the players have lost the game.

Initially, the Jeff Tracy player will have no real idea as to what Resources to ask for, so the players do not know which of the Resource cards in their hands to play with any certainty. However, once a particular Resource on a Journey card or a Mission card, the choices will begin to tighten and a player can husband his Resource cards and perhaps save particular cards for later rounds. Should the Jeff Tracy player swap a card to fulfil a Resource requirement, then the Jeff Tracy player on the next round will know one of the cards that player has a holdover from the previous round. In general, though, because Resource cards are kept hidden in each player’s hand, there is an element of uncertainty to play, which will of course, grow and grow as the players get closer to completing a Mission and the Countdown Marker slides down Tracy Island. On side effect of keeping the Resource cards hidden, is that there is no ‘Alpha’ player, no one player ‘suggesting’ the best course of action for everyone. The revolving role of Jeff Tracy enforces that too because it puts a different person in charge from round to round.

Beyond the core game, Thunderbirds Danger Zone: The Game adds options that increase both theme and complexity. These primarily give more options for the Jeff Tracy player. If the players manage to supply sufficient Resources on a turn, he has an extra pair of options. One is to ‘Prepare Pod and Equipment’, the other is to provide ‘Mission Support’. The ‘Prepare Pod and Equipment’ action is necessary because all of the six missions beyond the beginning mission, ‘End of the Road’, have Pods and Equipment. The Pods hold the special vehicles built by Brains and are transported by Thunderbird 2 piloted by Virgil Tracy. For example, the ‘Pit of Peril’ mission requires ‘The Mole’ and ‘Recovery Vehicles’, and the Equipment includes ‘Explosives’. What it means is the players have layers of cards each with their own Resource requirements, adding to demands of play and lengthening game play, but at the same time adding theme too.

‘Mission Support’ is carried out by bringing another character and his token into play, which is done by playing Resource card showing that character. These cannot be the characters actually on the mission, and provide the players with an advantageous action. For example, Lady Penelope has ‘Inside Information’ that lets the Jeff Tracy player reveal a third Resource card in play and use that instead of the one he has already selected, whilst Scott Tracy, as ‘Team Leader’, can use the Team Spirit Resource on one Resource card as the Knowledge Resource on another, and vice versa. The ‘Mission Support’ from any one character can only be used twice before he needs to be reactivated again. The Jeff Tracy player can conduct multiple ‘Mission Support’ actions.
Physically, Thunderbirds Danger Zone: The Game is well presented. The cards are of good stock and the tokens of sturdy cardboard. The rules leaflet is clearly laid out and easy to read. All three—especially the cards—are illustrated with photographs from the television series, and the particular episodes depicted in the seven Mission cards.
Thunderbirds Danger Zone: The Game is a serviceable card game that as a co-operative game interestingly introduces mechanics that avoid the ‘alpha player’ problem found in many co-operative games. As a game itself, it is perfectly playable, but ultimately, Thunderbirds Danger Zone: The Game really is a game for Thunderbirds fans and they are really going to get the most out of it.

 A bit of a divergence today for, well, a bit of divergence.  Let me set the stage a bit. It is 2007, and Wizards of the Coast has decided to end the publication of the wildly successful Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition line and will now produce Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition.  D&D 3e was the edition that brought many back to the game. It was the edition that rekindled my enjoyment of the game after so many years. The idea that this would end only after 7 years (10 years per edition had been the average) seemed a bit odd.

In any case, 4th edition was released, and ... well, I'll talk about that on Sunday. But people were not ready to give up their 3rd Edition rules. Enter Paizo and Pathfinder!

Back when 3rd Edition was popular, Wizards of the Coast had licensed out the RPG Hobby's flagship gaming Magazines, Dragon and Dungeon, to Paizo, Inc. Here they helmed both magazines for many years and built a few 3rd Edition compatible products thanks to the Open Gaming Licence. In 2007 Wizards of the Coast announced 4th edition they did not renew the contract with Paizo to produce material. So Paizo went on to produce their own Pathfinder periodical, a set of publications similar to the Dungeon magazine. 

In 2008 D&D 4e started out with good sales, but soon they began to fall. Fall faster than expected. Paizo saw there was still a market for 3rd-edition compatible material, but they also wanted to make some changes. Thus, in 2009 the Pathfinder RPG rules were born.

So in 2009, we both did D&D 4e, which was not compatible with D&D 3x or any other D&D rules set. And Pathfinder, which was 95% compatible with D&D 3.x.  That last 5% is for the differences in the D&D 3 and 3.5 rules and the extras Pathfinder added in. But honestly, you could take your D&D 3.0 characters, fight D&D 3.5 monsters while the Game Master ran Pathfinder rules, and everyone would be fine.

Sadly, Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro has a very bad habit of firing people. The good news here though is that some of those people would go on to be hired by Paizo to work on Pathfinder. I mentioned before that Pathfinder is often thought of as being "Dungeons & Dragons 3.75" and there is a lot of truth to that. There is a lot here that feels like D&D 3.x perfected. They certainly had the advantage of 9 more years of playing and writing to help them out. 

Pathfinder then did the impossible, it dethroned D&D as the best selling Fantasy RPG. They beat D&D at their own game. If the OGL was one of the reasons 4e got made, it was 4e's failures that got 5e made. In the meantime, Pathfinder just kept moving along and doing its thing.

Pathfinder 2nd Edition came along in 2019. It was different. While the rules were still very much tied to the OGL and the system first created for D&D 3, these rules had more divergence. The Pathfinder 2nd Edition rules were created to go after the D&D 5th edition, which by this time had reclaimed its market superiority. 

This would change again in 2023 when Wizards announced they were going to "revoke" the OGL (something they actually could not do legally). Pathfinder relied on the safe harbor of the OGL (as do many publishers) so in April of 2023 they announced their Pathfinder 2e Remastered. This would be their 2e ruleset, rewritten to avoid using the OGL and instead their own ORC license. While this did not deal the blow to D&D 5e that Pathfinder did to 4e, it was enough to have some people (myself included) move from D&D 5e to Pathfinder 2eR. 

Pathfinder 2e and 2eR. I am still a sucker for a ribbon in my book.

I can find no significant differences between the Pathfinder 2e rules and the Pathfinder 2eR ones. I know Paizo is no longer selling the 2e rules in favor of the 2eR, which is as it should be. Pathfinder 2e is a fine game in its own right, and I like it better as long as I am not trying to compare it to either D&D 3e or 5e. And then only because they can all do the same sorts of games, just in different ways.

Tomorrow is Q Day, and I am going with a tried and true one. I will talk about the various Queens of Dungeons & Dragons.

 I can't properly celebrate 50 years of Dungeons & Dragons and not talk about where the game started. So let's go back to 1974 and the Original edition of Dungeons & Dragons.

This is the original 3-Volume set of Dungeons & Dragons, plus the Chainmail rules for fantasy minatures.

The rules...are arcane to say the least. These rules assumed that the player and the Referee (what would later be named Dungeon Master) already had a background in wargames or had access to those who did. Some have even gone as far as call the rules indecipherable, but I think that is obviously not the case. These rules say several reprints into the 1980s, with the 6th reprint being the most common. Mine is a mix of 3rd and 4th printings. You can still buy copies of it on DriveThruRPG if you are curious (it sells for the same price as it did back then), OR if you are super serious about it, score one of the collectible editions Wizards of the Coast did 10 years back. 

I will warn you, they are going for a lot of money now. But they are still cheaper than the OD&D rules from the 1970s.  Even the relatively common 6th printing goes for thousands of dollars now. I hate to think what 3rd printing would sell for.

There were only three character classes back then: Fighting Men, Magic Users, and Clerics. Races were humans, dwarves, hobbits/halflings, and elves, who had to decide whether to begin their day as Fighting Men or Magic Users.

Even the rolling of a d20 (twenty-sided die) was the "optional" rule for combat.

I did not start with this one. However, in 1987, I played a summer session with these rules. It was an educational experience, and I am certainly happy I did. I don't know if I will repeat it like that; I would add in more of the later supplements that made it into the game I know now. But it is something every gamer, especially every D&D player, needs to try at least once. 

These rules, though, were the absolute standard for gaming from 1974 to 1977, when TSR launched the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons line. Even other game companies mimicked TSR's approach.

A prime example is Traveller, the premier science fiction RPG, which began as a same-sized box with three books. If the D&D game books were called "The Three Little Brown Books, " the Traveller books were  "The Three Little Black Books." 

These little books are a very humble start to what would become a worldwide phenomenon. As the game grew and progressed, so did its players. We are now at a point where there is truly a game out there for everyone's needs and wants. And if the game you are playing doesn't do that, well there are thousands of choices. 

I still love reading these little books. They never get old to me. 

Tomorrow is P Day, and I'll talk about Pathfinder, the divergence of Dungeons & Dragons.

The original 1st Edition Dungeon Master's Guide for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons is a treasure trove of material for running an AD&D game. It is also a treasure for running any sort of game. What it lacks in organization is something 2nd Edition attempted (and had some success with) to fix, but it makes up for in sheer volume and charm.

The tome, in addition to various details for the AD&D game, also has many informational appendices. One famous one was Appendix N.

