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?
A Site to Die For is a scenario for use with RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha in which the adventurers participate in a week-long ceremony of building and protecting a shrine for a Greydog Clan Hero.

It is a thirty-one page, full colour 2.57 MB PDF.

The layout is scrappy and the scenario requires development and editing.
Where is it set?
A Site to Die For is specifically set along the Starfire Ridges on the lands of the Orlmarth Clan.
Who do you play?A set of six pre-generated Player Characters is provided to play A Site to Die For.
If played using other Player Characters, the assumed default is that they are members of the Greydog Clan. Ideally, the Player Characters should number at least one worshipper of Orlanth amongst their number. It is also assumed that Humakti not be part of the scenario.
What do you need?
A Site to Die For requires RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha as well as The RuneQuest Gamemaster Screen Pack for wider information about the clans living along the Starefire Ridges. The RuneQuest: Glorantha Bestiary will be useful for details of some of the encounters.
Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes and The Sartar Companion will useful for background on the Greydog Clan..
What do you get?
A Site to Die For centres on week-long ceremony to construct and protect a shrine to a Greydog Clan hero. Unfortunately, this has to be done on Starfire Ridges, lands held by the rival Orlmarth Clan, which will object to both the intrusion by the Greydog Clan members and their task. The feud between the two clans has run for generations and sees no sign of being put to rest. Once the Player Characters have ascended into the steep hills—possibly assailed by ghosts of long dead clans, harassed by Orlmarthi hunters, and overcome environmental hazards, they can begin the ceremony. This takes place over the course of the week, involving the sacrifice of Magic Points and Rune Points—and even permanent points of Power(!), the erection of an ugly totem pole as an insult to the Orlmarth, and a small personal sacrifice to the hero, Tao. 

Throughout the week, the Player Characters will face the changing nature of the weather as it switches from one Rune-associated day to the next and a mix of encounters both planned and random. The planned are linked to the Rune-associated days, for example, a gang of wild Trollkin will attack on Freeze Day as it is associated with Darkness. Other encounters are random, whilst others will be with those known to the Player Characters, some of whom will support their quest, some of whom will wonder why they are provoking the Orlmarth by establishing the shrine?

A Site to Die For is nicely thematic and strengthens the Rune associations through the encounters and tasks that the Player Characters need to perform. There is actually more to the story than is obvious at first, though the likelihood of that full coming to light will depend upon whether the Player Characters completely fail to set up the shrine, or do so with a cost.
However, A Site to Die For is written in both a stream of consciousness style and in a style that keeps the players and their characters as ignorant as to what is going on as it does the Game Master. This primarily shows in the all, but complete lack of background for either in the opening stages of the scenario, even to the point where neither knows that the scenario actually comes with six pre-generated Player Characters—and the Game Master only knows this when she reads the last twelve or so pages.

A Site to Die For initially reads as toolkit to run the scenario, but it is a proper scenario that the Game Master really, really needs to read through and prepare a lot of information up front that the author does not. As a one-shot, with the given six pre-generated Player Characters, the scenario is probably too long for a single session given the likely number of combat encounters they will have with those wanting to stop the ceremony. With players roleplaying their own characters, this is less of an issue, and one of the potential uses of A Site to Die For is as a template for the Game Master to run a similar scenario for her players and their characters, though not one necessarily one involving either the Greydog Clan or the Orlmarth Clan. In some ways this is actually made all the easier by the amount of preparation the Game Master would have to do even if A Site to Die For was being run as written.
Is it worth your time?Yes—A Site to Die For presents an interesting clash between clans and Rune-themed encounters, especially if the Player Characters are members of the Greydog Clan, which could be adapted to other clans.No—A Site to Die For presents an interesting clash between clans and Rune-themed encounters, but if the Player Characters are not members of the Greydog Clan or they are not combat focused, then the scenario may not be suitable for them.Maybe—A Site to Die For presents an interesting clash between clans and Rune-themed encounters, which is perhaps too combat focused, but which could be adapted to explore the relationships between other clans.

3,2,1…Action! is designed to play fast and easy. When a player wants his character to undertake an action, he rolls a ten-sided die and aims to roll low—typically under a stat rated between two and nine. If the task is challenging, then the Game Runner can impose modifier of +1, +2, or +3 to the roll, depending upon the difficulty of the task. Likewise, if it is less challenging, she can add a bonus of -1, -2, or -3, depending on how easy the task is. Equally, combat is also simple. The Player Characters always go first, unless they faced by an ambush or a trap. Instead of rolling to hit an opponent, both player and Game Runner rolls damage inflicted, again on a ten-sided die, modified by the weapon’s damage modifier. Damage is deducted not from a Player Character’s Hit Points, but his Luck. Thus, a Player Character’s Luck can literally run out and so he would be dead. Luck can be replenished by the application of a first aid kit or at the end of each gaming session. Movement is done by weapon type. A lighter weapon does not slow a Player Character down, whilst a heavier one would, but in either case, the Player Character is ready for action and has his weapon aimed.

Two rules encourage great roleplaying and inventiveness in 3,2,1…Action! First, at the end of each session, there is an awards ceremony in which every votes for the Best Comedy moment, Best Action Sequence, and Line of the Night, the winners gaining one, two, or three points of Luck respectively. Second, player are encouraged to improvise and creativity, in effect, develop their characters by filling in ‘plot holes’. Whenever a player wants his character to do something out of the ordinary or unexpected, the Game Runner is not expected to answer, “Yes, but…”, but rather, “Yes, but tell me how your character can do that and tell me two sentences.” 

For Gayle needs to make contact with someone on the inside of crime boss’ gang and knows that they will be meeting at local restaurant. A very good restaurant, famed for the standard of its service. Gayle’s player tells the Game Runner that she will go undercover as a waitress. The Game Runner asks her player if Gayle has any experience as a waitress, especially a siler service waitress. Gayle’s player explains that in high school she got the role of a waitress in a play, but did not know how to be waitress. Fortunately, her uncle Ross, who worked for a fancy French restraint did, and he showed how, and she was so good that actually got a job as a silver service waitress during high school. The Game Runner accepts this explanation and lets Gayle’s player to pass herself off as a waitress with just a -2 penalty.

A Player Character in 3,2,1…Action! has four physical and mental stats—Action, Brains, Brawn, and Charm, and two survival stats—Cool and Guts. Cool is mental fortitude and Guts is physical fortitude and endurance. If a Player Character can keep his Cool, his player can gain boosts to his rolls, but conversely, gain penalties if the Player Character (literally) looses his Cool. Failing three Guts Checks reduces a Player Character’s stats by one, whilst failing a fourth means that he has died. A first aid kit or the expenditure of five Luck Points will reverse a failed Guts Check. A Player Character has a backstory consisting of just three lines (everything else is filled in via the Plot Hole rule) and four items in his inventory. He also has a role, which improves one stat, whilst also reducing another by a point. For example, a Journalist might be +1 Brains and -1 Action, or Tax Inspector, +1 Brains, -1 Charm.

To create a Player Character, a player rolls a ten-sided die six times and assigns the results to the six stats in any order he likes. He selects or creates a role and applies its modifiers, rolls another ten-sided die and add twenty to the result to get his character’s starting Luck, chooses the four items in his inventory (this includes armour, which takes up a slot in the inventory), and writes his backstory. A player Character may or may not have a Special Ability, which the Game Runner and player can agree on and typically adds a two-point boost under certain circumstances.

