Dogs & The Devil’s Due

You are a Dog. You are a Dandy Dog. You are one of the Devil’s Dandy Dogs. You are a creature made of the Devil’s shadow and a shadow of what you once were. As a Dandy Dog you are tasked with collecting souls for the Devil. This will take you back to the world that was once your home and face numerous peoples, visit various places, confront creatures, engage in experiences that perhaps might recall your memories, and solve conundrums. You may even be Tempted. In the process, you will gain a Soul, through agreement or through guile, but never force, that you return to your Master. Neither good nor evil, the Devil is smart, wily, debonair, wicked, generally willing to play by the rules, a cunning conversationalist, a fierce and loyal protector of their dogs. Thus, he will be grateful for the Soul, but he will always have one more task and that is for you to tell him of how you gained the Soul. In other words, he wants to be entertained.

This is the set-up for The Devil’s Dandy Dogs, a storytelling game published by Monte Cook Games. Best played by four or five players, who together make up a pack, plus the Diviner—as the Game Master is known—it is designed to be played with a minimum of preparation, and more! That more is very easy set up by the Diviner and play straight out of the box for the players. In fact, a would-be Diviner could open the box, read through the rules in thirty (at the very most) minutes and be ready to run The Devil’s Dandy Dogs. All of which is facilitated by quick and easy character or Dandy Dog options and creation, and equally as easy, card-driven, scenario or soul fetch creation. It can be played in a single session or over multiple sessions, making it suitable for both one-shots and convention play, as well as extended play. Play itself is collaborative with the Diviner establishing the set-up and soul fetch and then working with her players building the world that their Dandy Dogs will operate in. This world can be historical, it can be fantasy, it can be horror, it can be Science Fiction, it can be today or it can be yesterday. This is decided upon by the Diviner and her players, as can the tone and mood of the game. No matter who the soul belongs to that the Dandy Dogs have been sent to collect and the problem they need to overcome or condition they need to fulfil in order to do so, when the session begins, the Dandy Dogs will already have succeeded in bringing a Soul to the Devil. And since they have already succeeded, the Dandy Dogs will be telling the story of what has happened and so The Devil’s Dandy Dogs is played in the past tense. This facilitates a certain play style, such as being able to remember what happened next and ask another player what happened next, meaning that the “I did this” of The Devil’s Dandy Dogs rather than the “I do this” of other roleplaying games brings a certain nuance to play.

The Devil’s Dandy Dogs is a boxed game. Below the handy ‘What’s in the Box?’ sheet, there are two books, a playmat, eleven character sheets, four dice, and over one hundred cards. The first book, ‘The Devil’s Dandy Dogs’ explains the rules and how to set up a game, whilst the second, ‘The Devil’s Playbook’ is the reference for the thirty-six cards of the ‘Diviner’s Deck’, explaining how the cards are used on the ‘Soul’s Arrow’, the cloth playmat where the spread of cards is placed after it is drawn. The eleven character sheets are mini-portfolios, one each for the roleplaying game’s eleven roles, with explanations of how the roles work in play and how the game’s mechanics work. Three of the dice have the symbol for success on one face and the symbol for failure on one face, with the other four blank. Successes and failures are named different things depending on the situation. The Temptation die has the success symbol on four faces and failure symbol on two. It can be rolled during an action to bring a Dog’s Drive into play, but has a chance of the Dog falling prey to his Temptation. The cards are large, Tarot-card sized, done on glossy stock and done in very full colour. Their primary use is to set up the ‘Deal with the Devil’, the details of the Soul Fetch that the Dandy Dogs have to undertake, including the Person, the Place, the Pact, the Complication, and more.

A Dandy Dog is defined by his Role, Name, Goal, Devil’s Mark and Traits. The Roles include The Beloved, The Hearthed, The Faithful, The Vermillion, and more. Each Role gives a Dandy Dog his personality, Drive, Temptation, Tricks or supernatural gifts, and storytelling style. The player picks his Dandy Dog’s Role, Goal, decides on the Devil’s Mark, and decides whether his Dandy Dog is Good in one Trait, Very Good in a second, and Best in a third. The three Traits are Devil, which represents supernatural and magical actions, such as Dreamwalking, Sensing Magic, Shadowwalking, and Soulbearing; Dandy, used in social situations and interacting with the world; and Dog, which is all about the things a dog can do. Each Dandy Dog must be unique, different from one player to the next.

Name: Dasha
Role: The Frolic
Devil: Good Dandy: Very Good Dog: Best
Drive: Play
Temptation: Hunger
Goal: To become a real dog
Tricks: Become Dog, These Violent Delights
Devil’s Mark: A Dog Chasing Its Tail

Mechanically, The Devil’s Dandy Dogs is simple. To undertake an action, a player rolls a number of dice equal to the rating of the Trait used. Three for Best, two for Very Good, and one for Good. A roll of six or ‘Devil’s Eyebrow’ means the Dandy Dog succeeds superbly; two, three, four, and five are blank and are the ‘Devil’s Duty’, meaning the Dandy Dog has succeeded without being either entertaining or exciting; and one or ‘Devil’s Delight’, means that the Dandy Dog has failed and done so spectacularly. In combat, a six becomes ‘Devil’s Tooth & Claw’ and a one becomes a ‘Devil’s Concern’. During a scene, the Diviner can use ‘Call & Response’ to bring a Dandy Dog into narrative and go back and forth to the Dandy Dog’s player who narrates what he does according to each result on a die. It is possible to save one die if a Dandy Dog has any left over at the end of this, and if he does run out, a Dandy Dog can ask a packmate to ‘Throw Me A Bone!’ if another Dandy Dog has kept one spare.

In addition, a Dandy Dog can bring his Drive into play if relevant. If a roll of three, four, five, and six, then the Dandy Dog succeeds and something amazing happens. However, on a role of one or two, the Dandy Dog’s Drive overtakes him, he gains a Temptation card, and he cannot act until his Pack helps him. (Notably, the symbols are not named on the Temptation die, unlike on the standard dice for ordinary and combat results.) There are also two further outcomes. ‘Fates Folly’ is triggered when three ‘ones’ are used in a scene by the Pack as a whole and the Diviner adds a ‘Fates Folly’ card to the ‘Soul’s Arrow’ playmat. A ‘Devil’s Door’ card is added to the ‘Soul’s Arrow’ playmat by the Diviner when the three ‘sixes’ are used in a scene by the Pack as a whole.

The Devil’s Dandy Dogs is structured into several beats. In ‘Hearth & Home’, the players collectively describe what their Dandy Dogs’ Devil is like—this is the character that the Diviner will be portraying, and then in ‘Deal with Devil’, the Diviner draws the three cards and plays them on the ‘Soul’s Arrow’. One for the Person who made the Pact with the Devil—that person already having made the pact to give up his or her Soul, second for the Place where the Person can be found, and the third for Pact between the Person and the Devil. Each card has a corresponding entry in the ‘The Devil’s Playbook’ which can be used to guide the Diviner. Each Pact involves a Deal, and this can help the Person retrieve something or someone important, achieve mastery or success, complete unfinished business for them, protect or heal someone for the Person, or Assist the Person in some way… These options give some great situations and set-ups that essentially complicate what the Dandy Dogs will have had to do in order to obtain the intended Soul, which will be played out the third best, ‘Fun & Games’. The last beat is ‘Dark Night of the Soul’, in which the Dandy Dogs face their toughest challenge in obtaining the Soul, but the Diviner also presents three Pact of the Pact cards from which the Dandy Dogs can choose from one. This will give them a collective ability such as the Dandy Dogs assume a ‘True Form’ all together, a single solid creature with all of its advantages and disadvantages, or ‘Through Time’ when the Dandy Dogs step out of time and place into a safe, warm comfortable place and then return with ‘real’ no time passed, but subjectively having had a chance to plan, discuss, and prepare to continue the resolution of the scene. Lastly, the Dandy Dogs return to ‘Hearth & Home’ and the Soul Fetch.

There is another best, ‘The Devil’s Interlude’. It is an optional best, which can be used to add a scene between the other beats, pause the story, or to add a moment of levity. Whilst in the short term, a Dandy Dog and his pack are trying to retrieve a promised Soul, in the long term a Dandy Dog can be working towards his Goal and the gaining of Memory Shards. The latter are primarily gained for collecting a Soul and go towards completion of a Goal, but they can also be expended to ‘Mend a Tear’ and heal the damage that would disconnect a Dandy Dog from the Devil’s shadow or together with other Dandy Dogs keep a Pact of the Pack card.

As much as The Devil’s Dandy Dogs is a lovely looking game, the main, but minor issues are due to that physicality. First, the cards could have been slightly thicker. The cards are also quite bendy. Not all of the card types are readily named so that does impede play slightly. Secondly, the symbols on the dice are consistent across the standard and Temptation dice, but are not consistently named in the game, which is confusing.

Physically, The Devil’s Dandy Dogs is very well presented. The artwork on the cards is great and the rulebook is very well written. This includes good examples of play and solid advice from start to finish.

