Miskatonic Monday #344: Blackthorne Bridge Club: New Tricks

Much like the Jonstown Compendium for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and The Companions of Arthur for material set in Greg Stafford’s masterpiece of Arthurian legend and romance, Pendragon, the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition is a curated platform for user-made content. 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.

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Name: Blackthorne Bridge Club: New Tricks

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Gavin Bastiensz

Setting: New York, 1924

Product: Scenario
What You Get: Fifty-five page, 4.39 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Madness in an asylum, who would have thought it?
Plot Hook: Will it take half the corpse to put the plot together, or the whole body?

Plot Support: Staging advice, four pre-generated Investigators, thirteen NPCs, and one Mythos monster.

Production Values: Plain

Pros

# A sequel to Blackthorne Bridge Club

# More of a standard investigation than its predecessor

# Nicely detailed pre-generated Investigators, complete with secrets

# Intriguing showdown

# Pleasing sense of closure to one personal plot strand

# Chronomentrophobia

# Apotemnohobia

# Chronophobia

Cons

# Needs a slight edit

# A timeline would have helped with the structure

# What are the Investigators supposed to do with Theodore Roosevelt in 1923?

Conclusion

# Disappointing sequel that just feels a bit woolly

# Showdown has mammoth ramifications barely touched upon

Miskatonic Monday #343: Hope’s End

Much like the Jonstown Compendium for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and The Companions of Arthur for material set in Greg Stafford’s masterpiece of Arthurian legend and romance, Pendragon, the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition is a curated platform for user-made content. 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.

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Name: Hope’s End

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author Steen Stahlhut

Setting: New England, 1914

Product: One-shot
What You Get: Forty-six page, 4.74 MB PDF

Elevator Pitch: Can a zombie be guilty of making a false instrument?

Plot Hook: New England in a time of cholera.
Plot Support: Staging advice, four pre-generated Investigators, nine handouts, three NPCs, three maps, one Mythos tome, one Mythos spell, and two monsters.

Production Values: Underwhelming.

Pros

# Scenario near Lovecraft Country

# Easy to adjust to other locations

# Historically inspired scenario

# Mythos elements pleasingly hidden under another investigation

# Nosophobia

# Necrophobia

# Kinemortophobia

Cons

# Why are grave diggers in Call of Cthulhu always drunk?

# Needs a good edit

Conclusion

# Medical turned Mythos investigation undermined by poor presentation

# Potentially a very serviceable investigation

Your Imperium Maledictum Starter

The light of the Emperor’s divine might reaches everywhere—but not always. Only in recent years has the Great Rift begun to unseal and the mysterious Noctis Aeterna begun to recede, the Days of Blinding ended, and links reforged with worlds in the Marcharius Sector lost under its pall and beyond the sector itself. As communication, trade, and psychic links have been reestablished with Terra, the Imperium has worked hard to restore its rightful authority and ensure that no deviancy from creed has taken place in the Days of Blinding. Despite this still, heretics turn to the Dark Gods with their promises and falsehoods and corruption is rife, wasting the Emperor’s resources and wealth, and from without, there is always the danger of raids by Orks or worse, Tyranoids. Yet routing out such heresies and corruption is no matter, but an issue of politics and influence as well as loyalty and devotion. The Emperor’s great servants search out those they deem worthy to serve them and the Imperium, directing them to investigate mysteries and murders, experience horror and heresies, expose corruption and callousness, whether in in pursuit of their patron’s agenda, his faction’s agenda, the Emperor’s will, or all three. In return they will gain privileges far beyond that imagined by their fellows—the chance to travel and see worlds far beyond their own, enjoy wealth and comfort that though modest is more than they could have dreamed of, and witness great events that they might have heard of years later by rumour or newscast. This though, is not without its costs, for they will face the worst that the forces of Chaos has to fling at them, the possibility of death, and if they fail, exile and loss of all that they have gained. In the Forty-First Millennium, everyone is an asset and everyone is expendable, but some can survive long enough to make a difference in the face of an uncaring universe and the machinery of the Imperium of Mankind grinding its way forward into a glorious future.

This is the set-up in Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum, the spiritual successor to Dark Heresy, the very first roleplaying game to be set within the Warhammer 40,000 milieu and published in 2008, the very first roleplaying game that Games Workshop had published in two decades. Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum is published by Cubicle 7 Entertainment and now it has its own introduction to the setting in the form of the Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum Starter Set. Given that this is from Cubicle 7 Entertainment, there is the likelihood that this is going to be a good product. After all, since the publication of the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Starter Set, the publisher has been releasing one good starter set after another. Which begs the question, what is a good starter set? Essentially, it has to provide everything that the Game Master and her players need to play a good scenario that showcases the nature of the setting and what the players and their characters do in the game, explains the rules, and provide content that can be played beyond the confines of the box.

