The Other OSR: Omega City

In the far future of broken landscapes, stretched landscapes, and lost landscapes there is often only the appearance of the Gunslinger and the power of his Gun to bring order to the mouldering settlements and ruins of the uncertain past, to drive back the strange creatures, lurking, ready to pounce and rend the unwary, and to stop the ambitious and the foolish attracted to the power of magic which threatens what remains. The Gunslinger is a wanderer, a member of a brotherly order, arriving unbidden one day, dispensing justice and order, stopping the monster, perhaps engendering a little hope, all before finding the next Slip Door and the next world. Their peripatetic existence is the only constant and perhaps the only certainty they know. This is the Drifted World of We Deal in Lead, an Old School Renaissance-style roleplaying game published by By Odin’s Beard. It is set in a post-apocalyptic dark and weird west that combines a stripped-down presentation with the mechanics inspired by Cairn, Into the Odd, and Knave and it is very much inspired by Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series of novels, but also has the feel of a weird Spaghetti Western with genre-hopping possibilities.

Omega City – Ashcan Edition is the first supplement for We Deal in Lead and presents something very different, almost a point of permanence, even though, like much of the Drifted World, it is subject to decay and decline. It arose out of the Dungeon23 challenge, the aim of which was to design a mega dungeon in one year, one room per day, over twelve levels. Each day creators would add something to their dungeons, but creators also switched format, one of which was ‘City23’. Omega City was born of this switch, a city inspired by two things. One was the city of Lud from The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands, part of the series that inspired we We Deal in Lead, and the other was the author’s home city of Edmonton, Canada. This being the Drifted World of We Deal in Lead, the universe is still breaking down and so this supplement mixes more than it matches its various locations, drawing on a wide variety of locations, situations, and creatures from different time periods and genres. In this instance, the actual setting and its disparate nature means that the designer had more freedom of design than his counterparts working on a more traditional Dungeon23 creation.

Omega City does not so much detail individual locations within a city, but provide small regions—a total of twelve—each with five or six buildings, locations, and landmarks. These are presented over a two-page spread, with the places listed on the left-hand page and a corresponding map on the opposite side. Each location is accorded a listing of two or three bullet points. Each location is accorded a listing of two or three bullet points. For example, Region 9 has five locations, a ‘Shanty Town’, a ‘Cracked Riverbed’, a ‘Lumber Mill’, a ‘Colossal Skeleton’, and a ‘Writhing Mass Grave’. The Shanty Town is described as a “Collection of lost souls and broken travellers”, being home to “Residents from different worlds and times, the languages spoken number in thousands”, and the inhabitants suffer as “More and more victims vanish each night, lost to the red claws in the sands”. Meanwhile, the Lumber Mill is “Overgrown with pungent thorns that ooze vicious orange liquid”, as “Flies swarm constantly, adding to the ooze”, and “Great grey swarms cover the dead trees of the nearby woods”. All of the entries are like this, a clash of the old and new, of the ordinary and the outré.

However, amidst the ‘Burned Out gas Station’, ‘Pitted Gibbet’, ‘Spiral Slough’, ‘Corpse-Corrupted Reservoir’, ‘Flesh-Warping Runoff Pond’, and ‘Partially Phased Office Building’, there is no room for the individual. There are groups of people, such as at the ‘Shanty Town’, but no individuals, and also no hooks. The individual descriptions are intriguing, but possibly not quite enough to get the Gunslingers to investigate every case. Also, ‘Omega City’ itself does not have an overview or broad description. To be fair, both are due to the intermittent nature of the creation process involved in Dungeon23, the creator coming back to the process day-by-day rather than sitting down and working at it. On the other hand, this nature means that lack of connections between locations means that the Warden—as the Game Master is known in We Deal in Lead—can pull them out and insert them into her own content as much as she can develop her own hooks to them.

Physically, Omega City is not yet fully formed. Only an Ashcan version is available. It is handwritten and not always easy to read, whilst the map, though serviceable, are rough. The writing though, is by intent short and punchy, often spurring more questions than answers.

Omega City – Ashcan Edition is by its very nature rough and ready, but it does present some sixty or more locations that present mouldering mysteries and decaying dangers in a minimalist fashion that the Warden can use and interpret as is her wont. In this way, Omega City – Ashcan Edition can serve as a series of prompts for the Warden’s own city or prompts for her own version of ‘Omega City’.

The Other OSR: Summer’s End and Other One-Page Adventures

A mountain infested with rival bandits, a tomb to a saint and a tree of swords on which hangs the saint’s sword, and a giant with stolen horn that can cause avalanches. A lake whose goddess gives swords to high kings, yet there has been no high king in an age, on whose shores stands a fortress commanded by a corrupt captain and manned by a soldiery whose swords have been stolen and who are preparing for mutiny, whilst a Gelatinous King lurks in the nearby forest. A patch of sea shrouded in fog and marked by four islands, one a ships’ graveyard, the second a pirate port, the third home to a sea serpent, and the fourth a tower of friendly and inquisitive liches, plus three pirate crews each with three parts of a treasure map! A desert ruled from a city drawn on skids by a giant across the sands hunted by a Crawling Citadel which slides forward one black monolith at a time. A swamp dotted with shipwrecks and infested with swamp zombies, and home to six witches feuding over which one of them should be ‘The Swamp Witch’. These are just some of the entries in Summer’s End and Other One-Page Adventures, an anthology of adventures for Knave, Second Edition, the Old School Renaissance-style microclone published by Questing Beast.

Summer’s End and Other One-Page Adventures contains a total of twelve different adventures, or rather adventure sites. In fact, technically, they are not one-page adventures, since each one encompasses two pages rather than one. They consist of six wilderness adventures and six dungeons, all independent of each other and each easily dropped into a Game Master’s own setting or just run as is. This applies to the six wilderness adventures especially, since each is a self-contained six-mile-wide hex, which means that if the Game Master has an appropriate spot on her campaign map and the surrounding terrain matches, she can simply drop one of the wilderness adventures onto that map. After that, as with the dungeons, all that Game Master has to do is sow some links and rumours into her wider setting and any one of the dozen entries is ready to be visited by the Player Characters.

All twelve entries in the anthology are written in the same style and laid out in the same fashion. The map—whether hex or dungeon—is placed at the centre. Then individual location descriptions are threaded around the map like a border with arrows to mark the particular locations. Sometimes there is an overview of the dungeon or hex, sometimes not. Those with summaries are easier to grasp than those without, but to be fair, none of the entries in the anthology are difficult to prepare. This is, of course, intentional, since Knave, Second Edition is intended to be played from off the page with a minimum of preparation. And really, a two-page spread does not require all that much in the way of preparation anyway.

Summer’s End and Other One-Page Adventures opens with a fairly basic wilderness hex. The eponymous ‘Summer’s End’ presents a mountain on which the tomb of a saint stands, whilst the sword he wielded is stuck into the nearby Tree of Swords. Rangers hunt the wilds for a group of bandits, which has split into two groups—one of warriors and one of alchemists, and a giant lurks in a ruined tower coveting the great horn he has discovered, which if he ever blew into, would cause an avalanche! It is simple and straightforward, with the Game Master only needing to add hooks such as bounties on the bandits’ heads, a pilgrimage to the saint’s tomb, and so on. Turn the page and the hexes get a lot more sophisticated. For example, ‘The Raiders of Wolfsea’ details a fog-shrouded archipelago of pirate infested islands, a ships’ graveyard strewn with gold watched over by screeching harpies, an island containing a tower of very happy and inquisitive liches, and a pirate port riven by the rivalry between three pirate collectives, each of whom possesses one part of treasure map. The waters are the Wolfsea are dangerous enough with just the pirates, but they are also hunted by Fog Wolves which prey on any ship and Tempest the sea serpent, who likes to disrupt the doings of pirates and harpies (and Player Characters) for his own amusement. ‘The Wizards of Sparrowkeep’ would have a bucolic feel to it, were it not for the fact that the area is home to four wizard’s towers, whose occupants all vie for the affection of the local witch who lives in the woods nearby. What each wizard does each day and what spells he learns each day is randomly determined, but it is all in pursuit of the witch and stopping the pursuit of his rivals and it is all disrupting life and work in the nearby town. The noble in charge of the area wants the petty feud to stop, each of the wizards wants to prove that his love is worthy of the witch, and the witch…? It is a great little set-up that lends itself to some fun portrayals of the NPCs by the Game Master and some good player-driven action.