Robert Borkowski
Power Loader Operative
Action 7 Brains 4 Brawn 9 Charm 2 Cool 9 Guts 9
Luck: 29
Special Ability: Pack Horse – Robert can carry two extra items in his inventory
Inventory: Comlink, Toolkit

Backstory:
Born on a space hauler and doesn’t like being on the ground
Knows the best places to hide things on a space ship
Loves Poker, but never gets a winning hand

So that is 3,2,1…Action!, a set of rules which can be explained in a few minutes and a Player Character created in a few more. It fulfils its aim of emphasising fun and the story over physics, and keeps everything simple and fast. It is also the ruleset for Rocket To Russia: A Sci-Fi Survival Adventure, a one-shot RPG (and scenario) published following a successful Kickstarter campaign. Although published as part of ZineQuest 3, it is very much a mini-roleplaying game rather than a fanzine, and at one hundred pages in length, is very much larger than most of the titles released as part of ZineQuest, let alone ZineQuest 3.

Rocket To Russia: A Sci-Fi Survival Adventure takes its cue from the Predator series of films and the Contra run-and-gun shooter video game. A madman has crazy on a mysterious tropical island, which until recently was the site of a super science programme run as a joint operation between the USA and the USSR. Someone has to stop him before he does something terrible—and that someone would be the Player Characters. Assembled as a clandestine clean-up crew, the Player Characters are delivered to the island, armed and ready to deal with whatever they find, or so they believe. They have just over twelve hours to locate the madman , thwart what he has planned, and get off the island via the designated extraction. The Player Characters are going to need more than their fair share of good luck, because once they up onto the island, they are on their own. 

Rocket To Russia: A Sci-Fi Survival Adventure is a Special Forces, military Sci-Fi horror which begins with a hunt for a soldier gone rogue who begins a hunt for the Player Characters. Then it gets weird because there are monsters on the island—piscine or batrachian and cephalopodic, and very nasty they are too. Plus they are really not very happy with anyone human. They are prepared to deal with humanity though, which sets up some very creepy scenes, as the Player Characters go in search of their quarry. That said, the quarry will come in search of them and much of the scenario is one of a cat and mouse chase from tropical clearing to another. Along the way, there are opportunities to discover more about what is going on, traps and hazards to avoid, and chances for the Player Characters to be heroic in service of their country!

Besides the scenario and the rules, Rocket To Russia: A Sci-Fi Survival Adventure comes with seven pre-generated Player Characters, descriptions of numerous weapons, and full write-ups and stats for the scenario’s monsters and more. It is entirely possible that the Player Characters might not encounter all of them, and if that is the case in their play through of Rocket To Russia: A Sci-Fi Survival Adventure, then the Game Runner could easily create a sequel and use them in that. The book ends with optional rules like ‘Cheese It!’, which enables the Player Characters to retreat and regroup if a combat gets too tough, ranges and reloads, and more.

Physically,  Rocket To Russia: A Sci-Fi Survival Adventure is solidly presented. If the cover is underwhelming, the excellent internal artwork more than makes up for it.

Rocket To Russia: A Sci-Fi Survival Adventure nicely balances the action with opportunities to introduce some storytelling, but ultimately, it is a batrachian blast ’em up which should provide a big bag of cheesy, cliché eighties action movie machismo which the players can play up to or undercut as is their style. 

An alien force has invaded one galaxy after another. Assaulted one world, followed by another. Reduced colonies to glass and moons to floating collections of rubble. Civilisation is at the invader’s mercy, and as hard as it fights and as desperately as it fields one more newly developed weapon, it cannot withstand the onslaught. How long before survivors huddling on isolated worlds with oxygen and food supplies dwindling are all that is left? Soon, but perhaps there is one last hope, the fabled Reaper’s Gambit. Myth and legend say that it can be found on a world beyond the borders of civilisation, buried deep underground. Now that world has been located and an expedition been sent to excavate a possible site for the device. So far, the Bridge, a Landing Pad, and Ship’s Power has been established on the world along with a force of Marines. It is time to begin digging, exploring, researching, and defending.

This is the set-up for UMBRA: A Solo Game of Final Frontiers from the publisher of RISE: A Game of Spreading Evil and DELVE: A Solo Map Drawing Game. All three are map-drawing games for one player and each involves the drawing and building, populating and defending, and exploring and exploiting of great underground networks. Both RISE and DELVE are fantasy games, themed around building and exploring dungeons and telling the story involved in this. UMBRA is a Science Fiction solo roleplaying and journaling game inspired by the Science Fiction and Science Fiction horror of Alien, the Halo and Dead Space video games, The Thing, and Starship Troopers. In the game, the player takes the role of the Commander of an expeditionary base. From one turn to the next, as Commander, they will manage, expand, and defend the colony as well as sending out excavation and exploration teams which continue to dig out and dig down deep below the planet’s surface in order to locate the Reaper’s Gambit. Managing primarily means ensuring that the base has sufficient power and food to survive. Expanding the colony means constructing new facilities—barracks, crew quarters, charging stations, fabrication bays, genetic labs, power plants, hydroponics, cloning bays, alien beacons, research laboratories, and much, much more.
To defend the base, the Commander can recruit Marines and Hackers, build Support Droids and Robots, clone Mutants, and hire Alien Mercenaries. Once they have built a Fabrication Bay, they can begin installing automated machine guns, laser grids, psychic mind crushers, and more, whilst installing barriers—both defensive and offensive, and even secret passages, the latter to get around invading enemies. Together, they may need to defend the base against alien hive drones, war drones, and many more threats.

Exploring means finding resources, funding, natural formations, remnants, and other things. Natural formations include chambers full of eggs containing parasites; eruptions of lava; and strange anomalies. A remnant could be a monolith strange markings which might scan an adjacent area or turn some Marines hostile; a buried alien probe which a hacker could hack; or a dormant war machine already to go to battle…

The designer’s previous games in this family have all been about exploring and building underground—DELVE: A Solo Map Drawing Game about exploring and building down and RISE: A Game of Spreading Evil about exploring and building up. UMBRA: A Solo Game of Final Frontiers is also about exploring and building down, but it adds a new dimension—the outside. Or rather the surface. A colony breach at the surface can cause decompression and loss of units not protected behind airlocks; armed aliens might stage an invasion; an alien ship might conduct a strafing run or an asteroid might crash into the base; and once a Motor Pool has been constructed, Expeditions on the surface can be launched and discoveries made, such as finding a strand alien mercenary, a previously undiscovered civilisation, and even a lost relic.
To play UMBRA, the player will need squared paper, a deck of ordinary cards, some tokens to represent units, a notepad in which to record the expedition’s progress, and pen and pencils. They will also need dice—a four-sided die at least. The game starts with the player drawing the Bridge, Landing Pad, and Ship’s Power on the grided paper at the top. Then on each turn, they choose an unexplored location on the map—which is a cross section of the base and its underground facilities—and draw a card to determine what is found. Hearts are Resources, Diamonds are Funding for hiring troops, Spades are natural formations, and Clubs are remnants. Both natural formations and remnants require the player to draw another card and refer to the respective tables. Combat is a matter of attrition, comparing the Strength values of the combatants and deducting the lower Strength value from the higher Strength value. A troop unit whose Strength is reduced to zero is removed from the Hold, but a Medbay on the same level where the unit died can revive it. The rules also allow for ranged combat. The player can trade and exchange Resources for Funding or vice versa, and finally they can build new features in the base—facilities, security features, and much, much more, and hire new troop units.

