Kaves of Karshoon

Although there is no scenario in the rulebook for Shadow of the Demon Lord, the first RPG released by Schwalb Entertainment following a successful Kickstarter campaign, one of the excellent decisions upon the part of the designer has been to release support—and release it early—in the form of scenarios for the game. This way a gaming group can get playing quickly, even if they are just using the core rules presented in Victims of the Demon Lord: Starter Guide and an adventure. In addition, the publisher has also released Tales of the Demon Lord, a complete mini-campaign that takes a party of characters from Zero Level up to Eleventh Level. In the meantime, the tenth adventure is Beware the Tides of Karshoon.

Beware the Tides of Karshoon is the fourth adventure written for characters who have entered the Expert Path, that is of Third Level or higher. It is written by T.S. Luikart, author for such diverse supplements as Ruins of the North, published by Cubicle Seven Entertainment for The One Ring RPG and the Dragon Age: Dark Fantasy Roleplaying Set 2 from Green Ronin Publishing. It comes as a six page, 11.99 MB PDF. Physically, Beware the Tides of Karshoon is decently presented. Notably, the cartography is excellent, done in the same three dimensional style as The God Below, but here to much better effect. The adventure is decently written, although it does feel as it comes to an abrupt halt without the ramifications really gone into.

The adventure is set in Gateway, the oldest city in the Northern Reach. Here a dead
pirate’s vengeful curse has seized a poor, ramshackle neighborhood in a fearful grip, the denizens of Bilgewater having been beset by a rash of mysterious thefts and incidents. These include the destruction of a school, its teacher, and its students by  a rogue wave, as well as people being torn apart in broad daylight into bloody gobbets of flesh by things unseen. The people of Bilgewater believe that a ‘pirate’ curse has been placed upon for their failure to maintain an ancient monument in black basalt carved with symbols of the sea and dedicated to ‘Karshoon’. The local councilor hires the player characters to investigate, pointing them towards ‘Obsidian Triumph’, a shrine below ‘Karshoon’ that is said to be home to a giant pearl called the ‘Ocean’s Tear’. She believes that if the pearl can be retrieved and returned to the monument, then the curse will be ended.

This is, of course, only partly true... Beware the Tides of Karshoon is essentially a mini-dungeon that is more straightforward than the plot at first appears. As a dungeon, it has an aquatic theme, one that has been taken advantage of by the scenario’s actual antagonist. As a result, the scenario feels much like it could be set in Freeport, the pirate city setting published by Green Ronin Publishing, but then the writer did coauthor Skull & Bones, the same publisher’s pirate sourcebook for the d20 System and  did contribute to Buccaneers & Bokor, Adamant Entertainment’s d20 System magazine devoted to the Golden Age of Piracy. The scenario really does not have a piratical element, but it merely has that feel.

What this means is that the scenario has some nicely done monsters for the player characters to face and it makes good use of the aquatic environment. Though not necessarily spectacular, Beware the Tides of Karshoon is a solid enough  adventure. 

Love, Hate, & Survival II

If you have been wondering about the crew and passengers of HMS Arden, cast adrift in a lifeboat in the Atlantic Ocean in 1913, then doubtless you have been playing too much Lifeboat. Published by Gorilla Games, best known for the rare combination of light roleplaying and space combat against a Star Trek-like background that has a darker side to it than is usually hinted at in Gene Roddenberry style setting that is BattleStations—just finishing up its Kickstarter campaign for its second edition—Lifeboat is darkly humorous, social game of survival and inter-party rivalry in which the survivors must steer their way to land all the whilst fighting for the contents of the boat’s locker, for food, and for water as well as trying to avoid being knocked overboard and placed at the mercy of the circling sharks. If the Lifeboat could make it to land, then one of the survivors might have accrued sufficient loot, ensured that his Secret Love also survived, and his Secret Enemy died enough that he score enough Victory Points to win!

The good news is that the survivors of the sinking of the HMS Arden have made it to shore—even if it is in the South Pacific rather than the Atlantic and a desert island rather than the mainland. Now Lady Lauren, Sir Stephen, the Captain, the First Mate, Frenchy, and the Kid must start all over again, surviving the dangers of island and scrounging not only the jetsam washed ashore from the wreck of the HMS Arden, but also the pirate loot to be found on the island. Which should keep them busy until a passing ship spots their signal fire and everyone—still alive that is—can be rescued. This is the set-up for Desert Island, Gorilla Games’ sequel to Lifeboat, which is designed to be played by between four and six players, aged thirteen and up.

Funded following a successful Kickstarter campaign, Dessert Island consists of fifty Food Cubes (forty brown cubes and ten yellow four-cube cubes), twenty black skull-shapped Fate Tokens, three Ship Tokens, thirty red Wound Tokens, the rules sheet, and one hundred cards. The latter includes six Character cards, six Character Location cards, six Love and six Hate cards, six Location cards, thirty Fate cards, and forty Scavenge cards. The six Character cards are Lady Lauren, Sir Stephen, the Captain, the First Mate, Frenchy, and the Kid, each of which is illustrated in an Edwardian style, and is marked with values for their Size (a measure of their strength in combat and their capacity to take damage, ranging between three and eight) and Survival Value at game’s end (ranging between four and eight). Each character also has a Special Ability. Lady Lauren removes Fate Tokens from herself whereas Sir Stephen can add them to anyone, the Captain removes Fate Tokens from others, the First Mate can forage for more Food, Frenchy gains Fate Tokens back from a fight, and the Kid can steal Food from his neighbours. There is a corresponding ‘I Hate...’ and ‘I Love…’ card for each character. The Location cards are numbered from one to six and each grants a special action. The Beach (1) enables a Character to distribute Scavenge cards; when hunger strikes, there is always extra Food to be found in the Jungle (2); Food is lost in the Swamp (3); there is always extra Food to be found in the Spring (4) when foraging; there is more likelihood of the signal fire being seen from the Hill (5); and the Cave (6) is a safer place to hide.

