The Other OSR: THREE from the LOCKER

THREE from the LOCKER is a ‘Pamphlet Bundle’ for Pirate Borg, the self-described, “Worst Pirate RPG Ever Made™!”, published by Limithron. It is published by SkeletonKey Games, which previously released the excellent fanzine, Tales from the Locker #1, and consists of a mini-adventure, Sweet Tusk, and two mini-supplements, Blood in the Water and Raise the Black, that are also available separately. In turn, they give the Game Master a location-based scenario that combines H.G. Wells’ The Island of Doctor Moreau with George Orwell’s Animal Farm in the Dark Caribbean; six possible situations when the ship that the Player Characters are aboard is rendered into a derelict, whether from a ship-to-ship engagement, a terrible storm, a run in with sea monsters, or other threat, and about to sink; and what might happen when a pirate captain orders his crew to ‘raise the black’ and hoist the jolly roger! All pamphlets are available on their own as well as a bundle (or pack if physical). They do share the same trade dress, so definitely feel as if they should be bought together!

Sweet Tusk promises ‘Pigs Plot, Rum Flow, Adventure Awaits’ in detailing a costal rum plantation and rum distillery that was once home to a necromancer and his cult, but is now home to a passel of pigs, some sentient, some feral, many bipedal, most of them anthropomorphised. The Player Characters could simply wash ashore at the plantation a la Wells’ The Island of Doctor Moreau, but the adventure’s own hooks include looking for a new source of rum, being sent to exterminate ‘feral’ pigs to prevent them from spreading across the Dark Caribbean, or being hired to retrieve an item from the plantation for its previous owners. To get the best out of the location, the Game Master should ideally combine the latter with one of the first two as that will drive the Player Characters to interact with most of the inhabitants of the plantations, its plot threads, and explore its depths.

The plantation is dominated by two factions. One is lead by Lord Wembly Trembleton and wants to restore the rum distillery and sugar mill with the aim of becoming self-sufficient, whilst Scrofa, the plantation’s spiritual leader, her sorcery twisted by the necromantic studies she found that belonged to the previous owner, is becoming increasingly and brutally isolationist. The Player Characters will need to deal with them and explore the plantations—including the tunnels that have been dug under the plantation (and make it feel like a Vietcong tunnel network)—to achieve their given objectives. Alternatively, the Player Characters might ignore them altogether and clear out the whole of plantation and take it over and run it themselves as a going concern.

Sweet Tusk has a hot, sweaty feel, sticky with perspiration and sugar and piggy peculiarity. The latter is probably the only reason why the Game Master might not want to run Sweet Tusk, talking pigs not necessarily going to suit every campaign. As written though, it adds an off-kilter element that the Game Master can throw at her players and their characters and have fun portraying a passel of pigs in the process.

Blood in the Water gives the Game Master ‘Six Sinking Ship Scenarios’. The Game Master can use this when the Player Characters’ ship, or the ship that they are on, either selecting one of the options or rolling for it. Each one has events happening on deck and three zones surrounding the vessel, out to thirty feet and beyond. The six options include the ‘Feeding Frenzy’ of a shark attack on the ship going down; ‘Tentacles from the Deep’ that flail at the ship and its crew and passenger; a ‘Powder Magazine Explosion’ that sends fire and shrapnel across the deck and beyond; the ship and floating wreckage being thrown about by ‘Angry Seas’; ghosts that come looking for new crewmembers in ‘Revenant Recruitment’; and potentially the crew and passengers being saved with a kiss by ‘Meddling Mermaids’! Since the action in each divided into four zones—three plus the deck—where different things will happen, there is a degree of procedure to running any one of these post-disaster ship encounters. Not a lengthy procedure, but quite a simple one, and they all do add a bit of flavour to a sinking ship situation beyond the Player Characters abandoning ship and racing for the boats. Added to this is a sea shanty, Sharks in the Water, that a ship’s crew can sing to give its members bonuses to tests in the first few rounds of the sinking ship. The Game Master might want to have her players and their characters learn this in response to having been in a sinking ship the first time and so learn from their experience. Blood in the Water is quite specific in the situation it needs to trigger its use and that trigger is not going to happen that often, but definitely useful to have on the shelf though.

The third pamphlet is Raise the Black. This expands upon the various effects of the jolly roger in play. First, when ‘Raising the Black’, that is, hoisting the jolly roger and its effects upon the crew of the vessel being targeted by the pirate ship. In play, the ship’s captain of the pirate ship tests his Presence and result, which depends upon the size of the targeted vessel in comparison to the pirate vessel, may leave the crew plucky still and laughing off the threat or feeling doomed and wanting no part of the battle. There are plenty of options in between and effectively determines the morale of targeted vessels. ‘Witchjacks’ are special flags, ensorcelled versions of the jolly roger, that grant special powers that can be used once per day. For example, the Banner of the Black Whale grants an extra die of damage in ramming attacks and extra damage the further it has travelled, whilst the Pennant of the Mermaid grants an extra Crew Action. A pirate captain is unlikely to want to fly a flag other than his own, so there are rules included that enable to cut up a Witchjack and sew the resulting parts and its magic into the pirate captain’s own flag. This does not always work, but it destroys the original flag. Minor, but optional rules beyond this are included to help speed up naval combat and ‘D20 Pirate Flags’ give options for both a Player Character or an NPC crew if the Game Master needs to a pirate flag quickly. Given that a third of the pamphlet is taken up illustrations of jolly roger flags, Raise the Black is the least useful of the three pamphlets in THREE from the LOCKER and add the least to the play of Pirate Borg.

Physically, the three pamphlets of THREE from the LOCKER are all decently presented. They are clearly and simply laid out and all easy to read and use. Sweet Tusk is the busiest, so is harder to read, but only slightly so, and nothing that is going to impede the Game Master running the scenario from the page. The artwork is light, but the cartography is decent.

THREE from the LOCKER is solid support for Pirate Borg, the scenario Sweet Tusk being the highlight of the three, entertaining and enjoyable, a Player Character-driven plantation-crawl that is easy to add to a Game Master’s campaign. The other two pamphlets are shorter and not quite as entertaining as Sweet Tusk and Raise the Black not quite as useful, but in the right circumstances, still good to have in the ship’s locker.

Suffrage & Survival

It is two-hundred-and-fifty years since the nations and corporations of Earth and the solar system unified under the United Inner Systems Alliance. It is two-hundred-and-thirty-six years since I-Werks Solutions developed and demonstrated the Jump Drive which made interstellar travel possible. It is two-hundred-and-twenty-eight years since the first A.I. went rogue and the first uplifted animal was created. It is one-hundred-and-ninety-five years since the first interstellar jump was made between Jupiter and Proxima Centauri. It is seventy-seven years since the relaxation of the Cornelius Accords leading to the rapid development of Uplifted species as labourers and companions. It is fifty-six years since the Bugs, a previously unknown insectoid alien species attacked and overran human settlements. It is forty-six years since the United Inner Systems Alliance established the United Expeditionary Force, a paramilitary organisation to target threats to and protect the interests of humanity in the Untamed Worlds that lie at edge of—and beyond—the United Inner Systems Alliance. Bar a few Human officers, it is entirely staffed by Uplifts. Despite the dangers they encounter as members of the United Expeditionary Force, Uplifts are rarely recognised for their service or their bravery, especially in comparison to their Human officers and counterparts, and throughout the United Inner Systems Alliance, Uplifts are classified as ‘domestic dependent life forms’ and thus second class citizens with limited rather than full rights.

This is the set-up for Untamed Worlds, an anthropomorphic military Science Fiction roleplaying game published by Osprey Games. It is inspired by such things Band of Brothers and Babylon 5 on television, The Dirty Dozen and Starship Troopers on film, and Albedo and Justifiers in roleplaying. The Player Characters are Uplifts (or the rare Human) who are members of United Expeditionary Force. Theirs is not an entirely happy lot. They have a family in their brothers in arms, but they have limited rights, including the fact they have to seek permission to procreate, are seen as inferior, and ultimately, expendable. The roleplaying game can be played in one of two ways. First, as a straightforward, bullets and bravado military Science Fiction roleplaying game in a series of mission-based scenarios. Second, as a straightforward, bullets and bravado military Science Fiction roleplaying game in a series of mission-based scenarios, until such times as the Player Characters begin to chafe at the inequality of their situation and begin to seek a way out of it or a way to change it. In this it changes to objective-based scenarios with the aims of the Player Characters driving much of the play. However, Untamed Worlds does not support this objective-based play as much as it does the mission-based play, including as it does more detailed advice on creating and running missions and their consequences, as providing several example mission outlines. As a consequence, Untamed Worlds has a lopsided feel, emphasising one style of play over another, whilst leaving the other in the hands of the Game Master to develop in response to her players and their characters. In this way, the mission-based style of play is better suited to the less experienced Game Master than the more experienced Game Master. To be fair, the objective-based style of play is much less structured and open, so is harder to explore, but still, at just about a page in length, it is not up to the task. In the meantime, they will face marauders, pirates, dissidents, terrorists, the insectoid Bugs, and arachnoid Nids, as well as the poor regard of the United Inner Systems Alliance.

