[Fanzine Focus XLI] The Dragon Horde Issue #1

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another Dungeon Master and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. However, the vicissitudes of time and taste along with publisher decisions and in many cases, the publication of newer, hotter retroclones that capture the imagination of the Old School Renaissance means that some retroclones fall out of favour and so are no longer actively supported, whether that is by their publishers or their fans through fanzines. Such is the case with Labyrinth Lord. Fortunately, modern digital publishing means that many of the fanzines published for Labyrinth Lord and other, now less popular retroclones, are still available to download, and just like the fanzines of the early years of the hobby, they are still worth examining because their content is compatible with even the most contemporary of retroclones. One such fanzine is The Dragon Horde.

The Dragon Horde Issue #1 was published in July, 2013. What is apparent from the start is that this is a fanzine inspired not by the cut and paste, hand typed fanzines of the seventies and early eighties, but by the fanzines that appeared in the mid- to late-eighties with the appearance of the first commercially available Desk Top Publishing software. Thus, it has a look and feel of a booklet done on a dot matrix printer, which make it a little hard to read. This is confirmed in the author’s editorial and so the fanzine deals a double dose of nostalgia with the combination of its look and content. Published by New Big Dragon Games Unlimited, it states on the front that it is, “A Publication Dedicated to Tabletop Role-playing Games”, which given that it is primarily written for one retroclone, is a stretch. The other single content in the issue that is not for Labyrinth Lord is for the author’s own generic roleplaying game resurrected from the same period that inspired the fanzine, The System. The article, ‘Familiars Found – Guidelines for Spellcaster Familiars in New Big Dragon’s Universal RPG The System’ is serviceable enough and so mechanically light that it could been for almost any retroclone let alone the publisher’s own roleplaying game. Consequently, the inclusion of an article for a roleplaying game other than a retroclone is surprisingly unobtrusive and is really just another article about familiars that is, well, familiar. Otherwise, the stats given in the rest of the issue are written for use with Original Dungeons & Dragons, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition, and Basic Dungeons & Dragons.

The issue begins with ‘The Monster Roster’ and a pair of monsters. The ‘Leech-Man’ is exactly that, a man-sized, man-shaped version of the leech, whilst the ‘Beguine’ is a Neutral Good hybrid-Race that combines Elves and Halflings. The ‘Leech-Man’ is the more interesting of the two and could easily be added to a campaign as a monster in a swampy or cave-like environments, whilst the ‘Beguine’ does not fulfil any real purpose. The ‘d30 FEATURE’—drawn from The d30 DM Companion—is ‘Where Does the Weapon Hit?’ gives a quick and dirty means of handling hit locations using a thirty-sided die, modified by attacker’s height, and allowing for the possibility of different armour being worn in different locations.

The very basic map of ‘Yal Caramon’ is accompanied by ‘Lerdyn Chrisawn’s Chronicle’, a history of the continent. This discusses the several thousand years of the continent via the more than fifteen thousand volumes of Chrisawn’s Chronicle. The volumes are mostly written as a series of poems and epics before becoming more ordinary and prosaic as much of the continent settled down, became peaceful and organized, and then being upended when the Chaos came and the south-western lands were broiled for a thousand days as if under as many suns. Unfortunately, the most recent volumes have been stolen away, suspected by many as means to hide the culprits for the Chaos. As a very brief history, this is actually quite interesting and has the potential to be expanded and developed into something playable. However, there is no sense of place or geography to either really and it would require no little development to be something more.

The following NPC Class in ‘New NPC Class: Chroniclist’ does fit the setting though and could be added to others. The Classes specialises in languages, learning a new one every Level, and at later Levels gain the abilities of Memorisation and Insight, able to detect true meaning in someone’s words, and Comprehension, able to decipher unknown texts. From Second Level, the Chroniclist gains a ‘Branch’ at every Level, each one an area of geographical, cultural, military, and social knowledge. The deeper the knowledge of a Branch, the more exacting a question a Chroniclist can answer. Effectively, the Chroniclist is variant of the Sage NPC Class, but focuses on linguistics and anthropology as much as history and geography. They are very specialised, but very powerful within that specialisation.

The scenario in The Dragon Horde Issue #1 is ‘The Undertemple of Arkon – An Adventure for Characters Levels 1-3’. The Player Characters are engaged to investigate the remains of a temple which was founded by a cult dedicated to a large, very charming cat known as ‘Shadowcat’ and thrown down by the locals when the cult too large and too much of a threat, and where culists have recently returned. The dungeon does have a cat-theme running through it, but is often repetitive. The cultists are definitely back and definitely evil, even sacrificing the Bugbears which had taken up residence to feed to the reluctant panthers! The final battle against Arkon could have been better handled, since his major ability relies on his enemies looking into his eyes, and there is no real explanation as to what Arkon is beyond a big panther, what his cultists want, and so on. Underwritten without those explanations and serviceable with them.

Better still—and likely best of all in the issue—is ‘Seven New Magical Weapons’. This does what it describes, but is inventive. For example, Fumbleblade is a +1 dagger that forces the defender when struck on a roll of a natural twenty to drop everything in his hands, and Sickening Sword, a +1 longsword that inflicts, with a failed Saving Throw versus Poison, to temporarily suffer nausea and a penalty to hit. These are different and add some pleasing variety to the usual mix of magical weapons.

Lastly, ‘Who Speaks What: A Languages Spoken Crib Sheet’ is exactly that, a quick guide to the languages spoken by Dungeons & Dragons fantasy races and ‘Who’s in the Tavern: Tables to Fill the Tables at the Local Tavern’ provides a set of tables for rolling up tavern patrons. Both useful in their own way.

Physically, The Dragon Horde Issue #1 is as ever so slightly rough as you would for a fanzine using the early desktop publishing software. Problematically, this is intentionally so, such as with the choice of typeface which does make the fanzine challenging to read. The artwork is decent though, especially the cover.

The Dragon Horde Issue #1 is a love letter to the author’s past and the fanzines of his youth, and it does suffer for it. It is not as easy to read as it should be and its content is not as well realised as it could because of the lack context or background. There are bits and pieces in the issue that a Game Master might want to pick over, but they are far and few between, and given, this is not a fanzine that has yet found its voice or knows what it is yet.

[Fanzine Focus XLI] Cursed Scroll #1

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another Dungeon Master and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. A more recent Old School Renaissance-style roleplaying game which right from the start of its appearance began being supported by fanzines, is ShadowDark, published by The Arcane Library. One such fanzine is Cursed Scroll. This is not only a fanzine for ShadowDark, but since it is actually published by The Arcane Library, it is the official fanzine for ShadowDark, fulfilling a similar role as Carcass Crawler does for Necrotic Gnome of Old School Essentials.

Cursed Scroll #1 carries the subtitle of ‘Shadowdark Zine Vol. 1: Diablerie!’. Published in December 2021, the theme for the inaugural issue is all things demonic and diabolic, and this includes both a mini-hexcrawl and a mini dungeon as well as three new Classes, new monsters, and spells. All of which is linked, so that the Game Master is provided with a complete mini-setting and campaign that can be run as is, added to her campaign, or pulled out and used separately. The setting for Cursed Scroll #1 is ‘The Gloaming’, an ancient forest of black trees, moss strewn standing stones, and fog-shrouded marshes, but worse, demons that hatch from the region’s dark marrow trees, forcing inhabitants to cower behind wooden palisades, warily watching for diabolic incursion and waiting for the Knights of St. Ydris to ride forth from Greywall Priory and strike down the demons and dismiss from this blighted mortal realm, as is their mandate. ‘The Gloaming’ is a hexcrawl covering an area of seventeen by eleven hexes, thirty-four by twenty-two miles, roughly seven-hundred-and-fifty square miles. It has tables for rumours and encounters and in ‘The Gloaming Hex Key’, gives detailed descriptions of twenty-five locations across the region. These include crazy Uncle Grigor, a witch who wades barefoot through the bogs collecting leeches for treatment and pickling and who might take on an apprentice who shares the same love of leeches and leechcraft; Victoria, a maternal werewolf who has recently lost her cubs and from her Bone Cave is now plotting to turn the children of a local village into a new pack of werewolf cubs; and the Mud Pit where Ixidian, a swamp dragon, who writhes in the murk and the mud of a deep ravine, greedily awaiting the next sacrifice thrown to him by cultists that have made camp nearby and prey on nearby passing travellers.