Titled Appendix N: Inspirational and Educational Reading it is the only Appendix that doesn't offer direct advice above "read these."

Now, over the years, there has been something a cottage industry with the circles of "old school" gamers to study these books as if they were some sort of literary canon, ancient wisdom handed down from sages to us mere mortals.

Well...yeah, I mean there are some good books here sure, but you can play and enjoy D&D and never have read any of them really.

There are many links to explore these texts. Here are just a fraction.

• What is Appendix N? (Goodman Games)
• Appendix N (D&D Lore Wiki)
• Gary Gygax's Appendix N (Goodreads)

There are even books about it.

• Appendix N: The Eldritch Roots of Dungeons and Dragons, Edited by Peter Bebergal (the better one)
• Appendix N by Jeffro Johnson

Now, I am not trying to discount the effect these had on the writing of Dungeons & Dragons. I think I made clear at least some of these on H is for Hobbit day. Even the new 5th Edition D&D Player's Handbook revisits this list.

At the time I started playing D&D I had read the Hobbit. And that was about it. I was working through Lord of the Rings at the same time. I would quickly pick up Moorcock's Elric saga which is a natural step before getting into H.P. Lovecraft.

I actually found that a similar list in the Moldvay Basic book was much better. I also created my own "Appendix O" (the DMG has Appendix O) because it comes after N (and O for occult) of my own books that influenced my writing.

The Witches of Appendix N

A little project I have been planning is "The Witches of Appendix N." This would cover the various witches in these books and how I could represent them as AD&D characters. Some are easy, like Morgan Le Fey from Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions or the winter witches of Fafhrd's homeland in Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd & Gray Mouser series. Others have close ones, like the works of H.P. Lovecraft. And some don't have any at all. 

I have never read some of these books despite knowing about them for 45 years, and others I have not read in a very long time. So, it might take a bit for this project to see the light of day. 

--

Tomorrow is O Day, so I am taking us back to where it all began with Original D&D.

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: Pass The Giggle WaterPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Christopher DiFoggio

Setting: Arkham, 1929
Product: Scenario for Call of Cthulhu: Arkham
What You Get: Thirty page, 5.30 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: A race against the rage...Plot Hook: When rage comes to Arkham, can the source be found?Plot Support: Staging advice, eight NPCs, ten handouts, one map, and two Mythos monsters.Production Values: Untidy.
Pros# Scenario for Call of Cthulhu: Arkham & Lovecraft Country# Introduces NESI or ‘New England Shadow Investigations’ as an Investigator organisation# Can be played with one Investigator
# Angrophobia# Toxicophobia# Methyphobia
Cons# Needs a good edit# Linear# More floorplans and maps a necessity# Includes a deathtrap which might kill everyone# Another poisoned alcohol scenario for Call of Cthulhu# If the safest route into the mansion is via the basement, how do the Investigators get to the basement?
Conclusion# Underdeveloped and under presented# Potentially serviceable scenario that almost works, but ultimately is something for the Keeper to fix

 Today is Monday. It is also "M" Day. Here at The Other Side, Mondays are used for Monstrous Mondays, where I talk about monsters. Since I am doing the A to Z of Dungeons and Dragons my topic for today was pretty much handed to me.  Today I am going to talk about the Monster Manual.

All printings of the 1st Edition Monster Manual

Monster Manual for AD&D 1st Edition

This is the book that got me into D&D and RPGs. Along with The Hobbit, this is where my journey began. 

The Monster Manual was the book for me.  The one that got me hooked.  The book I borrowed from a friend to read in "silent reading" back in 1979 at Washington Elementary School in Jacksonville, IL, was the one that made me the über-geek you all know today. How über? I used the freaking umlauts, that's my street cred right there.

Back in '79 I was reading a lot of Greek Myths, I loved reading about all the gods, goddesses and monsters. A particular favorite of mine was D'Aularires' Book of Greek Myths. So I saw my friend's Monster Manual and saw all those cool monsters and I knew I had to have a copy. Though getting one in my tiny near-bible-belt town was not easy.  Not hard mind you, by the early 1980s the local book store stocked them, but I was not there yet.  So I borrowed his and read.  And read.  And read.  I think I had the damn thing memorized long before I ever got my own game going.

Since then, I have judged a gamebook on the "Monster Manual" scale. How close of a feeling do I get from a book or game compared to holding the Monster Manual for the first time? Some games have come close, and others have hit the mark as well. C.J. Carella's WitchCraft gave me the same feeling.

Also, I like to go to the monster section of any book or get their monster books. Sure, sometimes there are diminishing returns—Monster Manual V for 3.5, anyone? But even then, sometimes you get a Fiend Folio (which I liked, thankyouverymuch).

This book captured my imagination like no other gamebook.  Even the 1st DMG, a work of art, had to wait until I was older to appreciate it.  The Monster Manual grabbed op to me from the start and took me for a ride.

The Book (and PDF)
The Monster Manual's PDF has been available since July 2015. The book has three different covers from the various printings in 1977, 1983 and 2012.


Regardless of what cover you have, the insides are all the same. The book is 112 pages long and features black-and-white art from some of the biggest names to grace the pages of an RPG book.
This book was the first of so many things we now take for granted in this industry. The first hardcover, the first dedicated monster tome, and the first AD&D book.
The book contains 350+ monsters of various difficulties for all character levels. Some of the most iconic monsters in D&D began right here. Mostly culled from the pages of OD&D—even some of the art is similar—and the pages of The Dragon, this was and is the definitive book on monsters.

Eldritch Wizardry gave us the demons, but the Monster Manual gave us those and all the new devils.  The Monster Manual introduced us to the devils and the Nine Hells. We also got the new metallic dragons, more powerful and diverse undead, and many more monsters.  There were new sub-races of the "big 3". Elves get wood, aquatic, half, and drow.  Dwarves get hill and mountain varieties. Halflings get the Tallfellows and Stouts. So, there are not just more monsters but more details on the monsters we already know.

While designed for AD&D, I used it with the Holmes Basic book. The two products had a similar style and seemed to work great together. It was 1979, and honestly, we did all sorts of things with our games back then. The games worked very well together.



Flipping through one of my physical copies or paging through the PDF, I now feel the same sense of wonder I did 45 years ago.

Thankfully, you can get the PDF of the Monster Manual for just a little more than the hardcover cost 45 years ago.

Gary Gygax's oldest daughter, Elise, with the Monster Manual

The original Monster Manual is still so popular today that Wizards of the Coast is still making minis for D&D 5th Edition in the style of the monsters from AD&D 1st Edition. Granted, those sets are not aimed at casual 5e players but rather old gamers like me with fond memories and more disposable income than we had in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

I feel it is difficult for me to truly convey how I felt when I first read this book. But I think I have approached explaining it.

One thing is certain. This is the reason I have been working on my own Basic Bestiary.

Tomorrow is N Day. I plan to discuss the infamous Appendix N from the Dungeon Master's Guide.

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 Schoolmarm’s GhostPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Andy Miller

Setting: Oregon, 1877
Product: One-on-one scenario for Down Darker Trails: Terrors of the Mythos
What You Get: Fifty-eight page, 23.36 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Ghost, but in the Beaver StatePlot Hook: An inheritance and a haunting points to...?
Plot Support: Staging advice, one pre-generated Investigator, eight NPCs, sixteen handouts and images, seven maps and floorplans, three Mythos tomes, and two Mythos monsters.Production Values: Decent.
Pros# Scenario for Down Darker Trails: Terrors of the Mythos# Scenario for one player and her Keeper# Good introduction to both Call of Cthulhu and Down Darker Trails
# Probably the best conversion notes in the world
# Richly detailed investigation# Extensive notes included# Phasmophobia# Osmophobia# Androphobia
Cons# Needs a slight edit# Scenario hook is a Call of Cthulhu cliché
Conclusion# Excellent, easily adapted introduction for one player and her Keeper# Takes a hoary old cliché and turns it into a richly detailed and thoroughly enjoyable investigation in the Old West

This is another Sunday special to talk about another edition of D&D. Today, we are going to visit the year 2000 and the Third Edition of Dungeons & Dragons.

Dungeons & Dragons, 3rd Edition

Ok, let's get caught up. By 1997 I was married, had a new house, a new job and we were planning on starting a new family. I was also really, really burned out on D&D. I was tired of the nonsense that TSR kept pulling on their fans, I was tired of the infighting between the fans of different settings, and the power creep in the books was getting to be way too much. 

In April of 1997, TSR was not just in dire straits; they were failing life support and hemorrhaging money. In comes Wizards of the Coast, flush with cash from the success of Magic the Gathering. They buy TSR, and Dungeons & Dragons, and wipe out all of TSR's debt. 

For a while, things seemed, well, weird. Wizards ran TSR as an extension, and books were still produced using the TSR trade dress.  However, in late 1999, I got an email. I want to say it was December since that roughly corresponds to my 20th anniversary of playing. This email, which I was told was ultra-confidential, was the play test documents for the new Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition.

Then 2000 rolled around. On September 11, 2000 (not *that* 9/11) I went into my Favorite Local Game Store and bought a copy of the 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook. 