Once the Commander has excavated to the Level Five and beyond, the deck of playing cards’ Jokers are added back into the deck. When drawn Black Jokers represent Alien Terrors, bigger challenges that the Commander will need to overcome, and Red Jokers are Alien Artefacts which will help them in the long term. When the Red Joker is drawn, two further cards are drawn to determine its traits, and if they are face cards, then the Commander has located the Reaper’s Gambit. In which case, it is shipped off to support the Galactic War, the base and its facilities are given full colony status, and so the player has achieved victory in their play through of UMBRA! If however, enemy units reach the base’s Bridge, defeats the troops there, the base has been overrun or captured, and the Commander’s efforts to find the Reaper’s Gambit thwarted. The Galactic War will continue until the civilisation is destroyed—and so the player has been defeated in their play through of UMBRA.

If a player is victorious, they need not stop playing. There is something dark and dangerous in the abyssal depths of the planet, a truly monstrous threat—perhaps one greater in the long run to that being faced in the Galactic War. UMBRA contains options also for theming the planet’s levels, for terraforming the planet and making it even more difficult to explore, and a list of challenges that the player can overcome and so gain a little glory. Rounding out UMBRA is a selection of prompts and a quick reference page for ease of play.
Physically, UMBRA: A Solo Game of Final Frontiers is a cleanly presented, digest-sized book. The writing is clear and simple such that the reader can become a Commander and start exploring and drawing with very little preparation.

UMBRA: A Solo Game of Final Frontiers is closest in design to DELVE: A Solo Map Drawing Game. Both are sedate in their play with strong procedural and resource management elements, and these elements along with the map—or rather floor plans of the base in the case of UMBRA—are what the player builds and tells their story around. UMBRA can be played in one sitting or put aside and returned to at a later date, but it does take time to play and the more time the Commander invests the more rewarding the story which should develop. And as good as successfully finding the Reaper’s Gambit feels, playing UMBRA: A Solo Game of Final Frontiers and not finding it and having the base fail can be as narratively interesting and satisfying—if not more so. The story of discovering that tale though, might be for another roleplaying game and an entirely different session.

The A to Z of Conspiracy Theories: B is for Bermuda Triangle

The Bermuda Triangle might not be one of the big conspiracy theories, but it is an important one for me. 

The Bermuda Triangle was a gateway drug for me for all sorts of quasi-normal, pseudo-scientific ideas.  I think it was a set of "documentaries" I saw in the late 1970s.  The one that comes to mind most often to me is 1978's Secrets of the Bermuda Triangle.  I remember watching it at the Times theater in my old hometown.

The movie was presented as a documentary and to my 8-9-year-old mind that meant that it had to have had some scientific rigor to it.    The movie was a collection of "true stories" like the loss of the Navy's Flight 19 and other tales.  Many that still get repeated today.  It also included a lot of conjecture as to why this area had so many disappearances.  My favorite was one about a malfunctioning energy collection crystal from Atlantis that would zap ships and airplanes and either destroy them or send them to alternate dimensions.  Like many documentaries of this time it tries to make connections to Egypt and even to the Maya and Aztec cultures. 

Statistically speaking, the waters of the Bermuda Triangle are no more or less dangerous than any others given the number of ships.  In a 2013 survey of the most dangerous shipping areas, it doesn't even rank in the top 10.

I have been through the Bermuda Triangle twice now.  Once while flying home from Jamaica (our flight was not allowed to fly over Cuba) and once on a cruise ship.

For NIGHT SHIFT

I am going with the crystal idea for NIGHT SHIFT.  The Triangle was the site of some ancient alien base that later had to be abandoned. There is indeed a giant crystal that charges "Vril" (more on that on V day) from sunlight.  Periodically it releases its built-up energy in a blast that discorporates whatever is in its path. Does it destroy the object or, as some scholars believe, does it transport it to somewhere else?

Some even believe that these crystals are pyramid-shaped and have the same dimensions of the Great Pyramid of Giza. 

The remains of the Bimini Road are also part of this base, but so far no one has figured out how they are connected. 

The biggest problems here are 1.) discovering the crystal and it's nature and 2.) getting down the crystal and turning it off. 

I would say that there are smaller crystals that are connected to it.  This can give the PCs some clues.  Especially if the crystals glow and pulsate in time with the larger one.  Someone would need to correlate the brightest flashes with disappearances.   

Given that reports of missing ships seem to have dropped off (that darn GPS!) and the height of the reports peaked in interest in the 70s I am thinking of setting this in my Spirit of 76 campaign. Another chance for me to use some ideas from "The Fantastic Journey."

The NIGHT SHIFT RPG is available from the Elf Lair Games website (hardcover) and from DriveThruRPG (PDF).

No events at the Triffid Ranch this weekend: this weekend is dedicated to restocking, rebuilding, and recuperating from last weekend’s show. However, things start back up on April 9, and things won’t let up until June.

As well as contributing to Free RPG Day every year Goodman Games also has its own ‘Dungeon Crawl Classics Day’, which sadly, is a very North American event. The day is notable not only for the events and the range of adventures being played for Goodman Games’ roleplaying games, but also for the scenarios it releases specifically to be played on the day. For ‘Dungeon Crawl Classics Day 2021’, the publisher released two booklets. One was an anthology, the DCC Day 2021 Adventure Pack, which contains three adventures. One for Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, one for Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic, and one a preview for Dungeon Crawl Classics: Dying Earth. The other was Dungeon Crawl Classics Day #2: Beneath the Well of Brass. This is a classic Character Funnel, one of the features of both the Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game and the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game—in which initially, a player is expected to roll up three or four Level Zero characters and have them play through a generally nasty, deadly adventure, which surviving will prove a challenge. Those that do survive receive enough Experience Points to advance to First Level and gain all of the advantages of their Class.

Dungeon Crawl Classics Day #2: Beneath the Well of Brass begins with the Player Characters being brought before the Black King. A few days before, he and his band of brigands took over the village and demanded that he and his men be fed and treated with respect. Unfortunately, he has not come to the village merely for a series of good meals, but for the secret of eternal life. Just outside is The Devil’s Maw, a series of caverns from which flames regularly gout and no-one in living memory has ever entered and return. Thus it is forbidden to enter the caverns and descend the well found inside. However, the Black King proclaims that The Devil’s Maw holds the secret of eternal life and he wants to claim for his own. Not that he plans to enter a place as forbidden and as foreboding as The Devil’s Maw himself, of course. No, instead he chooses a random group of villagers and send them in his stead, promising that if they do not return with the prize, the lives of the other villagers will be forfeit!

Designed to be played in one session, Dungeon Crawl Classics Day #2: Beneath the Well of Brass is a short adventure, running to just twelve locations. All of which are nicely detailed and with good reason. This is not scenario which emphasises combat—though there are a few scenes where fights can occur—primarily because none of the Zero Level Player Characters are really capable of withstanding much in way of a clobbering. Instead, there are puzzles to solve and not so much traps, as environmental effects to avoid or overcome. The short network of caves which make up The Devil’s Maw are soot-stained and flame-touched, and the danger of being burned is a constant threat throughout the caves. There is also the danger of a ‘Total Party Kill’, for one group of player’s characters, if not all of the players’ characters. This is no necessary scenario-ending, as the Black King will simply feed replacement villagers and thus replacement Zero Level Player Characters into The Devil’s Maw.

