Friday Fantasy: The Book of Gaub

The Book of Gaub is a book of power whispered of by those fear it—and those lust after its secrets, a book of terrible knowledge that is never found whole, a book of vile things unleashed when its dark spells are miscast by the unready or the desperate, the reaching into our world of a being unknowable except by his hand which stretches out, his fingers—all seven of them, together and independently scratching at the walls and behind the cobwebs in the forgotten places. In mouldering dusty libraries, beyond the edges of maps, on the inside of the flesh of patients at a hospital underbudget, under the floorboards where rats and other things run, in that pie leftover from Christmas at the back of the icebox, nowhere because it never existed, and in that moment of lost love when a tear rolls down the cheek… Here the seven fingers—detached from the Hand of Gaub—incise their spells, perhaps to last for years and years, perhaps to disappear moments after discovery… Seven spells and seven instances for seven fingers, a catalogue of catastrophes to befall the foolish and the ambitious caster, details the many known things—or paraphernalia—left behind by the Shards of Gaub, a score of things that may come about because of Gaub, and descriptions of the situations that have wound themselves around the appearance of Gaub—in any form, all may be found within the pages of The Book of Gaub.

The Book of Gaub is a book of spells, a book of minor magical artefacts, a book of magical disasters, a book of magical monsters, a book of adventure or encounter hooks, and a book—a very short book—of rules for running sorcerer-type characters. All themed around Gaub, The Book of Gaub, Gaub’s spells and more. The Book of Gaub is a book of magic and spells from Lost Pages, a small press publisher best known for Genial Jack and Into the Odd. The publisher is no stranger to spell books, having previously published Wonder & Wickedness and Marvels & Malisons, but whilst The Book of Gaub follows the format of the latter, it is an altogether stranger tome. Not just stranger, but darker too. There are spells in The Book of Gaub that embrace medical violence, eating disorders, body horror, pregnancy, decay, bugs and spiders, stalking and gaslighting, self-harm and addition, and much more. This is not a book for an immature audience, but definitely a book that requires roleplaying safety tools and consent at the table.

The Book of Gaub is a book of spells for the Old School Renaissance and the retroclone of your choice. However, mechanically, The Book of Gaub is incredibly light with barely a handful of stats—and then only for its monsters. This makes it incredibly easier to adapt and not just to the Game Master’s preferred retroclone, but almost any roleplaying game in which spells, dark magic, and horror play a role. In addition, as much as the spell book is traditionally written with fantasy roleplaying games in mind, much of the colour or ‘micro fictions’ which accompany each spell have a very modern feel and tone. In fact, very twentieth century… What this means is that the contents of The Book of Gaub are easily transposed to roleplaying games such as Dying Stylishly Games’ EsotericEnterprises: Old School Adventures in the Occult Underground, Just Crunch Games’ The Dee Sanction, or even Liminal.

The forty-nine spells in The Book of Gaub are divided and themed darkly into seven. Thus the Finger That Trails Letters, working itself into dusty tomes and the written word, its spells related to the spells and written word; the Finger That Points The Way takes the caster and sometimes the victim of its spells on journeys; the Finger On The Pulse whose spells slice at the flesh, perhaps to heal, perhaps to bring suffering; the Finger That Scratches Beneath The Floorboards and in the hidden places of your house, its spells hiding and losing its victims there; the Finger Chewed Down To A White Bone, its spells inducing hunger and purges; the finger that is not there that you have already forgotten about by the time you reach the end of this clause; and the Finger That Catches A Shed Tear and slides it into a bottle, its spells playing upon and manipulating emotions.  Thus for example—at random, Eicastise, incised by the Finger Under The Floorboards, hides the caster in a painting—although he can be seen if it is examined—and even allows him to move freely in it or to another painting, to speak or hear from the painting, and appear appropriately dressed in the painting. The Finger On The Pulse leaves the Hypochondria spell behind, which requires the caster to fill a pouch marked with his sigil with rusty nails and the unwashed clothes of the victim, and then hide it in the victim’s house. Should the victim fail his Saving Throw, then he is cursed to have every injury amplified—cuts widen, blood does not clot, shortness of breath becomes stifling, and worse… Whilst under the curse, the victim cannot heal and for as long as the curse remains, only he and caster are aware of the worsening symptoms.

Not only are the spells often vile, but so is what they leave behind. Wherever the spells from The Book of Gaub are cast, they can corrupt the area and this corruption often manifests as a bauble or trinket, known as the Paraphernalia of Gaub, again each tied to one of the seven Fingers of Gaub. For example, the Finger That Trails Letters might discard a bibliography of non-existent books or an inkwell always filled with ill-appropriately coloured ink, whilst that left behind by the Finger Chewed Down To A White Bone could be a black photograph of a child standing in an empty house, the position of the child changing each time the photograph is viewed, the child also weeping when something invisible is near, or an exquisitely fractally carved scrimshaw which can be studied to aid concentration or the study of small things, but leaves the user open to hypnotism. In many cases, a Paraphernalia of Gaub requires the user to empower it, which means a spell has to be cast upon it.

The vile nature of The Book of Gaub and its spells are only exacerbated by the Catastrophes, misfortunes which will befall the caster such as the sorcerer’s joints creaking and moaning whenever he moves, potentially becoming too stiff for him to move, if he miscasts a spell learned via the Finger On The Pulse , but there are general Catastrophes too, like all children born within the region for the next seven days having seven fingers on each hand and upon reaching puberty will know a single spell of Gaub. Under certain conditions Monsters of Gaub can manifest too, though fortunately there are not quite so many of those are there of either the spells or the Catastrophes. They also range vastly in size from the Pinmate, a white paste goblinoid thing which seeps into a house and possesses its fabric, turning every edge or potential point of friction into features which scratch and scrape, feeding upon the blood they draw, whilst the Tide of Turmoil is a swirling mass of chaos and unresolved collective trauma that always closer to the nearest source of suffering…

As well as some twenty or so manifestations of the Grip of Gaub, each a hook that pulls the Player Characters into a story which hints at the effect Gaub has upon the world, The Book of Gaub includes suggestions of how to use them in a game with rules for Sorcerers hunting for The Book of Gaub. Fundamentally, this is a Class and Level system in which the spells themselves do not have Levels and so can be learned in any order as long as a searching Sorcerer can find them and has the time. They can be learned and cast via rote memorisation or off the cuff, but if a spell is cast without learning it first, more spells are cast beyond a Sorcerer’s usual allotment, the spellcasting is interrupted, or other misjudged events occur, then a Catastrophe can occur!

Physically, The Book of Gaub is a beautiful little book in its own right. Cloth bound, it feels delightful in the hand, such that you wish that it was an actual artefact within the game world itself. The artwork is decent for the most part, whilst the writing is also good, although perhaps it does veer into the ponderous in places.