A Player Character or Uplift in Untamed Worlds has a Heritage, a Background, and two Specialities. The Heritage is the species from which he is uplifted and Untamed Worlds offers some twenty-four broad species types, from amphibians, bats, and birds to ungulates, ursines, and xenarthra. Within these broad categories, there is room for a player to be more specific. Thus, for the xenarthra, the Uplift could be a sloth, an armadillo, or an anteater. A Heritage provides skills , Tricks, and Permissions, whilst a Background grants more skills and a Trick, and the Specialities, just skills. The Backgrounds consist of ‘Fostered’, ‘Farm’ (an educational facility rather than an agricultural one), or ‘Feral’ for Uplifts, and ‘Troublemaker’, ‘Dissident’, and ‘Volunteer’ for Humans. The Specialities all consist of military training packages, such as ‘Communications’, ‘Infantry’, ‘Ranger’, ‘Sniper’, ‘Space Operations’, and Vehicle Operations’. There are thirteen skills, each rated between zero and eight, of which twelve are obvious. The less obvious one is ‘CQB’ or ‘Close Quarters Battle’, which covers close range combat using guns, and armed and unarmed combat, whilst ‘Marksmanship’ is for long range combat.

Tricks are one of two things. First, they are innate things that an Uplift might have because of his Heritage. For the xenarthra, these are ‘Armoured Hide’, ‘Hardy’, ‘Keen (Smell)’, ‘Resistant’, ‘Second Skin’, ‘Strong’, and ‘Smol’ (small). Second, they are special abilities that the Uplift is good at such as ‘Ace’, ‘Charmer’, and ‘Trauma Doc’. In some cases, Tricks are mandatory, but most are not. Then there are Permissions. These are simply things that the Uplift can do because of his Heritage. For example, the Hyena has the Permissions of “Sense of smell and hearing well outside human ranges. Excellent night vision. Natural Scavengers.” Permissions are not detailed in the roleplaying game any more than this and there is no mechanical benefit to them. The Uplift simply has them. Yet there is some crossover between Permissions and Tricks. For example, the Hyena Uplift could have ‘Keen (Smell and Hearing)’ Trick, which does provide a mechanical benefit, but definitely does have the “Sense of smell and hearing well outside human ranges.” Permission. The Trick provides an Advantage when used, but what does the Permission provide? Does it mean that the ‘Keen (Smell and Hearing)’ Trick is better than the Permission? Ultimately, it leaves it up to the Game Master to adjudicate when instead Tricks could have been categorised between those available to just the Uplifts from their Heritages and those available to both Humans and Uplifts rather being left in a muddle between what is a Trick and what is a Permission.

Uplift (or Human) Player Character creation is not difficult. It is simply a matter of making choices in terms of Heritage, a Background, and two Specialities, and then choose from the options they give. Lastly, a player picks some gear for his Uplift.

Name: ‘Baby’
Rank: Trooper 2nd Class
Heritage: Shark
Background: Feral
Specialities: Infantry, Special Operations
Tricks: (Aquatic) Adept, Hunter, Keen (Smell), Natural Weapons (Bite)
Permissions: Adapted to aquatic life (including cold and high pressure). Extremely acute sense of smell. Possesses electroreceptors capable of sensing electric impulses and magnetic field (enhanced by Tricks/modifiers that affect smell).
Skills: Athletics 5, CQB 7, Demolitions 1, Espionage 1, Marksmanship 4, Mechanics 1, Recon 4, Survival 4
Hits: 7
Defence: 6
Carrying Capacity: 9

Mechanically, Untamed Worlds uses what it calls the Lucky 7 System. Any time a player wants his Uplift to undertake an action, he rolls two six-sided dice. Any result of seven or more is a success, whilst a result of six or less is a failure. To this roll, the player adds the appropriate skill, whilst subtracting the difficulty modifier set by the Game Master. The levels of difficulty range from ‘1’ and ‘Easy’ to ‘9’ plus and ‘Hellish’, which means that even the easiest of tasks levies a penalty. Having an Advantage means that the player rolls three dice and keeps the best two, whilst having a Disadvantage means he rolls three dice and keeps the worst two. Having multiple incidences of Advantage adds a ‘+2’ bonus each extra incidence of Advantage, whilst having multiple incidences of Disadvantage adds a ‘-2’ penalty each time. Getting a result of above or below seven generate Effects for each point above or below. Good Effects include increasing damage inflicted on a target or another target, moving to a different zone, adding new information to a scene, shaking off a Hit, and so on. Bad Effects include suffering an extra Hit, running out of ammunition, being a bad spot and suffering a Disadvantage, having some bad information come to light, and so on.

Both players and the Game Master have access to their own pool of Momentum. A player can spend the players’ Momentum to add bonuses to his Uplift’s rolls, but levy them on the Game Master to inflict penalties on an NPC’s dice roll. Conversely, the Game Master can spend her own points of Momentum on improving her NPCs’ dice rolls and levying penalties on the players for their Uplifts’ rolls.

Combat in Untamed Worlds uses the same core mechanic. Initiative is handled narratively with the Game Master deciding who goes first—the NPCs or the Uplifts, and then after each combatant has acted, their player or the Game Master deciding who acts next. The rules also scale up to enable combat between vehicles and spaceships. Each combatant has a pool of Action Points to spend during his turn, typically two for a player Uplift. Actions costing one Action Point include ‘Aim’, ‘Assist’, ‘Attack’, ‘Evade’, ‘Reload’, and more, whilst ‘Full Evade’ is the only action which costs two Action Points. Optional rules enable a player to spend Momentum to seize initiative; costly success for more heroic style of play; critical rolls and fumbles; wounds; non-lethal attacks; and more.

Armour reduces damage, but most armour is ablative. Most NPCs die when their Hits are reduced to zero, but Uplifts and major NPCs suffer a Down status and subsequent Death task checks. It only takes one successful Death task check for an Uplift or major NPC to recover, but two failed ones or a Death task check failed by five or more and they are dead. An Uplift or major NPC who has suffered the Down status can take a Last Stand and take one more action, and as long they keep making the rolls to do so, they can continue making a Last Stand. However, it does get progressively more difficult to do this.

As expected for a military roleplaying game there is an extensive list of arms and armour as well as gear and vehicles, with most modern weapons being electromagnetic slugthrowers, though there are laser weapons available as support weapons. Vehicles include land, air, and watercraft, plus spaceships of various kinds. For the Game Master, there is a wealth of background details that detail the United Inner Systems Alliance, its culture, corporations, enemies (such as Moreau’s Children, the New Reich Conglomerate, and the Blue Skull Brotherhood pirate gang), and more. Worlds both in United Inner Systems Alliance and in the ‘Untamed Worlds’ beyond are described and several secrets of the setting are given ready for discovery by the Uplifts, likely furthering their disillusionment with the United Inner Systems Alliance when they do find out. The duties and structure of the United Expeditionary Force are also covered, and there is not only advice on running the roleplaying game, but also several missions ready for the Game Master to develop.

There is much to like in Untamed Worlds. Both the setting and the military Science Fiction genre are accessible, there are a lot of options in terms what species types that the players can roleplay, and the Game Master is provided everything she needs in terms of a set-up. The rules for the Lucky 7 System are surprisingly uncomplex for what is a military Science Fiction roleplaying game and they are also fast playing. Yet Untamed Worlds hampers this with mundane presentation and annoyingly poor organisation. The rules are simple enough, but they are not organised in a wholly coherent fashion, with the general rules being mixed with the combat rules. The rules also come immediately after the setting explanation and before the character creation rules, so they are talking about elements before they are explained.