As the Player Characters delve deeper and deeper in The Devil’s Maw they will hopefully pick up a clue or two that helps them solve the big puzzle towards the end of the scenario. It will definitely help if they clear away a level of soot or two, but there are still plenty of clues otherwise. The big, literally big, puzzle is a killer if not got right, but fortunately, the author does not stint on the clues… Along the way, there are even opportunities for advancement and empowerment, some of which will have a telling effect on the individual Player Characters in the long term. One of these, a nasty version of the ‘lady in the lake with a sword’ (or at least an arm), will really present a player with a roleplaying challenge too—if the character survives.

Ultimately, whether the players have completed the scenario with their original batch of Zero Level characters or are on their first, second, or third sets of replacements, they will return to the mouth of The Devil’s Maw, hopefully with a treasure or two, perhaps with what the Black King sent them in for, and definitely with a desire for revenge. The scenario provides means to circumvent the brigands or even team up and beat a few up, if the players decide to look for those opportunities, but otherwise is linear and straightforward, from beginning to end.

Physically, Dungeon Crawl Classics Day #2: Beneath the Well of Brass is decently done. The artwork is fun and the map clear, but needs a moment or two determine its layout as it is not quite clear what goes with what at a first glance.

So the question is, why play yet another Character Funnel for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game? The most obvious reason is that they are fun to play and it can be really entertaining to roleplay four Zero Level Player Characters and build the relationships between the player’s four and the Player Characters of the players. The scenario could be played by a standard group of First Level Player Characters, but the effect would not be the same. Another reason is that Dungeon Crawl Classics Day #2: Beneath the Well of Brass is actually a prequel to Dungeon Crawl Classics #100: The Music of the Spheres is Chaos. Finally, Dungeon Crawl Classics Day #2: Beneath the Well of Brass is a thoroughly fun and engaging scenario, one which should be easy to run with a minimum of fuss and preparation.

The A to Z of Conspiracy Theories: A is for Ancient Aliens 

Let's kick this A to Z challenge off right and dive right into Ancient Aliens.  This will be one of my bookends for this challenge since I plan to use Zecharia Sitchin as my Z entry.

Now while there is a ton I could say about these theories today and the rest of this month, I do want to make it 100% clear that I do not buy into any of these notions.  They are good for RPG material though.

Ancient Aliens is the notion that ancient people were visited by aliens (extraterrestrial advanced lifeforms) and not only did these ancient people regard them as gods they shaped the cultures of these people and even, in some theories, shaped their DNA. 

I want to address the biggest issue with ancient alien ideas.  They are all notoriously racist.  There is an underlying notion that "white people couldn't figure it out, so brown people must have had help from an advanced species."  Which is pure bullshit.  We do have better ideas on how the pyramids were built and why.  We know how the stone heads on Easter Island were transported. We even have better hypotheses on how places like Stonehenge were built. None of these involved magic or alien technology.  Renowned Egyptologist Zahi Hawass has been particularly critical of these ideas saying they take away from the ingenuity of the Egyptian people.  I agree.

Once you start reading into this (and I even found a couple of questionable documentaries) it opens a whole rat's nest of crazy topics.  I am not going to go into any of these topics in detail. No room here and way off scope. But I am going to link some of the more *interesting* ones and the ones that had the most effect on my work here.

• 5000 BCE
• Anakim
• Nephilim
• Reptilian conspiracy theory
• Serpent gods/worship 
• Serpent symbolism
• Serpent Seed

This all makes one think about the movie and TV series "Stargate."  And it was looking into all of this that made me realize how much stuff I can use here.

For NIGHT SHIFT

Most ancient alien/god "theories" are centered around Egypt and the Pyramids.  But many also pull in myths, legends, and stories from ancient Babylon, Sumeria, and the Fertile Crescent.  Others also involve American cultures like the Mayans, Aztecs, and the Toltecs.  While Egypt and the Fertile Crescent certainly had interactions, the Central and South Americans had no contact with them. In fact, that is a central thesis of these theories; "They had no human contact but there are similarities, therefore they must have had divine/extraterrestrial contact."  Ok, technically that is not a theory but more of a poorly worded research position trying to move to a hypothesis.  I am going to suspend my years of doing and teaching research design though for now.  This is for a game, not a grant.  

In NIGHT SHIFT Ancient Aliens DID exist, but they did not give humans high-tech materials or help them build the pyramids.  Humans were slaves and many times they were food.  To quote Dr. Peter Venkman from Ghostbusters II, "And that is the whole problem with aliens, is you just can't trust them. Occasionally you meet a nice one: Starman, E.T. But usually they turn out to be some kind of big lizard!"

The ancient peoples feared them, but I am going to say they mostly tried to fight them.  There were organizations created then to combat this alien invasion and some still exist to this day. 

These ancient aliens were those lizards.  They invaded ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia and gave gods like Set, Apep, and Tiamat.  Then they went over to Central America and gave Queztcoatl.   The world of NIGHT SHIFT is absolutely overrun with alien lizards and their genetically modified lizard people.  

The ancient alien theories claim they are "reptoids" and are from stars in the constellation Draco. IT doesn't matter it seems that some of the stars in Draco are only 20 ly away (σ Dra) and others are as far as 7,000 ly away (V571 Dra) and everything in between.  But for NIGHT SHIFT let's pick Thuban (Alpha Draconis) as their homeworld.  It is 303 ly away, so a good distance.  It could explain the gap in time between visiting Ancient Egypt and Meso-America, they had to go back home.

I will get into the details of these lizards and what they can do.  But this is a start.  They have been here since the beginning and are still here now.  Maybe they are connected to the dinosaurs and responsible for all the myths about dragons.  

Who knows. 

I guess we all will soon.

The NIGHT SHIFT RPG is available from the Elf Lair Games website (hardcover) and from DriveThruRPG (PDF).

Be sure to visit all the A to Z blogs this month at the Blogging from A to Z blog.

The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beyond the Grave! is a quick-start for They Came From Beyond the Grave!, the roleplaying game of the shock, the terror, the eroticism, and the  humor of 1970s horror films. It is inspired by the output of Hammer Film Productions, Amicus Productions, and Roger Corman—so The Curse of Frankenstein and Captain Kronos – Vampire Hunter, The City of the Dead and Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors, and House of Usher and The Raven, and more... Its tales are not just from the 1970s, but also the nineteenth century, and they are performed by actors with rich, fruity voices ready to project all the way to the back of the auditorium, who are all going to give their all, despite wishing that they were performing on the stage, which is the proper venue for men of their talents and stature. Published by Onyx Path Publishing, The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beyond the Grave! provides everything necessary for a gaming group to give the roleplaying game a try and perhaps even use it as the starter scenario to a horror campaign set in the miserable, grim and grimy dark ages of the England in the seventies and the gaslight reaches of the Victorian era. This includes a basic explanation of the rules, a nine-scene scenario—the ‘The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory!’ of the title, and five pre-generated Player Characters or protagonists, plus Trademarks for all of the Player Characters, Quip Cards, and Cinematic Cards.