Two notable locations include Greywall Priory from where the small order, the Knights of St. Ydris, attempt to put an end to the demons that threaten the region and Bittermold Keep, the former seat of the Bittermold family, its stone walls long melted by the slime which bubbles up deep from under the ground from a shrine dedicated to the primordial ooze, Mugdulblub, poisoning the minds of those it does not melt. These are both expanded in different ways. For the Knights of St. Ydris, there is a new Class, whilst for Bittermold Keep, there is a complete mini-dungeon. ‘The Gloaming’ has a mouldering, muddy feel of a land gripped by lurking horror and foreboding. ‘The Gloaming’ is deigned for First Level Player Characters.

The Knights of St. Ydris is the first of thee Classes in the issue, a cursed knight who follows St. Ydris in embracing the demonic to fight the unholy. Notably, three times a day he can undergo ‘Demonic Possession’ to increase damage done and from Third Level, can lean Witch’s spells. The version of the Warlock Class is radically different to that normally seen in Dungeons & Dragons-style gaming. They are howling warriors and doomspeakers for their patrons, such as Shune the Vile, Mugdulblub, or The Willowman. Each of these grants random Patron Boons, and it is these that the influence what a Warlock can do. For example, Warlocks of Almazzat can temporarily gain advantage on melee attacks and initiative, whilst those of Titania can temporally hypnotise creatures, learn to wield a longbow, and gain protection against hostile spells. The Warlock is not a straightforward Class to play, but requires effort upon the part of both player and Game Master to bring the relationship between Warlock and Patron to life. The Witch Class is more traditional, being described as a cackling crone with milky eyes that can see portents, but also gains a familiar and potentially, the ability to teleport to the familiar once per day, as well as having its own set of Witch spells. All three Classes have their own set of titles that vary according to Alignment, a table of Diabolic Backgrounds, and for the Warlock, descriptions of the Patron options.

The Witch spells are a good mix. For example, Bogboil transforms an area of ground into a boiling, muddy bog of quicksand; Broomstick enables the Witch to fly; Cat’s Eye lets her see invisible creatures and secret doors with eyes that have turned to slits; and with Curse, she can instil curses such as horrible boils and warts, a constantly shrill voice, always losing at gambling, an irrational fear, and so on. Most work better with the Witch Class rather than the Knights of St. Ydris, and a player with a Knight of St. Ydris character may want to work with the Game Master to select the spells that he thinks is appropriate.

Many of the monsters in Cursed Scroll #1 can be found in ‘The Gloaming’ or ‘The Hideous Halls of Mugdulblub’. They include the Marrow Fiend, the wolf-like demons that hatch from the area’s marrow trees; Howlers, cannibalistic Halflings with sharpened teeth; and the Tar Bat, which an oil tar that it will set alight by flying into open flames and potentially doing more damage. Also included are stats for two of the Warlock’s possible Patrons, Mugdulblub and The Willowman.

The last entry in Cursed Scroll #1 is ‘The Hideous Halls of Mugdulblub’. This is a one-level dungeon for First Level Player Characters, the squelchy, acid-scarred dungeon below Bittermold Keep. The factions in the dungeon include devolved members of the Bittermold family; Howlers, Halfling cultists dedicated to Mugdulblub, whose leader is happy to let all dissolve if it will defeat the Bittermolds; vengeful Catfish mutated by Mugdulblub who are annoyed about being sacrifices; and Mugdulblub himself, who considers only the survivors worthy of worshipping him. The dungeon comes with rumours, but the Game Master may want more to get her players and their characters involved. The dungeon itself is clammy and muculent with barely a dry surface and plenty of sludge and mud underfoot. It is good for a mini-campaign as part of ‘The Gloaming’ hexcrawl, but can be run separately. Whether run separately or as part of the hexcrawl, the dungeon should take two or three sessions to fully explore.

Physically, Cursed Scroll #1 adheres to the style of ShadowDark. Thus, it is clean, tidy, and laid out. The illustrations and cartography are also good.

What is a so good about Cursed Scroll #1 is that it is a complete package, a mini-supplement all of its very own. That means that it is also easy to drop into a campaign and easy to add to. For example, the more recent Dark Visions and The Tower of Six would work well with this. Cursed Scroll #1: Shadowdark Zine Vol. 1: Diablerie! is a good first issue packed with playable content for ShadowDark.

Magazine Madness #45: Knock! #4

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

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Published in January, 2024 by The Merry Mushmen, the fourth issue of Knock! An Adventure Gaming Bric-à-Brac comes as jam-packed as the previous issues. There is content drawn from blogs and content that is wholly new, there are new rules and new ways of doing old things, there are monsters and NPCs, there are spells and spellcasting, there are swords and scenarios, and there are thought pieces and threads that run through the issue. There is just about anything and everything in the issue that a reader with any interest in the Old School Renaissance might want to read about. There is even a ten-page section at the end of the issue called ‘Welcome to the OSR’ that explores how various authors encouraged Old School Renaissance style play at their table. (Despite the title, the section is not intended as an introduction to the Old School Renaissance, but the issue’s editorial does give pointers to that.) Along the way to that last section, there is plenty of art, some of it new, some of it in the public domain, some drawn from unexpected sources (Vincent Price makes a surprising appearance), and honestly, just almost too much stuff, too much to read, too much to use, too much to think about. Knock! An Adventure Gaming Bric-à-Brac #4 really does pack a lot into its two-hundred-and-ten-pages.

Published following a successful Kickstarter campaign, the content in Knock! An Adventure Gaming Bric-à-Brac #4 begins with the dust jacket which contains with ‘The Lost City Sandbox’, Eric Nieudan’s homage to Tom Moldvey’s B4 The Lost City, the classic scenario for Basic Dungeons & Dragons. Along with the cover, this is a great start to the issue which does explore several themes. The first of these draws upon the influence of J.R.R. Tolkien upon the hobby. Josh McCrowell develops its ideas into two articles. The first is ‘The Hobbit as a Setting’ which asks, “What if The Hobbit was the only inspiration for roleplaying?”, whilst the second, ‘In search of better travel rules’ looks at where travel rules go wrong and how they might be improved for the Old School Renaissance. The first examines some of the elements of The Hobbit not normally seen in roleplaying, such as song do a lot of work—means to remember, appeals to authority, taunts, and more—and the importance of journeys means that Experience Points should be earned from them. There are new rule suggestions for each aspect like spending Experience Points to name yourself or an item following a critical success, to add both a story and a bonus to play, and that animals can speak their own language. There is even the observation that The Hobbit alludes to the existence of guns in Middle-earth! The second article expands upon the point about travel in the first, pointing out its potential mishaps if handled poorly and offering solutions to those problems. The second article can be seen as adjunct of the first, but can be used also be used in general Old School Renaissance too, not just one directly drawn from The Hobbit. Nevertheless, the first article could be the basis for a mini-roleplaying game and campaign all of its own.

A second theme will be more familiar; the design of adventures (and dungeons). They lead off with Idiomdrottning presenting her ‘BLORB Principles’, a preparation-focused, no-plot preparation, playstyle. The aim is to have the elements to place and engage the players and their characters with, but not plots, and then advice on how to develop and add to those elements in play. Then designer Chris McDowall takes a look at them in ‘Patching’ and develops them further to look at the more immediate effects of encountering something in play that the Game Master did not prepare for as part of her preparation. McDowall suggests ways of improvising a fix in play rather than leaving it for subsequent preparation. In some ways, the advice is obvious, but the second article complements the first and together they make a thought-provoking pair.

