Dungeoneering & Dragon Hunting

Roleplaying is all but forty years old, and thus, so is Dungeons & Dragons. As evidenced by the recent number of books that detail the hobby’s history, role playing has become something more than just a silly game. Mongoose Publishing’s Designers & Dragons, MIT Press’ Second Person – Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media, and McFarland’s The Evolution of Fantasy Role-Playing Games are all testament to that. Further, they have also become collectable, and none more so than Dungeons & Dragons. Collecting Dungeons & Dragons has always been something of challenge, for although sites like eBay and The Acaeum have made the task much, much easier, what collecting has always lacked is a guide. That is, until now.

Published by Italian publisher Wild Boar Edizioni srl through Chronicle City, Hunter of Dragons – The Original Dungeons & Dragons Collecting Guide is the complete guide to collecting Dungeons & Dragons. It is important to note this because its focus is entirely on Dungeons & Dragons and what that game became, Basic Dungeons & Dragons, rather than its bigger, bolder, better supported, if not bloated, younger brother, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Its time frame is also thus limited to just a nineteen-year time frame from 1974 to 1993. Within that span it not only covers the various editions of the game, adventures and accessories, miscellaneous items and unreleased products, but also titles from Judges Guild too! It is even more important to note that Hunter of Dragons is not a price guide. That would be impossible to accurately report given that such prices are constantly changing. So instead, it gives a rarity value for each entry.

Hunter of Dragons opens with “The History of Dungeons & Dragons” before discussing “The various editions of Dungeons & Dragons.” What is surprising to note is that there are as many editions as there are – six all together. Each edition is given its own entry with each entry giving the book or product name, its publication date, the names of its designers, its contents, its rarity, some notes, and whether there were any foreign editions. These include the Australian and British editions as well as those in French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish, and even the Japanese and Hebrew books! Some entries also include a trivia entry, for example that B3 The Palace of the Silver Princess Orange version is one of the few TSR titles to have been written by a woman and is one of the most sought after items for Dungeons & Dragons – more so than the fabled ST1 Up the Garden Path. Each section ends with a thumbnail illustration of each of the entries it includes.

Although the book has no index, it is neatly organised. Each section is broken down by edition of Dungeons & Dragons. So that for the Accessories section, the entries are from the game’s first through fifth editions, while for the Boxed sets the entries come from the fourth and fifth editions. Some ranges receive a section of their own, for example, that devoted to the Hollow Earth line. The “other products” section covers the 10th Anniversary Products, the Endless Quest books, novels, Calendars, Electronic Games, licensed items, magazines, and more.

Judges Guild receives a section to itself. This is almost a mirror of Hunter of Dragons, including as it does a history of the publisher as well as the listing of products that it released. The trivia sections for each of these entries are consistently more extensive than those for entries elsewhere in the book and makes for interesting reading.

Rounding out Hunter of Dragons is a trio of interviews, each appearing in print for the first time. These are in turn with Gary Gygax, David Arneson, and Larry Elmore. The one with Gary Gygax dates from 2002 and is the more noteworthy of the trio, being a lengthy piece that covers Gygax’s complete history – before, with, and after his time at TSR. Gygax takes the time to answer each and every question, and does not avoid the difficult subject of the financial difficulties and other problems that he had during his time at TSR. In many ways it is actually the most interesting read in the Hunter of Dragons, to an extent because it really offers the book’s strongest narrative, but mostly because five years on from his death, it presents a retrospective on the father of Dungeons & Dragons, if not the hobby itself, one in his own voice. In comparison, there is a certain reluctance to the interview with David Arneson and an obvious ebullience to the one with Larry Elmore, and as a consequence neither is particularly interesting.

As much as Hunters of Dragons describes itself as the “Collecting Guide” to Dungeons & Dragons, one aspect it does not address is the actual “collecting.” To an extent, this is understandable, for just like the notion of including an actual price guide, it can be countered by the fact that either is by their very nature, ephemeral. Prices change and fluctuate just as the sources that a collector goes to for the titles that he is after will also alter and vary. Nevertheless, some general guidance would have been useful.

Physically, Hunter of Dragons comes as a thick digest book, its vibrant red cover evoking Larry Elmore’s illustration for, and the trade dress of, the classic Red Box Edition of Dungeons & Dragons. In addition to the illustrations for each of the book’s entries, Hunters of Dragons is illustrated with a range of surprisingly interesting TSR adverts. It is a pity that that the book’s many illustrations could not been in colour, as that would aided the collector’s visual identification of any of the books that he is after, but the fact that it is not, is understandable. Another issue is the language. Hunter of Dragons is written in English, but he is Italian and it does show in paces. That said, the author’s English is better than this reviewer’s Italian, and this could have been addressed with a closer edit.

The release of Hunters of Dragons is a timely one in light of Wizards of the Coast’s re-release of its extensive back catalogue for both Dungeons & Dragons and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons in PDF and thus making them available to all. That said, the re-release of those PDFs by Wizards of the Coast has to an extent superseded some of the details given in Hunters of Dragons, essentially the history and the trivia, thanks to the efforts of Shannon Appelcline, the author of the aforementioned Designers & Dragons. That said, the focus and remit of Hunters of Dragons is much, much tighter and certainly successfully fulfilled by its author. Hunters of Dragons is a well-written, solidly researched, treatment of what to collect when it comes to Dungeons & Dragons that will with any luck be joined by companion volumes devoted to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.

A Restricted Dig

The Archaeologist's Handbook: A Guide to Archaeology for Roleplaying Games is a curious beast. It reads in part like a supplement for Call of Cthulhu, but is not written for that RPG despite the significance of that role in both the RPG and the fiction that inspired it. It also reads and feels like one of the Miskatonic University Library Association monographs that Chaosium, Inc. publishes in support of its primary RPG, Call of Cthulhu, but is instead published by Innsmouth House Press, an imprint of the website, yog-sothoth.com, which is specifically devoted to all things Lovecraftian, role playing in particular... Thus it feels like it should be a Call of Cthulhu supplement, but is not, and it feels like it should have been published by Chaosium, but was not.

So the questions arise, just what is The Archaeologist's Handbook: A Guide to Archaeology for Roleplaying Games, and who is it written for? As the title suggests, its presents an examination of the study and practice of Archaeology, its history, notable techniques, a discussion of noteworthy proponents of the science, as well as sites and forgeries, and so on, with the aim of making this information useable by roleplayers. In the main it covers the Victorian period, the 1920s, and the roughly contemporary here and now – the three eras that dominate Lovecraftian investigative horror.

The history begins in the antiquities before coming up to speed with archaeology’s founding as a field of study and its practise since the eighteenth century. Although it comes up to the modern day, it is a pity that it does not cover the rise in popularity for all things archaeological in the wake of television coverage – essentially the Time Team effect. Thus it covers both the Grand Tour and the research conducted in Egypt during Napoleon’s occupation; the archaeological scholarship that would lay the foundations for Darwin’s theory of evolution and the Ordnance Survey work that would reveal much of Great Britain’s hidden history; and how archaeology has moved from the province of the scholarly gentleman and his wealthy patron to the aegis of museum, university, and government. Numerous techniques used to dig and excavate a site are described, as are various means of scientifically dating a site and its finds. This is followed by descriptions and histories of some of the world’s more notable museums along with some of their exhibits. None of these are covered in extensive detail, but the balance is about between having enough information to make use of in-game and having enough to serve as pointers should further research be required. Of more practical use is the guide to actually running an archaeological excavation which gets into the logistics of the affair, period by period.