‘The Alchemist’s Repose’ is the first of the dungeons in Summer’s End and Other One-Page Adventures and needs a little more preparation upon the part of the Game Master as the complex is patrolled and worked by a series of constructs which are programmed by simple punch cards. This gives it a slight Steampunk feel, but also a puzzle element as the Player Characters discover the punchcards and begin to work out how they are used. ‘The Lair of the Keymaster’ also has a puzzle element, this time consisting of locks and keys behind secret doors that the Player Characters need to find and open if they are to open a vault containing the Keymaster’s greatest secret, the schematics to the ‘Lock Absolute’. Which of course, any king or thief would be willing to pay handsomely to obtain (or steal) these plans. ‘Drums in the Deep’ is a mini-sewer crawl, home to a spider so high on hallucinogenic fungus his skin ripples in mesmerising colour, a mini-cult whose members paint themselves as skeletons, and want to summon the King of Nails, whilst a blind sewer squid lurks in the murky effluence that flows through the sewers. There are also three missing teenagers, which is why the Player Characters have descended into the sewer. This is a much simpler affair, easy to slip under any big town or city.

Some of the dungeons do defy description, such as ‘The Hollow Prince’, a temple complex dedicated to something named the ‘Hollow Prince’. Although there is a lot of lovely detail to the various rooms and consequences of the Player Characters’ actions, quite what is going on in the complex is never explained. Whilst it is fine to mystify the players and their characters, it is arguably not so fine as to leave the Game Master also mystified. Without some kind of hook—obvious or not, ‘The Hollow Prince’ is just that much harder to add to a game.

Physically, Summer’s End and Other One-Page Adventures is a good-looking book. The layout is clean and simple, the big bold maps for each of the adventures dominating every two-page spread and working like artwork as much as they do maps. The cartography varies in style throughout, but in general is very good, although the wilderness hexes are the better of maps.

Summer’s End and Other One-Page Adventures is great collection of adventures and locations, really stripped down to fit neatly into two pages, but still offering a lot of good game play and adventure right off those pages without needing to refer to anything else. In general, the wilderness hexes are better than the dungeons, offering more plot and story, and whilst they are written for use with Knave, Second Edition, the minimal nature of the stats and the minimal number of stats, means that there is hardly another retroclone or Dungeons & Dragons-style roleplaying game that Summer’s End and Other One-Page Adventures would not work with and work well with.

The Other OSR: Knave, Second Edition

There can be no doubt that Knave, Second Edition succeeds at two things. First, it is definitely the prettiest microclones you can buy, and certainly one of the prettiest Old School Renaissance-style roleplaying games you can buy. Second, it is one of the most accessible of microclones you can buy, and certainly one of the most accessible Old School Renaissance-style roleplaying games you can buy. It is pretty because it uses just the one artist and that gives it a look all of its very own. Peter Mullen’s artwork is excellent. It is accessible because the play style of Dungeons & Dragons is incredibly familiar and because the core rules take up two pages and because every aspect of the rules is neatly and concisely presented on a single page. The rules for Ability Checks and Character Creation together take up a single page; for handling Checks, a single page; Delving, a single page; Combat, a single page; and so on. The core of these are even presented in the inside and back covers for easy reference. Barely thirty of the eighty pages that make up Knave, Second Edition are dedicated to rules, and that is including the author’s own commentary, advice on play, and an example of play and maps that the Game Master can develop as her own adventure sites. The rest of the book consists of tables. Tables for signs, locations, structures, and place traits, tables for delve shifts, rooms, room details, and room themes, tables for mutations, delusions, disasters, and magic schools. Each of these tables has a hundred entries and each of these tables is designed for two elements of play. One of course, is preparation prior to running the game by the Game Master, the other is to generate content through emergent play, the book itself is slim enough, short enough to make it easy to use at the table.

Knave, Second Edition is a toolkit designed and published by the author of The Waking of Willowby Hall, the earlier Maze Rats, and host of the YouTube channel, Questing Beast, following a successful Kickstarter campaign. The toolkit begins with advice on the duties of both the Game Master and the Player. The tasks of the Game Master are to create locations to explore, flesh out the cast, let the players guide the action, keep the game moving, immerse the players, reveal the world, signpost danger, reward smart plans, and so on. The task of the player are to create and play a character, take initiative and ask questions in driving play forward, apply tactical infinity—that is, treat the world as if it was real and turn any and all aspects of it to his character’s advantage, scheme and fight dirty, but be prepared to die! It is really simple and direct advice, in keeping with the concision of Knave, Second Edition. The advice also fits the play style which has each Player Character as a “tomb-raiding, adventure-seeking ne’er-do-well who wields a spell book just as easily as a blade.” Some aspects of the Game Master’s role, certainly when it comes to the ‘Edit the Rules’ set down at the beginning of the book is expanded upon in the Designer’s Commentary at the end of the book.

A Player Character in Knave, Second Edition has the six standard attributes—Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma—of Dungeons & Dragons and other retroclones. Each is rated in value between one and ten, and each one has a specific role in play and is associated with a specific role, or Class, from Dungeons & Dragons. Strength is the Fighter ability and is used for melee combat checks and physical activity. Agility is the Thief ability and covers any action involving reflexes or dexterity. Constitution is the Adventurer ability and is used to resist poison and diseases, but also determines how many item slots a Player Character has and how much damage a Player Character can suffer before dying. Intelligence is the Magic-User ability and is used for cunning, lockpicking—surprisingly not Dexterity, and spell use. Wisdom is the Ranger ability and is used for ranged combat, perception, and willpower. Charisma is the Cleric ability and is used to determine initiative and persuasion. What this means is that there is some shifting of what traditional Dungeons & Dragons attributes do and are used for in Knave, Second Edition, and that in addition, every attribute is useful. In other words, there is no dump stat! In addition, a Player Character has one or two previous Careers which determine his extra equipment in addition to the standard items that every Player Character receives. If his Intelligence is high enough, he can have a random spell book as well.

Character creation is fast and easy. The player distributes three points between the six Attributes (or he can roll), rolls for Hit Points, and two Careers. He also receives some coins with which to buy arms and armour. What he does not do is pick a Race or Class. Knave, Second Edition does not use either. A player is free to decide upon the Race of his character, but there are no mechanical benefits to doing so. Instead of a Class, a player can can choose to have his character specialise in one of his Attributes and its associated role. So, for example, to play a Magic-User type, a player would put points into his character’s Intelligence Attribute so that he knows more spells and is better at casting them or to be a Ranger type, he would put points in the character’s Dexterity and Wisdom Attributes. Alternatively, a player does not have to have his character specialise and can mix and match roles. For example, he could increase his Intelligence to cast spells and his Strength to be a better warrior. Although a Player Character only starts with three points to assign to his Attributes, he will be given more as he goes up in Level.

Crispin Cromditch

Level 1

Careers: Cobbler/Cultist

Hit Points: 1

Armour: Gambeson (AP 1) Armour Class: 12

Helmet: None Shield: None

Weapon: dagger (d6)

Personality: Dogmatic

Goal: Serve the Needy

Mannerism: Slow Speech

Strength 1 Dexterity 1 Constitution 1

Intelligence 0 Wisdom 0 Charisma 0

Equipment: leather roll, fancy shoes, tacks, dagger, ritual robes, amulet, day’s rations, 50’ rope, gambeson

Mechanically, Knave, Second Edition calls for checks to be made against specific attributes on a twenty-sided die. The base difficulty is eleven and may be as high as twenty-one. In combat the difficulty number is the defender’s Armour Class, which is based on the number of Armour Pieces the defender is wearing. In comparison to other roleplaying games, including Dungeons & Dragons, Advantage and Disadvantage is not handled by rolling extra dice, but applying a flat ‘+5’ bonus or ‘-5’ penalty per modifying factor. Beyond this, checks are used sparingly. There are no Lore checks, the Player Characters will know common knowledge and the knowledge granted by their careers, but anything else is waiting to be discovered. Similarly, there are no Search checks, but finding hidden things is handled narratively and through Player Character action.