The theme is further explored by a trio of articles by Joseph Manola. ‘Elements of Incongruity’ suggests adding unexpected elements alongside elements, including traits, individuals, and nature, and ‘Localism – The Adventure as Microclimate’ decries the genericism in modern Dungeons & Dragons and suggests that the Game Master focus on small regions and populate with unique, even singular monsters and perhaps with races that are not found elsewhere, the aim being to make them memorable. Good solid advice and both backed up by examples, but Manola’s ‘Romantic Fantasy and OSR D&D’ takes Dungeons & Dragons in another direction. At the heart of the article, is the simple idea that not every solution has to be resolved with violence and its shows a number of ways in which the mechanics of Dungeons & Dragons—the reaction system, the morale system, the combat system, and the retainers system—can be all used to support that. The result is a game that focuses on relationship-building and non-violent forms of resolving conflict and getting rewarded for it.

Since Knock! #4 is for the Old School Renaissance, there are articles aplenty on magic, monsters, and treasure. Some of these are specific, some are not. The specific includes a complete magic system in ‘d200 Power Words of Sorcery!’, inspired by a gamebook from the eighties, but feeling very much like the television series Knightmare; the ‘Menagerie’ gives full stats and details for creatures such as Zedeck Siew’s Mob Demon, Danilo Moretti’s Mirror Mare, and James V. West’s Raptor Knight as well as Islayre d’Argohl gives four fully detailed villains; and a selection of swords awaiting stats in Letty Wilson’s ‘The Sword Librarian’. The less specific includes Jens Turesson’s weird ‘Telephone Pictionary Game as Spell Research’, which fortunately is completely untested; a ‘4d8 Golem Generator’ by Chance Dudhack; and Glynn Seal’s complete to what happens following the ‘Desecration’ of a grave for its goods and treasure. There is even a little crossover by Eric Nieudan. So, his ‘Dragons Should Be Unique!’ gives the means to create dragons from alignment, age, and element to personality, hoard, and quirk, whilst the accompanying ‘The never-ending saga of the Wyrm’ shows how it works with a complete example.

Each issue of Knock! always includes some new Classes with ‘Retinue of Rogues’ and this issue is no exception. Joseph Manola’s ‘The Ghoul Blooded’ lets a player create a character who gets more Ghoulish as he goes up in Levels, from having an acute sense of smell and very tough fingernails to learning all the benefits of cannibal cookery and tunnelling through the ground, and even though he will become an unliving monster, he is not undead! Manola follows this with ‘The Inquisitor’, who can pass judgements on others for various effects, and is an interesting variant upon the Cleric Class. Pierre Vagneur-Jones also details two new Classes. ‘The Cynocephasus’ is a dog-headed human who may be born that way or cursed and may, through good fortune, transform into a full human and take Levels in another Class. It is inspired the medieval legend of St. Christopher. ‘The Skiapod’ draws from the writings of Pliny the Elder to present a very agile one-legged human. They prefer to kick with their feet rather than use weapons, but there are no details to reflect this. These second two Classes are less useful than the first two and ‘The Skiapod’ is underwritten in comparison to ‘The Cynocephasus’.

Penultimately, Knock! #4 gives four short adventures in ‘Extraordinary Excursions’. Numbered Work’s ‘Swamp Renewal’ involves the Player Characters in an ecological battle between a wizard who is using golems to dig out peat in a swamp and a Lizardfolk Druid who wants him stopped. The scenario does not give a set ending, so it will be entirely down to the players, but there are consequences to whatever side the Player Characters choose. ‘Grandma’s Cottage, Inc. and Gift Shoppe’ by Glenn Robinson has a cosy feel until it does not as the Player Characters go in search of a lot of missing orphans. When the king puts out the call for the softest of feathers for his bed, the Player Characters are off in search of the softest feathers in the land only to be found on the Giant Arboreal Goose in Martin Orchard’s ‘A Fistful of Feathers’. A cross between a race—there are rival groups—and a pointcrawl, this is an entertaining scenario. Lastly, ‘The Mountain Hall of the Iron Witch’ by Rosie Grey is written for The Merry Mushmen’s CRACK!, but is easily adapted to the rules of the Game Master’s choice. The Player Characters find themselves shackled and forced to work in the Iron Witch’s mines and have to escape. This is a fun campaign starter. In fact, all four scenarios are easily adapted and would work with a number of different roleplaying games.

Lastly, Knock! #4 rounds out the issue with ‘Welcome to the OSR’. Here the issue explores some of the responses to the attempt by Wizards of the Coast to rewrite the terms of the Open Game Licence. The aim here is for the members of Old School Renaissance hobby to show this section to players of Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition and point them in the direction of the possibilities in the different play style. There is discussion too of several Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition-retroclone hybrids. For the most part, this preaching to the choir, but the first article, ‘Back to the Future (of D&Deering)’ by Daniel Norton gives a good comparison between the play styles and why a player might want to switch.

Physically Knock! #4 is impressively bright and breezy, just as with the previous three issues. The layout is cluttered in places and the text a little too busy, but on the whole, it is clear that a lot of attention has been paid to the layout. It needs a slight edit in places, but the artwork is good and the cartography excellent.

The honest truth is that the Game Master is never going to use everything in the pages of Knock! An Adventure Gaming Bric-à-Brac #4. There is just too much. It is an embarrassment of riches. However, it gives the reader a lot of things to choose from and lots of ideas to think about. It is an absolute treasure trove of content for the Old School Renaissance and with so many contributors from the hobby, Knock! may well serve as a candidate for a focal point for the Old School Renaissance hobby. The reader could spend hours surfing the Internet for similar ideas and other content in Knock! An Adventure Gaming Bric-à-Brac #4, or he could just get the issue and have it all at his fingertips in another literally solid issue of the magazine.

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An unboxing of Knock! #4 An Adventure Gaming Bric-à-Brac can be viewed here.

Solitaire: SoloDark

SoloDark brings the means to solo adventures to the rules of ShadowDark, the fantasy roleplaying game which combines elements of Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition with those of the Old School Renaissance. He will control both the fate of his characters and those of the NPCs and monsters they encounter in the course of their adventures. Like solo rules for other roleplaying games, it uses an Oracle to generate answers to questions, whilst also making changes to accommodate for the fact that there is only the one player. These include creating between two and four Player Characters instead of just the one that solo play suggests, having group initiative and play in Chaos Mode meaning that it rolled at the beginning of every combat round, and that Luck is earned on any roll of a natural twenty. Perhaps the biggest change is that light sources last ten rounds of game play rather than an hour of real time. Both the presence and absence of light have a significant influence on game play in ShadowDark. Once a torch or lantern goes out, there is always a rough scramble to get a new one lit and in the meantime, there is the fear of the dark and the fear of something attacking out of the dark, since random encounters are suddenly more frequent!

Surprisingly, as SoloDark only runs to ten pages, two of those are devoted to a list of possible sources for further play. One-part sources of help and advice, one-part recommended locations—both dungeons and wildernesses—to play, and one-part suggested resources whether the player needs a monster, NPC, treasure, or encounter, that he can grab and add to his game straight away. Thus, there are links to The Arcane Library where the roleplaying game’s designer runs through some sample solo play and Me, Myself and Die! also offering solo play sessions such as with Free League Publishing’s Dragonbane. In addition to referencing ShadowDark for monsters, NPCs, treasures, encounters, dungeons, and wildernesses, SoloDark also points to Knave, Masks: 1,000 Memorable NPCs for Any Roleplaying Game from Encoded Designs, Ensorcelled Loot from Philip Reed Games, and City Encounters for Swords & Wizardry by Mythmere Games. Plus, dungeons like Dying Stylishly Games’ The Gardens Of Ynn and wildernesses such as The Hexanomicon #1. Overall, this provides not only a solid, useful set of references, but also highlights other authors too.