Up until this point, the tone The Archaeologist's Handbook is a little dry and technical, but this changes with a discussion of infamous fakes and forgeries, such as Glozel and The Cardiff Giant. The lighter tone continues as the book begins to support its roleplaying aspect – for example, each notable site, from Stonehenge and Pompeii to Petra and Great Zimbabwe is accompanied by a juicy plot hook that a referee could easily develop into something playable. It is a pity though, that the array of notable sites and accompanying plot hooks ignores Asia. Rounding out The Archaeologist's Handbook are some diary entries that nicely capture the life of an archaeologist in each of the book’s three eras, a list of notable archaeologists – none are given stats though, and a list of possible equipment for each era.

Although not written specifically for Call of Cthulhu, the contents of The Archaeologist's Handbook are probably more applicable to that game than any other. After all, the archaeologist is one of the game's signature Occupations, which means that Call of Cthulhu players and Keepers alike will probably get the most out of the book’s contents. Plus there is plenty of evidence in the book to suggest that it was written with Call of Cthulhu in mind. In particular, it focuses upon the RPG’s three core eras – the Victorian period, the Jazz Age of the 1920s, and the modern day, plus the sample NPCs its provides for each era are written up in a fashion that apes Call of Cthulhu characters rather than matches them exactly. Thus you have Stamina instead of Constitution, Willpower instead of Power, Library Usage rather than Library Use, Take Notice rather than Spot Hidden, and so on. Adapting any one of the three NPCs to Call of Cthulhu, Cubicle Seven Entertainment’s The Laundry RPG, or any Basic Roleplay RPG is anything other than a challenge. That said, given the fact that both skills and the stats for all three characters are expressed as percentile figures actually makes them more compatible with the forthcoming Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition rather than the current Call of Cthulhu, Sixth Edition. Adapting the characters to Pelgrane Press’ Trail of Cthulhu or RealityBlurs, Inc.’s Realms of Cthulhu is more challenging, but certainly within the bounds of possibility.

The Archaeologist's Handbook comes a seventy-six page A5 sized spiral bound book. This format makes it easy to flip through and read, the former necessary due to the lack of an index. That said, the format does not withstand much in the way of handling, and perhaps a plastic cover could have been included for the back cover as well as the front. The book is illustrated throughout with a range of black and white drawings and photographs, all of them appropriately selected. It is a pity that the book does not come with any maps as subject matter certainly lends itself to those. The writing is a also perhaps a little dry in places, but once the author begins to talk about sites and museums and forgeries, she warms to her subject and is more engaging. Still the book could have done with a closer edit.

More of an issue is that The Archaeologist's Handbook is underdeveloped in places. As a consequence its stance is strongly Anglophile in places. This is understandable given that the author is English, but that does mean that this guide to playing an archaeologist is tailored to English characters. Given that the Call of Cthulhu playing audience for this book is primarily American, it would have been useful if the author had been able to present information on how to play an American archaeologist, let alone say a French or German one.

Where The Archaeologist's Handbook is at its weakest is the fact that it is a generic supplement. Had it been specifically written for Call of Cthulhu then it could have better explored its subject and thus have better applied it to excavating the Mythos. Or least reference any one of the innumerable scenarios written for that the game that involve Archaeology or an Archaeological dig of some kind. Whether that is “The Clive Expedition” from Chaosium, Inc.'s Complete Masks of Nyarlathotep, TOME's Glozel est Authentique, and “Darkness, Descending” from Cubicle Seven Entertainment's Cthulhu Britannia anthology. Of course, it could also have covered how to create an Archaeologist character in each of RPG’s three core eras.

Had it been allowed to develop that much further – with maps and more scope than its current Anglophile stance as well as applied its subject to Lovecraftian investigative horror, then there is no doubt that this supplement could have been a very useful sourcebook for Call of Cthulhu. Despite these limitations, there is no denying that The Archaeologist's Handbook: A Guide to Archaeology for Roleplaying Games is a meaty introduction to its subject – and is thus of use to players and Keeper referee alike.

Adventure to the MAX!

Over the years the roleplaying hobby has thrown up a number of games specifically designed to be played by kids and in the process, actually introduce them to the hobby. Whether that is uncovering mysteries in PandaheadProductions’ Meddling Kids, exploring the magic of the woods and its denizens in Firefly Games’ Faery's Tale, adventuring in, beyond, and above the Atlantis of Third Eye Games’ Mermaid Adventures: An RPG of Undersea Fun, or protecting society from the dangers of big nature in Mouse Guard RPG from Archaia Studios Press, they invariably combine relatively simple mechanics with a setting that will spark the imagination of the younger, neophyte player. In each case, their aim is to help the parent who wants to introduce his child to his hobby and thus help the child who is curious about the fantastic adventures that he hears about, or sees, his parent playing. 

The latest RPG to aimed at kids is Adventure MAXIMUS!, a traditionally themed game published by Eden Studios, Inc. and set in a fantasy world. This can be the fantasy world of the Game Master or Maximus Master’s own devising, or can be the one lightly sketched out in the pages of Adventure MAXIMUS! This is the world of “Ex-Machina,” once known as Magisterica before the Reign of the Wise Wizard Kings ended. Following this apocalypse is a world in which mythical creatures roam the lands and both food and trees can talk. As much as the setting is traditionally themed in its fantasy, what sets it apart from others is a vein of light-hearted, if not slight silly humour, that runs through it. This shows in the setting, for example, there is a nation called The Take-Out Kingdom, in some of the actions that characters can take, each of which has a card of its own, and in several of the monsters that the adventurers will face. The presence of this light-hearted humour is intentional, as it is designed to engage the younger player’s imagination and to encourage him to think and engage with the world.

For the most part, the elements of the setting that the players and their characters interact with during play are represented by cards which are drawn from several decks. These include a Blue Race deck, a Green Class deck, an Orange Action deck, Purple Spell deck, a Red Item deck, a Black Monster deck, and a Gold Map deck. A character is comprised of a Blue Race card and a Green Class card, and will be equipped with cards from the Orange Action deck, the Purple Spell deck – if the character can cast spells, and the Red Item deck. The cards from the Black Monster and Gold Map decks are used to create adventures in conjunction with the game’s Adventure Sheet. (There are ten cards in the Green Class deck, eight in the Blue Race deck, ten in the Orange Action deck, thirteen in the Black Monster deck, eighteen in the Purple Spell deck, thirty-four in Red Item deck, and fifteen in the Gold Map deck.) In addition, Adventure MAXIMUS! uses its own “Maximus” dice as well as needing numerous tokens to represent Action Points, Damage Points, and Experience points. 

To create a character in Adventure MAXIMUS! a player draws three Blue Race and three Green Class cards, choosing one of each as his character’s Race and Class. Both provide special abilities whilst the Green Class card sets the number of Orange Action cards, RedEquipment cards, and Purple Spell cards – if a spellcaster, that the character can have. These are randomly drawn. The Adventure MAXIMUS! character sheet has specific places for all of these cards.