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

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

Eventually the system was updated to a 3.5 with various levels of compatibility with 3.0. It was I still say 98% compatible, except for where it wasn't.

The books were larger, and had some new art, but they were still largely the same. They were close enough that originally I did not feel the need to buy them. But when the "Special Edition" leather-bound covers came out, I had to have them. Plus I am a sucker for a book with a ribbon. 

D&D 3rd edition had a very solid run from 2000 to about 2008. 

The rumor I have heard was that the higher-ups at Hasbro (who now owned WotC) demanded a 4th edition because they could not believe that WotC was just giving away the game in the SRD. The way the license was written though they just could not pull it. They tried this back in December 2022/January 2023 and the fans and the publishers revolted. Hasbro's stock fell and subscriptions to their online tool, DnDBeyond, tanked so bad that Hasbro not only backtracked, they dumped the whole 5th Edition SRD into the Creative Commons.  I might to cover that in detail someday.

D&D 3rd Edition, though, still lives on. The Pathfinder RPG was created by people who worked with WotC on D&D 3.x and is often called "D&D 3.75." Pathfinder 1st Edition was published in 2009 and directly competed with D&D 4. By many measures, it out-sold and outperformed D&D 4. Pathfinder 2nd Edition was published in 2019. While not as backward compatible as the 1st edition, we are now at a point where the D&D 3.x (also known as d20) rules are approaching 25 years old.  That is some longevity. 

I still enjoy 3rd Edition. I played it a lot with my kids and had a great time. It rekindled my love for D&D, and that was no small achievement.

Dungeons & Dragons 3.x Edition was also the edition which Wizards really embraced PDF format. So to my knowledge nearly everything is available at DriverThruRPG.

Tomorrow, we will be back to regular A to Z posting. It is M day and Monday, so you know I am going to talk about Monsters!

In the far future of the 41st Millenium, the Gilead System has been isolated from the Imperium of Man by the Cicatrix Maledictum, the Great Rift that unleashed waves of supernatural darkness and malignant power from the Realm of Chaos. The system, rent by internal strife and disagreement from within as to how to survive and threatened by the Ruinous Powers and its allies from without, teetered on the edge of collapse, but hope arrived in the form of the Varonius Flotilla, a Rogue Trader fleet under the command of Jakel Varonius, bringing ships and forces which could ensure the system’s survival. The only vessels to have made contact since the opening of the Great Rift, the Varonius Flotilla is seen across the Gilead System as its saviour, but the fleet alone can only so much. There are wars across the system, the chances of starvation grow daily, and alliances have to be made, even with xenos. This is a time for heroes, for ordinary men as well the Imperium’s genetically enhanced super soldiers, the Space Marines, Psykers, scribes, and others to work together to withstand the Chaos and protect all those it would suborn and destroy. Under the command of Jakel Varonius himself, such agents will become the most distant, but worthy arm and blade of the Emperor himself! Can the agents save the Gilead System? Will ‘wrath and glory’ be theirs?

This is the set-up for the Warhammer 40,000: Wrath & Glory – Starter Set. Published by Cubicle 7 Entertainment, this is the second attempt at a starter set for the Warhammer 40,000: Wrath & Glory, previously published by Ulisses Spiele in 2019. It follows the same format as the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Starter Set in providing everything needed to play and get started in action, horror, and intrigue of the 41st Millenium. This includes ‘Traitor’s Hymn’, an adventure set aboard the Varonius Flotilla; ‘The Varonius Flotilla’, a guide to the fleet; six character sheets; three reference sheets; Wrath, Glory, and Ruin; and a set of eight six-sided dice, including a Wrath Die. ‘Traitor’s Hymn’ is a detailed adventure designed to introduce both the setting and the mechanics of Wrath & Glory, but ‘The Varonius Flotilla’ is designed to not only detail that setting, but also support further play with both background and further play with extra scenarios that will extend the usefulness of the Warhammer 40,000: Wrath & Glory – Starter Set.

Open the Warhammer 40,000: Wrath & Glory – Starter Set and the first thing that you see is a gatefold sheet with the words ‘READ THIS FIRST’ on it. This introduces the basics of everything about Warhammer 40,000: Wrath & Glory, essentially preparing each player for his first choice—what will he roleplay? Underneath is a sheaf of six gatefold character sheets, each of which details a Player Character or Agent. A lot of thought has gone in terms of the design of these gatefold character sheets. On the front of each, there is a summary of who and what the Agent is, as well as warning not to open the character sheet up unless the player is definitely planning to roleplay that character. Inside, the character sheet presents the stats and details in easy-to-read fashion, plus a background, and possible connections with the other Agents, secrets, and objectives. It includes notes on each Agent’s talents, abilities, and equipment too. There is a full-page illustration of the character on the back. None of the secrets are heretical, but they are often dark and may make life difficult for the Agent. The Agents consist of a Sanctioned Psyker, a Sister of Battle, a Rogue Trader, a Skitarius, an Aeldari Ranger, and a Space Marine Scout. The inclusion of an Aeldari Ranger, a Xenos, indicates the desperation which is driving the surviving factions and forces in the Gilead System to work together.

‘Traitor’s Hymn’ is the beginning scenario. It is designed to introduce the setting, the Agents, and the concepts behind the roleplaying game in a step-by-step process. As play begins the Agents are aboard The Herald Varonius, a voidship transporting notables to the Varonius Flotilla. They are attending a grand banquet for the guests aboard when everything goes awry. Before that, each Agent receives a flashback which allows his player to make a choice, roll some dice for the first time, and have some time in the spotlight. The events of all six flashbacks tie into the adventure. There is the chance to learn a few more clues before the action begins and the voidship is inexplicably thrown into the Void. However, the Geller Field which would normally protect the crew and passengers of The Herald Varonius is fluctuating, which means her Geller Field Generator is malfunctioning. Which means the Agents are going to make their way into the bowels of the ship in order to find the cause and if they can, fix it. Between them lie Chaos infestations and manifestations, cultists, and worse, via an entrail-strewn library, a combat turned execution arena, twisted hydroponics gardens, and more before they reach the bowels of the vessel and discover the real culprits behind the situation The Herald Varonius finds itself in.

Mechanically, the Warhammer 40,000: Wrath & Glory – Starter Set, and thus Warhammer 40,000: Wrath & Glory, is a dice pool system using six-sided dice. Rolls of four and five are counted as ‘Icons’, and a roll of six as ‘Exalted Icons’. Tests are typically rolled as combinations of an attribute and a skill, or just the attribute, the latter being fairly broad, with a Difficulty Number of three being ‘Standard’ difficulty and a Difficulty Number of five being ‘Challenging’ difficulty. If a player rolls a number of Icons equal to the Difficulty Number, the task is successful. Any ‘Exalted Icons’ rolls are worth two Icons rather than one. However, if enough Icons are rolled on a test and there are any ‘Exalted Icons’ left over, they can be ‘Shifted’, or removed from the dice pool. A ‘Shifted Exalted Icon’ can be sued to gain more information, make the Test exceptional and give an extra beneficial outcome, add an extra Effect Die in combat, or add a point of Glory to the party’s pool.

Included with any roll, is the Wrath Die. This is of a different colour. It works like a standard die, except when one or six is rolled. On a one, it adds a complication to the task, whereas a roll of six is counted as an ’Exalted Icon’, but also adds a point of Glory to the party pool. In combat, it indicates that a Critical Hit has been scored. A player also has access to Wrath Points. These can be spent to reroll all dice that rolled a one, two, or three on the dice in a Test, add a minor element to the narrative, or to take an Action to recover Shock which has either been lost through combat or misadventure. The party as a whole, has access to the Glory Pool. Glory Points can be spent to add dice to a test, to add more damage to a successful attack, to improve the effect of a Critical Hit, or to seize the initiative.

Combat uses the same rules, with an Agent able to take a Combat Action, a Simple Action, a Reflexive Action, a Movement Action, and a Free Action on his Turn. Initiative simply passes back and forth between the players and the Game Master until everyone has acted. Both Armour and an Agent’s Resilience stop damage, any left over being suffered as Wounds. The Wounded Condition means that the Difficulty Number for Tests increases, but a player can roll his character’s Determination. Any Icons from this roll convert Wounds to Shock, but suffer too much Shock and an Agent may end up exhausted.

Fear Tests are based on an Agent’s Resolve, failure giving the Agent the Fear Condition. Corruption Tests are based on the severity of the source of Corruption, a player rolling his Agent’s Conviction to withstand its effects. Corruption will increase the Difficulty Number for future Corruption and Mutation Tests. The latter will occur when the number of Corruption Points exceeds an Agent’s Conviction. The Warhammer 40,000: Wrath & Glory – Starter Set only provides a few options for Mutations, there being a more extensive list and advanced rules in the core rulebook for Warhammer 40,000: Wrath & Glory.

Whilst the Players have access to Wrath and Glory, the Game Master has Ruin. Points of Ruin are gained when an Agent fails a Corruption Test or a Fear Test, or the Game Master rolls a six on the Wrath Die. She can expend it to reroll failures on Test, to Seize the Initiative or have NPC act in an ambush, to restore an NPC’s Shock, and to make a Determination roll. Ruin is also spent to activate certain abilities on NPCs and creatures of Chaos.