Initiative in combat is handled by an opposed Charisma check and if the player rolls twenty-one or more on the attack check, his character can perform a manoeuvre such as disarming, blinding, tripping, and so on. Sneak attacks always hit and bypasses Hit Points to Wounds, and power attacks do double damage, but break the weapon. Damage is taken from a defender’s Hit Points and then in the case of a Player Character, from his Inventory Slots, which effectively serve as wounds. As his Inventory Slots are filled, his capacity to carry objects is reduced and if they are all filled up, the Player Character is dead.

Spellcasting is not just done spell by spell, but spellbook by spellbook. A spellbook holds a single spell and takes up a single inventory slot. Spells are not taught, but found, so that a spellbook is a treasure all of its own. Spells are automatically cast, but their effects can be saved against to avoid them. The rulebook includes one hundred spells, each consisting of a short, one or two sentence description. There are some fun spells here, like Astral Prison which temporarily freezes the target in time and space; Catherine, which makes a woman dressed in blue appear and fulfil any polite, safe requests; and Shroud which makes the affected creatures invisible for as long as they hold their breath! In addition, there is a set of tables to create even more spells.

Divine magic is called Relic Magic and is granted by patrons, such as gods, spirits, and saints, through relics. Rather than finding a scroll with a divine blessing on it, a Player Character will visit a shrine to communicate with a patron whose favour he has, and be given both a relic and a quest. Fulfil the terms of the quest and the relic will be imbued with a Blessing which can be performed multiple times per day. Of course, a relic takes up an Inventory Slot just as a spellbook does. The various tables for magic, potions, and powers are intended to provide inspiration for what these blessings might be.

Beyond these basic rules and those for delving, Knave, Second Edition scales up to encompass travel and weather, really simple and easy rules for alchemy, buildings and warfare, and of course, monsters. The bestiary itself, is short, at thirty-five entries, but enough to get started. Their format is close to that of monsters in Dungeons & Dragons, so it is easy for the Game Master to import and adapt monsters from other sources. Outside of adventuring and delving, there are rules too for downtime. The latter includes carousing and gambling, but also career training for everything from carpenter and hunter to lawyer and assassin. The rare careers take a lot of time and are very expensive.

Knave, Second Edition is round out with an example of play—which probably should have been more up front—and the ‘Designer’s Commentary’. Here the designer explains the decisions he took in redesigning Knave for this new edition. His voice comes through here most obviously—the reader can imagine him actually saying all of this—and pleasingly, he acknowledges the inspirations for each of those decisions. There are some interesting choices made here and the ‘Designer’s Commentary’ brings Knave, Second Edition to a close with a personal touch. Lastly, there is a map of a dungeon and a wilderness area that the Game Master could develop into actual adventuring material.

Physically, Knave, Second Edition is very well presented, the layout done in ‘Command’ style so that everything needed for each aspect of the rules is presented concisely on the one page (two at most). This makes everything accessible and easy to grasp. The artwork is excellent.

From start to finish, Knave, Second Edition has been clearly designed for use and accessibility. The layout is great, the mechanics combine simplicity and brutal Old School Renaissance play with player choice, and the tables provide the Game Master with hundreds of prompts. Knave, Second Edition is the microclone’s microclone, a superb little roleplaying game and toolkit, perfect for playing fast and light in the Old School Renaissance.

The Other OSR: Welcome to Strangeville

Strangeville is a town like any other, which means that it is beset by monsters and robots and dinosaurs and aliens, and because the adults never believe in monsters and robots and dinosaurs and aliens until it is too late, the only standing between the monsters and robots and dinosaurs and aliens and Strangeville’s doom are the kids! Young teenagers on bikes or skateboards or even roller-skates with the curiosity to notice that something strange is going in where else, but Strangeville! Welcome to Strangeville then, an Old School Renaissance compatible roleplaying game based on Knave. Published by Doomed Wizard Games, it is obviously based also on the television series Stranger Things as well as Paper Girls, The Goonies, and just any adventure film or television series set in the eighties in which the kids are the heroes. Being based on Knave it offers fast-playing stripped down mechanics, whilst also suggesting collaborative worldbuilding between the players and the Game Master. What it does not do is provide anything in terms of spells or monsters beyond advice on how to adapt them to Welcome to Strangeville. Thus, the Game Master will need access to a bestiary and a source of spells of some kind. That said, the Old School Renaissance is not exactly short of those.

In Welcome to Strangeville, a Player Character has six abilities—Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma—each of which has a Check Bonus and a Save bonus. The Check Bonus ranges between one and six and is added to the die roll when a Player Character undertakes an action. The Save Bonus is equal to the Check Bonus plus ten, and it is what the Player Character rolls against when tyring withstand various dangers or effects. He has an Alignment, either Nark, Slacker, or Bogus. Nark indicates that the Player Character believes in the greater good rather than the individual, a Slacker cares more about himself, but can be roused to action, and if a character is Bogus, he is definitely selfish, if not downright evil. He has a number of Traits such as Age—between twelve and fourteen, Physique, Hair, Virtue, Vice, Speech, Parents, and Parent Occupation, and so on. He will also have some gear which will include either a bicycle, a skateboard, or a pair of roller-skates so that he can get around.

To create a character, a player rolls three six-sided dice for each ability and assigns the lowest rolled as the Check Bonus. He adds ten to the Check Bonus to get the Save Bonus for the ability. Having done this for each ability, selects an Alignment and rolls for Traits, Gear, and means of transport.

At thirteen Terrell Thompson is beginning to get big and broad, which has made him a pick for the high school football team. He tries to keep himself out of trouble, but as the new kid in the school—his mom having moved to Strangeville to work in the town pharmacy, together with his size, he feels he gets picked on when things go wrong. So, he is not always trusting, but when he does make friends, he stands by them.

Terrell Thompson
Level: One

Strength Check +3/Save Bonus 13
Dexterity Check +3/Save Bonus 13
Constitution Check +4/Save Bonus 14
Intelligence Check +2/Save Bonus 12
Wisdom Check +3/Save Bonus 13
Charisma Check +1/Save Bonus 11

Hit Points 8

TRAITS
Age: 13 Gender: Male
Physique: Towering Face: Wide Skin: Perfect Hair: Dreadlocks Clothing: Torn
Virtue: Loyal Vice: Prejudiced
Speech: Breathy
Misfortunes: Suspected
Parents: Widowed Mother Parent’s Occupation: Pharmacist
Alignment: Slacker

GEAR
Swiss Army Knife, lantern & oil, caltrops, perfume, skateboard

Mechanically, Welcome to Strangeville is straightforward. To have his teenager undertake an action, a player rolls a twenty-sided die, adds the appropriate ability check and if the result is fifteen or more, he succeeds. The target may vary—primarily in combat because the target is likely to have a different value for its Dexterity Save, but otherwise, Welcome to Strangeville uses the standard Advantage and Disadvantage mechanic. Strength is used for physical actions, melee combat, and extra damage, Dexterity for speed and reflexes, Constitution to resist diseases and poisons, Intelligence for anything involving concentration and precision, including tinkering with machinery or picking pockets, Wisdom for perception and ranged attacks, and Charisma whenever a character interacts with someone else. Thus, there are some minor changes in how the abilities in comparison to more traditional Old School Renaissance retroclones.

Combat uses the same mechanics, with the defender’s Save acting as the target. This can be to inflict damage, and Welcome to Strangeville suggests that firearms be extremely be hard to hold of as the Player Characters are teenagers, or it can be stunts such as disarming an opponent or knocking them over. Most weapons inflict a four- or six-sided die in terms of damage, whilst rifles and shotguns do more. When a Player Character’s Hit Points are reduced to zero, he is unconscious and if they are reduced to his Constitution Check as a negative value, he is dead, that is if he has a Constitution Check of +2 and his Hit Pits are reduced to -2, he is dead. Critical hits occur if the player rolls a twenty and a fumble occurs if he rolls a one.