So for example, Louise creates her first character. She draws three Blue Race cards and gets Elf, Giantkin, and Food-kin. She chooses Giant-kin she wants to play a big fighting type and Giant-kin can use “Close Attacks” at “Far Range.” For her three Green Class cards she draws The Guard (a warrior who protects others), The Officer (a true warrior and leader of men), and The Sparklemancer (who is all about making friends). She decides to choose the latter, if only for the fact that not only is the idea of a Giant-kin running around in a gown and wielding a wand funny, but so is her Class Power, “Jazz Hands” which lets her dazzle her opponents with this dance move. Of course, this is a “Close Attack,” but since she is a Giant-kin, she can do “Close Attacks” at “Far Range” or “Jazz Hands from Afar”! The Sparklemancer also gives her Close Attack +1, Far Attack +2, one Action Card, three Equipment Cards, and three Spell Cards. For her Action Card, Louise chooses one which gives her “Double Flip!”, “The Naked Goblin!”, and “Lippy-Hippy-Shake!”. The first forces her enemies to lose an Action Point if they see her “Double Flip!” with her sword; the second gives her a +3 Scary bonus and if her enemies fail a Fear Test they must flee because of her big armour (or in her character’s case, her big gown as she is a Sparklemancer); and the third forces all of her enemies to dance as Louise actually gets up from the table and dances! These three actions cost her two, three, and three Action Points respectively.

For her spells, Louise receives “Banana Slips” (makes the floor slippery with the essence of banana peel), “Jared's Reducer!” (because she can shrink both herself and others, and sometimes she wants to be smaller), and “Feel the Heal!” (to make her friends feel better if they get hurt). For her equipment, Louise gets a pillow, a pot of super glue, and a length of rubber hose.

Louise the Sparklemancer

Weapon: Wand Armour: Gown

Attacks: Close A­ttack +1, Far A­ttack +2

Class Skills: Fast Talk +3, Notice +2, Crime +4

Willpower 2

Class Power

(1AP) Jazz Hands: +1 Willpower against one target's Willpower, if successful the target is Dazed for one round.

Race: Giant-kin

Giant-kin ability – Reach! You can use Close A­ttacks on things that are in Far range. Big, tough, and kind are words used to describe Giant-kin, but many prejudiced people will run in fear from you.

Action Card:

(2AP) Double Flip!: You can Dazzle your enemies with your sword play, they lose an Action Point if they can see your Double Flip!

(3AP) The Naked Goblin!: Your armour makes you look a lot bigger than you really are, you get a +3 Scary bonus. Enemies that can see you must make a Willpower test or flee in fear. Any enemies who win the test are immune to this effect for the rest of the encounter.

(3AP) Lippy-Hippy-Shake!: You have the uncanny ability to make your enemies dance when you dance. Get up from the game table and dance, enemies dance until you stop.

Spells: Banana Slips (1AP), Feel the Heal! (2AP+), Jared's Reducer! (4AP)

Equipment: Pillow, pot of super glue, rubber hose.

Adventure MAXIMUS! is designed to be an action orientated game. Once the action – or a “Courageous Situation” starts, whether that is getting into a fight, climbing a mountain, or entering a competition to bake a pie, then the Maximus Dice come out. What a character can do over the course of a single Round is determined by the number of Action Points he has, these being set by his Blue Race card. These are spent not only to undertake normal actions such as walking, running, looting, attacking, charging, using a skill, and so on, but also to undertake the options given on the character’s Orange Action cards and his Purple Spell cards – if he has any. A character can spend as few or as many Action Points as he likes and they always refresh from one Round to the next.

When it comes to skill rolls and other actions, a character rolls a number of Maximus dice equal to his skill. Each Maximus die is a six-sided die marked with three blank sides, one side with a single sword, a second with two crossed swords, and a third with a Maximus symbol. Each sword represents a success, so the crossed swords represent two successes. The Maximus symbol also represents two successes, plus it allows a character to roll another die and add its success to his total. As long as a player keeps rolling the Maximus symbol, he can keep rolling and adding successes. 

At its most basic, as a player rolls a single success on the Maximus dice, then his character succeeds at the desired action. Some skills require a player to roll two or more successes to achieve his desired aim. For example, the First Aid needs two successes to be rolled if a character wants to restore healed one dot on his or another character’s Health Track. Opposed skill rolls require one participant to roll more success than the others if he is achieve his desired aim. 

Combat though, is kept even simpler. Initiative is determined by the highest number of successes as you would expect, but only in the first round. In subsequent rounds, initiative order actually passes to the left, so that the player who acts first moves round the table rather than being randomly determined. Simple and for the most part a fair means of handling it, although there is nothing to stop the players rolling for initiative each round as is traditional. Actual combat is a matter of rolling the Maximus dice and rolling as many successes as possible. Armour negates these successes, so whatever gets through is taken as damage to the defender’s Health.

In keeping with the light nature of the rules, the advice for the Maximus Master is kept quick and simple. First and foremost, it adheres to a simple rule that applies to the Maximus Master as much as it does to the players – “Have FUN!” Second, that he should keep the game going by saying “Yes, and…” to all of the impossibly inventive ideas that his players might come up with. For example, heroes have tracked down the thief who stole the Frog God’s favourite jewelled eye and are racing after them along a steep path down the side of a mountain. Louise the Sparklemancer tells her Maximus Master that she wants to cast Banana Slips to make Barry the Burglar lose his footing. Of course, her Maximus Master says, “Yes,” and then describes how Barry the Burglar not only loses his footing, but also loses hold of the stolen jewel which goes flying through the air only to land on the gas bag of the aerial steamship that was passing below…! 

In addition, preparing an adventure is made all the easier for the Maximus Master with the inclusion of the “Who-What-Where-How Adventure Creation System.” By following its simple step-by-step instructions in conjunction with the Black Monster and Gold Map decks, plus some input from the players in form of names and descriptive words – or if preparing the adventure ahead of time these can come from the rulebook’s “Courageous Maxi-Libs List” – the Maximus Master can create a whole adventure. First, he draws a Boss Monster card from the Black Monster deck and equips him with Action, Item, and Spell cards as necessary. This is the “Who” or villain of the “Who-What-Where-How Adventure Creation System,” whilst another Red Item card is the “What” and a Yellow Map card forms the “Where.” Together these elements form the Climax Map of the adventure. These steps need to be repeated two more times to create two more Adventure Maps that the player characters must travel through in order to get to the Climax Map, although neither of the Monsters faced in these Adventure Maps will be Boss Monsters. 

The Maximus Master also needs to fill out the following statement using the players’ suggestions or the “Courageous Maxi-Libs”: “A message has been delivered to your Adventure Call Box. ‘________’ has asked for your help! ‘________’ has the ‘________’, you must travel to the ‘________’ in the “________.’ Bring back the ‘________’ and you will be rewarded!” So for example, “A message has been delivered to your Adventure Call Box. The Wizard Of Zoz has asked for your help! Sweet & Sour and Sweet & Spicy!* have the Clean Underpants, you must travel to the ruins in the Forest of Doors. Bring back the Clean Underpants and you will be rewarded!” In order to get through to the Forest of Doors, the player characters will have to travel through Teddy Bear Junction and then to Gum Drop Falls. 