‘The Varonius Flotilla’, the second book in the Warhammer 40,000: Wrath & Glory – Starter Set, details both the Varonius Flotilla and the Gilead System. This includes the major NPCs with their goals and agendas and their quirks and secrets, and the various ships of the fleet, the last being The Herald of Varonius. The latter is where ‘Traitor’s Hymn’ is set and it is also the reward which the Agents are assigned at the end of the scenario. What that does, is give them the means to travel back and forth across the Gilead System, undertake further missions, and do both with some agency. ‘The Varonius Flotilla’ notes that of Jakel Varonius, the rogue trader and commander of the fleet, has brought the shuttles across the whole fleet under his command to lessen individual ship control, tie the fleet together, and to give him an information network in the form of the shuttle pilots. Besides bringing support and relief to the Gilead System, the Varonius Flotilla is also searching for resources in the system to exploit, despite it having been settled and worked for millennia.

The ’Ports of Call’ section details the eight worlds of the Gilead System, including the major locations, NPCs, threats faced by the world, and important features. Notably, there is one of each major type of world found within the system, thus, Gilead Primus is a Hive World, Ostia an Agri World, Enoch a Shrine World, and so on. Each world is given a couple of adventure hooks as well. Lastly, there is a discussion of the Warrant of Trade that Jakel Varonius holds as a Rogue Trader, before ‘The Varonius Flotilla’ presents six further adventures that will take the Agents back and forth across the Gilead System. In terms of play, these are relatively, offering a single session each unless the Game Master wants to flesh them out further. In comparison, ‘Traitor’s Hymn’ will probably take tow to three sessions to play through.

One issue in terms of play between ‘Traitor’s Hymn’ and six extra scenarios is that the Agents are not going to improve or learn from their experience. To do that, the Game Master will need access to the core rulebook for Warhammer 40,000: Wrath & Glory. That said, a starter set is typically not designed to facilitate that aspect of play, the Warhammer 40,000: Wrath & Glory – Starter Set being no different here, and of course, the Game Master can adjudicate the rewards as necessary if her players want to continue playing beyond the confines of the Warhammer 40,000: Wrath & Glory – Starter Set.

Another issue is the player count required for the Warhammer 40,000: Wrath & Glory – Starter Set. There are six Player Characters or Agents, but ‘Traitor’s Hymn’ requires a minimum of five players. It can be played with four players, but one of the other Agents becomes a communal NPC. It is a high demand, and perhaps it could have been written with the lower player count in mind and allowed for an adjustment in terms of more rather than fewer players.

In terms of setting, the Warhammer 40,000: Wrath & Glory – Starter Set draws the Game Master, her players, and their Agents in a couple of steps. First, ‘Traitor’s Hymn’ gives an immediate experience of the milieu and sets them to explore the setting of the Gilead System detailed in ‘The Varonius Flotilla’. Together, the two books do the same for the wider setting of the Gilead System detailed in Warhammer 40,000: Wrath & Glory. However, there is a third thing that it should do as well, and that is follow in the footsteps of the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Starter Set which is supported by its own series of scenario anthologies, beginning with Ubersreik Adventures: Six Grim and Perilous Scenarios in the Duchy of Ubersreik. That enables the Game Master and her players to continue playing with the same Player Characters and in the same setting.

Much like the earlier Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Starter Set, the Warhammer 40,000: Wrath & Glory – Starter Set is not a good introduction to roleplaying and nor is it designed to be. It just does not start from the first principles to do that, but that is fine, because as an introduction to Warhammer 40,000: Wrath & Glory, it does a very good job and does so in an attractive package. Similarly, the rules presented have been stripped down from the core rulebook, but there is more than enough to play through the contents in the Warhammer 40,000: Wrath & Glory – Starter Set. If the Game Master and her players have access to the Warhammer 40,000: Wrath & Glory core rules, it would be possible for the players to create their own Agents and play through the scenarios included here, but unless they adhere to the archetypes given in the Warhammer 40,000: Wrath & Glory – Starter Set, some of the nuances of the pre-generated Agents and their ties to the Gilead System and the events of the scenario in ‘Traitor’s Hymn’ may be lost.
Physically, the Warhammer 40,000: Wrath & Glory – Starter Set is a handsome boxed set. Everything inside is of good quality—the gatefold character sheets are particularly well done—and vibrantly illustrated. It does, unfortunately, need an edit in places.

Overall, the Warhammer 40,000: Wrath & Glory – Starter Set is an impressive introduction to the setting of the Gilead System and Warhammer 40,000: Wrath & Glory, its playthrough preparing the Game Master and her players for wider adventures. For anyone wanting to roleplay the action, horror, and intrigue of the 41st Millenium, the Warhammer 40,000: Wrath & Glory – Starter Set is the perfect place to make that stand against corruption, chaos, and Chaos!

Much like the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, the Jonstown Compendium is a curated platform for user-made content, but for material set in Greg Stafford’s mythic universe of Glorantha. It enables creators to sell their own original content for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, 13th Age Glorantha, and HeroQuest Glorantha (Questworlds). This can include original scenarios, background material, cults, mythology, details of NPCs and monsters, and so on, but none of this content should be considered to be ‘canon’, but rather fall under ‘Your Glorantha Will Vary’. This means that there is still scope for the authors to create interesting and useful content that others can bring to their Glorantha-set campaigns.

—oOo—

What is it?Rubble Redux: Insula of the Waning Moon is a supplement for use with RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha which details an insula or city block with the ruins of the Big Rubble in Prax. It includes a complete description of an atypical city block in the Old City and an example city block, the eponymous ‘Insula of the Waning Moon’, plus four scenarios.

It is a ninety-four page, full colour hardback.

The layout is tidy and it is decently illustrated and comes with extensive floorplans. The Greek style illustrations are nice touch.
The PDF includes floorplans which can be used with miniatures.
It needs an edit.
Where is it set?Rubble Redux: Insula of the Waning Moon is set in the ruins of Big Rubble in Prax. It is set after the liberation of Pavis by Argrath.
Who do you play?
Rubble Redux: Insula of the Waning Moon does not require any specific character type.
What do you need?
Rubble Redux: Insula of the Waning Moon requires RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and the RuneQuest: Glorantha Bestiary.

The Big Rubble: The Deadly City will also be useful.
It is a suitable addition to New Pavis: City on the Edge of Forever and the rest of The Pavis & Big Rubble Companion series with some adjustment.

What do you get?Rubble Redux: Insula of the Waning Moon draws upon archaeological plans to present a type of building block found across the old city of Pavis and the Big Rubble, which can be found in various states of repair across the ruin. This is a large, square city block complete with businesses and residences. In the case of the Insula of the Waning Moon, these consist of food sellers, an oil seller, stables and a carter, and an inn, plus residences and a sunken garden. These are mapped out in some detail with a series of large, easy-to-read floor plans measured in one Mostal (or metre) squares.
The insulae were standard designs across the whole of Lord Pavis’ city and details the history and general features of the design, the history of their ownership and how that changed from being municipal to hereditary, and how the design changed as the city’s fortunes declined. Thus, they can be in various states of repair, from simple walls to fortified strongholds in various locations throughout the Big Rubble. This is a possible subject for expansion and a table of ideas as to what might be found in insulae across the various building phases their design would have been useful.
The supplement also address the change in attitudes to adventuring in the Big Rubble with the liberation of Pavis. Where the Lunar administration encouraged adventuring, now it is seen as looting the city’s cultural identity. There is also the push to clear and resettle parts of the Big Rubble. This presents other opportunities for work, though, and building materials from the insulae are still worth salvaging. In addition, a group of Player Characters could actually settle in the Big Rubble, finding an insula that they can occupy and fortify. This is not without its risks as their presence will attract the attention of predators—both human and non-human—from the surrounding area.
There are four adventures in Rubble Redux: Insula of the Waning Moon. The first two short, one-session affairs and both involve vermin and both involve the Player Characters simply walking past the insula. In ‘Thirsty Work, the Player Characters come to the aid of a family living the ruins which is using the well in the Insula of the Waning Moon as its source of water, but it has dried up. There is not much to reward the Player Characters if they help, except the gratitude of the family and the knowledge that they have rid the Big Rubble of one more Chaos beast. The second scenario, ‘Lucky Snake Ball’, begins when the Player Characters see snakes slithering across their path and into the insula. Inside they discover a ball of writhing, fighting snakes. Dealing with the odd phenomenon reveals a second problem, one very common to the Big Rubble. It should also expose the cause of the ‘snake ball’, which a rather neat little magical item.
The third scenario, ‘No Good Deed’, is the longest and most heavily plotted of the four, as well as the most traditional. The head of one of the Pavis Survivors clans employs the Player Characters to find his daughter who he thinks has run off to become a Lunar convert after she saw the good work that their missionaries were doing in the Big Rubble. Which is made all the more difficult because the Lunars have fled Pavis. The Player Characters will need to deal with some of the poorer inhabitants of Pavis that live in the ruins and who are very wary of strangers. Eventually, they can track her down to the Insula of the Waning Moon, where she is not living with Lunar missionaries, but has been captured by a gang looking to hold her to ransom. The gang is on the make, so seasoned adventurers will not find its members to be two much of threat, although they could get lucky, plus they have the benefit of being holed up in the insula. How the Player Characters deal with the problem is left up to them, obvious solutions such as paying the ransom or mounting a rescue are described in detail.
The fourth scenario is more of a set-up than an adventure. In ‘First Rule of Fight Club’, the Player Characters are hired to escort a party overnight out into the Big Rubble to a ruined insula. As the title suggests, a fight club is being run. Not though, with the Player Characters, but with slaves. How the Player Characters deal with this is left up to them, although a rescue attempt would be very dangerous. They could take the money or they could devise a solution, it all depends on how they feel about the moral dilemma presented to them.
All four scenarios take place in then Insula of the Waning Moon. This, though, is not all at the same time and the only factor linking the four scenarios is the city block itself. So, they do not form a campaign. Instead, the insula is somewhere that the Player Characters might pass again and again and nothing happen, but very occasionally it does or they have reason to go there. This makes Rubble Redux: Insula of the Waning Moon easy to drop into an ongoing campaign set in Pavis and the Big Rubble.
Where the scenarios could have been improved is in the presentation of the set-up and possible consequences. The set-up for each is written for the player’s benefit rather than the Game Master’s, so it does take a while for the Game Master to actually find out what is going on, and the consequences of the scenarios are also always fully explored, especially, in some cases, the consequences of the Player Characters doing nothing.
Is it worth your time?Yes—Rubble Redux: Insula of the Waning Moon is a solid addition to any campaign set in Pavis and the Big Rubble, with a building type that can be easily customised and four scenarios to slot in between the major plots of the campaign.No—Rubble Redux: Insula of the Waning Moon is ideally suitable for campaigns with extensive urban and ruined areas, such as Pavis and the Big Rubble, and that is not where my campaign is set.Maybe—Rubble Redux: Insula of the Waning Moon because the Lunars and the war against inflicted a lot of damage, so the insula could be relocated to any formerly Lunar-occupied town or city that has city blocks and its scenarios adapted to the new locations.