Open the Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum Starter Set and the first thing that the reader sees is a set of nice percentile dice and a gatefold pamphlet that screams, “READ THIS FIRST!”. This starts with a broad overview of the setting, shows you what is in the box, what Imperium Maledictum and a roleplaying game are, how you get started and what you need to play, and where to go next once the contents of the box have been played through. In four pages, it provides the reader—both player and Game Master with a solid introduction to the setting. As an introduction to roleplaying games, it is more basic, so the reader might want to look elsewhere. Nevertheless, this does not mean that it does not do a good job. Below this are six Player Character sheets, again done as gatefold pamphlets. On the front they explain who the character is and why a player might choose to roleplay that character, gives the character some quotes that player could use in play, whilst inside the actual character sheet for the character is presented, along with a breakdown of the sheet alongside it and a list of the character’s goals, connections to the other characters, and secrets. Lastly on the back of the character sheet is a full-page illustration of the character. These pack a lot of information into their three pages—four including the illustration—but the layout never threatens to overwhelm the reader, keeping everything to hand whilst the focus remains on the character sheet at the centre. The six include a Zealot, a Penumbra (a stealthy assassin and infiltrator), an Interlocutor, a Psyker, a surgeon of the Adeptus Mechanicus, and a warrior.

In addition, the box also contains a set of tokens that include the Inquisitorial Seal, a prop that is used to indicate who has possession of it in the game, Character Portrait and Environmental Trait tokens for use on a map (there are no maps provided Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum Starter Set), Superiority Tokens to track the party’s Superiority, and Fate Tokens. There is a set of reference sheets that in turn explain the basic rules, combat, criticals and wounds, conditions and environmental hazards, factions and influence, Warp and Psykers, and trading and gear. These are done on sturdy cards and contain rules and background needed for each aspect of the game, and all together serving as the rules booklet in the set.

The meat of the Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum Starter Set consists of two books, ‘Adventure Book: The Blazing Seraph’ and ‘Rokarth: A Guide to the Hive’. The ‘Adventure Book: The Blazing Seraph’ provides a full investigation in the depths of Hive Rokarth where the Player Characters’ patron, Inquisitor Halikarn, assigns them to investigate the site of a purported miracle, Acid Refinery Delta-64, which has exploded, leaving behind a possible survivor. The Adeptus Ministorum is investigating to determine if this survivor is a saint. The Player Characters have three days to investigate, locate the survivor, and confirm whether or not he is actually a saint, or merely very lucky. Inquisitor Halikarn also provides them with the details of a contact who can help, but before he does that, the Player Characters will need to find and rescue him. This is an opportunity for the Game Master to show how the game system works and how combat works in it, and thus for the players to get used to both it and their characters. The investigation takes the Player Characters from the dank industrial confines of the hive deep into its bureaucracy and out again to the governor’s table and further into the foul, fetid bowels of the hive to confront heresy and corruption.

The adventure is designed to provide a learn as you play experience and it certainly does that in its opening steps. It is a relatively straightforward investigation, though with marked changes of pace as the Player Characters navigate the labyrinthine bureaucracies of the Hive Rokarth and particularly in the council with the governor they have to attend. This is probably the most difficult scene to run. In the later scenes the Player Characters descend into the depths of the Hive are quite detailed and require careful preparation that perhaps might have been easier with the inclusion of a map. One element that the Player Characters do need to take into account of, is the fact that their patron does not want to reveal his involvement in the investigation. He does give them an inquisitorial seal as a sign of his authority, but he is never happy with its use. Further, its use will attract the attention of those who are likely to take exception to Player Characters’ presence.

The second book, ‘Rokarth: A Guide to the Hive’, describes the setting for the adventure given in ‘Adventure Book: The Blazing Seraph’, the hive of Rokarth on the world of Voll. Surprisingly, it is only six centuries old, home to thirty billion souls who dedicate themselves through the Cult Imperialis to work that sees hive manufacture material and materiel for the Imperium of Man’s continuing war efforts. However, the facilities are being constantly corroded from without from Voll’s caustic environment and from within by the caustic waste product, as well as the corruption and criminal activity. The supplement provides details of the factions within the Hive Rokarth from House Castyx, the governing family down. This includes the other noble Houses, the Adeptus Terra, which constitutes the vast bureaucracies and organisations that actually run the Imperium and to which every Player Character and their Patron is associated with, the guilds that hold monopolies on certain goods, and all the way down to the Infractionists, the gangs that control parts of the lower depths of the Hive, some of which have ties to the noble Houses. There are notes too on how commerce, the manufactorums, and how both the open and black markets work, noting that there is a silent trade in xeno artefacts smuggled into the Hive. There is a complete description of the hive from top to bottom, breaking it down from the Spire at the top down through the Upper Hive, Lower Hive, and into the Bowels & Beyond. All of these sections include a lengthy encounter table and descriptions of places and locations found there. Each of these locations is accompanied by a plot hook, and there are almost fifty of them! For example, the Player Characters might be asked by Sister Celestia of the Orders Hospitaller in the Upper Hive to move the last victim of the plague known as the Shivers so she can conduct further research; to find out for Lawrenca Parnam why her family secretly donates to the Cathedral of Obligatory Modesty—out of loyalty to the God Emperor or a shameful history; or either put down a gang war or broker a truce between in the wake of the events of the scenario in ‘Adventure Book: The Blazing Seraph’. Lastly, ‘Rokarth: A Guide to the Hive’ describes the presence and activities of the four Ruinous Powers and their cultists in the Hive. Of course, the plot hooks need development, but for the Game Master willing to make the effort, there is a lot to work with here.