The Scavenge cards consists of food, loot, and tools. For example, Sardines are equal to five Food and a Coconut just one; a Chamber Pot is worth five Victory Points, whilst a Chalice is worth seven; and a Blunderbuss +10 to any fight or turns any Boar or Monkey Event into three Food. The Fate cards represent events such as animal attacks—Boars (Lose Two Wounds), Monkeys (Lose A Card), or Rats (Lose All Food); Illnesses (Lose A Wound); and Tsunami (scour the island of Food and Signal Fire Tokens, and inflict a Wound on everyone). In addition, each Fate card gives the ‘Wood’, ‘Torch’, and ‘Ship’ icons that indicate whether or not the signal fre has been lit and spotted, as well as a number and character name that indicates who might be the subject the event on the Fate card.

Game set up on the Desert Island is similar to that aboard the Lifeboat. Each player randomly receives a Character card and an ‘I Hate...’ and an ‘I Love…’ card each. t is possible for a character to love himself, which makes him a Narcissist who will score double Victory Points for surviving, though of course, it means that no one else has him as his Secret Love and so will not willingly support him. Similarly, a character can hate himself, making him a Psychopath who will score Victory Points for the deaths on the island… Everyone receives a single Scavenge card with the rest of the Scavenge deck placed off the Beach. The Location cards are laid out in order, from one to six and the Characters are randomly placed in the Locations.

Each turn represents a week spent on the island. Each week begins with the Character drawing Scavenge cards equal to the number of survivors and deals them out as he wants. Of course this allows him first choice and to assign a good Scavenge card to the Character he secretly loves and a bad one to the Character he hates. Then everyone draws two Fate cards and plays one as part of an action, discarding the other. In addition, one Fate Token is placed on the Location corresponding to the number on the Fate card and another on the Character who is named on the Fate card. The Character with the most Fate Tokens at the end of the round will be subject to the event on the first Fate card played (or the most if multiple Fate cards of one type are played). Again, this enables a Character to protect the Character he secretly loves and target the Character he hates. 

Each Character now takes a single action. This can be ‘Forage’ (gain Food indicated on the Fate card), ‘Signal Fire’ (add to the Signal Fire), or Steal. When a Character decides to Steal, it can be to take Food or a Scavenge card from another Character or it can to be to force to exchange Locations. Now a Character can accept this and take the consequences—lose Food or a Scavenge card, or his Location, otherwise a fight ensues. A fight is a simple matter of comparing the combatants’ Size values against each other, the higher Size always beating the lower. Stalemates are always resolved in favour of the defendants, but both attacker and defender can boost their respective Sizes by using weapons like the Spear or Shovel and by getting allies to aid them. The attacking Character also gets to add the number on the Fate card played. The loser, or losers, if allies are involved, all take a single Wound. Should a survivor suffer wounds equal to his Size, he dies, and blocks the Location he is on.

In addition, the Characters who initiated the fight each receive a Fate Token as do any allies who joined on either side. So joining fights increases the chance of an event affecting a Character. The Characters are of course free to negotiate deals for their aid in helping one side out or another, but all deals are final and a Character cannot withdraw from a fight.

In the Lookout phase, the Characters check for Wood and Torch icons to see that the signal fire has been lit and for Ship icons to indicate that their signal fire has been spotted. This needs to happen four times for the Characters to be rescued. Lastly, the event indicated by the Fate cards occurs and everyone needs to consume Food equal to their Size. Then all of the Fate tokens are removed and a new round ensues…

Desert Island ends if everyone dies, in which case everyone loses. If the survivors are spotted enough times, they will be rescued and they can total their Victory Points, whether from Loot, keeping the Character they love alive, or killing the Character they love. The player with the most Victory Points is the winner.

Physically Desert Island is nicely done. The art on the cards has a charmingly period feel and both the Ship and skeleton-shaped Wound tokens are a nice touch. The rules could be a little clearer in places, but they are readable and after a play-through or two of the game, easy to understand. A set of ‘Sequence of Play’ cards would have been nice, rather than just the one.

Like Lifeboat, this is another nasty, cutthroat social game that is quite finely balanced. In both games the balance is between the need to gather resources or Water/Food, attempting to steer closer to land/attract ships, and protecting and killing the other Characters for Victory Points. Desert Island is not quite the same game as there is more of means to direct the action or events through the Fate cards against a Location or Character. So to an extent the players have the ability to influence where the events are going to happen. Another balancing point in the game is between the need for somebody to survive in order to avoid everyone losing against the drive for everyone to kill the Characters that they hate. In this, Desert Island is a semi-cooperative design.

Above all, the best element in Desert Island is going to come from the players. The Characters they play will influence their actions, but their ‘I Love…’ and ‘I Hate…’ will ultimately drive their actions. This will be coloured by the Characters that they play, which will allow them to bring some roleplaying elements into the game. Desert Island is a terrifically themed game of survival and infighting.

The US Election Game I

Like clockwork, the US Presidential Election rolls around every four years and with it, come a slew of US Presidential Election themed board and card games. Although strangely, they really only seem to appear in years where is the chance of switching from one party to the other, so Republican to Democrat or vice versa. So Z-Man Games’ 1960: The Making of the President was released in 2007 and followed by Campaign Manager 2008 in 2008. 2016 is no different with a half a Super Pac’s worth of games with a presidential theme coming our way in the run up to the US Election in November, most of them funded through popularity and pledges, just like the US Election itself. Of course, these games are funded via Kickstarter rather than through the ballot box. 

The first of these is The Contender: The Game of Presidential Debate. Funded via a successful Kickstarter campaign and published by The Contender, this is a social or party game in the mode of Apples to Apples or Cards Against Humanity. So it works by one player posing a question from a card to the other players, who will use their answer cards to supply answers to the questioning player who will select what he thinks is the most suitable answer from these cards. The person who played the selected card wins that round. Then the next player gets to pose the question whilst everyone else provides the answers, and so on. Play continues one of the players has won an agreed number of rounds.