The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beyond the Grave! employs the Storypath system. A distillation of the earlier Storyteller system, it is simpler and streamlined, designed for slightly cinematic, effect driven play. The core mechanic uses dice pools of ten-sided dice, typically formed from the combination of a skill and an attribute, for example Intellect and Science to analyse a problem, Aim and Dexterity to fire a gun, and Empathy and Manipulation to unobtrusively get someone to do what a character wants. These skill and attribute combinations are designed to be flexible, with a character’s preferred method being described as a character’s Favoured Approach. So a character whose Favoured Approach is Force, would use Close Combat and Might in a melee fight; if Finesse, Close Combat and Dexterity; and if Resilience, then Close Combat and Stamina.

The aim when rolling, is to score Successes, a Success being a result of eight or more. Rolls of ten count as two in They Came From Beyond the Grave!, rather than the capacity for the player to roll again for further Successes. Typically, a player only needs to roll one Success for a character to succeed at a task, though it can be as many as three, and ideally, he will want to roll more. Not only because Successes can be used to buy off Complications—ranging between one and five—but also because they can be used to buy Stunts which will impose Complications for others, create an Enhancement for another action, or one that makes it difficult to act against a character. Stunts cost at least one Success and each of the five pre-generated protagonists in The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beyond the Grave!  possesses three favoured Stunts. These include ‘Uncover the Truth’, ‘Spot Weakness’, ‘Oracular Gaze’, and more. However, where combat Stunts like ‘Increase Damage’, ‘Knockdown/Trip’, and ‘Pin Down’ are explained, there appears to be no explanation for the three favoured Stunts for each of the Protagonists.

Under the Storypath system, and thus in They Came From Beyond the Grave!, failure is never complete. Either a player can spend a Rewrite to reroll; accept the failure, accept its consequences and a Consolation; or if the roll was a failure and a one was rolled on the die, suffer the consequences of a Botch and earn two Rewrites for the Writer’s Pool.

Both ‘The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory!’ and They Came From Beyond the Grave! use a number of mechanics which help enforce the genre. Unlike Party Beach Creature Feature! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beneath the Sea!, the quick-start for They Came From Beneath the Sea!, Protagonists do not have access to Trademarks, each tied to a particular skill, which grant the player two extra dice on a related roll per Trademark, but when activated and there are some Successes left over from the completed task, enable the player to gain Directorial Control of the film. There is scope for them in They Came From Beyond the Grave! as there is space for them on the character sheet, but they do not appear in The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beyond the Grave!.

A Protagonist does have Quips, like ‘I always believed human sacrifice died out.’ or ‘There's your proof — the proof of your own eyes.’ When used, they require everyone around the table to vote whether or not their use is appropriate, but if a Quip is successful, it earns a player another die to a roll or a reroll if a complex action. Rewrites are another genre-enforcing mechanic and are drawn from the Writers’ Pool, which is a group resource. They require all players to agree to their use, but with that agreement, a Rewrite can be used to make rerolls or add dice to a roll, as well as to active Cinematic Powers. Several of these are listed, including ‘I’m a Serious Actor’ which grants a bonus to the Protagonist’s Social Attributes after he uses his serious acting chops to elevate the film; ‘Same Set, Different Movie’ in which the Protagonist—or the actor playing him recognises the set of the film from another and uses it to his advantage; and ‘Waxing Poe-etical’ which has the player narrating the actions of his protagonist in rhyme and everyone joining in to gain an Enhancement for all associated rolls. Several Rewrites are included in The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beyond the Grave!, but only five are used in play.

The rules in The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beyond the Grave! are not quite as well explained as they could be. Beyond the basic rules, which are clear enough, the rules for combat are explained in the scenes where they might happen in the scenario and there is no explanation of the Stunts for the Protagonists. That aside, the rules are all easy to use in play. They are specifically designed to encourage and support cinematic play, even badly cinematic play, and whilst they are genre-enforcing, there are quite a few of them. So as much as the players need to lean into the genre and their Protagonists, they also need to lean into the genre-enforcing mechanics—the Rewrites, the Cinematic Powers, and more—to get their full effect. This is not an impediment to play as such, but more of a requirement than players might expect of the roleplaying game.

A Protagonist in Both ‘The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory!’ and They Came From Beyond the Grave! has nine Attributes—Intellect, Cunning, Resolving, Might, Dexterity, Stamina, Presence, Manipulation, and Composure; a range a skills, Quips, and Favoured Stunts. A Protagonist also has a Path each for his Archetype, Origin, and Ambition, but these do not play a role in the jump-start, whilst of his three Aspirations, or goals, only the two short term Aspirations really count in The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beyond the Grave!.

The five Protagonists included in The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beyond the Grave! consist of an elderly and authorative parapsychology professor, a brilliant, but disillusioned scientist, an ex-cop turned skeptical researcher, an eccentric medium, and a would-be hero dupe. Each is presented in full colour over two pages with the character sheet on one and an illustration and background on the other. The character sheets are easy to read and the background easy to pick up.

The scenario, ‘The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory!’, on two stormy separate, but connected, nights. The Protagonists are members of a parapsychology research team from the University of Portsmouth (technically Portsmouth Polytechnic at the time of the scenario) who are visiting Abbeyham Priory, a gothic pile with a long reputation for being haunted and being associated with witch hunts. Once the Protagonists get past the small crowd of protestors objecting to the idea of ghost hunters visiting a place of God and gain entry to the abbey, they find the nuns frosty and unwelcoming. The building is shabby, dusty, and cobweb strewn, the floors creak and there is nowhere to escape the draughts. The nuns seem to watch their every move, and despite what the Protagonists’ ghost hunting equipment fails to detect, there seems to be signs of ghosts everywhere. Well, if not ghosts, then something strange is definitely going on.

The Protagonists are members of a parapsychology research team from the University of Portsmouth (technically Portsmouth Polytechnic at the time of the scenario) who are visiting Abbeyham Priory, a gothic pile with a long reputation for being haunted and being associated with witch hunts. Once the Protagonists get past the small crowd of protestors objecting to the idea of ghost hunters visiting a place of God and gain entry to the abbey, they find the nuns frosty and unwelcoming. The building is shabby, dusty, and cobweb strewn, the floors creak and there is nowhere to escape the draughts. The nuns seem to watch their every move, and despite what the Protagonists’ ghost hunting equipment fails to detect, there seems to be signs of ghosts everywhere. Well, if not ghosts, then something strange is going on!

‘The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory!’ is designed to be played in four hours—and so is suitable to be run as a convention scenario—and is designed as a fairly linear countdown to a big finale. Which is entirely fitting for the genre. It contains a detailed description of the abbey, (though there is no map), which the Protagonists have plenty of opportunity to explore and are encouraged to do so to gain clues as to what is exactly going on at the abbey. Some of the clues come from a series of flashback scenes which foreshadow the events of the present in ‘The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory!’. These are set in the nineteenth century and involve visitors to Abbeyham Priory very similar to the Protagonists and who are in fact roleplayed by the players as variations upon their Protagonists! As the scenario counts down, its scenes cut back and forth between the present and the past, one set of Protagonists desperately fighting to withstand their inevitable doom, the other set  desperately fighting to withstand their potentially inevitable doom.

Physically, The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beyond the Grave! is a slim softback, done in full colour throughout. The artwork is excellent and gloriously depicts the campy, over the top horror of its genre. Therea re two main issues with the quick-start. One is that the rules explanation is underwritten and there are elements, such as the explanations of the Trademark Stunts missing. The other is the structure of the scenario, which writes some of the core rules for the roleplaying game into scenes when they should really have been placed together with the explanation of the basic rules. Consequently, The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beyond the Grave! does need a thorough read through as part of preparation, both to grasp the overall rules as well as the structure of the scenario.