Other rules are quick and easy. Stunts on bicycles, skateboards, and so on, require a Dexterity check, it is possible to subdue an opponent, and a Player Character has a number of item slots equal to his Constitution Save. There are narrative elements too. For example, Group Advantage can be gained for everyone’s next action two or more Player Characters declare a collective action and their players narrate how a previous incident helps them with this one, but the primary narrative element to Welcome to Strangeville comes in the set-up when the players and the Game Master work together to create and describe the town of Strangeville. During Session Zero, each player also creates a handful of rumours and urban legends about places in the town, monsters that lurk, houses said to be haunted, serial killers believed to stalk, and so on. The Game Master takes these and deicides which are true and which are false, using as many or as few as she likes to both establish a sense of mystery and weirdness about Strangeville, whilst also using some as the basis for adventures. Beyond this, the advice for the Game Master is fairly brief, primarily focusing on how to adapt and use monsters and spells from other sources, noting that a spell takes a slot in a Player Character’s inventory.

Physically, Welcome to Strangeville is a bit scruffy in places and the artwork does vary in quality. It is clearly written and anyone with any experience of the Old School Renaissance will grasp how it works with ease. The cover though, is good.

Although it uses the stripped back mechanics of Knave, what Welcome to Strangeville is not, is an introductory roleplaying game. It is not written as such, and is more aimed at the experienced Game Master who can develop the ideas suggested by her players during their Session Zero. Given that it does have to rely on other Old School Renaissance sourcebooks for its content, Welcome to Strangeville is underwritten in comparison to other roleplaying games in its genres and a group looking for a more rounded treatment of the ‘kids in peril’ genre may want to look elsewhere. However, for a group that prefers Old School Renaissance and is prepared to put the development work in to create their own setting and the Game Master their ‘kids in peril’ adventures, Welcome to Strangeville is a succinct little choice.

The Other OSR: Runecairn: Into the Nine Realms

Runecairn: Into the Nine Realms is an anthology of short one-page scenarios and encounters for use with Runecairn: Wardensaga (or its earlier version, Runecairn), the Norse fantasy tabletop roleplaying game published By Odin’s Beard. Unlike most Norse- or Viking-themed roleplaying games, Runecairn: Wardensaga takes place after Ragnarök has come to pass, leaving a world without gods and beset by darkness and danger, into which a lone hero strides, ready to defend the innocent and the weak who still survive amidst this chaos. It is specifically designed to be played by a single Game Master—or Warden—and a single player (although the rules do provide for other options), whilst mechanically, it is inspired by minimalist Old School Renaissance roleplaying games such as Cairn, Into the Odd, and Knave. What this means is that the sixteen entries in Runecairn: Into the Nine Realms can easily be adapted to the retroclone of the Game Master’s choice and their minimalist format makes the processing of adapting that much easier.

The format for Runecairn: Into the Nine Realms is very simple. A single page dominated by a map of the encounter with the accompanying text providing a brief overview and almost as equally brief descriptions of the various locations, plus a legend for the map. The maps are all hand drawn and possess a certain roughness. This does not mean that they are bad maps, but rather they are not as polished as they might have been. There are no stats given for any of the monsters, the Warden expected to simply use those found in the Runecairn: Wardensaga rulebook or the Runecairn Bestiary. The side effect of this means that if the Game Master is adapting the scenarios to the another rules, she can similarly use the stats from the bestiary for the roleplaying game she is using.

The sixteen scenarios in Runecairn: Into the Nine Realms open with ‘Worldserpent Hollow’, a simple dungeon with clearly marked areas of light and darkness, full of skeletons, draugr, and secrets a Dwarf is excavating, and ends with ‘Limbs of Yggdrasil’, the immense ash tree pockmarked with the stumps of branches long cut from the tree behind which the Hero can hunker down for protection as spectral archers pepper his path with arrows. In between, the Hero will face another ‘Storm of Arrows’ as he crosses a kill zone that is already stabbed with ten-foot-long arrows embedded in the ground; come across a settlement already put to the torch and the inhabitants sacrificed by desperate cultists in ‘Mistbound Village’; discover a ‘Grove of Woe’, with its corrupted trees that reach down and grab passing travellers with a noose and are already strung with hanging cultists, whilst a lindworm lurks on the edge of the grove; and break into ‘The Ring Fortress’ which contains a great hammer-shaped cairn and has cultists are preparing for great unknown event whilst two ghost colossuses circle outside, wailing and smashing their hammers on the ground! ‘The Ring Fortress’ could contain the ‘Cairn of Thunder’, a hammer-shaped cairn, hand-dug, ringing to the constant sounding hammering, and home to a massive bone titan which if it climbs from its pits and stands, will bring the cairn down upon itself and the Player Character!

Many of the encounters are linear in nature, with a set entry and exit, so that not only is there a sense of progression from the beginning of an encounter to its end, but also from the beginning of the anthology to the end, as if the Player Character is on a great journey, perhaps searching for something. In some cases, the Warden will need to work with the player (or players) to provide some motivation for the hero to engage with an encounter. Others can simply be placed in the Player Character’s path as he journeys onward. All encounters begin with a bonfire, a sanctuary of light and rest in the darkness of the after-Ragnarök.

Physically, Runecairn: Into the Nine Realms is presented in as simple a fashion as possible. They are all easy to read and in addition, many of them are accompanied by some very good pieces of art. The depiction of the two ghost colossuses circling the Ring Fortress is exceptionally good.

Runecairn: Into the Nine Realms can be used in multiple ways. As a set of one-shots, as a set of encounters to place in the path of an ever onward moving hero, as inspiration for the Warden, or even as inspiration for the Game Master of another roleplaying game. Whether facing a hammer-wielding, niflmare-riding headless Jotunn in a broken village or crossing a water-logged battlefield contested by the living and the dead, there are some great encounters in Runecairn: Into the Nine Realms and some memorable confrontations with chaos and darkness.

The Other OSR: Runecairn: Wardensaga

Ragnarök came to pass and the world as it was known came to an end. Yet the world did not end, it was only broken, the gods of the Aesir and the Vanir missing or dead, Jörmungandr dead and flensed, the Jotunn forced to flee back Jotunheim. Yet as broken as the world is, and as full of dread and danger as the Nine Realms are, there are heroes who would stand alone against the darkness, to defend villages against roving bandits, hunt a creature stealing children, reclaim a family cairn overcome by the dead, retrieve a great relic lost to the ages, broker peace between warring clans, protect a caravan passing through dangerous lands, and search lands old and new for secrets and mythical beasts. Such activities are dangerous, but these heroes are strong of heart and even when they die, they will find their way back to bonfires that warm the soul and give life and never dwindle—and even link the Nine Realms. A great hero’s failure is only temporary, until it isn’t. Until then, a hero can try again and again to overcome the danger he faces, to find another way now that he is forewarned.

Runecairn: Wardensaga is the most complete version of Runecairn, the Norse fantasy tabletop roleplaying game published By Odin’s Beard, collecting the Runecairn Core Rules, the adventure ‘Beneath the Broken Sword’, and Runecairn: Advanced Rules into one handsome volume. Like the publisher’s We Deal In Lead: A Weird West Wanders Game, it is inspired by minimalist Old School Renaissance roleplaying games such as Cairn, Into the Odd, and Knave. It is specifically designed to be played by a single Game Master—or Warden—and a single player. However, the advanced rules gives options for reducing the players to one and turning Runecairn: Wardensaga into a solo roleplaying game or increasing their numbers for a more traditional roleplaying game.

Runecairn: Wardensaga begins with general advice and then advice for Warden and player alike. It does this as a series of principles presented as bullet points. The general advice states that the Warden’s role is one of neutrality, that the roleplaying game is Classless—the abilities of an Adventurer relying on equipment and experiences, that the possibility of death is ever present though never without warning, that fiction comes before the dice, that an Adventurer has opportunities to grow through his experiences, and that the player should always be presented with choices. For the Warden these include design philosophy—that she is helpful and honest as conduit of information, the context and realism determine difficulty, that the world changes and sometimes changes because of what the Player Character does, the narrative should support the emerging story, that danger is everywhere and obvious, that the player and his character should always have and be presented with choices, and when all that fails, there is occasionally, just luck. For the player, the principles advise agency, exploration, talking, caution, planning, and ambition, and if one path leads to defeat, then he should look for an alternative path. For the most part, these will be familiar to adherents of the Old School Renaissance, but here are not elucidated upon, but rather kept short and to the point. Similarly, the world of Runecairn: Wardensaga has its own principles.

