Rural Ruminations

Maps form such a fundamental part of our gaming experience. We explore them. We journey across them. We delve into them. We defend them. We attack them. We draw them. We create stories using them. We have been gaming maps for centuries, whether it is to conduct wargames like Kriegsspiel or H.G. Wells’ Little Wars, or more recently explore great dungeons such as B2 Keep on the Borderlands or sprawling sandboxes such as X1 Isle of Dread, or even create a community and its history with a game like The Quiet Year. There is also something else that we can do with maps and that is contemplate, and it is something that Paths does. Designed and drawn by the British Children’s Laureate, children’s book illustrator and author, and political cartoonist, Chris Riddell, Paths is the first game to be published by Betonmond. Or rather it is the first game published by Betonmond that is not a game, although it could be if you wanted.

Paths consists of fifty-two, large one-hundred-and-twenty-five by eighty-five-millimetre cards. Each depicts a landscape crisscrossed by one or more paths. A steep path leads up a hill to a round tower with a single door. A statue of a mermaid sits in the middle of a plaza around which stand a pyramid, a column, and other features. Paths cut through tunnels in the hills. A narrow path joins a junction surrounded by tall, narrow houses. A village sits atop a cliff overlooking a tower below. A field is divided by several routes, but leaves a single tent isolated. An abyss is encircled by the paths. A great viaduct crosses over a valley path. Paths connect to steps that descend to a single platform over a chasm or seemingly connect at random underneath a house that hangs from a wall. Who lives in the tower? Who was the mermaid? What lies in the tunnels? Who lives in the village and where does the narrow path lead? Why is the village higher than the tower? Who lurks in the abyss? What is the platform over the chasm used for? Who lives in the home hanging from the wall? These are just some of the questions that the cards in Paths provoke.

All of the cards are beautifully bucolic and are designed to form a grid, depicting an ever-greater area and range of terrain. As a deck they can be shuffled, cards drawn and laid out to form a whole map, and then done again and again to create new maps each time. Paths suggests that two cards be selected to mark the beginning and the end of a route, and then cards be drawn to map out the route between them, whether direct or meandering. The participant is encouraged to examine each card, asking what it makes him think of or how he feels? The process is intended to be contemplative, even meditative, the participant almost taking a walking holiday across his loving room table.

Lastly, Paths turns the participant into a player and the map cards into a game. It is suggested the map is built collaboratively with perhaps one player as the map-maker who knows the secrets behind each card and location to be revealed as the other players and their heroes add each card to the map. It is suggested that tokens be used and notes taken and dice be used for dice-battles—if needed. These are the limits of the suggestions in Paths, but it would be incredibly easy to import a set of simple rules or even create some. For example…

Paths: The RPG

1. Each player creates an adventurer, for example, a wizard or a warrior. Then name the character.
2. Players take turns as the Map-Maker. When it is your turn, draw a card and add it to the map. Describe it and answer any questions the other players have about it as their adventurers explore it. Portray any characters who live there. Perhaps they want to help the adventurers? Have something to tell them or sell to them (or both)? Perhaps they are hiding secrets? Is there an obstacle or some monsters? Are there secrets to be found?
3. As a player, describe what your adventurer does. Who does he talk to? Where does he look? Let the other players do the same.
4. If there is an obstacle or monster, the Map-Maker rolls a six-sided die. Each player rolls a six-sided die for his adventurer (another player rolls for the current Map-Maker’s adventurer). The highest result defeats or stops the other. If an adventurer would have an advantage because of the situation, a good idea, or he just would (perhaps through force of arms as a warrior or a spell cast by a wizard), he rolls two dice instead on one.
5. The next player becomes the Map-Maker.

Physically, the cards in Paths are large, glossy, and feel good in the hand. The leaflet runs to four pages and is a quick and simple read.

However the participant, player, or Map-Maker uses Paths, there is ultimately a simple truth to Paths. Which is that this set of cards is a beautiful and lovely artifact. A beautiful and lovely artifact which works as inspiration, contemplation, or a game.

