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: Monsieur Deloffre Has Gone Quite Mad!Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Cameron Hays

Setting: Paris, 1830Product: One-shot
What You Get: Twenty-eight page, 24.24 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Les Misérables meets the Mythos (singing optional)Plot Hook: Madness, Monarchy, & the MobPlot Support: Six pre-generated Investigators, six NPCs, two maps, one Mythos spell, and one Mythos monster.Production Values: Excellent
Pros# Intriguing historical background and setting# Potential convention scenario# Nicely done NPCs
# Nicely done pre-generated Investigators# Dementophobia# Submechanophobia# Phasmophobia
Cons# Needs a slight edit# Plot outline could be clearer# What does the invisible body feel like?# No NPC stats# No mob rule
Conclusion# Intriguing background and set-up supports a solid plot # Lack of mechanical development undermines the ease of use

There are certain parallels to be drawn between Tales from the Lone-Lands and Tales from Wilderland. Both are, of course, supplements for The One Ring, the roleplaying game set in Middle-earth between the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and both are by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan. Of course, Tales from the Lone-Lands is for The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings, the second edition published by Free League Publishing, whereas, Tales from Wilderland is written for The One Ring: Adventures Over The Edge Of The Wild from Cubicle 7 Entertainment. Both have companion volumes which greatly expand upon the regions where they are set. Thus, Tales from the Lone-Lands has Ruins of the Lost Realm, the regional guide to the lands of southern Eriador, and Tales from Wilderland has The Heart of the Wild, the regional guide to the lands bordering Mirkwood, which is also a companion to the campaign, The Darkening of Mirkwood. Further, Tales from the Lone-Lands and Tales from Wilderland are both campaigns that work as anthologies. In other words, all of their scenarios can be run separately, but to get the absolute best out of them, the Loremaster should run them as a campaign. Lastly, both Tales from the Lone-Lands and Tales from Wilderland present ancient threats from the north.
Tales from the Lone-Lands is actually the first collection of adventures for The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings, as Ruins of the Lost Realm presented a number of major Landmark locations replete with important individuals at each, and the grand plots that will play out and befall the region if the Player-heroes do not get involved and nothing is done to stop them. Instead of pre-written scenarios then, Ruins of the Lost Realm contains numerous plots, both immediate and long term, that the Loremaster can use and develop for her campaign. Tales from the Lone-Lands contains six adventures, each of which should provide two or three good sessions’ worth of play, which together will take the Player-heroes back and forth across Eriador—and beyond. Together, they will locate and confront the Hill of Fear, an ancient and blighted site where the Witch-king of Angmar performed foul rites to darkness, and as Third Age wanes and great evil waxes once again, the shadow cast by the hill promises to rise up and engulf all of Eriador. A hero once swore to defeat the darkness that is the Hill of Fear, but his courage failed and he fled, and though he sought inspiration and guidance to return, he never did. Thus, his oath remains unfulfilled, but there is another who may be equal to the task, who will discover his ancestor’s intent and take up the oath, make the journey to the far north, defeat the darkness, and so become a hero worthy of his ancestor, if not more. This will be a Player-hero, who as part of the play of Tales from the Lone-Lands becomes ‘the Heir’. Ideally, this should be a man or woman, either of Bree or a Ranger, although alternatives are suggested for a Dwarf or Elf Player-character. The aim here is not for the story to focus on ‘the Heir’, but on the fellowship he is part of as its other members aid him in his quest. Indeed, whilst the campaign acknowledges ‘the Heir’ at certain points, it does not focus on him very much.

The anthology opens with ‘A Troll-Hole, If Ever There Was One’. It begins in Bree, at the Prancing Pony, with the Player-heroes being inveigled into accompanying a chirpy Dwarf and his dour and bedraggled Man companion to locate a buried treasure hoard. The question is, can they be trusted? Well, of course not. However, neither Man nor Dwarf are exactly villainous and there is a lot more going on than simple villainy. The scenario does not take the Player-heroes very far, but it serves up nasty monsters, desperation, and a chance at redemption. All of which takes place in a rain sodden, boggy valley. One of the issues with the scenario is that the players and their heroes are unlikely to trust either NPC, but the scenario addresses this, suggesting how the NPCs might react under the questioning of the Player-heroes. It is a solid start to the collection.

‘Messing About In Boats’ takes the Player-heroes and The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings in totally unexpected direction—to sea, and in doing so, it begins the campaign proper. Heading to port of Lond Dear on the southwest coast of Eriador, one of the Player-heroes is grabbed by one of the kingdom’s champions, a Hobbit knight, and dragged before the queen. Not because he has done something wrong, but because he has been seen in a vision by a local seer. This is of the Player-hero—‘the Heir’—standing on the shore of lonely island, a great dark sword in his hand. The queen decides that this warrants investigation and the Player-heroes are ferried up the coast of Eriador and out further than they would have ever imagined travelling (unless they were an Elf) by a fisherman who has motives of his own, wanting to find his missing daughter. Their destination is the Isle of the Mother, and here the Player-heroes will encounter hunters from the very far north, a long-abandoned Númenórean fortress, and the first signs that the reach of the Hill of Fear is greater than they had imagined.

‘Kings of Little Kingdoms’ returns the Player-heroes to land and a small, but engaging scenario that plays on the reputation of Gandalf. Back in Bree, the Player-heroes are accosted by a woman complaining that as adventurers they have done nothing about her son and worse, they probably know Gandalf. Her problem is that her son ran off to join the wizard, who was hanging around Bree two weeks before, on promise of the discovery of buried treasure and has not returned. Of course, the Player-heroes are going to look bad if they do nothing and so upon investigating, begin to realise that something is amiss. The trail leads east of Bree, to an isolated farm and its family headed by a cantankerous old man who is definitely not pleased to see the Player-heroes, even if they do offer him help with attacks his farm is under. Numerous options are given as what might happen, but alongside the mundane, if slightly silly plot of the young man having run off in search of adventure, there is something much darker going on—the spreading influence of the Hill of Fear which plays upon the personalities of the NPCs.

‘Not to Strike Without Need’ begins with the Player-heroes on the road to the water-logged city of Tharbad in southern Eriador, which is fully detailed in Lone-Lands has Ruins of the Lost Realm. They are escorting a criminal to the city in the hopes of exchanging him for a visiting merchant who is currently imprisoned there for non-payment of fines. Yet it turns out that the criminal might actually have changed his ways because he has been aiding the Rangers including getting messages in and out of Tharbad where the Rangers are greatly mistrusted. Which sets up a dilemma for the Player-heroes. Are they willing to let a possibly reformed criminal suffer the ill-justice to be found in the city in order to arrange the release of another? There is the possibility too of the Player-heroes being imprisoned for non-payment of the random fines levied by the city guards, so essentially, the scenario becomes a break-in and a break-out as the Player-characters sneak into the partially ruined Fortress of Garth Tauron, locate the prisoners, and get out again. However, the prison is so large, it has to be explored to find the location of the right cells. This is done in narrative rather than by running a dungeon-type crawl. Once the Player-heroes have escaped the city, preferably with the latest message from the Rangers’ spy in Tharbad, the scenario switches to a hunt for the subject of the message—a Man travelling in lands that even the Rangers tend to avoid. It will be revealed that he has some interest in the Hill of Fear, but what they interest will remain a mystery.

The Player-heroes are asked by a Dwarves friend, Floki, to deliver a message to his brother in the fifth scenario, ‘Wonder of the Northern World’. In the far northwest of Eriador, they discover tragedy as the brother and his settlement of fellow Dwarves has been sacked and spoiled by an Orc warband as part of the opening plans of Sauron to defeat all the Free Folk. The scenario is more open than the previous ones, with the Player-heroes having multiple courses of action rather than a more obvious one. There are some great set pieces in the scenario—a chase across the Lone-lands after the Orc warband, a great council with the Dwarves of the Blue Mountains, and an attack on the Fort of Blood, an ancient fortress from the days of the Witch-king of Angmar, now home to a servant of Sauron! This can be done by force of arms if the Player-heroes mange to raise a Dwarven host in the council, or they can use stealth. There are rules for both, but at the end the Player-heroes will learn that that the servant of Sauron—who of course, gets away—has plans of his linked to activities that they will already be aware of.

The sixth and final scenario in Tales from the Lone-Lands is ‘The Quest of Amon Guruthos’. This takes the Player-heroes into unknown territory once again. This is Forodwaith—the northern waste—and it requires a great expedition rather than the simple toing and froing of the previous scenarios. With the help of the tribesmen that they met on the Isle of the Mother in ‘Messing About In Boats’, the Player-heroes can track east in search of the Hill of Fear and then a way to approach it successfully from yet another unexpected source and an utterly unexpected encounter! This is with the scenario’s villain and is a great moment in the campaign, giving the Lore-master a fun NPC to portray and a chance to portray him in a situation other than the big final encounter and when he and the Player-heroes are on equal footing. The scenario and the campaign will come to an end with the Player-heroes first approaching and then descending into the Hill of Fear. This a foul place, once from which they are unlikely to return from unscarred such is the malevolence of the Shadow here. As they are assailed from within and without, it is likely their strength of character that will save them, though numerous methods are suggested as to how the Hill of Fear might be defeated.

Tales from the Lone-lands works better as a campaign than it does as an anthology of scenarios. Really, only ‘A Troll-Hole, If Ever There Was One’, ‘Kings of Little Kingdoms’, and ‘Not to Strike Without Need’ work effectively when run on their own. The other scenarios are key to the campaign and cannot be effectively untied from it. So there is scope for just an anthology of scenarios, all unconnected, still. The format also leaves room aplenty for the Loremaster to insert her own scenarios and that does not take into account the plots given in Ruins of the Lost Realm that she interweave between that of this campaign. That may prove to be helpful since the campaign as a whole does feel quite short and it does feel as if it should be longer. What the campaign does fail to address are the consequences of the Player-heroes’ actions. What happened if they succeed? What happens when they fail? These are really the only issues with Tales from the Lone-lands. Other than that, there is good Loremaster advice throughout and there are notes on adjusting the starting points of each of the scenario’s depending upon the Player-heroes’ locations and patrons.
Physically, Tales from the Lone-lands is a fantastic book. It looks great and the artwork is very, very good. The depictions of moments where a Player-hero hides behind a pillar in a cellar as a wight hunts him and a mighty troll lolls on a lakebed as she stretches her arms up out of the water to attack a raft full of Player-heroes are both genuinely scary. That said, the maps are not often as good as they could be, the Loremaster often wanting more detail. In many cases, the maps given, all of them Landmarks, so representative rather than mapped out to the inch, will be used narratively rather than mechanically.
Tales from the Lone-lands captures the bleakness of the period between the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, when the darkness was again growing and spreading across Middle-earth. The Player-heroes have a chance to hold some of that back with Tales from the Lone-lands, far removed from the traditional manoeuvrings of the Dark Lord of Mordor, but that attempt will be grim and terrible and the likelihood is that even if they succeed, the Player-heroes will come away scarred and marked with the Shadow. Being a hero and helping to save even some of the land is not without its consequences.

Miseries & Misfortunes is a roleplaying game set in seventeenth century France designed and published following a successful Kickstarter campaign by Luke Crane, best known for the fantasy roleplaying game, Burning Wheel. Notably, it is based on the mechanics of Basic Dungeons & Dragons. Originally, Miseries & Misfortunes appeared as a fanzine in 2015, but its second edition has since been developed to add new systems for skills, combat, magic, and more. However, the underlying philosophy of Miseries & Misfortunes still leans back into the play style of Basic Dungeons & Dragons. For example, the differing mechanics of rolling low for skill checks, but high for combat rolls and saving throws. Plus, the Player Characters exist in an uncaring world where bad luck, misfortune, and even death will befall them and there will be no one left to commiserate or mourn except the other characters and their players. Further, Miseries & Misfortunes is not a cinematic swashbuckling game of musketeers versus the Cardinal’s guards. It is grimmer and grimier than that, and the Player Characters can come from all walks of life. That said, it is set in the similar period as Alexandre Dumas’ Three Musketeers and Twenty Years After, so will be familiar to many players. The other major inspiration for Miseries & Misfortunes is Les Misères et les Malheurs de la Guerre, a set of eighteen etchings by French artist Jacques Callot that grimly depict the nature of the conflict in the early years of the Thirty Years War.

Miseries & Misfortunes – Book 3: The Sacred & The Profane is the third of the roleplaying game’s rulebooks. The first, Miseries & Misfortunes – Book 1: Roleplaying in 1648 gives the core rules for the roleplaying game, and the second, Miseries & Misfortunes – Book 2: Les Fruits Malheureux provides the means to actually create Player Characters, and together they make up the core rules. Miseries & Misfortunes – Book 3: The Sacred & The Profane does two things. One is that it provides the rules for learning and casting various types of magic and the other is a set of Lifepaths for both religious and arcane character types. The Game Master can make use of some of the Lifepaths without making use of the rules for magic.

Magic in Miseries & Misfortunes can only be learned through the reading and studying of the written word. This is primarily from grimoires which contain hidden truths far beyond that of the two divine books of Christianity—the Book of God and the Book of Nature. This knowledge is called ‘Gnosis’ and it is required to perform rituals, cast spells, and mix formulae. Through Gnosis, a practitioner can study the physical and metaphysical properties of the world and learn to alter numerous substances through Chymistry; Goëtia to summon and command demons; Necromancy to affect the world, particularly spirits and the dead; Theology to understand and communicate with the divine to invoke prayers of one’s faith; and Theurgy to summon and bind aerial spirits or angels. There are parallels certainly in the study of ‘Gnosis’ and the Mythos of Call of Cthulhu, but with differences. One is that there is no Sanity loss for reading the grimoires in Miseries & Misfortunes, but the other is that where a Player Character will know how much Cthulhu Mythos knowledge his Investigator has, a Player Character in Miseries & Misfortunes does not. Instead, it is kept secret by the Game Master.

Miseries & Misfortunes – Book 3: The Sacred & The Profane lists some one-hundred-and-forty grimoires. Most have a language requirement to be read, and any attempt to read a grimoire can lead to a successful interpretation or a misinterpretation. The reader who misinterprets a grimoire can attempt to read it again, but the amount of Gnosis he can learn from it is reduced. If this happens too many times, the grimoire actually becomes useless. A reader’s Gnosis also needs to be high enough to be able to interpret the grimoire, which takes time. However, a failure to misinterpret can lead to a long period of meditation without learning anything, the learning of false knowledge, and again, the degradation of the text. The process takes time, whatever the outcome. Another way of gaining Gnosis is through appreciation of great art and beauty, though the Player Character needs to be open to this rather than being stubborn.