Designed to be played by three or more players, aged eleven and older, The Contender uses this same mechanic, but with an extra twist that comes from its theme, that of US Presidential Debates. In The Contender, the game is played with Topic cards rather than question cards and Argument cards rather than answer cards. The player setting each Topic is the Moderator and the players making the Arguments are the Candidates. The Contender comes with forty Topic cards and some five hundred Argument cards. Each Topic card has a subject and a question intended to be read aloud to the Candidates, for example, ‘Guns – Candidate, the debate over the Second Amendment has only grown louder in the last five years. As president, do you intend to pull the trigger or dump ammo on the right to bear arms?’ or ‘Police Brutality – Candidate, law enforcement has come under fire as viral videos of alleged police misconduct make headlines. Do you believe our boys in blue are seeing red, or is the current outrage white-washing a complex issue?’ All of the Topic cards deal with contentious subjects.

The Argument cards are slightly more complex. They are divided into three types—Attack, Distract, Fact. Each gives a short phrase that can be used as an Argument and the source from which it is drawn. So the ‘You’re a national embarrassment.’ is from the Bill Clinton quote, “We can’t have any more instances like what happened when Mr. Bush went to Japan and the Japanese prime minister said he felt sympathy for our country.”; the Distract card, ‘I would like to be the first to say…’ is based on Jimmy Carter’s “Tonight I would like to be the first to say a few words about this most special office, the presidency of the United States.”; and the Fact card, ‘I’ve had actual responsibility’ is based on the Sarah Palin quote, “I guess a small-time mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities.”

At the start of the game each Candidate receives five Argument cards and the person with the most presidential hair is the first Moderator and poses the first Topic. Then going round the table each Candidate can respond with one, two, or three Argument cards. A Candidate does not have to play all three cards at once, but can choose to hold some for use later in the round, typically as a response to another another Candidate’s Argument. Once a Candidate has played three Argument cards though, his contribution towards the debate about the Topic card is over for that round.

For example, Dave, Debbie, and Louise are playing The Contender and it is Louise’s turn to be the Moderator. She turns to the others and says, “Christmas. Candidate, over 50 percent of the voters who describe themselves as Christian claim there is a culture war on Christmas. Do you believe the reason for the season is under fire? Or should those concerned realize there’s more than one way to deck the halls?”

Dave’s opening statement is, “I will not rest until all Americans have Christmas.” (Fact) to which Debbie responds, “Are you taking crazy pills?” (Attack) and “I will not support this boondoggle.” (Attack). Dave looks over at Debbie and raising his eyebrows, says, “Suck it up.” (Attack) “We have to strengthen Christmas.” (Fact). Debbie gets in one last comment, “You can’t even spell Christmas.” At which point each Candidate has played his or her three Argument cards and it is up to the Moderator to decide upon the winner, at least for this topic. Louise decides that Dave has made the most cogent argument and awards him the Topic card as a victory point.

At the end of each round, each Candidate draws back up to five Argument cards and the next player in turn becomes the Moderator. Play continues like this until the Candidate with most Topic cards wins. Or at least this is how I think that The Contender is played. The problem is not the basic structure of the game, but rather the use of the Argument cards. Does each Candidate read them out verbatim or can he adapt them? Neither is suggested. Nor is the use of the Attack, Distract, or Fact cards explained. The lack of an explanation does leave the rules open to interpretation, but coming up with your own explanation or interpretation should not really be much of an issue.

Physically, The Contender comes in the same style of box as Cards Against Humanity, but has an obviously American theming in terms of its graphical design. The cards themselves are sturdy enough, easy to read, and the quotes on the Argument cards are interesting to read.

In addition to its underwritten rules, the other issue with The Contender is its subject matter. The players have to be interested enough in the process of the US Presidential Election to want to play this game. Firstly, this makes it of limited interest outside of the USA; secondly, it makes it of limited interest to a younger audience—especially the suggested age of eleven plus; and thirdly, whilst the subjects presented on the Topic cards are rude or adult in nature, they are potentially controversial in nature. There may be some Topic cards that the Candidates do not want to debate. Whatever the players’ attitudes towards the subject on the Topic cards, The Contender is best played with an older audience and with more than just three players unless you want to play out the final US Presidential Debates.

Now despite its underwritten rules, The Contender is nicely themed game that does a bit more with the traditional Apples to Apples, using the Attack, Distract, and Fact Argument cards to help Candidates build their arguments in each round. There is also plenty of scope for the players to roleplay too, taking on a particular stance for one Topic, switching to another for the next Topic, and so on, whether playing it straight or for comedic effect. Ultimately, The Contender: The Game of Presidential Debate is a solidly themed party game that gets you ready for all of the hoopla of the US Presidential Elections.

Strange Ways

The universe is stranger than we think… Beneath our world and the rest of the natural universe is a sea of dark energy known as the ‘Strange’ that can be accessed, traversed, and sailed by those in the know who have the ‘Spark’. Dotted across this chaotic sea are any number of unique worlds, varying wildly in size and possessing their own laws of reality. These are ‘Recursions’, the closest of which, caught in the shoals around the Earth, are reflections of the human imagination, even of humanity’s fiction. Many of these Recursions can be accessed from the Earth and then from each other by those known as the ‘Quickened’. As ‘Recursors’, only they possess the ‘Spark’ necessary to make the Translation between Recursions and thus explore the Sumerian-influenced high fantasy that is Ardeyn or the advanced bio-tech dystopia of Ruk, walk the fog-bound streets of 1890s London in the Recursion known as 221b or confront the Cthulhu Mythos in Innsmouth, and more. There are adventures to had, discoveries to to made, and treasures to be found—not just gold or jewels, but powerful devices known as Cyphers that can bend reality on each of the Recursions. Yet there are dangers too—dragons and shoggoths, jabberwock and sarks, weird drugs and great artifacts, and worse—planetovores, great creatures or constructs that devour whole worlds. With the Strange open to the Quickened, Earth is vulnerable to attack by these creatures, and there are factions on Ardeyn, Ruk, and the Earth that would see the planet attacked and consumed by a planetovore. Equally there are many Quickened who would not see this happen.