Physically, Untamed Worlds is uninspired. It is text heavy and there is not a lot of art to either break up the text or help bring the setting to life. The majority of the art, all done in a cartoony style that really is quite good, consists of depictions of Uplifts in the United Expeditionary Force service, and that makes sense. Yet that also means that very little of the arms, armour, and other gear is illustrated and certainly none of the vehicles or spaceships are illustrated. Lacking such illustrations means it is difficult to get a feel for what the future of Untamed Worlds looks like.

Untamed Worlds takes a cartoonish concept, that of anthropomorphic military Science Fiction, and pushes it towards an intriguing consequence, essentially that of indentured soldiery coming to the realisation as to the inequalities of their situation and aspiring to do something about it. Unfortunately, the roleplaying game does not explore this consequence in as much depth as it should, especially in comparison to its focus on the anthropomorphic military Science Fiction. Couple this with a dreary layout and confusing rules, and Untamed Worlds is simply not as well realised as it could have been.

Time & Tide

For three hundred years, the floating city of Naviri has been a beacon of comfort, co-operation, and community. Located in the shallow waters of a tropical lagoon, it consists of a number of large, permanent islands—or docks—as well as many floating ones, hence its nickname of the ‘Floating City’ or ‘Floating Islands of Naviri’, that together make up a warm and welcoming home under azure skies dotted with the fluffiest of white clouds. Despite their differences, numerous species live and work together in the city—Betalods, Chameleons, Crocs, Cuttlebeards, Frogs, Golfins, Humans, Iotas, Magnafrons, Nag’i, Salamanders, Turtles, and Tyros. Yet despite Naviri being a tropical paradise, it is sandwiched between two great threats. Behind it is the endless of expanse of the Droskani Desert, home to desert raiders and fiends, but also the grey-haired Human traders who make the twice annual journey from their home in Stoen on the far mountainous side of the continent to Naviri. Before it looms the Fold. A great storm that has been calcified into a glacier of apocalyptic weather and monsters. Naviri has always suffered from storms, but the city weathered them and the sea monsters that followed in their wake, protected by the Tidal Blades, elite guardians of the Floating Islands. For centuries, the Tidal Blades protected the city from both the storms and the monsters, as well as helping the community and helping to keep order. Fifteen years ago, the city was threatened by the biggest storm in recorded history. The Tidal Blades were no match for its ferocity or that of the monsters that invaded the reef. The city’s leaders asked the Tidal Blades to deploy an experimental piece of technology developed by Arcanists of the Citadel of Time called the Fold that would halt the storm and the sea monsters. Answering the call, in what became known as the Great Battle, the Tidal Blades successfully activated the Fold. It worked, but at a cost. The Fold stopped time. It trapped both storm and monsters in time, but also stopped the Tidal Blades in time. Now, the Fold has begun to weaken. Sea monsters are slipping through. How long until the Fold fails and who will protect the city now and then when it does? For there no Tidal Blades any longer…

This is the setting for two board games published by Druid City Games. In Tidal Blades: Heroes of the Reef, the heroes undertake a series of challenges across the island and in three arenas as part of the Tournament of Heroes in an attempt to be acclaimed one of the Tidal Blades. In its sequel, Tidal Blades 2: Rise of the Unfolders, the Tidal Blades are entrusted with the Nexus, a device that will enable them to enter the Fold, unfreeze time, discover its secrets, and hopefully recuse the Tidal Blade heroes of the Great Battle. It is also the setting for Tidal Blades: The Roleplaying Game, published by Monte Cook Games. It is set roughly at the same time as Tidal Blades: Heroes of the Reef, but can be set before or after, and although mechanically different, the board game could be used to play out the Player Characters’ efforts to become the new Tidal Blades. Or that can be played as part of the roleplaying game, which suggests several paths—or story arcs—that a Player Character can participate in to eventually become a Tidal Blade. In addition to being a roleplaying game, along with its rules for creating Player Characters and playing the game, Tidal Blades: The Roleplaying Game provides details of the world, making it a gazetteer of the setting, and two scenarios. It is a roleplaying game of hope and adventure, community and duty, exploration and heroism. It is an aquatic Science Fiction setting in which advanced Michronic technology enables Michronic Loops, or time jumps, often moments into the past to change the present.

As with other roleplaying games from Monte Cook Games, Tidal Blades: The Roleplaying Game uses the Cypher System, first seen in Numenera in 2013. A Player Character in the Cypher System and Tidal Blades: The Roleplaying Game has three stats or Pools. These are Might, Speed, and Intellect, and represent a combination of effort and health for a character. Typically, they range between eight and twenty in value. Might covers physical activity, strength, and melee combat; Speed, any activity involving agility, movement, stealth, or ranged combat; and Intellect, intelligence, charisma, and magical capacity. In game, points from these pools will be spent to lower the difficulty of a task, but they can also be lost through damage, whether physical or mental. A Player Character has an Edge score, tied to one of the three pools. This reduces the cost of points spent from the associated pool to lower the difficulty of a task, possibly even to zero depending upon the Edge rating.

A Player Character can be summed up in a simple statement—“I am an adjective species noun who verbs.” The adjective is the ‘Descriptor’, describing how the Player Character acts or his manner; the species is one of the thirteen species who live in Naviri; the noun is one of the four character ‘Types’ in the roleplaying game; and the verb is the Player Character’s ‘Focus, that is what he does. For example, “I am an Exiled Human Speaker who Doesn’t Do Much.”, “I am Sea-Born Tyro Explorer who Sails the Howling Seas.”, “I am an Intelligent Betalod Adept who Conducts Weird Science.”, and “I am Vicious Croc Fighter who Fights Dirty.” The four Types are Adept, Explorer, Fighter, and Speaker. Besides Human, the Species include the pink, semi-aquatic newt-like Betalods who are telepaths and good at analysing their environment; Crocs are aggressive combatants, often with regard to their own safety; Cuttlebeards have face tentacles used as manipulators and to enhance their speech, who are sociable and read the histories of objects; Nag’i are mutant, aquatic humans known for doing everything with a flourish or a quip; and more. All of the Species have one inability as well several abilities to choose from, as do the Descriptors and Foci.

Creating a character is a matter of making some choices, assigning a few points here and there, and so on. It is a fairly simple process, but there are a lot of options to choose from.

Sepiella

“I am an Inquisitive Cuttlebeard Adept who Delves the Fourth Dimension.”

Background: “You used to sneak into the Atoll of the Crab Mystics when you were young and that’s where you became enamoured of becoming an Adept”

Arc: Uncover a Secret

Tier 1 Adept

Might 9 Speed 12 Intellect 19 [Edge 1]

Effort 1

Inability: Medium and Heavy Weapons

Hindrances: Hearing/Noticing Dangers, Initiative, Physical Labour

Abilities: Anticipation, Far Step, Michronic Training, Onslaught, Scan, See History

Skills: Geography [Trained], History [Trained], Learning [Trained], Light weapons [Practiced], Pleasant Social Interactions [Trained]

Mechanically, as a Cypher System roleplaying game, Tidal Blades: The Roleplaying Game is player facing. Thus, in combat, a player not only rolls for his character to make an attack, but also rolls to avoid any attacks made against his character. Essentially this shifts the game’s mechanical elements from the Game Master to the player, leaving the Game Master to focus on the story, on roleplaying NPCs, and so on. When it comes to tasks, the Player Character is attempting to overcome a Task Difficulty, ranging from one and Simple to ten and Impossible. The target number is actually three times the Task Difficulty. So, a Task Difficulty of four or Difficult, means that the target number is twelve, whilst a Task Difficulty of seven or Formidable, means that the target number is twenty-one. The aim of the player is lower this Task Difficulty. This can be done in a number of ways.

Modifiers, whether from favourable circumstances, skills, or good equipment, can decrease the Difficulty, whilst skills give bonuses to the roll. Trained skills—skills can either be Practiced or Trained—can reduce the Difficulty, but the primary method is for a player to spend points from his relevant Stat pools. This is called applying Effort. Applying the first level of Effort, which will reduce the target number by one, is three points from the relevant Stat pool. Additional applications of Effort beyond this cost two points. The cost of spending points from a Stat pool is reduced by its associated Edge, which if the Edge is high enough, can reduce the Effort to zero, which means that the Player Character gets to do the action for free—or effortlessly!