It should be noted that ‘The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory!’ is a very British scenario. Consequently, it includes an explanation of what ‘jumble’ and a ‘jumble sale’ are and the Protagonists get a scene in an Austin Allegro. Which is either the result of brilliant research or the author getting revenge for childhood nightmares spent in the back seat of one on very long family holidays. Either way, for players of a certain age, it will bring back terrifying flashbacks of their own...

Although it needs a little more preparation than perhaps is necessary to ready the players for the rules, The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beyond the Grave! has everything the Director and her players need for one night’s session of a dark and stormy night, creepy nuns and salacious nuns, jump scares, creaks and groans from cheap sets, and over over acting. Anyone looking for down at heel frights and the richest, fruitiest of hammy performances as the clock ticks down to horror should prepare for a night at The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beyond the Grave!

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I can't believe that April is nearly here.

For many years now I have participated in the April A to Z blogging challenge.  Blogging every day is not really a challenge for me anymore; 15 years into this and I still have a lot to say.  For me is to find something that I want to talk about for a month straight AND provide you my reader the same sort of content you are used to.  That's the real challenge.

I debated on whether or not to do it this year.  But I came up with an idea and told my wife. She thought my idea was dull (it was) and instead suggested the topic I am going to do now.

So allow me to present to you, 

The A to Z of Conspiracy Theories for NIGHT SHIFT Veterans of the Supernatural Wars.  

The idea here is present to you a conspiracy theory and then how to bring it into your NIGHT SHIFT games.  I have my list ready to go but I do reserve the right to alter it as the discussions here take me. 

A few notes.

1. I, generally speaking, do not believe in ANY of these conspiracy theories.   I have spent the last month reading about them in earnest and while many are fun, some are downright racist and/or dangerous.  

2. I am not supporting any of these conspiracy theories.  Quite the opposite. They a fiction of the same level as my own "Generation HEX" or "Weirdly World News."   So while none of them seem to stand up to real scientific scrutiny, they can be fun for an RPG.

3. YES there have been some conspiracies that have turned out to be true.  The plot to kill Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was one.  But I am not convinced that the people doing that (the Black Hand) had WWI as their goal.  The suppressing of dangerous chemicals in cigarettes and the plot to keep the exploding tanks in Pintos by the Ford Motor Company were others.  JFK was killed by a lone gunman and 9/11 was a plot by Al-Qaeda and not the US government.

For these, I am keeping an eye on the Conspiracy Chart as created by Abbie Richards.

I am going to avoid some topics for various reasons.  My first requirement for anything here is "will it be good in a game?"  So if you are wondering why I pick some topics and not others that is usually the case.   For example right now "P" is a toss-up between "Phoenix Lights" and "Paul is Dead."   Phoenix Lights have more game-related uses, but the "death" of Paul McCartney is an old favorite of mine. 

My goal is to try to include NIGHT SHIFT stats and rules as I can.  I want to get the word out on my favorite RPG.  I will try to situate them in the various Night Worlds when and where I can.  So many of these ideas can be great fodder for Weirdly World News or even my Valhalla, AL setting. 

This could be very fun!

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I had a great Gary Con this past weekend.   I spent all my time in the Elf Lair Games / Troll Lords Games booth.  I spent my time selling copies of NIGHT SHIFT and Castles & Crusades.

I also got the chance to run into so many people I only get to chat with online.  I stopped by the Goblinoid Games / James Mishler Games booth to finally say hello.

I picked up some print versions of books I previously only had in PDF.

They were also selling copies of a new RPG, ShadowDark by Kelsey Dionne of the Arcane Library.  It looks rather good.

I also stopped by Bloat Games booth and got the chance to see Eric Bloat and Josh Palmer and grab a copy of their game What Shadows Hide.

Again this looks like a lot of fun.

I am not an autograph hound, but there were some signatures I wanted.  Top of the list was Darlene.

I also got to stop at Jeff Easley's booth and got him to sign his art from the 25th Anniversary Boxed Set.

 

And of course, I HAD to pick up the tribute/homage covers of the new Castles & Crusades covers.

 They do look really nice.

I didn't play any games or run any, but I had a great time.  

Looking forward to next year!

The Monstrous Compendiums would eventually move over to an annual format of perfect-bound soft-cover books.  These followed on the footsteps of the combined, hardcover Monstrous Manual, which people liked much better.  The idea was to publish a collection of all the published monsters from other products in a Monstrous Compendium style format.  But the days of perforated and loose-leaf pages was over and the Annuals and the other books that followed were all bound collections.

To my knowledge, there were four of these in total.  I never owned the print copies, at this time I was getting married and moving into a new house, though I have been able to get the PDFs from DriveThruRPG.  Curiously, Annual Vol. 2 has not made it to PDF yet.

Monstrous Compendium Annual - Volume 1

PDF 128 pages, Color cover art, color interior art, $9.99.  129 monsters, Aballin to Xaver.

This first book took on the trade-dress and style of the early AD&D 2nd Ed line and was a companion piece to the hardcover Monstrous Manual. 

There are a lot of monsters here I have seen in later editions of the game and some are completely new to me.  There are a surprising amount of dragons for example. There are few I recognize from 1st Ed that I guess had not made it over to 2nd ed yet (Gibbering Mouther as one example). There are a also a few I recognize from Ravenloft, given a more "generic" or general approach.

It is a good collection of monsters, to be honest.  While the page are formatted to fit a book and not really a Monsterous Compendium (the left or right justification of the text on titles) you can still take this PDF and print your own page to fit into your Monstrous Compendiums.  I am going to do this with the dragons for example.

Monstrous Compendium Annual - Volume III

PDF 130 pages, Color cover art, color interior art, $4.95.  131 monsters, Alaghi to Zhentarim Spirit.

This third annual takes on the trade dress of the later printing AD&D 2nd material when the "2nd Edition" subtitle was removed.  The formatting looks transitional. That is I see here the original Monstrous Compendiums eventually morphed into the style I associate with the last years of 2nd ed (and TSR for that matter).

The volume includes a lot of monsters I had seen in various Ravenloft and Forgotten Realms publications at the time and a few that I assume got their origins in the Dark Sun and Planescape product lines.  There are some that also first appeared in the Creature Catalog from Dragon Magazine (Lillend for example).

There are few more dragons here too and, in a surprise, two demons / Tanar'ri.  So something here for everyone.

This book also includes the Ondonti, the Lawful Good Orcs. So don't try to tell me that "Good" orcs are a new thing.

Monstrous Compendium Annual - Volume 4

PDF 98 pages, Color cover art, color interior art, $4.95.  104 monsters,  Ammonite to Zombie, Mud.

This fourth and last Monstrous Compendium Annual was published in 1998 by Wizards of the Coast, though the TSR brand is still on the books.  Additionally, this book also indicated where each monster came from whether Forgotten Realms or the pages of Dragon Magazine. There are some that I think are original to this volume. There is even a monster from Alternity here, which is a big surprise!

I would also like to point out that this is the first of these Annuals that acknowledges that it is based on the original D&D rules created by E. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson.

There are quite a few new-to-me monsters here and few I have seen in other places before.  It is nice to get them all into one place.  