Once learned, Gnosis represents the degree of knowledge a practitioner knows, no matter which tradition he follows or studies, each of which has its own skill. Chymistry includes a list of chymical formulae; Goëtia comes with a list of demons, their form and office—the latter the purview of their powers, and Demons can only be summoned at certain times of the day; Necomancy a list of highly detailed spells; Theology divides its prayers between those used by Catholics and those used by Protestants; and Theurgy, a surprisingly short list of Angels and their offices. Notably, each of the practices has its own set of unintended results and catastrophic results, many of which are quite amusing. In addition to the major difficulties of learning and casting, there are social challenges in learning Gnosis. Many of the traditions have been declared heresy and practitioners are hunted by the Inquisition.
The particular tradition that a practitioner studies depends on the Lifepaths they have followed. Miseries & Misfortunes – Book 3: The Sacred & The Profane includes five new Lifepaths. These are Exorcist, Jesuit Priest, Occultist, Protestant Pastor, and Philosopher. Thus, the Exorcist studies Goëtia, the Jesuit Priest and the Pastor Theology, the Occultist both Goëtia and Theurgy, and the Philosopher, Chymistery. All five begin a six-sided die’s worth of Gnosis.
Physically, Miseries & Misfortunes – Book 3: The Sacred & The Profane is well presented and written, and although it does include some examples, these feel underwritten in places. It is illustrated with a period artwork and etchings which helps impart its historical setting. If it is missing anything, it is an index, but at just forty pages, this is not too much of an issue.

Miseries & Misfortunes – Book 3: The Sacred & The Profane provides a solid set of rules for adding ‘magic’ to the world of Miseries & Misfortune, although it is not really magic or even as simple as magic. In many cases the practitioners are dealing with the profane and the heretical, so dangerous both metaphysically and socially. It also takes time to research and interpret, so it involves more effort and work than most magic systems, so more commitment upon the part of the players and their characters. Of the traditions, Theurgy does feel underwritten, but the others are nicely detailed, and if there is anything missing, it is a Nun Lifepath and notes for Gnosis studying NPCs. Otherwise, Miseries & Misfortunes – Book 3: The Sacred & The Profane expands its Early Modern France setting both mechanically and thematically adding dangerous knowledge.

Primal Quest – Weird Stone & Sorcery Adventure Game is a roleplaying of a Stone Age that never was, inspired by Edgar Rice Burroughs’ The Land That Time Forgot and The People That Time Forgot, Quest for Fire and One Million Years, B.C., Thundarr the Barbarian, Horizon Zero Dawn, and the Cavemaster RPG and Hollow Earth Expedition. This is a world in which humanity survives alongside dinosaurs and other creatures and ancient secrets and aliens lurk, the Player Characters as warriors and hunters, shamans and sorcerers, exploring an environment dominated by a natural untrammelled by mankind. Designed by Diogo Nogueira because of his love of dinosaurs and published by Old School Publishing, the core rules for Primal Quest – Weird Stone & Sorcery Adventure Game are presented in Primal Quest – Essentials. Besides a surprisingly thorough bibliography, this includes a simple set of mechanics using six-sided dice designed to handle both consequences and narrative control, character creation, survival and exploration, sorcery, and a complete mini-hexcrawl that encompasses twelve, lightly-detailed locations, that introduces the World of Thaia. In addition, Primal Quest – Weird Stone & Sorcery Adventure Game is not only supported by its own licence enabling others to write and publish for it, but also its own series of supplements, including The Primal World of Thaia fanzine.

A Player Character in Primal Quest – Weird Stone & Sorcery Adventure Game has three attributes—Body, Mind, and Heart. These can be negative values, but typically range in value between 0 and +3, though can be higher through experience. He has five Tags, one each for his Concept, Talent, Motivation, Relationship, and Trouble. His Vitality represents his Hit Points, whilst his Defence is dependent upon armour worn and shield carried. To this are added name, gender, looks, and personality. To create a character, a player divides three points between the three attributes, to a maximum of +3. A bonus attribute point can be gained by lowering one attribute to -1. He defines his five Tags and the five aspects of his character, and then chooses an equipment option. Three are given, one each suitable for a warrior with more weapons and armour and shield, one for a hunter with hunting tools, and one for a sorcerer or shaman with three foci for casting spells.

Name: Dres’zhi
Body -1 Mind +3 Heart +1
TAGS: Curious Shaman (Concept), Secrets (Talent), To Prove Herself (Motivation), Cantankerous Master (Relationship), Mother (Trouble)
Vitality: 9
Defence: 1
Equipment: wood spear, light armour, arcane foci (Fire, Spirit, Life), three torches, fire, three units of Food, three units of Water.

Mechanically, Primal Quest – Weird Stone & Sorcery Adventure Game uses pools of six-sided dice, needing several of two different colours. One colour is Positive Dice, the other Negative dice. A player always rolls one of each die type. More Positive Dice can be gained by invoking a Tag, which can be a Player Character’s own, or come from an item of equipment, the environment, and even an opponent. Extra Effort, gained by sacrificing Vitality, provides further Positive Dice. Further Negative Dice can also be added to the pool, whether from poor equipment, difficult terrain, or spell or monster effect. Once the combined pool is rolled, the value of the highest Negative Dice is subtracted from the value of the highest Positive Die. The value of the appropriate Attribute is added to the resulting value and compared to the Difficulty of the task, which ranges between zero and moderate and six or Legendary. The default is zero, but it is otherwise determined by a stat, such as an Attribute, Defence, and so on. If the final value is equal to, or greater than the difficulty, the character succeeds.

The degree of success, or Effect, of a task, is determined by subtracting the result from the Difficulty. In addition, a Player Character can benefit from Boons and Setbacks. A Boon is gained for rolling a six on a Positive Die, a Setback for rolling a six on a Negative Die. A Boon can be used to add an extra Stat if appropriate to the result, give an extra Positive Die to another Player Character’s action, impose a Negative Die on an opponent, or to gain insight about a situation. A Setback can grant an extra Stat if appropriate to an opponent’s result, add an extra Positive Die to an opponent’s action, inflict a Negative Die on the Player Character’s next action, or add a negative consequence to the current situation.

Combat uses the same mechanics, with an opponent’s Defence value, derived from his armour, determining the Difficulty. A shield blocks an attack entirely, but used to block too many attacks and it will break. Weapons inflict either one, two, or four points of damage depending upon their size, plus the Effect value of the attack roll. Combat can be short and brutal, but the healing rules are fairly forgiving.

The primary resources in the game are food and water, and Player Characters need one of each per day to survive. The primary means of exchange is barter, and there are simple rules for encumbrance and material durability, which includes bronze—though not copper—as well as wood, stone, and bone.

Sorcery requires two things—an Arcane Focus and an associated word. The latter can be ‘Fire’ or ‘Truth’ or ‘Grasp’, and once a focus—a particular object like a stone with a hole through it or a piece of carved leather or bone—it cannot be used with another word. That said, different foci and their words can be combined for different spell effects. Primal Quest – Weird Stone & Sorcery Adventure Game does not include spell lists, but instead a sorcerer decides upon the desired spell effect and describes how he is using the Arcane Focus to cast it. Once a player has described the spell that he wants his character to cast, the Game Master decides whether it is a Cantrip, Invocation, Ritual, or Miracle, each one more difficult to cast than the last.

For the Game Master there is the recommendation that safety tools be used and several pointers of good advice. Much of it will be obvious to an experienced Game Master, but useful, nonetheless. Further rules cover opponents, exploration, getting lost, camping, and so on. Half of Primal Quest – Weird Stone & Sorcery Adventure Game is dedicated to ‘Mother’s Vale’, a ‘Weird Stone & Sorcery mini-Hexcrawl’. To the north lies Father Mountain rich with life upon its slopes; to the south in the Deep Jungle the Mother Tree upon which grows fruit that can restore life to the dead, to the west the Fanged Hills that smell of fear, sweat, and death; and to the east, lies the Tower That Fell, a strange organic structure that left a ravine and Mother’s Mounds, a series of ravines that stretch for miles and lead beneath the vale where the remains of ancient, non-human civilisations can be found. There are twelve locations strewn across Mother’s Vale, each given a broad description, a combination of a problem, a secret, a danger, or a special detail, and a table of random encounters. The latter ranges from tribesmen from the three humankind villages in the Mother’s Vale, aurochs, and Triceratops to Argentinosauruses, a Giganotosaurus, and Devouring Chaos Beasts via Red Gorillas, Yeti, Giant Constrictors, Brachiosauruses, and a whole lot more. These encounter tables also serve as the bestiary for Primal Quest – Weird Stone & Sorcery Adventure Game.

Although obviously an anachronistic mix of Stone Age man and dinosaurs, in very Ray Harryhausen fashion, Primal Quest – Weird Stone & Sorcery Adventure Game is also a Pulp adventure setting, a lost world of sorts which mixes in elements of Science Fiction too. Much of these require further development upon the part of the Game Master, as the ‘Mother’s Vale’ is drawn in quite broad detail. Once that is done, the Game Master can add an adventure site or two and be in position to respond to what the players and their characters want to do. That said, there is plenty of further content available for the roleplaying game, plus each of the three villages in Mother’s Vale—the obvious starting point for any campaign—has a problem that can easily serve as a hook for the Player Characters.

Physically, Primal Quest – Weird Stone & Sorcery Adventure Game is well done. It is lightly illustrated, but the artwork is decent, whilst the cartography for Mother’s Vale is engaging. It does need an edit in places and feels slightly underwritten in others.

In terms of tone and to an extent play style, Primal Quest – Weird Stone & Sorcery Adventure Game is like an Old School Renaissance roleplaying game, but mechanically, it is anything but that. Its dice pool mechanics are far more modern and its narrative controls in the form of Boons and Setback are distinctly opposite the mechanics you would find in an Old School Renaissance retroclone. That aside, Primal Quest – Weird Stone & Sorcery Adventure Game is a solid Pulp-style Stone Age-set roleplaying game in which its Science Fiction and Fantasy elements and thus many of its stories are wrapped up as mysteries for the Game Master to develop and make her own.

Galileo Galileo is famous as the astronomer who attracted the ire of Pope Urban VIII and the Catholic church and the Roman Inquisition by championing Copernican heliocentrism, the concept of the Earth rotating daily and revolving around the Sun, rather than the Aristotelian geocentric view that universe revolving around the Earth. Tried for heresy, in 1633, he was condemned and sentenced to house arrest, remaining in his villa outside Florence until his death in 1642. What though, if Pope Urban VIII, deeply irked at an insult Galileo had insinuated at him in his work of 1632, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, believed that house arrest was too good for the heretical natural philosopher? How far would the Holy Father go in order to have his revenge? Would he commission a clockwork automaton that would tramp the halls of Galileo’s villa, tormenting him verbally and playing tricks on him, day after day? Well, to be fair, very probably not, but since this is the set-up for a scenario for Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplaying published by Lamentations of the Flame Princess, it is safe to assume that this did happen and the Player Characters got caught up in it, because otherwise, there is no scenario. The scenario in question is Galileo 2: Judgment Day, which if you are thinking the title of which sounds an awful lot like Terminator 2: Judgement Day, you definitely have some idea what this scenario is about, because it does involve Galileo and it does involve a big, near unstoppable, clomping robot. Just not from the future.

Galileo 2: Judgment Day takes place roughly in 1640. Galileo Galilei has been under house arrest for several years and the Inquisition maintains a steady watch on his villa, the Villa Il Gioiello, hiring spies to do so from a neighbouring house. The Player Characters are the latest to be hired to fulfil this role, discovering the pay to be a pittance and the house where they stationed, a mould and rat-infested tumble down ruin. The job is also boring. Nothing happens. Except on this summer’s night when strange noises are heard in the villa and then a figure runs out through the games. Followed, not long after, by a mountain of a man, heavy-footed, but determined. With the change in circumstances, do the Player Characters have the chance to take advantage of the situation and come out of it richer either than they were before or they would have been if nothing had happened? Their choices are simple? Do they ransack the Villa Il Gioiello, said to be home to untold riches? Do they race after the fleeing man, and then after determining who he is—most likely Galileo—work what to do with him then? Hand him into the Inquisition and collect the reward or let him go free because they believe him to have been unjustly imprisoned? And if they do let him go free, do they follow him, or do they take advantage of an empty house, to go back and ransack the Villa Il Gioiello and make off with any money and valuables that Galileo has left behind? Then what of the great bear of man, huffing and puffing after Galileo, taunting him all the way? Can he be stopped, bribed, or does he simply need to be bribed and done with it?

Galileo 2: Judgment Day takes places in the default setting for Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplaying of the Early Modern period, the first half of the seventeenth century. What it promises is a pair of one-shot adventures, but that is really not what it provides, because what Galileo 2: Judgment Day really sets up is a situation with a handful of options and another handful of endings. In one option, the Player Characters might see Galileo run out of Villa Il Gioiello and decide to burglarise the building and make a run for it themselves, being hounded by the Inquisition once the authorities realise what they have done and they attempt to fence their loot. In another option, they chase Galileo to nearby Florence, help his escape, and he rewards them with details about the Villa Il Gioiello and the many traps he has laid, letting them grab the loot. Alternatively, they capture Galileo, hand him over to the Inquisition and take the reward for doing so, and head for the nearest bar and get stinking drunk? These are the main options, but there are others too, including one where the Player Characters end up in the hands of the Inquisition themselves and face the possibility of torture and death—the table for that is just ever so slightly unpleasant—and another where the neighbours of Galileo decide the rob the Villa Il Gioiello before anyone else does. And that still leaves the unstoppable killing machine which has been tormenting Galileo and will stop at nothing to prevent his escape to Florence and beyond...

However, it is possible for the Game Master to run Galileo 2: Judgment Day as two separate things. For example, whilst the Player Characters chase after Galileo on the road to Florence, his neighbours could be attempting to loot the Villa Il Gioiello. To that end, several nosy neighbours are provided, who either turn up whilst the Player Characters are still there or could be played as would be looters with a little bit of development. They include a widow wanting to prove the capability of old people, a castrato who takes the opportunity to perform, an Ottoman mercenary, a gossipy chandler and his wife, and so on. These are simply drawn, but could developed into playable characters.

And then there is the Automaton or ‘L’Assassino Meccanico’. All six feet of it, a half-tonne of steel, and dressed in the best boots, wig, and cloak that money can buy. Designed to impersonate a man to the best of its abilities and then placed to taunt the poor Galileo for as long as he shall live. The thing is described in some detail, and comes with a table of twelve wrestling moves for the Game Master to roll on and randomly determine if it engages in combat. Galileo Galileo is similarly detailed, though as an NPC rather than a monster.