An Adventurer in Runecairn: Wardensaga has four abilities—Strength, Dexterity, Wits, and Spirit, rated between three and eighteen; Vigour and Vitality, which are rated between one and six; and Resilience which is a total of Vigour and Vitality. Vigour is the Adventurer’s self-determination, which Vitality is how hale and hearty he is. A player rolls dice for all of these, and can swap two of the abilities. The player then picks a Class. This can be Warrior, Skald, Scout, or Seer. Each Class provides a range of equipment and skills or special actions that will give the Player Character many of their initial abilities.

Gertrud
Warrior
Strength 17 Dexterity 15 Wits 11 Spirit 12
Vigour 6 Vitality 5 Resilience 11
Def 3
Linden Wood Shield (+1 Def), Chainmail (Bulky, Def 2), Bearded Axe (d8), Ash Wood Spear (d6, 20’), Memento of Defeat, (Free Slots: 4)
Skills: Block (Shield), Parry (Axe), Disarm (Axe), Hack (Axe), Thrust (Spear)

Mechanically, Runecairn: Wardensaga is straightforward. When a player wants his Adventurer to act or react—and it is dramatically appropriate—he rolls a save versus either Strength, Dexterity, Wits, or Spirit, needing to roll equal to or lower than the value. A one always succeeds and a twenty always fails. Standard rules are used for advantage and disadvantage, and can apply to damage as well as standard actions.

In terms of combat, Runecairn: Wardensaga uses the same core mechanic, but in terms of rolling dice, combat in the roleplaying game is all about damage and reactions. Fundamentally, every attack made by an attacker will hit the defender and inflict damage. That is, unless the defender can do something as a reaction. Every Adventurer can ‘Roll’ away from the attack or ‘Withdraw’ from the combat, but each Class adds its own options in terms of Reactions. These require ‘Key’ items, pieces of equipment, that without, the Adventurer cannot perform the Reaction. For example, the Scout’s Key item is a pair of hunting knives. These are light enough that the Scout can perform a ‘Dash’ as a Reaction, which requires a save versus his Dexterity, the Scout able to avoid all damage if successful or impairing it and reducing it to a four-sided die if it is unsuccessful. Attack actions also require an item of equipment and increase the amount of damage inflicted or another effect. For example, the Seer Class has the ‘Clobber’ action. This requires a staff and has the Seer smashing a defender over the head with his staff, granting the Seer advantage for the damage roll, and the defender being forced to roll a save versus Strength or be dazed. Many of the actions and Reactions force the Adventurer to suffer ‘Fatigue’. Each point of Fatigue fills a slot in the Adventurer’s Inventory.

One damage is suffered, the ‘Def’ or Defence value, reduces the amount of damage suffered. Both Classes and monsters and NPCs have a base ‘Def’ and this can be augmented by any armour worn or shield carried. Damage is then deducted from Resilience. If an Adventurer’s Resilience is reduced to exactly zero, he will receive an Omen, a message from the spirits, or gods, or… which can be good or bad. If reduced below zero, damage reduces Strength and counts as a critical strike. This requires a save versus critical damage on Strength, and if failed, the defender dies.

For example, as Gertrude struggles through the last of a snowstorm to get to the next village, she hears yells and screams from up ahead. Over the rise, she sees a caravan which has been ambushed during the storm. It is in disarray as several figures fight the surviving guards and others drag off merchants. Gertrude spots two of the rough-looking fellows attempting to abduct an old woman. Unlimbering her Linden Wood Shield and readying her bearded axe, she charges down the hill. The Warden rules that since the battlefield is noisy and the old woman is screaming, neither of the cultists will spot her charging down the hill and will grant her Advantage on the damage roll. This means that Gertrude’s player will rolling two eight-sided dice instead of one and taking the best result. Gertrude’s player rolls a five and an eight. He chooses the latter and inflicts eight points of damage. The Cultist has a Def of one, reducing the damage he is about to suffer by one to seven. However, the Cultist only has Resilience of six, so it is reduced to zero and the Cultist takes a point of damage to his Strength. It also means that the Warden has to make a Critical Damage save. The Warden rolls against the Cultist’s Strength of ten and rolls a sixteen! The Cultist yelps at the sudden blow and drops dead… At this point, it triggers a special ability which means that when the Cultist dies, a black tentacle bursts out of him and inflicts damage on the nearest person. This requires a roll of one on a twenty-sided die. The Warden rolls seven, so nothing happens.

The other Cultist looks round in surprise. He reacts by throwing the old woman down and drawing his seax, advances on Gertrude. He stabs at the mighty warrior and rolls six for the damage. Gertrude has a high enough Resilience to stop a lot of this damage, but his player decides on a Parry Reaction. This enables Gertrude to deflect the attack and riposte with advantage on the damage roll. Gertrude’s player rolls fourteen, which is under Gertrude’s Strength. Gertrude smashes the seax stab aside and the Cultist suffers enough damage to reduce his Resilience to zero, but not inflict any damage to his Strength. The Cultist screams in pain. This attracts the attention of the other cultists attacking the caravan. They stop what they are doing and move to take down their attacker. She will make a worthy sacrifice.

Two of the Classes—the Skald and the Seer—are capable of casting various forms of magic. These are Runestones and Sagas. Runestones are polished stones into which spells are inscribed, whilst Sagas are memorised tales that are recited to channel the power of the gods. Both Runestones and Sagas take up an Inventory Slot in total and when either a Runestone or a Saga inflicts damage, it bypasses non-magical armour. There is a decent list of spells for the Seer, such as Cloak of Knives or Spectacle, as well as one for the Skald like Laughter or Sense Evil.

As the mighty warrioress comes to her aid and attacks the cultists who would have kidnapped her, the old woman, Tove, finds herself thrown into the snow. She is now free to act, and as Skald, she reaches into the folds of her tunic to pull out her Runic Focus. Concentrating on the key item, she recalls the story in which Thor called down the power of lightning on his enemies. With a crackle of energy, a dagger of lightning appears in her hand. From where she lies, she throws it at the Cultist still standing in front of the unknown warrioress. This inflicts three damage, reduced by one for the Cultist’s ‘Def’. This means the Cultist suffers Strength damage and triggers a Critical Damage save. The Warden rolls eleven for the Cultist, which means that with a zap, the Cultist is blown off his feet. The Warden rolls for the Cultist’s post-death ability. This time she rolls a one and a black tentacle emerges from the dead Cultist and inflicts a six-sided die’s worth of damage on Gertrude!

If an Adventurer dies, it does not necessarily mean that play is over. The Adventurer simply reawakens at the last Bonfire he rested at. He loses all Souls found—Souls are remnants of the power of the gods scattered and hidden across the Nine Realms, that if returned to a Bonfire whilst alive can be used to imbue an Adventurer with power and improve his abilities and Vitality—and has his Strength and Resilience restored to full. However, when this happens, it also reduces his Vigour by one. If his Vigour is reduced to zero in this fashion, the Adventurer truly dies and rises as a Shade… Lastly, any enemy that the Adventurer killed before dying is also returned to life!

This is the extent of Runecairn in terms of its basic rules. What is interesting about Runecairn: Wardensaga is that it shifts what would be the inherent abilities of a Player Character because said Player Character has a Class in another roleplaying game from the internal to external. Much of what a Player Character can do is down to the equipment that he carries and packs into his inventory, and many of them enable the use of skills. What that means is that an Adventurer in Runecairn: Wardensaga could snatch up a spear and carry a ‘Thrust’ attack as per the Warrior Class, enabling him to lunge forward ten feet and make an attack, but suffering from fatigue in return, or after obtaining a Runic Focus, learn spells as can a Skald. In addition to finding Souls and spells, an Adventurer can also find Relics and Rings. Relics are items imbued with magic or spells, often one-use items, which when used do not inflict Fatigue, and sometimes can be recharged. For example, a Skull Beacon, a charred and crumbling skull with faintly glimmering eye sockets, which glows brightly when held. It can be used to light up and area, but only once. To recharge it, it needs to be burned on a roaring bonfire. Rings typically grant a better benefit, but always at some cost. For example, the Iron Ring is wrought of dense metal grants a point of Defence, but at a loss of Speed.