* Twin chicken chunks from the Take-Out Kingdom that were just born bad. 

What is so good about the “Who-What-Where-How Adventure Creation System” is not just the ease and speed with which the Maximus Master can create an adventure, but also the fact that it can be picked up and used by the very players that the game is written to be run for. In other words, kids can run this as much as adults can. In combination with the card-driven means of creating characters, the “Who-What-Where-How Adventure Creation System” gives Adventure MAXIMUS! a strong capacity for "Pick Up and Play." Not necessarily such that the game can be played straight out of the box – though the RPG is easy to learn in terms of its mechanics, but the preparation time for an adventure is mere minutes rather than the hours it might be with other RPGs. Just as it is for character creation. 

Adventure MAXIMUS! could be run as a fairly straight forward fantasy RPG, but that would be to ignore its potentially rich vein of humour and silliness. This shows more in the decks of cards that support the game – the Black Monster deck, the Purple Spell deck, the Yellow Map deck, and the Red Item deck than the Blue Race deck and the Green Class deck. In fact, with just the one humorous or silly option in each of the latter two decks – the Sparklemancer in the Green Class deck and the Food-kin in the Blue Race deck – the game feels disappointingly traditional in terms of what characters it offers the players to play. In fact, the choices can be best described as “fantasy vanilla” and it would have been nice if some other choices had been included, preferably ones that matched the game’s humour. Yet once past the Blue Race deck and the Green Class deck and the options and choices for the Maximus Master are a lot more varied and mine much more of the vein of silliness. Whether that is the Bunny Mummy!* from the Black Monster deck, the Foothills of Fungus** from the Yellow Map deck, or the Bunny Borough Bow*** from the Red Item deck, they all show that Adventure MAXIMUS! is intended to be anything than wholly serious in its feel and style. 

* My favourite monster! 

** Actual hill-sized feet upon which grows fungi!!

*** Also known as the Velveteen Wackit because an arrow fired from it never inflicts damage, but anyone hit is turned into a bunny!!! 

Physically, Adventure MAXIMUS! is neatly presented in full colour. In its current form it does need another edit, but it has two more pressing problems. The first is that it fails to state up front what it is, not what a roleplaying game is, but what Adventure MAXIMUS! is and how it is intended to work. It becomes apparent after reading through the whole of the short rule book, but this seems at odds with the “pick up, get playing” intent of the design. The other issue is that there is not enough background, though that said, this lack allows plenty of room for the Maximus Master and his players to create as they go. A lesser issue would be that there might not be enough cards for long term play, though there is nothing to stop anyone from creating their own cards. 

As much as the origins of Adventure MAXIMUS! as a fantasy RPG lie in Dungeons & Dragons, its tone and feel have a more contemporary source – contemporary television animation. It recognises that it is silly, but it embraces this aspect in a joyous fashion whilst referencing this, that, and the other in postmodern “reference anything and everything” fashion. Adventure MAXIMUS! is not necessarily the Adventure Time RPG and certainly is not based on the Cartoon Network Studios animated series of the same name, but it is not impossible to suggest it as an inspiration. The combination of the two in Adventure MAXIMUS! results in an RPG that can be played as a traditional fantasy RPG akin to Dungeons & Dragons, but by design is much lighter in tone, with a setting and means of adventure creation that allows room aplenty for player input and player imagination.

On Her Majesty's Adventurous Service

How do you like your Victoriana roleplaying? As with most historically set RPGs, those set during the reign of Queen Victoria bring other elements to the table. For example, Pinnacle Entertainment Group’s Deadlands brings horror to the Wild West, Cthulhu by Gaslight from Chasoium, Inc. brings Lovecraftian investigative horror and the horrors of H.P. Lovecraft’s fiction to the 1890s, and CubicleSeven Entertainment’s Victoriana brings magic and other elements normally associated with the fantasy genre to the 1860s. So the question is, what does the newest RPG to draw up a chair at the roleplaying table of your gentlemen’s club, Leagues of Adventure: A Rip-Roaring Setting of Exploration and Derring Do in the Late Victorian Age!, bring to Victorian era?

Leagues of Adventure is published by Triple Ace Games, the British publisher best known for a number of RPG settings that make use of Pinnacle Entertainment Group’s Savage Worlds rules such as Necropolis, Hellfrost, and Sundered Skies. Rather than employ the Savage Worlds rules, Leagues of Adventure makes use of the Ubiquity System. First seen in ExileStudio’s Hollow Earth Expedition, and since used in Greymalkin Design’s post-apocalyptic fantasy, Desolation, and the German version of Space 1889 from Uhrwerk Verlag, the Ubiquity System has also been previously used by Triple Ace Games’ own award-winning All For One: Régime Diabolique. What the Ubiquity System brings to Leagues of Adventure is a fluid, action orientated set of mechanics that supports a Pulp style of play.

What Leagues of Adventure brings to Victorian era roleplaying is a sense of adventure and mystery. It is specifically set during an age of great exploration in which the boundaries of the known world are only just beginning to be pushed back and many secrets are being revealed. As much as it is set during the history of the period, it draws heavily from the fiction of the period, so that Sherlock Holmes and Doctor John Watson are as much real as Brigadier General Sir Harry Paget Flashman, VC, Phileas Fogg, and Abaham van Helsing. As adventurers or globetrotters, the player characters will travel to the far corners of the Earth, exploring the unknown, making great discoveries, and uncovering mysteries, whether these are the strange Gill Men reputed to live in the Black Lagoon at the head of the Amazon, another plot to overthrow the monarchy in Ruritania, or a rash of stranglings in Shanghai!

Every globetrotter or player character is a member of a “League,” an exclusive or secret—or not so secret—society, such as The Alpine Club, the Epicurean Society, or The Temporal Society. These are the “Leagues” of the game’s title — as much as the multitudes of adventures it also suggests, with each League providing contacts, resources, and patrons that will call on the globetrotters just as the globetrotters can call upon the aid of their Leagues. For the most part, the various Leagues possess a friendly rivalry with each other where their interests conflict, but there exist villainous Leagues whose aims are far from honourable or enlightened. The Thuggee is one such villainous League, as is The Immortals Club, whose members seek ever greater power and the means to keep it for themselves.

Character creation is matter of choosing one of the provided archetypes – Big Game Hunter, Consulting Detective, Diligent Correspondent, Explorer, Crackpot Antiquarian, Pioneering Aviatrix, and Temporal Scientist – each of which is presented in full colour, or assigning a number of sets of points. Fifteen points between six attributes and another fifteen points to skills before selecting a Talent such as Knockout Blow or Well-Educated or a Resource like an Artifact or Rank, and a Flaw such as Flea-Infested or Thrill-Seeker. Another fifteen points are spent to customise the character. A character also needs a Motivation and he also starts the game with a Style Point, the Ubiquity System’s equivalent of hero or luck points.