Rolls of one enable a free GM Intrusion—essentially a complication to the current situation that does not reward the Player Character with any Experience Points, whereas rolls of seventeen and eighteen in combat grant damage bonuses. Rolls of nineteen and twenty in combat can also grant damage bonuses, but alternatively, can grant minor and major effects. For example, distracting an opponent or striking a specific body part. Rolls of nineteen and twenty in non-combat situations grant minor and major effects, which the player and Game Master can decide on in play. In combat, light weapons always inflict two points of damage, medium weapons four points, and heavy weapons six points, and damage is reduced by armour. NPCs simply possess a Level, which like the Task Difficulty ranges between one and ten and is multiplied by three to get a target number to successfully attack them.

Experience Points in Tidal Blades: The Roleplaying Game are earned in several ways, primarily through achieving objectives, making discoveries, and so on. There are two significant means of a Player Character gaining Experience Points. The first is ‘GM In trusion’. These are designed to make a situation and the Player Character’s life more interesting or more complicated. For example, the Player Character might automatically set off a trap or an NPC important to the Player Character is imperilled. Suggested Intrusions are given for the four character Types and the Foci. When this occurs, the Game Master makes an Intrusion and offers the player and his character two Experience Points. The player does not have to accept this ‘GM Intrusion’, but this costs an Experience Point. If he does accept the Intrusion, the player receives the two Experience Points, keeps one and then gives the other to another player, explaining why he and his character deserves the other Experience Point. The ‘GM Intrusion’ mechanic encourages a player to accept story and situational complications and place their character in danger, making the story much more exciting.

There is the reverse of the ‘GM Intrusion’, which is ‘Player Intrusion’. With this, a player spends an Experience Point to present a solution to a problem or complication. These make relatively small, quite immediate changes to a situation, such as an old friend suddenly showing up, a device used by a NPC malfunctioning, and so on.

The other means of gaining Experience Points is the Character Arc. A Player Character begins play with one Character Arc for free, but extra can be purchased at the cost of Experience Points to reflect a Player Character’s dedication to the arc’s aim. Each Character Arc consists of several steps—Opening, two or three development steps, followed by a Climax and a Resolution. Suggested Character Arcs include ‘Avenge’, ‘Become a Parent’, ‘Enterprise’, ‘Finish a Great Work’, make a ‘New Discovery’, and so on, that the Player Character can follow and be awarded Experience Points for each stage completed. This formalises and rewards players for engaging in their characters’ objectives. he selection of the Character Arc during character creation signals to the Game Master what sort of story a player wants to explore with his character.

One of the aspects inherent to Tidal Blades: The Roleplaying Game and all Cypher System roleplaying games and settings are the Cypher System’s namesake—Cyphers. Again, first seen in Numenera, Cyphers are typically one-use things which help a Player Character. In the Science Fantasy world of Numenera, they are physical or Manifest devices and objects which might heal a Player Character, inflict damage on an opponent or hinder him, aid an attack, turn him invisible or reveal something that is invisible, increase or decrease gravity, and so on. They are effectively, one-shot Player Character abilities that are free. In the Science Fiction setting like that of Tidal Blades: The Roleplaying Game, Cyphers are parts of Tidal Blade relics which so broken that they can only be used once or fruits that can be harvested. Cyphers are always obvious, but not always obvious in what they can do. Plus only a few Cyphers can be carried at any one time, otherwise there are side effects which can be dangerous. Artefacts can also be found. These are rare, but do have multiple uses.

Intrinsic to the setting of Tidal Blades: The Roleplaying Game is Michronic energy. This powers the technology in and around Navri and can be manipulated to enable time travel. A Michronic Loop or time leap will only take a Player Character back a few seconds into the past, but will enable him to reattempt an action or do another action instead. This can have the side effect of a memory loss. Mechanically, it requires the expenditure of Experience Points to allow a reroll, but devices such as a ‘Time Stretch’ Cyber or a Shell Shield artefact, or the abilities of someone who ‘Delves the Fourth Dimension’ also allow it. Where changes can be made as a result of a time leap, it is considered all but impossible when travelling in hyperdimensional space as the past is fixed whereas the future remains a series of possibilities.

In terms of support, the advice for the Game Master is as good as you would expect for a Monte Cook title, expanding upon this advice with setting specific guidance, such as running challenges. In terms of setting, Tidal Blades: The Roleplaying Game gives a gazetteer of Naviri, a bestiary of both creatures and NPCs, notes on languages, and two scenarios as well as details of various Cyphers and artefacts that the Player Characters can scavenge. Notable locations in the city of Naviri include the Citadel of Time from where the city is governed and much of its technology is developed and manufactured, and the Chronosseum, the Lamara Stadium, and the Droska Ring where festivals and other events are held, such as challenges. Challenges are a major part of Naviri culture and seen as a way of proving oneself, ultimately preparing participants for the Tournament of Heroes. There are numerous different challenges, including races and battles, and each venue has its own. Challenges are not intended for beginning Player Characters, but like the Tournament of Heroes, something for them to aspire to. Other cultural notes include elements such as the fact that killing other people is frowned upon, unless in self-defence, which is more likely the further away you are from the city. The bestiary lists a wide range of creatures, including the legendary Akora, a creature so big, it can be seen from miles as it emerges from the water, the volcano on its back spewing lava and ash! There is a variety of crabs as well as things like the Dragonslime, which has a dragon-like head and an octopus-like body, its tentacles exuding a burning slime, and the Whirlpool Weaver, a manta ray-like beast that can detect, absorb, and even use Michronic energy. 

The first of the two scenarios is ‘Chef Surprise’. This is designed as an introductory scenario in which the Player Characters are asked to help out a restaurant by obtaining some special ingredients from a distant island. Once past finding and equipping a boat, the scenario is all about the trip there and what the Player Characters find on the island, an on-the-run band of thieves hiding out. It presents a moral dilemma for the Player Characters to sort out, but is fairly direct affair and there is advice for the Game Master on running it throughout. The second scenario, ‘A Dock of Their Own’ is more complex and broken into discrete tasks, meaning that it can be run is or spaced out as series of events over the course of an ongoing campaign. The Game Master advice suggests ways in which it could be tied into a Player Character Arc, but leaves some of the scenario set-up to the Game Master, specifically how Player Characters might get involved in the project at the heart of the scenario, which building a dock that they can freely use. It is not a bad scenario, but it is not as immediately useful and ultimately it really works better as a framework into which the Game Master can add her won content.

There is nothing missing from Tidal Blades: The Roleplaying Game per se. It contains everything that a Game Master and her players need to begin playing and set up and support the aims of their characters. It also serves as a good introduction to the Tidal Blades setting. Yet there still remains much that is unexplained and unexplored, most obviously the Droskani Desert and the Flow. Both deserve further treatment and adventures involving them. A more minor issue that the example of play is given at the back of the book rather than the front where it would have been more obviously useful, especially to anyone new to roleplaying as a hobby.

Physically, Tidal Blades: The Roleplaying Game is well presented and written. The artwork, much of it in a cartoon style, is good. The illustrations of both buildings and sea-going vessels in Naviri are excellent. Overall, the artwork does a great job of imparting the look and feel of the world of Tidal Blades, a mixture of anthropomorphism and anime.

Tidal Blades: The Roleplaying Game is a Saturday morning cartoon of a roleplaying game, bright and breezy and positive. This makes it suitable for play by a younger audience, but it is not written for them, so requires a more experienced Game Master. Further, although the Cypher System is not complex, the Tidal Blades: The Roleplaying Game is a still daunting prospect for any fan of the two board games it is based upon, but for the fan who does roleplay, the Tidal Blades: The Roleplaying Game is much easier to grasp, presenting the players with a wealth of character options and an interesting setting to explore.

Quick-Start Saturday: The Official PLANET OF THE APES RPG Quickstart Rules

Quick-starts are a means of trying out a roleplaying game before you buy. Each should provide a Game Master with sufficient background to introduce and explain the setting to her players, the rules to run the scenario included, and a set of ready-to-play, pre-generated characters that the players can pick up and understand almost as soon as they have sat down to play. The scenario itself should provide an introduction to the setting for the players as well as to the type of adventures that their characters will have and just an idea of some of the things their characters will be doing on said adventures. All of which should be packaged up in an easy-to-understand booklet whose contents, with a minimum of preparation upon the part of the Game Master, can be brought to the table and run for her gaming group in a single evening’s session—or perhaps two. And at the end of it, Game Master and players alike should ideally know whether they want to play the game again, perhaps purchasing another adventure or even the full rules for the roleplaying game.