Galileo 2: Judgment Day includes the detailed background for Galileo’s situation, his means of escape, and the resulting chase from the Villa Il Gioiello to Florence, plus a set of encounters along the road in the dark. Possible events in Florence are also covered, including a case through its streets and encounters with the Inquisition. The Villa Il Gioiello itself is described in detail should the Player Characters decide they want to take advantage of the absence of its occupants. The description includes some really nasty traps, though of course, the Player Characters may avoid them should they help Galileo and he reward them with their particulars.

Physically, Galileo 2: Judgment Day is a short, clean and tidy affair. It is well laid out, and easy to read. The cartography is decent and the artwork is excellent. The illustration of the Automaton is particularly good and in combination with its portrayal by the Game Master with its booming voice, it should enforce its imposing nature.

Galileo 2: Judgment Day demands a greater suspension of disbelief than might be required in other scenarios. If that is achieved though, then all bets are off, and that includes quite where the events of the scenario and the Player Characters will end up. This is very player-driven scenario, with their decisions deciding which its parts will come into play. Go in one direction and only Villa Il Gioiello does, go in another and only Florence comes into play, although there is the possibility of the scenario coming back round from Villa Il Gioiello to Florence and then back to Villa Il Gioiello. Yet if it does not, there is possibility of using Villa Il Gioiello all by itself as a target of the Player Characters’ larceny. So there is the possibility that the Game Master could use the parts of the scenario rather than as a whole. The nature of the scenario also means that it is difficult to work into a campaign, but an inventive should be abale to come up with something suitable.

Galileo 2: Judgment Day—inspired as the author admits by Terminator 2: Judgement Day—takes the concept of the unstoppable robot killing machine and drops it into the last situation you would think of. It has the potential to be a classic slasher horror with a really weird premise that could be run as a one-shot and thus a convention scenario, or it swirl out of control and end up in another of the scenario’s various endings, which would probably take another session to play. Galileo 2: Judgment Day is a ridiculous, but still enetrtaining scenario, whose set-up is pleasingly detailed as are it various different endings.

—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.

For every Ptolus: City by the Spire or Zweihander: Grim & Perilous Roleplaying or World’s Largest Dungeon or Invisible Sun—the desire to make the biggest or most compressive roleplaying game, campaign, or adventure, there is the opposite desire—to make the smallest roleplaying game or adventure. Reindeer Games’ TWERPS (The World's Easiest Role-Playing System) is perhaps one of the earliest examples of this, but more recent examples might include the Micro Chapbook series or the Tiny D6 series. Yet even these are not small enough and there is the drive to make roleplaying games smaller, often in order to answer the question, “Can I fit a roleplaying game on a postcard?” or “Can I fit a roleplaying game on a business card?” And just as with roleplaying games, this ever-shrinking format has been used for scenarios as well, to see just how much adventure can be packed into as little space as possible. Recent examples of these include The Isle of Glaslyn, The God With No Name, and Bastard King of Thraxford Castle, all published by Leyline Press.

The Pocket Sized Perils series uses the same A4 sheet folded down to A6 as the titles from Leyline Press, or rather the titles from Leyline Press use the same A4 sheet folded down to A6 sheet as Pocket Sized Perils series. Funded via a Kickstarter campaign as part of the inaugural ZineQuest—although it debatable whether the one sheet of paper folded down counts as an actual fanzine—this is a series of six mini-scenarios designed for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, but actually rules light enough to be used with any retroclone, whether that is the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game or Old School Essentials. Just because it says ‘5e’ on the cover, do not let that dissuade you from taking a look at this series and see whether individual entries can be added to your game. The mechanics are kept to a minimum, the emphasis is on the Player Characters and their decisions, and the actual adventures are fully drawn and sketched out rather than being all text and maps.
Death in Dinglebrook is the fourth entry in the Pocket Sized Perils series following on from An Ambush in Avenwood, The Beast of Bleakmarsh, and Call of the Catacombs. Designed for Fourth Level Player Characters, the scenario is a gothic mini-mystery, much in the style of the Hammer Horror films or Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. Although written for use with Dungeons & Dragons, its theme and tone make the scenario easy to adapt to other fantasy roleplaying games or even to the Victorian era. It does have some set-up requirements which limit its usefulness, in that it suggests that each of the Player Characters is ill at the beginning of the scenario, but these can be worked around. Perhaps an NPC is ill or one of the characters whose player is present is ill, and so on. Whichever of the Player Characters (or not) is ill, they are all travelling into the mountains to the isolated vale of Dinglebrook. Here, it is rumoured that a gifted healer named ‘Sirona’ can be found, one who is capable of curing whatever rare disease it is that ails them.

Upon arrival, it seems bar the local tavern, ‘Thin Fat Jim’s’, Dinglebrook is deserted and when the Player Characters do discover the locals, it turns out that they are all skeletons, although going about their normal lives, just as they did before their undeaths. After realising that the skeletons are not actually evil and do not want a fight, probably after the bones have knitted themselves back in order and the correct place, probably after the bones have knitted themselves back in order and the correct place—ideally to the sound of ‘Dem Bones Dem Bones Dem Dry Bones’—the Player Characters are going to be wondering quite what is going on in Dinglebrook. Which is when three stone golems, dressed as orderlies turn up and attempt to take them away... So, what has happened to the inhabitants of Dinglebrook? Who are the stone orderlies working for and where are they taking their captives? And lastly, where is ‘Sirona’ and why has she not cured all of this?

Flip through the few, but heavily illustrated pages of Death in Dinglebrook and the story will take the Game Master and her players and their characters to the village and the local tavern, ‘Thin Fat Jim’s’, and from there outside to look up the Abbey that looms over the village from the mountainside. To reach this the Player Characters will need to climb the mountain, but all the Game Master has to do is open up the pages of the scenario, flip it over, and pull it open. This reveals the abbey in all its glory, fantastically drawn in isometric style, with room descriptions round the edge and Sirona’s stats and roleplaying hints below. The abbey is no longer a place of worship, but part-hospital gone wrong and part-alchemical laboratory gone awry, overseen by stone, golem-like orderlies, and Sirona, would be healer driven to madness and monstrousness by her failure to heal the sick.

Death in Dinglebrook is straightforward enough, but its set-up is all for a standup, knockdown fight, without any scope for roleplaying. This is a pity, since there is the fun earlier of interacting and roleplaying with tongue-less and therefore speechless skeletons in the tavern, whereas Sirona is only given a motivation. Given the genre and tone of the scenario, she deserves more, and the Game Master should really seize the opportunity to let her explain her actions and motivations, and have her chew some scenery!

Physically, Death in Dinglebrook is very nicely presented, being more drawn than actually written. It has a cartoonish sensibility to it, that although it plays up the scenario’s tone and genre, lacks the humour of the previous releases in the Pocket Perils series. The combination of having been drawn and the cartoonish artwork with the high quality of the paper stock also gives Death in Dinglebrook a physical feel which feels genuinely good in the hand. Its small size means that it is very easy to transport.

Ultimately, the plot of Death in Dinglebrook is short, simple, and the whole thing can be run and played in a single session. It is not as sophisticated or as engaging as previous entries in the Pocket Perils series, and its set-up requirements are quite strict, which in combination, does limit its usefulness. That said, if the Game Master can meet the requirements for its set-up and is prepared to develop her portrayal of its villain, then Death in Dinglebrook is easy to prepare and run for a single session’s worth of play.

 My exploration of the Forgotten Realms continues with the next adventure on my list, N5 Under Illefarn by Steve Perrin.  I actually ran this adventure a while back at the start of my 5e Second Campaign long ago. My first real attempt at getting a Realms game going. While that game would end up in different directions, the adventure is still a solid one. 

N5 Under Illefarn

by Steve Perin. 1987. 50 pages, color covers (Jeff Easley) and maps (Stephen Sullivan), black & white art (Luise Perenne). 

I am reviewing the PDF and Print on Demand versions from DriveThruRPG. 

This is a "Novice Level" adventure and, likely due to timing, became connected to the Forgotten Realms.  It is also the first of the N series to feature the Forgotten Realms banner. Something similar happened to the H series on the other end of the level spectrum.

When I talked about Module N4 Treasure Hunt, I mentioned that it was a great starting adventure that missed a little of what also made B2 Keep on the Borderland so great. This is fine since we already had Keep on the Borderlands. N5 strikes a middle ground. There is a base of operations, plenty of "wild" areas to explore, and a hook. It also works as a direct sequel to N4. You can play it stand-alone (as I did in 2017) or as a follow-up.  Both have advantages.

Like N4, we are given an overview of the AD&D 1st Ed game, in particular the races and classes. Now, back in 2017, I said: "I am going to run it through like an AD&D game. So no tieflings or dragonborn. More gnomes, though, never have enough of those." That was a mistake in retrospect. If anywhere is open to Dragonborn, Tieflings, and all the new post-AD&D 1st-ed races (remember, tieflings are AD&D 2nd-ed), then it will be Faerûn.  There is a bit on how you all get to Daggerford and what happens once you are there. I admit I did not like the idea of the characters needing to be in the Town Militia until I started thinking of this adventure as akin to an episode of "Cops" or, more to the point, the parody "Troops."

The base of operations for the characters is the small frontier town of Daggerford. So, like the Keep. From here the characters can go on quick adventures and then come back. An idea implicit for B2 KotBL, but here it is baked in. 

The DM's section gives some background on the village of about 300 people and some 1,000 total living in the surrounding area. Sounds like where my wife grew up. The area and the city make are given. This includes many of the shops and building and what surrounds the village. There is even a bit on the "Big City" Chicago,  I mean Waterdeep. 

The main personalities of the town are also detailed. One of the things I had to used to (and get over) was that the Realms is about people. I can choose to use who I want. In 1987 this annoyed me, but in truth I was already switching my point of view then. Now? Now it is great. I mean, do I need to use Duke Pwyll Greatshout Daggerford? No. But why would I not want to? 

This covers about the first half of the book. After this are adventures.

What kind of adventures? Lots! The first page has the AD&D staple, the Random Encounter Tables. One of the outcomes is a Ceratosaur! Imagine this. You are a still a newbie adventurer. You just recently learned which is the pointy end of the spear and which is the end you hold. Now you are on milita duty, and someone finds dinosaur tracks on your very first day on what you were told was going to be dull work making sure kids don't steal apples in the marketplace.

Kudos to Steve Perrin for getting going. And that is just one random encounter. I mean there is also a hermit. Yes, I said he is the same one from the KotBL. Why not. There are also werewolves, which I am using later on. 

Among the detailed adventurers are a raid by Lizard Men (why I grabbed this in 2017 to be honest), basic Caravan duty, a kidnapped daughter of the Duke, and the titular Illefarn in the Laughing Hallow. The adventures range from a couple of pages to several. 

The best thing about this adventure. Well, one of the best things. You can run it in many short adventures to get new players into the game. Need to spend an extra hour explaining rules? No worries, do that and send them on Militia duty to guard a caravan against orc raiders. That's a solid session.

Note About the Pring on Demand Print

The PDF from DriveThruRPG looks great and served me well in 2017. Recently I also grabbed the Print on Demand copy from DriveThru. There is some dithering from lower resolution art being brought up to print quality, but the text looks like it has been redone so it is nice and sharp and easy to read. I should note that it is not all the art. Some look rather crisp and clear as well. They may have had some of the higher resolution versions still on hand.

Again, we have a great introductory adventure. Not just good to introduce people to the AD&D 1st Edition game but also a great way to ease into the Forgotten Realms. Waterdeep is too big of a bite for new players (and characters) and many of the "big names" are still too big. This is nice little village with some fun problems to solve. A taste of adventure. An appetizer in small portions OR more akin to Tapas or Dim Sum. Small plates that can add up to a nice full meal.

Sinéad's Perspective

"Just a small-town girl. Livin' in a lonely world..."

At the outset of these reviews, I said I wanted to explore the Realms through the eyes of a native, but one that was just as naïve as me. Sinéad is that character. 

She finally made it to the main land after surviving her own kidnapping and adventures in the Moonshaes and the Korrin Archipelago. And was absolutely broke. Like I said, at first I balked at the idea of forcing the characters into the Daggerford Militia, but in truth it works very well. Sinéad, given she knows how to play an instrument was given the job of trumpeter. She at least gets a spear too. 

This actually works. I went back to look over her Baldur's Gate 3 setup and her background there was Militia as well. This was before I knew I could change it. So, yeah. I guess that is what I am doing.

When my oldest son gets off of work from his bakery job (he is a pastry chef and a damn good one) we work out what these characters are doing and roll some dice. It has been great really.

So. Sinéad is in the Militia. She has a shiny new trumpet, a not-as-shiny new spear, and a blue tabard proclaiming she is part of the militia. If she is going to survive the Realms, she will need some friends.

So, who do we have here?

Nothing Like the Sun...

Up first is Rhiannon. Yeah, I am embracing the clichés here. But in my defense, I did start her up with that in mind.  She is a Dragon Magazine #114 witch. There is some evidence that Ed used the Dragon Magazine witches in his own game. She is a member of the "Sisters of the Moon" coven, something that will become important later on. If Sinéad is my Realms exploration character, and Larina is my witch exploration character, then Rhiannon is where they meet. Again. Expect clichés here. This my chance to go all out.  

I already decided that Sinéad honors Sehanine Moonbow as her personal Goddess, even above that of The Earthmother of the Moonshaes. Maybe this is one of the reasons she wanted to leave. Rhiannon knows about Sehanine. She also knows about Selûne and, oddly enough, Shar.  At this point, Sinéad doesn't know enough about Shar to find this odd. 

Rhiannon is not in the militia, but she is the friend of someone who is. 

Bad Moon Rising

The next character is an in-joke with my son and me, but I really liked where the character is going.  Arnell Hallowleaf is a male moon elf cleric of Selûne. He is in the militia as a healer. There are obvious reasons why Sinéad would seek him out. He is a cleric for starters, also he is the first full-blooded moon elf she has met other than her own mother. So, this has given her a chance to find out more about the moon elves.  Players of Baldur's Gate 3 might recognize this name. He is the father of Jenevelle Hallowleaf, aka Shadowheart, in the game. But that is not until DR 1492. Jenevelle is not born until DR 1447 and this is still DR 1358.  Arnell is a young elf. His future human wife, Emmeline, has not even been born yet. So maybe (taking a page from Sarek of Vulcan's book) Rhiannon (a human) is his current girlfriend/wife. Which? I don't know, I have not gotten there yet. 

I do know that at some point in this adventure, he is bitten by a werewolf and becomes one. His devotion to Selûne is what keeps his lycanthropy in check. 