For the most part, this is standard character creation under the Ubiquity System. To this Leagues of Adventures adds a tweak or two. The first of these are “Zero Level” skills, of which a globetrotter receives four. Two to account for his background and another connected with the League that he belongs to. Truth be told, they do not add all that much to the game, but just enough to add a little depth to each globetrotter.

Our sample character is Lieutenant Henry Rathwell, a member of her Imperial Majesty’s fledging Air Corps. An excellent navigator, he transferred from the Royal Navy because he suffers from sea sickness. Currently he is on detached duty and is willing to join an expedition that needs a good pilot or navigator.

Lieutenant Henry Rathwell

Archetype: Pilot Motivation: Duty

Style: 2 Health: 4

Primary Attributes

Body: 2          Charisma: 2

Dexterity: 3   Intelligence: 4

Strength: 2    Willpower: 2

Secondary Attributes

Size: 0            Initiative: 7

Move: 4          Defense: 5

Perception: 6 Stun: 2

Skills/Base/Levels/Rating/Average

Anthropology 4/0/4/2

Athletics 3/1/4/2

Bureaucracy 4/1/5/2+

Craft (Electrics) 4/0/4/2

Craft (Mechanics) 4/0/4/2

Diplomacy 2/1/3/1+

            Leadership 2/2/4/2

Empathy 4/1/5/2+

Expeditions 4/1/5/2+

Firearms 3/1/4/2/1

Gunnery 4/1/5/2+

Linguistics 4/0/4/2

Pilot (Aerial) 3/3/6/3+

Science (Physics) 4/1/5/2+

Survival 4/3/7/3+

            Navigation 4/4/8/4+

Talents

Direction Sense

Resources

Rank – Lieutenant

Flaw

Honest

When it comes to the Ubiquity System, it is all a matter of the number of successes rolled. A task’s Difficulty determines the minimum number of successes that have to be rolled for someone to achieve it. Even results equal successes, so any type of die can be used with Leagues of Adventure and the Ubiquity System. Any successes rolled above that improve the result. The rules also allow a character to “Take the Average,” meaning that if the average number of successes that he would roll is equal to, or greater than a task’s Difficulty, then the player does not have to roll. In addition, every player character has Style Points, which are spent to add bonus dice, boost the level of some Talents, and reduce damage. They are gained for pursuing a character’s Motivation and playing to his Flaw, for being heroic and being in character, as well as for out of game actions, such as writing gaming reports, hosting the game, and so on.

What is interesting about Leagues of Adventure is that although it has little in the way of background – the various Leagues, both fictional and historical, along with the various fictional characters mentioned are the extent of its background, it comes with plenty of setting material. The bulk of this comes in the form of an extensive gazetteer that takes the GM around the world in fifty-six pages. Continuing the game’s mix of the fictional with the historical Victoriana, once it has the “ordinary” descriptions of the continents and their constituent countries out of the way, it joyously as many fantastic places, both real and fictional as it can. So it describes the Grand Duchy of Fenwick, the Diogenes Club, King Solomon’s Mines, El Dorado, the Lost World, the Plateau of Leng, and Ruritania as much as it does the Black Museum, the Rookeries, Great Zimbabwe, Timbuktu, Machu Picchu, Ponape, and the Great Wall of China. In fact, it almost seems as if the author cannot wait to get the descriptions of the ordinary places out of the way so that he can concentrate on Leagues of Adventure’s fantastic locations. Further, all of these locations—places already crying out to be visited by the player characters—are accompanied by at least one adventure, usually more than one. All told, this gazetteer of the fantastic is accompanied by over one-hundred-and-thirty adventure seeds!

In addition, Leagues of Adventure comes with a bestiary with which to populate these locations. Again, they include a mix of the fictional and the real, from Amazon Warriors, Giant Apes, Kraken, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Doctor Moreau, and Professor James Moriarty to the Officious Bureaucrat, the French Foreign Legion soldier, the camel, the hippopotamus, and the tiger. Plus guidelines so that the GM can create Villainous Leagues with which to oppose his players and their globetrotters.

In terms of advice for the GM, Leagues of Adventure dispenses relatively little, assuming that the prospective GM is not new to the hobby. Perhaps the most telling advice comes in the form of setting the style that the GM and his players want for their game, essentially by determining the game’s Action Level. The options include “Gritty” like The Man Who Would Be King, “Adventurous” like Around the World in Eighty Days, “Pulp Adventure” such as the Indiana Jones movies, and “Cinematic Reality” like the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Each sets the number of Style Points and their effect that the players get to use during the game, from the all Style Point free of the “Gritty” Action Level up to the double Style Points of “Cinematic Reality.”

Apart from the rules for setting the Action Level, the major mechanical addition to Leagues of Adventure is the rules for invention. Supported by numerous examples, these are a really easy set of rules to use, and support the creation of fantastic devices and vehicles in the game, whether that is by a gadgeteering player character or a nefarious villain with a penchant for dastardly devices. As written and as evidenced in the examples, these rules are not intended to cover the Steampunk genre, but rather the type of devices drawn from the fictions of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. That said, these rules would cover the Steampunk genre with relatively little difficulty.

Physically, Leagues of Adventure is nicely put together and pleasingly illustrated. If the book lacks anything it is maps that match the detailed contents of the gazetteer, but this should not held against Leagues of Adventure. Finding maps, or indeed, further details of any one of the locations described in the book is hardly a challenge given access to the Internet. One might quibble at the lack of a pre-written scenario in the pages of Leagues of Adventure, but given that the book is written with the GM who has some experience in mind and the fact that it comes with as many adventure seeds as it does, this is less of an issue than it be with any other RPG. In addition, the QuickStart Rules in the form of Plateau of the Ape Men & The Dragons of London are available from the publisher’s website and they come with two scenarios.

So what does Leagues of Adventure bring to Victorian era roleplaying? In a word, ACTION! Well, actually “action and adventure,” for this is far from being a deep or introspective game – and there is nothing wrong that. To an extent it is something of toolkit, allowing the GM to adjust slightly the tool of action that he wants to present, but with the supplements available from the publisher’s website, such as the Globetrotters’ Guide to Weird Science and the Globetrotters’ Guide to Gothic Horror, the scope of both the game and the GM’s toolkit expands further. There is nothing to stop a GM from running games which focus on those elements just from Leagues of Adventure, but the Globetrotters’ Guide to… series support them better.

Beyond the game’s ACTION!, Leagues of Adventure exudes a sense of wonder and fascination that the possibilities of the unknown in the late Victorian era – whether real or imaginary – present to the GM and players alike. There is certain joy and excitement, almost exuberance in the presentation of Leagues of Adventure’s setting, which it matches well with a set of rules that support its action and adventure. 