Alternatively, if the Game Master already has the full rules for the roleplaying game the quick-start is for, then what it provides is a sample scenario that she still run as an introduction or even as part of her campaign for the roleplaying game. The ideal quick-start should entice and intrigue a playing group, but above all effectively introduce and teach the roleplaying game, as well as showcase both rules and setting.

—oOo—

What is it?
The Official PLANET OF THE APES RPG Quickstart Rules is the quick-start for The Official PLANET OF THE APES RPG, the roleplaying game based on the Planet of the Apes film franchise. Specifically, it is based on the original 1968 film, Planet of the Apes, followed by Beneath the Planet of the Apes, Escape from the Planet of the Apes, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, and Battle for the Planet of the Apes, as well as the 1974 television series and later novels and comic book series.

It is a eighty-six page, 55.08 MB full colour PDF.

It is decently written and the artwork really is very good.

How long will it take to play?
The Official PLANET OF THE APES RPG Quickstart Rules is designed to be played through in two sessions.

What else do you need to play?
The Official PLANET OF THE APES RPG Quickstart Rules needs a handful of six-sided dice, one of which must be a different colour to represent the Wild Die.

Who do you play?
The Official PLANET OF THE APES RPG Quickstart Rules includes six pre-generated Player Characters. They consist of an ambitious Chimpanzee Statesape, a Gorilla Veteran scout, a Gorilla Constable, an Orangutan Lawgiver, almost muckraking Chimpanzee Journalist, and a Gorilla Serviceape.

How is a Player Character defined?

A Player Character in the The Official PLANET OF THE APES RPG can be a Chimpanzee, Gorilla, Orangutan, Mutant, Human or Tribal Human, or even an ‘Astro-Naut’. In The Official PLANET OF THE APES RPG Quickstart Rules needs, they are either Chimpanzee, Gorilla, or Orangutan. A Player Character has six Attributes—Dexterity, Knowledge, Mechanical, Perception, Strength, and Willpower—and their associated skills. They are rated by a die code, indicating the number of six-sided dice it has as well as a bonus, either ‘+1’ or ‘+2’. A Player Character will also have a memento that grants him a bonus under specific circumstances, background, and motive. In The Official PLANET OF THE APES RPG, a Player Character can also have a Quirk, which enables to have a Remarkable Ability, but those in the The Official PLANET OF THE APES RPG Quickstart Rules do not.

How do the mechanics work?

The Official PLANET OF THE APES RPG Quickstart Rules—and thus The Official PLANET OF THE APES RPG—uses a variant of the D6 System first seen in Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game published by West End Games in 1987. This variant is called the ‘Magnetic Variant’ or ‘D6MV’. To have his character undertake an action, a player rolls a number of dice equal to the attribute, plus a skill, if appropriate. The result is compared to a Difficulty Number, ranging from five or ‘Very Easy’ to thirty or ‘Extremely Difficult’, with fifteen being ‘Average’, to determine the degree of success. If the result is equal to the Difficulty Number, it is a ‘Partial Success’, which means that the Player Character succeeds, but with a setback. If the result is greater than the Difficulty Number, it is an ‘Ordinary Success’, but if three times greater than the Difficulty Number, it is an ‘Exceptional Success’ and the action is achieved with greater speed, accuracy, or effect. Conversely, if the result is less than the Difficulty Number, it can be simple ‘Ordinary Failure’, ‘Exceptional Failure’, or ‘Catastrophic Failure’, depending on how low it is. With an ‘Exceptional Failure’, something bad will happen to the Player Character, but not immediately, whereas with a ‘Catastrophic Failure’, it happens immediately.

One of the dice rolled on an action is always the Wild Die. If it rolls a six, then the Player Character gains an advantage, which can be elevating a successful roll by one step, gaining Hero Points, or granting another Player Character a Hero Point. If the roll is a failure and the Wild Die result is still a success, a player can roll it again and hope that it rolls more sixes to add to the total. If the Wild Die rolls a one, then something bad happens, even if the action was otherwise a success. This can be to add a setback, lowering the degree of success by one step, and so on. Some of these options will grant the Player Character more Hero Points.

Hero Points are also earned from ingenuity or good play. They can be spent to double the Die Code for a single roll, to reroll a result, or to turn a Wounded, Incapacitated, or Mortally Wounded condition into ‘Just a Flesh’ wound.

How does combat work?
Initiative in combat is a group roll, either using the Reflex skill if the combatants are aware of the fight, or just Perception if not. It is rolled at the start of each round to reflect the back and forth of cinematic pulp action of the source material. Hand-to-hand attacks are rolled using the Brawl or Melee skills against the defender’s defence value. Ranged attacks use either the Marksmanship, Thrown, or Gunnery skills, the Difficulty Number determined by the defender’s defence value and the range. A defender—and thus a Player Character—has three defence values. These are ‘Surprised Defence’, ‘Ready Defence’, and ‘Psyche Defence’, each of which is derived from an attribute. Damage—whether from a combination of Strength and a melee weapon’s damage or a ranged weapon’s damage—is compared to the defender’s Strength to give a result of either ‘Stunned’, ‘Wounded’, ‘Incapacitated’, or ‘Mortally Wounded’. The rules in The Official PLANET OF THE APES RPG Quickstart Rules also cover mental trauma and recovery as well as general recovery.

What do you play?

The scenario in The Official PLANET OF THE APES RPG Quickstart Rules is ‘The Deadliest Prey’. In this an affluent, but bored and ambitious Chimpanzee uses his position and connections to organise a lawgiver-sponsored hunt for one of the deadliest of predators to have appeared in years—a meat-eating, ape-murdering Human! So far, he has proved himself to be a highly deadly and elusive threat, and this is further enforced when the members of the current expedition—of which, the Player Characters are a part—are attacked and their supplies destroyed. The Player Characters are forced to rely on their survival skills as they attempt to track down the Human predator. The situation escalates as the Player Characters become the hunted as well as the hunters. The scenario is a sandcrawl in which the Player Characters track down the predators and explore the region. It is decently detailed, but is very much a ‘pull-and-push’ scenario as the LAWGIVER—as the Game Master is known—reacts to the actions of the Player Characters and pushes back at them with the very active threat that they face. The scenario also allows for a greater freedom of action upon the part of the Player Characters as they are free to wander wherever they want in the valley and on the hillsides where it is set. It means that ‘The Deadliest Prey’ is more complex to run than the typical quick-start.

Is there anything missing?
No. Not as written. However, it is disappointing that the quick-start does not use the rules for Quirks and Remarkable Abilities to show off better how special the Player Characters are. The Official PLANET OF THE APES RPG Quickstart Rules includes a good introduction to the history and background to Planet of the Apes that also provides the general viewpoints of the various factions, starting with the apes. It also incudes lots of references to the full rules and what is to be found in the full rulebook for The Official PLANET OF THE APES RPG. Which does become a little wearisome.

Is it easy to prepare?
Yes. The Official PLANET OF THE APES RPG Quickstart Rules is easy to prepare.

Is it worth it?
Yes. The Official PLANET OF THE APES RPG Quickstart Rules is a very good looking product that does a good job of introducing both the future that is Planet of the Apes and the rules to the roleplaying game, along with a solid adventure that gives the Player Characters more agency than most quick-start adventures and is thus more complex to run.

The Official PLANET OF THE APES RPG Quickstart Rules is published by Magnetic Press Play and is available to download here.

Review 3000: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness

1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.

—oOo—

In 1984 and 1985, the breakout comic was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, written and drawn by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, and published by their Mirage Studios. It was an independent black and white comic that told the adventures of the eponymous quartet of four genetically-mutated turtles trained under a pet rat, Master Splinter, to fight rival ninja, including the Foot Clan, and other threats, such as aliens. Combining humour and stories with a darker edge than Marvel Comics like Daredevil and The New Mutants, the comic book was a hit and not only continued to be published by Mirage Studios for the next thirty years, but was heavily licensed, pushing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles into the mainstream. Since 1987, there have been five television series based on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and eight films. However, in the forty years since the first issue of the comic, there has only been one roleplaying game—Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness was published in 1985 by Palladium Games, a company best known at that point for 1983’s Palladium Fantasy Role-Playing Game and 1984’s Heroes Unlimited. It was designed—or rather redesigned in a matter of weeks after Palladium Games was unhappy with the original submitted version—by Erick Wujcik, who most notably would go on to create Amber Diceless Role-Playing. The result was a fast-paced, engaging, if imperfect roleplaying game packed with art from Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman, that looked like it was a lot of fun. And if you were a teenager when Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness was released, it was, because Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was and were cool. Perhaps because of the speed in which it was rewritten, perhaps because it is a Palladium Games book, there is ‘cookie cutter’ feel to some parts of the roleplaying game—the alignment system, the equipment list, and the weapons—which all very feel imported from Palladium Games’ other roleplaying games that used the Megaversal system, like the earlier Ninjas & Superspies. There are certainly some parallels between the two, not least of which are the fact that they were both written by Erick Wujcik, but they do not feel like a natural fit to the comic book universe of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. That aside, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness proved to a be a big hit for Palladium Games, selling very well until the release of the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles television series and the first film, when the toning down of the edginess and darkness of the original material meant that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was no longer cool.