The next part of SoloDark is not quite so useful, being a table for creating dungeon names such as the ‘Palace of the Draconic Hunter’ or the ‘Asylum of the Fungal Sorcerer’. If there an associated set of tables to generate dungeons in SoloDark, the table might have been more useful. What is useful is the Oracle. This the means by which the player will generate yes and no answers to his questions and there is short simple advice on best practices, such as keeping questions plausible, rely on game rules, asking positive questions, and limiting the number of questions. To use, it the player determines the odds, rolling with advantage or disadvantage depending on the difficulty of getting a ‘yes’ answer. It is possible to roll a critical or a fumble on the Oracle check, leading to extreme results, but the results can be quite nuanced, allowing for a ‘yes, but…’ or ‘no, but…’ answer. If the player needs further clarification, including if he rolls an unexpected twist, the following table of ‘Prompts’, which encompasses a wide array of verbs and nouns, is there to provide more nuance.

Physically, SoloDark is decently presented and written. Lightly illustrated, the artwork is excellent.

SoloDark requires more experience of ShadowDark and running solo sessions of any roleplaying, let alone ShadowDark, than is included in its pages. There is no example of play and perhaps there should have been. Of course, the point of including a suggestion to check a YouTube video is there to alleviate that need, but its inclusion would have been nice and given SoloDark some permeance rather than just saying, look at this or look at that. Still the suggestions are useful and in some cases do show how the designer uses SoloDark and how other players play their games. For the more experienced player, none of this should be an issue and SoloDark should get them delving almost as soon as he has characters ready to play. SoloDark is free and a more than decent aid to venturing into the dark alone.

Low Fantasy Complexity

Tales of Argosa: Sword & Sorcery Adventure pitches itself as a Swords & Sorcery roleplaying game designed for short, sharp adventures built around emergent play. There is no set story, or indeed setting in the roleplaying game, but the intention is that the story and the play will develop from the choices made by the players and the actions of their characters. The Game Master will present to her players the hooks and rumours that their characters will respond to and thus follow up, deciding where to go, what to do, what to investigate, what to explore, who to interact with, and so on. What the player and their characters will discover is a sandbox world full of savage wilderness, treacherous cities, murderous monsters, mysterious ruins, fierce battles, ruinous magic, fabulous treasures, and cosmic weirdness. Wherever they go and whatever they do, fights are fast and brutal and magic is dark and definitely dangerous, and their goal is fortune and glory rather than some heroic cause necessarily.

Tales of Argosa is published by Pickpocket Press, following a successful Kickstarter campaign. An updating of the earlier Low Fantasy Gaming—effectively a second edition—Tales of Argosa is an Old School Renaissance retroclone that draws from Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, but shifts mechanically back to some older editions of the venerable roleplaying game whilst maintaining some modern mechanics. In addition, there are some quite startling changes that make the tone and play of the game a whole lot grimmer than the average retroclone. What this means is that there is a lot that is going to be familiar about Tales of Argosa—attributes, Races, Classes, monsters, types of combat, monsters, and treasures. However, there is a lot in Tales of Argosa that is going to be different and unfamiliar. Much of it is good, but some of it is not so much bad, as irksome—and even then, not for everyone.

So, what are the changes in Tales of Argosa? They start with a level cap—Player Characters can only achieve Ninth Level before they retire. Hit Points are low and remain low in comparison to other Dungeons & Dragons-style roleplaying games, even at Ninth Level. The Saving Throw is replaced by a Luck roll every time the Player Character would be damaged by an effect or the environment, but Luck diminishes each time it is tested. Encounters are designed to be unbalanced and dangerous, forcing the Player Characters when to fight and when to run. Healing takes minutes, not seconds, so it always takes place at the end of combat, by which time, a Player Character could be dead… Magic is dark and dangerous and if it goes wrong can cause madness and mutations, unleash monsters from the Veil, and worse! On the other hand, at each Third Level, a player can design an ability unique to his character (or pick one of the options in the book), so there is scope for customisation. Exploits—Minor, Major, and Rescue—that work alongside damage inflicted enable heroic action upon the part of the Player Characters. There are Exploits too for combat, plus effects for ‘Nat 19’ and Critical rolls, which when combined with Fumble ripostes, Morale checks, and Trauma rolls, give a Player Character more choices and lend themselves to exciting and action-packed battles! Some damage dice can explode depending upon the weapon type and situation. These are not the only changes in Tales of Argosa, or indeed, the only features. They do, however, impart much of the tone of the roleplaying game.

A Player Character has a Race, Class, seven Attributes, and a Background. The five Races are Human, Dwarf, Elf, Halfling, and Half Skorn. Called halfmen or beastmen, Skorn are heavy set, pink skinned proto-humans, whilst Half Skorn are strong and hard-to-kill and inclined to war and conquest, but suffer from poor memory and analytical ability. The Classes are the Artificer, Bard,

Fighter, Barbarian, Monk, Ranger, Rogue, Cultist, and Magic User. The Cultist is the equivalent of the Cleric, with five suggestions given in terms of gods worshipped and the benefits and strictures of doing so, whilst the Artificer can be an expert alchemist, forge master, gear priest, or black powder savant. He gains access to alchemy and mechanica, inventions that he can use once per day per Level. The inventions include a Black Powder Weapon, Chaintooth Weapon, Breathing Mask, Corroding Spray, Ironward, Thunder Gauntlet, Truth Serum, X-ray Goggles, and more. He can also jury rig a device or concoct a mixture a number of times equal to his Intelligence modifier per day to bypass a current obstacle, disarm a trap, or assist the party in some other way. The seven attributes are Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Willpower, Perception, and Charisma. Initiative is derived from Dexterity and Intelligence, whilst Perception is also used to determine ranged attack bonuses. A Background provides an attribute bonus, a skill, and an item. For example, the Rat Catcher Background improves a Player Character Dexterity by one and gives him a wedge of cheese, whilst a Hangman gains a bonus to his Willpower, the Leadership skill, and thirty feet of rope.

Notably, at Third, Sixth, and Ninth Level, a Player Character can have a ‘Unique Feature’, the equivalent of a Feat. These can be created by the player, but Tales of Argosa offers a set of off-the-shelf options. Many of these are ‘Cross Class’ Unique Features, enabling a Player Character of one Class to take an ability of another, such as ‘Alchemy & Mechanica (Cross Class)’, which grants a Player Character one invention from the Artificer’s list and limited use of it. Many also have multiple tiers, meaning that they can be selected three times. For example, with ‘Pilfer Pouch’, a Player Character has wandering hands and is always picking up things and putting them in his pouch. At Tier 1, the player rolls percentile dice to randomly draw an interesting—and hopefully useful item—such as a Skorn tooth or a jar of bees—from the pouch; at Tier 2, the player can reroll; and at Tier 3, the player can make a Luck check to pick an item from the table.

To create a character, a player rolls for his Race and Background. He then rolls three six-sided dice for his attributes, one of which must be fifteen or higher, and another thirteen or higher. He can raise stats to these values if necessary. He selects a Class and takes (or rolls) its options at First Level, and also rolls for a Party Bond, which explains why the Player Characters are together. Everything is either set or derived, notably Hit Points are equal to a Player Character’s Constitution, plus a modifier determined by Class. For example, the Barbarian’s Hit Points are equal to his Constitution plus twice his Level, whilst the Magic-User’s is only equal to his Constitution plus Level. Equipment is a mixture of Battle Gear Slots and Pack Gear, but each Class offers some equipment, including arms and armour, as well as some coins.