Empire City Fears

New York stands tall in Call of Cthulhu canon. Not only are numerous scenarios set there, such as “Dead Man Stomp” from the Call of Cthulhu rulebook, but the city forms the backdrop for the opening sequences of three classic campaigns – Day of the Beast, Masks of Nyarlathotep, and Beyond the Mountains of Madness and for the whole of the modern campaign, Unseen Masters. Of course it has its sourcebook in the form of Secrets of New York, but even the invariably Pelgrane Press’ anglophile Trail of Cthulhu has its own anthology of New York set scenarios in the form of Arkham Detective Tales Extended Edition. The city has of course been visited in Lovecraft’s fiction, most notably in his “The Horror at Red Hook,” a short story that has itself been revisited three times by Lovecraftian investigative horror roleplaying. The city, coming into its ascendancy in the 1920s, stands equally tall in our collective imagination with its melange of cultures old and new, its drive to conquer the financial world as well as the sky itself with its monumental skyscrapers, and its vibrancy. It is this rich and heady, not so say hedonistic mix that has presented fertile ground for Lovecraftian investigative horror roleplaying in the past and does so again with the fifth release from Miskatonic River Press, Tales of the Sleepless City.

The release of Tales of the Sleepless City gets 2013 off to a great start in terms of printed titles for Call of Cthulhu and not just because it was actually released in the same week as Atomic Age Cthulhu from Chaosium,Inc. (A review of that will follow soon). Rather it gets 2013 off to a great start both because it is simply a good book and because it comes as a more than welcome relief – not to say a curative tonic – after the low plumbed with the release of Chaosium, Inc.’s Terror from the Skies late last year. Marking Miskatonic River Press’ third anthology, Tales of the Sleepless City brings together six scenarios that explore life as it is lived in the city of New York in the Roaring Twenties.

Behind Paul Carrick’s dream-like cover, what strikes you first about Tales of the Sleepless City is how good the book looks. It is neat and tidy with various elements – side bars and hand outs, artwork and maps – judiciously placed to break up the text. In particular, the choice of typefaces perfectly evokes the period in which the contents of the book are set, while the use of the single interior artist further gives the book a cohesive feel, with many of the illustrations capturing some singularly nasty moments in the scenarios. Similarly, the use of the same map of New York again and again, each annotated with the different locations for each scenario also adds to book’s singular look. It is interesting to note that the map for each scenario includes its subtitle on the map. Lastly, each of the anthology’s hand outs, courtesy of the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society, is a beautiful piece of work that should help immerse the players further into of each the anthology’s scenarios.

The collection opens with Dan Harms’ “To Awaken What Never Sleeps”, which literally brings New York alive. It does call for the use of experienced investigators who have some knowledge of the Cthulhu Mythos, though this is as much for effect as it is for the actual knowledge. Steeped in the recent history of the city, it draws upon the works of both Fritz Leiber and H.P. Lovecraft to present antagonists who are literally opposed to its thrusting modernity. Beginning on a very specific date in 1928, it starts with a bang and goes on to infuse the very fabric of the metropolis with an unnerving sense of unease. Initially this is a difficult scenario to get into and the scenario also seems to take on elements of the Dreamlands before coming back to reality. Nevertheless, there are some nice set pieces that move it along and get the investigation moving along into a bruising finale.

The second scenario is both a much more traditional and a more familiar affair. Inspired by the craze for all things Ancient Egyptian that followed the 1922 opening of Tutankhamen’s tomb – and also by certain urban legends – “The Terror from the Museum” by Brian Sammons is another tale of “revenge from beyond the grave.” This mania is brought to New York in decidedly grisly fashion as the consequences of a recent visit to Egypt comes back to bite a number of academics. It feeds into a heady, movie-like mix that combines xenophobia, a particularly pulp villain, and a certain Mythos artefact that makes its second appearance here. At its worst, this scenario could be a morass of clichés, but fortunately, the author lifts “The Terror from the Museum” above the clichés and leaves the Keeper with an interesting paradox as to the nature and status of the aforementioned artefact.

If “To Awaken What Never Sleeps” literally brings New York alive, then C. Michael Hurst’s “The Fishers of Men” brings it to life by taking player and Keeper alike into the vibrant hotbed that is Harlem. The death of Doctor Harold Bejoujou, a local religious leader and noted manufacturer of the tonic ‘Dr. Harry’s Enlightenment’, brings the investigators to his funeral and an interview with his wife who believes that he did not commit suicide as the police believe. Getting the investigators involved in this scenario will not be easy, both because of the subject of race and the somewhat closed nature of the scenario. A mixed race group of investigators would go some way to alleviate this problem. Once involved though, they find themselves mixed up in community politics and strange magic. Its climax feels absurdly theatrical, but overall, this feels like a well-judged treatment of Harlem.

“The Tenement” by Oscar Rios takes the investigators to the heart of a very New York problem – the slum tenements and slum landlords of Hell’s Kitchen. The investigators are hired by a well-meaning lawyer to prove a case against a slum landlord, Mister Edmund Grey. This involves their having to living in one of his buildings, the Buckley Arms, and persuading the much put upon tenants to give statements as to their ill treatment and the conditions in the building. This involves lots of dog work upon the part of the investigators as try and persuade their new, and often, recalcitrant neighbours. These NPCs are lightly drawn, but are no less interesting, so the Keeper should have roleplaying each and every one of them. As they gather evidence, Mister Grey becomes aware of the investigators’ efforts, the conditions in the tenement seem to worsen even as he sends in his muscle to coerce them. The climax to this well-written affair is shockingly deadly, so the investigators will need to follow up every lead if they are to be forewarned and thus have any chance of survival.

Mikael Hedberg’s “A Night at the Opera” is a grand treatment of a subject familiar to Call of Cthulhu, the performance of Massa di Requiem per Shuggay, and indeed, it is a grandiose affair. The investigators receive tickets for the inaugural performance of a new opera at the Metropolitan Opera House, a performance that will also be attended by the rich and famous, such as Zelda Fitzgerald and John D. Rockefeller, JR. As the evening progresses – the events of the scenario literally playing out over the course of just a few hours – the observant investigators will begin to notice strange events occurring, and as the ones to have seen them, it is up to them to prevent the full ramifications of the opera being performed coming to fruition. Although it could be said that the scenario is too linear, there is much for the investigators to do within the confines of the Metropolitan Opera House and it is only a short scenario anyway. Indeed, this is a race to save not just everyone at the performance, but also the whole of New York all played out in one single evening, one single session.

Rounding out Tales of the Sleepless City is the oddly titled “Értóng hé Kūqì de Mǔqīn” or “The Child and the Weeping Mother”, co-authored by Tom Lynch and Scott David Aniolowski. Like the earlier “The Fishers of Men”, this scenario takes place in one of New York’s communities, but Chinatown rather than Harlem. The investigators are asked by a local family to find its missing daughter. Yet both father and mother have something to hide and the investigators’ progress will be hampered by the intransigence of the tiny community and the criminal politics, if they tread carefully, both allies and informants can be found. As with the earlier “The Terror from the Museum”, this is a pulpy treatment of the exotic, though one with a nod towards the Wuxia genre rather than the horror movies from Universal Pictures.

Coming to the end of Tales of the Sleepless City, it is far from easy to find fault with its contents. Such faults as there are can only be described as minor. It could be argued that the layout is too busy in places, but to be fair, everything about the layout evokes the Jazz Age in which its six scenarios are set. In places the tone of scenarios feels uneven – more so with “The Terror from the Museum” and “The Fishers of Men”, but these are minor marks against what is otherwise a solid selection of scenarios.