The adult tone of The Book of Gaub means that this book is not for everyone nor every campaign, and its contents will need to be carefully judged to determine whether it is suitable for a campaign or not. If it is, The Book of Gaub is a fantastically nasty book of ideas, encounters, and mysteries whose impact upon a campaign will not be obvious initially. Instead, The Book of Gaub and its contents should creep into a campaign, turning it darker and weirder, whether that is in a frantic race to prevent yet one more spell from the tome fall into the wrong hands or a desperate search to find yet one more spell incised by one of the Fingers before a rival does. Whether a fantasy campaign or an urban fantasy campaign, The Book of Gaub is waiting to reach into your campaign and creep through its shadows, and show just how a little knowledge can spread darkness and chaos…

Alimentary Now

There is no dungeon as queasy, bilious, or tumorous than Genial Jack Vol. 2. It also throws in swollen tongued pestiferous thrushspawn, toxically affectionate amoeboids, a true vampire squid, and Dog-Nymph Skulla, the Swallowed Sea-Devil, along with Gutreavers, Tapeworm swarms, shivers of Septic Sharks, lost and swallowed cities, wrecks aplenty, and more—all in the longest, most linear dungeon possible and all in the strangest location possible. The location is ‘Genial Jack’, the Godwhale, a levianthine Blue Whale which for centuries has been home to the teeming town of Jackburg built across his thick skin and in his stomachs and deep into his intestines, much of it made up of the ships he has swallowed and those that have sailed into his maw and permanently moored inside of him. Jackburg is home to peoples and islands that the whale—the ‘Genial Jack’ of the title—has swallowed, from the Draugr to the Fomorians, and today it serves as a roaming free port, from which merchants sell the strange and exotic goods they have acquired in distant lands as well as the ambergris constantly formed deep in his gut. Yet beyond—or rather behind—the public spaces of Jackburg, lie ancient wonders of swollen cities and partially digested Jackburgs past, the Ambergris Consortia and its tight control of perhaps the most precious substance found within the Godwhale, Gutreavers ready to attack vessels travelling deep into Genial Jack—plundering cargo and enslaving passengers and crew, and a refuge for its outcasts, such as criminals who have fled the reach of the Whaleguard and Jacksblood-Addicts who find a way to slice at the intestinal walls and feed their addiction to the whale’s blood. All this whilst the Gutgardeners, combining druidic magic and ancient technoscience, labour to keep Genial Jack’s digestive microbiome as healthy as they can. Essentially, in presenting the ‘Entrails’, Genial Jack Vol. 2 explores the Godwhale’s outback and hinterland... 

Genial Jack Vol. 2, published by Lost Pages, continues the description of the Godwhale begun in Genial Jack Vol. I, a serialised setting of nautical weirdness and whimsy written for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, but with an Old School Renaissance sensibility and tone combined with elements of steampunk and grotpunk. Where the first issue introduced the setting of the Godwhale from its city of Jackburg to The Gutgardens at the bottom of the whale’s main stomach, and its varied inhabitants such as the drowned Draugar, the shapeshifting Finfolk, the crafters that are the Formorians, Jackburg’s literal underclass the Urchins, the mercantile Octopoids, the vicious shark-men Selachians, and more.

Genial Jack Vol. 2 begins with reasons for entering the Entrails—Jackburg University being willing to pay for artifacts found there, mounting an ambergris mining expedition, investigating the loss of workers for the Ambergris Consortia, collecting a bounty on Ericius, the Urchin assassin, and more. The Dungeon Master can easily mix and match—or mismatch—these or keep them separate to provide motivations for multiple expeditions into the back end of the Godwhale. Since the Player Characters will be mounting an expedition, they will need equipment, so the next stop is shopping, and so a fully illustrated list of items particular to expeditions into the Entrails is also given, like the Fumehound, a tiny dog with a superb sense of smell which will bark in the presence of ambergris, or Anglerfish Lanterns, consisting of glass globes containing an ugly fish which will provide a light if fed. The circle of Guntgardeners is also described, an alternative organisation of Druids dedicated keeping the Godwhale’s guts contracting and relaxing, along with its commonly taught spells. Then the natural perils of the Entrails are detailed—the stench, the slipperiness, miasmas, and a whole lot more. Make no mistake, the Entrails are literally a stomach churning, pulsating, pustulent environment and not for the faint hearted.

As well as a decent table of random encounters, Genial Jack Vol. 2 details some fourteen magical items and artifacts to be found in the Entrails, many of which form the basis of quests and sidequests once the Player Characters have begun interacting with the denizens of Genial Jack’s bowels.  Some of them are highly entertaining, such as the skulk-marked Thanometer or Scavenger’s Compass, which detects the nearest dead humanoid; The Rude Shield, which has leering grotesque features and maintains an insulting running commentary on anything and everything it sees, and whilst it hinders attempts at stealth, it can cast Vicious Mockery; and The Bristling Blade, a boar-headed heavy scimitar which inflicts savage wounds out of which sprouts greasy bristles!

And then it is into the Entrails themselves, a tangled, colonic mass of the Small Intestine and the Large Intestine separated by Herniaheim. From the Duodenum Docks, the Player Characters will set out on a journey into darkness, their senses assaulted by musky, feculent, effluent, rotten, acrid, and bilious smells, and queasy sucking, whispering, rustling, and susurrating sounds. Every location begins by telling the Dungeon Master what her players can see, smell, and hear before presenting the  people to be found and the perils faced. So at the Filthfalls, the Player Characters will hear the rushing sound of debris and effluence, smell a combination of raw sewage, rotten fish, and ripe flesh, and whilst they will not encounter anyone, the Player Characters must work to avoid the foul falls, though if they can lower themselves into the pool below, they may find some plunder! Halfway down, they will find Hernaheim, a protrusion of the intestinal walls in which sits a cannibal fortess-town, ruled over the for the moment, by the Corsair Queen, Amaranth ‘Falsebeard’ Leech’, until such times as she is killed a pretender to the throne in the annual battle to the death in the Orifice. This is a fighting pit with a central pool filled with septic sharks and other intestinal creatures, which can be crossed using the flimsy rope bridges. In Hernaheim, septic sharks are farmed for food by Canness Sharpnose and her heretical order of Sawtail Nuns dedicated to the Sharkfather, all manner of ghastly fun can be found in Slimeside, Hernaheim’s ‘oozing’ pleasure district, and a previous version of Jackburg, long swallowed by Genial Jack hides secrets amidst its infestation of Jacksblood addicts.

Beyond Hernaheim stretches the Large Intestine, home to a Narwhal Skeleton, the Swallowed Sea-Devil Shrine, and the Elder Ruins. These are perhaps the final destinations for any venture this far deep into Genial Jack, and will likely require the Player Characters to have made multiple journeys into the depths. Many of the locations come with encounters and NPCs which will often spur the Player Characters to travel further. This is all backed up with a Colonic Bestiary containing sixteen entries, like the Corsair Queen, Gutreavers, Jacksblood-Addicts, Septic Sharks, Skulla, the Swallowed Sea-Devil, and even a True Vampire Squid, the latter of which takes a two whole pages!

Physically, Genial Jack Vol. 2 is a content-packed, well-written A5-sized fanzine style publication. The dungeon is fantastically illustrated and mapped out in thematically squidgy and convoluted detail.

Unfortunately, Genial Jack Vol. 2 has a problem—or rather a perceived problems, and this is that the fact that it is written for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. Which is not to everyone’s taste and further, they may reject Genial Jack Vol. 2 out of hand because of it. Now not only is that their problem rather than one with Genial Jack Vol. 2, but they would also be completely and utterly in the wrong and it would be their complete and utter loss were they to do so. Whether or not you dislike Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, the fact is, the tone and style of Genial Jack Vol. 2 is such that it feels an Old School Renaissance scenario. It places an emphasis on exploration and dungeoneering, and does so on an unforgiving environment with lots of nasty features and creatures lurking about. It also has a great sense of the unknown and of being far from acceptable society, with even the few outposts of civilisation being strange and alien. In terms of tone and content then, it would be relatively easy to the adapt the content of Genial Jack Vol. 2 to the retroclone of the Game Master’s choice, and to be honest, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition shares a lot of terminology with other roleplaying games. Further, Genial Jack Vol. 2 also has a ‘Grim & perilous’ feel to it, so a Game Master could run its scenario using Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay or even ZWEIHÄNDER, Grim & Perilous, although it would require a lot more adaptation than a mere retroclone of Dungeons & Dragons would.