This is the setting for The Strange, the second RPG to be published by Monte Cook Games, following on from the highly successful, award-winning Numenera. Released following a successful Kickstarter campaign, The Strange uses the same Cypher System mechanics as Numenera and shares some of the same concepts, but its genre and setting is radically different. For The Strange does not involve just the one genre or the one setting, but it is a multi-genre, world-hopping RPG in which the player characters can jump from one world or Recursion to another world or Recursion. Each time they jump, they not only change worlds or Recursions, but also bodies and powers. Further, they might change their gender, their species, and their genre, from modern day Earth to fantasy to Science Fiction to… Some of these Recursions are all original to The Strange, but others are derived from fiction, such as the works of H.P. Lovecraft, Lewis Carroll, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and others.

In Numenera, there are just three character types—Glaives, Nanos, or Jacks. Glaives are warriors, either wearing heavy armour and wielding heavy weaponry or relying light arms and armour to give them movement and agility. Nanos are sorcerers, capable of tapping into the Numenera to alter reality or learn more about it, wielding ‘Esoteries’ to command nano-spirits. Jacks are somewhere in between, being flexible in what they can do, capable of learning to fight, using ‘Esoteries’, and more. In The Strange, the three are replaced by Vectors, Paradoxes, and Spinners. Vectors are physical types, whether it is about combat, movement, or action; Paradoxes are scientists/sorcerers, who can use science, psionics, spells or similar to draw upon The Strange and alter reality; and Spinners are charismatic storytellers, persuaders, and dissemblers.

At their core, each character is defined by three stats—Might, Speed, and Intellect, and a descriptive sentence. This sentence has the structure of “I am a [adjective] [noun] who [verbs]”, where the noun is the character’s Type; the adjective a descriptor, such as Clever or Intelligent, that defines the character and how he does things; and the verb is the Focus or what the character does that makes him unique. For example, ‘I am a Tough Vector who is Licenced to Carry’, ‘I am an Intelligent Paradox who Solves Mysteries’, and ‘I am an Appealing Spinner who Works the System’. A player will also need to assign some points to the three Stats and choose some options in terms of Background—how the character became a Paradox, Spinner, or Vector—and select some skills from the Type. The choice of descriptor and the verb further defines and modifies the character, whilst the Background and the Connection help hook the character into the setting. Characters begin at Tier One and can advance as far as Tier Six, gaining skills and abilities along the way. The three sample characters attempt to showcase what the system can do. The Paradox is a native of Earth, the Spinner is from Ardeyn, and the Vector is a native of Ruk.

Huongsem Kim
‘I am a Clever Paradox Nano who Solves Mysteries’
Tier One Paradox
Might 08 (Edge 0)
Speed 10 (Edge 0)
Intellect 18 (Edge 1)
Effort 1

Cyphers (3): (Three Cyphers selected by the GM)
Revisions: Exception (1 Intellect), Premonition (2 Intellect), Investigator
Skills: Trained in the Strange, Trained in Lies & Trickery, Trained in Mental Defence, Trained in Computer, Trained in Perception, Trained in Identifying & Assessing danger/lies/quality/importance/function/power, Practiced with light weapons
Equipment: Street clothes, light handgun, laptop computer, torch, utility knife, mobile phone, $500

Thre’un
‘I am an Appealing Spinner who Shepherds the Dead’
Tier One Spinner
Might 10 (Edge 0)
Speed 12 (Edge 1)
Intellect 14 (Edge 1)
Effort 1

Cyphers (2): (Two Cyphers selected by the GM)
Physical Skills: Trained in Persuasion, Trained in Pleasant Interaction, Trained to Resist Persuasion & Seduction Attempts, Practiced with light and medium weapons
Twists: Fast Talk (1 Intellect), Understanding (2 Intellect)
Equipment: Ardeyn clothing, light armour, quarterstaff, explorers, incense, 10 matchsticks, 400 crowns

Kishiev
“I am a Graceful Vector who Controls Infiltrates”
Tier One Vector
Might 12 (Edge 1)
Speed 14 (Edge 1)
Intellect 10 (Edge 0)
Effort 1

Cyphers (2): (Two Cyphers selected by the GM)
Moves: No Need for Weapons, Fleet of Foot
Skills: Trained in Unarmoured Speed Defence, Trained with Running, Trained with Climbing, Trained in Balance & Careful Movement, Trained in All Physical Performing Arts, Practiced with weapons
Equipment: Ruk Clothing, light armour, knife, light tools, umbilical, account with 50 bits

In comparison to Numenera, there are fewer options when it comes to a player choosing a Focus in The Strange. The problem is not only that there are fewer of them in The Strange, but they are divided between the different Recursions. What this means is that there are certain Foci that a Recursor from Earth cannot have until he Translates to a Recursion where said Focus appears. Until then, he is limited to those available on his home world or Recursion. For example, a character from Earth who is ‘...a Strange Paradox who Conducts Weird Science’ might Translate to Ruk where he becomes ‘...an Strange Paradox who Processes Information’. Now some of the Foci given are ‘Draggable’ in that when a character Translates, a Focus can go with him unchanged. He still has the choice to change his Focus if he wants to. As much as the idea of Translation and changing the Recursor when he goes from one Recursion to another fits the setting of The Strange, this limited number of Foci also restricts choice in terms of character design and in comparison with Numenera, where there were no limitations in terms of Foci choice, The Strange could really do with more Foci and thus with more choice. Now to an extent this is offset by the default set-up in The Strange where every player character begins the game aware of the Strange, Recursions, and the ability to Translate, and can thus choose freely from all of the Foci.

Mechanically, The Strange uses the single mechanic of the Cypher System—the roll of a single twenty-sided die against a Difficulty, ranging from zero up to ten. The actual Target Number is the value of the Difficulty multiplied by three, thus giving a range between three and thirty—any action with a Difficulty of zero is automatic. Modifiers, whether from favourable circumstances, skills, or good equipment, can decrease the Difficulty, whilst skills give bonuses to the roll. A character can also spend points from his Stat pools—on a one-to-one basis—to reduce the Difficulty, though a player should bear in mind that the Stat pools reflect his ability to act and take damage when attacked. The cost of spending points from a Stat pool is reduced by its associated Edge, as are the use of a Paradox’s Revisions, a Spinner’s Twists, and a Vector’s Moves. In some cases, this will reduce the cost to zero, thus reducing it to an innate action. For example, Huongsem has an Intellect Edge of 1, which reduces the cost of his Exception and Premonition Revisions. His Exception Revision costs one point from his Intellect pool to use, but his Intellect Edge is also one, so that reduces the cost to zero and means that he can do it instinctively. No effort is required. Whereas, his Premonition Revision costs two points from his Intellect pool, so he still needs to spend a point of Intellect to use it because his Edge reduces the cost by one. Results of nineteen indicate a success and a Minor Effect, which might be extra damage in combat or something listed for a character, such as ‘Hitting a Muscle’ for the ‘Carries a Quiver’, which inflicts Speed damage as well as ordinary damage. A roll of a natural twenty also inflicts extra damage as well as a Major Effect.

While the system is simple enough—even if the GM adds any of the given options—the radical, even elegant aspect to the Cypher System mechanics is that the GM never, ever rolls a die. So whilst a character rolls to attack as normal, when an opponent attacks him, the character rolls to avoid the attack. Essentially the mechanic focus of the game is always on the player characters and they are always the focus of the action and the story. At the same, the shift for the GM is on running and presenting the story, not the dice rolls, and as a development of this idea, player characters receive Experience Points in again, another radical fashion when compared to other RPGs. First and foremost, they are not earned for defeating opponents, overcoming challenges, and so on, but for finding interesting things and making discoveries. Secondly, a player character gains them when the GM ‘intrudes’ on the game in storytelling terms to present the character with a challenge or difficulty, such as his crossbow string snapping whilst in combat or the rope slipping whilst climbing. Accept this ‘Intrusion’ and the character earns two Experience Points, one of which he must give to another character. A player could reject this ‘Intrusion’, but that would cost him an Experience Point. If a character rolled a natural one at any time, the GM can give an ‘Intrusion’ that cannot be bought off. However it comes, a GM ‘Intrusion’ replaces the need for him to roll dice and encourages him to participate in the telling of the story.

In addition to their own abilities, the player characters in The Strange can find and use cyphers. They come in two types. Devices are simple items, commonly in the form of pills or grenades, such as a Curse Bringer, Monoblade, or Melt All, that have a one-time use and in each case grant a Recursor an amazing power—if only for that moment. Recursors are not expected to hold onto devices such as this for very long and can only carry a few anyway, but they are expected to use them at will. This is for two reasons. First, the GM will always let the player characters find more, and two, using cyphers gives a Recursor to shine and look great. More desirable are the artifacts, as they have greater endurance and more obvious application. For example, a Dragontongue Weapon or a Skill Bud. Unfortunately, artifacts have a depletion factor, a chance that they will cease to function. Artifacts are not always perfect and may have quirks that the GM can use as ‘Intrusions’. In the setting of The Strange, there are a number of Quickened who have learned to Translate and who go Recursion Mining for cyphers to bring back home.

A good proportion of The Strange is devoted to describing its background and setting. This begins by examining the mechanics of Translation and what is important here is that Translation takes time and effort—it is not instantaneous. Now it can be sped up and the process can be eased so though it is not as disorientating—and each player character Type can participate to ease and hasten the process, but it never takes less than ten minutes and it can be as long as four hours. Further, when Recursors first Translate to a Recursion, they always appear at a set location and later, if they Translate from a different location and then come back, they will always appear at the new location. This firmly places the emphasis in The Strange on adventuring and gaming on the various Recursions or in the Strange itself rather than on the act of Translation. There is little chance of there being a chase from one Recursion to another because of both the time delay and location limitations. Most of the time, Translation is an act of concentration, but there are gates and devices, often permanent ones, that connect Recursions and make Translating easy.

The description of the various Recursions begins with the Earth. Since it is our Earth, it really only looks at the Earth and its connections to The Strange, primarily the various agencies with an interest in these connections. The primary agency is The Estate, a private science foundation dedicated to protecting the Earth, exploring the Strange, and preventing the development of technology that might ping the Strange and attract the attention of a planetovore. The default set-up for The Strange has the player characters as agents of The Estate. Other agencies, like the government funded OSR (Office of Strategic Recursion) want to use the technologies and discoveries from other Recursions to weaponise them, whilst the September Group wants to to build advanced technology.

As well as the Strange itself—how to navigate it and what can be found there—the two Recursions that receive the most coverage are Ardeyn and Ruk. Formed from the prison of an evil god called Lotan the Sinner, Ardeyn is a world of mighty magics with a lengthy history. Lotan the Sinner’s gaolers numbered  the Maker, his Seven Incarnations, and their angelic qephilim servants, but since their fall long ago, Ardeyn has been without protection. In their stead, humans and fallen qephilim seek to protect the world against dragons, soulshorn, homunculi of the Betrayer, invaders from alternate recursions, demons of Lotan, and worse. Where Ardeyn is a fantasy world, Ruk is a Science Fiction Recursion. Located in the shoals of Earth, Ruk is a bio-tech, bio-punk near-dystopia, that although self-contained, is constantly expanding. Rife with factions, the not-quite human inhabitants of Ruk have lost their history and constantly search for what they call the True Code, the original basis for their race. The capital, Harmonious, is relatively safe, but beyond this floating city there are spore worms, venom troopers, free-roaming constructs from the Qinod Singularity, and glial storms. Where most of Ardeyn are not aware of Earth, it hangs faintly in the sky over Ruk and many of the inhabitants of Ruk see the future of Earth as being tied to that of Ruk. Other Recursions include Atom Nocturne, an anime-influenced world of youth and psychic superpowers; Catalyst, a post-singularity Recursion of runaway transformation; Crow Hollow, a world-tree home to anthropomorphic crows and ravens who run the Glittering Market; and more.

Both the Strange and all of the Recursions in The Strange are described in some detail and extensively supported with places, personalities, and possible adventure hooks. Indeed, both Ardeyn and Ruk could have RPG settings all of their very own. This is in addition the RPG’s bestiary and list of cyphers, the latter complementing the various artifact descriptions given for each Recursion. In the long term, the player characters have an interesting for the Strange—they can create a Recursion of their own. This requires a Starseed and no little effort, primarily in the form of Experience Points. This is an interesting option, but the rules for do feel slightly underwritten, but doubtless there will be a sourcebook devoted to this at some point.

As with Numenera, the GM advice in The Strange is well written and helpful. It includes sections on how to use the rules, building stories, and specifically running a game of The Strange. Together this covers things such as how to set task difficulty levels and using GM Intrusions properly, how to introduce the game and understanding the mechanics, challenging the player characters and how to involve characters from different Recursions. It is supported with a single adventure, ‘The Curious Case of Tom Mallard’, plus various adventure hooks. Like the RPG itself, the adventure assumes that the characters begin the game aware of the Strange.

Physically, The Strange is as well presented as Numenera. The writing is clear and the book is redolent with superb, full colour illustrations. It is also clearly laid out and organised. Yet at the same time, The Strange is messy. In a good way and a bad—which comes of it being a multi-genre, multi-world RPG. This means that the artwork has to depict a variety of things and styles; and it does that. The setting though, is not a coherent whole, but interconnected parts held together by a framework. This may make the RPG difficult to run at the outset—despite the good advice for the GM—because there are too many options and because The Strange has one singular flaw.

As an RPG, as The Strange has a flaw that hinders initial play, or at least anyone’s first approach to the game. Simply, it utterly lacks an ‘elevator pitch’, a simple statement that defines what the game is about and what the characters do. In comparison, Numenera did this—it had a whole chapter up front that told the GM and the player what the game was about. The Strange lacks this and in an RPG as conceptually complex as it, it seems like a very odd omission. In its stead there is a leaflet from The Estate, but it is not an adequate pitch for the game. Worse, it is not until fifty pages into The Strange that it is fully explained how a Recursor translates and switches to a new body—in the process becoming part of the new Recursion—rather than translating in whole. There are hints up until this point, but it seems odd not to have this vital piece of information up front, especially when the default set-up in The Strange is that the player characters will be aware of it from the start of a campaign. Similarly, it feels odd not to have a scenario in The Strange that introduces its setting and concepts, which might again have helped with this issue.

Despite the oddities of these omissions, The Strange is a well-produced, interesting RPG. Although there have been many RPGs that have done world-hopping, genre-hopping, and so on, like Tri Tac Games’ Fringeworthy, Chaosium, Inc.’s Worlds of Wonder, or West End Games’ TORG, but oddly the game that The Strange is closest too is TSR, Inc.’s 1993 Amazing Engine. In that RPG, a player created a core character and could take said core character from one game to another, from the alien-monster blast ‘em up of Bughunters to Tabloid!, a spoof comedy setting of sensationalist journalism. The process though, was between games/settings and not within the setting of the game itself, whereas it is within the setting of The Strange. The multiple settings also means that The Strange is also greatly expandable, with new Foci and Descriptors, new Recursions, and so on. This is in addition to expanding upon the Recursions given in The Strange. Similarly The Strange is also infinitely expandable with the GM’s own material, whether of his own creation or derived from his favourite fiction, film or television series, or even RPG. (It should be noted that the Recursions in The Strange based on other sources are all based on out of copyright intellectual properties.)

As a framework, The Strange is a rich, well realised RPG. It is not quite as accessible as it should be and not all of the settings are quite as rich as they would be if the game was just devoted to the one setting. Nevertheless, the settings are interesting, varied, and rife with gaming possibilities. 

A Shadowed Sanctuary

Although there is no scenario in the rulebook for Shadow of the Demon Lord, the first RPG released by Schwalb Entertainment following a successful Kickstarter campaign, one of the excellent decisions upon the part of the designer has been to release support—and release it early—in the form of scenarios for the game. This way a gaming group can get playing quickly, even if they are just using the core rules presented in Victims of the Demon Lord: Starter Guide and an adventure. In addition, the publisher has also released Tales of the Demon Lord, a complete mini-campaign that takes a party of characters from Zero Level up to Eleventh Level. In the meantime, the ninth adventure is The Star’s Refuge.

The Star’s Refuge is the third adventure written for characters who have entered the Expert Path, that is of Third Level or higher. It is written by Monte Cook, best known as a co-designer of Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition and as designer of Numenera, and comes as a five page, 8.07 MB PDF. Physically, The Star’s Refuge is decently presented. The writing is clear and simple, and the illustrations are good.

The scenario is set in an area known as Troll’s Fist during the growing reach of the ‘shadow’ of the Demon Lord, his influence having grown as the wall has weakened between our reality and the Void where he is imprisoned. Thus the undead walk the land, swarming village after village; trolls and other creatures strike at the remnants of the Empire with seeming impunity; and cultists boldly sacrifice the innocent in droves in order to bring the Demon Lord’s imminent arrival ever closer… To the ordinary peoples of the blighted lands east of the Troll Mountains, there appears to be no hope, but there are legends of a portal in the wilderness that leads to sanctuary from the growing madness and murder—a sanctuary known as the Last Refuge.

Unfortunately it has grown to be too much for Troll’s Fist. What forces there were that might have protected the region have long retreated to the fastness of West Hold and those who remain have no protection—not even the player characters can stand against the dangers that stalk Troll’s Fist. Whether they have come to the region for altruistic reasons, because they have reasons of their own for seeking out the Last Refuge, or because they have been hired to do so, perhaps the player characters might be able to persuade the remaining inhabitants of the region to evacuate, though even this is fraught with danger.

This set up is one that the GM of Shadow of the Demon Lord will have to develop himself, but the threat from monsters—human and otherwise, should be ongoing as the player characters first seek information about the location of the Last Refuge and and second, seek it out directly. The bulk of The Star’s Refuge is devoted to the sanctuary itself and more importantly, the means of gaining entrance. This lies at the heart of the scenario because the adventurers have to ask themselves how far they will go in order to find sanctuary for the inhabitants of Troll’s Fist. The scenario sets up a moral dilemma for the player characters and…

Well that is it. That is really all there is to The Star’s Refuge. There is no predetermined outcome and whatever happens is really down to the decisions taken by the player characters.

The Star’s Refuge is a challenging encounter. There is nothing wrong in that, but it is a challenge that may not find a home with all groups, for whom it will be unsatisfying, even unenjoyable, to both play and answer.  For others though, the very nasty moral dilemma at the heart of The Star’s Refuge will be lead to a session or two’s worth of memorable gaming.

There, but mostly Back Again

2013 was an exceptional year for Lovecraftian investigative horror for it saw the release of not one, but two campaigns. Both start from, and take the investigators in, radically different directions. One is Eternal Lies, written for Trail of Cthulhu and published by Pelgrane Press, whilst the other is The Sense of the Sleight-of-Hand Man: A Dreamlands Campaign for Call of Cthulhu, published by Arc Dream Publishing. Written for use with Call of Cthulhu, Sixth Edition, The Sense of the Sleight-of-Hand Man is radical in three ways. First, it is set in the Dreamlands, that realm of dreams that can be accessed by many Earthly sleepers, and is thus only the second campaign to be set there after Chaosium, Inc.'s The Dreaming Stone. Second, it begins where many Call of Cthulhu campaigns end up (see spoiler below). Third, it forgoes the traditional onionskin format that have underpinned the majority of the fifteen or so campaigns published for Call of Cthulhu since 1982.

Originally published as a scenario in Worlds of Cthulhu #6 in 2009, The Sense of the Sleight-of-Hand Man has since been expanded and published as a full campaign following a successful Kickstarter campaign. For its inspiration it draws from H.P. Lovecraft’s Dream Cycle of stories—‘The Doom That Came to Sarnath’, ‘The Cats of Ulthar’, and ‘The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath’ in particular, as well as being inspired by Wallace Stevens’ poem of the same name, ‘The Sense of the Sleight-of-Hand Man’. Despite the majority of the campaign being set in the Dreamlands, it actually begins in New York in 1925. Here the player characters—they are not investigators in the traditional sense of Call of Cthulhu nor are they yet Dreamers—begin the campaign as opium addicts, driven to their addiction by trauma suffered in the Great War, by artistic temperament, by delving too deeply into things that man was not meant to know, and so on. They all also owe their supplier money and it is the payment that he extracts that initiates the campaign proper. He does this by flinging them into the Dreamlands and it is from here that the player characters must find their way back to Earth. What follows is a languorous, almost Arabesque campaign that sees the Dreamers trek back and forth across the northern regions of the Dreamlands, all the whilst being taunted and manipulated by the Black Man of the West. It is a standalone campaign in two senses. First, because it is set in the Dreamlands—not the most normal of campaign settings, and second, because the campaign set-up calls for characters with addictions—not the norm in investigators either, though the campaign being set in 1925 does mean that it can lead into some of Call of Cthulhu’s major campaigns. Should the Dreamers find their way home, that is...

Although The Sense of the Sleight-of-Hand Man takes place within the Dreamlands, the Keeper need not own a copy of H.P. Lovecraft's Dreamlands: Roleplaying Beyond the Veil of Sleep to run it. Rules are provided for handling Directed Dreaming, the ability to manipulate dream world around the Dreamers, which replaces the Dreaming skill from H.P. Lovecraft's Dreamlands. Also absent is the Dream Lore skill, but the Cthulhu Mythos skill is retained and the campaign provides multiple means to learn more of it. That said, having access to H.P. Lovecraft's Dreamlands will be useful in terms of background material.

So that SPOILER…

In most Dreamlands scenarios, the Dreamers’ dream selves travel nightly to the Dreamlands whilst leaving their physical, Earthly bodies behind. In The Sense of the Sleight-of-Hand Man, the Dreamers are flung bodily into the Dreamlands, but not in their own bodies—and not even their own genders. Now Miskatonic River Press’ The Legacy of Arrius Lurco did something similar and just like in that campaign, this is an audacious piece of campaign design. One that is not done ‘just because’, but rather because it means is that the Dreamers arrive doubly disconcerted, first from being literally in a strange new land, and second from being in a strange new body. It also drives the Dreamers on through the campaign to escape their brave new world and reclaim their bodies.

Once in the lands of dreams, The Sense of the Sleight-of-Hand Man takes place in the North and West of the Dreamlands. It begins in Sarkomand and from there the Dreamers are free to search for a way out of the Dreamlands wherever they want… The city of Inquanok is nearby, but the best routes seem to lie south, possibly near the cities of Lhosk, Ilek-Vad, Sarnath, and Ulthar. Suggested routes take the Dreamers by road, by sea, and by underground and there is also the suggestion that events will take them down one route, but divert them into another, and so on. Along the way there are likely to be encounters with the Men of Leng, Gugs, Moonbeasts, and Ghouls amongst other denizens of the Dreamlands. There are also plenty of strange encounters to be had, some dangerous, some whimsical, and some helpful. Then there are opportunities to interact directly with elements drawn from Lovecraft’s fiction, most notably Earth’s greatest Dreamer himself, Randolph Carter.

The tone and feel of The Sense of the Sleight-of-Hand Man is also slightly odd in comparison to traditional Call of Cthulhu campaigns. It is at times languid, at others frantic, but for a fair amount of the time it does not feel as if the Dreamers can do much beyond being led around by the nose. This is understandable since the Dreamers do need a guide and it does give the Keeper a key NPC or two to roleplay almost throughout, but it does limit player agency. Likewise in comparison to standard Earthbound Call of Cthulhu campaigns, the number of ‘magical’ items and artefacts that the Dreamers can have access to in The Sense of the Sleight-of-Hand Man is astounding, almost as if they are not playing Call of Cthulhu, but Dungeons & Dragons. Yet again this is understandable. After all, the Dreamers are in a strange and wondrous land, a fantasy of the mind; none of the magical items are really all that powerful; and they do fit the dark, ‘swords & sorcery’ style of the campaign.

Further, in comparison to standard scenarios set in the Dreamlands, The Sense of the Sleight-of-Hand Man is a deadlier affair. In most of those scenarios, the investigators are doing no more than endangering their dream selves, but in this campaign, the Dreamers are in danger of losing their physical bodies—not just the ones in the Dreamlands, but the ones in the waking world also. A way is provided to overcome both the physical and mental damage that is likely to be suffered by the Dreamers, but this does not stop the campaign from dangerous if not outright deadly in places. 

There are two definite issues with the campaign. One problem not dealt with in a satisfactory fashion is that of replacing lost characters. There is a means late into the campaign, but it does feel as if it is a little too late by then. The other is an odd ommission, that of the details and stats of the Dreamlands counterpart to the Dreamers' supplier on Earth.* Although he is mentioned in passing, he is ignored for the rest of the campaign. This is not an issue if the Dreamers focus entirely upon getting out of the Dreamlands, but the likelihood is that most players will want answers as to why their characters are in the Dreamlands and what their characters can do to get their bodies back. Now to some extent some of these questions are answered by other NPCs, but the even greater likelihood is that other players will simply want to have their Dreamers take revenge upon said counterpart. This is disappointing since the roleplaying opportunities afforded by allowing the Dreamers to hunt down and confront the counterpart could have been interesting.

*Note: I am indebted to Mr. Mike Mason for reminding me of this ommission. I successfully made my Spot Hidden roll to note the ommission, failed my Idea roll to realise its full significance, and then failed my Own Language roll to include in the first draft of the review.

Now The Sense of the Sleight-of-Hand Man is not an easy campaign to run and that is primarily due to its structure. The issue is that this structure is not linear as more traditional onionskin style campaigns for Call of Cthulhu tend to be as their investigation process takes the investigators from the start of the mystery to its resolution. Here there is no one path from the start of the campaign to its end. Rather, there are multiple, almost parallel paths and the Keeper will need to prepare more than one to account for his players’ choices. This is compounded by the fact that the Keeper can do a bait and switch with these routes—send the Dreamers down one route before sending them down another. Indeed, the inference in the campaign is that this is what the Keeper should do, compounded by the emphasis upon one particular route. To an extent there is nothing wrong with this, in part because the campaign has a story-like quality which means that it should weave back and forth a little and also because the direct route is likely to be the least interesting story to play out. The advice for handling this could have been stronger and easier to use.

Physically, The Sense of the Sleight-of-Hand Man is ably, even spaciously presented, with wide margins and the author’s own artwork. The wide margins are a useful space for supplementary information, but do make the pages of the books look underused when the margins are left empty. Another issue is that it could be better organised, but proper preparation will get around this hindrance. It should be noted that although it is written for use with Call of Cthulhu, Sixth Edition, like all good releases for the RPG, The Sense of the Sleight-of-Hand Man could be run using Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition. Similarly, the campaign could be run outside of the 1920s with relative ease.

Where scenarios for Call of Cthulhu set in the Dreamlands have been about getting into the realm of dreams, The Sense of the Sleight-of-Hand Man is all about getting out. It is as fresh and as original a treatment of the Dreamlands as there has been in over three decades of Call of Cthulhu being in print and without a doubt is the best book ever published for the Dreamlands. Unfortunately, The Sense of the Sleight-of-Hand Man stands out for those reasons rather for the quality of the campaign. This is not to say that The Sense of the Sleight-of-Hand Man: A Dreamlands Campaign necessarily a bad campaign, but it needs a very good Keeper to really bring out the best of that quality.

Give it up for the Giant

Although there is no scenario in the rulebook for Shadow of the Demon Lord, the first RPG released by Schwalb Entertainment following a successful Kickstarter campaign, one of the excellent decisions upon the part of the designer has been to release support—and release it early—in the form of scenarios for the game. This way a gaming group can get playing quickly, even if they are just using the core rules presented in Victims of the Demon Lord: Starter Guide and an adventure. In addition, the publisher has also released Tales of the Demon Lord, a complete mini-campaign that takes a party of characters from Zero Level up to Eleventh Level. In the meantime, the eighth adventure is The Giant’s Tribute.

The Giant’s Tribute is the first adventure released for Shadow of the Demon Lord for characters who have entered the Master Path, that is of Seventh Level and above. It comes as a seven-page, 22.36 MB PDF. As it opens, it finds the adventurers on the Emperor’s Road between Sixton and Crossings in terrible weather and thus have decided to seek warmth and shelter in the nearby village of Rowanrest. When they arrive, the player characters find the village in disarray—its inn has been assaulted by a giant! In fact, the inn has been assaulted by Roog Muttonfist, a lazy brute of a creature who for the last ten years has been monthly demanding tribute from the villagers in the form of beer and sheep. This has proved to be a small price to pay to avoid having their houses knocked down and the likelihood of the giant feasting on them. The previous evening though, Roog changed his demands—he wants people, not sheep. The villagers, are of course, terrified, since they know that the giant might destroy the whole town and kill everyone if they refuse him.

So the question is, what caused Roog Muttonfist to change his appetite? This is the mystery at the heart of The Giant’s Tribute—and it is a good little mystery. Rowanrest is beset by terrible circumstances outside of its control and if the adventurers decide to investigate, their research efforts will take them to various locations surrounding the village. The majority of these efforts will lead to a fight, but there are also some quite nice roleplaying encounters too, notably with the inhabitants of another village. That said, thematically, The Giant’s Tribute does feel similar to the Novice Path scenario, The Apple of Her Eye. Here though, the villagers are definitely the innocent party. The scenario does end with a big stand up fight, one that is relatively complex, so the Game Master will need to prepare it with some care.

Physically, The Giant’s Tribute is well written and a straightforward affair. It requires another edit in places, but since it is a PDF, the likelihood is that this can be done with ease. The main issue is with the scenario’s cartography—or rather its single map. It is an attractive affair with an Old School, almost Tolkienesque feel to it. Unfortunately, some of the location names are hard to read and they do make the map hard to read and its locations difficult to find at a glance.

Perhaps though, The Giant’s Tribute might be seen as lacking the depth that an adventure for the Master Path might demand. Otherwise, The Giant’s Tribute is a decent, enjoyable adventure that offers a session or two’s worth of play.