The Advanced Rules of Runecairn: Wardensaga provide two extra Classes, alternate ways of playing the roleplaying game, and a Delve Generator. The two extra Classes are the Berserker and the Pyre. The former is a warrior who calls upon his animal spirit to fight with great ferocity, whilst the latter draws upon fire to burn his enemies and even shield against their attacks. The first of the alternate methods of play is solo play. This suggests playing Runecairn: Wardensaga as a Journalling game, suggesting that the player use an ‘Oracle’ as a means to draw meaning from the randomness of play, such as that created using the Delve Generator. This ‘Oracle’ can be a Tarot deck, but the guidance for solo play in the Advanced Rules of Runecairn: Wardensaga provides a set of tables to roll upon. The co-operative play gives a way of bringing another player into a session, the Adventurer using an effigy stone at a bonfire to summon a fallen hero—from either the past or the future—who will fight alongside the Adventurer, until one of them dies. Conversely, the Adventurer might face a ‘black fetch’ instead of a fallen hero, intent of stripping him of his humanity and vigour. The ‘black fetch’ can be run as a normal NPC by the Warden, or if both players do not object to the situation, by another player, setting up an adversarial situation. Alternatively, the ‘black fetch’ might actually be a fallen hero who believes the Adventurer to be the ‘black fetch’!

The Delve Generator creates locations for play in Runecairn: Wardensaga. This includes locations such as cairn or stronghold, objectives such as infiltrating the mercenary group at a stronghold and convincing its members to join the Adventurer or hunting a cairn for the rock troll that killed the adventurer’s family is hiding out in the family tomb. An extensive set of tables provides encounters within these locations, NPC reactions and actions, and a countdown mechanic which determines how close the Adventurer is to his objective after each encounter. Thus, the Adventurer need not explore the whole of the location to achieve his objective. The process is neatly handled through a flow chart that makes the solo play proceed with ease.

Penultimately, Runecairn: Wardensaga provides a complete delve, ‘Beneath the Broken Sword’. This is designed as an introductory adventure which showcases how to play and how the Adventurer lives and dies. It begins with the Adventurer waking up not know where he is and what he should possess, so the first part is really looking for both, though the inevitable death within the first few locations will teach the player the transient nature of life and death in the roleplaying game and then reinforce the importance of the Adventurer’s possessions as they really are key to his survival. Lastly, the appendices consist of a short, but useful bestiary, and some player options as well as a pronunciation guide.

Physically, Runecairn: Wardensaga is well presented and the artwork is excellent. However, the writing does feel succinct in places, leaving the reader wanting a little clearer explanation. However, there is a good example of Adventurer and a good example of combat. Both do a good job of showing how the roleplaying game works. If there is anything missing from the pages of Runecairn: Wardensaga, it is details of the wider world, of the Nine Realms, which the Warden will have to develop. Another issue is that there is no differentiation within each Class, so that the only difference one Warrior and another is their core abilities. That said, Runecairn: Wardensaga is not designed for that style of play where these are multiple players. Nevertheless, when there are two players involved, they should ideally have their Adventurers each be of a different Class.

Runecairn: Wardensagaa is the complete version of Runecairn, containing everything needed to play, including a beginning scenario, and then more to play further, whether that is just one player and the Warden, as is standard, solo play, or more players. There is a fantastically brutal dynamism to the play of Runecairn: Wardensaga, combined with a strong player agency that the Warden is encouraged to support through the roleplaying game’s principles. In particular, the thrust back and forth of combat is desperate and gruelling, a player whose Adventurer has his equipment, always having choices in terms of how he attacks and he reacts. This reliance upon equipment emphasises the power of these choices and makes the Adventurer feel mortal—even though this is not the case as death returns him to the last bonfire—rather than like some fantasy superhero. Yet the heroic aspect of Runecairn: Wardensaga means that the Adventurer can return from the dead, to come back with the knowledge of what killed him and perhaps be better prepared for the next attempt.

Above all, Runecairn: Wardensaga is a really enticing roleplaying game for two that gives the Warden a set of solid tools with which to create the situations and delves for the Adventurer to get involved in, whilst for the player, there are some great Adventurers to play and bring to life and use their skills, and together the means to explore a broken world. Ultimately, Runecairn: Wardensaga is like a computer game in its one-on-one play-style, but its post-Ragnarök action has all the advantages of a tabletop roleplaying game—player agency, the varied and more reactive world created by the Warden, and the fierce and feisty actions, reactions, and decisions of the Adventurer.

—oOo—

By Odin’s Beard will be at UK Games Expo which takes place on Friday, May 31st to Sunday June 2nd, 2024.

[Fanzine Focus XXXV] Keep It Together

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. Similarly, the fanzine has been a popular format for Mausritter. However, the format has in the main, been a vehicle to provide specific support in the form of scenarios, rather than general content, such as Keep It Together.

Keep It Together – An Adventure Zine is a scenario for Mausritter – Sword-and-Whiskers roleplaying, the rules-light fantasy adventure microclone in which the very big and very dangerous world is explored from a mouse eye’s point of view. This is our world, but one in which the mice are anthropomorphic and can talk, as can other species. Beyond the walls of their home, the world is one of opportunity and adventure, fraught with hazards natural and unnatural, those untouched by mankind and those imposed by mankind. Using the base mechanics from Into the Odd, mice in Mausritter need to be brave, resourceful, and clever, as well as lucky if they are to survive. Scenarios for Mausritter tend to be location based. Either the mice having to explore a single location, which could actually be a tree stump, a human-sized suit of armour, a grandfather clock, or an abandoned human-made shack, as in Mausritter: Honey in the Rafters or a sandbox setting containing numerous locations, such as Mausritter: The Estate Adventure Collection or Mayfield. Keep It Together is sandbox setting, but with a twist.

Keep It Together – An Adventure Zine was published by The Necropede as part of ZineQuest #3. Describing itself as ‘An Adventure Area for Mausritter’, it details the area between two mouse towns—Willowthorpe and New Willowthorpe. There is a New Willowthorpe because nearby development by humans uprooted trees, diverted the stream, and destroyed an area nearby, and so the inhabitants of the village decided that they would be better off elsewhere. Packing their belongings, they moved three miles away, on the other side of a pond. However, some of the mice in Willowthorpe did not want to make the move, after all, Willowthorpe was their home and they were unsure of whether New Willowthorpe would be a success or not. Now it has, and the inhabitants of New Willowthorpe want their friends and neighbours from their old home to move into their new home with them. However, the journey to New Willowthorpe was dangerous and none of them feel ready to brave it again. Thus, they put out the call for adventurers. Can they make the trek across the wilds, including tall grasses and dangerous, to bring news of New Willowthorpe to old Willowthorpe, persuade the inhabitants to make the journey, and then lead them to their new home?

The Player Characters have two primary routes between the two towns. Either by sailing or rowing boat across the pond and along the streams, or through the grasslands. Both offer their own dangers and both are replete with their own encounters and locations. Travel by boat is simpler, but predators can more easily see the mice from the sky, whilst the grass is taller than the mice and harder going, it both hides the mice from predators from above and the mice from seeing the predators above. Of course, the weather and time of year will travel conditions too. Between the old and new towns lie the Great Log, hollow with end in the water, and the easternmost point of the nearby Rat Lady’s kingdom; an Old Graveyard where it is always cold and foggy, no matter the weather, and now beset by some strangeness; and field of rocks below there are caves where ancient treasures might be found. There are only a handful or two of such locations, but they are nicely detailed and each one comes with an encounter table.

At either end of these encounters stand Willowthorpe and New Willowthorpe. Of the two, New Willowthorpe is more briefly described, but there is more than enough information to support the Player Characters with rumours, rafts to use to get across the pond, and even some hirelings who will accompany them. Old Willowthorpe is described in more detail, as are its NPCs, and the village is also given a map as well. The seven mice still living in the village are simply and directly detailed, a handful of bullet points listing background, the reason why they have not yet left, views of the other mice, and so on, all providing the Game Master with sufficient information for her to portray them effectively. Each is also accompanied by a thumbnail portrait that the Game Master should use to show her players. There is also a table indicating the relationships between the remaining mice and a table for randomly determining what they might be doing day or night. Whilst each of the remining inhabitants’ homes and the village’s major businesses are detailed, another table provides random descriptions of the abandoned buildings.