Genial Jack Vol. 2 is a wonderfully thematic dungeon, but it really fully works as a counterpart to Genial Jack Vol. 1. Essentially, they complement each other. If you want a wholly original, but foul and fetid, tumorous and peristaltic, desperate and dangerous dungeon, then Genial Jack Vol. 2 certainly delivers that, but together, Genial Jack Vol. 1 and Genial Jack Vol. 2 make up a fantastic grim and grimy ‘Whalepunk’ campaign.

Friday Fantasy: Lumberlands – Wampus Country Travel Guide I

Out on the borders of the far Northwest lies a forest without end. Here doughty Lumberjacks and Lumberjills leap from tree to tree, felling and cutting the mighty pines for shipping back to civilisation. In the deeper parts of the forest, the great hairy hulks known as Sasquatches roam freely, feared by some as monsters, simply misunderstood say others, but unknown to all. If the exact nature of the Sasquatches remains unknown, then the secrets of the Squirrels are kept hidden—and they like that. For within their secluded city republic of Baudekin, sapient Squirrels and other members of the Sciuridae family from across the dimensions protect it secrets, most notably the Secret Gnawledge those contained within the roots of the Library Trees. For anyone wanting to set out into the forest, the place to start is Squeamish, a ‘nice, clean, company town’. Squeamish is a boomtown, a frontier town built by the Red Bear Lumber Company, and the many Lumberjacks and Lumberjills that work the forest work for a felling gang employed by the Red Bear Lumber Company. They work for the Red Bear Lumber Company, they live on the Red Bear Lumber Company property, they eat Red Bear Lumber Company food, and they have a long line of credit with the Red Bear Lumber Company. Perhaps though, one of those many Lumberjacks and Lumberjills—whether a Lumber-Fighter, Lumber-Cleric, Lumber-Thief, or Lumber-Wizard—will strike it lucky on a side hustle or with an independent gang and bring back that one rare botanical specimen which will set them up for life—or at least ensure they can pay off their credit. There are always Wizards and Alchemists willing to pay for such items. Adventurers come to Squeamish too, perhaps for those same rare botanical specimens, or to hunt for Sasquatch or rescue innocents kidnapped by the brutish creatures, or to enter a Lumberjack competition, or… Whatever the reason, they will need a guide—and there are plenty of those to go around. Perhaps hire a Gunkey—a cross between a goat and a jackass, and twice as stupid/foppish/lecherous as you would expect, rent out a half-useful, only half-tested device from Half-Mad Leach MacCleod, or simply feast on tasty street food from Odd Jacob—the ‘Salty Weasel Bites’ are a best seller!

This is the set-up for Lumberlands – Wampus Country Travel Guide I, a systemless, rules-agnostic fantasy roleplaying setting by the creator of Wampus Country. Published by Lost Pages, best known for the entertaining Genial Jack and the Burgs & Baillifs series, this is a comedy-style setting based on the Pacific Northwest—although it could be Vermont too, although mostly the Pacific Northwest because Portland—which is easy to adapt to the setting of the Game Master’s choice, whether that is Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, Savage Worlds, or Old School Essentials. So as a setting, right from the start, it is full of flannel (shirts), axes, bearded men, axes, maple syrup, axes, and weirdness, which sort of has a Twins Peaks feel to it.

Lumberlands is offered as a place to visit, rather than as a place to be from. Numerous reasons are given why, such as questing for the legendary Squirrel City, engaging in logging company intrigues, or even attempting to hire a family of Giant Beavers to gnaw you that perfect home. Lumberjack and Lumberjill culture is highlighted, how they are plain-dealing, strong, self-reliant, egalitarian (mostly), and so on, before suggesting what Lumber-versions of the four core character Classes might look like. So Lumber-Fighters prefer axes, wear flannel and dungarees, possess stunning beards, big stompin’ boots, and enjoy public displays of prowess, whilst the Lumber-Thief sports a smaller, often oiled beard, wears flannel ironically (?), is agile as a weasel, has canvas boots with good luck symbols, lumbergang tattoos, and pirate-style earrings. Not really enough to equate to an actual Class in terms of Dungeons & Dragons, more a set of pointers in the right direction, whether the Game Master simply wants to use the use the classic Dungeons & Dragons Classes as written with Lumberlands flannel, or actually create Lumberlands versions of those Classes. Lumberjacks and Lumberjills can worship any gods, but have their own too, like Timmerton, the demigod of the Lumberlands, a bare-chested mountain of a man with maple syrup dripping from his mighty beard, and the Cult of the Beaver, whose members are very fond of hard work and clean teeth.

Lumberjack and Lumberjill equipment includes the Lucky Flannel, which when combined with dungarees, counts as leather armour, and axes of all sorts—and custom-fitted axes for all sorts of situations. The list of possible customisations is only the first of several tables in Lumberlands – Wampus Country Travel Guide I. The next gives options adding a personality to your Gunkey, whilst there are several subtitles to the supplement’s quite detailed encounter table. Once out of Squeamish, having detailed the Red Bear Lumber Company and several of the town’s peoples and places, the supplement runs off into the woods, with all of its gear strapped atop a Gunkey of course, and begins to expose some of the secrets of Lumberland. This includes just who and what the Sasquatches are and they really are not what you think; a discussion of Squirrel politics, which might or might not be a parody of US state politics, less members of the rodent family of course; and somewhere—since there are no maps of the Lumberlands, ‘Portal-Land’, a dimensionally unstable triangle where easy access to other worlds can be gained (and vice versa), and time and gravity can shift, and is inhabited by the False Ones, strange humanoids with perfectly smiling porcelain masks, hypnotically pleasant lines in banter, horribly matching sweaters, and a willingness to invite adventurers to dinner…

Rounding out Lumberlands – Wampus Country Travel Guide I is a lengthy set of encounter tables, which are broken down by type, so Deadly Plant, Things of Nightmare, and Natural Wonders, and more. Each of the categories includes six detailed entries. Penultimately, there is a list of Lumberland familiars, including an ‘Enchanted Salmon of Wisdom’, which looks good on a wooden plaque and dispenses wisdom in song, and an ‘Animated Tattered Flannel, which could have been a shirt or a baby’s blanket, but which will happily wrap around the owner’s shoulder, but leaps to cover his nose and eyes in the event of a gas or powder attack! Lastly, there is final list, this one of potential Henchbeings, including one eyebrow-raising Marmot!

Physically, Lumberlands – Wampus Country Travel Guide I is neatly presented, although the text is a little fuzzy in places. The artwork is of course cartoonish, which suits the supplement perfectly.

Lumberlands – Wampus Country Travel Guide I is funny and engaging and inventive, but for all that, its tongue-in-cheek tone and subject matter is unlikely to be for everyone or every campaign. Both tone and subject matter mean that Lumberlands – Wampus Country Travel Guide I needs a higher degree of buy-in from the players as much as the Referee for everyone to enjoy it. The other issue is where to use it, as there are likely to be few campaigns or settings in which are going to be natural fits for its content. It means that the Referee should really consider if this supplement is going to be suitable for her campaign even before thinking about the work necessary to adapt it to the rules being used. That aside, Lumberlands – Wampus Country Travel Guide I is a delightfully silly satire upon the Pacific Northwest (or Vermont or Canada), its peoples and its politics, and its wildlife, and let us hope that there will be a Wampus Country Travel Guide II.

—oOo—

A full unboxing of Lumberlands – Wampus Country Travel Guide I is available to view on Unboxing in the Nook.

Tomorrow's Future Today

The Future We Saw is a near-future, post-scarcity, post-labour roleplaying game of A.I. and precognitive manipulation of politics, power, privacy, and information in a world of radical political, corporate, and social factions. This is a future in which corporations and other organisations not only have their own public relations teams to make themselves look good, but teams of undercover fixers whose task is to ensure that their employer looks good and their employer’s rival looks bad, that they have the inside information on their rivals, whilst denying inside information to their rivals. Working in small team ‘Special Forces’ style operations, these fixers will conduct acts of blackmail and kompromat, assassination and intimidation, infiltration and hacking, extraction and kidnapping, sabotage and discovery, and more. Each team will comprise combat and protection Veterans, technical Specialists, Psy-Ops who provide medical and psychological support, and Seers, precogs capable of seeing Glimpses and Gazes into the possible future, and so potentially avoid them—though not without suffering high degrees of stress such that it is not uncommon for Seers to burn out.