Both characters are here to let me explore some different ideas. Talking it over with my oldest, he suggested that if Johan were from the Realms, he would have been a cleric of Selûne. Arnell is not a Johan stand-in, but he will let me explore playing a cleric in the Realms. Rhiannon is my "don't just embrace the cliché, live it character." I'd love to see how far I can get with her as a "Dragon #114" witch. 

Sinéad and Arnell finish their tour of duty and, along with Rhiannon, venture out into the wide world.

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

—oOo—
It is interesting to note that two of the hobby’s mostly highly regarded humour roleplaying games were co-designed by Greg Costikyan and both were published in 1984. One, the dystopian Science Fiction roleplaying game, Paranoia, published by West End Games, was most obviously published in 1984, because after all, that was the year that George Orwell’s eponymous novel is set. The other was Toon – The Cartoon Roleplaying Game. Published by Steve Jackson Games, it was based on an original idea by Jeff Dee which was inspired by a conversation about genres that nobody had then yet designed roleplaying games for. As its title suggested, that genre was cartoons. Not the cartoons of Saturday mornings, but rather the short, sometimes violently anarchic cartoons of Warner Bros’ Looney Toons, Hanna and Barbera’s Tom and Jerry, and Walt Disney’s Silly Symphonies and others. This is a genre that almost everyone is familiar with, making the resulting roleplaying game incredibly familiar in terms of what you were playing and the world in which it took place. However, Toon also asked a great deal of its players in terms of how it was played, because in many ways it was asking them to do everything which other roleplaying games had taught them to do.

In almost every other roleplaying game, the player not only wants his character to survive, to grow, and to thrive, which invariably means plotting and planning, and taking the time to come up with the best tactics or strategy to achieve all three. Not so in Toon. Let alone the fact that a character in Toon cannot die—only fall down for three minutes of real time—the play is all about the immediate. What does my character want? How does he achieve that right now? What is the simplest and more direct way of getting that? It does not matter if that direct way is not the most logical, for it serves its purpose right now. So rather than ‘think before you act’, the credo of Toon is ‘ACT before you THINK’. The roleplaying game will even punish a player if he thinks before he acts or attempts to think before he acts, rendering his character Boggled and unable to do anything until his next turn. This is a roleplaying game played at high speed, even breakneck speed, in which the action passes from one character to the next in a flurry, in which Short Subjects and Feature Films always take place in Anytown, Outside of Town, The City, and Outer Space, where there is always a mailbox close by to receive that thing you just ordered, logic has a way of being illogical in an entirely logical way, coincidences are perfectly normal and to be expected, cause and effect might go one way for a character, but not another, and nobody reads the fine print until you write it and persuade everyone as to its veracity.

Toon – The Cartoon Roleplaying Game is a roleplaying game with a genre that everyone will know and will understand how its worlds work, supported by simple, fast-playing mechanics, good advice for the Animator—as the Game Master is known, and four Short Subjects and one Feature Film. One of the Short Subjects is designed to teach the game and so with a quick read through and copies of the characters ready, the Animator really could be running her first game in fifteen minutes.

A character can be anything. An ant, a robot ant, a sea serpent, a kangaroo, a pig, a parakeet, and so on. He can run and talk, take part in the Cartoon Olympics, go to Outer Space, and more, whether he is a Milkman, a Retired General, a French Chef, or a Cowboy. He has four attributes—Muscle, Zip, Smarts, and Chutzpah—which determine how strong, how fast, how intelligent, and how pushy he is. They are range in value between one and six. Each attribute has a number of skills, which range in value between one and nine. He will have a natural enemy, such as a cat for a dog or a park ranger for a bear; a Belief and a Goal, for example, “I hate elephants” and “Stop the hunter from hunting me in Rabbit Season”; a possession or two; and Shtick. A Shtick is an amazing ability that breaks rules. For example, a Bag of Many Things from which innumerable objects can be drawn, Shape Change, Hypnosis, and so on. Mechanically, they are rolled for just like skills to see if they work.

To create a character, a player rolls a six-sided die for each of the four attributes. Species, Occupations, Beliefs, and Goals can selected or rolled for, or selected, whilst Natural Enemies are always chosen. The base value for each skill is equal to its associated attributes, but a player has thirty points to divide between them. Alternatively, a character can have a Shtick, which costs five skill points and always begins play with a value of five. This cannot be increased during character creation, only later through experience. The process is quick and easy and takes five minutes.

Doctor Freuderick “It’s pronounced ‘Frederick’” von Mesenme (Actually Joe from Pittsburgh)
Species: Human
Natural Enemies: Patients and other doctors
Belief: I always know what is best for my patients
Goal: Get rich
Hit Points: 9

Muscle 3
Break Down Doors 3, Climb 3, Fight 6, Pick Up heavy Things 3, Throw 3

Zip 2
Dodge 7, Drive Vehicle 2, Fire Gun 2, Jump 4, Ride 2, Run 4, Swim 4

Smarts 5
Hide/Spot Hidden 5, Identify Dangerous Thing 7, Read 5, Resist Fast Talk 8, See/Hear/Smell 5, Set/Disarm Trap 5, Track/Cover Tracks 5

Chutzpah 6
Fast-Talk 9, Pass/Detect Shoddy Goods 9, Sleight of Hand 6, Sneak 6

Shticks
Hypnosis 5

Possessions
Medical Diploma from The Republic of Užupis University of Universal Study, Pocket Watch, Pipe (for bubbles), medical forms

Mechanically, Toon is simple. To undertake an action, the player rolls two six-sided dice, and aims to roll equal to or lower than the skill or attribute. It is a simple yes or no mechanic. Situations where there is an opposed roll, such as a fight or a chase or a competition, the outcome is determined by who rolls successfully and who fails. Thus, in a chase, the character who makes a successful roll with either Drive Vehicle, Run, or Swim will get away from the character who fails his roll, whereas if both make a successful roll or fail, neither makes any progress. Combat uses the Fight or Shoot Gun skills, with brawls and bust ups being opposed rolls. In general, if neither side is successful, that is, makes a successful roll whilst the other fails, then after three rounds of both making successful or failed rolls, both characters fall down exhausted. If a character is successfully hit in a fight or shot, then he suffers a six-sided die’s worth of damage. If he loses all of his Hit Points, the character will Fall Down. This is bad, but not actually that bad, because unlike every other roleplaying game, the character is not dead. Instead, he is out for the count, but can bound back, because that count is three minutes of real time. After that, the character and his player are back in the game with full Hit Points, ready to play.

The mechanical aim of play is to earn Plot Points. These actually reflect how well a player has roleplayed his character and served the genre of the Short Subject or the Feature Film. Each Short Subject and Feature Film has a budget to divide amongst the Player Characters at the end, but a player can earn more when his character makes another Fall Down, roleplays the character’s Beliefs & Goals, has his character make a Natural Enemy Fall Down, roleplays his character in a clever or entertaining fashion, and even for making the Animator laugh. Conversely, he loses them if he does not roleplay the character’s Beliefs & Goals or if the character is made to Fall Down by an NPC. Plot Points are used to increase a Player Character’s skills and shticks, including buying new shticks.

In terms of game play, Toon – The Cartoon Roleplaying Game begins before Player Character creation. This gives a description the base elements of the game, how the skills work, a quick introduction to Plot Points, and some advice the Animator. All this in preparation for ‘The Cartoon Olympics’, a Short Subject designed for the Animator and two players. Taking place in the Anytown Anydome, this sports event will see the Player Characters compete in boxing matches, javelin toss, and marathon to determine the winner. They will also have to deal with Judge Mole, who of course, is blind as and also armed with a deadly starting pistol, and a bunch of monkeys. Although intended for two platers, the Short Subject includes a quartet of potential Player Characters, such as Mack the Mouse, Olga Hippopovna, Fred Bulldog, and Fifi La Feline. This is an easy to prepare Short Subject that can be brought to the table very quickly.

It should be noted that Toon also emphasises adversarial play, a feature also shared with Paranoia. Player Characters can have conflicting goals even as they work collectively towards the objective of a Short Subject or Feature Film, but more often than not, they are directing competing against each other, as in ‘The Cartoon Olympics’, and unlike in other roleplaying games, there can be a winner. Offset that though, with the fact that Toon is designed for ephemeral, one-shot play rather than campaigns, so even if the same Player Characters appear in a subsequent Short Subject or Feature Film, the events or outcome of a previous Short Subject or Feature Film will not have any real influence on the next one.

Beyond both ‘The Cartoon Olympics’ and Player Character creation, Toon – The Cartoon Roleplaying Game explains how Beliefs & Goals, skills, and shticks all work, plus there is good advice on being the Animator. Ultimately, this boils down to keeping things moving, throwing in sound effects, playing to the genre, and transmitting the right atmosphere to her players. The advice also stresses that the most important aspect of being an Animator is to remember that the Animator is in charge, and that anything she says goes. That said, the Animator should always be open to ideas from her players and when it counts, she should act crazy.

Rounding out Toon – The Cartoon Roleplaying Game are another three Short Subjects and one Feature Film. The extra Short Subjects include ‘The Cartoon Olympics Strikes Back!’, which really just expands on ‘The Cartoon Olympics’ with a single page; ‘I Foogled You!’ sends the Player Characters into the jungles of Darkest Africa (conveniently located Outside of Town) in search of the famed Foogle Bird, which involves lots of swinging on vines with a Tarzan-like character and his wife; and ‘Spaced Out Saps’ in which members if the Space Aeronautics Patrol Squad or S.A.P.S., take a trip to the Moon (conveniently located Outside of Town) and investigate strange activity involving The Martian and The Martian Dog. The Feature Film is ‘The Better Housetrap’ in which the Player Characters are trying to hide out in a newly built house, only for them to discover that the house is actually robotic! Each one of the Short Subjects and the Feature Films can be played in a single session and each wears its inspirations firmly on its sleeves.

Physically, Toon – The Cartoon Roleplaying Game is cleanly, tidily laid out and organised. It is liberally illustrated with entertaining cartoon artwork. The roleplaying game is well written and easy to read and grasp.
—oOo—Toon – The Cartoon Roleplaying Game was reviewed not once, but twice by Dragon magazine. First by Michael Dobson in ‘New heights(?) in silliness’ in Dragon #92 (December 1984), in which the opening line is, “TOON™, The Cartoon Roleplaying Game, appears at first glance to be just an elaborate joke.” before he qualifies this with, “…TOON is a genuine good idea – an original (if unlikely) concept in role-playing – that is enjoyable, fastmoving, and incredibly silly.” Although critical of the roleplaying game’s use of Plot Points, which he felt were, “…[A] holdover from traditional role-playing games that doesn’t quite fit the TOON spirit. In a straight adventure game, a character’s potential to improve may be important as a tool to motivate the player and to keep a campaign going. In TOON, this approach doesn’t make sense. Cartoon characters never get “better.”” Nevertheless, Dobson described Toon as “Inspired silliness…” Jim Bambra would follow this up in Dragon #144 (April 1989) in ‘Role-Playing Reviews’. He described it as “…[A] classic – a game which deserves the attention of everyone looking for a dramatic change of pace and emphasis in their role-playing.” before concluding with, “The TOON game provides an excellent change of pace and a shift of emphasis away from the more serious role-playing games. I highly recommend it as an evening’s entertainment and as a cure to role-playing blues.”

In ‘Notices’ in Imagine No 21 (December 1984), Mike Lewis was equally as positive, concluding his review with, “Toon is a very refreshing change from the usual run-of-the-mill rpgs which have been appearing recently. The game very firmly puts a sense of humour back into rpgs. If you are interested in cartoons, then Toon is an essential purchase — but even if you aren’t, try it for a change. I am very impressed with the ideas behind this game and hope that it gets more support than most minority RPGs have done in the past. It deserves it.”

R.A. Greer reviewed Toon in Space Gamer Number 72 ((Jan/Feb 1985) and like Jim Bambra would four years later, described it as an antidote to the roleplaying blues, saying that, “TOON is a quick cure for all your roleplaying ills, a fast-acting balm to be applied directly to your funny bone, speeding you back to those uncomplicated days of roleplaying when it was fun!” His conclusion was equally as complimentary, stating that, “TOON is a gen for those willing to work with it a little bit. (The game should have been published with a qualified Animator stapled inside.) It may not replace the weekly fantasy game, but it’s great change of pace. It is also a great introduction to roleplaying for that new to the hobby and really allows experienced gamers to let down their hair. Almost all of TOON’s problems can be solved by applying this simple maxim: “If you want to do it, exaggerate it; if it’s simple, complicate it; if you’re in a jam, take all steps to make it worse.” Follow these simple rules and you’ll advance the plot and add to the fun. Congratulations to Steve Jackson Games on a job well done.”

None other than Larry DiTillio reviewed Toon in ‘Game Reviews’ in Different Worlds Issue 38 (Jan/Feb 1985), awarding the roleplaying three stars out of four and praising its writing, stating that, “[Greg] Costikyan has clarity, wit, and the good sense to be brief, as well as an obvious love for cartoons. The rulebook not only reads quickly and easily, it makes you eager to play the game.” He advised that, “Role-players of a basically serious nature and gamemasters who prefer rigid detail are advised to stay away. On the other hand, for a few hours of silliness, Toon can’t be beat and is a refreshing change from the ofttimes leaden pace of other role-playing games. It’s fast, it’s fun, it’s simple.”

Lastly, Toon was reviewed in ‘Open Box’ in White Dwarf Number 63 (March 1985) by Stephen Kyle, who awarded it nine out of ten. He concluded that, “For anyone who likes cartoons, then Toon is definitely worth looking into. It concentrates more on the Warner Brothers/Hanna Barbera type of American cartoon, rather than the more sophisticated British product like Dangermouse. Nevertheless, all of us have favourite cartoons or characters and Toon enables you to recreate them easily and with a lot of fun. I just hope it gets more support than most minority RPGs.”—oOo—
Toon – The Cartoon Roleplaying Game does have one single problem—and it is a big one. That is the degree of buy-in that a Game Master and her players need to have to play and enjoy Toon, the willingness to accept its implied anarchy and mandatory impulsiveness of ‘ACT before you THINK’, and to break the learned habits of playing roleplaying games. A player unwilling or unable to make that adjustment is not going to enjoy or appreciate the fun that Toon has to offer.

Toon – The Cartoon Roleplaying Game is and was a groundbreaking roleplaying game, because of its treatment of the cartoon genre and its humour, although numerous roleplaying games have visited its genre since. It is simple, even simplistic, but the simplicity of the rules and the mechanics means that Toon is incredibly easy to teach and just as easy to grasp, and when it comes to its genre, Toon has the most accessible, most familiar genre of almost any roleplaying game. After all, who has not seen a Looney Tunes or Tom and Jerry cartoon? Which absolutely makes it great for convention play. That said, whilst it can be used as an introductory roleplaying game, it is not written as an introductory roleplaying game, so is best suited to be run by an experienced Game Master who can adapt to its fast pace and over the top, silly play. Similarly, this is a roleplaying game whose speed and tone is something that experienced players will also have to adapt to in order to get into the spirit of the roleplaying game and its silly, cartoon humour. Essentially, this is not a roleplaying game which the Game Master simply decides to run—her players have to buy into the whole concept, big anvil, stick of dynamite, and all.