Donoso
Class: Magic-User
Level: 1 Age: 30
Background: Prisoner
Strength 14 (+1) Dexterity 07 (-1) Constitution 07 (-1)
Intelligence 16 (+2) Willpower 16 (+2) Perception 16 (+2)
Charisma 14 (+1) Luck 11

Armour Class: 10
Initiative: 12 (+0)
Attack Bonus: +1 Ranged Bonus: +2
Rerolls: 2
Hit Points: 8
Death Save: 12

Abilities: Spellcraft, Sense Magic
Spells Known: Hex of Volcanic Steel (Heat Metal), Whispers of the Watchers (Locate Object)
Skills: Animal Lore, Arcane Lore, Apothecary, Deception, Persuasion, Sleight of Hand
Battle Gear: spellbook, longsword (1d8), leather armour (+1 AC)
Pack Gear: torch, bedroll, rations (5 days), manacles, and tinderbox
Coins: 10 sp

Of the Classes, the Artificer is the outlier. It adds technology such as the Black Powder Weapon and Chaintooth Weapon—the latter effectively a chainsword—that the Game Master may not want in her campaign and do not necessarily fit the swords & sorcery genre. The option is given to make the Class more like the Alchemist, with Poison replacing both weapons, but why not do it the other way round? Make the Alchemist Class the default as it does more readily fit the genre and the Artificer the option?

Mechanically, Tales of Argosa uses a number of different systems. The first is Luck. A Luck roll is a roll against, rolling under the value, typically to resist serious adverse effects such as spells, traps, special enemy attacks, or major environmental hazards, or to perform a Major Exploit, Rescue, or Party Retreat, which rely on the Luck resource to pull off. Depending upon the nature of the situation, a Luck roll can be modified by an attribute. However, each time a Player Character succeeds on a Luck roll, his Luck attribute is reduced by one to a minimum of five.

As with the Luck roll, skill checks and attribute checks are rolled under an attribute. A skill increases the attribute value by one for the skill check. A Player Character has a number of Rerolls, determined by Level, which can be used on Attribute checks, Luck checks, Death saves, and so on. Humans have one more Reroll than other Races. It is possible to roll a Great Success or a Terrible Failure on an Attribute or Skill check. A roll that is equal to half or less of the Attribute or Skill is a Great Success, whereas, a roll equal to or greater than one-and-a-half times the Attribute or Skill is a Terrible Fail. Thus, for example, for Donoso’s Dexterity of seven, a Great Success would be three or less, but a Terrible Failure, eleven or more, whereas for Intelligence, a Great Success would be eight or less, a Terrible Failure, twenty only. Modifiers to skill checks and attribute checks, can be a few points either way, but instead of major modifiers, Advantage and Disadvantage is used instead. There are other difficulty mechanics present in Tales of Argosa which seem to apply to Montage rules, but these are not readily explained.

Combat in Tales of Argosa uses group initiative, rolled against one Player Character’s Initiative. If successful, the Player Characters attack before the enemy and on a Great Success, before any boss or heavy monsters or other enemy. The players take it in turns to roll it, so that it is not always the player with the character with highest initiative always rolling. On a round, a Player Character can act and move once. Most fights are not to the death, but rather to the point when one side’s morale breaks. Typically, an action is an attack, casting a spell, dodging, and so on. Where an Attribute or Skill check requires a low roll on a twenty-sided die, combat requires a high roll to equal or better an Armour Class. A natural twenty inflicts maximum damage plus half the attacker’s Level—rounding up, rather than rounding down as in most situations. A Fumble results on a roll of one, potentially opening the fumbler up to a free attack.

Most weapons have properties that can also be triggered on a roll of a ‘Nat 19’, that is, a natural roll of nineteen. For example, a light mace or hammer inflicts 1d10 damage on a ‘Nat 19’, instead of the standard 1d6. The result of a ‘Nat 19’ gives a player two choices, one is a roll on the ‘Blunt Trauma’ table, the other is pushing a defender back a short distance or knocking him prone. To this, a player can also add an Exploit, which can be Major or Minor. Both require a player to hit and inflict damage, but a Minor Exploit might be to knock an opponent off his feet, drive him backwards, throw him through a window, throw dirt in his eyes, and so on. A Major Exploit might be to shatter a foe’s weapon, grab an enemy in each hand and crack their skulls together to stun them both, cut off a dragon’s wing, or decapitate the head of an orc. A Major Exploit does not increase damage to a single target, but might affect multiple targets, and nor can a Major Exploit kill or incapacitate a target, unless they are particularly weak. Similar rules work for Rescue Exploits, but Exploits in general, bring a narrative element into play as well as the standard rules. Other situations covered under combat include chases—complete with a table of chase events, as well as different fighting styles, knockouts, flanking, and aerial and underwater combat.

Damage, from any source, is deducted from a Player Character’s Hit Points. A combatant who is reduced to half his Hit Points is regarded as Wounded. This does not affect the Player Character, but it does certain monsters. For example, the Banshee’s ‘Death Wail’ recharges when it is Wounded. When a Player Character’s Hit Points are reduced to zero, he is dead or dying, but he and his fellow adventurers only find out which after the battle. At this point, a Death Save is made. If failed, the Player Character is dead, if successful, he is merely dying. At this point, healing can be rendered from any source and the player must still roll on the ‘Injuries & Setbacks’ table to determine the effects of being brought to near death. This can be as simple as a sprained ankle that limits his movement and mobility temporarily or it could be a broken or even a lost leg! Non-magical healing requires Willpower checks for a Short Rest, typically only one Hit Point is recovered following a night’s sleep, and a Long Rest takes a week!

Sorcery requires an Intelligence (Arcane Lore) check to cast, followed by a ‘Dark & Dangerous Magic’ check. If the Intelligence (Arcane Lore) check results in a ‘Great Success’ result, the spell is extra potent, gaining an extra effect as detailed in the spell. For example, A Wisp Unseen, which grants invisibility, lets the caster make a second person invisible too. However, on a ‘Terrible Failure’, both the spell and the ‘Dark & Dangerous Magic’ check fails. A Magic-User cannot cast the same spell more times than his Intelligence modifier per day. A Magic-User casting a spell is not the only situation in which a ‘Dark & Dangerous Magic’ check is required. It is also made when a Cultist invokes a Blessing without Favour from his god, gained from adhering to his deity’s strictures. A Cultist either has Favour or he does not and he can gain it multiple times per day, but the more times he uses it, the harder it becomes to gain. Whilst a ‘Dark & Dangerous Magic’ check may be required due to some magical aspect of a scenario or situation, the other reason why it might be required for a Player Character other than a Magic-User or Cultist is when a magic item is used.

A ‘Dark & Dangerous Magic’ check requires a simple die roll. Initially an eight-sided die, but then a ten-sided and a twelve-sided die as the Magic-User or Cultist goes up in Level. Using a magic item necessitates the rolling of a twenty-sided die. Whatever the die type, on a roll of one, the ‘Dark & Dangerous Magic’ effect is triggered and a roll on the ‘Dark & Dangerous Magic’ table is required, or the ‘Divine Rebuke’ table if a Cultist. The result might be “Fell Fingers – Your fingers turn into tentacles, serpents, leeches or something similarly creepy for 1d6 minutes. You cannot cast spells during this time. You count as Two Weapon Fighting and cause 2d6 acid or poison-based damage on a hit.” or “Plague of Flies – Lingering in the open attracts an abundance of flies, gnats, mosquitoes, locusts, etc, to your person. Atonement ends the rebuke.” There is a table of Atonements for the Cultist. However, if the ‘Dark & Dangerous Magic’ check succeeds, its threshold rises by one until either it is triggered or a new adventure begins and it can be reset.

Tales of Argosa lists some fifty spells, from A Wisp Unseen, Abjure the Unnatural, and Arcane Aegis to Whispers of the Watchers, Wings of the Raven King, and Witchblade. Most of them are familiar, but are renamed. For example, Dark Slumber is Sleep and Riddle of Bones is Speak with Undead. This both adds flavour, but it also confuses somewhat.

Beyond adventuring, the Player Characters are given numerous options for their downtime. Of course, this includes advancement, but it also covers buying or constructing buildings, black market trading, carousing, gambling, training pets—including monstrous pets, brewing potions, recovery—from addiction, madness, and injuries, conducting research, inscribing scrolls, and rumour mongering. For the Game Master, there is guidance on running wilderness and dungeon adventures, supported by encounter tables for both, hireling creation tables, running mass battles, and handling madness. This is typically suffered after encountering monstrosities, aberrations, and demons, or reading forbidden lore and requires a Luck (Willpower) check to resist. Symptoms manifest in acute episodes once per symptom per adventure and cannot be cured by magic, only through recovery during downtime.