The Devil’s Dandy Dogs is a very good game in a box and it is a very quick game in a box, combining portability, ease of set-up, and mechanical simplicity with scope to tell the great stories of the final moments of those who have sold their soul to the Devil. Honestly, once the Diviner has learned how to make a ‘Deal with the Devil’ and read through the rules, she can run The Devil’s Dandy Dogs at any time. Mechanically, it is that simple. The complexity comes in the Pact made between the Devil and those willing to give up his Soul and ensuring that it is fulfilled, that is, in the story not the rules. Beautifully presented, The Devil’s Dandy Dogs’ combination of easy-to-learn rules and challenging storytelling make it the perfect pick-up, no preparation, be a good dog, dance with the Devil roleplaying game.

The Al Amarja Quartet

Welcome to the Island is an anthology of scenarios for Over the Edge Third Edition: The Role-playing Game of Surreal Danger published by Atlas Games. It presents four lengthy, often complex scenarios designed to do six things. First, to show what a scenario looks like in Over the Edge, Third Edition. Second, to act as a campaign starters or slot into an ongoing campaign. Third, it is designed to present multiple story hooks and thus means to get the Player Characters involved in each of its scenarios, whether as agents of one faction or another, newcomers to Al Amarja, members of one or more of the conspiracies on the island, as street level gangsters or criminals, or as paranormals or mystics. Fourth, it is designed to showcase the island of Al Amarja and its people in all of their conspiratorial, counterintuitive, and corresponding weirdness. Fifth, it is designed to shake everything up by throwing a grenade into the room and upsetting the status quo. In other words, once the Game Master has run and players roleplayed any one of the four scenarios in the anthology, the situation on Al Amarja will not be the same as before. For example, by the end of the second scenario, ‘A Conclave of Chikutorpls, or the Winds of Change Are Blowing (Up), or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Multidimensional Convergence.’ Frank Germaine, owner of Sad Mary’s, the hottest bar on Al Marja, may have lost control of it, whilst at the end of ‘Battle of the Bands’, the biggest band on the island may or not have been reformed and even one of the Player Characters might be a member of it! The result, whatever the outcome, is to enforce the sixth thing and that is, make Al Amarja and thus Over the Edge Third Edition: The Role-playing Game of Surreal Danger the Game Master’s own and thus different from that of any other Game Master with an Over the Edge campaign.

Right from the start though, Welcome to the Island is a challenging set of scenarios. There is always homework for the Game Master to do as part of her preparation. Thankfully, each scenario references the very sections of the core rulebook that she needs to read, though there are multiples of them. There are usually a lot of NPCs to handle as well, often quite detailed in terms of their background and motivations, if not their stats. The authors of the anthology do go out of their way though to give advice and further explanation, including tips and playtest notes, with much of this supplementary information organised into sidebars and sections of boxed text. These are categorised by colour, so for example, advice and Game Master tips are always in red sections, NPCs in black, suggestions as where one scenario intersects with another in violet, and so on. Thus, Welcome to the Island is laid out in great blocks of colour that are easy on the eye.

Welcome to the Edge begins in relatively gentle fashion with ‘Battle of the Bands’. The Glorious Lords of the Edge are hosting the biggest battle of the bands on Al Marja, an event which anyone can participate in, but one in which Oblivion Function, an electronica trio, is tipped to win and win big, and so get to perform a victory concert. However, this will be a big win too for the backers of the Oblivion Function, the Movers, and there are plenty of other factions on the island who do not want that to happen. So, another band needs to be found to defeat Oblivion Function and there is only one band capable of doing that, Betwixt, one of the biggest and most critically acclaimed groups on the island. Only Betwixt split up over a decade ago and nobody knows exactly why. If somebody—by which we mean the Player Characters—is to get Betwixt back together, they are going to have to track down the four members, find out why they split, and get them to make up and put aside their differences enough to perform together once again. Which means a road trip back and forth across the island as the Player Characters track down one band member after another.

The four members of Betwixt are nicely detailed, each with their own views and revelations as to why the band broke up and reasons for getting back together (or not). Part of the scenario involves getting the old band tour bus back on the road too (although alternatives are suggested) as well as finding out what has become of the band members. There are some fun encounters to had on the road too, such as a big burrito-eating competition and an attack by a hit squad consisting of a Capella band whose singing has dangerously telekinetic heft to it, and the scenario will climax with the actual battle of the bands.

‘Battle of the Bands’ is the least weird and the least complex of the four scenarios in the anthology, in some ways more of a multi-character piece than the weird conspiracy shenanigans that you would normally expect with a scenario for Over the Edge. This makes it both a good introduction and a poor introduction to Al Amarja. A good introduction because the level of weirdness is relatively low, plus because the road trip format provides a really good reason for touring the island, but a poor one because the weirdness is low and because the introduction, at least for ordinary visitors to the island, as members of the Betwixt fan club, is underwhelming. As a scenario, ‘Battle of the Bands’ has an enjoyably languid, summertime, dust and tarmac feel to it, and as an interlude from the weirdness of Al Amarja, it is just perfect.

The second scenario, ‘A Conclave of Chikutorpls, or the Winds of Change Are Blowing (Up), or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Multidimensional Convergence.’ both turns up the weirdness and has an easier means of introduction. It opens with the car they are in—either they are driving or being driven—knocking someone down in the street and a woman known as Chikutorpl appearing almost immediately out of nowhere. Then they begin finding flyers announcing the reappearance of the Winds of Change, the high-stakes pop-up casino owned by Chikutorpl where it is possible to bet your youth, your beauty, your talent, a memory, even your life… When they attend, Winds of Change lives up to its reputation as a raucous, racy event filled with strange games like hyperbolic billiards and immortal combat. Throughout the host is in a highly mercurial mood and seems to change almost every time the Player Characters see her. Whatever the outcome of their attendance, the Player Characters receive invitations to the next opening and that is when it gets even weirder. It turns out that the host both sent and did not send the invitations, because there are multiple Chikutorpls, each pursuing agendas of their own and seeming to threaten reality in the process. Successive events get more chaotic, and this begins to ripple out as multiple Chikutorpls’ plans have a greater effect upon attendee after attendee. Ultimately, it comes down to a showdown when all of the Chikutorpls on the island host their events to outdoor each other. Throughout the Player Characters can pursue their own agendas or get caught up with those of every other attendee, but the end result is likely to change them in ways they did not anticipate at the start of the scenario.

ParaCon is the most important cutting edge scientific and technological event on Al Amarja, if not in the world, and it is hosted by the leading paranormal figure on the island, Doctor Chris Seversen. In ‘Seversen’s Mysterious Estate’ the Player Characters get to attend the most exclusive high-tech event of the year, whether as bodyguards, as inventors, or simply at random! The scenario is one big party with a lot of guests and a lot going on, including the event being gatecrashed by an astral vampire (note this is not a spoiler, the author advises to tell the players at the start of the scenario about it attending the party in order to ramp up the tension) and a Presidentials wet works strike team. This is not so much a big sandbox as a highly populated sandbox with twenty-three NPCs to weave in and out of the event and several sequences of events for the Game Master to handle and run. It comes with good advice to that end, and it also provides a great set of NPCs which can be used beyond the party (that is, if they survive).

The last scenario in Welcome to the Island is ‘Sympathy for the D’Aubainnnes’, which brings the Player Characters into contact with members of Al Amarja’s ruling family in a completely bonkers fashion. Everyone on the island receives a parcel containing a lifelike rubber mask of one of the D’Aubainnes, including the Player Characters. However, when anyone puts the mask on, they cannot take it off. Slowly the mask wearers begin to act like the D’Aubainnne family member they wear the mask off, so Jean-Christophe mask wearers starting teleporting short distances at random, Sir Constance mask wearers accrue wealth, and Sister Cheryl mask wearers become naturally disposed each other and feel stronger and better. The mask wearers also begin to hate the wearers of the other masks to the point that they will kill each other. As a rash of murders ripple back and forth across the island, it also becomes clear that someone is keeping a tally… ‘Sympathy for the D’Aubainnnes’ best works if one of the Player Characters dons one of the masks and the scenario includes multiple suggestions as to why one or more of them would do so. Once they do, then the scenario becomes one of survival and investigation, closer to a more traditional type of scenario found in other role-playing games. The result is a disturbingly surreal end to the quartet.

Physically, Welcome to the Island is a bright, colourful book with excellent artwork. It is also well written, and the cartography is decent.

Welcome to the Island provides four good scenarios that are all different and all easy to slot into an ongoing campaign. In fact, they work better as part of an ongoing campaign because all four will have long term effects upon a campaign, as the various factions and conspiracies work out their agendas. The is exactly what the Over the Edge Third Edition: The Role-playing Game of Surreal Danger needs, a showcase of just what the island of Al Amarja can deliver—stupendously surrealistic situations and wonderful weirdness backed up with good advice for the Game Master on how to handle all of that and run the scenarios too.

Over the Edge Again. Again.