Toon – The Cartoon Roleplaying Game is undemanding fun that in the hands of a good Animator awards energy, inventiveness, and impulsiveness. Toon – The Cartoon Roleplaying Game is the roleplaying equivalent of a tonic, a great pick up and play roleplaying game that enables the players to engage in all of the mayhem and madness of their favourite childhood cartoons and after they Fall Down, get back up and dive right back in.

 Got a a nice little treat in the mail yesterday.

The latest print versions of the Frightshow (formerly Fright Night) Classics Adventures designed for Chill.

Included was a 2nd printing of my own The Nightmare!

This completes my print editions (so far) of all the Frighshow Classics Adventures from Yeti Spaghetti & Friends. I know a couple more are in progress now, including my Golem adventure, though they won't be out until the spring or later.

PDFs are available at DriveThruRPG.

If you want a print version, send an email directly to Frightshow Classics at cryptworldrpg@gmail.com.

They are all quite fun and really great for any sort of Horror RPG.

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?The Bully Bird is a “A monstrous predator packed into two pages” for use with RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha which presents a creature and three hooks to use the creature in a campaign that the Game Master can develop and run as a single session’s worth of play or possibly longer.

It is a two page, full colour 329.59 KB PDF.

The layout is tidy, the artwork rough, but serviceable.

The creature and the scenario hooks can be easily be adapted to the rules system of the Game Master’s choice.
Where is it set?As written, The Bully Bird details a creature found across Dragon Pass.

Who do you play?
The Bully Bird does not require any specific character type, but the Bully Bird is hated by Orlanth-worshippers in particular, and anyone who keeps alynxes, such as Odayla or Yinkin worshippers.
What do you need?
The Bully Bird requires RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha only.
What do you get?The Bully Bird details simple, but very large creature, roughly four times taller than the average man and the size of a mammoth. It is a giant bird that talks and pecks its way back and forth across Dragon Pass, able to fly, but only with the benefit of a running start. It will stalk and eat anything it likes, but not men, though it is capable of defending itself by pecking or grappling with its beak or flapping its wings in a strong strike. Having escaped into the mortal world from God Time following a botched heroquest, it has become both a terror across the region and a much desired trophy for hunters, who are seen as being either very brave or very foolish for wanting to hunt it. One reason to hunt are its magical feathers, which either make magnificent trophies or can be used to attract predators when hunting.

In addition to describing the Bully Bird, how it came to be in the mortal world, and giving its stats, The Bully Bird includes three plot hooks. These will have the Player Characters preventing it being accidently caught by Summons of Evil cast by a clan, the Bully Bird becoming infatuated with a Player Character, and the Player Characters becoming involved in an attempt to banish the Bully Bird. These are thumbnail descriptions at best, and the Game Master will need to undertake a fair amount of development to have something readily playable.
One aspect of the Bully Bird which would have have benefited from further development is the heroquest that enabled it to escape God Quest. That might have better prepared the Game Master who wants to run a heroquest to banish it or it might even set up the possibility of the Player Characters having performed the original heroquest that set the Bully Bird free in Dragon Pass!
Ultimately the usefulness of The Bully Bird will depend upon if the Game Master does not mind adding another creature to Glorantha, especially as one as ridiculous as the the Bully Bird, and does not mind developing the included scenario hooks.

Is it worth your time?Yes—The Bully Bird adds a strange beast to Glorantha that can be seen lurking here and there throughout Dragon Pass before the Player Characters go hunting for it just as in Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark.No—The Bully Bird is just a bit too gonzo, even silly, and needs too much effort upon the part of the Game Master to effectively use.Maybe—The Bully Bird is fantastically absurd, a looming presence which reminds others of the dangers of heroquests gone wrong and with a bit of effort its plot hooks can be developed in something worth running..

 Playing around with different layouts for Basic Bestiary. I did a few, and I didn't like most of them. Not a big deal, I have time.

Right now, I am trying to figure out if I want to break up BB1 into smaller 64-page volumes or one larger one. I like the idea of smaller volumes. To round that out, I might need to develop a couple more monsters here and there. Again, not a big deal.

If I did break up BB1 into say three volumes, they would have about 120-130 monsters each. Do I break them up by themes or alphabetically? I guess I need to see how big it is when I am done.

The "theme" of Basic Bestiary 1 is "Monstrous Maleficarum," or monsters I have read about, used, or developed while working on my various witch books. There are also more than a few here from various monster books I loved reading as a child and spent some time hunting down as an adult. 

In any case here is a new one I worked on when I was supposed to be doing editing and layouts.

Trollkönig (Troll King)
Large Humanoid (Fey, Faerie Lord)

Armor Class: -5 [24]
Hit Dice: 18d8+108 (189 hp)
   Large: 18d10+108 (207 hp)
Move: 120' (40')
Attacks: 2 fist slams, 1 bite or 1 weapon (x2) or thrown rock, or roar
Damage: 1d12+5 x2, 1d8+5 or by weapon (x2) or thrown rock 2d12, roar for fear
Special: Magic resistance (45%), immune to  poison;  half damage to cold, can communicate telepathically, Magic +2 weapons to hit, regenerate, roar, summon trolls, sunlight sensitivity
No. Appearing: 1 (unique)
Save As: Monster 18
Morale: 10 (NA)
Treasure Type: C x20
Alignment: Chaotic (Chaotic Evil)
XP: 8,900

Languages: Elven, Sylvan, Telepathic, Trollspeak

The King of Trolls may not be the most eloquent or attractive of the faerie lords, but he is one of the most physically impressive.  He appears as a 13' tall troll of massive build. His skin appears to be a dense rock-like hide with patchy bits of hair and numerous scars from his many battles. His eyes, though, betray a keen and malign intelligence not seen in lesser trolls.

Like his subjects, the trolls, he attacks with fist slams and a bite. Though, unlike the lesser trolls, he is also intelligent enough to use weapons. He often chooses to use a giant battle axe doing 1d10+5 hp of damage per attack.  Like a giant, he can throw rocks. The Trollkönig can roar 3 times per day. This roar can cause fear (as per the spell) in any creature of 7 HD or lower, save vs. Petrification to ignore. Creatures less than 1 HD are not allowed a saving throw.  

As their king the Troll King can summon 3d8 trolls to his side. The trolls must be nearby, and they arrive in one turn.   

The King of Trolls also has 45% magic resistance, can only be hit by +2 or better weapons, and is immune to poison and only half damage from cold. This creature also regenerates like lesser trolls, but at an alarming rate of 10 hp per round; starting on the first round, he takes damage. Unlike common trolls, the Trollkönig can regenerate even from fire and acid damage. He can't regenerate if exposed to sunlight.

The Troll King is a powerful individual who has risen above the typical troll, ruling over a vast network of tunnels and caves with utter brutality. Driven by a twisted sense of hierarchy and ambition, the Troll King seeks to assert its dominance over anything smaller or weaker. It hoards treasures stolen from those unfortunate enough to cross its path.  The Faerie Lords tolerate the Troll King, not due to any sense of loyalty or familial ties, but because they often employ him to take care of their enemies and the physical fighting they can't be bothered to do themselves. 

There is a heated rivalry between the Troll King and the Goblin King, largely due to their respective subjects' own rivalries.

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: Mad Sci – How to Train your ShoggothPublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Kurt Havelock

Setting: Miskatonic UniversityProduct: One-shot
What You Get: Thirty-eight page, 142.16 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Miskatonic Mad Science
Plot Hook: Cartoonish capers with chemistry and whatnot causes chaosPlot Support: Eighteen NPCs, one map, and sixteen Mythos monsters, plus one robot.Production Values: Plain
Pros# Entertainingly cartoonish art# Interesting set of NPCs/Mythos Monsters# Variant Great Race of Yith# Myxophobia# Teraphobia# Science Anxiety
Cons# EDU as a stat is NOT stupid# Variant Great Race of Yith# All set-up, no plot# No staging advice# No investigation# Unusable as written without a lot of effort

Conclusion# All set-up, but no plot, investigation, adventure, or advice on how to use it# Actually more the bible for an anime-style Saturday morning Miskatonic University mad science cartoon

The two great features of the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Starter Set were twofold. First, in ‘A Guide to Ubersreik’, it introduced Ubersreik, the fortress-town in the south of the Reikland, and its surrounding duchy that are in turmoil after an announcement from the emperor that unseated the ruling House Jungfreud. It left the town’s burghers and minor members of the nobility spotting an opportunity to take control themselves and much of this was explored in ‘The Adventure Book’, which provided a five-part mini-campaign and more story hooks. This was the second great thing about the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Starter Set—lots to roleplay. Although Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Starter Set was in part designed to set the Game Master and her players up reader for the majestic The Enemy Within campaign—after all, almost everything is in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Fourth Edition is—what if instead of leaping into that campaign, the Player Characters wanted to stay in and around Ubersreik? Fortunately, and almost immediately, publisher Cubicle Seven Entertainment began publishing scenarios set in and around the Duchy of Ubersreik, so the Player Characters could not only continue their involvement in the political upheaval in the town, but also explore its surroundings.

Ubersreik Adventures: More Grim and Perilous Scenarios in the Duchy of Ubersreik continues the series begun with Ubersreik Adventures: Six Grim and Perilous Scenarios in the Duchy of Ubersreik, by collecting the next five scenarios in the series—and more, in another handsome, if slim, hardback. The five take the Player Characters in and around the Duchy of Ubersreik, but do not stray very far from the river port at its heart. In the process, they will face an uprising by the recently dead, investigate a local legend, get caught up in a whodunnit, search for a serial killer, and find themselves wrapped in a con job. The scenarios are also flexible. All can be taken and dropped into the Game Master’s campaign, used in conjunction with the Rough Nights & Hard Days campaign anthology, or used as part of The Enemy Within. However, where Ubersreik Adventures: Six Grim and Perilous Scenarios in the Duchy of Ubersreik felt like it constantly wanted to push the Game Master, her players, and their characters onto the path that would lead into the events of The Enemy Within, none of the scenarios in this anthology do. Instead, they are standalone affairs that can be run in episodic fashion in and around the duchy, all the better to be free of any connection to The Enemy Within. One thing missing from all five is the ‘Shaking Things Up’ appendix with advice for the Game Master on running the scenario, alternative hooks to get the Player Characters involved, and a list of possible connects to not only the other five scenarios in the volume, but also other parts of the Empire. Although the lack of suggested connections means that the five scenarios in the anthology are less obviously flexible, at the same it enforces their independence away from The Enemy Within, though of course, they do work better in conjunction with the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Starter Set.

The anthology opens with ‘Deadly Dispatch’ which opens with one of the Player Characters receiving a mysterious package. Opening the package reveals that it contains a puzzle box and opening the puzzle box—the scenario suggesting either Intelligence checks modified by appropriate skills and talents or brute force as possible methods—reveals its contents to be quite probably blasphemous. Of course, brute force also destroys some of the evidence, but not all of it. Investigating the address label reveals that it has been given to the Player Character in a case of mistaken identity and investigating the addressee reveals that it should have been sent to a local river woman. She turns out to be easy to find and nervous when she is found. This is because unfortunately, she has become the front woman for a necromancer who has designs on Ubersreik. This is all a good set-up, supported by two well written NPCs in the form of the river woman and the similarly reluctant, but undead Estalian duellist who is the necromancer’s bodyguard and servant. In comparison, the necromancer himself feels underwritten as does the fact that the plot ends with a zombie uprising. Nevertheless, zombie uprisings are invariably fun and ‘Deadly Dispatch’ is a serviceable scenario that can be played through in a single session.
If ‘Deadly Dispatch’ is straightforward, then ‘Fishrook Returns’ is just a bit obvious in its plotting. The whole of Ubersreik is talking about the return of Fishrook, a notorious highwayman who has been holding up and robbing coaches and wagons on the roads around the city. What is significant about the highwayman’s return is that he is dead, having been hanged for his crimes a century ago. But this Fishrook wears the same bird-like mask and dresses just as flamboyantly, so is this the real Fishrook returned, his ghost, or someone impersonating his legend. A local noblewoman, Gutele von Bruner, bored and enamoured by the legend is determined to find out and hires the Player Characters to find out. Unfortunately, there is not really much of a mystery as to the identity of who the new Fishrook is and it is likely that the Player Characters will very quickly put two and two together and realise that it is actually Gutele von Bruner. There is a bit of a run around to capture her, but where the scenario gets interesting is deciding what to do with her, because after all, she has committed several crimes. This is particularly tricky if the Player Characters are still part of the city watch as they are in the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Starter Set. Do they upset the nobility by pushing for a trial and causing a bigger scandal, get a very reluctant town council involved, or upset almost everyone else by brushing it under the carpet and letting Gutele von Bruner get away with it? At this point, the scenario opens up and becomes much more Player Character driven as they try to negotiate the way out of the legal and social mess that Gutele von Bruner has landed them in and the Game Master will need to respond as necessary. Although there is advice for the Game Master, this second half of the scenario is much more difficult to run and so needs much more preparation time to understand the various possible outcomes.
The third scenario, ‘Double Trouble’, is a classic country house murder mystery. It begins with the Player Characters being invited to visit the home of a young poet because he wants to hear of their adventures and adapt them into verse. The atmosphere in the poet’s home is tense and nervous, and not because he has invited what his mother considers to be riffraff onto the family estate, but because of the other reason that he wants the Player Characters there. The poet is also worried about the rash of recent and sudden disappearances from amongst the staff on his family’s estate and the odd behaviour of his mother, and he wants the Player Characters to investigate. When they do, the Player Characters discover similarly worried and nervous staff, hear odd movements in the night, and so on, their efforts hampered by the attitudes of the staff who do not trust them and the efforts of the murderer. With a scenario being a murder mystery in a country house and having a title like ‘Double Trouble’, it would suggest that a twin is involved—and it is. Sort of. The scenario includes a good floor plan of the family estate and some well NPCs, though again, as in ‘Deadly Dispatch’, not the true villain of the piece. There is also good advice on what to do if the Player Characters accuse the villain too early on and pleasingly, it culminates in a scene in the drawing room in which the Player Characters will have to identify the murderer, explain his actions and motives, and convince everyone of their solution to the case. In other words, a classic ‘I suppose you’re wondering why I gathered you here today…’ scene and the scenario even uses that phrase for the title of the actual scene! ‘Double Trouble’ is a cracking little scenario that puts a Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay spin on a classic genre to very entertaining effect.
The fourth scenario, ‘The Blessing That Drew Blood’, is another murder mystery, but this time more procedural in nature and set on the streets of Ubersreik, with the Player Characters undertaking a lot of detective footwork as they slog from one murder site to the next and from one witness interview to the next. In fact, there are a lot of witnesses to interview and a party of Player Characters without a decent Charm between them is going to be at a disadvantage from start to finish. This is something the scenario acknowledges, noting its heavy reliance upon the Charm skill and suggesting alternative interpersonal skills to use such as Gossip and Intimidate. Throughout the investigation, the Player Characters will be watched with keen interest by a strange trio that include a cat and a dog, and beset by incidences of explosive bodily expression or sleepiness at just the wrong moment… Are they connected and if so, what is their interest in the Player Characters and their investigation? It turns out that they are working to ensure that the culprit responsible, a musician famous across the empire, succeeds, because they are all in the service of Slaanesh. The strange trio willingly because they are former daemons attempting to get back into Slaanesh’s good books and the musician half-heartedly because if she fails to kill the required number of victims, she loses the musical ability that has made her rich and famous.
‘The Blessing That Drew Blood’ is another scenario with a good set-up and a great cast of well-drawn and colourful NPCs, including a veteran agitator and muckraker, a scared initiate of Morr—who may also serve as the Player Characters’ patron for the adventure if needed, a hail and brimstone Sigmarite Warrior Priest with shameful secrets, and a bartender who attempts to avoid answering every question lest he gains a reputation as an informer! And then there is the trio of ex-daemons whom the Game Master can have some fun with inflicting horrid, if temporary, afflictions upon her Player Characters. Unfortunately, the scenario is not as clearly laid out as it should have been and some of the information does not always match in the text. Nevertheless, this is a good adventure that fans of police procedurals will enjoy a great deal.