Physically, Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum Starter Set is very well presented. The artwork is good and the books are well written. The inside of the box is illustrated with a map of the Marcharius Sector, whilst the inside of the box cover shows an image of Hive Rokarth, though it is not very clear.

There is a lot to like about the Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum Starter Set—the production values, a meaty scenario, and the combination of setting and extra plot hooks, but it is not quite as good as the earlier Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Starter Set. This is because it does not have the extended content, the mini campaign that is further supported with content in Ubersreik Adventures: Six Grim and Perilous Scenarios in the Duchy of Ubersreik and its sequels, instead giving the Game Master numerous plot hooks that do require development. What Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum Starter Set very obviously does provide is something that the Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum rulebook does not and that is a ready-to-play scenario. Hopefully, Cubicle 7 Entertainment will develop scenarios for the Marcharius Sector from this starter set in the same fashion as the Ubersreik Adventures.

Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum Starter Set is another good starter set from Cubicle 7 Entertainment, providing the Game Master and her players with everything necessary to start playing and learning the rules, along with a dark investigation into heresy and corruption.

Street Stories

Twilight 2000: Roleplaying in the World War III That Never Was opens with the Player Characters on the run, attempting to escape the last hurrah of the US 5th Mechanized Infantry Division near the city of Kalisz in central Poland or the 2nd Marine Division near the central city of Örebro in Sweden. Where do they go? Where do they find shelter? Where do they find food and water? Spare parts for their vehicles? Extra ammunition for their weapons? Published by Free League Publishing, Twilight 2000 presents an expansive sandbox setting that the Player Characters can explore, forage, loot, protect, and even settle. A sandbox setting consisting of a broken world, torn apart and poisoned by war and weapons of mass destruction, followed by disease and starvation. In the immediacy of the aftermath of the war, it is a grim setting where every day is a struggle to survive at best, a fight at worst. Urban Operations is the first supplement for Twilight 2000: Roleplaying in the World War III That Never Was, examining the status of cities and other settlements in the broken world of 2000, presents new rules and expanded details for playing within their confines, and provides encounters, plots, factions, and scenario sites that the Game Master can add to her campaign. Lastly, Urban Operations presents two ready to play urban centres that can form the basis of urban-centred campaigns and potential destinations for the Player Characters. As with the first edition of Twilight 2000 from 1984 and the supplement, The Free City of Krakow, one of these is the city of Kraków in southern Poland, whilst the other is the town of Karlsborg, to go with the new alternative setting of Sweden as presented in Twilight 2000: Roleplaying in the World War III That Never Was.

Urban Operations comes as a boxed set that contains a ninety-six page book, sixteen Encounter Cards, fourteen modular battle maps—ten for urban environments and four for close quarters combat, four scenario site battle maps with two being for close combat quarters, fifty-four battle map tokens, and two double-sided maps. One of the double-sided maps is a city travel map for example city of Kraków in Poland and the example town of Karlsborg in Sweden, whilst the other is a battle map for Wawel castle in Kraków and a battle map for Karlsborg Fortress in Karlsborg. Everything is done in full colour and most of the maps are marked in hexes, whilst the close quarters combat maps are marked sectors. In turn they depict a large housing complex, a church, a nuclear power plant, a bunker, an industrial site, a housing estate, a hospital, a park, even a housing complex where a passenger airliner has crashed, and more. These are ready to be used in the game, the Game Master needing only to add the details of what might be found at each location. The maps also work well with those found in the box for the core rules.

The ‘Urban Operations’ book opens with a discussion of what the Player Characters might find in a town or city. What it emphasises, of course, is the differences between the now of after the war and what it was like before. So, law and order varying from town to city—even devolving on anarchy, but now always at the point of a gun; bartering has replaced currency, whilst in organised towns and cities, citizens sometimes have ration cards and may have to give up their labour in return for this, sometimes willingly, sometimes not; transportation options are extremely limited; politics continues, but is more individualistic, often feudal in nature, the consensus of party politics having been destroyed in the war; and the infrastructure has been broken, so no power, no running water, and so on. Lastly, the survivors are traumatised, damaged by the loss of friends and family and the society that they once knew. Some cities remain uninhabited, too damaged by the weapons of mass destruction deployed in the war. This presents a good overview and introduction to the situations that might be found in the major settlements in post-war Europe, suggesting a variety of different circumstances that the Game Master can use to make places different in her campaign.