Ever hear of Al Amarja? Yes, that Al Amarja. The island in the middle of the Mediterranean that everyone denies exists, ruled by president-for-life, Her Exaltedness Monique D’Aubainne, Historic Liberator and Current Shepherdess of Al Amarja? There is no way you would go there. After all, the state health care is mandatory, especially under Doctor Nusbaum’s experimental treatment programme, as is voting. Plus it is a brutal place with state control and overwatch, whether it is the seemingly ever-present members of Peace Force and their guard baboons (and if the baboons are not in Peace Force, they are everywhere), the nationalised state Total Taxis, and more. Sure, it is unrelentingly violent. There are fights on the streets and even organised in the middle of Roller Derby League matches, but nobody is allowed guns, and you really, really do not want to see what goes on in the ice skating—or maybe you do! (Since it is a full contact sport, baby, do I mean contact...) Then there are the public hangings as well as the Festival of Fate, the highlight of which is prisoners submitting themselves to Sister Cheryl’s Wheel of Fate at Temple of Divine Experience, the result of which possibly leads to the commuting of their sentence, but more likely death or torture and death. Of course, it is a commercial, trade, and scientific free-for-all, unfettered by all the regulation we have to suffer. So go to Broken Wings District for the best parties—whether to be seen amongst the elites or disrupt the event; Flowers District to party on the streets or experience that latest in Avant Garde artwork; spend time away from the island’s weirdness in the Sunken District with a fellow exile; and so much more… And there are supposed to be sorcerers and psychics on the island, Organ Grinders harvesting for their dead god, aliens, oh so many aliens, secret world bettering technologies which the corporations are hiding because they can and the same goes for cancer treatments, and more. Yes, that Al Amarja, which does not exist and never did because it is all some damned roleplaying game, Over the Edge: the Role-playing Game of Surreal Danger from back in the nineties, put out by some weirdly progressive little gaming company in Minnesota, Atlas Games. So, none of it is real.

Except it is.

Al Amarja is real. You can get there if you know how. Plus, if you are American, the state language is English and everyone takes dollars. They will take every other currency too, because it gets exchanged into the state currency, zlotys. So if it is real, where is it? Well, not where it was in the nineties. Now it is not in the Mediterranean, but rather in the Atlantic. Freedom is still valued above all, but the government monitors everything—for your safety of course. Weapons are outlawed—especially firearms, but everyone carries something. Medical care is free at the point of delivery, but so is medical malpractice and there are no laws against that. Drugs are totally illegal, but the barista will add a shot of something to your coffee. In the teensies and the twenties, you will need look harder though, as Al Amarja slipped down a parallel time stream where Donald Trump got elected president and he let Nazis walk the streets of America again. Which means that it is different from back in the nineties, but the same, right? So if you have been before, you still need to get ready for the heady rush of unreality, because this is a whole other unreality even if bits still look familiar. And the reason for Over the Edge: the Role-playing Game of Surreal Danger? Call it the ultimate in disinformation sponsored by the government of the Ultimate Democratic Republic of Al Amarja. And if a piece of propaganda worked the first time, why not do it again? After all you are never going there, you were never going there, and you never will go there—and Al Amarja was and is fake, is it really there?

Over the Edge Third Edition: the Role-playing Game of Surreal Danger is real though. Funded via a Kickstarter campaign is no mere update. Instead, this is a re-envisioning of Over the Edge with everything old, but new. It is still a roleplaying game of counter-culture conspiracy, weird science, and urban danger combining conspiratorial factions, strange fringe abilities, cutting-edge technology, and cross-reality incursions all under the watchful eye of an all-powerful anarchic State. The revision also includes the rules and the mechanics, which forgoes the complexities of the original WaRP system, in favour of a more luck-based system designed to drive the story with extra twists—good and bad. There is nothing to stop a Game Master from running Over the Edge Third Edition: the Role-playing Game of Surreal Danger using the original WaRP system, but it is not designed with that in mind. It should be noted that Over the Edge has always been cited as one of the progenitors of the storytelling movement in roleplaying and this latest edition very much draws from that movement. The result makes demands of both the Game Master and her players. It uses simple character creation that calls for strong conceptualisation and scope for storytelling over the course of one or more story arcs. It asks the players to be ready for said characters to encounter and accept random twists—both for good or ill—to the outcomes of their actions, whilst the Game Master has to be on her toes ready to create and suggest those twists. Lastly, the players are required to commit their dice to Over the Edge and no other campaign roleplaying game. (Fortunately, Over the Edge only uses a pair of six-sided dice each.)

A Player Character in Over the Edge can almost be anything, which includes paranormal and magical gifts. This excludes plot wrecking powers such as invincibility, invisibility, flying, phasing, mind reading, shape-changing, and others. So an ex-MMA fighter turned vigilante, a doctor searching for the cure to cancer, a burned out ex-FSB agent, a conspiracy theory seeking the truth, an extreme tourist, a would-be sorcerer with an intelligent rat sidekick, and more. A Player Character though, is always human, adheres to ‘Hollywood’ reality and tenacity of the everyman, described in broad details, fits in and interacts with the setting, and is new to the island. He is described in four features—a Main Trait, a Side Trait, a Trouble, and a Question Mark. The Main Trait is what the Player Character is or does, whilst the Side Trait is something that he can do in addition to the Main Trait. The Trouble is whatever will draw or force the Player Character to act in ways that are probably unsafe, if not dangerous, to him, but will always be interesting. The Question Mark is an aspect of the Player Character about which he is uncertain or he will break or he will transgress. For example, ‘Hard-Hearted-?’, ‘Friendly-?’, or ‘Fearless-?’. He also has a name, but this is chosen last and the other players can suggest ideas for it too.

Cheyanne Lovecraft
An ex-stripper turned sorcerer’s apprentice [Main Trait] who is Intuitive-? [Question Mark] and has a talking rat mentor [Side Trait].
Trouble: Cannot resist a sob story

In addition, a Player Character has a Level. In fact, everything in Over the Edge Third Edition has a Level, ranging from first to seventh. So this is not just a Player Character’s capabilities, but also locations, backgrounds, opponents, and story arcs. What the Level does is set the degree of challenge that a Player Character will face in comparison to his own capabilities, and a Player character will typically match that. So a First Level Story Arc is about ordinary people in over their heads, a Third Level Story Arc is about notable experts in their fields, even powerful, who can get into trouble as much as they can out, whilst a Fifth Level Story Arc is about characters beyond human. Sixth and Seventh Levels are godlike and out of reach of a Player Character. Typically, the default in Over the Edge Third Edition lies at the lower end of the scale. Opponents, or Game Master Characters, are on a similar scale as Player Characters, whilst locations and backgrounds get progressively weirder the higher up they are on the scale. Where a Player Character sits on that scale with regard to the world of Al Amarja around him has an influence on the mechanics of Over the Edge Third Edition.

Mechanically, in Over the Edge Third Edition, a player does not so much roll dice as ‘cast lots’, and lots are cast only when the outcome matters and then really to encompass everything in what the Player Character is attempting to do. Thus, sneak into a warehouse to obtain a sample of Voo, the drug that makes temporarily forget everything or get away from the Charters, the independent band of pirates that predates the United States and only men can join (so technically women are men in the Charters), that is one roll. If the roll is a success, then fine. If a failure, then maybe other rolls are called for. What a player needs to do in either situation is cast his lots and aim to get seven or eight, or more. That is a success.

If a Player Character is of a higher Level than the Game Master Character, location, or background, his player gets rerolls and he rerolls one or more dice, but must keep the result. If a Player Character is of a lower Level than the Game Master Character, location, or background, the Game Master gets rerolls that the player must make and keep the result. If the Levels are equal, then there are no rerolls. Casting lots also generates twists. Each three rolled when casting lots, generates a bad twist, whilst each four generates a good twist. So it is possible to roll one good twist or one bad twist; a ‘Lightning Bolt’ or two threes, which can a two bad twists or a double-bad twist; a ‘Twist Tie’, meaning a good twist and a bad twist’; or a ‘Crazy Eight’ and two good twists or a double-good twist. It is also possible to fail a casting of the lots and still have a good twist or succeed and cast lost with a bad twist. Whatever the nature of the twist, the Game Master brings something new and interesting into play, this perhaps being the capacity that the Game Master can have when running Over the Edge Third Edition: the Role-playing Game of Surreal Danger. In addition, the players can have access to Karma which is shared between them and also allows a reroll. Together they can only share one use of Karama, but since it can be regained whenever doubles are rolled, it is always better to use it than not.

Combat uses the same casting lots mechanic. The primary outcome of a bad twist in combat is damage. Three strikes and a Player Character is possibly dying, and unless it comes from a strange, alien, or paranormal source, healing is slow. Depending upon their status and potency, Game Master characters can have one or more Saves, Game Master fiats which enables them to shrug off damage.