The fifth and final adventure in the anthology is ‘The Grey Mountain Gold’. The Player Characters are hired by an ambitious young man who believes that he has got hold of a map which shows the locations of the treasures rumoured to have been left behind when the Dwarven Clan Harataki had to flee the Karak of House Harataken from constant Greenskin assaults and wants their help to mount an expedition. Only it turns out that not only is he gullible, but he has been targeted by a gang of charlatans, because of course, the map is fake. How far the Player Characters are taken in by the conmen is another matter, but complicating the problem is that the remnants of Clan Harataki are based in Ubersreik and when Queen Vilda of Karak Branar gets to hear about it, she is less than pleased to learn that someone is going after treasures that rightfully belong to her and her clan. The other dwarves of Clan Harataki, in comparison, are incensed and with their ire up, are quite happy to give the culprits a good thumping, all of which sets up a scene where the Player Characters are chased through the alleys of Ubersreik by mob of disconsolate dwarves! This is an entertaining set piece, though one not helped by the lack of a map. One of the pleasures of this scenario is seeing a con in action with the Player Characters being caught up in it rather than being the target per se, whilst another is seeing a signature Career from Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, that of the Charlatan, in action. Of course, if the players and their characters are unhappy at the end of the scenario because they did not actually have a chance to mount an expedition to Karak of House Harataken, then this scenario does actually show them why it might be a bad idea.
One of the aspects of Ubersreik which is not explored in full in the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Starter Set or Ubersreik Adventures: Six Grim and Perilous Scenarios in the Duchy of Ubersreik, is what happened to the ruling House Jungfreud after it was unseated by the Emperor. This, though, is explored in Ubersreik Adventures: More Grim and Perilous Scenarios in the Duchy of Ubersreik. House Jungfreud has fled back to its ancestral seat of the neighbouring Duchy of Black Rock, a grim and gloomy place best known for its coal or ore mines, where Graf Sigismund von Jungfreud alternates between glowering and preparing for war, wary of the Emperor’s next steps. All of this is detailed in the penultimate section of the book, ‘A Guide to Black Rock’. This details the craggy, rock-strewn moorlands, it various town and settlements, mines along with a list if miner’s slang, the site of a ruined abbey which along with its monks and nuns was put to the torch for heresy and is still haunted by a tomb banshee who was the former abbess, the source of Neufaljung ink typically used to sign death warrants, Castle Neufaljung—seat of House Jungfreud—and its inhabitants, and the various plots whirling around the castle and the duchy. Alongside this are numerous hooks and sidebars that the Game Master can develop into scenarios and plotlines, and overall, this a good introduction to the duchy with plenty of information for the Game Master to work with.

Lastly, Ubersreik Adventures: More Grim and Perilous Scenarios in the Duchy of Ubersreik does actually return to the subject of The Enemy Within, but in an unexpected fashion. This is as consequences of the campaign, as if there is another group of Player Characters involved in it rather than those in Ubersreik. This further divorces Ubersreik Adventures: More Grim and Perilous Scenarios in the Duchy of Ubersreik and its events away from those of The Enemy Within beyond those consequences, whilst allowing the Game Master to take them into account even if she has no intent of running the campaign herself. Alternatively, a group of players could actually play both, but with different characters, so that the one set of characters experience the events of The Enemy Within and the other characters’ activities if only vicariously. It is a nice addition and interesting to the campaign from a different angle even if it does give away a lot of detail about The Enemy Within.

Physically, Ubersreik Adventures: More Grim and Perilous Scenarios in the Duchy of Ubersreik is very well presented. The book itself is a handsome hardback and the book’s artwork—especially in its depiction of the NPCs—and cartography are both well done. However, the anthology needs an edit to fix final errors and to make sure that some of the plots and their information is clearer.
Ubersreik Adventures: More Grim and Perilous Scenarios in the Duchy of Ubersreik is another solidly impressive set of scenarios that enables a group to continue playing the campaign begun in the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Starter Set, whilst also being flexible enough to be set elsewhere in the Empire and the Game Master’s campaign. ‘A Guide to Black Rock’ very nicely expands upon the source material in the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Starter Set, but really the two standout scenarios in the anthology both involve murder—‘Double Trouble’ and ‘The Blessing That Drew Blood’. Although it is a good anthology of scenarios in general, the Game Master who has set her campaign in Ubersreik is definitely going to want to run the scenarios in Ubersreik Adventures: More Grim and Perilous Scenarios in the Duchy of Ubersreik.

One of the great things about The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings, the second edition of the acclaimed The One Ring: Adventures Over the Edge of the Wild published by Free League Publishing is The One Ring Starter Set. Why do you ask? Well, because it lets us roleplay members of the Hobbit community whom we not normally encounter. Drogo Baggins, Esmeralda Took, Lobelia Bracegirdle, Paladin Took II, Primula Brandybuck, and Rorimac Brandybuck, in many cases the parents or relations of three of the Hobbits who would form part of the Fellowship of the Ring decades later. Under the direction of the scandalous Bilbo Baggins, the quintet went off and had adventures of their own in the Shire, whilst at the same time The One Ring Starter Set presented the Shire for the roleplaying game itself. Sadly, the five adventures had to come to close and with it the chance to play those characters again. Fortunately, s available a number of sequel adventures, including Landmark Adventures, that can be run as part of, or after, the events of The One Ring Starter Set, or simply added to an ongoing campaign for The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings if it is being run in or around The Shire. The Ghost of Needlehole proved to be a sharp little ghost story, whilst the Mines of Brockenbores took the Player-heroes to the far north of the Shire to inspect a mine! Sackville-Baggins Estates takes the Player-heroes to the far south to explore a growing threat that comes to a fruition at the end of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
Sackville-Baggins Estates describes the farmstead to the southeast of Longbottom, which lies on the very edge of the Shire. This is the estate of Otho and Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, the latter the infamous cousin of Bilbo Baggins, known for her covetous and grasping nature and her desire to own Bag End. Despite the poor quality nature of the farm’s ground, Otho and Lobelia have enriched themselves growing Southern Star pipe weed, which although of too poor a quality to sell to other Hobbits, is sold to Men and merchants in Bree and beyond. Where Lobelia is sour-natured and inquisitive, her husband is dour and ill-mannered, and their son, Lotho, is ill-tempered and lazy with a perpetual scowl on his face. Otho is also secretive and rarely welcomes visitors—and with good reason.

In his desire to become the ‘wealthiest Hobbit in the Shire’ and appease his wife, Otho has entered into a secret pact with a man from the south. This is to provide information about the doings of the Shire, and in particular, the comings and goings of Gandalf the Grey. The money he is paid comes from the purse of Saruman the White... Over the years, Otho’s farm has doubled in size and seen an increasing number of visitors, working the fields and transporting the harvest away. These are a mix of ne’er do wells from across the Shire and men brought in, many of whom work the spy network that Otho has established on behalf of Saruman. Ultimately, the investment that Saruman has made in the Shire will pay off with the Scouring of the Shire.

Sackville-Baggins Estates includes a rumour and old lore about Otho’s farm and both he and Lobelia, a random event that brings the Player-heroes into contact with one of Otho’s agents, descriptions of all three NPCs—Otho, Lobelia, and Lotho, and a description of their farm. There is a lot of information given here and as a Landmark Adventure, what it does is develop the back story to the events at the end of The Lord of the Rings. However, this is not an easy Landmark Adventure to use. To begin with, there is relatively little to explore and not much more to discover. Then, when Otho’s perfidy is revealed, how does this play out? What are the consequences? How does it affect future events in the Shire given that they are written in stone? Then there is an even darker plan upon the part of Otho, which the adventure suggests, but again, the consequences are not explored in any depth.
Sackville-Baggins Estates is neatly presented and is well written. The map is rough, but workable.
Unfortunately, as welcome as Sackville-Baggins Estates is, it is simply not as good as the previous The Ghost of Needlehole. It does a very nice job of filling in the back story to the events that lead into the later events of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and the Scouring of the Shire. In terms of gameable content, Sackville-Baggins Estates will need development upon the part of the Loremaster to be effectively useful in her campaign.

How do you like your GM Screen?

The GM Screen is a essentially a reference sheet, comprised of several card sheets that fold out and can be stood up to serve another purpose, that is, to hide the GM's notes and dice rolls. On the inside, the side facing the GM are listed all of the tables that the GM might want or need at a glance without the need to have to leaf quickly through the core rulebook. On the outside, facing the players, can be found either more tables for their benefit or representative artwork for the game itself. This is both the basic function and the basic format of the screen, neither of which has changed all that much over the years. Beyond the basic format, much has changed though.

To begin with the general format has split, between portrait and landscape formats. The result of the landscape format is a lower screen, and if not a sturdier screen, than at least one that is less prone to being knocked over. Another change has been in the weight of card used to construct the screen. Exile Studios pioneered a new sturdier and durable screen when its printers took two covers from the Hollow Earth Expedition core rule book and literally turned them into the game’s screen. This marked a change from the earlier and flimsier screens that had been done in too light a cardstock, and several publishers have followed suit.

Once you have decided upon your screen format, the next question is what you have put with it. Do you include a poster or poster map, such as Chaosium, Inc.’s last screen for Call of Cthulhu, Sixth Edition or Margaret Weis Productions’ Serenity and BattleStar Galactica Roleplaying Games? Or a reference work like that included with Chessex Games’ Sholari Reference Pack for SkyRealms of Jorune or the GM Resource Book for Pelgrane Press’ Trail of Cthulhu? Perhaps Or scenarios such as ‘Blackwater Creek’ and ‘Missed Dues’ from the Call of Cthulhu Keeper Screen for use with Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition? Or even better, a book of background and scenarios as well as the screen, maps, and forms, like that of the RuneQuest Gamemaster Screen Pack also published by Chaosium, Inc. In the past, the heavier and sturdier the screen, the more likely it is that the screen will be sold unaccompanied, such as those published by Cubicle Seven Entertainment for the Starblazer Adventures: The Rock & Roll Space Opera Adventure Game and Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space RPG. That though is no longer the case and stronger and sturdier GM Screens are the norm today.

So how do I like my GM Screen?