New archetypes in Urban Operations include the Cop and the Criminal. Both are roles that can be created using the rules in Twilight 2000, but the archetypes enable the Game Master to create an NPC or the player a character quickly and easily without going through the full character creation process. The other new rules cover fog of war, city movement such as hugging walls, spotting shooters, breaching buildings and blocked hexes, and close quarters combat. These build on the wargaming aspect of Twilight 2000 and play out as a hex (or sector) and counter game. The rules are nicely supported by a decent set of examples. Similarly, the rules for city travel, which is harder than rural travel, are supported by decent examples. As well as the sixteen new encounters, Urban Operations adds Areas of Controls to indicate if a city hex is under the control of a specific faction, primarily replacing the military or marauder encounters with the local faction, whilst the actual encounters burning buildings, robberies, finding a spy dying in an ally, encountering the ‘Baker Street Irregulars’ gang of street kids, a pop-up market, and more. Other encounter tables cover situations when the Player Characters are stationary, radio chatter, and rumours. Four factions are described, three of which can be used in Sweden and three of can be used in Poland. Each is given a plot and some notes, as well as a detailed description that includes goals and forces under its control. The Free Polish 6th Brigade is the one that can only be used in Poland, specifically tied in with the city of Kraków (though it could be used as a template for other local military forces in Poland), whilst the Life Regiment Hussars is the Swedish faction tied to the town of Karlsborg. The two factions that can used in both countries are the World Health Organisation and the Vorovskoy Mir, or ‘thieves’ world’. These two are also given two interesting NPCs as well.

The four factions are each tied into one or more of the plots described in the book. These are intended to provide a storyline that the Game Master can tie factions and encounters together rather than serve as a full adventure. To help this, each has a countdown of events and notes as to what factions and what sites—or rather maps—might be involved. The plots include a search by a group of fanatics for the lost and holy Spear of Longinus and the race to stop a new plague spreading in the face of desperate and brutal measures being used by the World Health Organisation (its staff in the post-apocalypse have mercenaries). Some are specifically tied to the locations described in the book’s appendices, such as getting involved in a mayoral election in Kraków or stopping a KGB power play in Karlsborg. The biggest plot is ‘OPERATION Reset’, which suggests that there were other aims than just military ones in this operation, which was to obtain secret Soviet technology. Only part of the whole plot is explained and available to play through here—the next part will play out in the supplement, Hostile Waters. Thus, ‘OPERATION Reset’ provides the beginning of an overarching espionage campaign that will carry over into several modules for Twilight 2000 and involve the CIA, DIA, KGB, and GRU at each other’s throats and the Player Characters caught in the middle.

The four scenario sites consist of a housing block where two gangs vie for access to the local resources and turf with the Vorovskoy Mir in between; a church whose flock looks to its faith for answers, but wonders if God failed to protect from the war or used it to punish them, whilst not every member of the clergy is honest; a nuclear power plant that is still operational, but are threatened by marauders and the staff believe it has a traitor amongst its midst; and a bunker, no longer a place of war or survival, but turned into a nightclub that offers many locals a few hours escape drinking and dancing, whilst behind the scenes is the target for a turf war. All four come with an explanation of the situation, rumours to fling about, a countdown of events, a description of the various locations within the site, and full descriptions of the major NPCs involved. Like the plots, these are not full ready-to-play scenarios, but rather storylines that can play out as the Player Characters get involved in them. They are all very nicely detailed, they all have their own scenario maps, and they can all be used in either setting for Twilight 2000—Poland or Sweden, Kraków or Karlsborg. Then again, like much of Urban Operations, they can be used in the city or town of the Game Master’s choice.

The last section in Urban Operations consists of a pair of appendices. These in turn, detail Kraków in Poland and Karlsborg in Sweden, after the events of the Twilight War. The descriptions begin with what the Player Characters might see on arrival before going on to give the history of the population centre, its current status, a handful of rumours, descriptions of its neighbourhoods, and its major NPCs. Kraków describes itself as the only ‘free city’ in Poland, a democracy on the verge of a new election in the face of an extremist political faction, a centre of commerce sat on the Vistula River which manufactures ammunition and various devices to trade for food whilst the Vorovskoy Mir smuggles in everything else, and the holder of one ace—a working Mil Mi-24 Hind helicopter, though fuel supplies are limited. At the heart of Karlsborg is the Karlsborg Fortress, back in control of Swedish forces and possibly the seat of the Swedish king, the town under the protection of a military which has very limited means to extend that protection, especially as more and more refugees arrive, and marauders control much of the surrounding area. Of the two, the description of the situation in Kraków is richer and deeper than that of Karlsborg, though this is understandable given that the authors had a previous work, The Free City of Krakow for the first edition of Twilight 2000, to draw from.

Physically, Urban Operations is very well presented. Everything is in full colour, the artwork is excellent, and the maps are clear and easy to use.

As much as Urban Operations provides further rules to run Twilight 2000 within the confines of the damaged and destroyed cities and towns of the aftermath of the Twilight War, what it really is, is a toolkit for the Game Master to run a series of plots in a variety of different locations in her own campaign, ideally in Kraków or Karlsborg. Each of the plots has its own scenario location and together they can easily be inserted into an ongoing campaign in whatever town or city the Game Master is using, or they can be run in one settlement after another as the Player Characters travel from one town or city or another. Either way, they offer several months’ worth of play as the Player Characters travel, get involved, survive, and build or move on. Lastly, Urban Operations does include the start of ‘OPERATION Reset’, a plot that will run through the next series of releases for Twilight 2000, so that there is an ongoing connection from one to the next. Overall, Urban Operations is an excellent expansion for Twilight 2000, providing the hooks and means to pull the Player Characters into the world around them, interact with the survivors, explore the consequences of a nuclear conflict, and hopefully make the world a better place.