Tales of Argosa includes an extensive bestiary of monsters with guidance on customisation and set of templates that will turn a monster into a boss, demon, heavy, lycanthrope, and more. Again, most of the entries will be familiar from other Dungeons & Dragons-style roleplaying games, but many also have scope for customisation. Rounding out the roleplaying game are sample traps and an extensive list of magic items. There is also a set of Oracle Tools, intended for use as ‘quintessential improv enablers’ and which make use of The Bones or Deck of Signs. They work well, but they feel out of place in a retroclone, more so because they require a completely separate set of dice to the standard polyhedral dice or cards. Obviously, they are also available online, but that adds complexity when Tales of Argosa is played at the table. There are rules too for solo play and a dungeon generator to work with normal and solo play.

Physically, Tales of Argosa is cleanly, but occasionally, tightly laid out. In general, it is well written and apart from the occasional piece that feels out of place, the artwork—all black and white—is excellent, a mix of classic Dungeons & Dragons combined with swords & sorcery.

Tales of Argosa is an attempt to create a grimmer and more perilous version of Dungeons & Dragons-style play, and in this, it succeeds. This is primarily through the lower number of Hit Points, the lack of immediacy of healing in combat, reliance on a diminishing luck resource rather than standard Saving Throws, and spellcasting being ‘Dark & Dangerous Magic’. Yet this comes with a complexity that echoes Advanced Dungeons & Dragons more than it does any other edition. None of the roleplaying game’s various subsystems is necessarily complex in themselves, but the roll low for Attribute, Luck, and Skill checks versus the roll high for combat versus the roll low for ‘Dark & Dangerous Magic’ check is outmoded, counterintuitive, and adds unnecessary complexity. Similarly, the roll of a natural twenty versus a ‘Nat 19’ is counterintuitive and in the case of the latter adds further complexity, as well as forcing the question, “Which is the better result?” Or rather, which has the more interesting result? Invariably, it is the ‘Nat 19’ result because the player gets to roll on the various trauma, or critical hit, tables. The inclusion of Exploits add an extra narrative effect as well, and then the Oracle Tools seem to have been dropped into the roleplaying game from an entirely different game and age. And yet…

Not every player or Game Master is going to have an issue with the differing subsystems in Tales of Argosa, but there will also be those that do. It simply means that Tales of Argosa is not for them. Yet to be fair, they all add flavour and detail to play as well as enforcing the fact that adventuring is dangerous and for the foolish. Tales of Argosa: Sword & Sorcery Adventure is undoubtedly an entertaining roleplaying game, but Game Master and player alike are going to have to adjust to its complexities to get to the entertaining part of play.

Darkness & Danger

When it comes to the Old School Renaissance, there are plenty of retroclones and microclones and other roleplaying games designed to emulate the play and feel of retroclones, but without being directly derived from Dungeons & Dragons. Further, in the two decades of the Old School Renaissance, there have been plenty of gaming darlings, designs that have garnered praise, play, and support from both within and without the Old School Renaissance. 2010’s Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplaying from Lamentations of the Flame Princess, was one of the first, bringing an adult sensibility to the hobby in terms of content, tone, and horror, whilst in 2019, Necrotic Gnome’s Old School Essentials presented a very clean and elegantly accessible version of the Moldvay/Cook 1980/81 version of Dungeons & Dragons. More recently, 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 made a splash with its doom punk attitude combined with its artpunk style. In each case, these offered a combination of the familiar play of Dungeons & Dragons-style roleplaying games with their own unique selling point. So, if Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplaying offered adult horror and Dungeons & Dragons, and Old School Essentials offered accessibility and elegance in a new version of Basic Dungeons & Dragons, and Mörk Borg offered doom metal sensibility alongside a splash of chromium yellow and neon pink, what does the latest darling of the Old School Renaissance, Shadowdark, have to offer in terms of its unique selling point?

Shadowdark is published by The Arcane Library following a successful Kickstarter campaign. Its claim was that it would be ‘Old School Gaming’, but modernised, and presented in a way that devotees of the Old School Renaissance and players of Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition will find accessible. And in the case of the latter, a means of entering the Old School Renaissance sector of the hobby. So, what is Shadowdark? The publisher describes Shadowdark as, “…[W]hat an old-school fantasy adventure game would look like after being redesigned with 50 years of innovation.” And certainly, there is some truth in that, since what Shadowdark offers is Dungeons & Dragons-style play, but with many rules and mechanics that are modern, having been derived from the more recent iterations of Dungeons & Dragons rules. So, what it uses is the key d20 System mechanic of rolling a twenty-sided die and aiming to roll high to beat a difficulty class and ascending Armour Class, both drawn from Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition; the Advantage and Disadvantage mechanic from Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition; and the slot-based inventory system of microclones such as Knave. Thus, there is a lot here that a player of Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition will recognise.

What the player of Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition will not recognise is the replacement in Shadowdark of the Vancian ‘cast & forget’ style of spellcasting by having players of Wizards and Priests roll to cast magic. Then again, neither will the devotee of the Old School Renaissance. However, said devotee will recognise the standard attributes—rolled for in order, the relatively low Hit Points, standard Alignments of Law, Chaos, and Neutrality, Experience Points being awarded for treasure found, and certainly, a lot of content and tables designed to be used at the table and support developing play.

Shadowdark is a Class and Level roleplaying a la Dungeons & Dragons. In the game, players take on the roles of Crawlers, who will use their magic, iron, and cleverness to delve into and explore mysterious ruins, lost cities, and monster-infested depths. They will overcome traps, face monsters, and the constant threat of danger and calamity, but they will find gold and gems, amazing magic, and ancient, forgotten secrets, and with luck, survive to return to civilisation. As well as luck, they need light, and if ever it goes out, they are in danger of being attacked by those creatures and monsters who can see in the dark, of wandering into traps and chasms unseen, and getting lost in the depths of the Shadowdark!

A Crawler is defined by his stats, Class and Ancestry, Background and Talents, Armour Class, Hit Points, what he can carry, and more. The stats are the six standards—Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. There are four Classes—Fighter, Priest, Thief, and Wizard, and six Ancestries—Dwarf, Elf, Goblin, Half-Orc, Halfling, and Human. Each Ancestry provides a single benefit. The Dwarf gains more Hit Points and rolls with Advantage at each Level to increase them; the Elf has a bonus to either ranged weapon attacks or his spellcasting checks; the Goblin cannot be surprised; the Half-Orc is better at fighting with melee weapons; the Halfling can turn invisible once per day; and the Human gains an extra Talent from his Class at First Level. What none of the non-Human Ancestries have is anything akin to Infravision or Darkvision. Thus, no Player Character can naturally see in the dark. This is by intent and it has major ramifications in play.

Each Class determines the arms and armour a Player Character can wield and wear, several Class abilities, and access to Class Talents. Each Class has a table of these, rolled for randomly at First Level and then every other Level. So, the Fighter can use all arms and armour, can carry more if his Constitution is higher, can master a weapon, and gains Advantage on either Strength or Dexterity checks to overcome an opposing force. The Talents include mastering another weapon, gaining a bonus to hit on all weapons, increasing a stat, improving Armour Class for one type of armour, and so on. These Talents can be rolled again and again as the Player Character acquires Levels.

Of the three other Classes, the Priest can Turn Undead and cast Priest spells, and generally gets better at spellcasting through his Talents. The Thief can Backstab and has Advantage on Climbing, Sneaking and Hiding, Disguises, Finding and Disabling Traps, and Picking Pockets and Locks. The use of the latter does not get batter through Talents, the Thief improving his Backstab Ability and combat prowess. The Wizard can learn spells from a scroll and cast spells, whilst his Talents include being able to make a random magic item get better at casting magic. Backgrounds range from Urchin, Wanted, and Cult Initiate to Scholar, Noble, and Chirurgeon. These provide no mechanical benefit; the player and Game Master being expected to work out when they provide a benefit or a penalty during play. Essentially, roleplay their use and provide an on-the-spot bonus or penalty, the most obvious being Advantage or Disadvantage.