I like my Screen to come with something. Not a poster or poster map, but a scenario, which is one reason why I like ‘Descent into Darkness’ from the Game Master’s Screen and Adventure for Legends of the Five Rings Fourth Edition and ‘A Bann Too Many’, the scenario that comes in the Dragon Age Game Master's Kit for Green Ronin Publishing’s Dragon Age – Dark Fantasy Roleplaying Set 1: For Characters Level 1 to 5. I also like my screen to come with some reference material, something that adds to the game. Which is why I am fond of both the Sholari Reference Pack for SkyRealms of Jorune as well as the RuneQuest Gamemaster Screen Pack. It is also why I like the Gamemaster’s Toolkit published by by Modiphius Entertainment for use with Dune – Adventures in the Imperium, the roleplaying game based on the novels by Frank Herbert.
Dune – Adventures in the Imperium: Gamemaster’s Toolkit comes with a four-panel screen and a Game Master booklet that contains tools and advice on running a campaign for Dune – Adventures in the Imperium as well as adventure hooks, intrigues, and more. The screen itself is a sturdy affair, as is standard for the hobby today, but in portrait format rather than landscape. This is not as easy a format to use, plus it does have a much imposing presence at the table. The front of it depicts a map of Arrakis, or rather the known map of Arrakis at the time of the events of the novels. So, the northern polar region around Arrakeen and Catharg with the surrounding shield wall and The Great Flat, Funeral Plain, and Habbanya Erg to the west and the Deep Desert to the east. Done in sandy shades of yellow and brown with the startling blue of the polar ice cap at the centre, it is an imposing presence at the table. On the inside, the outer left panel list Skills, Drives, Traits, difficulty levels, and the skill test procedure, whilst on the inner left panel summarises the use of Determination, challenging Drives, how to add to the Game Master’s Threat pool, and the uses of Momentum. The inner righthand panel covers the rules for conflict and the attack sequence, plus the costs for spending Advancement Points, whilst the outer right panel has sections for creating NPCs on the go and generating story hooks. Throughout, every section has a page reference number so that the Game Master can check for further details or an explanation in the Dune – Adventures in the Imperium core book. Overall, there is a clear and pleasing simplicity to the Game Master’s Screen, and it is easy to read and use.
Dune – Adventures in the Imperium: Gamemaster’s Toolkit comes with a four-panel screen and a Game Master booklet that contains tools and advice on running a campaign for Dune – Adventures in the Imperium as well as adventure hooks, intrigues, and more. The screen itself is a sturdy affair, as is standard for the hobby today, but in portrait format rather than landscape. This is not as easy a format to use, plus it does have a much imposing presence at the table. The front of it depicts a map of Arrakis, or rather the known map of Arrakis at the time of the events of the novels. So, the northern polar region around Arrakeen and Catharg with the surrounding shield wall and The Great Flat, Funeral Plain, and Habbanya Erg to the west and the Deep Desert to the east. Done in sandy shades of yellow and brown with the startling blue of the polar ice cap at the centre, it is an imposing presence at the table. On the inside, the outer left panel list Skills, Drives, Traits, difficulty levels, and the skill test procedure, whilst on the inner left panel summarises the use of Determination, challenging Drives, how to add to the Game Master’s Threat pool, and the uses of Momentum. The inner righthand panel covers the rules for conflict and the attack sequence, plus the costs for spending Advancement Points, whilst the outer right panel has sections for creating NPCs on the go and generating story hooks. Throughout, every section has a page reference number so that the Game Master can check for further details or an explanation in the Dune – Adventures in the Imperium core book. Overall, there is a clear and pleasing simplicity to the Game Master’s Screen, and it is easy to read and use.
The Game Master booklet expands upon the chapter on being a Game Master in the core rulebook, first suggesting the types of conflict that the Player Characters might be involved in a scenario for Dune – Adventures in the Imperium. These include humanity versus nature, humanity versus civilisation, humanity versus tradition, humanity versus other humans, and so on. It supports these with eighteen different story seeds each of which includes a dramatic hook, an immediate call to action, locales, what is at stake, and the nature of the opposition. For example, in ‘Forgotten Vendetta’ under Kanly or humanity versus other humans, the Player Characters’ House may find itself the target of Kanly from a Minor House over an ancient and otherwise forgotten slight and a War of Assassins has already begun or in ‘The Star Pilgrims’ under Wilderness Survival for humanity versus nature, there is a race on to locate and investigate a crashed starship recently uncovered from the sands—just how old is it? No stats are provided and the Game Master will have to develop them into something playable, but they are good starting points.
To help the Game Master, the ‘Adventure Generators’ is a set of tables to create all of the elements of a scenario. This starts with title structure, key character type involved, location, object or animal, concept such as revenge or calamity, and institution or group. Following this are tables for a starting point for the adventure, involving the Player Characters and an enemy, before revealing the plot and identifying the antagonists and their aim. Further tables throw in problems and obstacles, a hidden hand behind the plot, and the supporting cast and NPCs. It is suggested that this is then mapped onto an intrigue map, with tables further tables given to detail the NPCs. All of this is supported by a really good example of how an adventure generation works which can easily be adapted to the Game Master’s campaign. All the Game Master has to do is supply names and stats and the plot is ready to play.
In addition, Game Master booklet includes four Intrigues as both inspiration and ready-to-develop examples. These dive into the conspiratorial aspect of the Known Universe, including the Bene Gesserit’s Missionaria Protectiva attempting to craft a new superstition with which to manipulate the Fremen, the Bene Tleilax scheming to obtain the secrets of the Bene Gesserit breeding programme, investigating the low yields of spice recovery from the harvester cleaning crews, and the Ixians attempting to scavenge the remains of an ancient spaceship. The latter could be tied back into the earlier ‘The Star Pilgrims’. The Locations add three example places that the Game Master can add to her campaign. They include a smuggler base, a sample House which serves as an information broker on Arrakis, and a House-run passenger spaceship. These nicely detailed, complete with full NPC stats, and again fairly easy to insert into a campaign.
Physically, the Dune – Adventures in the Imperium: Gamemaster’s Toolkit is well presented. The screen itself is sturdy and easy to use, whilst the Game Master Booklet is clean and tidy and easy to read. If there is an issue, it is that the Game Master will need a bag in which to store its various parts and not lose them!
The Dune – Adventures in the Imperium: Gamemaster’s Toolkit is a solid resource for the Game Master. The screen will always find a use, whilst the contents of the Game Master booklet is really something that the Game Master will dip into as necessary and as an addendum to the Game Master advice in Dune – Adventures in the Imperium. This can be as direct inspiration using its almost ready-to-play content or as a series of prompts for the Game Master’s imagination.

Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #8: The Land of the Eight Cities is a bit different, just like the previous entry in the line, Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #7: A Dozen Lankhmar Locations. Unlike the majority of the releases for Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game and the releases for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set, both of these are supplements rather than scenarios, although Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #8: The Land of the Eight Cities does actually include a scenario. Where Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #7: A Dozen Lankhmar Locations provided the Judge with a wide range of locations and businesses and NPCs that she can use to bring the city of Lankhmar to life, what Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #8: The Land of the Eight Cities does is open up the wider world of Nehwon to what is at heart a city campaign. It follows in the footsteps of the heroes of author Fritz Leiber’s tales of the adventures, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, as they struck north across the Inner Sea and into The Land of the Eight Cities. Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #8: The Land of the Eight Cities is both a guide to the country and to playing in that country, as well as a guide to how it was developed from original source material. Plus of course, it comes with its own scenario to get the Player Characters there.
Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #8: The Land of the Eight Cities introduces The Land of the Eight Cities, located in and on the edges of the Forest Land, across the Inner Sea from the city of Lankhmar. Six centuries ago, it was settled by Lankhmarts who came searching for resources including lumber, ores, and gems, who established its first cities and effectively turned the region into a colony of the city. That changed three centuries ago, when eastern nomads filtered through the gap between the Barrier Mountains and the Inner Cities and assaulted city after city, eventually capturing all of them. Yet they did not sack the cities, but instead occupied them and adopted their ways! In the centuries since, The Land of the Eight Cities and the city of Lankhmar have become uneasy trading partners, The Land of the Eight Cities trading its ready supply of lumber, ores, and gems in return for the grain and meat farmed around Lankhmar. Despite this strong relationship, the lords of the Eight Cities still fear invasion by the Overlords of Lankhmar. It has also a similar relationship with the barbarian tribes of the Cold Wastes, trading for their furs, amber, and ivory via the cold city of No-Ombrulsk, but constantly needing to patrol against the pirate ships from the north. The supplement also presents details of the peoples of The Land of the Eight Cities, its government, and its gods. The latter consist of the Gods of the Forest and the Red God. The Gods of the Forest are worshipped by the majority of inhabitants of the region and personify their belief in the inherent spiritualism of the ancient trees and verdant wildlife. The Red God is a deity of blood and slaughter, and is worshipped by soldiers across the region and in particular, by the gladiators who fight in the arena in the palace-house of Lithquil, the Mad Duke and ruler of the city of Ool Hrusp.
All eight cities of The Land of the Eight Cities are detailed, most of which are cramped settlements of close-set, steep-roofed wooden buildings threaded through by narrow alleys which are set in forest clearings where the forests literally come right up to the edge of the settlement. Few have walls or the fortifications found in the south, the surrounding areas being laced with traps and treetop watch posts with troops also keeping a hardy eye on the narrow roads to and from the cities.

The secrets of forest around the cities include stats for a typical gladiator of the Mad Duke, a Kilyolsho tribesman, a member of the desert tribe to be found on the other side of the Barrier Mountains, Ool Hruspian Marine who serves aboard the Ool Hruspian ships assigned protect the city’s merchant fleet from pirates and Sea Mingols. Two new creatures are given, the bear-like Luhr-beast and Pack Bear, the latter of which can be trained to carry items for a master, as well as fight for him. There are new Bensions and Dooms too. ‘Bear-blooded’ is a Benison which gives a Player Character bear blood, not only enabling him to roar like a bear and scare off animals in the forest, but also allowing him to have a trained pack bear that can understand commands and fight for the Player Character. The other Benison is ‘Mining Claim’, whilst the Dooms are ‘Blasphemer’, which makes the Player Character an apostate in the eyes of the priests of the Gods of the Forests, and ‘Treader in Ancient’ which curses the Player Character to followed by something discovered in the ancient black ruins deep in the forest, though he cannot recall the exact events of his first encounter with it or what it is. Both of these Bensions and Dooms are designed initially for natives to The Land of the Eight Cities, but outsiders who live there for some time may also gain them. Both the Gods of the Forest and the Red God are described in terms of being patrons, and there is a table for carousing in The Land of the Eight Cities instead of using the one given in the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set.
The included adventure in Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #8: The Land of the Eight Cities is ‘Introductory Adventure The Tooth of No-Ombrulsk’. Designed for Player Characters of Second Level and Third Level, it begins with them coming into possession of a treasure map, pointing to the location of a stolen artefact. This is The Tooth of No-Ombrulsk, sacred to a whale-god worshipped in the northern city of No-Ombrulsk. The adventure is more of a mini-adventure, consisting of just eleven locations and describing a long-abandoned and ruined watchtower where the artefact has been hidden. It has a tomb-like quality, being laced with a number of traps, those these are not the only threats that the Player Characters will face. There are some sea-themed monsters as well as another pair of factions also after the artefact, including a very nicely done, desperate and vengeful priest of No-Ombrulsk. ‘Introductory Adventure The Tooth of No-Ombrulsk’ is nicely detailed as you would expect for Dungeon Crawl Classics, and the consequences of the Player Characters successfully gaining possession of the artefact are well thought out, but it only gets the Player Characters to the very tip of The Land of the Eight Cities and does not actually engage with the content presented elsewhere in the book. Thus, the Judge and her players will have to wait for something more definitive that will take their characters into The Land of the Eight Cities.

Rounding out Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #8: The Land of the Eight Cities is ‘Appendix A: The Fritz Leiber Papers Collection’. This details Michael Curtis’ trip to the University of Houston and its Special Collection department to examine the Fritz Leiber Papers it holds as part of the research to create the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set. In particular, it looks at the draft version of ‘The Tale of the Grain Ships’ which would ultimately become The Swords of Lankhmar. It is this draft which Curtis draws on heavily for Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #8: The Land of the Eight Cities and he discusses this before delving deeper into the many items in the collection. This includes swords, early maps, screenplays, and even correspondence with E. Gary Gygax. For fans of Fritz Leiber and Lankhmar, and both Gygax and the Appendix N, this is a fascinating read and a great addendum to both the scenario and the box set.
One of the issues with Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #8: The Land of the Eight Cities is that it has relatively little source material upon which to draw from. Consequently there is a brevity to the content of the supplement, though some Judges will see this as a boon as it gives them room aplenty to develop their own content. However, the supplement is missing content which would have been useful. This includes maps, both of The Land of the Eight Cities and the Eight Cities themselves, and whilst the inclusion of the two Patrons, the Gods of the Forest and the Red, is more than useful, the lack of spells particular to them is not. Similarly, the supplement mentions several times that strange, ageless structures are to be found in the forests of The Land of the Eight Cities, but these are not detailed beyond suggesting that they might have been built by the same people who built the black temples upon which Lankhmar is built. Of course, this leaves plenty of room for the Judge to develop her own, but something beyond mere hints would have been useful.
Ultimately, the problem with Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #8: The Land of the Eight Cities is the paucity of information. There is always the feeling that there should be more information, but this is not the author’s fault, as there is relatively little information about The Land of the Eight Cities for him to draw on. Nevertheless, he has been able to develop a fair amount of detail and add to it, from what was available. The rest is up to the Judge to develop herself.

Physically, Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #8: The Land of the Eight Cities is well presented. The artwork is good and the one included map for the scenario is likewise good. One oddity to note is that the illustration of the Pack Bear is included on the previous page below the description of the Luhr-beast, a bear-like creature. Which suggests the possibility of there being a non-human anthropomorphic bear-like species in The Land of the Eight Cities. Which is not the case, and will only become clear when the reader flips over the page and continues reading.

Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #8: The Land of the Eight Cities opens up the possibility of the Player Characters—thieves, pickpockets, burglars, cutpurses, muggers, and anyone else who would skulk in the night—escaping the City of the Black Toga and going on wilderness adventures and visiting other cities. It is unfortunate that the included adventure, as decent as it is, does neither. Similarly, whilst the rest of the information in the supplement is also decent, especially given the constraints faced by the author in terms of source material, it is only a starting point. This limits its usefulness for the Judge, whilst also leaving the setting open for her to develop as part of her own campaign. Thus, whilst there is a lot of interesting information in Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #8: The Land of the Eight Cities, none more so than in the appendix, this is not a supplement that the Judge needs to have as part of her campaign. Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #8: The Land of the Eight Cities is very much an option, if then, an interesting option.

In my efforts to expand my knowledge of the Forgotten Realms, I am going to Master Sage himself, Ed Greenwood.

Official YouTube Channel
https://www.youtube.com/@edgreenwoodofficial

Patreon Page
https://www.patreon.com/EdGreenwood

X/Twitter
https://twitter.com/TheEdVerse

Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/ed.greenwood.142

I am not a subscriber to his Patreon page, but I hear wonderful things about it. It sounds like a great forum for his ideas and of course exclusives.  I'm a fan, but not at the level I need exclusives before everyone else.

The real treasure trove for me in my explorations of the Realms has been his YouTube page.

Now, typically, I really hate videos. I don't have the time to listen or watch, and frankly, most of the people doing video neither have the voice nor the presence to do them. This is not so for Ed. Ed, among everything else, is a natural storyteller. The Realms are his canvas.

He has had a few I have found really interesting too. 

This one because I a. remembered the picture, and b. loved the idea that Ed could use this channel to talk about things he could not before.  Plus he says "Drau" like Cow. Actually one of the best things about his videos is knowing how he pronounces some of the names he comes up with!

This one because I loved the background on this character and was a fan of Symgharyl Maruel, aka The Shadowsil.  But this one is also fun because Ed has such a love for all these characters.  

That was always obvious to me reading his books and Dragon articles. And he extended that love to characters he was borrowing.

Gary loved my portrayal of Mordenkainen, which was a great relief to me at the time. Dalamar vanished because of publishing timing: we didn't know his fate in Margaret and Tracy's DL novels at the time, so had to sidestep. (And the series was an editorial assignment.)#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) September 10, 2020

And extends to others who treat his characters with the same love.

I LOVE these portraits!!!!! Spot on!!!!

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) October 28, 2022

So give the Father of the Realms a follow. I hope you find him as entertaining and as educational as I find him.