The Future We Saw is published by Lost Pages, best known for its Old School Renaissance titles such as Genial Jack Vol. I and the Burgs & Bailiffs series. It employs the mechanics from Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition to provide four Classes—each of which goes up to Fifth Level, near-future skill and tool Proficiencies, and the spell-like Glimpses and Gazes of the Seer. In addition, it covers the types of factions found tomorrow—if not today—and the means to set up a Scheme, or campaign, in which factions will send teams on Missions against their rivals to gain or prevent leverage, perhaps discovering other information, which will lead to further Missions, and so on. Lastly it includes a campaign setting, set-up, and scenario in tomorrow’s Dublin written by the author of Macchiato Monsters: Rules for Adventures In a Dungeonverse You Build Together.

The Future We Saw is not a Cyberpunk roleplaying game. Not only does it lack the chrome and neon aesthetics, it is not about technology and our inability to integrate with it, and it is not about the masses versus megacorporations or working to bring them down. The various factions in The Future We Saw are in power, so it is about sabotaging them, manipulating them, and controlling them rather than destroying them, and all for the benefit of another faction rather than society. The Future We Saw is about the manipulation of a future that has already been lost to the control of corporations and other factions whose promises have failed to deliver as discourse polarised and technology either drove out the need for labour or began to direct it. What technology there is has been subsumed into society, whether that is robot delivery drones or mobile devices or A.I.-driven vehicles—essentially all recognisable from today, and in terms of game play there are no hacking rules. Instead hacking is handled offscreen by an NPC, if at all. However, labour is at least useful for providing a human face, or stepping in when A.I. cannot cope or needs to be repaired, but in the main, robots do much of the work. However, constant working with A.I. has caused mental illness in many, even triggering a precognitive ability in some. Typically, this comes in the form of a hallucination which suggests the best possible outcome, but not whether the action will succeed, such that the powers of a Seer are powerful, but not absolute. However, such predictions, known as Sights, can fail due to errors in belief, the blurring of details, focus upon incidental details, and personal bias as well as the Seer’s mental health.

An Agent in The Future We Saw has the six attribute scores of Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition—Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. Each of the four Agent Classes grants various Proficiencies—Saving Throws, Armour, Weapons, and Skills, as well as a series of features. For example, the Specialist starts with Expertise—double Proficiency with two skills and Specialist Training. This can be Thug, essentially the equivalent of the Rogue’s Backstab; Contacts, which grants Advantage on Charisma checks when dealing with criminal contacts; or Meaningful Practice, which grants a bonus action with one particular tool the Agent has Proficiency with. Two means of Agent creation are given. One is an array for the ‘Typical Professional’, whilst the standard three six-sided dice are rolled for those ‘From Other Walks of Life’. An Agent then receives some bonuses to these and then selects a Class. An Agent does not begin with equipment as this is provided by his employer on a Mission by Mission basis.

Marilyn Hilliard was an actuary working for Solid Life Health Insurance supporting an expert A.I. when she began to see the times of deaths of her customers. This drove her into having a mental health episode and eventually hospital. Her policy and employment was subsequently purchased from Solid Life Health Insurance and she found herself working for an entirely different employer.

Marilyn Hilliard
First Level Seer

Strength 12 (+1)
Constitution 06 (-2)
Dexterity 13 (+1)
Intelligence 14 (+2)
Wisdom 18 (+4)
Charisma 16 (+3)

Hit Points 7

Proficiencies: Light Armour, Simple Weapons
Saving Throws: Intelligence, Wisdom
Skills: Insight, Investigation, Persuasion

Features
Stress Prevision (People)
Future Sight: Emotional Button Mashing, Evil Eye (Glimpses); Alpha-Beta Approach Pruning (Gazes)

A Seer’s capacity to see into the future is divided into ‘Glimpses’ and ‘Gazes’. ‘Glimpses’ grant visions of the future about the Seer’s immediate environment—to see how a combat plays out to pre-empt an action, to determine how a conversation might play out, or to predict the worst possible outcome from a situation. In general, this is to gain a bonus action, a reaction, and so on. ‘Gazes’ take longer, often days at a time, and grant long range predictions, perhaps about the plans of a rival faction or the best possible course of action. Although The Future We Saw does not have hacking rules or mechanics, but the difference between ‘Glimpses’ and ‘Gazes’ maps onto the shift on how hacking is handled in cyberpunk and similar roleplaying games. Originally, hacking was always handled by a Player Character working from a base or home whilst the rest of the team goes on the Mission, essentially ‘Gazes’, but in more recent iterations, hacking needs to be done on scene, that is, the hacker has to go on the Mission. Which is this case, the equivalent of the ‘Glimpses’, visions of the future which happen on site, during the Mission. Predicting the future does not come without its cost. Invoking ‘Glimpses’ and ‘Gazes’ inflicts stress and suffering stress can led to burnout and exhaustion, which can greatly impede an Agent’s capacity to operate. Combat is also dangerous in The Future We Saw as it is possible to suffer grisly wounds.

Ideally, The Future We Saw should be played with four players and thus one of each of the four Agent types in the roleplaying game, though with more players, the doubled up Agents should opt for different specialities to enable each Agent to shine in different ways during play. Doubling up with Seer Agents may set up an interesting dynamic of differing views of the immediate future, but will also complicate the efforts of the Game Master to what that ‘best’ future might be in any given situation. Even with just the one Seer in a team, determining the ‘best’ future might be in any given situation is still one of the more challenging tasks in the roleplaying game for the Game Master.

In terms of setting, The Future We Saw does three things. First it presents and discusses five Factions—Hegemon, Innovator, Movement, Rentier, and Zaibatzu—and what their objectives are, why they are hated and why they are useful, and the three perks they can grant once per Mission. For example, an Innovator represents the Power of Progress, which could be cutting edge technology, pervasive data hoarders and manipulators, and the like, such as gig economy delivery and taxi services, and political consulting firms specialising in data analysis and manipulation. It is hated because it pursues improvements without any qualms about collateral or financial damage, but useful because it is building the future. Their perks include ‘Benefit: SIGINT’—harvesting data means great briefing material, Support: Cutting Edge—new technology; and Ultimate: Hack from the Stash—the possibility that the data breaches have already made in the target of the Mission, but not yet revealed. A diagram shows the relationships between the five types of Factions, so that the Game Master can see the alliances and enmities at a glance.

Second, it examines the types of Missions and Schemes that the Agents can be sent on. Whether an Extraction, Cover-Up, or Kompromat, Missions are played out in seven phases—Briefing, Procurement (assign equipment), Deployment, Execution, Extraction, Debriefing, and Consequences. What is interesting here is that in terms of game play, failure is as interesting as success, since the target Faction (or other Faction) might be running its own team of Agents and failure means approaching the problem again, but from a different angle, even a different type of Mission. Further, throughout the Game Master has her own character to roleplay in addition to the various NPCs in situ, and that is Control, a voice in the Agents’ ears, offering advice, help, and warnings, a la Control of John le Carre’s espionage fiction.