A good third of Over the Edge Third Edition: the Role-playing Game of Surreal Danger is dedicated to Al Amarja. This covers Al Amarja and the outside world, the presence and role of the state, culture media and media, and more. Every district is detailed, including why somebody might go there and what can be seen there, before the book details the gangs, groups, organisations, and more. Each one comes with an expanded explanation and advice for the Game Master as to how they can be used because ultimately, the Game Master is free to use them as she chooses, to pick and discard them as needed, and in the process, make Al Amarja hers and thus different to that of another Game Master. On the downside, this does mean that the island and its weirdness is densely presented, but on the plus side, the Game Master can in part tailor the island, its conspiracies, and its weirdness to the Player Characters and what is driving them.

For the Game Master there is further advice on running the new edition of Over the Edge, this in addition to the advice that appears throughout the book, as well as on engaging the Player Characters, creating Game Master Characters, to what degree she should be preparing her game, and advice in general. Like much of the rest of the book, it is accompanied by commentaries from both of the authors and there is also a full scenario, ‘The Sun Queen Must Die’. It is designed as an introductory one-shot, in which the players should create characters coming to Al Amarja in search of a reclusive guru. Their chance to meet him takes place at Sad Mary’s Bar & Grill, known for its girl fights and radical arts performances, at the height of an unsurprisingly adult Passover celebration. Events outpace them though and potentially take a darkly weird turn…

Physically, Over the Edge Third Edition: the Role-playing Game of Surreal Danger brightly and colourfully presented. The artwork is excellent, the layout a little busy in places, and the index is great. However, it takes a while for the roleplaying game as written to click. The issue is that the first fifth of the book is devoted to rules which feel out of context and difficult to quite grasp until you get to the selling point of Over the Edge Third Edition: the Role-playing Game of Surreal Danger and that is Al Amarja, its setting and its weirdness.

Over the Edge Third Edition: the Role-playing Game of Surreal Danger is weird and weird. It is weird because of what the setting is and what it is made up of, but it is weird because its resolution mechanic, which is designed as much to throw something else, a good twist or a bad twist, into the mix as much as can resolve any one situation. It forces players to fall back upon roleplaying and their character’s story and motivation rather than whatever stats or numbers a Player Character would normally have to rely upon. The lack of stats and numbers do make character creation incredibly simple, but incredibly challenging in making a player create a character with story potential. There are examples, all of them fully worked out, but the resulting ready-to-play Player Characters are not immediately obvious at the back of the book. Further the designers push the weirdness further than might be found in another roleplaying game by having the Game Master reveal interior elements of that weirdness to the players which their characters would not be aware of. Thus, the play of the game takes on extra-narrative elements, an artifice that enforces the sense of unreality on Al Marja.

Over the Edge Third Edition: the Role-playing Game of Surreal Danger is a darker, faster-playing, even more improbable random return to the unreality of Al Amarja. Its even more storytelling-focus and ultra-light mechanics make demands of both the Game Master and her players and consequently the degree of buy-in, whether because of those rules or the unreality of the setting, is greater than might be expected. Still, what it comes down to is that just like Over the Edge: the Role-playing Game of Surreal Danger back in 1992, what stands out in Over the Edge Third Edition: the Role-playing Game of Surreal Danger is Al Amarja, and that is worth overcoming whatever reservations you might have about the mechanics.

A Mythic Neo-Noir Starter

City of Mist is a roleplaying game of neo-noir investigation and superhero-powered action. The intersection between the film noir and superhero genres has invariably derived from the Pulp fiction of the thirties and forties, with such characters as The Shadow or Batman, with generally low-key and low-powered heroes and villains in comparison to what would follow with the Four Colour subgenre. City of Mist does something different. It brings in the powers and personalities of legends and gods of different Mythos—King Arthur, Red Riding Hood, Hercules, Athena, and Bast—and then obscures them. These powers and personalities manifest through Rifts, inhabitants of The City, a fog-shrouded, corrupt, and crime-ridden metropolis which could be Los Angeles of the thirties, New York of the fifties, or London of the sixties. It is simply known as The City. As Rifts, the Player Characters investigate Cases, and if necessary, fight crime, some of it committed by other Rifts, some not. Yet as powerful as each Rift is, the ordinary citizens of The City, the Sleepers, cannot see them for what they are and never see them manifest their powers. The Mist, a strange mystical veil renders each manifestation of a power or legend ordinary. Wallcrawling? Parkour. Lightning bolt? Broken electrical substation. Each Mythoi—god or legend or even abstract concept wants to manifest itself in The City, but the Mist works to prevent this, for the result might be chaos which could rip The City apart, so instead it allows them to manifest through the Rifts. Equally, as there is a tension between the Mythoi and the Mist, there is tension between the Mythos, both the legend which wants to become more and a mystery as to why it manifested, and the Logos, the ordinary self, safe and mundane in each Rift.

The City of Mist: All-Seeing Eye Investigations Starter Set is designed as an introduction to the setting. Published by Son of Oak Game Studio LLC, it provides everything necessary to play through at least one Case. Designed to be played by five players and a Master of Ceremonies—as the Game Master is known—the starter set comes richly appointed. There are two books labelled ‘The Players’ and ‘The Master of Ceremonies’; five pre-generated character folios, one each for Baku, Detective Enkidu, Job, Lily Chow, Iron Hans, and Tlaloc; a deck of twenty Tracking cards and a Crew Card; two twenty-two by seventeen-inch poster maps; forty-one illustrated character tokens; and two City of Mist dice—one purple Mythos die and one ivory Logos die. There is a lot in the box, all of it presented in full colour and illustrated throughout with artwork which invokes the two inspirations for City of Mist.

The starting point for the City of Mist: All-Seeing Eye Investigations Starter Set are five pre-generated Player Characters or Rifts. The quintet consists of Baku, Detective Enkidu, Job, Lily Chow and Iron Hans, and Tlaloc. Baku is a monster hunter, mythological Japanese chimera who hunts ghosts and devours nightmares; Detective Enkidu is an experienced police detective who hides a creature of the wild from Sumerian myth inside her which drives her to break the rules; Job is an unkillable priest whose family was killed by The City’s criminal underworld; Lily Chow is a runaway teen able to unleash Iron Hans, a magician-giant who is her companion, protector, and big brother; and Taloc is a small time crook with a gift of the gab and the power of the Aztec god of rain and water, thunder and lighting. Each of the five character folios is done on heavy, glossy card in A3-size. This does mean that there is quite a lot of information on each folio and that each folio takes up quite a bit of space on the table.

Unlike a traditional roleplaying game, a Rift is not described in terms of skills or attributes, but rather what he can do. Each of the five has the same set of Core Moves, or actions that they can attempt. What marks a Rifts out as special is the fact that he has four Themes, represented by four cards on the folio. They are divided between Mythos and Logos Themes, the legendary and the ordinary aspects of a Rift. Some Rifts have Mythos Themes than Logos Themes, and vice versa, and it is possible to lose Themes, so that a Mythos Theme might Fade and be replaced by a Logos Theme, whilst a Logos Theme might Crack and be replaced by a Mythos Theme. There are consequences to having Themes all of one type. For example, a Rift who replaces all of his Logos Themes with Mythos Themes, becomes an avatar of his Mythos, whilst losing his last Mythos Theme means he becomes a Sleeper and denies the existence of the Mythos. Whilst each Mythos Theme has a Mystery that the Rift wants to explore, and each Logos Theme has an Identity which represents a defining conviction, belief, or emotion, all Themes have Power Tags which can be invoked to help achieve a Rift’s intended goal, plus a Weakness.

For example, Tlaloc has the Mythos Theme ‘God of Rain and Lightning’. This has the Mystery, “Who Threatens to Blot Out the Fifth Sun?”, the Power Tags, ‘Call Upon the Storm’, ‘Thunderbolt Manipulation’, and ‘Electrifying Gaze’, plus the Weakness, ‘Indoor Spaces’. He also has the ‘A Dimond in the Rough’ Logos Theme, which as the Identity, “This Will Be The Last Time, I Swear!”, the Power Tags, ‘Good, deep down inside’, ‘Relentless Schmoozer’, and ‘Sticky Fingers’, as well as the Weakness, ‘Pangs of Remorse’.

Learning the game begins with ‘The Players’ booklet. It runs to forty-four pages and introduces the concepts behind roleplaying and City of Mist, explains the character folios and how the roleplaying game is played—the ‘Moves’ or actions a Rift can take and their potential outcome, describes the various districts of The City, and provides a lengthy, eight page example of play. The latter includes two of the pre-generated Rifts in the starter set and showcases the various types of Moves that the Rifts can perform as part of an investigation and then combat scene. In general, the Moves are well explained, but do come with fine print and do require a little bit of study. The example of play though, is more than helpful in showing the prospective player and Master of Ceremonies how the game works.