These annuals certainly represent the widest variety in monsters I have sen in any of the other compendiums.  If I were to play AD&D 2nd Ed again, I think I would start with these as my sources for new and different sorts of creatures.  I am sure that people that were still playing at this time (I had gone on an AD&D sabbatical from 1996/7 to 2000) might be more familiar with these books and these monsters, but it is a joy to open a book, even one 20-25 years old, and see something new.

I am now at the point if I print these out I am going to need a third 3-Ring binder.

The set-up will sound familiar. A gang of besuited, well-dressed criminals arrive at a warehouse having just pulled off an extraordinary crime. Before planning and committing the crime, they had never met before, and even afterwards, they only know each other by their pseudonyms—Mister Black, Mister Red, Mister Green, Mister Purple, Mister Beige, and Mister Silver. The crime has been successfully committed; all they need to do now is follow the boss’ instructions. Lay low in the warehouse until midnight, when he will come for them and ferry them to safety across the bay. It is only a few hours, but not everyone in the gang likes each other and not everyone trusts each other. Perhaps with good reason, because some of them have secrets—and that is before the strange things which seem to be happening in the warehouse. The loot is not what it was when it was stolen—but now it definitely is. Time seems to pass really slowly or really quick. The sound of sirens can be heard right outside the warehouse—but the cops are nowhere to be seen. A baby crying can be heard, but never found in the warehouse. Mister Grey keeps copious notes, but comes and goes. Was he in on the robbery, and if so, should he not be staying in the warehouse like everyone else?

If that sounds like the plot of the first film from nineties wunderkind, then you would not be far wrong.

This is the set-up for Dockside Dogs, a scenario for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition from its co-designer, Paul Fricker. It is a gangster themed, single-session, one-shot scenario which more or less follows the plot of almost any ‘Heist Gone Wrong’ film, from Rififi to Reservoir Dogs—though more the latter than the former. It is set in the nineties, but could just as easily be set in other time periods, and whilst it has obvious American trappings it could be easily adjusted to almost any other big coastal city. As a one-shot, it is designed to be roleplayed by six players and to that end comes with over twelve Investigator sheets so that each of the six gangster Investigators can be played as male or female. There are guidelines for running the scenario with fewer players, but Dockside Dogs is at its best with the full cast of six players and thus six gangsters. Each Investigator sheet includes a personal description, backstory, treasured possessions, and traits for that gangster, as well as a list of what each gangster thinks—and in some cases knows—of his or her fellow crew members.

Dockside Dogs begins with the gangsters arriving at the warehouse in two groups. Exactly what happened earlier in the day will be established through flashbacks and here Dockside Dogs begins to diverge away from what the traditional Call of Cthulhu investigation. The investigation, such as it is, is not through newspaper morgues or in libraries, but into each other. This is spurred on by events which the Keeper slips into the scenario exacerbate the sense of paranoia and uncertainty which pervades the scenario. Another difference between Dockside Dogs and other scenarios for Call of Cthulhu is that it encourages creativity and improvisation upon the part of the players and the Keeper. The effect of these scenes is twofold. First, they strengthen the links between the gangsters, and second, they call back to the film which inspires the scenario and enforces the genre.

Physically, Dockside Dogs is well presented, clearly written, and consequently easy to run with relatively little preparation. The Investigator sheets have all been customised for the scenario and are nicely individualised from one character to the next. Interestingly, there is some foreshadowing on some of the Investigator sheets, which effectively calls for the players of those Investigators to go along with the plot, again to enforce the genre and call back to the scenario’s inspiration.

Just as the genre and film inspiring Dockside Dogs is obvious, so is the Mythos inspiring it. However, just as the scenario asks the players to lean into its genre and filmic inspiration, it is also asking them to lean into the Mythos inspiration as well, though that inspiration is used in a markedly different fashion. With its combination of genre and single-session, one-shot format, Dockside Dogs is reminiscent of the Blood Brothers and Blood Brothers 2 anthologies, but is a more modern, storytelling-influenced version of that format. Dockside Dogs involves ‘blood brothers’ of a different kind in what is a tense and potentially bloody character study.

The rise of the dead and the zombie outbreak has been visited again and again in board games and roleplaying games that the concept has become a cliché and the question has to be asked with each new game, “What makes this zombie game different?” such that a playing group will pick it up and play it. So the question is, “What makes Zombicide Chronicles different?” As the name suggests it is based on the boardgame of the same name, Zombicide, in which the players control the fate of the ‘Survivors’ as the zombies rise up, infect their town, and they fight back, becoming ‘Hunters’, taking the violence to the corpse cortège… This is no Deadof Winter or The Walking Dead where every day is a desperate battle for survival—and that is even before the survivors encounter any zombies! Instead, Zombicide is a game in which the players ‘team up, gear up, level up, take ’em down’ and batter, slash, hack, and shoot the members of the cadaver cavalcade and it is this sensibility which is brought to Zombicide Chronicles: The Roleplaying Game.
Zombicide Chronicles: The Roleplaying Game is published by CoolMiniOrNot and Guillotine Games as part of the successful Kickstarter campaign for Zombicide: 2nd Edition. It is designed as both a standalone roleplaying game set in the Zombicide universe and a roleplaying game which is compatible with Zombicide, 2nd Edition, so that the cards and the dice and more can be used with the roleplaying game. This compatibility does lead to some oddities with regard to terminology if the players have experience with other roleplaying games. If they are coming to the roleplaying game after playing the board game, then this is not an issue. If however, they have not, then a little adjustment might be required.

A Survivor in Zombicide Chronicles: The Roleplaying Game is defined by his Skills, Attributes, and Proficiencies, and through the combination of Attributes and Proficiencies, his Actions. Skills are actually special abilities, which work under particular situations, for example, ‘Born Leader’ enables a player to give another player an extra Support Action in combat or ‘Beak-in’, which enables a player to get past standard locked doors or windows without any noise or specialist equipment. There are three Attributes—Muscle, Brains, and Grit, and Proficiencies—Athletics, Attitude, Background, Combat, Perception, and Survival—are categories in which a Survivor can specialise. Attributes and Proficiencies are rated between one and three and laid out on a grid with Attributes along the top and the Proficiencies listed down the side. In play, the Proficiencies are cross-referenced with the Attributes to give an Action, for example, cross-reference the Background Proficiency with the Brains Attribute to get the Education Action or the Perception Proficiency with the Grit Attribute for the Scout Action. It is Actions that might be seen as skills in other roleplaying games.

To create a Survivor, a player first selects an Archetype. There are twelve of these, each with a favoured Proficiency, Attribute, and four starting Skills. They include a BMXRider, a Hacker and Boxer, Bus Driver, Resourceful Foreman, Postwomen, and more…There is, of course, a boxed set of miniatures for the twelve archetypes, which would enable the player-created Survivors to be used in conjunction with the board game. All come with a name, a quote, and a suggestion as to why a player might pick that archetype. The player selects four starting Skills and four favoured Actions (these are underlined on the sheet), and assigns ratings of one, two, and three to his Survivor’s Attributes. He sets two Proficiencies at three, three at two, and one at one. The Survivor also has some gear—a readied weapon, a holstered weapon, and the contents of a backpack.

Alternatively, a player can instead create a Survivor from scratch, ignoring the Archetype step, though they are fun. This would free a player to choose all four of his Survivor’s favoured Proficiency, Attribute, and four starting Skills. A set of tables provides options for the Survivor’s Prologue—when he first heard of the outbreak, firsts aw a zombie, his first Zombicide, and more. The process is quick and easy, and defines the Survivor in broad strokes.