With Tales of the Sleepless City, Miskatonic River Press continues its sure-footed treatment of the Mythos in Call of Cthulhu – five books on and the publisher has yet to put foot wrong in its support for the game. There is not a poor scenario amongst the six in this anthology, such that it would seem unreasonable to highlight any one of them over another, but it would not be unreasonable to say that the second three scenarios are more interesting than the first three. At its worst, Tales of the Sleepless City provides a solid set of playable scenarios that present some fine shocks and scares; at its best, Tales of the Sleepless City does not tell what New York was like in the Roaring Twenties for Call of Cthulhu, but actually shows you what it was like.

Sin & Sanity

Before you get to the review you need to know something. I am listed in the credits in the book that I am reviewing and I am an editor for its publisher, Sixtystone Press. I tell you this because I do not want you to think I am being unprofessional in reviewing a book that in some small way I worked on. You see, I originally wrote the review after I was asked to simply read through the manuscript and give my opinion on it. At that time, there was no point in my publishing the review as the book was a long way from publication. That was in August, 2011 and the best part of a year before Sixtystone Press asked me to be its editor. In the meantime, very little of the book has been changed from what I originally saw, and what has been changed amounts to just little things. For example, a weapon was changed from one make and model to another – and that on the basis of my being part of the peer review group and then editor on another Sixtystone Press title, Investigator Weapons, Volume Two, but at its heart, this is the review that I wrote in August, 2011.

–oOo– 

Published by Sixtystone Press, Nameless Cults Volume One: Lost in the Lights – A Call of Cthulhu sourcebook of cult horror is a scenario and sourcebook for Call of Cthulhu set in the modern day. It is the first volume in the publisher’s ‘Neue Unaussprechliche Kulte’, a series detailing modern day cults that are ready to run for any Keeper of Arcane Lore. As a contemporary set scenario and sourcebook, it is not written for use with Chaosium’s Cthulhu Now, as that book is at best obsolete, but it does include notes so that it be can run as part of a Delta Green campaign using the sourcebooks from Pagan Publishing.

What strikes you first about Lost in the Lights is its use of colour. It is surprising to note that in over thirty years of published Call of Cthulhu titles that not one of them has ever been published in full colour. Now there have been titles which include colour plates and titles that used spot colour, but none have used full colour. At least not for Call of Cthulhu books published in English, until now that is. Lost in the Lights makes use of full colour, in particular in its very modern hand outs which include a mobile telephone screen and television screen shots, but for the most part it employs spot colour and does so with a vibrant pink and an equally vivacious purple throughout the book. The effect is startling and certainly gives it feel that matches the contents of Lost in the Lights.

The reason why that vibrancy matches the contents of Lost in the Lights is because its scenario, “Invisible Sun”, is set in Las Vegas and a literary Las Vegas at that. The scenario presents a very contemporary investigation into a cult that is also fully described in the pages of Lost in the Lights, as well as “A Brief Discussion of Other Las Vegas Weirdness.” This is a mere introduction to the setting rather than a full guide to Sin City and its environs, but it is more than enough to intrigue the Keeper. The cult described in Lost in the Lights is the Keepers of the Primal Song, whose members worship the Lesser Outer God, of Shabbith-Ka. First appearing in “What Goes Around, Comes Around,” in Issue #8/9 of PaganPublishing’s The Unspeakable Oath (later reprinted in Pagan Publishing’s The Resurrected Vol. 3: Out of the Vault), the cult here is expanded to present its goals, origins, and practices from antiquity until the here and now. What marks the Keepers of the Primal Song as a cult of singular note – held for a very long time – is the fact that the cult is wholly insular, wholly introverted, and has no plans on world domination. This makes for a very different cult, one that possesses a horrible machismo in the way in which its members worship Shabbith-ka – such that you have to feel sorry for any investigators exposed to it – and as seen in “Invisible Sun,” also makes for a very different threat and a very different type of investigation.

“Invisible Sun” is a lengthy scenario that draws heavily from contemporary pop culture. The scenario and the investigation begins with a missing girl – Angelique Adams who ran away to be star. She never made it, not did she make it home from Las Vegas, sending a text message in which she said she had been trying to escape from some “cult wackos”! Now her father wants the investigators to find her and bring her home, or if that proves impossible, bring anyone responsible for harming her to justice.

The investigation plunges the investigators into the strange and seedy world of Las Vegas and beyond. It throws them up against a horribly modern environmental hazard as well as into a facedown with the ultimate sinner in Sin City. He is a late sixties teeny-bopper heartthrob who just happens to own a casino, and as a casino owner, is very respectable and law abiding. Which throws up a very interesting challenge for the investigators – doing anything that investigators, or indeed player characters, would normally do in a Call of Cthulhu scenarios, will bring them to the attention of the casino security and thus to the LVPD. Therefore, the investigators will need to be a whole lot more circumspect than normal if they go looking for ways to get into limited access areas, carrying concealed firearms, questioning staff members, and so on. Which makes getting anywhere with the investigation in “Invisible Sun” much more of a challenge than is the norm. The author discusses numerous means of the investigators circumventing, though his inclination, and that of the scenario and literary Las Vegas, is to run this as a caper, even a heist movie. Various options cover the type of caper that the players might come up with for their investigators, the simplest of them being quite technical, the easiest being the most kitsch and perhaps the most fun to roleplay. Preferably with the investigators dressed as Elvis…

“Invisible Sun” then, is a very kitsch affair. It is also veers into the psychedelic for a potentially very nasty encounter that draws from one of H.P. Lovecraft’s better filmed short stories. If there is an issue with “Invisible Sun”, then it is this kitschy nature. Some of it is unavoidable. The scenario is set in Las Vegas after all, a town hardly known for its austerity. The easiest means of conducting the investigation is for both Keeper and players alike is to embrace the kitsch and the camp, and use it to their best advantage. Further, for all of the gaudy extravagance of Sin City, the Las Vegas of “Invisible Sun” is a filmic or televisual one, the author suggesting further kitsch elements that can be drawn from both mediums.

Once past the kitsch, Lost in the Lights is perhaps one of the most challenging scenarios to be published in some years. Challenging because it sets the normal mode of investigation in a Call of Cthulhu scenario very up against the modern world, its technologies and in particular, its approach to security, post-September 11th, 2001. This requires careful handling by the Keeper and careful detective work on the part of the players and their investigators.

Lost in the Lights is rounded out with four appendices. The first of these covers recommended viewing, listening, and reading, the movies listed certainly being useful given how central a role that the caper that plays in “Invisible Sun;” while the second lists all of the character write-ups, maps, and hand outs. The third provides a guide to weird Las Vegas, covering everything from Area 51 and the Atomic Testing Range to the Liberace Museum and urban legends of the area. It is not extensive, but it does give a good starting point for further research. This being a modern-set scenario, the first question that many a Call of Cthulhu Keeper will ask, “Can I use ‘Invisible Sun’ with Delta Green?” Pleasingly, the last of the volume’s appendices deals with this very question, addressing it scene by scene.

Behind its gaudy cover – which actually makes sense once you have read the book, but might put the initial viewer off – Lost in the Lights is an eye-catching book. In addition to its use of colour, the layout is clean and thoughtful, and the maps all well done. The hand outs are all well-chosen and designed, with a Wikipedia entry in particular giving the book a pleasingly contemporary touch.