Whilst the Master of Ceremonies has to read the ‘The Players’ book to understand the basics of City of Mist, the ‘The Master of Ceremonies’ book is all hers. This explains the role of the Master of Ceremonies, the Moves or actions she can take—and when, explains how to present challenges and dangers to the Rifts, and so on. A Danger encapsulates a threat to the Rifts, whether that is an NPC, a location, or a situation, which might be a crime lord’s chief enforcer, a car chase through the streets of The City, or a building on fire. The bulk of the ‘The Master of Ceremonies’ book is given over to ‘Shark Tank’, the first case for ‘All-Seeing Eye Investigations’, the crew which the Rifts in the City of Mist: All-Seeing Eye Investigations Starter Set are members of. ‘All-Seeing Eye Investigations’ has its own ‘Crew Theme card, complete with its own Mystery and Power Tags which the Rifts can invoke as part of their investigation.

Mechanically, City of Mist and thus the City of Mist: All-Seeing Eye Investigations Starter Set is ‘Powered by the Apocalypse’, which means that it uses the rules first seen in Apocalypse World in 2010. These rules are player-facing in that the Master of Ceremonies does not make dice rolls, but rather that the player do. So from the Core Moves below, a player would roll ‘Convince’ to persuade an NPC, but ‘Face Danger’ to avoid being influenced. The rules in City of Mist have eight Core Moves—‘Change The Game’ (give an advantage or remove a disadvantage), , ‘Face Danger’ (avoid harm or resist a malign influence), ‘Go Toe to Toe’ with someone, ‘Hit With All You’ve Got’ (harm someone in the worst way you can), ‘Investigate’, ‘Sneak Around’, and ‘Take the Risk’ (perform a feat of daring). When a Rift undertakes an action, his player states the Move he is using, applies any bonuses from Tags—short descriptors for a quality, resource, advantage, disadvantage, or object in the game—and applies the resulting Power value for the sum of positive and negative tags and statuses affecting an action, and rolls two six-sided (or the included City of Mist dice) dice. A player can use all manner of Tag Combos to build up the Power value, as long as the Master of Ceremonies agrees. Several Tag Combos tailored to each pre-generated Rift are listed in their respective folios.

A result of a six or less is a Miss, a result of between seven and nine is a Hit, but with complications, whilst a result of ten or more is a Hit with a great success. Each Move works slightly differently and will give different results depending upon the roll. For example, the ‘Investigate’ Move gets a Rift answers to questions. If a Hit—seven or more—is rolled, the player can ask the Master of Ceremonies a number of questions and so gain a number of Clues equal to the Power value applied to the roll. If a Hit with complications—seven or more, but less than ten—is rolled, the Master of Ceremonies can expose the Rift to danger, give fuzzy, incomplete, or partly-true partly-false answers, or have the NPC ask the Rift a question, which he must answer. The aim in many Moves is to inflict a Status such as ‘Prone-2’ or ‘Befuddled-1’ or ‘Knife Wound-3’, which will give a Rift an advantage when rolling against that NPC who has suffered such a Status and a disadvantage when suffered by the Rift. A status like this is recorded on a Status card and kept in play until it is got rid of.

In addition, the Rifts can enter a Downtime sequence between the investigation or action, and undertake actions such as ‘Give Attention to a Logos’, ‘Work the Case’, ‘Explore Your Mythos’, ‘Prepare for your next Activity’, and ‘Recover for your next Activity’. This is handled as a montage scene and the effects of each action are automatic, whilst ‘Burning for a Hit’ grants an automatic success without complications, but also makes the Tag unusable until a Downtime sequence has been completed. Lastly, there is ‘Stop.Holding.Back.’, a special Move which enables a Rift to push his powers beyond their limit, though at the cost of a sacrifice to one of the Themes in a Rift’s folio.

The Master of Ceremonies has her own Moves, divided between Soft Moves and Hard Moves. A Soft Move is an imminent threat or challenge to the Rifts and their investigation, and really only consists of the Master of Ceremonies complicating things for the Rifts as a means to spur them into action. A Hard Move is a major complication or a significant setback to the Rifts and their investigation, and includes more options for the Master of Ceremonies. ‘Give a Status’ inflicts a Status on a Rift, but this can be resisted by a ‘Face Danger’ Move. Other Hard Moves, such as ‘Burn a Tag’, ‘Complicate Things, Big-time’, and others cannot be resisted and are more narrative effects and consequences than Moves as such. Essentially, they can come into play when a Rift fails to take an action or fails—rolls six or less—when undertaking an action. The Master of Ceremonies also has Intrusions, which really codify her using her judgement when adjudicating the rules.

The Case in the City of Mist: All-Seeing Eye Investigations Starter Set, ‘Shark Tank’ is organised in a couple of ways. First, it is a pyramid diagram of scenes, arranged by depth into a series of layers, which after the briefing, the Rifts can visit and investigate. Second, it is as a series of programmed steps which take the Master of Ceremonies and her players through the process of learning to play both City of Mist and the scenario. For example, when the Rifts encounter a group of enforcers shaking down a shop owner, ‘The Master of Ceremonies’ book says, “If this is the crew’s first fight, stop the story and move over to the players’ booklet, starting at Exhibit #8: Playing Through a Conflict on page 21 (see also MC Skill: Running a Fight Scene on the next page).” At which point, the players and Master of Ceremonies can set up and run the fight scene. However, this does not mean that the Master of Ceremonies can necessarily run ‘Shark Tank’ without any preparation, but it does mean that once prepared, she really has all of the references, pointers, and advice at her fingertips, including advice specific to each of the five Rifts which come pre-generated with the City of Mist: All-Seeing Eye Investigations Starter Set. The scenario itself has the Rifts interviewing the owners of several businesses on Miller’s Square where All-Seeing Eye Investigations has its shabby office, potentially exposing police corruption, confronting villains who bring a whole new meaning to the term ‘loan shark’, and having a showdown at the chief villain’s lair. Beyond the confines of ‘Shark Tank’, there are extra scenarios available which can be played using the content from the City of Mist: All-Seeing Eye Investigations Starter Set.

Also included in the City of Mist: All-Seeing Eye Investigations Starter Set are two twenty-two by seventeen-inch poster maps and forty-one illustrated character tokens. The maps depict various locations which appear in the scenario, ‘Shark Tank’, and tokens cover all five Rifts and the various NPCs in the scenario. The single purple Mythos die and single ivory Logos die are decent twelve-sided dice marked with one through five twice, and then the domino mask symbol on the six face for the Logos die, and power icon on the six face for the Mystery die. Each icon also appears on the Themes in each folio.

Physically, the City of Mist: All-Seeing Eye Investigations Starter Set is very nicely put together. The poster maps are on sturdy paper, the counters thick cardboard, the folios on glossy card stock, and both of ‘The Players’ and ‘The Master of Ceremonies’ booklets done on glossy paper stock. Inside, both booklets are superbly illustrated in a slightly cartoonish, but suitably film noir style, and their layout is excellent. Not only designed to look like a set of case files for a crime, but also designed to be accessible with effective use of devices to highlight text and boxed text for useful information. If there is a physical downside to the City of Mist: All-Seeing Eye Investigations Starter Set, it is the box it comes in. It is not particularly sturdy and unlikely to do a good job of protecting its otherwise excellent contents.

The City of Mist: All-Seeing Eye Investigations Starter Set is at first confusing. The box contains a lot of components and it is a little difficult to quite know where to start. However, once you dig into the rules in the ‘The Players’ booklet it begins to make a little sense, but really where it comes together is in ‘The Master of Ceremonies’ booklet, especially in the scenario, ‘Shark Tank’, which gives context for the rules and whether through nudges to the Master of Ceremonies to use particular rules or direct referral back to the rules in ‘The Players’ booklet. Once grasped, what the City of Mist: All-Seeing Eye Investigations Starter Set reveals is a flexible ruleset which drives and pushes the narrative. The setting itself, combines urban fantasy with super heroics, but that combination avoids much of the trappings of the superhero genre. It shrouds them in the fog of the film noir genre just as The Mist masks The City from them. The City of Mist: All-Seeing Eye Investigations Starter Set is an excellent introduction to The City and the ‘Powered by the Apocalypse’ mechanics of City of Mist.