Views of the Warden

The Book of Handouts – 16 Scenes to Show Players is a supplement for Metamorphosis Alpha: Fantastic Role-Playing Game of Science Fiction Adventures on a Lost Starship. The first Science Fiction roleplaying game and the first post-apocalypse roleplaying game, Metamorphosis Alpha is set aboard the Starship Warden, a generation spaceship which has suffered an unknown catastrophic event which killed the crew and most of the million or so colonists and left the ship irradiated and many of the survivors and the flora and fauna aboard mutated. Some three centuries later, as Humans, Mutated Humans, Mutated Animals, and Mutated Plants, the Player Characters, knowing nothing of their captive universe, would leave their village to explore strange realm around them, wielding fantastic mutant powers and discovering how to wield fantastic devices of the gods and the ancients that is technology, ultimately learn of their enclosed world. Originally published in 1976, it would go on to influence a whole genre of roleplaying games, starting with Gamma World, right down to Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic from Goodman Games. And it would be Goodman Games which brought the roleplaying game back with the stunning Metamorphosis Alpha Collector’s Edition in 2016, and support the forty-year old roleplaying game with a number of supplements, many which would be collected in the ‘Metamorphosis Alpha Treasure Chest’.

Next to come out of the ‘Metamorphosis Alpha Treasure Chest’ is Book of Handouts – 16 Scenes to Show Players. There is no denying the power of a good handout, whether is the matchbook from the Stumbling Tiger Bar found in Jackson Elias’ hotel room at the start of Masks of Nyarlathotep or the Origami-style elemental stones from The Doomstones campaign for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying or the rotating puzzle from The Chained Coffin for Dungeon Crawl Classics or the opening screen crawl scripts for West End Games’ Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game. They engage the players and draw them into the world of the roleplaying game, building atmosphere and a sense of immersion. Yet for most fantasy roleplaying games, handouts take the form of maps, but there is a special case for Dungeons & Dragons. Going all the way back to S1 Tomb of Horrors, certainly Advanced Dungeons & Dragons has had a history of including a separate booklet of images keyed to locations in a scenario, so that when the adventurers reach a particular location, the Dungeon Master can flip to the relevant image in the Illustration Booklet and show it to her players. These illustrations brought each location alive and made the Dungeon Master’s task all the easier, and it is from these Illustration Booklets, for S1 Tomb of Horrors or more recently, Dwimmermount, that the Book of Handouts – 16 Scenes to Show Players draws from for its inspiration.

The Book of Handouts – 16 Scenes to Show Players is simply a book of illustrations of scenes aboard the Starship Warden. Unlike the Illustration Booklets for S1 Tomb of Horrors or Dwimmermount, there is no text associated with the images in its pages. Or indeed, an actual scenario associated with it. What you have instead is literally a booklet of images. Appearing in landscape and portrait formats, one image per page, they include a Tiger Mutant Animal in armour and firing a rocket straight at the viewer—and thus the Player Characters; a woman dressed in the clothes of the Ancients, asleep in her cyropod; and a bunch of scruffy Pure Strain Humans, bearded and armed with flint spears, looking nervously into a strange hole in the wall. Some are humorous, like the four Wolfoids, clearly enjoying themselves travelling in some ancient vehicle, the passengers with their feet, whilst others are horrifying, such as the Pure Strain Human being strapped down by medbots whilst staring at the metal leg they are about to replace his own with! Then some are intriguing, like the entrance to a bunker or a facility marked as ‘Level 5’, the ground before it strewn with dirt out of which protrudes one of the many infamous coloured arm bands to be found aboard the Starship Warden and which will grant access to certain keyed areas.

However, because there is no text in the Book of Handouts – 16 Scenes to Show Players and so each picture is not displaying a specific scene or encounter, these images are not actually intended to be shown to the players—at least not at first. Their initial role is to severe as inspiration for the Game Master, for the Game Master to write scenarios and scenes in which the images can be shown to the players and illustrate what their characters can see. For example, perhaps one of the Player Characters’ friends has gone to serve the Ancients, but when they discover him, they see him about to undergo leg upgrade surgery at the hands of the medbots or during the rites to the holy carp in the lake upon whose shores the Player Characters’ village stands, the giant fish is suddenly attacked by something tentacular. Is this tentacled attacker a mutated beast, a robot gone rogue, or what else could it be?

The all but text free Book of Handouts – 16 Scenes to Show Players does another thing and that is showcase the artwork of the late Jim Holloway, drawings here each to a brief given by author, James Ward. And they are good pieces of art, interesting, a little quirky, and hopefully for the Game Master, inspirational, and her players, illustrative. And like so many supplements for Metamorphosis Alpha, the Book of Handouts – 16 Scenes to Show Players works with almost any post-apocalyptic roleplaying game, from Gamma World to Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic. Ultimately though, the Book of Handouts – 16 Scenes to Show Players is not a book that a Metamorphosis Alpha or other post-apocalypse Game Master absolutely needs, but short of ideas, it might provide much-needed inspiration for the next adventure.