Schemes are the overall objectives of the Faction the Agents are working for, the equivalent of a campaign in other roleplaying games, but relatively short and meant to be flexible and be developed as the Agents play through Missions, make discoveries and the target Factions acts in response. These are mapped out on a ‘FTM’ or ‘Faction Tension Map’, which sets out the specific relationships between the Factions and other organisations or persons involved in the Scheme, willing or not. The relative brevity is supported by the number of Missions the Agents go on to acquire Levels—two Missions to get to Second Level, then three to get to Third Level, and so on, for a maximum of fourteen Missions to get to Fifth Level, the maximum available in The Future We Saw.

Third, The Future We Saw presents a Scheme setting, ‘Dublin 2020’. It details a city divided by wealth and a security Fence, dominated by corporate interests, alco-tourism, and tax breaks. It is supported by complete scenario, ‘L❤VE’s Data’s Lost’, in which the Agents are working for L❤VE, an Innovator and start-up company desperately on the make whose data, much of it private and harvested from its app, has been hacked into on the servers at a nearby server farm. The Faction responsible, ZPLNTR, a radical hacker group, is holding the data hostage and the Agents’ task is to prevent further leaks and get control of the data back. Mix in rival Factions, rival events, and more, and this is a decent starting Scheme which feels just a little too real.

Currently, The Future We Saw is only available in an ‘Ashcan’ or ‘Zero Edition’. This does not mean that it is roughly presented. The layout is clean and tidy, and there is a lot of white space. This is by design, and whilst some may complain, it does give the content room to breath and it makes it easy to read. The artwork is decent and though it needs a slight edit in places, the book is well written.

The Future We Saw is a heist roleplaying game, a roleplaying of small teams of experts conducting missions in small amounts of time. It is like the television series Leverage or Hustle, but with a twist. It is like those television series, but backwards—or rather forwards. In Leverage, the team achieves its aims, playing out a con on its mark, but how the mark is played, how each switch or misdirection is made, is revealed in flashbacks, showcasing the skills and abilities of the team’s members. In The Future We Saw, there are no flashbacks, but there are flashforwards, quick peeks and squints mostly into the immediate future(s), and they occur throughout the mission rather than at the beginning or the end.

Overall, The Future We Saw is an interesting take upon the heist and the post-cyberpunk roleplaying game, set in a tomorrow that we can already see.

All Aboard the Godwhale

Published by Lost Pages, Genial Jack Vol. I is the first issue of a serialised setting that is one-part the Book of Jonah, one-part Green Ronin Publishing’s Freeport, one-part Swift’s Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships or Gulliver’s Travels, one part Baron Munchausen's Narrative of his Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia, but all weird nautical urban fantasy that can be best described as ‘whale-punk’. This is because Genial Jack Vol. I details a levianthine Blue Whale which for centuries has been home to the teeming town of Jackburg built across his thick skin and in his stomachs and deep into his intestines, much of it made up of the ships he has swallowed and those that have sailed into his maw and permanently moored inside of him. Jackburg is home to peoples and islands that the whale—the ‘Genial Jack’ of the title—has swallowed, from the Draugr to the Fomorians, and today it serves as a roaming free port, from which merchants sell the strange and exotic goods they have acquired in distant lands as well as the ambergris constantly formed deep in his gut.

Designed for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition—but very easily adapted to the retroclone of your choice—Genial Jack Vol. I focuses very much on the peoples and places of Jackburg. The former includes over thirteen new player character Races. These start with the undead Draugar, drowned corpses from the north who dwell in longships and a reputation for fell curses and trading in people, and Finfolk, sly, shapeshifting merfolk who are known for their illusions and the indentured workers they mark with their bloodsucking maws; and Formorians, giants banished from Faerie by Queen Mab who can cast an evil eye about, but are skilled crafters of magical devices and weapons and armour, to Sirens, who have reputations as malicious seductresses, but are highly charismatic and help in Jackburg’s aerial defence; Undines, water elementals who can turn into water and back again and work in Jackburg powering waterwheels, serving as living air-suits, and moving vessels and cargo; and Urchins, Jackburg’s underclass, beggars—Urchin Beggars?—who will happily eat rubbish, but who are considered to be lucky. The others do include Humans, but also the hive-mind Jellyfolk, the Karkinoi crustacean warriors, tentacular mercantile Octopoids, the sentient and artistic coral Polypoids, the bankers and thieves who make up the Ratfolk, and the often vicious shark-men raiders known as the Selachians, who include an individual casino-owner and moneylender who is called, of course, the Loan Shark. All of these Races have adapted to an amphibious life aboard Genial Jack and inside Jackburg, including being able to see in dim or low lighting, many need to be submerged at least once per day.

Genial Jack Vol. I then examines each of Jackburg’s districts in both Outer Jackburg and Inner Jackburg, the former being on the exterior of Genial Jack, the latter inside him. Each is given a full page which includes a short description and a handful of encounters and locations. So along the great whale’s flanks can be found Barnaclebank, the series of barnacles which have been hollowed out and linked via tunnels of reinforced glass and iron, then carved and reshaped, many of them into gun emplacements, harpoon launchers, and torpedo bays manned by the Whaleguard, Jackburg’s guard and security forces—unsurprisingly, Genial Jack has a decent navy to protect both himself and Jackburg. The encounters include an emergency as a porthole has cracked and is letting in water with the player characters being the nearest ones who can fix it before the Whaleguard can get there and the discovery of an enormous crimson pearl brought ashore by Jackburg’s fisherfolk, which might be anything from a mermaid lich’s phylactery to a resurrection stone. The locations given thumbnail descriptions are the Barnaclebank Fish Market which operates on the extendable docks on Genial Jack’s starboard flank, and the Sea Star Saloon, a tavern inside a single, huge barnacle-shell which is run by a man with the lower body of a starfish and which caters to Whaleguard officers and fishermen alike.

At the other end is The Gutgardens at the bottom of the whale’s main stomach. Here fish and krill is received from Genial Jack’s maw via canals and tubes and cultivated into gut bacteria and symbiotic algae which soothes his innards. They are worked by Gutgardeners in signature green and black uniforms with gas masks and heavy-duty work boots and gloves. The encounters include coming across a pair of Bloodskulls gang members about to dunk a debtor in Acid Lake; an invasion of Feral Fungoids driven into frenzy after feeding on Genial Jack’s blood; and a poisonous miasma that will leave all who breathe it in with a lung infection. The locations include an abattoir where a Jellyfolk mentalist humanely stuns livestock before their slaughter; the aforementioned Acid Lake, where enclosed and perfumed domes provide popular picnic spots for those from Inner Town; and the Digestive Reserves, areas kept entirely free of buildings and people to aid in Genial Jack’s digestion.

Some twenty or so districts are described in this fashion, along with a centre spread illustration/map of Genial Jack and Jackburg, as well as a list of city slang. So far, so good, but so far this is forty pages into Genial Jack Vol. I and the reader is left wondering how all of this works, who is in charge, and so on. At this point, Genial Jack Vol. I does cover the authorities of Jackburg, including The Captains’ Conclave held at Mysterium Tremendum, a massive ship and alehouse, where every captain and depending on the size of their constituent populations they represent, ship’s mates too, express their opinions and suggest where the Whale journeys next. Such are directions are imparted by the Navigators, the divine intercessors between the peoples of Jackburg and the ‘Godwhale’ that is Genial Jack, who are descended from those first shipwrecked inside him. Lastly, the Whaleguard is Jackburg’s navy and police force. Rounding out Genial Jack Vol. I are some details of Jackburg’s laws and criminal organisations as well as a list of some twenty interesting Jackburgers, inhabitants of Jackburg.

Physically, Genial Jack Vol. I  is more of a magazine rather than a book. Down in black and white throughout, this first issue is richly illustrated with some fantastic cross sections of Jackburg’s twenty districts. Use of the art does veer into the repetitious, but it has to be said it is good art. On the downside, the twelve new Races are only given portrait illustrations rather than full body shots, so players and Referee alike will need to use a little imagination there. The cover though is absolutely fantastically fantastic, a piece of artwork which just grabs the reader. Elsewhere, the writing is decent, as is the editing.