 I have been talking a lot about D&D history this month, but today I want to shift focus for a moment and talk about D&D's present. Honestly, the best Dungeons & Dragons content is not coming from the current owner and publisher, Wizards of the Coast (Hasbro), but from other companies. One in particular is Larian Studios, and the content is Baldur's Gate 3.

It is not really hyperbole to say that Baldur's Gate 3 is the biggest video game of the last couple of years and might be the best video game I have ever played.  Larian is a smaller independent video game company located in Belgium. They have had a great track record of producing engaging, high-quality games for a small studio. Their big claim to fame prior to BG3 was their Divinity series. In their game Divinity: Original Sin 2, you can see the elements that would later be enhanced and perfected in BG3.  They are notable for their constant and rapid support, their desire to listen to their fans and give them what they want, and their games do not have microtransactions. These are little features in other games. Want some cool armor? Great, just $0.99 on your credit card. Cool sword? $1.99. For Larian, if you want those things, they are in the game for you to find somewhere.

They are a small independent studio producing games that rival, and in many cases surpass, the ones made by larger and more well funded companies.

Baldur's Gate 3

Larian Studios shocked me with this. Baldur's Gate 1 was released in 1998, and Baldur's Gate 2 was released in 2000, with updates up to 2016. They had been rumors before of a Baldur's Gate 3, but nothing ever came from it.

Then in 2020 Baldur's Gate 3 went into "Open Beta" with little fan fare and almost no mention in the wider Dungeons & Dragons community.

In August 2023 it got its official release on PC and PlayStation with Mac and Xbox versions close behind.  To say it blew up is putting it rather mildly.

Right now, the game has an aggregate score of 96/100 from all reviews. I has also won pretty much every Game of the Year award for 2023 there is, including sweeping all five of the industry's top Game of the Year Awards. It even won more BAFTA awards while I was writing this post!

Like all the other Baldur's Gate games, this one takes place in the Forgotten Realms, but 120 or so years after the first two events (and a few months after the published book adventure Descent to Avernus). This corresponds to the published Forgotten Realms game books and novels, which had 100 or so years between the 3rd and 4th editions. This game uses some of the same mechanics and feel of Divinity: Original Sin II, and it is heavily influenced by the Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition rules.  It feels like a 5th Edition game. The classes, spells, magic, and combat are all from the 5th edition rules.

Want to know how D&D plays but don't have people to play with? This is not a bad substitute.

I am currently on my third play-through with an eye toward's completion. I am half way through Act II. In this one I am running as a "companion run" to my 2nd play through. Same basic outline with similar characters, only swapping who is the main character. 

My first full play-through was with Larina. This was followed by Sinéad. Now, I am mirroring my Sinéad run with Taryn. They were "NPCs" in each other's run.

Larina
Sinéad
Taryn

I have incomplete runs with Kelek, Skylla, Rayne (Bloodrayne), and, of course, my Paladin Johan.

Rayne
Kelek and Skylla on an "evil run."
Johan's run with NPC Larina
Johan

I have been using a combination of hirelings, "Withers" (an in-game guide), and the "Magic Mirror" to turn the various NPCs into previous playable characters. So my Johan run for example has Larina in it, She can't interact like Johan can, but game-play wise she is the same. 

Same with my Taryn/Sinéad runs. In my mind they are the same run, just from each character's point of view. 

This has also allowed me to try out different "romance" options. Karlach for Johan, Gale for Taryn, Shadowheart for Sinéad, and Shadowheart, Halsin, Wyll, Mizora, Sorn and Nym Orlith, (!) all for Larina. She is a lover. She is also a fighter, but mostly a lover.

Bloodrayne *might* go for Astarion. She is based on the video game character Rayne from Bloodrayne, after all. But I have never had my approval rating high enough with him in any run. My Kelek and Skylla runs are all about violence, not romance. Which come to think of it, might be what I need to do for Astarion. 

The game is bloody, violent, very often NC-17 and NSFW, and an absolute ton of fun.

I am just over 350 hours into all my runs and I am STILL finding new material. Both of my kids play it, and they tell me about things they found that I haven't! I even found another hidden door last night in Act II. So yeah, I have in no way exhausted all of this game's options. 

This is the most fun I have had with a video game in a very long time.

Sadly Larian will not be doing Baldur's Gate 4 despite their overwhelming success. They have been super gracious about it online, saying they loved doing BG3, but they want to do new things now. Reading between the lines, it was obvious that Hasbro was asking for a LOT more in licensing fees for the Forgotten Realms world, and Larina didn't want to lay people off to pay for it. So, kudos to Larian Studios.

Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro now has full rights again to all these characters. Back when Baldur's Gate 2 came out Wizards published game material to support it. Now? Nothing for Baldur's Gate 3. I hope they do something; otherwise, they are leaving money on the table. 

Tomorrow is Sunday, so there will be no A to Z post, but I will continue my Sunday Specials. So tomorrow is Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition.

A line of cars, black, with the Stars & Stripes fluttering from the bonnet. The scene jumps. A cheering crowd, flags in their hands, waving. A band strikes up with anthem that always announces his arrival. Men in black, sunglasses hiding their eyes, but you know they are looking. Are they looking for you? You look up. The man in the suit. Striding. Waving. Grinning to the crowd, but not to you. The scene jumps again. Looking at the man. Looking at where you are, but from far away. It jumps again. Hands move quickly. They know what they are doing. There is something in those hands. Is it a device? A trigger? A rifle? There is bang. Close to you. The scene jumps. There are screams. People are running. You cannot see the man… Oh my god! Is it real? Will it be real? Will you be there? Fortunately, this is a vision, a premonition, it has not happened. Yet. But it might. Someone really wants to assassinate the President of the United States and the someone is the USSR. Nobody is going to believe you though, nobody except your fellow psychics in the program. Certainly not since the head of the program was killed in a car crash—why did nobody see that coming?—and funding from the US government got cut… Now it is just you, armed with your premonitions, which stands between you and the death of the leader of the free world and the consequences that would have.
This is the set-up for Project Cassandra: Psychics of the Cold War, a roleplaying of secret government projects and conspiracies in which the psychically gifted, trained as part of a program to spy on the Soviets, are the only ones who know that the President of the United States’ life is in danger. Except, of course, for those involved in the conspiracy to assassinate him. Published by LunarShadow Designs as part of ZineQuest #3 following a successful Kickstarter campaign, it is designed to be played as a one-shot, of the Player Characters responding to the premonition and attempting to prevent it from happening, but it can be played as a longer campaign and it need not be about the assassination of the President. There are plenty of pinch points throughout the Cold War, from the Hungarian Uprising and the Bay of Pigs to the Moon landings and the stationing of Pershing missiles in Germany, which serve as inspiration for Project Cassandra: Psychics of the Cold War.