Nevertheless, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness was cool in 1985. At just one-hundred-and-twelve pages, it does not have a lot of space to waste. It starts by pointing out the animal characters are common to comics, if not roleplaying games, so the roleplaying game is giving players that option. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness is designed as a supplement to Heroes Unlimited, the superhero roleplaying game published by Palladium Games, but can be played as a standalone game as it is complete. It also rationalises why it uses a random character generation system rather than a point buy system, which was then becoming popular, such as with Mayfair Games’ DC Heroes Roleplaying Game, Victory Games’ James Bond 007: Role-Playing In Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and Steve Jackson’s Man to Man: Fantasy Combat from GURPS, the precursor to the full release of the system the next year. What this boils down to is that “Excellent players can role-play ANYTHING…”, the Game Master can create interesting villains as much the players interesting characters, and randomness reflects real life. This is followed by quite description of what a roleplaying game is before leaping straight into character creation.

A character in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness is defined by eight attributes—Intelligence Quotient (I.Q.), Mental Endurance (M.E.), Mental Affinity (M.A.), Physical Strength (P.S.), Physical Prowess (P.P.), Physical Endurance (P.E.), Physical Beauty (P.B.), and Speed (Spd.). The base attributes range from three to eighteen, with results of sixteen or more granting bonuses, though low rolls do not impose any penalties. A character will also have Hit Points and Structural Damage Capacity or S.D.C., essentially stun points. He has an Animal Type, which be anything, including dog, cat, mouse, frog, monkey, cow, pig, chicken, goat, sheep, turkey, wolf, coyote, fox to elk, moose, boar, sparrow, robin, blue jay, eagle, owl, escaped pet bird, lion, tiger, leopard, baboo, camel, and buffalo. All animals found in North America, including those in zoos and safari parks. The list, of course, includes the turtle. He will have a Cause of Mutation, the reason why he is anthropomorphic and intelligent. This can be due to a random mutation or an accident, but will primarily because he was a research project of some kind, either growing up in a researcher’s home or even being deliberately trained as an assassin! This background will determine how many skills he will have and often, how good a combatant he is, and his basic attitude towards humans, the default attitude being one of distrust.

Creating a Player Character in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness involves fives steps. These are rolling for attributes, animal type, and cause of mutation (this will also determine the organisation that will have created the mutated animal and his degree of education), and then spending ‘Bio-E’ or ‘Biological Energy Points’ to mutate the animal. Each animal type has a pool of ‘Bio-E’ points that a player can spend to make it more anthropomorphic and give it hands that grip like a human, speech like a human, and stance like a human, as well as its own intrinsic animal abilities. For example, the aardvark has tunnelling and digging, and the elephant has a prehensile trunk, advanced hearing, and thick skin. ‘Bio-E’ points also account for size. So, if an animal is small, the player has to spend ‘Bio-E’ points to make it bigger, but is given ‘Bio-E’ points to spend if a bigger animal needs to be smaller. The aim here is to make the Player Characters roughly about the same size and of roughly the same capability. It was a way of balancing wildly different character types, but still left something to be desired. In addition, ‘Bio-E’ points can be spent on psionic powers.

After this the player chooses his character’s skills. These will include a variety of skill programmes, scholastic and physical skills, and secondary skills. From amongst these, a Player Character should definitely select a martial arts package, whether that is Hand-to-Hand Basic, Hand-to-Hand Expert, Hand-to-Hand Expert, Hand-to-Hand Assassin, Hand-to-Hand Martial Arts, or Hand-to-Hand Ninjitsu, since part of the roleplaying game’s title includes the word ‘Ninja’ and it does have an emphasis upon combat. Plus, there is a variety of Weapon Proficiencies for various weapons, many of the melee weapons drawn from Japanese culture and history. There are Modern Weapon Proficiencies too, but these tend to be the province of NPCs rather than Player Characters, in keeping with the source material, though there is nothing to stop a Player Character learning one. Lastly, the player selects an Alignment and purchases equipment. The process is not difficult, but slightly cumbersome. It does allow for players to create a group of similar characters a la the turtles of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Name: Aaron
Level: 1
Alignment: Principled (Good)
Animal Type: Aardvark
Mutation Cause: Rescued and adopted from a private company by a friendly researcher whilst it hunted him.
Human Features: Full Hands, Full Speech, Full Stance
Natural Weapons: Claws (1d6)
Animal Powers: Digging, Tunnelling
Psionic Powers: Sixth Sense

Intelligence Quotient 12 Mental Affinity 12 Physical Strength 19
Mental Endurance 12 Physical Prowess 16 Physical Endurance 18
Physical Beauty 07 Speed 29
Hit Points: 22
S.D.C.: 32

SCHOLASTIC SKILLS
Mathematics: Basic 82%, Read/Write English 60%, Speaks English 60%

MILITARY/ESPIONAGE SKILLS
Pick Locks 35%, Tracking 35%, Wilderness Survival 45%

PHYSICAL SKILLS
Acrobatics (Sense of Balance 65%, Walk Tightrope 65%, Climb Rope 82%, Climbing 44%, Back Flip 65%), Athletics, Boxing, Prowling 64%, Running

SECONDARY SKILLS
Automotive Mechanics 53%, Cook 65%, Computer Operation 65%, Dance 45%, First Aid 55%, Hand-to-Hand: Martial Arts, Land Navigation 44%, Pilot: Basic – Automobile 80%

COMBAT BONUSES
Two attacks/round, +4 Damage, +1 to Strike, +5 Roll with Punch/Fall, +7 Parry, +11 Dodge, +2 Strike with Body Block/Tackle (1d4), +2 to Save versus Coma, Death, and Toxins

NOTES
Fearless of Heights

Mechanically, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness uses Palladium Games’ Megaversal system and is in general, quite straightforward. Skills are percentiles and cannot rise above 98%, with bonuses gained from high attributes, training in physical skills, and gaining Levels. Otherwise, the emphasis in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness is on combat. Once initiative is determined, usually by a roll of a twenty-sided die, combatants roll to attack and defendants roll parry, dodge, or entangle, and so on. A roll of five or more on a twenty-sided die always hits. If the attack roll is less then defendant’s Armour Rating (either natural body or worn armour), damage is deducted from his S.D.C. only. If the roll is over the defendant’s Armour Rating, damage is deducted from his S.D.C. first and then actual Hit Points. A roll of natural twenty is a critical hit and inflicts double damage. If a defendant is hit, his player or the Game Master if an NPC, can choose to parry, dodge, or entangle the attack. This requires a roll greater than the attack roll. This can be done automatically if parrying, but dodging uses up one of a combatant’s attacks. Bullets and energy blasts can be dodged, but not parried. If the attack is with a blunt weapon or with fists, the player or Game Master can for roll for character or NPC to roll with the punch and if successful half the damage. Hand-to-hand combat allows for a variety of different attacks, including punches, kicks, jump kicks, leaps, throws, and so on, as well as the use of various martial arts weapons. The rules for firearms allow for multiple shots per round, since a round actually lasts fifteen seconds, and also automatic fire. They add some complexity to combat and are likely to slow things down whilst melee and hand-to-hand combat is going to flow back and forth a lot more easily.