Genial Jack Vol. I  still feels as if it is missing one or two things. Obviously a scenario, but then it has almost forty encounters across the various districts it describes, but more problematically there is no discussion of what Classes are suitable or found in Jackburg and there are no new Classes. Yet, the one thing that is really missing is a discussion of the technology found on and in the Godwhale. Gunpowder definitely, but also an overhead tram which runs from Genial Jack’s Maw down its oesophagus, and working of iron and glass into tunnels, all of which suggests advanced technology of a kind. Exactly what though, is another matter. Hopefully, it will be covered in a later issue.

Although written for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, the rules content in Genial Jack Vol. I is very light being confined to the various abilities possessed by each Race. This means that it is very easy to adapt to the retroclone of your choice and it is very much a case of Genial Jack Vol. I being imaginative enough to transcend any limitations a Referee or player should have with regards to their roleplaying game of choice. Not only could this be adapted to the retroclone of your choice, it could be adapted to the setting of your choice, whether that is Green Ronin Publishing’s Freeport: City of Adventure or the world of 50 Fathoms for use with Savage Worlds or the Referee’s own campaign world.

Although just the first issue, Genial Jack Vol. I is a satisfying appetiser for what promises to be an imaginatively weird and wonderful setting. It can absolutely be described as unique, the first ‘whalepunk’ setting. Genial Jack Vol. II is eagerly awaited.

Risking the Old School Renaissance

If you have The Black Hack and Whitehack, then surely you must have the ‘Grey Hack’. Well no, what you have instead is Macchiato Monsters: Rules for Adventures In a Dungeonverse You Build Together, an Old School Renaissance roleplaying game which draws from both to provide simple mechanics, freedom of character design, streamlined combat, and freeform magic, plus an emphasis upon risk and the use of resources. Now that latter aspect sounds like the play of Macchiato Monsters involves some kind of crunchy of resource management, but nothing could be further from the truth, for Macchiato Monsters uses dice—indicated as Δ4, Δ6, Δ8, and so on—throughout to handle each player character’s resources and more… Macchiato Monsters is published by Lost Pages and is available here.

Character creation in Macchiato Monsters is straightforward enough. A player rolls three six-sided dice for the six traditional statistics—Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution, and Charisma. A player is then free to swap any two of these. Then he invents a Trait. This can be a race, an occupation, a background, a faction, and so on. Hit Points are rolled on a six-sided die, this die type also representing a character’s Hit Dice and as his martial prowess, this is also his ability to wield better or more efficient arms and armour. A character is given two options which can be to add the roll of a six-sided die to a stat under ten; gain another trait or another Hit Die; take martial training and increase his Hit Dice; and undertake Specialist Training and create an ability which can be used once per day or undertake Magic Training and create two spells which can be used once per day.

Next—and instead of choosing equipment—a player rolls for it. There are nine tables to roll on, each with twenty entries, covering equipment and food, wealth and valuables, mêlée weapons, missile weapons, armour, magical trinkets, heirlooms and heritage, and faith. The player assigns one die type to each table—four-sided, six-sided, eight-sided, ten-sided, and so on—and rolls on the table. This represents the equipment that a beginning character has been able to muster before stepping out on his adventuring career. 

Our sample character is a re-interpretation of the treasure hunter created for the review of Whitehack, but where Whitehack has Classes—broad Classes, but Classes nonetheless—Macchiato Monsters has none and is even more open in terms of character design and possibilities. Both though, enable Referee and players alike to start world building at the point of contact, of character creation.

Thurston Smyth
Strength 08 Intelligence 17 Wisdom 11 
Dexterity 14 Constitution 07 Charisma 16 

Hit Dice: d8 Hit Points: 7

Trait: Sage of the Last University
Magic Training—Illuminate the Path, Soporific Field 
Martial Training (Master of the Whip)

Languages: Draconic, Elvish

Equipment: Infaillible Darts (damage Δ10), whip (d4), Hide tunic and fur hat Δ4, Funeral urns worth silver Δ6, a noble title (Rais, Viscount, Duchess, Khan...) and a bodyguard (Δ10), and jar of snail soup Δ6, old ox, rolled up carpet, 2 sacks, crowbar.

Mechanically, Macchiato Monsters uses the roll under a statistic mechanic, with the results of one being a critical success and twenty being a fumble. It also uses the Advantage and Disadvantage mechanic of Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition and The Black Hack. A trait, whether that is an occupation, a background, a faction, and so on, will not give a character any bonuses in combat, but for non-combat circumstances, it will grant a character the Advantage for a roll or enable him to undertake actions that another character would not be able to.

Combat is designed to be flexible and simple. First, it is possible to set up situations to a combatant’s benefit, but there is always an element of tactical risk to such a situation. Thus, it requires a roll against an appropriate statistic—for example, against Intelligence or Wisdom to determine a good ambush site or placement of some defences—and if successful, the combatant would have an advantage the following turn. However, fail and the combatant will have disadvantage the following turn, and perhaps other negative effects. For example, the ambushers might not be in position when the attackers appear and so cannot concentrate their fire and are in the open they are attacked. Attack rolls are made against Strength for mêlée attacks, Dexterity for missile attacks. Damage is rolled by weapon die type, but with disadvantage if the weapon die type is larger than the attacker’s Hit Die type. Similarly, if an attacker is faced by an opponent whose Hit Dice are higher than his or opponents whose total Hit Dice are greater than the party’s, then the attack is rolled with disadvantage.

Instead of Armour Class, Macchiato Monsters uses a die type for any armour worn. When a character is first attacked and hit, his player rolls the die type for the armour worn. This determines the number of points of damage that the armour will stop that fight. It is quick, it is brutal, and to an extent cinematic with elements like shields being smashed or fried to stop overwhelming damage from one source. Similarly, it is easy to handle complex actions such as escaping a burning, collapsing building whilst grabbing the Lost Proclamations of Oshun the Minor.

Much like Whitehack, magic in Macchiato Monsters is freeform, player-Referee negotiated, and deleterious to the character’s Hit Points. Only a critical result of a statistic check will the caster not lose any Hit Points. A more generically worded spell, instantaneous casting, extra range and targets, increased duration, and so on, will increase the Hit Point cost, but similar to Whitehack, the Hit Point cost cast can be alleviated by using a focus, reagents, and materials—as well as if the caster is using specialist magic or using faith, depending if the caster is a specialist or has faith. Even if the spell fails, the caster can choose to roll the Chaos die, a twelve-sided die, on the spell mishap table. The clever thing is though, the negotiation process between Referee and player as to the nature and Hit Point cost of the spell enables the spell-casting player to establish a cost of that spell when his character wants to cast it again. Do this a few times with different spells and variations in their effect and casting, and what the player character has is his own personal, even unique spellbook.