It has been no little wait for this book to be released, just as it has been no little wait for the author, Jeffrey Moeller to deliver on the promise he gave us with the Monograph, The Primal State. I wait to see what he creates next with great interest… In the meantime, what he and Sixtystone Press present us with in Nameless Cults Volume One: Lost in the Lights – A Call of Cthulhu sourcebook of cult horror is a consistently challenging scenario for Keeper and players alike. It combines an interesting cult and an entertaining scenario that focuses on interaction and investigation in a highly contemporary setting.

Back to Africa

Railway-themed board games, or Train Games as they are known, such as the 18XX series, Age of Steam, Railways of the World, Empire Builder, and so on, are all about their maps. Many of the expansions for these games come in the form of maps as the terrain presented on each board presents the players with challenges anew when it comes to making connections between each map’s destinations. Ticket to Ride is something of a latecomer to the concept, its publisher, Days of Wonder, having preferred to put out new core games like Ticket to Ride: Europe and Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries that stand alone rather than new boards that expand upon one of the core games. So the Ticket to Ride Map Collection series has been something of a breath of fresh air.

To date, Days of Wonder has published three volumes of the Ticket to Ride Map Collection. The first, Ticket to Ride Map Collection vol. 1:Team Asia and Legendary Asia added mountains as a new terrain and expanded the number of possible players from five to six players with a team play element. The second, Ticket to Ride Map Collection vol. 2: India and Switzerland reprinted the Switzerland board from its original release in 2007 together with a new board for India that advanced the series’ timeline into the Edwardian age. Late in 2012 these were joined by the third and latest in the series, Ticket to Ride Map Collection vol. 3: The Heart of Africa.

As with the other titles in the series, Ticket to Ride Map Collection vol. 3: The Heart of Africa requires a base set to play, either Ticket to Ride or Ticket to Ride: Europe. Unlike other titles in the series, Ticket to Ride Map Collection vol. 3: The Heart of Africa only includes the one new map board and set of rules rather than two. So in comparison, it has to do the work of two new boards to be interesting, let alone challenging. The good news is that The Heart of Africa is challenging…

Ticket to Ride Map Collection vol. 3: The Heart of Africa consists of the new map board, forty-eight Destination Tickets, forty-five Terrain Cards, a new type of card, plus the twelve-page rules booklet, which includes the expansion’s rules in ten different languages. The map itself does not depict the whole of Africa, but rather the South and the West of the continent as far North as Nigeria in the West and Sudan in the East. Thus it does not include North Africa nor does it include the Horn of Africa. As with the Switzerland map, The Heart of Africa map includes destinations that are countries rather towns or cities. These are limited in number though, consisting of Nigeria, Tchad, and Sudan on the map’s northern edge. These destinations are reflected in the game’s Destination Tickets.

Physically, The Heart of Africa map reflects the Ticket to Ride line’s chronological progression. The original board game is set in the 1890s whereas the India map from Ticket to Ride Map Collection vol. 2: India and Switzerland is set in the Edwardian period. The Heart of Africa map is placed in the 1920s, as reflected in the artwork with its motorcar and its biplane. Elsewhere, the art on the map has a dry, dusty feel apart from the rich illustrations accorded to the country destinations depicted at the northern edge of the board.

Most Ticket to Ride maps reflect the type of terrain they depict in the routes that the players have to claim in order to fulfil their Destination Tickets. Thus, on the Switzerland map from Ticket to Ride Map Collection vol. 2: India and Switzerland, there are a lot of mountain routes that the player must claim if he has to connect to any of the destinations in the South of the country or over the border in Italy. Similarly, the map of Scandinavia from Ticket to Ride Nordic Countries has a lot ferry routes reflecting the difficulty of reaching certain destinations and the fact that the Baltic Sea divides the various countries on the map. The map in Ticket to Ride Map Collection vol. 3: The Heart of Africa does reflect the type of terrain it depicts in the type of routes available. Indeed, besides the standard type of route, there is only one other incidence of another type of route on the map, that of the ferry route to Madagascar.

So if The Heart of Africa map does not reflect the difficulty of its terrain in the types of routes it depicts, then how does it do it? It does so by grouping the route colours according to terrain type. So rather than distribute route colours across the map, here they are grouped – orange, red, and yellow for Desert and Savannah routes; blue, green, and purple for Forest and Jungle routes; and black, grey, and white for Cliff and Mountain routes. These groups are organised geographically, with the Forest and Jungle routes across the middle of the map, the Desert and Savannah routes to North and South of this, and the Cliff and Mountain routes to the North and the East.

This grouping has a strong influence on play. First, it will have players scrabbling for Train Cards of the same colour if they want to make connections through the terrain types. The map has multiple incidences of routes of one colour being connected to a destination out of which leads a route of the same colour. This is only exacerbated by the lack of double routes in the interior of the map – all of its double routes are located along the coast of the continent. The map also has very few grey routes that can be claimed using any colour Train Cards. Second, it will be obvious to the other players what terrain group a player a wants to claim a route from the colour of the Train cards he is drawing.

The Terrain Cards specifically work with the route groupings and so come in three types – Desert and Savannah, Forest and Jungle, and Cliff and Mountain. When a player claims a route he can also play a Terrain Card (or two Terrain Cards if the route is longer) that matches the colour of the route to double the value of the points scored for the route. He must have as many Terrain Cards of that terrain grouping as any other player – this is known because they have to be kept face up on the table where everyone can see them. Alternatively, Locomotive or Wild Train Cards can be used instead of Terrain Cards. Once played, Terrain Cards and Wild Cards are discarded.

Game set up is little different to that of other Ticket to Ride games. Each player receives his forty-five trains and four Train Cards as usual. He also receives four Destination Tickets, of which he must keep two, and a single, random Terrain Card. Two Terrain Cards are placed face up as well as the usual Train Cards. When a player decides to draw cards during his turn, he can choose to draw Terrain Cards as well, so either two Train Cards or two Terrain Cards, or one of each. Once drawn, a player’s Terrain Cards are placed face up so that everyone can see them.

Both the need to have Terrain Cards and the need to have as many Terrain Cards as another player adds the need to make more decisions in the game. Drawing more Terrain Cards gives the potential for a player to outscore his rivals, though this may come at the cost of drawing Train Cards and expending them to claim routes. Or should a player ignore the Terrain Cards and grab routes before anyone else does rather wait to score double points. In addition, a player can draw more Terrain Cards in order to have as many as his fellow players or more as a means to stop them scoring double with their Terrain Cards. In other words, the Terrain Cards can be used as means to block other players.

Over the course of the Ticket to Ride line, the distribution of the routes across the various map boards have got tighter and tighter and thus more competitive. The India map from the previous expansion, Ticket to Ride Map Collection vol. 2: India and Switzerland being the most recent evidence of that. With The Heart of Africa, the map is equally as tight and competitive if not more so because of the lack of the double routes and the grouping of the route colours. The tight nature and competitive play of the Ticket to Ride Map Collection vol. 3: The Heart of Africa map is enhanced by the use of the Terrain Cards making this the most challenging version of Ticket to Ride yet.