The Other OSR: The Chapel of the Hanged God

As the world slides towards its seemingly inevitable end, there are those who desperately search for ways to stop its collapse—or at least forestall its ongoing effects, if only not be the last king, the monarch whose reign would be the ultimate in failure. King Fathmu IX searches for ways in which his realm can be maintained rather than lost and now his eyeless scryers say they have seen traces of Verhu in the catacombs beneath the ruined Hangman’s Church, deep in the Valley of the Unfortunate Undead. Are these visions one more sign of the impending apocalypse or does Verhu’s chapel hide secrets that will enable the kingdom to survive? King Fathmu IX sends the worst of his servants to find out—his crypt breakers. They are given a map and a simple mission. Traverse the ruined paths and lands of the Valley of the Unfortunate Undead, gain entry to the ruins of The Chapel of the Hanged God and descend into the tunnels below, survey their extents, and take what they can, before reporting back to the capital with what information and evidence they can find.

This is the set-up for The Chapel of the Hanged God. This is a pointcrawl and dungeon adventure published by Loot the Room for use with Mörk Borg, the Swedish pre-apocalypse Old School Renaissance style roleplaying game designed by Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell and published by Free League Publishing. This is a classic scenario for Mörk Borg, packed with its trademark mix of misery, weirdness, and horror. So much so of the latter that it carries a well-deserved content warning for suicide, self-harm, cannibalism, mind control, and more. Make no mistake, The Chapel of the Hanged God contains strong themes, suicide especially, so the warnings are necessary.

This is a classic scenario for Mörk Borg, packed with its trademark mix of misery, weirdness, and horror. So much so of the latter that it carries a well-deserved content warning for suicide, self-harm, cannibalism, mind control, and more. Make no mistake, The Chapel of the Hanged God contains strong themes, suicide especially, so the warnings are necessary.

In terms of content, The Chapel of the Hanged God is a pointcrawl consisting of eight locations, one of the actual Chapel of the Hanged God. These are connected by a series paths, some known, some hidden, the hidden ones have to be found, but consist of shorter routes. All of the routes, whether hidden or not, shift and change, so that sometimes the journey along them is shorter, other times longer. This is handled by rolling a number of dice to determine many ‘watches’ it takes to traverse along any one path. Each day consists of six four-hour watches, two of which can be spent travelling, two exploring or foraging, and two resting. So, it might take as little as two watches, or two days, for the Player Characters to make their way along a path, but on another attempt, it might take twenty-four watches, or twelve days.

Similarly, the various locations take a varying number of watches to cross. Seven of these are given a two-page spread, with an illustration on the left hand page and the description, along with a random encounter table on the right hand page. They include ‘The Wetlands’ where those who shamed themselves in service to King Fathmu IX and have been consigned to a pit of black filth which they wade across on stilts trawling the rot and the ordure for treasures that will enable them to return the king’s service; a maze of shifting walls, filled with writhing fat worms, faces leering out of the walls, and beset by torrential rains, as guards stand on the walls to stop the shambling dead and prisoners from escaping, and the Player Characters can search for treasures or a way out; and a Hermit’s Hut, wrapped in thick chains and with thick black smoke and heavy ash pouring from its chimney, whilst inside the hermit is bound and melded to the floor by thorny roots, his mouth the source of both the black smoke and heavy ash, and prophecies of dubious quality.

Eventually, the Player Characters will find their way to the ruins of the Chapel of the Hanged God. Inside is a dead man who speaks with one of three voices, making promises and attempting to persuade them that they can help the Player Characters. Of course, these are all lies and each voice is actually a demon trapped in the corpse. Below lies an ancient crypt dedicated to the Hanged God, full of looters and profane writings and dedications, but long abandoned bar one twisted servant who awaits the return of the Hanged God. There are worse things to be found though, including a gospel of the Hanged God that if read may enrapture a Player Character, proselytise him to worship the Hanged God, and even emulate the Hanged God and string himself up (this is where the content warning is required and the book actually repeats it here again to enforce the point). The ultimate secret below the Chapel of the Hanged God is the existence of the Book of the Hanged God. This vile tome is made from the skin of the god’s last priest, but is not yet complete and at least one of the Player Characters could be driven to follow the directions marked on a number of maps created via foul means—a combination of swallowing a ball of human skin, auto asphyxiation, and vomiting—each of which leads to the location of missing pages from the book. Once the book is complete it creates a book akin to one of the four described in IKHON, each of which provides numerous benefits, but at a cost in terms of sacrifices necessary and potential aftereffects. Although the Player Characters do carry a map marked with routes to the Chapel of the Hanged God, once there, it begins to change and push the owner to seek the catacomb where the Book of the Hanged God is kept, almost as if it wanted to be united with it…

Physically, The Chapel of the Hanged God embraces the neon bright colours of the artpunk style of Mörk Borg, but not the actual style. Thus, the colours are big and bold, and so is the layout with the map of the Valley of the Unfortunate Undead. The cartography, big and blocky, is serviceable at best. Despite the artwork being somewhat better than the cartography, the book does look most basic in several places.