For example, Thurston Smyth is being chased by his arch-rival, Ronson Ballard, who also wants the Lost Proclamations of Oshun the Minor. Ballard has persuaded a tribe of Kobolds that he speaks for their god since he can shoot fire from his hands and together they are chasing Smyth as he runs away. Smyth decides that now is the time to cast Soporific Field. The extra targets and wide field add two Hit Points to the base single Hit Point cost, as do the higher Hit Dice of the targets and the instantaneous cast. So four Hit Points. Fortunately Smyth has this and can use his magic focus, a wand to lower the cost by a Hit Point to just three. Unfortunately, Smyth’s player fails the check against his Intelligence, but desperate to get away, the player calls upon the Chaos of magic…! The result of the Chaos Risk die is a twelve—and BAM! The effect is to double the area, number of targets, or area of the spell. Thurston could not hope for a better result as all of the chasing Kobolds as well as Ballard suddenly collapse. A bit tired and exhausted, Smyth turns round and walks over to a sleeping Ballard and proceeds to rifle through his pockets…

The Black Hack added another mechanic for handling consumables. It gives each Consumable a die type, for example, a flask of oil has a Usage Die of d6, and then handles their use as dice rolls. When each is used, its die type is rolled and if the result is one or two, the Usage Die is stepped down to a lower die type. In the case of the flask of oil, from d6 to d4. After the d4, the Consumable is consumed. Macchiato Monsters uses this mechanic, but applies it on a wider scale and exacerbates its effects. So food, armour in combat, faith and reagents when casting magic, missiles, holy water, even followers (after all, they can get tired!), can all be handled using a similar mechanic, called the Risk die. When the Risk die is rolled, instead of being stepped down to the next die type on a one or two, it is stepped down on a result of a one, two, or three. Further, the result of a one is worse than a two, which is worse than a three, and so on, for narrating the effects of the step down. A maximum result on the Risk die indicates a lucky break, though what that means is up to the players and the Referee to decide.

Macchiato Monsters steps up its use of the Risk die to handle weather, applying a die type according to the season and then when a Risk die is stepped down the weather gets worse. A similar mechanic is used for wilderness encounters, the die type varying according to the terrain type, whilst the Risk die is also used for off-screen expeditions, carousing and nights out, building and controlling domains—like an assassins’ guild or a wizard’s tower, the stability of a region, and more. Notably, the Risk die is used to handle money, so one character might possess a bag of silver Δ6 and use that to purchase a good quality black powder pistol, whilst another might have a bag of gold Δ6 and spend it to take a luxury room at a hotel. Each time a character makes a purchase, the Risk die is rolled and in effect, really only spends the money if the die is stepped down… It is also possible to split, merge, and exchange such bags of coin, but these rules, as clever as they are, do feel counter-intuitive, mostly because they make something which should be a number into an abstract. There is nothing to say that they will not work, but when it comes to the financial aspects of the roleplaying game, they take some adjusting to. In addition, Macchiato Monsters provides simple rules for handling monsters as well as a list of ‘Fifty Shades of Macchiato Monsters’, and then tables and tables for creating townsfolk, plots, factions, adventure locations, creatures, items, and treasures. 

Physically, Macchiato Monsters is a neat, tidy, and readable black and white book. Although lightly illustrated, its contents are neatly organised and laid out. It is a pity that the book is not available in a ‘lie flat’ book as the Referee will find herself rolling on a lot of tables during play and being able to play directly from the book would have made it easier.

Of course, there is risk involved in dungeoneering—and to a varying degree, there always has been, ever since the publication of Dungeons & Dragons in 1974. As with Whitehack it hands Referee and players alike a high degree of freedom in what they play and the world in which the characters adventure, but Macchiato Monsters makes the degree of risk in not just dungeoneering, but in every aspect of adventuring, travelling, organising, hiring, and more, explicit in the use of the Risk die. It lies at the heart of Macchiato Monsters, using it as a means to drive stories and to push the adventurers to desperation as bad events come about as Risk dice are stepped down and ‘resources’ are essentially expended.

Macchiato Monsters: Rules for Adventures In a Dungeonverse You Build Together could have been simply an amalgam of The Black Hack and Whitehack, but it is very much its own take upon the best elements of both. In particular, its application of the Risk die makes for much more fraught playing experience and makes adventuring ‘risky’ once again.

The Other OSR: Bastion Ein Sof

Although perhaps initially opaque in terms of what it is, Into the Odd turns out to be a terrifically simple, stripped back, player-facing post-apocalyptic near fantasy, steampunk, roleplaying game. Published by Lost Pages, it is surprising that in the years since its publication, that there has been very little support published for it. Bastion Ein Sof, meaning “Bastion ‘unending’ or bastion ‘infinite’”, is one of the very few examples, building on the previous supplement Electric Bastionland. Running to just twenty-eight pages—and small pages at that—Bastion Ein Sof describes a setting that stands and falls before the monstrous.

Bastion has fallen. The Angels destroyed Bastion. In turn the Giants defeated the Angels. In the wake of this calamitous conflict stand ten cities, humanity’s final sanctuary, each one lying within a Giant’s shadow. Each of the ten cities stands in the shadow of one the giants, each no more than a be-halo’d wraith of its former self. Yet their vigil leaves them vulnerable to the Angels and it is up to bravest of the survivors to venture out into the ravaged wastes beyond the cities where they can ensure that none of the Angels are made whole again. Such stalwart men and women are known as Hunters and it is their task to defeat the Angels and return the secrets of Bastion to humanity’s last refuge. At the heart of Bastion Ein Sof are four questions—All is lost, but what has been found? Bastionland is a void, but what fills it now? The Giants keep Humanity safe, but what is their price? The Angels must be contained and what happens when the containment fails?

As Hunters, the player characters venture forth from the city to take the blood of the Angels and scavenge the relics of the past. Each Angel has a lair. Each is a dangerous place, the reality of which, as well as the lands around, is twisted by the nature of the Angel. The blood is required to pay a tithe per Hunter to the Giants for their service upon the return of the Hunters to the city, though the payment can take other forms, including the flesh of the Hunters. There is one other thing that can be taken from the Angels. Once they are reduced to a benign form they leave behind—Dæmons! Loathed by the Giants, for they see Dæmons as a corruption of nature, they are desired by Hunters for the powers and great abilities they grant. In times past, they were known as Arcanum. Yet should a Dæmon be destroyed, it turns back into an Angel, so any Dæmon wielded by a Hunter is a holy time bomb waiting to go off…! Not paying the price of returning home or being found wielding Dæmons risks the danger of angering the Giants and should their ire be raised, it threatens not only the Hunters, but also the safety of the city… Relics from beyond the Giants’ shadow are needed if the city is to survive and Dæmons may well be the only way in which Hunters can survive beyond the Giants’ shadow.

Bastion Ein Sof includes a stripped down version of the character generation rules from Into the Odd to reflect the desperate nature of post-Bastion world. No character begins play with any Arcanum as in Into the Odd, as after all, their true nature is revealed here. Our sample Hunter is the scrawny, scabrous Tipp Potterworth, a former sexton turned grave scourer to survive and to feed a terrible Ether habit. He has become a Hunter to find more goods and so feed his addiction. 

Tipp Potterworth
Profession: Ex-Grave Scourer
Strength 4
Dexterity 10
Willpower 12
Hit Points: 8
Equipment: Rifle, Flask of Ether


The three major elements of the setting—the Giants, the Angels, and the Dæmons—are covered in broad detail, essentially pointers for the Game Master to develop the post-apocalypse herself. Rounding it out is a short scenario, ‘Illustrious Hod’, which takes the Hunters in search of lost ship and into the lair of an unknown Angel. It should provide a session or two’s worth of play, including character generation.

Physically, Bastion Ein Sof is simply and cleanly presented, and is illustrated with some excellent public domain artwork. It comes with some pointed advice for running a game set in this post-apocalypse, essentially that every roll should have a point. 

Bastion Ein Sof takes the baroque world of Bastion and Into the Odd and casts it into an unknown future of humanity clutching literally to shadows, forced to make a pact that levels a great price. It presents an unreal setting, a sliver of something more begging to be developed into a richer, deeper world. There is enough to get started in the slim pages of Bastion Ein Sof, but please give us more. In the meantime, Bastion Ein Sof possesses huge scope for the Game Master to develop its weird, desperate future, one that seems without hope, even if only providing a taster of that future.