Brilliantly Sunny Handouts

As well as introducing players to the cosmic horror of H.P. Lovecraft and the concept of playing ordinary persons—or investigators—pitched stopping the entities and their servants borne of an uncaring universe, Call of Cthulhu introduced something else. And that is, clues, and in particular, their associated handouts. For Call of Cthulhu is a literary game and an academic game, a game in which clues come in the form of letters, diaries, newspaper clippings, excerpts from Mythos tomes, and more. Which of course, means that they can all be copied and cut out for the players and their investigators’ perusal, and from the clues found, so push the play of the game forward. As scenarios and then campaigns grew in complexity, then so did their clues, and then so did their handouts...

Of course, the first sophisticated handout for Call of Cthulhu would arguably be the match book for the Tiger Bar in the Shanghai chapter of Masks of Nyarlathotep, and in some ways, just as Masks of Nyarlathotep has remained the preeminent campaign for Call of Cthulhu, so its handouts have remained as correspondingly important. Thus to accompany the most recent edition of the campaign, updated and adjusted for use with Call of Cthulhu, Seventh edition, The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society has created the Masks of Nyarlathotep: Gamer Prop Set. With its one hundred and more props and handouts, this—even in its standard form—is a gorgeous looking collection and would deservedly go on to win the 2019 Ennie Award for ‘Product of the Year’. (Note that Reviews from R’lyeh has only had a chance to examine the Masks of Nyarlathotep: Gamer Prop Set and is not ashamed to admit that it would like to write a review of this and other prop sets.)

However, not every campaign or scenario warrants so lavish a treatment, but over the years there have been many efforts to support Call of Cthulhu’s use of handouts as props. For example, Chaosium, Inc. published the Beyond the Mountains of Madness Game Aid, which collected all of the handouts and supporting material for the pre-millennium campaign, Beyond the Mountains of Madness. Similarly, Pagan Publishing published GM Packs for many of its campaigns, such as that for Realm of Shadows. Many of these extras have become highly collectible, with correspondingly high prices, even though in some cases, they have not amounted to much more than a few sheets of paper.

Alongside this, another trend has allowed the Keeper to create more and more of her own handouts—the use of the personal computer and inexpensive Desktop Publishing software. Previously, a Keeper might have written out a handout and then soaked it in tea before drying it out in the oven to get that effect of its being old, and whilst she might still do that today, she is just as likely to create something her computer—a letter, a diary entry, a newspaper article, a map, and the like. This also means that publishers can do the same, whatever their size. So it is with Dave Sokolowski and Weird 8, who has released the Sun Spots Prop Kit, a set of handouts for the 2016 scenario, Sun Spots. Set in 1926, west of a wintery Boston in the resort town of Red Valley where sun-worshippers are taking advantage of the unseasonably warm weather and a father—accompanied by the investigators—have come to retrieve his daughter, whom he believes to have fallen into immoral company. Of course, nothing is as it seems, for that immoral company turns out to be sun-worshipping cultists, more and more of whom flocks to the town the heat grows and grows, threatening burn it—and more—down.

The Sun Spots Prop Kit is a simple envelope, inside of which are just four items. The first of these is the first of three maps in the Sun Spots Prop Kit. This is an A3-sized, double-page spread of the town, drawn in topographical style, and done as the sort town map you might find at a tourist office or a hotel. It even comes with marked and numbered location as well as list of adverts down one side. This gives it a lovely verisimilitude. The second prop consists of several entries in the daughter’s diary over a couple of sheets and they are nicely presented with a slightly rough and idiosyncratic feel to the handwriting. The handwriting is large and easy to read, but with elements that make it just a little harder to read in places—just like the handwriting of you or I.

The second map—and third prop—is a simple plan of the town of Red Valley. This feels much more a handout rather than an in-game map like the first one, but is clear and simple. The likelihood is that this map was designed to accompany the third map—and fourth prop, an elevation map of the valley around the town of Red Valley. Now in Sun Spots, only the fourth prop was included in its pages, rather than including a map of the town. So, the Sun Spots Prop Kit certainly fixes that omission. Of the two maps, the elevation map is the only one done in full colour and it has a pleasing delicacy to it matching the area maps of the period.

Physically, the Sun Spots Prop Kit is solidly presented. All four items are printed on weighty paper stock and feel good in the hand. 

The Sun Spots Prop Kit is smartly done and all four props have a lovely feel to them. Now if you have a copy of Sun Spots, then the truth is that the props in the Sun Spots Prop Kit are not entirely necessary to play the scenario. However, they do add a degree of verisimilitude when running the scenario—especially the tourist-style map and the diary. Which means that the Sun Spots Prop Kit does what it is intended to do and that is, help make the play Sun Spots all the better.