Conspire Like Its 1992

It is interesting to note that the three great modern roleplaying games of the 1990s—a decade dominated by fear of the New World Order, the belief in UFOs and UFOlogy, and the birth of the digital age—are all conspiracy roleplaying games. Two of these, Pagan Publishing’s Delta Green for use with Call of Cthulhu and Conspiracy X from first New Millennium Entertainment and then Eden Studios, Inc., published in 1997 and 1996 respectively, are post-Magic: The Gathering, digital age settings of global scale. The other is none of these. Over the Edge: the Role-playing Game of Surreal Danger, published by Atlas Games by 1992, is set on a single island that almost nobody has heard of and is rife with not with just a few conspiracies as Delta Green and Conspiracy X are, but a multitude, involving altruists, extra-dimensionals, extraterrestrials, mad scientists, mobsters, religious cults, street gangs, and of course, traditional conspiracies a la the Illuminati. All this takes place on Al Amarja, an obscure island off the coast of Italy in the Mediterranean, liberated from Mussolini by president for life, Her Exaltedness Monique D’Aubainne and transformed into an independent state which steadfastly refuses to join the United Nations or any other international body and does not maintain an embassy anywhere in the world. Here, where English is the official language and the American dollar is the official currency, the discerning businessman can trade unencumbered by copyright and trademark laws and safety regulations, and law enforcement resistant to bribery. Worshipers are free to follow what faith they like as they do not disrupt the peace, so Christian Scientists, Scientologists, and Satanists can be found on the island as can ‘Sommerites’, religiously oriented fans of rock star Karla Sommers. There are no churches or other official places of worship on Al Amarja, except for The Temple of the Divine Experience, a combination of multi-religious worship centre and dance club. Colonised and in turn conquered Greeks, Romans, North African Muslims, Catalans, Castilians, various Italian states, and ultimately, the newly unified Italy, Al Marja is a crossroads in the Mediterranean, through which smuggled ivory and other forbidden animal products can be trafficked, legal and illicit business can be conducted, and persons of all kinds and come and go—if the right palms are greased that is… Meanwhile the discerning tourist can find all manner of pleasures illegal elsewhere, or in the case of narcotics, illegal, but not policed by the Peace Force. Though not guns, private ownership being extremely frowned upon and strictly policed by the only armed body on the island—the Peace Force.

There are many reasons to come to Al Amarja. Off the beaten track tourism or to take up a business opportunity are obvious draws, or perhaps you are looking for someone. Perhaps you want to conduct scientific research or medical experiments unhindered by ethical guidelines, then Doctor Chris Seversen or Doctor Fürchtegott Nusbaum might be interested in your work or maybe D’Aubainne University might offer you a grant. Perhaps you want psychic powers? Either way, there is nowhere better to study fringe science than Al Amarja where scientists are known as Oppenheimers. Perhaps you are a devotee of rock star, Karla Sommers, then Al Amarja is home to her true fans. Or is there some secret organisation you want to track down, whether to expose or join? Then according to some conspiracy theorists that organisation—be they secret masters, lizardmen, aliens from outer space, and so on—operates on Al Amarja.

All of these character concepts—and more—are supported by the simplicity of the rules for character generation. A character is defined by four traits, three positive and one a flaw. The first of the positive traits is a character’s central trait, which essentially describes what he is, for example, ‘Baltimore Homicide Detective’ or ‘Avenging Mother’. Where the central trait can be fairly broad, the other two positive traits have to be more specific. They are side traits and they define either a particular skill or aspect of the character, for example, ‘Good Behind the Wheel’ or ‘Charismatic’. One of these three traits is a character’s superior trait, one his good trait, and the third an average trait. All traits and flaws are rated in a number of six-sided dice, so the superior is assigned four dice, the good trait three dice, and the average trait just two dice. The fourth trait is a character’s flaw, for example, ‘Obsessed with the New Age’ or ‘Speed Junkie’.In addition, every trait—including the flaw—has a ‘sign’, something that can be noticed by others, for example, ‘Jittery’ for ‘Speed Junkie’ or ‘Always looking to frame a shot’ for ‘Photographer’.

Beyond the traits, a character also needs a motivation, a secret—preferably a dark secret, and someone they hold to be important, whether someone they know or someone they hold to be an ideal. Lastly, each character needs an illustration, hand drawn by the player, no matter how bad. 

The character creation process is mechanically very quick. Coming up with a concept and appropriate traits is necessarily as easy because of the freedom for a player to create what he wants, but the process is partly collaborative because the Game Master has to work with each player to define their character to help bring out what is interesting about the character and what will make a good story. The process is slightly easier in that there is a set way of interpreting a particular trait, so that two characters might have the same trait, but describe them differently. The process is also very open, so whilst some sample traits and flaws are listed, a player does not have to choose from them and can build almost any type of character, from the most mundane to the most powerful. The rules though specifically advise players against power gaming when designing their characters since it is likely to garner their characters greater attraction and greater trouble.

Vittoria Oborín

• The ‘perfect’ housewife

Languages: English, Italian, Russian
Attacks: 2d (knitting needles)
Defence: 2d (Sometimes Oleg threw crockery!)
Hit Points: 14
Traits

• Mother knows best (Superior) 4d: “Whatever the situation, whatever the drama, whatever the danger, I am sure that we can find a way to deal with and learn how to be better people.”
• Prim & Proper 3d: Always looks her best, no matter the situation. The right outfit for the right occasion.
• Intuition 2d: “Sometimes I just get a funny feeling about someone…” (Sign: a twitch of the nose.)
• McMafia Widow (Flaw): “I can’t help what my husband and my father were, and I never knew anything about their criminal enterprises. It was also so shocking when I found out. No, really…”

Secret: Serial Killer
Motive: To find her backpacking son, Daniel

Mechanically, Over the Edge employs simple dice pools rolled to exceed a task number—4 for a very easy task; 7 for an easy task; 11 for a moderate task; 18 for a difficult task; 18 for a very difficult task; and 21 for a nearly impossible task. The difficulty for an opposed task is the opponent’s roll. A player simply rolls the dice for the appropriate trait to beat the target difficulty. The more a result exceeds the target difficulty, the greater the success, whilst equaling the target difficulty results in a draw and the more a result is lower than the target difficulty, the worse the outcome. If a character has an appropriate trait, then his player rolls the dice for that trait, otherwise he rolls two dice if an average person could do it. If a character has an advantage, then his player gets to roll a bonus die and drop the lowest die from the roll. Conversely, a penalty die means that the highest die is dropped. Bonus and penalty dice cancel each other out, whereas a flaw reduces the number of dice a player will roll.

In addition, a character also has dice in his experience pool, beginning play with one. They are earned for good play by the Game Moderator and can be used for two purposes. The first is to add to a character’s dice pool, just a single die for each action. Once used, an experience die is spent for that session and cannot be used until the next, but the reason for their use has to be justified in narrative terms. The other use is to improve a character, to improve an existing trait or taking a new one. This costs five experience dice and again needs to be reflected in terms of the narrative.

All this covered in a chapter of less than thirty pages, including ten pages for character generation, four pages for the base mechanics and optional rules, and eight pages on combat, which is outcome based. Combat is handled as opposed rolls, with the difference between a successful roll and the failed roll being multiplied by the weapon type to determine the amount of damage inflicted. Combat can be very deadly, especially when firearms are involved. The Game Moderator has her counterpart to this chapter, which is of roughly the same length. This gives her advice aplenty, starting with how to edit a player character to help it fit in with the player group and not be too powerful, and how to handle both money and the mechanics. Its focus is twofold. The first is on fringe powers, encompassing magic spells and psionic powers, with some twenty of the latter being listed, such as Automatic Writing, Hunches, and Sub-Vocalisation. Only a few magic spells are listed, leaving the Game Moderator and player to work together to create what the player wants his character to learn (unfortunately, there is little advice to that end). Learning either takes a lot of effort and experience dice and there is a chance that all that effort is for nought and the dice are wasted.

The other focus is on running Over the Edge, covering starting the series, how to use the setting and keep track of everything, handling the weird and the remarkable, designing and running adventures, how to screw with the player characters, and so on. It is a really good section, backed up with an example of how and how not to run a session, and how to adjust for errors and so on.

The opening players’ chapter and the Game Moderator’s chapter together amounts to a quarter of the Over the Edge, leaving the rest to what is essentially background to Al Amarja. This begins with an ‘Overview’, an introduction to the island intended for those native to Al Amarja—or at least have lived there for a while—and are familiar with the basics of living and getting by there, including geography, climate, politics and power groups, law and order, economics, population and customs (including why the noose is a fashion item), language—primarily English, but with five different ways to say yes, hot spots and places to avoid, drugs, and media. This runs to just six pages and really amounts to sets of pointers. They are points to start from for the Game Moderator, for whom the rest of the book is designed for.

This begins by building on the ‘Overview’ with a ‘Deep Overview’, expanding on the basic information presented so far before subsequent chapters deal with specific aspects of Al Amarja. So ‘The Edge’ presents the premier city on the island, whilst ‘At Your Service’ details various businesses in the city. ‘Forces to be Reckoned With’ presents the aliens, artists, bureaucrats, conspiracies, cults, gangs, individuals, politicians, rubbish collectors, scientists, students, vigilantes, and more who have a hand, an interest, and some influence in what goes on on the island of Al Amarja. Every place, every establishment or institution, every organisation is accompanied by a Game Moderator character and a story hook, giving the Game Moderator numerous ideas and suggestions for her game. The number of power groups and conspiracies on the island, ranging from inner and outer aliens, organised crime, and religious cults to politicians, weird scientists, and occultists could be seen as a problem when running Over the Edge, threatening to overwhelm a campaign, but the point is clearly made that the Game Moderator should really only concentrate on a few rather than all of them, leaving some to become interested in the player characters’ activities later on. One very useful addition here is a table listing all of the organisations, groups, and cults and their relationships with each other which nicely helps the Game Moderator begin to grasp the web of conspiracies which covers Al Amarja.