Player Character creation is simple. Stats are rolled for in order—a complete new set can be rolled for if no stat is fourteen or higher—and the player then selects an Ancestry and Class, rolling for a Talent for the latter. He also chooses Alignment and purchases equipment.

Name: Brak
Class: Thief (Robber)
Ancestry: Goblin
Level: First
Alignment: Neutral

Strength 13 (+1) Dexterity 17 (+3) Constitution 14 (+2)
Intelligence 13 (+1) Wisdom 12 (+0) Charisma 05 (-3)

Armour Class: 14
Hit Points: 6

Abilities: Backstab, Thievery, Cannot Be Surprised
Talents: +2 Dexterity
Background: Sailor

Equipment: Crawling Kit, Leather Armour, Daggers, Lantern, Flint & Steel, Oil Flasks, Crowbar

Mechanically, to have his character perform a task, a player rolls a twenty-sided die and adds any Stat modifier and bonus from a Talent to the result. The Difficulty Classes are standardised to nine for Easy, twelve for Normal, fifteen for hard, and eighteen for extreme. It is possible to roll a critical hit or fumble, which will require interpretation in play. In combat, a critical hit will typically double damage, but if spellcasting, it will double one aspect of the spell. Combat plays out as you would expect for a Dungeons & Dragons-style roleplaying game.

Magic works the same way for Priests and Wizards. To have his spellcaster cast a spell, a player rolls a twenty-sided die and adds a Stat bonus to the result. This is either from Intelligence for Wizards or Wisdom for Priests. The Difficulty Class for spells is ten plus the tier of the spell. So, to cast a First-Tier spell, a player must roll against a Difficulty Class of eleven, then twelve for Second Tier spells, and so on. A spellcaster will know a number of spells and during an adventure can cast as many and as often as he likes. Once cast, he does not forget them. However, if the spellcasting roll is a failure, the spell cannot be cast again until the spellcaster has had a rest. If the roll is a one, or critical failure, then the spellcaster will not only forget the spell until he has had a rest, but also roll on the Wizard Mishap table if the spellcaster is a Wizard or complete a ritualistic penance if a Priest.

The players and their character also have access to Luck Tokens. These are awarded by the Game Master for good roleplaying, character heroism, and so on. Effectively, they are reroll tokens, which allow a player to reroll his dice. A player may only hold one Luck Token at any one time.

So far, so good. Shadowdark reads and sounds like a standard Dungeons & Dragons-style roleplaying game, but done in a very accessible style and with some tweaks. However, the play of it is radically different to most retroclones in two major ways. The first is Initiative. In almost every other roleplaying game, Initiative is determined at the start of a fight or the action. In Shadowdark, it is determined at the start of play and play progresses in turn order for the rest of the session like that, though it may be rerolled for combat and a Game Master can decide not to adhere to it all the time, allowing for more freeform play. When it is in effect, what it means is that the players and their characters are always on. There is no let up to the tension. They are Crawling through the dungeon or the temple or the caves and so they are in a dangerous place and anything can go wrong or happen at any moment.

The way is light. No Player Character has Infravision and can see in the dark, no matter what their Ancestry. Therefore, a party must keep a torch lit at all times. A torch or a lantern, only lasts for a single hour—and that is an hour of real time, not game time. At the end of the hour, the torch (or lantern) goes out and the Player Characters are in the dark. Now they can move and act in the dark, but it is difficult and dangerous. All actions are at a Disadvantage—including lighting a new torch—and the Danger Level of the location where the Player Characters are, rises to ‘Deadly’. The higher the Danger Level, the more chance of a random encounter. Plus, if there is a random encounter, the monsters are going to be able to see in the dark. Now simply changing one torch for another is not going to matter in most cases, but there will be moments when a light source being extinguished turns the situation into one of dread and fear. Imagine being in a fight and the light source goes out or fleeing from a cave-in and the light goes out…

For the Game Master there is excellent advice on running the game, always direct and the point. Providing information to the players so that they can make informed choices, telegraphing danger, dropping tells for traps, being the neutral arbiter, letting the players learn as their characters do through play, and so on. There is a brevity to all of the advice given, that makes it easy to grasp. Advice particular to Shadowdark suggests ways in which the Player Character’s light source can be ‘attacked’, whether by monsters or the environment, so that as well as the Player Characters needing to watch the clock for when the light goes out, they have to protect it too. There are suggestions for different modes of play, such as halving the time for which a torch remains alight for ‘Blitz Mode’ or ‘Momentum Mode’ that gives Advantage on repeated tasks and makes damage dice explode. There are notes too, on running Shadowdark in ‘The Gauntlet’, a starting type of adventure for Zero Level Player Characters in which the survivors will rise to First Level much like the Character Funnel of the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. To support this, there are tables upon tables, covering everything. A random ‘Something Happens!’ table, ‘NPCs’ and ‘Rival Crawler’ tables, tables for creating maps of the Shadowdark below and for Overland travel, ‘Settlement’ tables accompanied with ‘Taverns’ and ‘Shops’ tables, plus encounter tables for a variety of environments. One of the fun activities that the Player Characters can do during their Downtime is carouse and there is a fun table of outcomes which will often reward them with bonuses and Experiences. Plus, they might engage in a game of Wizards & Thieves, a gambling game whose rules are included overleaf!

There is not just a set of tables for generating monsters, but a good bestiary of monsters. From Aboleth, Acolyte, and Angels to Wraith, Wyvern, and Zombie, there will be a great deal that is familiar here from any Dungeons & Dragons-style game. Alongside the more well-known entries are more individual threats. These are given full page write-up as opposed to the thumbnail descriptions accorded most creatures, such as ‘Mordanticus the Flayed’, a skinless mummy-lich who lives in secret in the sanctum of Gehemna’s archmage and ‘The Ten-Eyed Oracle’, a barnacle-encrusted mass with ten writhing eyestalks that shoot out random damaging rays and which stalks the Shadowdark…

Rounding out Shadowdark is a further section of tables for generating treasure, which supports the ‘treasure as Experience Point award’ aspect of the roleplaying game. Included here are boons such as oaths, secrets, and blessings, for non-tangible treasures, plus all manner of tables for creating simple, but interesting magical items. For example, a shield with blurry indistinct edges that once per day deflects a ranged attack against the wielder or a dagger that trails sparkles and when it hits a target enables the wielder to learn the target’s true name. The notes on creating magical items are short, but do advise against creating items that grant Darkvision or light or increase the number of Inventory slots a Player Character has. Both of these adversely affect the core features of Shadowdark’s game play. The section is followed by a selection of ready-made magical items.

There are a lot of things that the Player Characters do in roleplaying and Dungeon & Dragons in particular with its procedural play that are conveniently glossed over and forgotten, it being assumed that the Player Characters automatically do it. This includes the lighting of torches and the maintenance of their upkeep or replacement. Shadowdark does away with that for a profound effect on game play and constantly highlighting the danger that the Player Characters are in. How much that game play of constantly being alert and of constantly watching the torches is going to last in the long term is another matter. At what Level does it become a tedious part of play? This is not something that is addressed in Shadowdark, but it may well be something that the Game Master wants to bear in mind as her campaign progresses.

Physically, Shadowdark is very well presented. The artwork is excellent and notably, the book is written in a short, punchy and concise style. Rarely is a paragraph more than a couple of sentences long. It is a thick, little hardback, but the formatting makes the content easy to read and quick to grasp and there are fewer rules in its pages than might be first imagined. Anyone coming to Shadowdark from a longer, more verbose roleplaying game will be very surprised by its brevity. However, some of the phrasing could have been clearer in places and marking of text in bold for some terms does not always work. Lastly, the roleplaying game is missing an index and a glossary might have helped.