For example, Aaron the Aardvark is out on patrol one night when he spots Bill the Burglar attempting to break into a house. Aaron’s player states that the Aardvark is going to sneak up on Bill the Burglar and attempt to knock him out. The Game Master calls for Prowling roll first, but Aaron’s player fails this by rolling 83% rather the 64% needed. Since Aaron has failed, the Game Master rules that since Bill the Burglar was being quiet too, he heard the sound of Araon’s claws clicking on the slabs of path. She calls for an initiative roll. The Game Master rolls 17, but Aaron’s player rolls only a 12. With the initiative, the suddenly shocked and frightened at the sight of a five foot tall aardvark Bill the Burglar reaches into his jacket and pulls out a 9 mm Smith & Wesson Model 59 and opens fire! Bill the Burglar has done time at the range and has the Weapon Proficiency: Handgun, but in his state, he opts to blast Aaron with a burst of shots. This gives him a +1 bonus instead of the +3 for an aimed short. Aaron is wearing a vest which gives him an Armour Rating of 10 and 50 S.D.C. The Game Master rolls 16 and one of the shots from the burst hits Aaron, meaning that the damage will be deducted directly from his own S.D.C. rather than the vest’s. Instead of taking the damage, Aaron’s player opts for him to Dodge the attack. Aaron’s player rolls the die and adds his Dodge bonus of +11. He rolls 16 to get a result of 27, meaning he leaps out of the way. This uses up one of Aaron’s actions. Realising that whatever this creature is that is in front of him, Bill the Burglar realises that just blasting away at it, is not going to work. This time, he takes an aimed shot, which gives him a +3 bonus to hit. This time he rolls a 3 for a total of six, which means that Aaron’s vest has stopped the round. Aaron’s player chooses not to Dodge, but instead pounces on Bill the Burglar with a body tackle. Aaron’s player rolls 19, adds +2 to get a result of 21, which definitely means he hits. Aaron’s player rolls for damage, a four-sided dice, +4 for his damage bonus, and inflicts eight points damage to Bill the Burglar’s S.D.C. that he is not fast enough to avoid. There is an oof from Bill the Burglar as Aaron slams into him!

One aspect of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness that is decently handled is Experience Points. Player Characters do improve going up Levels, and so increasing their Hit Points, Skills, hand-to-hand combat skills, and Weapon Proficiencies. Experience Points are awarded not just for killing or subduing menaces, but also ideas clever and useful, performing skills, endangering your life to save others, avoiding violence, and good roleplaying. There is a lot in the list that encourages good gaming.

There is a decent equipment list drawn from other modern-set roleplaying games from Palladium Games as well as an extensive list of Japanese and Ninjitsu weapons, plus equipment for the latter. The Game Master or player wanting more is recommended to check out Heroes Unlimited or The Palladium Book of Contemporary Weapons. The list does include energy weapons since they appear in the comics. A lot of the equipment is intended for use by the police or in espionage.

In keeping with the relative shortness of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness, the section for the Game Master is also short. It is supported by helpful examples of combat and character creation, and there are some notes on matching the scenario to the capabilities of the Player Characters, creating villains and villainous organisations, and how to use Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness with Heroes Unlimited. The bulk of the Game Master dedicated to five scenarios. They include ‘Caesar’s Weasels’, in which the Player Characters track down a gang that has been looting meat packing plants; ‘The Terror Bears’ in which a gang of mutated bears have using their psionic powers to terrorise and then hide in a neighbourhood; ‘Doctor Feral: The Genius of Bio-Spawn’, which details a highly respected scientist who kidnaps mutant animals to vivisect them; ‘Terror on Rural Route 5’, in which mutant animals have taken a school hostage; and ‘The Leg of the Ninja’ which details a Ninja organisation that could grow into a major threat for the Player Characters. ‘Terror on Rural Route 5’ is intended as an introductory scenario, but to be honest, none of the five are actually full scenarios, but rather, set-ups. None of them are bad per se, but rather that the Game Master will need to develop each of them further. Of the five, ‘The Terror Bears’ is the most memorable, since it introduced the four anti-Care Bears—Pain Bear, Fear Bear, Doom Bear, and Nightmare Bear—that parodied a popular animated series of the day. One thing that all five scenario seeds did was provide the Game Master with good range of sample threats.

Rounding out Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness are the stats and write-ups for characters from the comic. This includes the four Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, their friend April O’Neil and others, Shredder, the leader of the Foot ninja clan, and the T.C.R.I. (or ‘Techno-Cosmic Research Institute’) aliens, as well as the Sparrow-Eagles, the sample team characters outlined earlier in the book.

Physically, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness feels a little scruffy around the edges, and not quite up to Palladium Games’ usual neat and tidy standards. That may be due to it being rushed or the artwork that sometimes intrudes into the page. It is engagingly written and what really stands out is the artwork. This is either taken from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic or drawn for the roleplaying game and it really is good, including as it does a couple of short strips, one of which depicts the origins of the turtles. The artwork also gives the book a sense of energy and excitement like you really want to take up your katana and battle ninja in the sewers or aliens on the rooftops of New York. Lastly, it is short—at barely more than one hundred pages—and if not quite as well organised as it could be, its short length makes everything easy to find. It also suffers from none of the bloat or utter lack of organisation that have plagued books from the publisher since, most obviously, Rifts.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness is not perfect. One problem is character generation, which though fun is very far from balanced because it is entirely random. Only very high attributes provide bonuses of any kind, and whilst taking some physical skills will improve them, any Player Character with attributes high enough to provide bonuses is at an advantage. The end results can also vary, so that one character might be a relatively mild manner creature with a college level education or a wild creature with barely any, whilst another is a super-soldier assassin killing machine trained by the military. This in addition to some Player Characters who might look humanoid, others not, and maybe not even able to talk, and given a roleplaying game as heavily focused on combat as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness, the super-soldier assassin killing machine trained by the military is what everyone wanted to play. Another problem is that focus on combat, means that other aspects of the game may suffer such as roleplaying. The advice for creating NPCs is underwritten and the Game Master wanting to create ordinary humans will need to work out how to do that. It is not difficult, but advice would have been useful.

Unfortunately, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness was not free of controversy. In the first printing of the roleplaying game, it included the option for a Player Character to start play with a form of insanity or gain a random later in play as the result of trauma, for example, demonic possession, near-death experience, or torture. Under the list of insanities, it included a list of sexual deviations, which notably featured paedophilia and homosexuality. The idea here was that one of the effects of the trauma was to compel a Player Character to change his sexual orientation. Another bizarrely, was that the Player Character would want to retrain as a psychiatrist! Even so, at the time, this was a tasteless, even offensive, treatment of sexual orientation, especially as homosexuality had been officially declassified as a mental illness for over a decade in 1975. At first, the offending section was covered up by Palladium Books, but then excised from later printings.

Alignment in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness is also a potential problem. An Alignment represents a Player Character or NPC’s attitudes and moral principles and can be one of seven options divided into three categories. ‘Principled’ and ‘Scrupulous’ are both ‘Good’; ‘Unprincipled’ and ‘Anarchist’ are ‘Selfish’; and ‘Miscreant’, ‘Aberrant’, and ‘Diabolic’ are ‘Evil’. The problem, specifically, is that of torture. Only the ‘Principled’ character or NPC will never resort to torture, whereas even the ‘Scrupulous’ will, but “Never torture for pleasure, but may use muscle to extract information from criminals or evil characters.”; the ‘Unprincipled’ will “Not use torture unless absolutely necessary.”; and ‘Anarchist’ “Will use torture to extract information. But not likely to do so for pleasure.” The ‘Evil’ Alignments are worse, and this treatment of Alignment was common to all roleplaying games from Palladium Games, but that does not excuse in any way the suggestion that a Player Character should or can use torture.

—oOo—

Marcus L. Rowland reviewed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness in ‘Open Box’ in White Dwarf Issue 78 (July 1986). He did not come to any clear conclusion, but said, “Fans of the comic will already know what to expect, other readers will need enlightenment. The heroes are exactly what the title implies: large intelligent turtles, trained in Oriental martial arts, and equipped with a variety of Ninja weaponry. Apart from this central joke, the comics pretend to take themselves very seriously. To reflect this, the style of play is completely deadpan, setting intelligent and deadly animals against a background of urban terrorism, gang warfare, juvenile delinquency and random violence.” A more positive comment was made by Robert Neville in ‘Open Box’ in White Dwarf Issue 83 (November 1986) when he reviewed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures!. He opened the review by saying, “TMNT has been one of the surprise hits of the last year, with multitudes of gamers snapping up copies of the rulebook as fast as importers can freight them over to the UK.”

Scott Dollinger reviewed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness in ‘Game Reviews’ in Different Worlds Issue 44 (November/December 1986). He awarded it three-and-a-half stars out of five, said, “What is unusual is that Eastman and Laird have not taken the easy route to fast money and licensed the characters to a combat [sic] that would produce a hastily-made product to cash in on the current popularity of the characters. Instead they have maintained the high quality of the comic by licensing the characters to a smaller but well respected gaming company that takes their time and produces an excellent product. In this case the game Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness was created by Palladium Books and the results are fantastic.” He also added that, “…[T]he $9.95 price tag makes Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness one of the best buys on the market.”