However, given its subject matter, what inspires Project Cassandra: Psychics of the Cold War is not the obvious cinema and television of the period. So instead of dark psychological thrillers or the constant dread of all too many of those who lived through the era, it takes its inspirations from lighter fare. The question is, what exactly is that inspiration? If not The Manchurian Candidate or The Parallax View, or similar films and television series, the most obvious inspirations, what then? These after all, are not only great cinema, but also great inspiration in terms of tone and atmosphere. Unfortunately, Project Cassandra: Psychics of the Cold War does not include a bibliography and that is a serious failing. So why not dark psychological thrillers or the constant dread? The simple answer is Safety Tools. This is not a criticism of Safety Tools in general. They deserve a place in the roleplaying hobby and they deserve a place in Project Cassandra: Psychics of the Cold War since it is set in the past when negative social attitudes were rife. Yet to ignore the inspirations for its inspiration means that Project Cassandra: Psychics of the Cold War is really doing a disservice to its audience. It should not only have included them, it should have included them as an option and allowed the Game Master and her players to make that choice given the genre of Project Cassandra: Psychics of the Cold War.

A Player Character in Project Cassandra has an Identity, a Background, ten Skills, several Knowledges or areas in which he is an expert, and a single, unique psychic power. The Skills are divided between three categories: Mental, Physical, and Specialist. The Skills can be anything that a player likes, but the Mental and Physical, skills are broad, whereas the Specialist skills are fairly narrow. To create a character, a player assigns a Rank value of one to one of the three categories, and a Rank value of two to the remaining pair. The player assigns four Skills to one category and three skills to each of the other two. The Player Character starts with a single Knowledge. It has no numerical value, but is used once per session to introduce a fact or truth related to the Knowledge into the game.

Identity: Maureen Herslag
Background: Housewife
Premonitions: 14
Mental – 2: Intimidation, Haggle, Chutzpah, Being Nosy
Physical – 2: Cleaning, Look Anonymous, Dodge, Athletics
Specialist – 1: Pistols, Self Defence,
Knowledge: Cookery
Power: Yesterday

Project Cassandra uses what it calls the Precognition Engine. To undertake an action, a player must roll six six-sided dice and obtain as many successes as he can. Each roll equal to or under the value of the skill counts as a success. The difficulty and the number of successes that a player has to roll varies between one and seven, the latter being almost impossible. Successes can also be spent to overcome a challenge, such as picking a lock or punching out a senator’s aide/Communist sympathiser, representing both the amount of effort it takes and the amount of time it takes. It might be done in a single action, or it might take several. A failed roll will result in a Player Character suffering a consequence, typically a narrative consequence, but it can also be a condition, such Paranoid or Bloodied. A player can choose to suffer a Condition in order to gain an extra success, meaning that it has come at some cost. A Condition can increase the difficulty or it can make a Player Character’s Premonitions more difficult to use.

A Player Character starts play with fourteen Premonitions. These represent his ability to see the immediate future and can be used to reroll any dice that did not roll successes. They recover slowly, at a rate of one Premonition per night of rest. A Player Character’s tenth and fifth Premonition is special. It grants the Player Character a more detailed vision of the future, specifically about the next scene. A Premonition is also used to activate a Player Character’s power. Most people will be unaware of psychic powers, but some are Nulls, who have no psychic footprint and who can negate a Player Character’s power if it is used directly on them. The conspiracy does employ Null agents as well as psychic agents.

The set-up to Project Cassandra is intended to be fairly freeform. It begins with the players and the Game Master building a conspiracy. Together they create an Opening Vision and answer some Conspiracy Questions. This should set the era, the nature of the conspiracy, and so on. Typically, this will involve the assassination of the President. For example, ‘How will the President be killed?’, ‘Where will the attack take place?’, and ‘Why will the world believe you are responsible?’. Project Cassandra incudes some sample questions, an example of play, and good advice for the Game Master on running the game and what Safety Tools to use. There are notes too on running longer term conspiracies—longer than four sessions—but they are fairly brief.

Besides five ready-to-play Player Characters, Project Cassandra includes two Mission Profiles, also ready to play. The Opening Vision of ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ sees President Kennedy assassinated in Berlin in June 1963, and starts with a bang for the Player Characters, whilst ‘The Dark of the Moon’ is pulpier in tone, asking the Player Characters to confront what hidden secrets Apollo 12 brought back from the Moon. Both come complete with questions to set the stakes and details of the conspiracy.

Physically, Project Cassandra: Psychics of the Cold War is generally well presented and nicely illustrated. However, it could have been much better organised and it takes a while to work out quite what is going on. Once done, the roleplaying game is easy to grasp. The other aspect of the roleplaying game which could have been made clear on the cover is the fact that it is a storytelling game.

Project Cassandra: Psychics of the Cold War is in need of a bibliography and really some general background about the period, because not everyone is going to be familiar with it. However, for those that are, Project Cassandra: Psychics of the Cold War does have an enticing set-up. That though is far as it goes, for Project Cassandra: Psychics of the Cold War is storytelling game, and the uncovering of the conspiracy and the prevention of it coming to fruition as well as the set-up depends on both players and Game Master working together. For the most part, Project Cassandra: Psychics of the Cold War is best suited for a group which has some experience with storytelling roleplaying games and some understanding of the period.

 I am sharing this one again. Why? Well, mostly because I want to, but I also think there will be images of my little witch Larina in it! At least I saw some in the previews. So I am quite happy about that!

 A very special one today! This is from my very good friend Djinn and she has a new art book coming out.

Djinn Unboxed - NSFW Artbook

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/djinnintheshade/djinn-unboxed-nsfw-artbook?ref=theotherside

Djinn has been a good friend for a long time. She began doing illustrations of her D&D character, Solaine, a witch with a knack for all sorts of trouble, and they took off.

If you have seen her work in the past, you know what to expect here, and it should all be fun. She is in Italy, so the books will be shipped from there, which will cause extra charges for shipping and handling. 

I am hoping this is a big success. Djinn is a great person and we all want to support real human artists. Here she is!

Get on this one right away we are in the last 4845 hours.

Unless I am mistaken, this looks like a few of the images that will be included in the book.

The land of Norway is one of mountain ranges and fjords, and according to legend, one of the mountain ranges is not at a mountain range at all! Instead, it is the body of a Jötunn, Hrungnir, who has been lying sleeping ever since he was killed and thrown out of Ásgard for being a very bad guest and threatening his hosts, whereupon his body turned to stone and formed the mountains! In the many centuries since, Norway has since changed, not least of which was the widespread adoption of Christianity and abandonment of the Old Ways. Not every Norwegian has abandoned the Old Ways though, and there is a cult whose members believe that they can be restored. The cult believes that when Hrungnir was killed by Thor, his mighty hammer, Mjonir, knocked a piece of the giant’s heart free that also fell to Earth. If the Heart of Hrungnir is restored to the mountains where the Jötunn is said to have fallen, the cult believes that a great gift will be bestowed upon the people of Norway. Only recently has the cult found the Heart of Hrungnir once again, in the possession of John Ostergaard, a London merchant, as part of his Cabinet of Curiosities. However, as the cult begins to make threats against him, John Ostergaard discovers that the object of the cult’s attention has been stolen!

This is the set-up for A Gift for all of Norway, a scenario for use with Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplaying published by Lamentations of the Flame Princess. The Player Characters are hired by John Ostergaard—perhaps at the recommendation of The Magnificent Joop van Ooms—to recover the Heart of Hrungnir. He is a hard, but fair bargainer, and will tell the Player Characters that he believes a recent acquaintance, Francois Arquette, stole it and is taking it to Norway. The Player Characters, of course, will follow in its stead.

A Gift for all of Norway really begins with the Player Characters standing before a cavern entrance on Hrungnir’s Peak. Once they enter, what they discover is a series of caverns, initially connected by a single, often convoluted tunnel. In places, the tunnel walls want to open and digest the Player Characters, oozes float around waiting for the opportunity to attach themselves to intruders, and there are signs too, of others already having passed through the caverns. The long tunnel connects to a bat-infested cave and another lined with sticky vines. The dungeon is actually quite long, but consists of a very few locations. In fact, bar confrontations the strange creatures to found within the caverns and the tunnel connecting, and perhaps cultists dedicated to restoring the Heart of Hrungnir to its rightful place, proceeding through the dungeon is very quick and the Player Characters could be in and out within an hour or two’s worth of actual game play with the Heart of Hrungnir in hand… Except…

Well, there is an ‘except’ here, and it is very much a big ‘except’ and a very small ‘except’. It also hinges on the fact that the legends are true, that Hrungnir’s body really did fall to the Earth and form a mountain, and that part of his heart is missing. What this means is that the tunnel and caverns the Player Characters are travelling through is his partly ossified alimentary canal. Now adventures in which Player Characters penetrate and explore the body of some gigantic beast or even a god, are a known design choice such that they have become almost a cliché in their own right. In general, the Player Characters find a way in via the mouth or nose or ears, but not through the anus. A Gift for all of Norway is, of course, written for use with Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplaying, so using the rear entrance was a given.