Once the Player Characters have arrived in Willowthorpe, their aim is to persuade and then the remaining mice to New Willowthorpe. Some do not want to leave, some are scared of leaving, some do not want to leave anything behind, some do not want to leave anyone behind, and some want everyone to go elsewhere. The Player Characters will need to sort through who wants what and why, and then persuade to change their minds, all before making the journey back. This is all complicated by the interest of several external factions who have taken an interest in the current state of Willowthorpe. These factions, including the Rat lady and the Fey are described at the end of the adventure are the monsters that might be encountered. Plus, there is list of new spells, such as Calm water, Protection from Undead, and Float. Lastly these new spells as well as several items are provided as tokens to cut and slip into a Player Character’s backpack and so take up space.

Physically, Keep It Together – An Adventure Zine is a neat and tidy affair. It is well written and the artwork is good. The artwork is cute, though the look is sometimes more fifties suburbia than the usual medieval look of Mausritter.

Keep It Together – An Adventure Zine is a there and back again adventure for Mausritter – Sword-and-Whiskers roleplaying. The ‘there’ being a straightforward trek through the wilderness, whilst the ‘back again’ has the feel of pioneers on the frontier of the Old West, the Player Characters guiding a wagon train home. The scenario can be played through as is, but there is scope for expansion, which the Game Master may want to consider if her Player Characters want to go and investigate the caves and other locations. The Game Master may also want to add a little more treasure, as there is very little to be found in the pages of the adventure. Should the Game Master want to add Keep It Together – An Adventure Zine to an existing Mausritter campaign, the size and the scale of both setting and story make it very easy to add.

Overall, Keep It Together – An Adventure Zine is a solid adventure for Mausritter – Sword-and-Whiskers roleplaying.

The Other OSR: 10 Downing

Mausritter – Sword-and-Whiskers roleplaying is a rules-light fantasy adventure microclone in which the very big and very dangerous world is explored from a mouse eye’s point of view. It encompasses not only the world of nature, but also the world that the players themselves live in. This is our world, but one in which the mice are anthropomorphic and can talk, as can other species. Beyond the walls of their home, the world is one of opportunity and adventure, fraught with hazards natural and unnatural, those untouched by mankind and those imposed by mankind. Using the base mechanics from Into the Odd, mice in Mausritter need to be brave, resourceful and clever, as well as lucky if they are to survive. Scenarios for Mausritter tend to be location based. Either the mice having to explore a single location, which could actually be a tree stump, a human-sized suit of armour, a grandfather clock, or an abandoned human-made shack, as in Mausritter: Honey in the Rafters or a sandbox setting containing numerous locations, such as Mausritter: The Estate Adventure Collection or Mayfield. In being real places—or places inspired by the real world—there is definitely a sense of wonder about these locations because we are seeing and exploring them from a very different angle. Would this sense of wonder be invoked if the setting were real, and not only real, incredibly familiar to almost everyone in the world, let alone the country? What if a Mausritter campaign took place in a seat of power? What if a Mausritter campaign took place in 10 Downing Street, one of the most famous addresses in the world?

10 Downing: A Mausritter Campaign is set inside the cramped splendour of the Georgian townhouse that is 10 Downing Street, home to the Prime Minster of Great Britain and the seat of the government in office. In recent decades, it has been home to some colossal figures of British politics, including Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, and Boris Johnson. It is also notoriously infested with mice and other rodents and for several centuries there has been a cat in residence at 10 Downing Street, appointed as ‘Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office’. The current holder of the title—and the first to do so officially, is Larry. Having served through five premierships to date, Larry is the lord of all he surveys. His reputation as a mouser has varied over the years, but Larry is no fool. He knows that his presence is enough to instil fear in the mice also resident in 10 Downing Street and so in order to avoid undue chasing and catching of mice, he has come to an agreement with the mice. If they avoid making trouble and certainly avoid coming to the notice of the building’s many human inhabitants, he will leave them be. This leaves him with a mice retinue of servants and time to focus—at least occasionally—upon a more pressing problem: rats! This then, is the basics of the situation as describing in 10 Downing, which also presents the complete floorplans for all three floors of the house and numerous storylines and five ready-to-play quests and adventures involving six rival factions, eight new hirelings, new creatures, new treasures, and new spells. 10 Downing: A Mausritter Campaign includes everything a Mouse Master and her micey medley need to play through a mini-campaign of multiple mouse sessions.

10 Downing presents an overview of the house combined with the floorplans. These have been marked with the important locations, such as the Cocked Hat Rats stronghold, tunnels through the wall, and the Chief Mouser’s domain. These are briefly described as are the locations throughout the building, adding in details such as available quests to be started there and treasures to be found there. Some of these are thematically fun, such as the Flaming Churchill, a cigar which belonged to Winston Churchill and whose odour keeps cats away. The various factions, such as The House of Lordly Mice, the original mice in the house, or the Cocked Hats Rats, a gang of cockney rats, which are interlopers in the house. This sets up a social divide in 10 Downing Street over which Larry the cat lords it all. 10 Downing includes six quests, such as scavenging for food during a feast held in the dinning room, fomenting rebellion against Lord Mouse and his cabinet.

The quests and the adventure locations are given more detail. These include breaking into a bust in search of a powerful spell tablet or rescuing the nephew of the Lord Mouse after the Cocked Hat Rats have kidnaped him. Some of the quests have random elements and some also have the potential to change the balance of power in 10 Downing Street. All six quests are solid affairs, and supported for stats of the major NPCs and creatures. In addition, there new items in the forms of traps (to ensnare the corgis), new stealth spells, and treasures such as razor blade or teacup handle weapons and even Paddington’s Coat as armour.

What 10 Downing cannot really do is bring the human element into play. Of course, the many human locations that are the setting for other Mausritter campaigns and scenarios are busy places with many humans moving about, living and working, but in 10 Downing Street, the footfall is incredibly high. There are politicians, ministers, government officials, Downing Street staff, security, and even the Prime Minister’s family all moving about, and doing so through much of the day. Only once do the humans appear in the Encounters table, and even then, they are the cleaners, there after everyone else has gone—for the day, or to bed. That said, one of the quests does involve the Queen coming to tea—which of course, dates 10 Downing—and the Player Characters setting traps to prevent the corgis from causing any trouble. It gives the quest a delightful personal presence that everyone will enjoy. Yet it is disappointing that the personal presence comes from a visitor rather than anyone who is expected to be in 10 Downing Street. More so because we all have good idea who would be in the house, depending, of course, upon which Premiership the Game Master decides to set her 10 Downing campaign during. Now of course, the author cannot account for the five (actually, three if we want to be historically accurate since the Queen could really only have visited three of them for tea) Prime Ministers, the members of their cabinets, staff, or family. This is something that the Game Master will have to work into her campaign herself. Which will require some research upon the part of the Game Master.

Physically, 10 Downing is breezily presented. The self-penned artwork is cartoony, but the author mixes in a lot of public domain art too. The floorplans are a little small, but the PDF comes with larger maps that a little clearer.

10 Downing: A Mausritter Campaign has everything that the Game Master needs to run a campaign set in 10 Downing Street. However, it requires some research and development upon the part of the Game Master to fully bring out its political nuances and influences, but for a certain audience, 10 Downing: A Mausritter Campaign will give a chance for their mice to play when the Prime Minister is away.

Best of... Bernpyle YEAR ONE

Before the advent of the internet, the magazine was the focus of the hobby’s attention, a platform in whose pages could be news, reviews, and content for the roleplaying game of each reader’s choice, as well as a classified section and a letters page where the issues of day—or at least month—could be raised and discussed in chronically lengthy manner. In this way, such magazines as White Dwarf, Imagine, Dragon, and many others since, came to be our community’s focal point and sounding board, especially a magazine that was long running. Yet depending upon when you entered the hobby and picked up your first issue of a roleplaying magazine, you could have missed a mere handful of issues or many. Which would have left you wondering what was in those prior issues. Today, tracking down back issues to find out and complete a magazine’s run is much easier than it was then, but many publishers offered another solution—the ‘Best of…’ magazine. This was a compilation of curated articles and support, containing the best content to have appeared in the magazine’s pages.