Arcane magazine and editor Paul Pettengale had reason to examine Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness not once, but twice. First in Arcane Issue Twelve (November 1996) in which he made it the subject of the magazine’s regular ‘Retro’ department. He said, “Of the random character generation system and its consequently random results he said, “You can imagine how much potential this had for farcical situations.” whilst of the layout, which he said were badly organised, he added that, “The layout of the rulebook could have been clearer (the martial arts section was together with the skills rather than the combat).” Yet despite this, his conclusion was positive: “…[I]t was a quick and easy game to learn, and the rules for character generation are good ... together with Paranoia, TMNT&OS was one of the most fun, and funny games I have played.”

This was followed in Arcane Issue Fourteen (December 1996) by its inclusion in ‘The 50 favourite RPGs of all time’ based on a reader’s poll at position #36. Arcane’s editor Paul Pettengale commented that, “The rules are badly laid out, but the principles are easy to learn and combat is fluid. So, fine on that score. It’s a superbly fun game to play because of its quirkiness, and the fact that the post-apocalyptic setting has most of California under the ocean. Fantastic fun.”

—oOo—

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness was a big hit upon release. It was the roleplaying game that everyone wanted and just like the comics it was based on, it was cool and it was fun. Tonally though, there are elements of the roleplaying game that are at odds with the comic, even though that comic is grim and gritty and full of cartoon violence. But remove them—and at least Palladium Games removed some of them—and there is still potential for a lot of fun in its pages. If you can get them roughly balanced, then the range of character options based on the eighty animals it includes is huge and the rules are straightforward, if only a little rough. Which to be fair, is an amazing achievement for a roleplaying game designed in five weeks! It is not the greatest roleplaying game or even the best roleplaying game of 1985, but Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness opened up the world of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to roleplaying and let you roleplay strange mutant animals sneaking around in the shadows, fighting crime, stopping alien invasions from other dimensions, and facing off against ninja. Which was very definitely cool in the eighties, and if you want to whisper it to yourself now, it still is forty years later.

[Fanzine Focus XL] LOWBORN Issue 2

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 how another Dungeon Master and her 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 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. Most, but not all fanzines draw from the Old School Renaissance. Some provide support for much more modern games.

Lowborn is ‘An Independent Grim Perilous Fanzine for Zweihänder RPG’. As the subtitle suggests, this is a fanzine for the Zweihänder: Grim & Perilous RPG, published in 2017 and thus modern, but actually a retroclone of another roleplaying game. That roleplaying game is the definitive British roleplaying game, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, published by Games Workshop in 1986.

Lowborn Issue 2 was published in August, 2020. The content begins with with ‘The Dark Order’ by Peter Rudin-Burgess. This is a scenario set in the chancery of Edessa, below the city of Outremer. This is a murder mystery set below the city where single-sex work gangs labour at feeding the great steam turbines. Gang Master Zangi leads a gang of twenty-four free women who, in turn, drive sixty female mutant slaves, all loading city waste into the furnaces. Gang Master Zangi has disappeared, but now her skull has been raked out of Number 2 furnace. Shortly after, a new gang leader is appointed, and then it happens again when another gang master is found boiled alive and a new gang member is also appointed. This is followed by the murder of a bar owner and then another gang master. The scenario is presented with a lot of set-up up front and then followed by the plot hooks and the various genres in which the scenario might be used on. The scenario needs a lot of work to run effectively with clues to connect the murders to the culprits and it is also only halfway through the scenario is it mentioned that it is for Dark Astral: Chapbook for ZWEIHANDER Grim & Perilous RPG, the Science Fiction equivalent setting for the ZWEIHANDER Grim & Perilous RPG. It is mentioned on the cover, though. The map of the lair is by Dyson Logos, so good.

‘New Distinguishing Marks’ by Adrian Kennelly is literally that, a table of entries like ‘No chin’ or ‘Unbending knee’. Chuck Kranz’s ‘Random Space Encounters’ provides twelve encounters, again for Dark Astral: Chapbook for ZWEIHANDER Grim & Perilous RPG. For example, ‘Just like in the TV shows.’ expands to ‘A tear in space erupts of the port barely out of manoeuvring range, but a strong magnetic pull of the anomaly pulls your ship in. A voice in your head echoes, “I have such wonderful sights to show you.” The darkness takes you after being dragged through the event horizon. When you come to your ships nav-computers are not able to gain bearing on where you are… or when you are.” These are fine and again something that the Game Master will need to develop.

It is not quite clear what Sean Van Damme’s ‘Introduction to Assassinations’ quite is, initially, but what it turns out to be is a means of introducing options for the budding assassin. The Claw of Retribution is the largest guild of assassins in the great city and puts up notices on a board at the West Wind Pub, where the guild previously operated from, of small jobs, or rather, assassinations of minor folk that it has been hired to do. Its members can perform them, but it lets prospective members undertake them as a test. There are thirteen such tasks, not always hits or deaths, such as burning down a distillery that is not guild affiliated or forcing a member of the faith to stop preaching in the docks. The Game Master will need to develop the hooks, but there are some fun options here that will support a grittier, dirtier style of play for thug and thief type characters.

‘Order And Corruption: Purity Points’ by Lyle Hayhurst gives an extension to the Corruption Points of ZWEIHANDER Grim & Perilous RPG. Corruption Points are gained for immoral acts, giving in to personal weakness, and even being injured, and will potentially force a Player Character down a dark path. This article suggests another path that a Player Character can go up. By committing acts of goodness, being tolerant of those different to himself, protecting the innocent, giving to the poor, being merciful to a villain, and more, a Player Character can gain Purity Points. Like gaining Disorders for Corruption Points, he can gain Blessings for accruing enough Purity Points like becoming a ‘Friend of Animals’ or gaining a ‘Inner Glow’ of Purity. The article suggests that a Player Character can earn both Corruption Points and Purity Points and need to be tracked, and what this does is add some flexibility and complexity to the play and reward a player for good roleplaying whatever his character’s action.

Ignacio M. writes three entries in the issue. The first, ‘Learning from Different Arcanas’, suggests a way in which an Arcane Magick user can cast magick from a Wind other than his own. For each symbol that Player Character has to pass through to get between his Wind he has studied and the one he wants to cast from, there is a penalty to the Incantation test and if the Channelling test is failed, then extra Chaos dice has to be rolled. The rule is quick and simple and potentially dirty if thing goes wrong! He also suggests ‘New Combat Actions’ with ‘Oh No You Don’t’ which enables a Player Character to study the ebb and flow of the battle and interrupt the action of a foe; ‘Goad and Deter’ to slow a foe’s action down; and ‘Leave It Open’, in which he tricks a foe to gain a bonus on his next attack. These are decent additions.

Lastly, ‘Carnival II’ continues the description of a magical carnival—a common trope in roleplaying games inspired by Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay such as Zweihänder: Grim & Perilous RPG—begin in Lowborn Issue 1. However, unlike in many cases what lies behind the magic in the carnival is not necessarily dark or dangerous, but that rather its various members are all anthropomorphic animals. They include a middle-aged anthro-rabbit who controls his perfect puppets though his voice alone and Priscilla, middle-aged anthro-hedgehog who is also a very skilled physician, alchemist, and herbalist, and exotic dancers that somehow entice audience to buy the overpriced drinks at their show. The latter is perhaps the only real danger in the carnival, but others might see it differently and act accordingly. This adds another three tents and their occupants to add to the three previously described, so there is yet room for expansion. If there is an issue for the article, it is the inclusion of the anthropomorphic NPCs and whether that fits a Game Master’s campaign. She, of course, has the right to change such details and the various NPCs could be hiding something else instead. Bar some scenario ideas or hooks, ‘Carnival’ offers an intriguing and different type of circus, one with plenty of room for expansion and development.

Physically, Lowborn Issue 2 is a bit untidy and rough around the edges, plus it needs a slight edit. The layout is also a little tight in places.

Lowborn Issue 2 is a mixed bag with some content more useful and more interesting than others. ‘Introduction to Assassinations’ is packed with great hooks for a bruising lowlife campaign and like ‘Order And Corruption: Purity Points’, has plenty of roleplaying potential. Elsewhere, several of the articles are rough and could be clearer in their set-up, let alone their execution.