Anyway, the Player Characters will find the Heart of Hrungnir very quickly. Then they have a choice. Go home, return the Heart of Hrungnir to its ‘rightful’ owner, and take the money, or give it to the cultists or perhaps explore further and see if there is any truth to the cultists’ belief that a great gift will be bestowed upon the people of Norway if the Heart of Hrungnir is also restored to its ‘rightful’ owner. What that gift is, is left up to the Game Master to decide, but the inference is that whatever it is, might have been good for Norway during the age of the gods, but in modern day, Christian, Norway? Not a chance… Thus, taking the money is the good choice, whilst being overly curious is the wrong one. Which all begs the question, is that it?

Yes.

Physically, A Gift for all of Norway is well done. It is well written, the descriptions are good, the artwork fine, and the maps excellent.

A Gift for all of Norway combines a number of elements common to Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplaying. One is the consequences for the Player Characters if they are too curious. The other is a big, stompy threat that will probably unleash hell upon the surrounding countryside, and in most cases those scenarios have been a combination of entertaining, clever, and amusing. Unfortunately, A Gift for all of Norway is none of those. It is not that the scenario is bad per se, and it is certainly not a case of the scenario being presented badly, but rather that A Gift for all of Norway is not really sufficiently interesting or atmospheric to entice the Game Master to want to run it. At best A Gift for all of Norway is a sidequest that could have severe consequences for Norway and the Game Master’s campaign, but if it does not, the effect is underwhelming.
—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 thus the author has no bearing on the resulting review.

 Today I am going to talk about the Known World, or the campaign setting implied in Basic D&D.

When the D&D Expert Set was introduced, it included a two-page map of part of a continent. This was described as "The Known World," and that was good enough for us back then. A lot of strange cultures were crammed into an area about the size of the North Eastern portion of North America. But hey, it was D&D, and we thought it was great. It was certainly enough for me. In fact my characters rarely left this area. There was plenty to adventure here.

At the time, I did not know the work already done here and where this world would go in the next few years.

The Schick-Moldvay Known World

Before working on the D&D Basic Set, Tom Moldvay had a game with future D&D heavyweight Lawrence Schick. In their games they had a campaign world they were calling "The Known World."

A while back, Lawerence Schick posted "The “Known World” D&D Setting: A Secret History" over at the Black Gate site.  A nice history of how he and Tom Moldvay came up with the Known World for their own games and then ported it over to D&D Basic/Expert.  It is a fascinating read if, like me, you are a fan of the Mystara world and/or of maps in general.

James Mishler (who also did the Mystoerth map) takes this one further and provides the above map for the Moldvay/Schick known world.
It is interesting how so many familiar names and even locations exist in different places. It is like looking at a world you know but through some sort of distorted lens. What is also quite interesting to me are the new lands—places, and names that are entirely new to me.
The Known World Replica Map by James Mishler

There is so much here I can use and honestly I have yet to grow tired of exploring this map. BUT it is not the map we ended up with. No once the Known World left the hands of Moldvay and Schick it became a different world.  That world would eventually be called URT! (ok and then Msytara).

The Known World of Urt Mystara

Spend any time here, and you will know that the Known World of the Basic/Expert Sets (B/X) was the first world I played in.  While I would move on to AD&D and Oerth, the Known World would also move to Mystara.  It would be the world introduced to us in the Companion Set and expanded on the Gazeteer Series, the D&D Rules Cyclopedia, and even into the 2nd Edition age and beyond.

But it was in the Companion and Master Sets that Mystara got its start.


The B/X Known World only occupies the East-most lower gray box, this is the same as the very first map on the top of this page.   The BECMI World, Mystara, is going to be bigger.  Even this is just the continent of Brun.

I am not sure who came up with the idea for Mystara to look the way it does but there are some obvious parallels.

From the Master DM's Book,



Here is Mystara, courtesy of http://pandius.com/





If it looks familiar, there is a good reason.

(image from here, http://www.scotese.com/earth.htm)
That is the Late Jurassic, the early Cretaceous period of the Earth, 150+ Million Years Ago.

Long-time readers here already know of the Paleomap Map project of Earth History.  It has many maps of the different stages of Earth history and potential future maps.  I will admit when I first saw maps of the really old Earth it was disquieting to me.  I love maps, and throughout all of human history, the Earth has been the same. Not so throughout ALL history and prehistory.

It's also kind of cool to see where the places of Mystara will line up to our world.

Mystara and the Lands Beneath the Waves by Grimklok
At first, the Known World was known by Urt or even Urth by Frank Mentzer and was designed to be similar to Gary's Oerth of the AD&D game. We also learn in the Immortals Set that Urt did not look like Earth 150 MYA it WAS Earth at that time. 
Though I think (and I have nothing to support this) that the "Urt" version of the Known World was scrapped after Frank Mentzer left TSR. His good friend Gary had already been ousted. It seems like Urt was a casualty of that regime change. So "Urt" was out, and "Mystara" was in. 
Mystara 
The Known World of Mystara was later expanded and given more detail in the wonderful Gazetteer Series, Hollow World Series, and Challenger Series.

While delving into everything Mystara would take me another month or another year, there is still a vibrant and active community on the web to support this world.  In fact, I would say it is far more active than most other worlds. Starting in the early days of the MPGN listserve lists run by TSR. The MYSTARA-L listserve was active back in the days when my access to the Internet was via a mainframe.  Many of the same people on those lists then are still active in the various Facebook groups and websites today.
Mystoerth

For me, I always had a soft spot in my heart for Mystara. It was the world of my Basic era days, and when I moved on to AD&D, I still kept the world as "my own."  It was understood that when I was a player, it was in Greyhawk/Oerth, but when I was a DM, it was in the Known World/Mystara.  Eventually, right before college, we merged our worlds into one. I got the western half, and my DM got the eastern half.  
So you know, I was thrilled when I found the James Mischler/Chatdemon Mystoerth map.  The worlds share a lot of details in common, so a merge was inevitable. I no longer have the original map my then DM made, but this one is a better rendition anyway.

Click for larger
This appears to be the original map. While researching this, I found an old post by Rich/Chatdemon that offers an alternate name: Oerstara. I kind of like that. A lot. It sounds like Ostara, the pagan holiday from which Easter comes. Oestara could have been an alternate name for the planet, like Earth and Terra.

Regardless of which version of the Known World I would use there is more than enough in any of them to last me another lifetime of gaming and exploration.

Isn't that what it is all about?

Tomorrow is L, and I will talk about Larian Studios and Baldur's Gate 3

This is also my next entry of the month for the RPG Blog Carnival, hosted by Codex Anathema on Favorite Settings.

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

—oOo—
Senet—named for the Ancient Egyptian board game, Senet—is a print magazine about the craft, creativity, and community of board gaming. Bearing the tagline of “Board games are beautiful”, it is about the play and the experience of board games, it is about the creative thoughts and processes which go into each and every board game, and it is about board games as both artistry and art form. Published by Senet Magazine Limited, each issue promises previews of forthcoming, interesting titles, features which explore how and why we play, interviews with those involved in the process of creating a game, and reviews of the latest and most interesting releases.

Senet Issue 9 was published in the winter of 2022. As an issue, it does something different. This is to spread its wings away from its usual subject, that is, board games, into roleplaying—though only a little! This is in the issue’s interviews with designers and publishers who have both had a big influence on the games hobby and industry, one more recently, one over the course of decades. Never fear though, for outside of these articles, Senet Issue 9 is very much a board games magazine. This does not stop the editor highlighting one of the issue’s interviews in his editorial, which is perfectly reasonable, since it is with a designer and publisher who is a very big name in both the board game and the roleplaying hobbies—and other hobbies—here in the United Kingdom.

‘Behold’ is the regular preview of some of the then-forthcoming board game titles. As expected, ‘Behold’ showcases its previewed titles to intriguing effect, a combination of simple write-ups with artwork and depictions of the board games. Notable titles previewed include Pandasaurus Games’ The Fox Experiment, co-designed by Elizabeth Hargrave of Wingspan fame, which is a ‘roll-and-write’ design about the Belyaev-Trut experiment into fox domestication, in which the players attempt to draft friendly foxes and use them to breed even friendlier foxes, whilst Moon, the third and final part in a trilogy of card-drafting games from Sinister Fish Games which began with Villagers, takes the series off planet to colonise the Moon as well as increase the player interaction with this style of game.

‘Points’, the regular column of readers’ letters is only as thematic as to be all from readers praising the magazine, so is a whole lot less interesting than in previous issues. ‘For Love of the Game’, continues the journey of the designer Tristian Hall towards the completion and publication of his Gloom of Kilforth. In this entry in the series, he addresses the issue of  acknowledging your inspirations when it comes to your game, both in terms of other game designs and other sources. He cites Donald X. Vaccarino being inspired by the deck-building aspect of Magic: The Gathering for his Spiel des Jahres award-winning Dominion, but actually lists other sources for his inspiration for his own Gloom of Kilforth, such as the Fighting Fantasy books, Dungeons & Dragons, and J.R.R. Tolkien, so although this represents another nod to roleplaying in the issue, it does feel one-sided.