The Chapel of the Hanged God can be run as a one-shot, the Player Characters essentially stumbling upon a map to the Valley of the Unfortunate Undead, but it works better as a scenario in which they in service—willingly or not—of King Fathmu IX and so are driven to search the loathsome, often repulsive confines of the Valley of the Unfortunate Undead to find clues and secrets that might hold back the apocalypse that everyone knows is coming. This is a journey into revulsion and perhaps the only thing driving the Player Characters onwards is the knowledge that they might find something to give them hope in the Chapel of the Hanged God, though this being a scenario for Mörk Borg, they may find something, but it may not be what they, or anyone, is really looking for.

Friday Fantasy: Adventure Anthology 1

Since it first appeared in 2019, Old School Essentials has proven to be a very choice of roleplaying game when it comes to the Old School Renaissance. Published by Necrotic Gnome Productions, it is based on the 1981 revision of Basic Dungeons & Dragons by Tom Moldvay and its accompanying Expert Set by Dave Cook and Steve Marsh, and presents a very accessible, very well designed, and superbly presented reimplementation of the rules. There is plenty of support for Old School Essentials from third-party publishers, but Necrotic Gnome also publishes its own support, including scenarios such as Halls of the Blood King, The Isle of the Plangent Mage, The Incandescent Grottoes, and The Hole in the Oak. These are full length, detailed adventures and dungeons, but for the Game Master looking for shorter scenarios from the publisher, there are two options. These are Old-School Essentials Adventure Anthology 1 and Old-School Essentials Adventure Anthology 2. Each contains four adventures of varying difficulty and Level, with many of them being very easy for the Game Master to insert into her own campaign, and working well with Old School Essentials Classic Fantasy and Old School Essentials Advanced Fantasy.

Old-School Essentials Adventure Anthology 1 contains four adventures by noted contributors to the Old School Renaissance. The first three consist of dungeons designed for Player Characters ranging from First to Third Level, whilst the fourth is that rare creation, a high-Level adventure for Old School Essentials, in this case, Ninth Level. It is also different in that it is a hexcrawl adventure and not a dungeon, and it takes the Player Characters somewhere surprisingly odd. This means that in comparison to the other three adventures, it is not quite as east to add to a campaign. The first two adventures require an urban environment.

The anthology opens with ‘The Jeweler’s Sanctum’ by Giuseppe Rotondo. It is designed for Player Characters of First to Third Level and opens with them being hired to investigate the secret workshop of a long-dead jeweller-magician by his grandson who has been by the strange emanating from the complex. He cannot pay, but he will let them take whatever treasure they find as recompense. It actually has multiple sources of noise that the Player Characters have to deal with in their exploration of the workshop. The complex has the rundown feel of somewhere abandoned for decades and despite consisting of just seventeen locations, it has lots of detail and lots of things for the Player Characters to look at and examine. There are some interesting and inventive magical items to be found in the process, like the Glove Of Curse Detection, which detects cursed rings and several items which aid magical research. In the long term, these are very powerful items for any Wizard in the party. Another nice touch is that there are no active threats in dungeon, although there are plenty of dangers. The Player Characters will often be able to make plenty of progress through talking rather than rushing into danger.

It is followed by Glynn Seal’s rather unpleasant ‘Curse of the Maggot God’. Designed for Player Characters of Second and Third Level. This is a sewer crawl, slightly linear in nature—especially if the Player Characters follow the drag marks—which begins with the Player Characters being hired by the Guild of Sewermen to enter a recently opened up set of tunnels and rescue a guildsman who has been lost inside. Inside, they find the cellars, all that remains of an ancient villa, almost Roman in style, occupied by the worshippers of a vile creature they believe to be a god. Rot and decay permeate the whole of the complex, and whilst there is treasure to be found, it is either distasteful or requires rooting around in muck to find it. This is more of an extended encounter than a full scenario and probably the easiest to add to a campaign, though in comparison to the other adventures feels sparse and even underwritten.

Brad Kerr’s ‘The Sunbathers’ is for Third Level Player Characters. If ‘Curse of the Maggot God’ had a slightly Roman feel with its cellar of a villa setting, then ‘The Sunbathers’ is more of a Greek island with a temple and strange cult which has harpies in oversized cloaks as orderlies! The Player Characters are hired to travel to Fos Imeras Island, famous for its healing, perhaps because nothing has been heard from the island in quite some time or because the champion Orsilochus has vanished and was known to be heading there. Once ashore, the Player Characters find men and women blissfully and all but mindlessly sunbathing on the island’s beaches whilst tended to by white-frocked attendants, whilst inside they will find patients catatonic, mindlessly playing instruments, violently playing with children’s toys, and the like. The island then, has been turned into a sanatorium for the insane, its patients and staff a contrasting mix of the silent and the savage, with the staff also accompanied by their lion protectors. If there is downside to the scenario it is that the fate of the former staff is never explored and neither are what happens after the Player Characters visit. Nevertheless, the situation is creepy and unsettling, not unlike a scenario for Call of Cthulhu, ‘The Sunbathers’ being a very quiet horror scenario.