To support the running of the roleplaying game, the Game Moderator is provided with three scenarios or plots to get her player characters involved in the wonder and weirdness of Al Amarja. The three are designed as one-shots, intended to be played each time with different characters before the players create the characters that they want to play in a full campaign. As a means to showcase the rules and also the three styles of play in Over the Edge—espionage, supernatural mystery, and partying over the Edge—this is fine, but it feels like a waste of three decent scenarios with which to feed the characters into that campaign. The first scenario, ‘Contact on Al Amarja’, casts the characters as bodyguards for a courier delivering a message on the island, which in true espionage style turns into a MacGuffin hunt. In the second scenario, ‘The Bodhisattva’, the characters are fringe scientists on an information exchange in and of course it goes weird, whilst in the third, ‘Party on Al Amarja’, the players are free to create a group of friends, colleague, or family members, who go on vacation on the island. None of the three is really that straightforward, the second being event and time driven, whilst the third is much more of a freeform with greater capacity for the input of the Game Moderator. Given how weird Al Amarja is meant to be—and is—it is strange that the first scenario misses out on the opportunity for the characters to enjoy all of the delights of the airport, literally the first port of call for travellers coming to the island. Rounding out the three out is another trilogy, this time of detailed campaign outlines, each basically given two pages for the Game Moderator to build from and each really very good. 

Physically, Over the Edge is well presented for a book of its time—the second edition was released in 1997—and is certainly well written. It is entirely black and white throughout, clean and tidy, with some decent pieces of artwork, though some of it is underwhelming by modern standards. One issue with the content is the plea made to reviewers not to reveal the roleplaying game’s secrets and even over thirty years later that is difficult adhere to. That said, the setting of Al Amarja is so dense with secrets it is difficult to know where to start.

Over the Edge: the Role-playing Game of Surreal Danger is a toolkit. The tools are inspired by the works of William S. Burroughs, Philip K. Dick, David Lynch, and Robert Anton Wilson, amongst others. The result is Interzone meets Mulholland Drive, a hive of wretched scum and cultists, a kitchen sink of conspiracies put through a surreal blender, strange tourism on the American dollar, the weird accepted by the ordinary, and the player characters confronting this mess and getting used by it. Plus there is still room for the Game Moderator to add her own conspiracies and cults. Yet as much as the conspiracies have their plots, Over the Edge is not necessarily intended to be a plotted roleplaying game, but rather more a freeform, improvised style of game, with the Game Moderator having a idea of the antagonists’ plots whilst reacting to the actions of the players and their characters. This is something that would have been quite radical in 1992 when the first edition was published and is thoroughly supported by the simple, but solid mechanics which although designed to accommodate innumerable concepts and ideas, do not impede the narrative. The essays on narrative and storytelling are groundbreaking and lay the groundwork for the roleplaying games that the designers would create in the years to come and doubtless would influence game design in the late 1990s (after the Collectable Card Game craze) and the early 2000s.

Above all, what shines through in Over the Edge: the Role-playing Game of Surreal Danger is the setting. Al Amarja is a Game Moderator’s dream, rich in detail and rife with ideas, populated with plots which will fuel a campaigns for months and months. Over the Edge: the Role-playing Game of Surreal Danger is as fresh and as modern as it was in 1992—add protagonists and let the weirdness begin.

—oOo—

In 2012, Atlas Games published a twentieth anniversary edition of Over the Edge—and it is this version of the roleplaying game that is being reviewed. Aside from the fetching blue leatherette hardcover, it includes a sixteen page full colour insert that consists of five mini essays from the publisher, the designers, and subsequent contributors. These explore the game’s origins in the APA, Alarums & Excursions, and beyond, placing Over the Edge in context and grounding it in the early nineties—and even the eighties. These even the suggestion that Over the Edge could be shifted back into the Reagan era along with a list of suitable props. This would firmly place it before the Information Age, but the Over the Edge 20th Anniversary Edition was published in 2012, a decade or so after the start of the Information Age. The game’s designer comes firmly down on the side of the argument that the two do not mix and if they did, on Al Amarja, it would not be so much the Information Age as the Misinformation Age.

Given how light the rules are in Over the Edge, it is surprising that they get revisited in these essays. In 1992, those rules were radically light and fast, designed to facilitate the narrative rather than simulate a story, but as radical as the storytelling mechanics were over twenty five years ago, the design of mechanics has moved on. In fact, they moved on a decade after Over the Edge was published, emphasising the same types of storytelling as the roleplaying game did. So the designer examines the new mechanics of the past decade (this was 2012, remember) and suggests ways in which to incorporate them into Over the Edge. These include ‘Fail Forward’, the ‘Kicker’ from Ron Edwards’ Sorcerer for starting each session with something compelling, the ‘Beliefs’ system from Luke Crane’s Burning Wheel, and running short campaigns a la Paul Czege’s My life with Master. In turn, these feel like a natural fit for Over the Edge and its storytelling style.

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Over the Edge: the Role-playing Game of Surreal Danger only received two editions and bar the Over the Edge 20th Anniversary Edition from 2012, has been out of print for several years. Between those two editions there was very little change to the setting of Al Amarja and given that the second edition was published in 1997, the setting has not been updated in some twenty years. All that changes with Over the Edge: A Roleplaying Game of Weird Urban Danger, a third edition of the roleplaying game currently being funded on Kickstarter campaign, which will see changes to the setting and the mechanics, taking account of the changes in game design and storytelling games that Over the Edge: the Role-playing Game of Surreal Danger helped start.

If you ain't got that...

An alternative title to Agents of S.W.I.N.G. from Postmortem Studios might be The Avengers RPG – and by that we do not mean the American comic series, but rather the iconic British television series, The Avengers, in which the umbrella swinging, bowler hatted John Steed investigated an array of Cold War, criminal, science fictional, and supernatural threats with a pretty and capable assistant by his side. Similarly, an alternative title to Agents of S.W.I.N.G. from Postmortem Studios might be the I.TC. TV RPG. For those of you not in the know, I.T.C. was a British television company headed by Lew Grade that during the 1960s and 1970s produced some of the United Kingdom’s most iconic television series and sold them worldwide. The Saint, Danger Man, The Prisoner, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, Department S, The Persuaders! , The Champions, and Jason King to name but a few. What these series had in common, including The Avengers, was their genre and the fact that they were “Cool.” Their genre was that of the “Adventure Series” or “Spy-Fi” and their Coolness was borne not just of the fact that they were good shows, but also that they were British and the 1960s, Britishness was cool and London was swinging…!

In Agents of S.W.I.N.G., you get to be cool, suave, and sophisticated, working as an agent for S.W.I.N.G. – “Supreme World Intelligence Network Group,” an international espionage and counter-espionage organisation that deals with threats to world peace and security above, beyond, and below the global obsession with the West versus East of the Cold War. Just like The Avengers, the agents will be investigating an array of threats and mysteries, but Agents of S.W.I.N.G. has the capacity to push further at the envelope of its genres in a number of ways. First, it draws upon the equally as cool action films of the period, most notably the James Bond films, thus moving more towards the “Spy Fi” genre. Second, it follows both the Adventure Series and I.T.C.’s output out of the 1960s and into the grimmer, more cynical decade of the 1970s, best typified by series such as The Sweeney and The Professionals, so shifting towards the crime genre. Third, it can shift towards the supernatural and the outré with series such as Doctor Who and Sapphire & Steel, neither of are necessarily produced or distributed by, but are nevertheless both Adventure Series and thus not only part of the genre, but also cool. Fourth, it can do the Science Fiction Adventure Serial such as Thunderbirds or Joe 90.

If this seems like a lot of genres for Agents of S.W.I.N.G. to encompass, it probably is, but its actual genre is not many but one – the Adventure Series – and that genre can include elements of many other genres. It is up to the game’s GM or Control to decide how far he wants to go with any one genre with his Agents of S.W.I.N.G. game.

For its mechanics, Agents of S.W.I.N.G. uses the FATE 3 engine. First seen in Evil Hat Production’s superb pulp action RPG, Spirit of the Century, the Fate system is a Fudge variant, one in which Fate Points play a major role. Just as in many other RPGs they can be spent to gain a bonus to a roll, but here they have a greater versatility. Like many “Indie” style games, a player can spend them to create and bring small elements into the game, what is known as “dramatic editing,” but under the Fate system, Fate Points can do a whole lot more. They can be spent to invoke a character Aspect and bring it into play, to tag another character or location related Aspect to bring it into play, to power a Stunt, or to make a Declaration, adding some small element to the story. The Fate system also ditches traditional attributes, instead defining characters by Skills, Aspects, and Stunts. It plays fast and easy – the player rolls two six-sided dice, each of a different colour, and deducts one from the other to a number from +5 down to -5. This number is added to any bonuses derived from Skills, Aspects, or Stunts to try and beat a target number, or to roll higher than an opponent in a contested roll. In a contested roll, the amount by which one side beats the other determines the amount of damage or Stress inflicted, whether Physical, Composure (mental), or Social Stress.