Stanley Redfield
Occupation: Reformed Burglar
Level 0
Habit: Rolls a cigarette, but never lights it. Had to give up for health reasons.
Looks: Unshaven, shifty, and balding
Hit Points: 4
Stress: 6

SKILLS
Break-in, Is That All You Got?, Precision, Mindfulness

ACTIONS – Muscle 3 Brains 2 Grit 1
Athletics 2 Stunt Sneak Endure
Attitude 1 Appeal Convince Hearten
Background 2 Security Education Contacts
Combat 2 Fight Shoot Cool
Perception 3 Spot Evaluate Scout
Survival 3 Scavenge Tinker Heal

GEAR
Pistol, crowbar

When did I first hear about the outbreak?
My brother-in-law died and I heard he came back from the dead…

When did I first experience the outbreak?
My neighbour’s dog wouldn’t shut up, and when I went to investigate, the crotchety old witch nearly ripped my damned arm off…

When was my first Zombicide?
I helped clean up the neighbourhood. Not like the cops were coming…

What happened to your significant others?
I ain’t heard from my son. I sure hope I can find him and he is okay.

What did I take with me?
My cell phone. Need to find a charger for it though…

What did I leave behind?
My favourite book, Angels & Demons

How did I meet the other survivors?
Yeah, one or two were friends.

Mechanically, Zombicide Chronicles: The Roleplaying Game is simple. A player cross-references a Proficiency with an Attribute to give an Action, the combination of values for the Proficiency and the Attribute give the number of dice to be rolled for the Action. This generates a base dice pool which ranges in size from two to six dice, but to this can be added bonus dice for a Favoured Action, equipment, and the difficulty of the situation, which can increase or reduce the number of dice to be rolled. This can increase the number of dice up to a total of twelve, and any dice after the first six, are rolled as Master dice. Zombicide Chronicles: The Roleplaying Game has its own dice. These are six-sided dice, marked with a Zombie Head on the one face and a Molotov Cocktail on the six face, but ordinary six-sided dice can be used instead just as easily. The basic dice should be all one colour, whilst the Master dice another. When rolled, results of the Molotov Cocktail count as Successes. Only one success is required for an Action to succeed, but multiple Successes rolled improve the outcome. If a Zombie Head is rolled on a Mastery Dice, then the player can reroll it once. If there are more Zombie Heads than Molotov Cocktails (or ones versus sixes), then Trouble can ensue, such as a weapon being dropped or friendly fire in combat!
For example, Stanley Redfield is out scouting downtown and discovers a pharmacist which has only been partially looted. There are zombies moving around and he wants to break in without alerting them. His player selects the Security Action, which effectively means he is cross-referencing his Muscle of three with his Background Proficiency of two. This gives him a base dice pool of five dice, but since Security is a favoured Action, this adds one Bonus Die. The use of his crowbar also adds another Bonus Die. Which means altogether, Stanley’s player is rolling six dice and one Mastery die.Combat uses the same mechanics, with only one success needed to hit and weapons inflicting a fixed amount of damage. Combat consists of ‘Opening Shots’ of ranged combat, followed by proper Combat Rounds of melee combat. Zombies are attacked in speed order, from the slowest to the fastest, unless the Survivor takes the Aim move. Damage needs to be enough to kill a zombie in one go, or not at all, and some of the zombies, like the Abomination, can withstand more damage than most weapons can inflict. In this instance, the Survivors need to master their weapons with the right Skills. Zombies attack and automatically do damage in the Combat Rounds with the Game Master not needing to roll. Armour provides protection, but can be damaged. Another option is that the Survivors can take the Evade move.

One advantage a Survivor has in combat is that he can inflict Stress on himself in return for turning a failed roll into a Success. Whether this is possible depends on the weapon and its Accuracy value, and the number rolled on the dice. For example, the fire axe has an accuracy of four plus. If the player rolls just numbers on the dice rather than Zombie Heads or Molotov Cocktails, he can check the numbers, and if any of them are four or five, he can take a point of Stress to turn it into a Success. Stress though is a finite resource and there is a limit to how often a player can use it. Once his limit is reached, a Survivor will need to find a way of relieving his Stress.

All weapons have an Accuracy value like this. The ranged weapons in Zombicide Chronicles are the generic pistol, shotgun, and so on, but the melee weapons are more individual—baseball bat, chainsaw, katana, kukri, and more. They all have their own cards in the board game which can be incorporated into Zombicide Chronicles: The Roleplaying Game.

As play progresses and a Survivor rolls Successes, he accrues Adrenalin. This is tracked and as it rises, he can use more and more of his Skills (or special abilities). Adrenalin is also gained for achieving objectives. The Skills are rated either Basic, Advanced, Master, and Ultimate. At the beginning of a Mission, a Survivor can use just his Basic Skills, meaning that he gets better and better as the Mission proceeds.

Zombicide Chronicles: The Roleplaying Game is played in two phases—the Shelter Phase and the Mission Phase. The Shelter Phase is when the Survivors plan and prepare the situation in their current shelter and nearby, including checking for supplies (if they have insufficient supplies, the Survivors will suffer Conditions in the Mission Phase), gathering rumours, making things, studying or training, and creating and defending a shelter. The Mission Phase is when the Survivors go out and perform the mission itself. Various types of missions are discussed, including going on a supply run, exploring, making a rescue run, and more. This is combined with the ‘World of Zombicide’, which describes the various districts and locations of an archetypal city and takes up the last third of the Zombicide Chronicles: The Roleplaying Game. Although there is no actual scenario in the roleplaying game, the ‘World of Zombicide’ has plenty of ideas and NPCs for the Game Master to use.

In terms of zombies, Zombicide Chronicles: The Roleplaying Game has its own ‘Zombipedia’. There are four base types of zombie—Walker, Fattie, Runner, and Abomination, and these are typically organised in play into hordes which the Survivors will need to take down. The Game Master can customise these though to add variation, and several mutated and animal zombie types are also included. There is good advice for the Game Master on running the game, including suggestions on how to set the right tone for her players, though this is a horror game after all.

Physically, Zombicide Chronicles: The Roleplaying Game is big, bold, and in your face. It is heavily illustrated with lots and lots of cartoon style artwork, decent maps and floorplans, and fully painted panoramas of the city. The book is well written and easy to read.

There are any number of zombie-themed roleplaying games, but with its simple mechanics and cartoon zombie action, Zombicide Chronicles: The Roleplaying Game is easy to pick up and easy to play. The compatibility between Zombicide Chronicles: The Roleplaying Game and the Zombicide: 2nd Edition board game means that there is plenty of potential for cross play between the two. So, the various equipment cards and map tiles from Zombicide: 2nd Edition could be used with Zombicide Chronicles: The Roleplaying Game to play out the action of the Mission Phase, but equally, the Survivors created using the Zombicide Chronicles: The Roleplaying Game could be used to play through the content in Zombicide: 2nd Edition. However, given that potential for cross compatibility, there is no advice on how to do that, which is an odd admission since the roleplaying game was funded as part of the Kickstarter for the board game.

Zombicide Chronicles: TheRoleplaying Game is a grim—but not dark—post apocalyptic roleplaying game with genre elements and a setting of the ‘World of Zombicide’ that will be familiar to most gamers. This does not stop it from delivering fast-paced, big, zombie-fueled tension and action.