We are lucky. We live in a time when the hobbies we pursue and the things that we like are the norm. Not just the norm, but accepted. Science Fiction, fantasy, superheroes, playing games, all the sorts of stuff that would have been derided in our childhoods and got us labelled as nerds. Board games are part of that trend, a trend which has seen them grow from being seen as childish pursuits to being just a hobby, but is that all they are? Just one more nerdy hobby amongst many others? This is something that What Board Games Mean to Me: Tales from the Tabletop sets out to explore in a series of essays from designers and publishers, players and scholars, journalists and librarians. Published by Aconyte Books, it is part of the publisher’s ‘Play to Win’ line, which includes James Wallis’ examination of the Spiel des Jahres winners, Everybody Wins: Four Decades of Greatest Board Games Ever Made, this is a collection of reminiscences and thoughts about board games—occasionally collectible card games and roleplaying games—but mostly board games, that will take the reader around the world and to some interesting places and ideas and to experiences familiar and unfamiliar, before coming back again, to his own collection of board games on the shelf and to the table where he plays them with friends and family.
The familiar follows two strands. The first being of playing with family—siblings, parents, and grandparents—of family classics such as Monopoly, Scrabble, Whist, Draughts, and how that got the essayist into playing games and understanding not just the mechanics of play, but the social dynamics of play. Games thus became a way to facilitate interaction with the rules of the game and the rules of game play. This is followed by the second, the discovery of a wider variety of board games, opening the essayist up to different themes and styles of play, co-operative games being a notable common discovery. For gamers of a certain age, such as John Kovalic, Gav Thorpe, Jervis Johnson, and Sir Ian Livingstone. This would have been with titles such as Escape from Colditz, Diplomacy, and The Warlord, an experience which British gaming hobbyists would recognise and which such figures would use as springboard into careers in the gaming industry. Others would discover a similar path through modern classics such as Carcassonne and CATAN or collectible card games such as Magic: The Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh!.

The unfamiliar at first takes the reader to Nigeria with ‘Picture a Scene’. This charts KC Obbuagu’s first encounter with board games with an African classic, Mancala, and then following a revelatory moment in which he saw his board game design played, his steps into the board game industry where there was none. This was in Nigeria, and creating his first games led to the setting up of the games company, NIBCARD Games, the first tabletop café in Nigeria, and AB Con, the first board games convention in sub-Saharan Africa. All of which would result in NIBCARD Games being awarded the Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming in 2021. This is a fascinating story, shining a light on the spread of the hobby in unexpected directions far beyond its origins in the English-speaking world. Also, an unfamiliar area—at least for board games—is that of the library. Jenn Bartlett describes in ‘Ticket to Read’, how she, as a librarian, created a board game programme at her library, working with publishers and local games shops, to support local business and develop a library-using habit in the attendees of the games events that she ran. There is an uncomfortable moment when she encounters misogyny as a player, but she draws parallels between what the hobby does at its best and what a library does, which is to welcome people in and letting them explore what each of them offers without judgement.

Both Lynn Potyen and Edoardo Albert bring a personal touch when they explore a fascinating effect of playing board games. In ‘Brain Games’, Lynn Potyen reveals how playing board games can help with learning disabilities and dementia, whilst Edoardo Alberto shows us in ‘Learning the Rules’ how the rules and etiquette learned in playing games can be applied to ordinary life, not in neurotypical learners, but in himself as well. What is interesting to note here is that when board games are used as tools in this fashion, they achieve something that the eighteenth and nineteenth century designers of board games failed to do, and that is to create a board game that works as an effective educational tool. That though was to teach the young players to be good Christians and the values of the British Empire, but even the board games of today designed to help players learn are not necessarily good teaching devices. Both Lynn Potyen and Edoardo Albert suggest that modern boardgames work better because they are designed for play rather than learning first, rather than the other way around. All of the entries in What Board Games Mean to Me are very personal, but none more so than ‘Brain Games’ and ‘Learning the Rules’.

Other entries in What Board Games Mean to Me include ‘Playing by Design’ an interview with the prolific board games designer, Reiner Knizia, the only entry to differ from personal essays that make up the rest of the book, and two scholarly explorations of board games and play. In the first of these, ‘The Magic Circle’, Matt Coward-Gibbs explores the phenomenon of the space which we all enter when we play from a theoretical standpoint, whilst in the second, ‘Connections’, Holly Nielsen looks at the connections made in that space when playing. One of the points she makes is that after discovering games designed to highlight the causes of women against unequal treatment and misogyny, the examples given pointing the feminism movement of the sixties and seventies and the Suffragette movement of the early twentieth century, she came to realise that despite the rallying cry of “Keep politics out of games!”, there had always been politics in games. There is scope here for an essay of all its own, but Nielson is also interested in the other aspect of games that the contributors to What Board Games Mean to Me return to again and again, and that is making connections via game play. Both entries talk about board games in a way that the casual player might necessarily consider, but do so in an engaging fashion.

What Board Games Mean to Me is similar to a pair of books published by Green Ronin Publishing, Hobby Games: The 100 Best and Family Games: The 100 Best, which together presented a series of essays on what the authors thought were the best and most enjoyable games of previous one hundred years. A handful of the contributors to What Board Games Mean to Mee also wrote entries in those earlier books, but where Hobby Games: The 100 Best and Family Games: The 100 Best looked back, What Board Games Mean to Me looks forward as well as back. This can be seen in KC Obbuagu’s essay highlighting the spread of board games as a hobby into unexpected markets and in the essays by Lynn Potyen and Edoardo Albert that point to board games as means of therapy and socialisation. In this way, it enhances the respectability that playing board games as a hobby has achieved in the past few decades.

Physically, What Board Games Mean to Me is a very lightly illustrated, but very readable paperback. None of the essays are longer than a few pages long and each is accompanied by a biography of its author.

What Board Games Mean to Me explores a variety of experiences in how the contributors came to play board games and how they came to discover and explore the wider hobby, and in doing so, tell stories that, for the most part, we can relate to because we had similar experiences. Yet wherever these stories take us, they always come back to the fact that playing board games is a social activity, a space where when we play, we do so using a set of rules that enable safe interaction and socialisation, even as we compete and battle against each other. Overall, What Board Games Mean to Me: Tales from the Tabletop is an enjoyable essay collection whose entries are in turn not only highly personal and immensely interesting, but will also will make the reader consider their own experiences with board games, whether they are new to the hobby or have been playing for decades.

 I have asked this before, but it bears repeating here and now. How does one review a classic? Better question. How does one review a genre-defining classic?  Because that is what I have sitting in front of me now. A genre-defining classic. Eighteen-year-old me back in 1987, ready for his first year at university, would not have thought so at the time, but that is what much older me thinks now. 

The Forgotten Realms was the foundation of the "new" TSR, the one without Gary Gygax and many of the other founders on which they would build their new home. We can debate the merits of this and financials ad nauseam, but by any stretch of the imagination, the Forgotten Realms were very successful. So successful that the biggest video game of 2023 is set there.

This review will cover the Forgotten Realms Campaign Set, the Boxed set from 1987. Written by Ed Greenwood and Jeff Grubb and edited by Karen S. Boomgarden. But any insight to this product knows that the genesis was with Ed, and he first brought it all to life in the pages of Dragon magazine. At least that is alive to us. Many other authors have contributed to Realms over the decades, but here is where it begins.  

How do we begin? Let's take Ed's own words, which he scribbled into my Cyclopedia of the Realms as our opening.

"Welcome to the Forgotten Realms!" - Ed Greenwood

Forgotten Realms Campaign Set

by Ed Greenwood, Jeff Grubb and edited by Karen S. Boomgarden. 1987. Boxed set. Full-color covers and maps. Cyclopedia of the Realms 96 pages. DMs Sourcebook of the Realms 96 pages. Maps and clear hex overlays.

For this review, I am considering the physical boxed set from 1987 and the PDFs from DriveThruRPG. There has yet to be a Print on Demand version.
The DriveThruRPG PDF combines all this information into a 230-page book. Maps are broken up and scanned in at letter size.

Cyclopedia of the Realms

96 pages. Color covers. Sepia-tone pages and art.

"Let's start at the very beginning. A very good place to start." - Maria von Trapp nee Kuczera, Bard/Cleric

This book is an introduction to the Forgotten Realms, and maybe the most important bit here is the introduction by Ed Greenwood/Elminster and the About this Product.  We start immediately with the "voice" of the Realms, Elminster. He is no ersatz Gandalf, nor is he a more approachable Mordenkainen, and certainly, he is more interesting than Ringlerun. He is our guide, but sometimes I still like to think of him as an unreliable narrator. These are the Realms in his eyes. More (if the not the most) knowledgable, but there are still "small stories" to tell that are beneath his notice. Those are the stories (aka games) I want to know about.

This book covers the timeline (I do love timelines!) and ways of keeping time in the Realms. The date for this set is the end of 1357 DR (that's Dale Reckoning or Dalereckoning). For full context, the Baldur's Gate III video game takes place in 1494 DR, with the current year of the D&D 5e titles at 1496 DR. There is a bit of discussion about holidays and how the "weeks" are grouped as Tendays (3 a month). It feels different and I like it.  The money system is rather AD&D standard, with some proper names to the coins. This is fine because this IS supposed to be an AD&D world, and the authors want people to feel familiar with it all, if not right at home.

Languages and scripts are up. Some of these are still being used in current versions of D&D. 

The Gods are next. These were already familiar to me, not just because this is an old product, but because Ed talked about them in Dragon magazine back in 1985.  See "The Dragon Connection" below. While these gods have "Earthly" sources, it actually works out great and ties into the mythology of the Realms as one being connected to Earth. Something it shares with Greyhawk's Oerth. The connection between Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms is strong. They share almost all the same demi-human gods. By extension of the rule-set they also share all the same demons and devils. This makes moving between worlds a little smoother. The gods and their relationships are detailed well here and there is just enough unknow to keep them interesting.

Next section is about Adventuring Companies. So here is one thing that the Realms does better than Greyhawk (well there are more, but the first thing in this book). Adventurers are baked into the system. The world doesn't just need adventuring parties, it demands them. These parties can be used as models for your own adventuring parties. All these parties have names as well. I'll have to think about how Sinéad and Co would fit this format. Plus, the back cover of this book has a grid for the adventuring party! Room for 10 characters even.

We get into the "Cyclopedia" part of the book now. This is an alphabetical listing of major topics within the Realms. These include things like the various character classes, races, countries, towns, areas of interest and other topics. There is a narrative piece describing it, Elminster's Notes for the point of view of the most knowledgeable native (even when he admits to not knowing much), and Game Information.

I rather like it, to be honest. Hit me with facts, and let me build some adventures around it!

DMs Sourcebook of the Realms

96 pages. Color covers. Sepia-tone pages and art.

One of the best things in this book is the Introduction. We get words from Ed (as Ed) talking about the World of the Forgotten Realms and how it is now our world too. Yeah it is trademarked by TSR and now WotC/Hasbro, but this is an open invitation to do what you want with this world now. This is a foreshadowing to all the great Ed Greenwood content we would get over the next almost 4 decades. Honestly reading Ed's own words make me excited for all the exploration ahead of me. This is followed by words from Jeff Grubb, who also had a hand in shaping the AD&D version of the Realms. And more by editor Karen S. Martin who adds her experience and excitement to this world.

So much better than any puff-piece bit of gamer fiction!

We get right into it. Information on how to use this as an AD&D campaign world is started from the word go. Overview again of the boxed set. How to set up campaigns for new players, new campaigns for experienced players, and bringing in characters from other campaigns. Hmm...I should try all of these to be honest. Maybe a character from one of my Greyhawk or Mystara campaigns could come on over. I DO like the idea that Elvish and Dwarvish and some others are mostly the same languages. Would really help bring the worlds closer together. 

A bit of coverage on the maps and how to use them. Nice comparison of the map of Faerûn compared to the continental United States. And a section of various wandering monsters. The Forgotten Realms may be Forgotten, but they are very much alive!

The next 20 pages detail NPCs of note. Any to drop in as background, enemy, or ally. 

Speaking of living. A really nice section on recent news and various rumors starting in DR 1356 to 1357 are presented. With or without your characters, the Relams live on. 

Another plus for this boxed set is the ready-run adventures for low-level characters. The first, The Halls of the Beast Tamers, is a nice dungeon crawl. Next is Lashan's Fall, which appeared in Dragon #95 as "Into the Forgotten Realms," and even the maps are the same! Mind you I think this is a bonus since that is the adventure I always wanted to use as an intro to the Realms. I still can come to think of it. 

The next section is a "Pages from the Mages" style entry.  Lots of spells books to be found with plenty of new spells. I think some of these were in "Pages form the Mages" to be honest. That's fine, they work well here.

Honestly, the ONLY thing missing here are some new monsters, and this would be complete.

Maps & Plastic Hex Overlays

There are four gorgeous maps of the content of Faerûn. While it doesn't quite live up to the artistry of the Darlene World of Greyhawk maps, they are more practical. The plastic hex overlays also make it easier to read the maps and then do your hex crawls in whatever area you like.

The Dragon Connection

One of the great things about doing my This Old Dragon feature and concentrating on the period between 1980 and 1987 is watching the Forgotten Realms develop and grow as an Advanced Dungeons & Dragons world. From Ed's musings on gods in Down to Earth Divinity to magical tomes and spells of the Pages from the Mages and The Wizards Three features to adventure Into the Forgotten Realms, all of which would find homes in an official Forgotten Realms product in some shape or form.

I mentioned already that Dragon #95's Into the Forgotten Realms makes an appearance here as an introductory adventure.

As I mentioned, all we were missing were monsters. Well, Ed penned enough monsters in the pages of Dragon Magazine that were explicitly for the Realms, so collecting them all is worthwhile. In addition to monsters, there are magic items, more spells, blades, shields, and even musical instruments, and I know I am nowhere near collecting it all. I do know I will run out of room in my box for them all.

My Thoughts

There is a lot packed in this box. It's like a TARDIS really; bigger on the inside. In truth, nothing of what I thought was going to be here was here. Yes, there are NPCs, but they are background, and your characters may never ever run into them. They are the background noise of the Realms until the characters are the big noise. I certainly unfairly judged the Forgotten Realms. 

A lot of this stemmed from me thinking that Gygax had been done wrong. Yes, that was true, but the Realms really had nothing to do with that. The New TSR was working to relgate Gygx to the past and Ed was just the guy in the right place in the right time with the right idea. I was also unfair of me to judge the Realms on that.  If reading Ed's "The Wizard's Three" has taught me anything that Abier-Toril and Oerth have more in common than not.

This is, of course, just the start. A big start, to be sure, but a start all the same. This is a canvas to paint on. This is a great set, not just for its time but also for now. Minus some of the stat blocks and spells, everything here can be used with any version of D&D or similar game with little or no effort. 

While I am somewhat overwhelmed by the task before me, I am also excited about it.

Honestly, I am going to pull out some dice and roll up some characters now.

 I am not exactly sure why I didn't do this one already.

I was working on something else and needed an AD&D (Dragon #114) witch for it.  It then dawned on me that I didn't have a proper AD&D character sheet for a witch.  Well. I fixed that today.

I edited an existing PDF and ran some off on my printer. Proper Goldenrod, of course, but also salmon and blue since they came in those colors as well (NPC and permanent character records, respectively) and because I can come in purple. All my important witches have sheets in purple!

They are not perfect by any means. Just a quick edit job in Affinity Publisher, but I really like them.