The Other OSR: Into the Odd

From the outset, it is difficult to tell what Into the Odd actually is. Any other roleplaying game would give you a blurb or an explanation or a setting or some inspiration—or two, three, or all of these. Published by Lost Pages, its starting point is character generation followed by an explanation of the core rules. The former is done in two pages, whilst the later is done in one. So literally everything a player needs to know to get playing is done within three pages. All a player does is roll three six-sided dice for three Ability scores—Strength, Dexterity, and Willpower, a six-sided die for Hit Points, and three six-sided dice to determine a character’s Starter Package. This can be equipment, weapons, armour, weird powers, an appearance, or an Arcanum, the latter a magical and highly sought after device like Pain Sign, Heat Ray, or Phase Key. Rolling for type of Arcana is a separate roll. A character can rolled up in minutes.

Reginald Cremson
Strength 10
Dexterity 13
Willpower 16
Hit Points: 4
Equipment: Pistol (d6), Knife (d6), Unarmed (d4)
Ability: Telepathy if target fails Will save

Mechanically, if a character wants to undertake an action, his player rolls a twenty-sided die against the appropriate Ability, aiming to equal to or under to pass. For initiative in combat is handled with a Dexterity save. Combat is equally as simple. A player rolls the die for the weapon used to determine how much might damage be inflicted. The target’s armour is subtracted from this and the remainder is subtracted from first his Hit Points and then his Strength. Should a character lose all of his Strength, he dies. It takes only a Short Rest to recover lost Hit Points, but a Long Rest lasting a week to recover lost Ability points. Saves against Willpower are used for several things, maintaining morale of course, but also in a pinch, maintaining civil discourse with others, and more interestingly, to manipulate the powers of Arcana. Each Arcanum does one specific thing and does it well. Binding Strands for example, creates strands spreading between two surfaces twenty feet apart. A Dexterity save is required to move through them. To use a Binding Strands Arcanum in this way is automatic, but if a character wants to do something different, for example, to tie up and gag a recent captive using Binding Strands, then a Willpower save is required. Arcana come in three types of increasing magnitude—‘Powers You Cannot Understand’, ‘Powers You Can Barely Control’, and ‘Powers You You Shouldn’t Control’.

It is at this point that we begin to see what the point of Into the Odd is—to go on an Expedition, perhaps to explore a mysterious environment, to confront or escape a powerful threat, or to find ever more powerful Arcanum. The aim being at least to be successful, return to civilisation at least with a great story, if not an amazing artifact or a dangerous secret. By going on expeditions and surviving a character gains Experience Levels and thus more Hit Points, a reputation, and possibly increases to his Abilities. A character needs to survive an ever increasing number of expeditions as he rises in Levels. In between expeditions, a character might set up and run a business or establish a mercenary company. Quick and easy rules are provided for handling these, both of which can generate income for the character as well as create story and scenario ideas for the Game Master.

All of which is covered in barely a third of Into the Odd and that also includes a good example of play. The other two thirds of the book are for the Game Master. The main rule for the Game Master is the Luck roll for when a degree of randomness is required. This is a roll of a six-sided die with higher results favouring the player characters. Beyond this there are discussions of monsters to be encountered, treasure to be found—including some new Arcana, and traps and obstacles to be overcome. What is interesting about traps and obstacles in Into the Odd is that unless a character is in a rush, then he will always spot them. This is because the challenge for the character is not spotting them, but overcoming or avoiding them. So for example, a pit trap is easy to spot and with a bit of effort and time, easy to work around without the danger of falling in, having got past the pit, the characters later have to return past in a hurry. Now their players need to make Dexterity saves in order to get past safely in a hurry.

So far, with inclusion of pistols and muskets and strange powers and Arcanum, Into the Odd implies a strange Science Fantasy version of the early modern age—the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The latter half of Into the Odd introduces a setting, that of the Odd World, of which ‘Bastion’, ‘Hub of Mankind’ is the self-proclaimed capital of civilisation. It is a fog-palled city of huge factories, mobs crying out for vengeance, star cults vying for secrets and power, and an underground riddled with tunnels, vaults, and more. There are lands and cities beyond Bastion, even a Polar Ocean, but they are not Bastion. (It should be noted that the illustrations suggest Bastion and thus Odd World is more Dickensian then Georgian or Stuart-era London.)

In terms of specific playing areas, Into the Odd provides three locations. These are the scum-encrusted fishing town of Hopesend Port, the Last Port of the North; a dungeon, The Iron Coral, which lies off the coast off Hopesend Port; and the hexcrawl, The Fallen Marsh, the soggy stretch of coast which lies between them. Now these are presented in the order of The Iron Coral, The Fallen Marsh, and Hopesend Port, which feels counter-intuitive if the trio is run as a campaign, with the player characters starting out from Hopesend and then travelling through The Fallen Marsh to The Iron Coral. That said, the inclusion of The Iron Coral first essentially means that it is good for getting straight into play as it can be run with very little preparation upon the part of the Game Master. All three locations pack a lot of content into as a few words as possible with short descriptions and concisely written details. The designer here impresses with the amount of flavour he brings to these locations with such an economy of words. Both The Iron Coral and The Fallen Marsh are supported by random encounter tables that will help drive the action, whilst Hopesend is supported by table of events. Overall though, the trio form an excellent introductory mini-setting.

The ten or so pages are devoted to the ‘Oddpendium’, set of tables drawn from the designer’s website. They include tables for name generation, occupations, abilities, manner, connections, and important little life events, all for quick NPC generation. Others create the feel and atmosphere of a city street, its sample businesses, links to the Underworld that runs under Bastion, and more. Perhaps the pair of tables that get across the nature of the city the best are the ‘Insane Council Decisions’ and ‘General Public Reaction’ to them tables, which give a sense of governmental chaos, of desperate powers-that-be, and of mob rule.

Physically, Into the Odd is cleanly laid and in general, well written. The art is a good mix of new and public domain, serving to suggest both the weirdness and the banality of Bastion and its surrounds. The content could have been better organised, primarily to reorder the the three scenarios/locations in the book and if there was a second edition, perhaps a guide as to where to start and what to do next would be useful for player and Game Master alike. (In fact, a boxed set for the Into the Odd would be great.) Another issue is that an index would have been useful for finding particular elements of the book, although the book is short enough that it is not too much of a problem.

Into the Odd is quick and easy to play, players able to create characters in minutes and be ready to play. A little extra effort is required by the Game Master, but again she could read through the rule book in about half an hour and be ready to run The Iron Coral straight out of the book. Both the rules and the setting of Bastion are very light and very much open to interpretation by both players and the Game Master. This gives both a lot of freedom in deciding how elements of the setting and the rules work, and the Game Master a lot of freedom in building the elements of her Bastion. The tables of the ‘Oddpendium’ help in this, whether in preparing before a game session or during a game session.

How much play can be got out of Into the Odd is another matter. Certainly, the trio of the town, the hexcrawl, and the dungeon provide material for several sessions’ worth of play. Likewise, the tables will provide details and elements that a Game Master happy to improvise can develop into something more, but that will only go so far. Certainly support in terms of encounters and adventures which can be run with little preparation would be welcome, since that is the type of play that Into the Odd is designed to engender.

Mechanically though, Into the Odd is not necessarily a forgiving system. Combat in particular, is deadly as every attack succeeds and what matters is the amount of damage rolled. So hirelings or playing with multiple characters might be an option if a group wants to avoid a total party kill. In this, Into the Odd may initially have the feel of a Character Funnel as in Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game and Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, with its set-up of multiple Zero Level characters per player.

The simplicity of Into the Odd will attract some groups and put off others, the issue being  it not being really suitable for the Game Master who prefers to prepare her game rather than improvise in play. Yet this element of improvisation which provides ready scope for interpretation and judgement by the Game Master along with the unforgiving, often deadly, rules echo the play style of the Old School Renaissance. A brilliant combination of concision and flavour, Into the Odd is impressively easy to pick up and play with minimum preparation.