The fourth and last entry in Old-School Essentials Adventure Anthology 1 is as different from the first three as it is possible to be. ‘The Comet that Time Forgot’ is a mini-hexcrawl for Player Characters of Ninth Level by D. M. Wilson and Sarah Brunt. As the title suggests this is a ‘lost world’ style adventure a la Edgar Rice Burroughs or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but also X1 Isle of Dread, but one set on a comet travelling through space. The comet is actually an ark for dying world, comprised of icy mountains and forests at one end, volcano strewn deserts and mountains at the other, with mountains, jungle, and swamp in between. Numerous species live on the comet, including Fire Giants and Ice Giants, Red Dragons and White Dragons, dinosaurs of all types, Neanderthals, White Apes, and more. Thousands of years have passed since their ancestors left their home world and they have long forgotten that they are searching for a new one.

When they arrive via the Portal of Time and Space—the only way off the comet—the Player Characters encounter the Neanderthals in their metropolis of ice and grey stone and discover that they have tasks that perhaps the Player Characters can fulfil. One is to cleanse the Neanderthals’ ancient Necropolis of the White Dragons that have taken up residence there and the other is to rescue the Neanderthals’ leader’s daughter being held prisoner by the Fire Giants. However, when the Player Characters go to the lands of the Fire Giants at the other end of the comet, they learn that the Fire Giants are also having a problem with Red Dragons. There are various different factions across the three zones on the comet, but all of them have similar quests, such as having deal with dangerous beast of some kind, rescuing one of their number held prisoner by another faction, and so on. Consequently, there is a degree of circularity—and similarity—in the way in which the various factions and their quests connect to each other.

The scenario can be played out in a leisurely pace, or the Game Master can add a degree of urgency by having the comet be in imminent danger of collapse. Similarly, the Player Characters can follow the quests or simply explore the comet in true hexcrawl fashion, or more likely, a combination of the two. Ultimately, the primary aim of the Player Characters is to get off the comet via the Portal of Time and Space, but in the process they will change the societies on the comet, so the Game Master had best be prepared for that. Overall, ‘The Comet that Time Forgot’ packs a lot of adventure into its pages, enabling the Player Characters to explore a whole world in a few sessions.

Physically, the Old-School Essentials Adventure Anthology 1 is very cleanly and tidily laid out and organised as you would expect for a title for Old-School Essentials. Notably, the content is split between columns of content and almost sidebars where the monster and NPC stats are highlighted in coloured boxes. Colour is used to spot effect throughout, whilst the maps are excellent. The full colour artwork is also good.

The Old-School Essentials Adventure Anthology 1 contains four good adventures, three of which—the first three—the Game Master is most likely to use as they are for low Level Player Characters and the easiest to use. Of the four, the very first, ‘The Jeweler’s Sanctum’ is the best, full of detail and flavour and with an emphasis on exploration and interaction rather than combat, whilst the third, ‘The Sunbathers’ is quietly creepy and unsettling.

Friday Filler: Equinox

At each equinox, mythical creatures gather in the magical forest to compete to be the ones to have their tales recorded in the Legendary Story Book and remembered in times to come. Only three will survive to have their stories written down, so the competition is fierce as they confront each other with their magical powers, but they only one night to prove themselves worthy. This is the set-up for Equinox, a betting and bluffing, card placement game designed by Reiner Knizia, one of the board game hobby’s most prolific creators. That said, Equinox is more of a reimplantation of a reimplantation than a new design, though one which has been given a very attractive retheming. Mechanically, if not thematically, it is a redesign of Colossal Arena, published by Avalon Hill in 1997, which was itself a redesign of Grand National, published by Piatnik in 1996. So, the game has a bit of a history. Equinox itself, was published by Plan B Games, best known for titles such as Century Spice Road and Azul. It is designed to be played by between two and five players, aged ten and up, and can be played through in thirty minutes.

The very first thing that you are going to notice about Equinox is the quality of the components. The cards are large—2¾ by 4¾ inches—and the artwork is superb. The game’s stones, done in pastel colours, add a pleasing tactile feel and heft to the game, and the game even comes with nice little bags to store them in. (To be honest, this is the only thing the bags do, so they do feel superfluous.)

Equinox consists of one-hundred-and-ninety-nine cards, five cloth bags, and twenty-five stones. The cards break down in fourteen Champion cards, one-hundred-and-fifty-four Creature cards, eleven Chameleon cards, three Tree cards, six Row cards, and eleven Disappearance cards. The Champion cards represent the entrants in the competition, and consist of various animals and creatures, such as Squeak (mouse), Stag, Hoot (owl), Ursus (bear), Goatman, and so on. Each Champion has corresponding set of eleven cards in the one-hundred-and-fifty-four Creature cards, numbered from zero to ten. Each creature has a special ability, which is marked on their cards. The Chameleon cards are also numbered from zero to eleven, but do not have a corresponding Champion card. The Row cards, from zero to five, indicate the current round of the game. Their number also indicates the number of Prestige Points they will award the players who placed bets on the surviving Champions. The Disappearance cards are used to identify the creatures who have been eliminated from the game. The stones are used to indicate the players’ bets, each player being able to place a single bet per round.