Senet follows a standard format of articles and article types and Senet Issue 9 is no exception. One explores a theme found in board games, its history, and the games that showcase it to best effect, whilst another looks at a particular mechanic. In addition, there are two interviews, one with a designer, the other with an artist. The particular mechanic in the issue is the engine-building game. In ‘Rise of the Machine’, Alexandra Sonechkina examines the history and state of the mechanic, starting by making an interesting suggestion that Monopoly, a fairly poorly regarded game, is actually an engine-building game—although not one in the modern sense. That, though, is really as far as the history goes in the article, as it looks what makes a good engine-building game. The article is an interesting look at what the mechanic can do, but it could have benefited from boxed sections highlighting particular designs and used them to track some of the mechanic’s development to give more context. Although interesting, the article does not feel complete.

The theme article in the issue is pirates! Matt Thrower’s ‘Pirates on Board’ is a far thorough look at the history of its subject, whose more recent surge in popularity as a theme can be traced back to 2003’s Pirates of the Caribbean, and before that with Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. Along the way, it notes the historical nature of the subject means that it has long been a popular subject for wargames, such as Wooden Ships & Iron Men and Blackbeard, both from Avalon Hill, but the fantasy element of pirates means that it is seen as a suitable subject for lighter board game designs too. Examples include Cartagena and Pirate’s Cove, yet as the hobby has matured, there has been an acknowledgement the fantasy of pirates does not always equate to the actual history, since they are both villainous and violent, though less so with other board game themes and history. Thus pirate-themed board games tend to romanticise the history and make it palatable for a wider audience. It does, though, come up to date with a look at the issue of actual piracy and counterfeiting in the board gaming industry, but does not come to any more conclusion than that it is an ongoing issue. ‘Pirates on Board’ is an entertaining piece that nicely continues the magazine’s thread of examining the themes common to modern and not so modern board games.

The much-heralded highlight of the issue is ‘The Games Master’. This is the first of the two interviews in the issue, and is with Sir Ian Livingstone, co-founder of Games Workshop and co-creator of the Fighting Fantasy series, as well as designer of board games like Judge Dredd: The Game of Crime-Fighting in Mega-City One. The lengthy interview, which starts with Livingstone’s first experiences with board games and takes the reader through the founding of Games Workshop, the games he designed, the creation of the Fighting Fantasy series—the primary roleplaying focus in the interview, and beyond to what he plays today. It is a good, solid interview, interesting and informative, liberally illustrated, though more so if you have not read other interviews with Livingstone. The interview is, of course, timed ahead of the release of Dice Men: The Origin Story of Games Workshop, which expands upon the various subjects explored in the piece and more.

The second interview in Senet Issue 9 is with Johan Nohr, the co-creator and illustrator of Mörk Borg, the Swedish pre-apocalypse Old School Renaissance retroclone, and its Cyberpunk counterpart, CY_BORG. As with previous issues of the magazine, this does a very nice job of showcasing his artwork, although it is not necessarily a style that would be seen in board game design.

‘Unboxed’, Senet’s reviews section actually includes a review of Apothecaria: Solo Potion Making RPG, so continuing the issue’s flirtation with roleplaying games, although solo journalling games are typically the magazine’s only flirtation with roleplaying games. Otherwise, a wide range of games is reviewed, from family titles such as Dodo and its egg-rolling down a mountain mechanic to big, brutal storytelling designs such as Oathsworn: Into the Deepwood. The latter is the issue’s game of choice, but there are a surprising number of disappointments reviewed too, like Rear Window and Cellulose: A Plant Cell Biology Game. In between, there is a good mix of interesting games reviewed that should drove the reader to go and find out more.

Rounding out Senet Issue 9 are the regular end columns, ‘How to Play’ and ‘Shelf of Shame’. For ‘How to Play’, Mx Tiffany Leigh addresses the issue of ‘Playing with Alphas’, and how the over abundance of advice from an Alpha Player can negate player agency, involvement, and fun, before giving straightforward advice. In fact, the advice might be called too straightforward, even obvious, but this does not make it bad advice. Tom Brewster of Shut Up & Shutdown takes Pax Pamir, a wargame of nineteenth century politics in Afghanistan, off his and ‘Shelf of Shame’ and explains why it is not getting to his table to play more often. Unlike a lot of entries in this series, it is not because it got forgotten or bypassed in favour of other titles, but because it is actually not a game that others want to play because of its complexity and capacity. This highlights an issue with a lot of board games, that of finding the right audience.

Physically, Senet Issue 9 is very professionally presented. It looks and feels as good as previous issues of the magazine.

It has almost become a cliché to state that as with previous issues, Senet Issue 9 offers a good mix of articles, interviews, and reviews, but it does. Yet where the interviews both look great and are very accessible, the articles on the issue’s theme and mechanic are not. This is not to say that they are unreadable, as they are, but they are no longer highlighting particular games appropriate to either theme or mechanic, so unlike in previous issues with these articles, there are no examples to stand out effectively and catch the reader’s attention. The issue also has an odd feel to it because of its emphasis on roleplaying in its two big articles, but this change is refreshing, widening the scope of the magazine, if only a little. It also highlights how a magazine of similar quality devoted to roleplaying could be just as good. Overall, Senet Issue 9 is still good, but just a little bit different—and that is not a bad thing.

A double one today, but related topics. You can't talk about the early days of Dungeons & Dragons and not mention the Judges Guild. And you can't talk about the Judges Guild or D&D and not mention Jennell Jaquays.  She was there at the start, but now sadly both have passed.

Judges Guild

The Judges Guild began in 1976 in Decatur, Illinois. Just on the other side of Springfield from where I grew up. Being situated between Chicago/Lake Geneva and Carbondale (SIU) with U of I in Urbana and Judges Guild in between put me on a pipeline of D&D materials that, honestly, I thought everyone in the country had access to. That was not the case, as I discovered later. 

I discovered the Judges Guild very early on. Back then they were one of the very few companies allowed to print D&D compatible products. Among their contributions were a set of Ready Ref Sheets to be used by Dungeon Masters (originally called Judges) and character sheets.  They began to expand out with their own journal and a series of adventures.  From the Judges Guild Journal I came across the Mystic and the Warlock classes. While I didn't like them as such, they convinced me that a Witch class was a viable option.  Though they would also do their own witches with the Psychic Witch and in the adventure Witches Court Marshes. There was also The Illhiedrin Book, which was a fun, if simple adventure. 

But what they are most well known for are two adventures. One is Dark Tower, which I will talk more about below, and the other is The City State of the Invisible Overlord. Both are considered among the best of all of the early D&D products.

I am using them in the past tense. Yeah, they are still around, but they have been dropped by everyone. You used to be able to buy their PDFs from DriveThruRPG, but they are no longer there.  Why?  Well blame it on the son and grandson of the late owner Bob Bledsaw, Sr. BBII and BBIII turned out to be rather racist and held some pretty awful beliefs. You don't have to take my word for it, but I did document it all in a couple of posts a while back.

• Choose a Side, Or One Will Be Chosen For You
• How to Destroy a Legacy in a Week

So, yeah, they might still be around, but they are dead to me and many other gamers. Which is too bad because they once had some quality products.

Jennell Jaquays

Sadly, we lost Jennell earlier this year.  I had never met with her face to face, though we had spoken together many times online. She was a compassionate, understanding, and wonderfully funny soul. I had been looking forward to seeing her at Gary Con this year. BTW, they had a wonderful tribute to her and to Jim Ward, who had also passed this year.

Jennell was there in the beginning.  You can't go through the early days of our hobby and not see her name on something. Whether it was early Judges Guild material, articles in Dragon magazine, or her works, both as a writer and artist, for Dungeons & Dragons, Traveller, The Fantasy Trip, and Runequest.  Her work in the Judges Guild Journal and the Dungeoneer pages are still some of my favorites from the dawn age of RPGs.

While her work on Central Casting is justifiably lauded, it was her Dark Tower adventure in which she gained her highest accolades. It was so good that it not only made the list of The 30 Greatest D&D Adventures of All Time, it is the only non-TSR/WotC entry on the list. It was also updated for D&D 3.5 and again for 5e.  Though I admit, I am also rather partial to her TSR adventure "Talons of Night." Her adventures were so non-linear in their design that the style is now known as "Jaquaysing a Dungeon." With this being the proper spelling.

Her continued work in video games, like Quake, kept her close to RPGs. 

Her wife, Rebecca "Burger Becky" Heineman, has a GoFundMe. Initially, it was to cover medical expenses, which, sadly, she still has.

she created the adventure Dark Tower which 

Goodman Games (a good company) has been producing their Original Adventures Reincarnated series, and Dark Tower is again the only one in the series that is not a TSR adventure. They are also producing a line of material that Jennell had been working on prior to her death. Materials of hers she bought back from Judges Guild.

• Judges Guild Deluxe Collector’s Edition Vol. 2 – The Works of Jennell Jaquays
• 5E – Original Adventures Reincarnated #7: Dark Tower (3-Volume Slipcased Set)
• Dungeon Crawl Classics #105: By Mitra’s Bones, Meet Thy Doom! – Jennell Jaquays Variant Cover
• Dark Tower (original)

I don't have the new Dark Tower 3-book set yet. It is the only one I am missing.

Both these topics represent a loss. One, Jennell the loss due to her death. The other, Judges Guild, the loss because the current owners decided to burn up 40 years of goodwill and fandom in a week. 

Tomorrow is K, and I will talk about the Known World