1980 got the format off to a good start with both The Best of White Dwarf Scenarios and The Best of White Dwarf Articles from Games Workshop as well as the Best of Dragon from TSR, Inc. Both publishers would release further volumes of all three series, and TSR, Inc. would also reprint its volumes. Other publishers have published similar volumes and in more recent times, creators in the Old School Renaissance have begun to collate and collect content despite the relative youth of that movement. This includes The Gongfarmer’s Almanac which has collected community content for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game since 2015 and Populated Hexes Monthly Year One which collected the content from the Populated Hexes Monthly fanzine. The ‘Best of…’ series of reviews will look at these and many of the curated and compiled titles from the last four decades of roleplaying.

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Bernpyle is a fanzine dedicated to Mausritter – Sword-and-Whiskers roleplaying, the rules-light fantasy adventure microclone in which the very big and very dangerous world is explored from a mouse eye’s point of view. This is our world, but one in which the mice are anthropomorphic and can talk, as can other species. Beyond the walls of their home, the world is one of opportunity and adventure, fraught with hazards natural and unnatural, those untouched by mankind and those imposed by mankind. Using the base mechanics from Into the Odd, mice in Mausritter need to be brave, resourceful and clever, as well as lucky if they are to survive. Funded via a Kickstarter campaign, Bernpyle YEAR ONE collects the most interesting, the most popular, and the best content from first six issues. This includes a regional hexcrawl complete with eight adventure sites and locations, a selection of alternative mechanics inspired by a range of Old School Renaissance adjacent roleplaying games and even a non-Old School Renaissance, new weapons, spells and magic items, two playable species, and more.

Bernpyle: Year One opens with ‘The Earldom of Bernpyle’, a hexcrawl of nineteen sub-hexes. At its heart is the large settlement of Bernpyle, once home to rats, but now home to twelve hundred mice and a minor kingdom where mice reside in some safety and trade is booming. To the west, the woods of the Feylands are home to the Faerie Queen and her people, once at war with the earldom, but now there is a tentative peace between them. To the east is the road that humans built through Cobblefence Park and The Great Spine mountain range. The earl hopes to find a way through the mountains to expand his economic reach into the grasslands on the other side. ‘The Earldom of Bernpyle’ includes a map of the region; a description, but no map of Bernpyle itself; a list of the factions present—including their resources and goals; and stats for all factions, notably The Six, the cavalier mice and their bird mounts, who aid the earl. This though, is only the start, as Bernpyle: Year One expands greatly upon the simple hexcrawl.

The major content starts with two big adventures. ‘A Grizzly Revelation at Badger Burrow’ is set in a series of caves and human-dug mine beneath The Great Spine mountains. A renowned wizard and teacher, a star-faced mole named Suetonius, known to live there, as is a tribe of shrews. However, when the mice venture into the caves, they discover not one tribe of shrews, but two—and they are at war. A religious schism has divided them and the tribes meet daily to battle each other in the caves. The scenario is one of exploration and diplomacy more than combat, with mice choosing the latter option likely to find themselves dead quite quickly. Various outcomes are covered, but to get to the best of them, the mice will need to solve difficult situation. If ‘A Grizzly Revelation at Badger Burrow’ is classic dungeon adventure, then ‘Murky Mysteries of Mice in Marshes’ is traditional hexcrawl—or rather diamond crawl, since it consists of a single hex divided into twelve equal, diamond-shaped segments. The hamlet/town (the fanzine is not quite sure) of Coypu sits on the edge of the Froschsumpf Marshes in the Feylands. The mayor is known for his extensive whisky collection, but has not been heard from recently. Could the swamp’s frogs under their tyrant Mudlord Swelcheeks have something to do with this? The resulting scenario is a boggy bayou horror-tinged affair with some revolting villains.

In addition to the stats for the monsters, NPCs, and treasures to be found in both scenarios, Bernpyle: Year One includes a description of ‘The Missing Wand of Suetonius the Wise’, whom the mice will probably have met in the first scenario. The wand is given quite a good list of its abilities, but an even longer list of magical maladies that can befall the user if he miscasts. There are descriptions, illustrations, and floorplans of the border towers surrounding Bernpyle, each previously used by humans to play something called ‘disc golf’. In ‘Traversing the Feylands’, the author takes inspiration from The Gardens of Ynn to turn the region into layers that the mice will in effect descend as they delve deeper into the forest. This is complicated by the fact that locations within the forest can move, so if the mice may not necessarily being going up or down but both during their delve. The idea is supported by a number of tables which the Game Master will use as prompts.

Separate to the ‘The Earldom of Bernpyle’, ‘A Not So Stille Nacht’ is included as one of the fanzine’s more popular pieces. It is a one-shot, in which the mice are celebrating Christmas at the North Pole when Belsnickel the barn cat and his Pixie allies invade Santa’s polar home. It is as twee as you would expect it to be and if your playing group is partial to that sort of thing, is a passable Christmas one-shot. ‘MausTrap’ is more interesting in that it takes the concept of the Character Funnel from the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game and applies it to Mausritter, only with a crueller touch. The mice are ordinary mice in debt, and to clear that debt they are being sent down a dungeon to return with enough pips’ worth of treasure to repay said debt. Each player has four mice and if any survive, they become First level and can begin play as normal. Tables are provided of occupations and occupational possessions, and the possible nature of their debts. ‘Rodents and Recreations’ adds a set of classic Dungeons & Dragons-style alternative backgrounds, such as wizard, assassin, and barbarian. They are primarily designed for creating mice on the go for one-shots, being ready-to-play packages that can be applied to a player’s mouse.

Other rules cover ‘Foraging Whilst in Human settlements’, whilst ‘Mouserules of Combat’ adds a ‘to hit’ roll where there is none in Mausritter with the intention of keeping players coming to Mausritter from Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, and mounted combat and movement is added with ‘Mauspanzer – A ‘tacti-cool’ brief for Warband Scale Mounts’. The rules cover finding or buying them, and using them in combat, which is only becomes possible after a mount has acquired a Prestige Level or two. ‘Scars’ gives a table of injuries and effects for whenever a mouse is reduced to zero hit points. They include ‘Battle Worn’, ‘Shaken’, ‘Jostled’, ‘Haunted’, and more. ‘Time and Resource tracking in the Veins’ is inspired by Veins of the Earth and adds rules to make Mausritter even harder when delving into deep into the underground. This does run counter to the light nature of Mausritter, but if the Game Master and her group are happy with that, their dungeon delves are going to be tough indeed. Alongside this, there are new spells in ‘Magic from Mayfield’ with a botanical theme, such as Petal Strike and Thorn Bramble, thistles turned into weapons, and even #’A Weapon from Maukbörg’, a big crossbow.

‘Songvogel – A Maus’ Field Guide to Songbirds and other perching avian’ introduces the Songbird as a playable race, all small, and all hailing from Harmony Glade. There are just three Backgrounds—Soldier, Porter, and Companion. The Soldier gets armour, the Porter can carry more with his Traveller’s Duffle, and the Companion has a Saddle and Bridle, enabling a mouse to ride on his back. Songbirds do not have hands, so cannot use weapons. Instead, they use their beak attack and talon strikes. ‘Make a Fienkrieger’ provides another playable race, Fae Warriors whose love of Mauskind have led them to become Faerie Outcasts. The creation involves rolling for Former Occupation, Physical Look, Wing Type, Colour, and Weapon of Choice. Instead of spell tablets, the Fae have Tattoos, for example, Blood Dart, which lets a mouse or fae shoot a projectile out of his skin and Maus’ Paw, which grants the user a spectral paw with which manipulate objects at a distance. Rounding out Bernpyle YEAR ONE is ‘For Mouse, for Home, for Bernpyle!’, which lists all of the releases for Mausritter and even though Bernpyle YEAR ONE was published in 2022, there are a lot!

Physically, Bernpyle YEAR ONE is well presented. The artwork is excellent and the maps clear and easy to use. One issue is that the book does refer to other locations and content from other issues of Bernpyle, so in places the Game Master will need to locate other issues.

Bernpyle YEAR ONE is a lovely little book. It is really divided into the two halves—one devoted to Bernpyle as a location and the other a Mausritter miscellany. In truth, ‘The Earldom of Bernpyle’ content is better than the rest, being more focused and useable, and thus easier to bring to the table. It is a pity that more of Bernpyle as a location was not included. Bernpyle YEAR ONE has something for every Mausritter Game Master, something to play, something to try, and all nicely packaged.