Sometimes though, a player will need a third die – a “SWING die.” Whenever a player rolls well, he earns one of these dice and gets to keep it in front of him. Later on in the game, the player can choose to use his “Swing die” to substitute the negative or the positive die in order to get a better result.

For example, the S.W.I.N.G. agents want to get a pass from an enemy agent, Gustav Zimmerman, which would give them access to a high security laboratory. They have followed Zimmerman to a masque ball where Claudia Romanov will engage the agent on the dance floor and attempt to distract him whilst slipping the pass out of his pocket. Control decides that this will be an opposed roll against Zimmerman’s Mental rating of +2. Claudia’s player decides to use her skill of +3 (Solid) Sleight of Hand and spends a Fate point to trigger Bump and Grind Aspect. Control agrees and allows her a +2 bonus to her roll. Control rolls +3 and -6 to get a total modifier of -3, which reduces Zimmerman’s +2 Mental down to -1 Bent. This gives an excellent target for Claudia to beat and her player’s roll of +6 and -3 gives a modifier of +3, which when added to her current Sleight of Hand skill gives a total result of +8 or Atsonishing. Since this is 3 higher than the target, Control awards Claudia a Swing Die to use later. Control also rules that Zimmerman was so oblivious that he will be delayed getting to the laboratory himself whilst he looks for it!

Characters are defined by their Skills, Stunts, and Aspects. Skills are areas in which a character is trained in, his knowledge and expertise; his Stunts are related to his Skills and grant a character small bonuses or permissions within the game; while Aspects define the character in some way, such as “You won’t break me” or “Champagne Charlie” and are the more interactive elements within the game. Sample skills might be +1 (Cool) Guns or +4 (Neat) Science, while possible typical stunts include abilities like Architect of Death and Hide in Plain Sight or possessions such as Custom Ride gives you a favoured vehicle that you have added a gadget to (tied to the Drive skill). Most Stunts do not require the expenditure of Fate Points, but those that do are slightly more powerful. A Fate Point can be spent to Invoke one of a character’s Aspects and so gain a bonus, but if Compelled by Control and brought into play, so developing complications and driving the story along, then the character earns a Fate Point. Lastly, Aspects belonging to another character, or to an object, place, or a scene can be Tagged by another character, again by paying out Fate Points. When choosing Aspects for a character, the designer’s advice is that they should never be boring and it should always be possible to view an Aspect in both a positive and a negative light. Otherwise, a character cannot participate in the game’s Fate Point economy – bring negative Aspects into the game and letting it act as a story hook, gets a character more Fate Points to spend in his favour.

At its most basic, character creation is simply a matter of choosing Skills, Stunts, and Aspects. A quick method of creating characters is provided, but of course, the game wants a little more than that from its players, asking them to create a simple background and tying Aspects to their character’s Section (the department that they work for in S.W.I.N.G.), past, and cover identity before being given a free choice of another five. A player has twenty points to assign to Skills, these ranging from +1 (Cool) and +2 (Hip) up to +7 (Far Out) and +8 (Out of Sight); four Stunts to choose; and lastly some equipment to take. It should be made clear that although Agents of S.W.I.N.G. gives detailed lists of Skills and Stunts, players are expected to create their Aspects, tying them into their agents’ concepts.

The first of our two sample characters is based on a character that I originally played in a friend’s James Bond 007 RPG campaign. She is of an impoverished White Russian noble family, who followed her father into his elicit trade of theft and burglary, stealing from the rich to support the family. She worked the high society scene around the world before being caught by a S.W.I.N.G. agent into whose room she had broken. Now she commits burglary as a S.W.I.N.G. agent herself.

Name: Claudia Romanov
Concept: Reformed Jewel Thief
Section: Section 10 – Acquisition
Cover: High Flying Photographer

Section: “In and Out Without a Trace”
Past: Nobility in Reduced Circumstances
Cover: “My camera gets me in everywhere…”
Aspects: “Looks can be deceiving…”, Takes a thief to catch a thief, Like good Russian vodka, Always dressed the part, “I did complete finishing school”
Skills: +5 (Groovy) Burglary; +3 (Solid) Sleight of Hand, Stealth; +2 (Hip) Academics (French, Russian), Photography, Social Standing; +1 (Cool) Contacts, Deceit, Fists
Stunts: Acrobatics, Bump and Grind, Network of Contacts, Unruffled

Stress
Physical Stress OOOOO Composure OOOOO Social OOOOOOO

Our second example character is based upon a friend of mine who happens to be a fan of the Adventure Series genre and uses elements of characters that he has played in the past. Doctor Exton was kidnapped whilst working in Nepal and when he returned, found that he had developed strange abilities. These were detected by other members of Section 8 who recruited him into S.W.I.N.G.

Name: Doctor Simon Exton
Concept: Psychic Doctor
Section: Section 8 – Uncanny Affairs
Cover: Consultant Toxicologist

Section: “I know your body, I know your mind”
Past: It was a strange holiday
Cover: Let me through, I’m a Doctor!
Aspects: “My, that does look painful”, It’s just a scratch, Sardonic Wit, I have just the thing for that in my bag, I sense that there is more to this
Skills: +6 (Fab) Science; +4 (Neat) Academics; +3 (Solid) Fists; +2 (Hip) Empathy, Intimidation; +1 (Cool) Contacts, Mysteries, Resolve
Stunts: Cold Read, Developed Immunities, Psychic Telepathy, Sixth Sense

Stress
Physical Stress OOOOO Composure OOOOOO Social OOOOO

The setting and genre is supported with rules for equipment and gadgets, organisations, a year by year breakdown of events of the setting’s timeframe – the 1960s and 1970s, along with some notes on Superscience! and the Supernatural. If Control wants to push his game in either of those latter two directions, he might find the guidance somewhat light. Then again, both usually figure as elements within the Adventure Series genre rather than serve as its mainstay or focus. Further, the primary genre for Agents of S.W.I.N.G. is “Spy-Fi.”

Advice for Control on running Agents of S.W.I.N.G. is well done, but essentially boils down to keep the game light, keep it moving, and take your cues from the players and their agents. Agents of S.W.I.N.G. do not come with a scenario as such. Instead it includes a detailed outline that can be used as scenario, all but ready to play.

Perhaps where its Adventure Series genre is best displayed in Agents of S.W.I.N.G. is in its chapter of SWINGers. Or rather, its chapter of some thirty or so S.W.I.N.G. agents, each of them drawn from the various television series that are the inspiration for the RPG. If you know your I.T.C. and other series, then there will be certain pleasure in recognising who Cobalt and Iron, John Chain, Agent Crimson Saul Metford, Andrew Bowie and Richard Foyle, Jackson Queen, and John Swan are, and which television series that they come from. That said, there is no explicitly given use for these characters, whether as sample player agents or NPCs. The given sample “Villainous Schemers,” which include a Chinese criminal organisation, an extremist Left wing revolutionary movement, and a American neo-Nazi movement, are of more immediate and useful use, providing something iniquitous for the player agents to investigate and interdict.

Physically, Agents of S.W.I.N.G. comes as a three-hundred-and-fifty-six page black and white digest sized book. The layout is done as if from a series of report files, illustrated with silhouettes of ladies in various action poses, sometimes armed, sometimes not, but either way, reminiscent of the opening film credits of the James Bond series. The only other artwork in the book is the illustrations of the sample characters. Unfortunately, whilst Agents of S.W.I.N.G. is readable, both layout of the book and its editing are at best wanting. Some of the book could have been better organised, and whilst the choice of fount, Courier New, is perfectly in keeping with the book’s genre, its size is too large, often leading to ragged paragraphs because the column width is too short. As to the editing, the book just needed another polish, preferably from another pair of eyes than those of the author’s.

There is one last issue with Agents of S.W.I.N.G. and that is Mike Myers. Much like a game of Pendragon threatens to tip into absurdity a la the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, a game of Agents of S.W.I.N.G. can easily lurch into a parody of its genre, the Austin Powers trilogy of films. Given the title of the RPG, there is certain inevitability to this, but it is certainly within the purview of both the players and Control to rein any such tendencies to “schwing” that way in their Agents of S.W.I.N.G..

Being a “Spy-Fi” or Adventure Series RPG, Agents of S.W.I.N.G. is anything other than a serious treatment of the espionage genre. Agents of S.W.I.N.G. is not Ron Edwards’ SPIONE: STORY NOW in Cold War Berlin or even Crafty Games’ SpyCraft, but is rather a light, almost coy take upon the espionage genre, whilst also serving as a toolkit to do other light, almost fantastical genres. So for example, whilst Agents of S.W.I.N.G. will do The Avengers or even The Man from U.N.C.L.E. with a wink, a tip of the bowler hat, and even a cocked eyebrow, with a little effort upon the part of Control, it would also do Thunderbirds, U.F.O. , or even The Six Million Dollar Man. Overall, despite lacking something of the flair its genre calls for in terms of its production value Agents of S.W.I.N.G. is a pleasingly light version of the FATE engine that demands just enough from the players to do its genre justice.