Each round, the players will take it in turns to play Creature cards on the spaces in the current row underneath their Champion cards and place bets on the cards. A player can also reveal a secret bet made at the start of the game to gain control of a Champion, which allows him to trigger its special ability. At the end of each round, one Champion will be eliminated, so that by the end of the game, only three will have survived. The player who has earned the most Prestige Points from the bets he has placed on the surviving Champion is the winner. Bids placed earlier in the game are worth more than those placed later in the game.

Set-up is simple enough. Each player takes one set of stones and eight Champion cards are selected, either randomly or by choice. The six Row cards are laid out in a column, from zero at the top to five at the bottom. The selected Champion cards are laid out in a line in the top or row zero. They will be the Champions that the players will be betting on over the course of the five rounds. With fourteen Champions to choose from and only eight being used each time, Equinox offers a decent degree of replay value as it means different special abilities to try and activate over the course of the game. The Creature cards corresponding to the chosen Champion cards, the Chameleon cards, and the Tree cards are shuffled to form a single deck. Players then draw a hand of eight cards from this deck.

On each round, the players are playing cards and betting on the one row. A player’s turn has five phases. In the first, the player makes or reveals a prediction. In the first round, this can be an open prediction or a secret prediction, but can only be an open prediction in later rounds. A secret prediction is made on a Creature card from the player’s hand that he hopes will survive until the end of the game. It is placed face in front of him with a stone on top of it. If that Champion does survive to the end of the game, it is worth extra Prestige Points. An open prediction can be placed on a space or a card under a Champion in play, and once placed, no further predictions can be placed under that Champion in that row.

A player can also reveal his secret prediction. This can help him gain control of that Champion, though it means that the other players are more likely to try and eliminate that Champion.

A player can play one of three cards—A Creature card, a Chameleon card, or a Tree Card. A Creature card is placed in the row under the corresponding Champion and it can be played on top of another card. This will alter the strength of combined cards under the Champion, which is important in determining control if a Secret Bid is revealed, and it can activate a Special Ability if the player has control. A Chameleon card can be played on any space in a row and prevents the activation of any Special Ability if played, even if another Creature card is played. A Tree card is not played onto a row, but either forces the other players to reveal if they have made a secret prediction on a particular Champion or allows a player to take a previously played and visible card from any row.

The Special Abilities include drawing three cards for Squeak, retrieving a previously placed stone from any column—including for an eliminated Champion—for the Stag, and play a second card for the Twinz. There are a lot of Special Abilities and some of them are more useful than others.

Lastly, a player can discard cards from his hand, useful if he has cards in his hand for eliminated Champions, and draws back up. If all of the spaces in a row have been filled and one Creature card has the lowest value, its Champion is eliminated and the round ends, otherwise play continues until this happens. The game itself will end when either a Champion is eliminated on the fifth and final round or the deck is emptied.

Equinox is a game of betting and elimination and hoping that the Champion you are betting on is not going to be eliminated. When the Champion player is betting on is eliminated, it is likely to be devastating, because with it goes those bets and the possibility of Prestige Points and victory. It can lead to a player being knocked out of the game early because he cannot necessarily make up for the lost bets, so a player needs to be careful and not signal to the other players which Champion he is backing. Placing a Secret Bet at the start of the game can help with that as can taking control of a Champion if that Secret Bet has been revealed. Taking control of a Champion means that a player can potentially use the Special Ability for that Champion and with the right Special Ability it can give the player an advantage and even a way to counter the losses of backing an eliminated Champion.

However, once a Secret Bet and a potential player’s control of the Champion is revealed, it makes that Champion a target for the other players to eliminate. Also, not all of the Special Abilities are very useful. Further, if no Secret Bets are revealed, none of the Special Abilities will come into play. The likelihood is that only one or two Secret Bets are revealed and so equally, relatively few Special Abilities come into play. The difficulty with that is twofold. One is that sheer number of Special Abilities adds complexity because the players need to know what they are and what they do, despite coming into play infrequently. The other is that their use is an exception, meaning that the players have to look it up in the rules. (And even looking it up in the rules can signal to the other players that a player is about to do something.) It feels as if there should be a way of using the Special Abilities without having to reveal a Secret Bet.

Physically, Equinox is a gorgeous looking game. The artwork really is exquisite. The rulebook is easy to read and contains some good examples of play and scoring. There is an absolutely necessary guide to the Special Abilities on the back of the rulebook, though one per player would have been more useful. That said, the large cards mean that the game takes up a lot of space on the table and the bags, whilst nice, are a frippery too far.

Equinox is a great looking game and it is easy to see it origins as a horse betting game in which the players get to bet on the horses as they run the race and are left behind, one after the other (but hopefully not eliminated). Here though, beyond the core game play of placing bets and cards, it feels overdone in terms of its Special Abilities, that whilst seeming to add replay value, figure surprisingly infrequently during actual play and this makes them harder to teach and thus the game harder to teach and not quite as casual as it wants to be. Equinox is a decent game that will appeal to veteran players looking for a fast-playing cutthroat game of secrecy and bets, whilst for the casual player, its harder edge is hidden by its fantastic looks.