If anything, Shadowdark has the feel of a Basic Dungeons & Dragons-style game at its core, but with modern additions that do not impede that feel or its play. What impedes its play—or rather what the players have to get used to—in comparison to other Dungeons & Dragons-style games are the rules for light and time. They need to adjust to never forgetting that their torch might go out at any time and that they are always on the clock and always in danger when Crawling. This is what Shadowdark has to offer the Old School Renaissance and players of Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, its unique selling point—time and tension.

Friday Fantasy: Raiding the Obsidian Keep

The rumours have been spreading for weeks now. The Archbishop of Radiant Vitela has excommunicated the Duke and Duchess of Isla Requia, declaring them heretics and sorcerers, foul worshippers of Chaos, and most recently he sent a fleet to land an army on the island and assault the Obsidian Keep, home to the Duke and Duchess. Word has it that as the Radiant Fleet anchored in Isla Requia harbour, the only part of the island where it is possible to land, a great storm of strange, red lightning descended on the ecumenical ships and shattered one vessel after another. The Duke and Duchess of Isla Requia remain in the Obsidian Keep, protected by the weird storms that some say the Duchess is responsible for, the dark walls of Obsidian Keep, and the distance across the Sakeen Sea to the island. There have been calls put out by Archbishop of Radiant Vitela for brave adventurers to sail to the mouth of Isla Requia harbour and there a launch a rowing boat to explore the harbour and shore for survivors and relics—and if such adventurers put an end to the reign of Duke Avito and Duchess Forza (literally Duke ‘Ancestral’ and Duchess ‘Force’), then there will be an even bigger reward. Similarly, there have been whispers put out by Master Argento of Radiant Vitela for treasure hunters to break into the Obsidian Keep and steal its treasures, with a bonus if the treasures happen to belong to the Duke or Duchess.

This is the set-up for Raiding the Obsidian Keep, an ‘Adventure Module for Characters 2-4’ for use with Old School Essentials, the retroclone based on the 1981 revision of Basic Dungeons & Dragons by Tom Moldvay and its accompanying Expert Set by Dave Cook and Steve Marsh. Originally published as The Obsidian Keep by Dungeon Age Adventures for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, like the author’s well received Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow, this edition of the scenario has been expanded, adapted, and transformed by The Merry Mushmen—best known for the Old School Renaissance magazine, Knock!, and the excellent A Folklore Bestiary—following a successful Kickstarter campaign. And what a transformation it is! The digest-sized scenario comes as a thick, seventy two-page booklet in a wraparound card cover. The trade dress echoes that of classic TSR, though the artwork is more cartoonish. The cover has been purposely distressed and inside has been drawn the map of the temple, again in the style of classic Dungeons & Dragons modules. The cartoonish style of artwork continues throughout in a greyscale, depicting the devastation which has been wrought upon the Radiant Vitela fleet and the gothic weirdness that permeates the Obsidian Keep and its inhabitants.

Structurally, Raiding the Obsidian Keep is linear, organised into four stages, one after the other, but within those stages, the Player Characters have plenty of freedom of movement. These are in turn, ‘The Harbour of Death’, ‘Survivor Beach’, ‘At the Foot of the Obsidian Keep’, and ‘Inside the Obsidian Keep’. Each of these stages contains a mix of encounters with survivors—initially from the Radiant Vitela fleet and then from the Obsidian Keep, signs of the recent storm, and other strangeness. There is a distinct atmosphere to each of the four stages. ‘The Harbour of Death’ is a sea salt-encrusted battlefield, strewn with shattered and capsized hulls, with survivors desperate for help among the dangerous waters patrolled by harbour sharks and the leathery black and bewinged Vulgranes. ‘Survivor Beach’ is a shanty town of fishermen, Radiant Vitela sailors and soldiers washed ashore, and servants that have fled from the Obsidian Keep, the narrow area split down the middle by a lava stream. ‘At the Foot of the Obsidian Keep’ is a fractured courtyard split by lava filled vents, marching obsidian skeletons, and a floating cottage, all under an ash-laden sky. ‘Inside the Obsidian Keep’ is decadence and luxury smashed by lightning and Chaos, populated by the mutated lords and ladies of the ducal court acting as if everything was perfectly normal and littered with corpses, many with wrinkled skin, eyeless, and missing their left arms, robed in red.

Throughout Raiding the Obsidian Keep there are some fantastic encounters. some of the most notable include Angelica the Ursaloth, half-woman, half-octopus, in ‘The Harbour of Death’, who welcomes a kiss and gives a boon in return for the gift of a finger; on ‘Survivor Beach’ with the charred and frozen naked skeleton of Prince Orsino, who might tell you his story in return for a promise; in the stables ‘At the Foot of the Obsidian Keep’ with a shining back stallion with a skull for a head, that despite being Chaotic, just wants to be friends; and ‘Inside the Obsidian Keep’ where Pavnutia, vampire alchemist from outer space just wants to be rescued (so she can enthrall the world!). There is plenty of treasure to be found, all artfully designed, like billiard balls of sapphire in the games room or the individual model ships each sailing on a worked sea of silver in Prince Orsino’s room. That though, is just the treasure of artistic or monetary value, for there are numerous magical items to be found and delightfully, not a single one of them actually boring!

As the Player Characters progress through the adventure, both it and their focus will change. In ‘The Harbour of Death’, they will be rowing from wreck to wreck, rescuing people and learning about what happened in the bay, whilst on ‘Survivor Beach’, they will begin to learn about what happened in the Obsidian Keep before entering the courtyard of the keep and then the keep itself to really discover the truth of what happened. As a result, there is tonal shift from one half of the scenario to the other, initially an open water tale of bracing adventure and danger, and then a dark gothic story inside the ruined black castle with echoes of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death via Roger Corman and Vincent Price.

For all of its atmosphere and its details, where Raiding the Obsidian Keep disappoints is in the set-up. Unless starting the scenario en media res, right at the mouth of Isla Requia Harbour, being launched into the long boat, the scenario requires quite a bit of set up in terms of its back story and setting. All necessary to provide context to the reasons why the Player Characters might become involved. The given set-up in underwritten and there is a lot more going on in the scenario some of which the Player Characters will be aware of. Some of this can be facilitated via the included rumour table, but even that feels out of context. Also one thing that cannot easily be done with Raiding the Obsidian Keep is run it as a sequel to either of the earlier scenarios from the publisher, Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow or The Horrendous Hounds of Hendenburgh, whereas The Horrendous Hounds of Hendenburgh has links indicating that it could be could be run as a sequel to Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow. To be fair, Raiding the Obsidian Keep is not written as a sequel to either, but neither does it have links suggesting that it could be.

Physically, Raiding the Obsidian Keep is very well presented. The writing is succinct and laid out in an easy to grasp style, whilst the artwork is entertaining throughout. If there is anything disappointing it is that the cartography of both the courtyard and the keep is are clean, tidy, but dull. Especially in comparison to that of the harbour and the beach. That said, the descriptions of the various locations in the courtyard and rooms in the Obsidian Keep more than compensate for their uninteresting cartography. None will hinder the Game Master running Raiding the Obsidian Keep, but none really help their locations come to life either.

Raiding the Obsidian Keep is self-contained. This means that it is easy for the Game Master to drop into her own campaign world or an existing one she is already using. Similarly, although Raiding the Obsidian Keep is written for use with Old School Essentials, the scenario is easily adapted to the retroclone of the Game Master’s preference.

Raiding the Obsidian Keep is a scenario for more experienced players, being challenging and dangerous. It has a fantastic gothic atmosphere of ruin and tragedy in the face of overweening ambition. However getting to that ruin and tragedy will take some effort upon the part of the Game Master to set-up and get the players and their characters motivated. Once they are, they will discover that Raiding the Obsidian Keep is another fine scenario from The Merry Mushmen and the author of Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow.