Escape to New York

With Everyday Heroes, publisher Evil Genius Games did for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition in 2022 what d20 Modern did for Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition in 2002. That is, facilitate and handle roleplaying in the here and now, in the world we see outside our windows, on our television screens, and at the cinema. It went even further though by doing something not actually included in the rulebook. This is providing access to a number of source and scenario supplements all based upon a surprising range of films. In fact, a range of films which nobody expected to see turned into roleplaying material despite their popularity in the hobby. These consist of The Crow™ Cinematic Adventure, Escape From New York™ Cinematic Adventure, Highlander Cinematic Adventure, Kong: Skull Island Cinematic Adventure, Pacific Rim Cinematic Adventure, and Total Recall Cinematic Adventure. These showcase at least, what Everyday Heroes can do and are, equally, six good reasons to play Everyday Heroes. Each entry in this Cinematic Adventure series draws on the core film it is based upon as well as extra source material, to provide background material for the setting, new options for Player Characters, advice for the Game Master, and a full-length adventure, ready to play.

Escape From New York™ Cinematic Adventure is the second cinematic adventure sourcebook for Everyday Heroes. It is based on the 1981 film directed by John Carpenter, in which a convicted criminal has to rescue the president of the USA from the maximum security prison that the prisoner is about to be incarcerated in and get out again in order to save the world. The prison is the whole of Manhattan Island, the convicted criminal is decorated war hero turned cynical criminal Snake Plissken, and once you go into New York Max, you never come out again. The film combines fantastic world-building, radical anti-authoritarian themes, and hard-bitten cynicism in a post-apocalyptical setting of a late seventies style New York left to fend for itself. Plus, it has to be said, a really rather good soundtrack. However, the film leaves the Escape From New York™ Cinematic Adventure with a problem. This is that there simply is not enough information in the film to build a world, so the authors have, for example, created a timeline that fits both the world and Snake Plissken’s background. In this, the supplement does draw upon the sequel, Escape from L.A., but that is extent to which the sequel is referenced. Thankfully.

Although the focus of the Escape From New York™ Cinematic Adventure is on the Manhattan of New York Max, it extrapolates a world in which successive Republican presidents intervene heavily in the Middle East, pushing the USA and the USSR into direct conflict with each other, though not a war. War is declared in 1987 when a disguised Soviet tanker explodes and unleashes the Reagent 18 nerve agent. It will kill millions, but many more are turned into psychopathic ‘crazies’ after exposure. There is no cure and when martial law is declared due to the subsequent unrest and the United States Police Force founded to deal with it, both the crazies and criminals beyond rehabilitation from across the USA are incarcerated in the newly established and blockaded New York Maximum Security Prison. This takes place a decade before the events of the film and the Escape From New York™ Cinematic Adventure fills in details here and there, pushing the timeline all the way to 2013 and the end of Escape from L.A. This gives plenty of room still for the Game Master add her own stories and details to the broadly drawn background.

This is supported by details of the US government, the United States Police Force (USPF), and the US military, plus two revolutionary groups—the Guiding Star Family and the National Liberation Front of America (it is the latter that triggers the events of Escape from New York), before moves on to describing New York Max. This covers everything from the levels of security around it and the economy—mostly barter, to the crazies and organisations in the prison. ‘A Number One’, of course, is The Duke, but there are numerous street gangs in the old city too. These are given thumbnail descriptions, as well as their colours and territories. Some of the gangs are more than the traditional idea of gangs—like those depicted in The Warriors—in New York. For example, the Hippies, of course, manufacture recreational drugs, the Flying Dragons are renowned as skilled tailors, the Broadway Boys promote the arts and culture, and the Nightshades have cleared parts of Central Park and its soil of Reagent 18 to grow food. There is good range and variety of gangs given here. A map of Manhattan is marked with their respective turfs along with notable locations of the island, including Broadway, the Empire State Building, and the World Trade Centre. Overall, it is not a huge amount of detail, but it is enough for the Game Master to work with and again, leaves room for her to add her own details.

The new Hero options in the Escape From New York™ Cinematic Adventure include a number of new Backgrounds and Professions. The former consists of Convict, Legend (such as Snake Plissken, despite the fact that everyone thinks he is dead), New York Native (like Cabbie in the film), and War Veteran (like Bob Hauk in the film), whilst the latter consists of Nightshade Druid, Drug Cook, Fixer, Gang Soldier, Prison Gladiator, and Rat Catcher. Most suggest roles, like Nightshade Druid, a member of the Nightshades gang, on New York Max or why the character is there in terms of the crimes he committed. The Revolutionary Soldier and the USPGF Soldier lend themselves to other origins and explanations for why they are involved with the prison. Three Classes are given. The are the Gutter Rat, Motorhead, and Street Warrior. The Gutter Rat is an Agile Hero who uses a mixture of tricks, charm, lies, a certain slipperiness, and vicious attacks to get what he wants. For example, he has Play the Fool to distract others and Slippery which gives Advantage on checks to escape bonds and grapples, as well as Tricks such as Gloat and Hobbling Strike. The character of Romero, the lieutenant of The Duke, would be a Gutter Rat. The Motorhead is also an Agile Hero, but modeled on the character of Cabbie—as played by Ernest Borgnine. So the Class specialises in driving and piloting, in and out of combat, and his Motor Pool abilities include Daredevil Driver, Quick Fix, and Repo Man. His suggested equipment includes Molotov Cocktails! the Street Warrior is a Strong Hero and is essentially good at fighting, but not more than that. All three Classes are quite specialised, the Street Fighter in particular, but all fit the feel of the film.

As a then alternate future, the technology of Escape from New York looks and is clunky and this is embraced in the Escape From New York™ Cinematic Adventure. It notes the fact that firearms are rare in New York Max and many weapons are improvised or constructed from what was available, such as crossbows and spiked clubs. One notable inclusion is the Fun Gun, tranquiliser pistols firing darts loaded with designer drugs that cause confusion and euphoria in a target. Despite the lack of petrol, vehicles feature heavily in Escape from New York, leading to the possibility of vehicular combat using the rules from Everyday Heroes. The supplement gives a list of modifications such as body spikes, oil slick devices, and spike droppers which lend themselves to Car Wars or Mad Max style combat, for which the Motorhead Class would be very useful. And course, the list of modifications includes Decorations, so yes, you too, can mount chandeliers on your 1977 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham if you want to. Which you do—and not just because they give the owner advantage on the first Charisma check in an encounter. Other equipment in the Escape From New York™ Cinematic Adventure includes details of Reagent 18, the Survival Pod used by President Harker to escape Airforce One, and the Vascular Explosive Shot implanted in Snake Plissken to force him to complete the mission.

The new rules are limited to adding Street Cred as a means of handling reputation and trade and the effects of Reagent 18 on the poor unfortunates who would become the crazies. For the Game Master there is advice and discussion of the themes to Escape from New York—the authoritarianism, anarchy versus freedom, street gangs, Science Fiction, and of course, New York itself. This is not in great depth, but it makes the point clear for each theme and it is supported by a series of scenario hooks and a three-act adventure. This is ‘Liberty lost’, a prequel to the film set in 1993 in which a team of five convicted criminals are about to be incarcerated onto New York Max, when they are pulled aside and given a mission which if completed successfully will grant them a presidential pardon each for their crimes. The mission is of course, against the clock. Revolutionaries of the National Liberation Front of America have infiltrated Liberty Island—the base for the USPF’s operations in maintaining the blockade of New York Max—and stolen the arming device for the nuclear bomb planted in the Statue of Liberty that is only meant to be detonated if the walls of the prison completely fail. The revolutionaries have fled on Manhattan Island and are threatening to detonate the bomb in twenty-four hours unless their demands are met. They are shot onto the island via a submarine and once on New York Max, must find their find and fight their way through crazies and gangs, assault the Empire State Building (because), and engage in a street race that is mostly to the death. It is a fairly tightly plotted scenario, but it is attempting to emulate the style of the film and it is to the sound of ticking clock, the countdown to the detonation of the nuclear bomb. The scenario makes use of the various elements and rules presented in the supplement, though only Romero from the film makes an appearance in the scenario. Thematically, the potential destruction of the Statue of Liberty illustrates the limits to which the authorities will go… There are notes too on running a shorter version of the scenario, possibly for a convention, but that would be to miss out on a lot of the fun of the action-packed adventure.

Lastly, ‘The Cast’ chapter provides stats and details of a variety of NPCs and more. They start off with the antagonists from the film including The Duke, President Harker, and Romero, though there are no stats for The Duke’s champion Slag, who is killed by Snake Plissken in a deathmatch. Although there are details for Bob Hauk, USPF commissioner and Rehme, the USPF captain, the Game Master is advised to use stats taken from the Everyday Heroes core rulebook. These are followed by the stats for various NPCs from the scenario, ‘Liberty lost’, then those from the cast of the film—Plissken, Cabbie, the Brain, and Maggie—and lastly, five pre-generated Player Characters for use with ‘Liberty lost’.

Physically, Escape From New York™ Cinematic Adventure is cleanly, tidily presented. Unfortunately, the sourcebook is not illustrated with images from the films and does not illustrate all of the characters from the film. Whilst the artwork instead of using photographs is serviceable enough, they are only approximations of the characters in the film.

The Escape From New York™ Cinematic Adventure is about as a close to a sourcebook for the film as is possible. That it is not more than this, is down to the lack of wider information and background about the setting than the fault of the authors. In fact, the authors have squeezed as much potential out of Escape from New York as they possibly could in the presenting the great world-building of the film and adding to it in order to make it gameable. This is definitely a gaming supplement for fans of Escape from New York and of eighties action and Science Fiction cinema.

Between Light and Dark

The world of Fyera is divided. Once it spun upon its axis like any other, but that stopped centuries ago. Known as ‘The Ruination’ it divided the world into three. One side of the world would always face the sun, the ‘Lands of the Old Days’, their waters and rivers long gone, the red soil dried into endless swathes of sand and heat. The other will never know the sun, ‘The Darklands’, frozen and diseased withered, but within its permanent shadow lurk beasts and beings of the dark unknown before The Ruination. Between them is the band known as the ‘Penumbra’ which runs right around the world, where the survivors of The Ruination have learned to adapt to a world with no diurnal cycle, no night and day, at the mercy of attacks from deep within The Darklands. In response, the peoples of Fyera constructed the Cressets of Vigil, great towering portable beacons of light, and placed them further into The Darklands, bringing a light that reveals both the lands and their secrets lost to the dark and advanced warnings of attacks upon Penumbra. These attacks seem endless as if the very darkness would reach out and swallow the last of the light. The Ruination would also have an effect upon the survivors’ souls, for they would be granted ‘The Gifts of Fyera’, abilities that none of the peoples of Fyera had possessed before The Ruination. These gifts can help in holding back the darkness, but there is the ever-present danger of the valiant defenders of the Penumbra falling into the Darkness as a result of committing or witnessing sins done in the name of the Light, of their souls being scarred by both the Light and the Dark.

This is the setting for Soulmist: A Journey from Darkness to Light, a dark fantasy setting compatible with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. Published by Black Lantern following a successful Kickstarter campaign, this is the first roleplaying game and setting to be published by a Greek publisher and reach the English-speaking market. It is designed primarily for the player, with details given on creating five new Races, eight new Classes, between three and five Sub-Class per Class, new Feats, spells, and magics, and more. The core rulebook for Soulmist: A Journey from Darkness to Light is not quite standalone, the Player’s Handbook needed for the full list of spells at the very least.

The Soulmist: A Journey from Darkness to Light core book begins with an examination of the three subsystems that measure a Player Character’s relationship between the Light and the Dark. These are ‘Erebos’, ‘Sparks of Light and Darkness’, and ‘The Scales of Nebula’. They derive from and feed into the ‘Soulmist’, the Nebula of Souls that surrounds the world of Fyera and reflects back onto it. The more that Dark souls pass into the Soulmist and the more the world is given over to cold, fear, and despair, whilst more Light souls increases the light, warmth, and innocence of the world. Erebos—‘darkness’ or ‘gloom’, named for the primordial Greek God of Darkness—is measured between zero and ten. At zero, a Player Character is a ‘Torchbearer’ who embodies the Light and has empathy for both the beings of the Light and those in the shadows; at three and four, he is ‘Wavering’, able to feel the touch of the dark, but all the better for seeing the Light; and at eight and nine, he is ‘Tarnished’, his sense of self lost even as he is concerned with self-preservation. At ten, he is an ‘Apostate’ of the dark and all but lost. When a Player Character is in a situation where an act—witnessed or his own—his player has to make an Erebos Roll. Depending upon the situation, the Player Character can lose or gain levels of Erebos, and this can lead him to acquiring a Soulscar. For example, at levels one to three, the Lesser effects of a Soulscar might be that the Player Character suffers from Separation anxiety, Panic attacks, Insomnia, and worse. At levels seven and eight, the Greater effects are either mania or illusions. In many cases, a Light Spark can be spent to negate these effects, at least temporarily. The only way to negate these effects in the long term is to work back down to being with the Light.

Through his connection with the Soulmist, a Player Character possesses a Light Spark. Once spent, it can be recovered with a Long Rest. What it is spent on varies from Sub-Class to Sub-Class. For example, the Pyromancer Sub-Class can spend a Light Spark to target a particular area to set alight with a bomb and at later Levels, empower his bomb with a Light Spark to infuse it with the essence of a Star-Dust Devil, a moving inferno with the form of an animal. The Oracle Sub-Class has the ‘Spin the Hourglass’ ability, which lets him take two turns, one after the other, but he chooses which one to use. With the expenditure of a Light Spark, he can empower ‘Spin the Hourglass’ to negate a single target’s action. All of the Sub-Classes have abilities which work with Light Sparks, although not at First Level. The Game Master uses Dark Sparks to power the abilities of the monsters and dark creatures under her control.

If the ‘Erebos’ mechanic tracks a Player Character’s internal struggle—not unlike, but more nuanced than the alignment system of Dungeons & Dragons—then ‘The Scales of Nebula’ externalises the struggle between the Light and the Dark within the Soulmist. It is specifically used in battles between the Light, that is, the Player Characters, and the monsters of the Dark. At the start of a battle, two pools of sparks are created, a pool of Light Sparks shared between the players and their characters, and a pool of Dark Sparks for the Game Master. These can be used over the course of the battle, but at the end, if there are more Light Sparks than Dark Sparks left over, there is a chance that the Player Characters’ Erebos level will fall, but a chance it will rise if there are more Dark Sparks left over. The tension here is whether or not the Player Characters use all of the power of the Light they can to defeat their foes, or retain some of it to maintain their hope.

Soulmist: A Journey from Darkness to Light details five Player Character Races. These are Avernians, Lumens, Primus, and Draesyr, the latter split between the Eldrasyr and the Yildrasyr. Avernians are in touch with their animal spirits and can harmonise with them to transform into their animal forms, either partially or fully. Lumens can peer into the past or the future at the cost of their age. The Primus are vampires, highly militarised and embrace the intricacies of high society, and can be powered by their blood to inflict more damage, move faster, and resist physical and necrotic damage. The Draesyr embrace nature, the Eldrasyr more than the Yildrasyr, who partially embrace the Darkness in order to protect the Penumbra and are scorned for it. All of the Race are given details about their cultural background and ethics, places and cities, and so on, helping to develop the background further.

The eight Classes are Fighter, Barbarian, Rogue, Monk, Seeker, Scholar, Spiritualist, and Mistweaver. The Fighter, the Barbarian, the Monk, and the Rogue are standard as per Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, but the others are new. The Seeker is a hunter and tracker akin to the Ranger, always looking for something or exploring; the Scholar is an educated Class, whose knowledge can benefit others with a Cognition die for an ability check or saving throw or use it as a reaction to penalise another, and knowledge of Insider Trading gives a bonus on barter and bargain checks. The Scholar is intended to replace the Bard Class as an inspiring Class. The Spiritualist is the link between the material world and the Soulmist, able to perceive Light Sparks and Dark Sparks, and can actually channel the Soulmist to power spell effects. The Mistweaver is the equivalent of the Wizard. The core Classes are in places quite basic, but Soulmist: A Journey from Darkness to Light adds flavour and detail with some twenty-eight Sub-Classes.

Thus, for the Fighter, there is the Warrior, the Dark Knight, the Blood Prince, the Templar, and the Pack Alpha; for the Rogue there is the Trickster, the Assassin, and the Pyromancer; the Diplomat, the Engineer, and the Herbalist for the Scholar; the Healer, the Necromancer, the Shaman, and the Witch Doctor for the Spiritualist; and the Elementalist, the Blood Mage, and Oracle for the Mistweaver. Many of these are specific to the particular Races, are essentially, Racial Archetypes. For example, the Blood Prince and the Blood Mage are for the Primus only, the Ashen Berserker and the Witch Doctor are for the Yildrasyr, and the Oracle and the Templar for the Lumens. These are interesting and add further flavour and detail to the base Classes. For example, the Ashen Barbarian manufactures and consumes toxins that grant him better natural armour, extra attacks, bone spikes that increase natural damage, and even poison fangs! Using them can leave him poisoned, but this lessens as he acquires higher Levels. Later on, he can craft toxins using materials from the Darklands. These Dark Toxins can cause Foul Bloody, which turns the Ashen Barbarian’s blood acidic, and Dragontongue, which gives him a venomous bite. Lastly, the Ashen Barbarian can be ‘Embraced by the Dark’, drawing Dark Sparks into his body, increasing his Erebos to maximum level, his skin cracked and grey, eyes black, and his body smokes… The Blood Mage can substitute Hit Points for spell components, spill his blood to add necromantic damage to a spell, take damage in order to cast a spell without expending a slot, maximise a spell’s damage, and cast a spell without the need for line of sight, have the target save against the spell at Disadvantage, change the damage to necrotic, and even if the spell requires a to hit roll, it automatically succeeds!

The roleplaying game also adds three types of feat—general, racial, and then Class, as well as Backgrounds, all suitable for the Soulmist setting. Soulmist: A Journey from Darkness to Light discusses the nature of magic in the setting as well, noting that Spiritualists and Mistweavers are based on the Cleric and Wizard Classes, that Schools of Magic are replaced by spells tailored to the spellcasting archetypes, and adds Prohibited Magic too. This is practised by witches and sorcerers who delve into the darkest of secrets of the Darklands, drawing upon their own life force and those of others to cast spells such as Inner Offer, the consumption of a creature’s organs to gain benefits to saving throws or damage, and Black Mass to control all of the Dark Sparks in the vicinity, which gives the caster an advantage in situations where ‘The Scales of Nebula’ come into play. To properly study Prohibited Magic, a Spiritualist, Mistweaver, or Witch Doctor needs a Feat such as Dark Acolyte’s Indoctrination or Tarnished Petitioner’s Sacrilege, but both need knowledge of a Prohibited Spell. Knowledge of Prohibited Spells is not widely known, and they must be found or learned from a Dark Acolyte, an existing practitioner. However, when found, Prohibited Spells can be learned by non-spell casters. The use of Prohibited Magic will literally Taint the caster’s soul, force Erebos rolls, and drive up his Erebos level. Although the practice of Prohibited Magic is reviled, the Witch Doctor will sometimes do so in order to turn the power of the Dark back at his enemies.

Rounding out Soulmist: A Journey from Darkness to Light is a list of scenario hooks. There is a decent range here, organised by each of the five Races in the Soulmist setting. This is followed by some notes on how to use the content of SSoulmist: A Journey from Darkness to Light in a standard Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition game. This requires some major decisions, including whether or not to include the use of the Erebos system and Light Sparks and Dark Sparks as the former replaces the Alignment system and the latter empowers numerous abilities.

Physically, Soulmist: A Journey from Darkness to Light is generally well presented and the artwork decent throughout. However, the map of the single area of Fyera given is bland. It does lie within the Penumbra, so falls in part under the shadow, but some variation and some colour, even if muted, would have made it stand out. The main issue is that the book does need further editing as spelling errors and missing text can be found here and there. The index, more a table of contents, is also difficult to use.

The core rulebook for Soulmist: A Journey from Darkness to Light introduces an interesting setting, array of character archetypes with the new Races, Classes, and Sub-Classes, and a potentially engaging set of mechanics with the ‘Erebos’, ‘Sparks of Light and Darkness’, and ‘The Scales of Nebula’ systems that help enforce the back and forth between Light and Dark. However, the setting itself is never really brought to life, its introduction all too brief before the book begins discussing its core new mechanics. There is setting and cultural background for each of the five Races, but this is placed after each of the mechanical details of the Races have been given, so not immediately accessible. Consequently, you get more of a broad overview of the setting rather than one that necessarily draws the reader in and intrigues him. Conversely, the combination of the mechanics—the ‘Erebos’, ‘Sparks of Light and Darkness’, and ‘The Scales of Nebula’ systems—and the new Classes and Sub-Classes do draw the reader in as they present new and interesting options for play. Yet even the mechanics are problematic. The ‘Erebos’ system works fine, but the options for the ‘Sparks of Light and Darkness’ and ‘The Scales of Nebula’ systems are limited. A Player Character only gets two abilities that he can empower with a Spark of Light and only at Second or Third Level and then at Fourteenth Level. There are never going to be a large number of Light Sparks in play at any one time, but it definitely feels as there should be more options that a player can choose from in order to use them. This could be gaining or granting temporary Hit Points, a temporary bonus to hit or Armour Class, and so on. Part of the aim with the ‘The Scales of Nebula’ system is to give the players and their characters the choice to use them or not. Use too many and they risk increasing their Erebos level, use too few and they might not survive the encounter unscathed. With too few options, that intent is not as obviously present as it should be.

The other main issue with Soulmist: A Journey from Darkness to Light is what to do with it. There are scenario hooks at the back of the book, but with a limited sense of the world of Fyera and no discussion at all as to the nature of the forces of the Dark, the Soulmist: A Journey from Darkness to Light is the equivalent of the Player’s Handbook. The Game Master will really need the Darklands supplement to provide that threat. Hopefully, a scenario will follow to showcase what Soulmist: A Journey from Darkness to Light adventure looks like.

Soulmist: A Journey from Darkness to Light introduces a game and setting that has a lot of potential. The conflict between light and dark feels both desperate and epic, and is supported by mechanics and an array of Player Character options to engage in that conflict. Yet the mechanics in particular feel underdeveloped in places and do not quite support the core conflict as well as they should. Despite this, there is a lot in Soulmist: A Journey from Darkness to Light that will intrigue and interest the Game Master who is looking for a different grim dark fantasy roleplaying game.

Mapping Your Heists

Given the origins of the roleplaying hobby—in wargaming and in the drawing of dungeons that the first player characters, and a great many since, explored and plundered—it should be no surprise just how important maps are to the hobby. They serve as a means to show a tactical situation when using miniatures or tokens and to track the progress of the player characters through the dungeon—by both the players and the Dungeon Master. And since the publication of Dungeon Geomorphs, Set One: Basic Dungeon by TSR, Inc. in 1976, the hobby has found different ways in which to provide us with maps. Games Workshop published several Dungeon Floor Sets in the 1980s, culminating in Dungeon Planner Set 1: Caverns of the Dead and Dungeon Planner Set 2: Nightmare in Blackmarsh; Dwarven Forge has supplied dungeon enthusiasts with highly detailed, three-dimensional modular terrain since 1996; and any number of publishers have sold maps as PDFs via Drivethrurpg.com. Loke BattleMats does something a little different with its maps. It publishes them as books.

A Loke BattleMats book comes as a spiral-bound book. Every page is a map and every page actually light card with a plastic covering. The fact that it is spiral-bound means that the book lies completely flat and because there is a map on every page, every map can be used on its own or combined with the map on the opposite page to work as one big, double-page spread map. The fact that the book is spiral bound means that it can be folded back on itself and thus just one map used with ease or the book unfolded to reveal the other half of the map as necessary. The fact that every page has a plastic covering means that every page can be drawn on using a write-on/wipe-off pen. It is a brilliantly simple concept which has already garnered the publisher the UK Games Expo 2019 People’s Choice Awards for Best Accessory for the Big Book of Battlemats and both the UK Games Expo 2019 Best Accessory and UK Games Expo 2019 People’s Choice Awards Best Accessory for Giant Book of Battle Mats.

The newest release from Loke Battle Mats is the Big Book of Battle Mats: Rooms, Vaults, & Chambers, which presents “Battle maps for Tabletop Roleplaying Ideal for Heists and Other Exciting Encounters!”, marked in either one-inch squares. Unlike other map books from Loke Battle Mats, the plain maps, simple floors without any detail or furnishings, are left until the end, so the volume gets straight to presenting interesting locations that a Game Master can add to her game. It starts with a tavern, all wood flooring and trestle tables on one page, but a stone-floored cellar, connected by a set of stairs on the opposite page. Next, there is some kind of office, which could be town hall or a minor guild hall, but next to that is a gaol with several cells, so together the two maps become a watch house or town guard station complete with its set of cells in which hold suspects or prisoners. Similarly, there are work desks and an office on the next map, but a room with shelves containing books or papers on the other, turning the location into a records office or a library, a plain series of tunnels snake around the map only to connect to room via a hole in the wall (either dug open or blown open with magic of even explosives), whilst an unremarkable work area is turned into something interesting—the backstage of a theatre—because it connects to a stage and auditorium on the opposite page, and an innocent-looking restaurant hides a gambling den complete with dueling room should satisfaction be demanded on the opposite page. Other maps depict warehouses and sections of a sewer system—the latter easy to line up with the sewer maps in other map volumes from the publisher, a sauna complex, a museum foyer complete with triceratops skeleton on display, an abandoned house complete with cobwebs, and even a banqueting hall and kitchen.

The maps are also nicely detailed in places. Food in particular features throughout, whether that is the lonely plate on the desk in the room backstage or sumptuous choice of dishes laid out on the banqueting table, but there are also numerous tools, weapons, and pieces of armour dotting the various locations as appropriate. Another feature is that the maps do not always specifically work for the fantasy genre. They will work in others too. For example, the inn and gambling den would be perfect for the nineteen twenties and thirties, the sauna complex feels very modern, and the museum foyer with its triceratops skeleton would work in numerous genres.

The main feature of the maps in the Big Book of Battle Mats: Rooms, Vaults, & Chambers is their capacity to tell stories. Want the Player Characters to tunnel into the vault of a bank? There is a tunnel and map with a broken wall for that, as well as vault on another map. Or, for a bank robbery, take the office and gaol and make the cells individual vaults. The gambling den is perfect for a raid by the police or a rival gang. The stage is ripe for an interrupted performance. All the Game Master or her players and their characters have to do is supply the details of the interruption. Essentially, depending upon the story being played out, the multiple maps can be used as the Player Characters move from one location to another as events unfold. In addition, because the maps in the Big Book of Battle Mats: Rooms, Vaults, & Chambers depict urban locations, they can often be used again and again, especially in a campaign which takes place in one town or city.

Physically, Big Book of Battle Mats: Rooms, Vaults, & Chambers is very nicely produced. The maps are clear, easy to use, fully painted, and vibrant with colour. One issue may well be with binding and the user might want to be a little careful folding the pages back and forth lest the pages crease or break around the spiral comb of the binding.

It is clear that a lot of thought of has been put into the design of the Big Book of Battle Mats: Rooms, Vaults, & Chambers. Although not every room or map in the collection is either exciting or inspirational, they can all be useful. The best of them are and many of the maps will inspire a gaming group to use them as locations and more, using them to help create the stories they roleplay. The Big Book of Battle Mats: Rooms, Vaults, & Chambers is a really useful sourcebook for city campaigns and its capacity to help tell stories is very nicely thought out.

Friday Fantasy: DCC Day #1 Shadow of the Beakmen

As well as contributing to Free RPG Day every year Goodman Games also has its own ‘Dungeon Crawl Classics Day’, which sadly, can be a very North American event. The day is notable not only for the events and the range of adventures being played for Goodman Games’ roleplaying games, but also for the scenarios it releases specifically to be played on the day. For ‘Dungeon Crawl Classics Day 2020’, which took place on Saturday, May 16th, 2020, the publisher released two items. The first was DCC Day #1: Shadow of the Beakmen, a single scenario for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game. The second was the DCC Day 2020 Adventure Pack, which not only provided support for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game and Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic, but also for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set, with a scenario for each. This format has been has been followed for each subsequent DCC Day, that is, a single scenario and an anthology containing two or three scenarios, all of them short, relatively easy to run and add to an ongoing campaign, or even use as a one-shot of convention game.

DCC Day #1: Shadow of the Beakmen is short and it is designed to be played within a four-hour slot, whether that is at a convention or on DCC Day itself. The scenario is designed for a party of four to eight First Level Player Characters. They are travelling between locations when they come across a small village standing on a lake. From the settlement echo screams and cries of terror, smoke hangs over its rooftops from the buildings already set ablaze, and strange figures move in the shimmering light, some riding crocodiles and wielding a lance of stone tipped with a weird green light in a perversion of the knights of old. Yet this is not what catches the eyes of the adventurers, for a blazing emerald light emanates from beside the lake. There is something dangerous happening there, more dangerous than the marauders roving the streets of the village. As befits a one-shot or convention-style scenario, such as DCC Day #1: Shadow of the Beakmen is that it leaps straight into the situation, presenting the players and their characters with a choice—do they rush to the villagers’ aid or do they ride away? Now to be fair, the Player Characters will be pulled into the adventure whatever choice they make, but DCC Day #1: Shadow of the Beakmen will be all the more interesting if the players decide that the best course of action is to intervene.

Intervention then, sets up what is actually the best scene in the scenario. This is the running battle across the village, down its streets and into the marketplace to the docks and the edge of the lake. It is handled as a series of random encounters, with villagers begging for help, buildings collapsing into flames, and encounters with the strange beaked humanoids, some of whom are riding crocodiles and wielding green-tipped lances, that are attacking the village and attempting to capture the villagers. It feels brutal and desperate. Once at the lakeside, the Player Characters can discover the cause of the light, something strange is summoning something even worse than that attacking the village. More of the beak-faced men! This sets a big battle, but defeating them gives the Player Characters the chance to discover more about the invaders.

The second part of the scenario takes place in the Malachite Stele, a giant stone tower that has erupted from the lake as a result of the summoning. It is a traditional dungeon, although limited to just nine locations and is thus linear in nature. Fortunately, its brevity is made up by its atmosphere, which is muddy and murky, squelchy and slimy, the damp meaning it is also cold. It is thoroughly unpleasant. There is also a good mix of encounters throughout the dungeon. There are pools where the Player Characters can gain great boons or suffer terrible banes in classically random chances, there are chambers with egg sacs incubating more beakmen much like those of Aliens, and there is a challenging big boss encounter at the end, but in between there is the second-best scene in the scenario. This is with the Weaver, a corpulent woman with long silver hair and eight segmented limbs, who spinning the silk that each egg sac is made from. She wants to escape and in the main bit of roleplaying in the scenario, will negotiate for her release. Of course, she cannot be exactly trusted, and it is suggested that if freed, she will want to play a role in the future lives of the Player Characters. Further, if her web is plucked, it enables a Player Character to scry another location in the Malachite Stele complex. This can be random, but it can also be used to hint that the complex contains more rooms than at first seems. Several are behind a secret door—though there is another, more dangerous means of access—and the foresight granted by the web should help the Player Characters to progress further.

Finally, at the top of the Malachite Stele, the Player Characters will face the villain of the scenario, the Master of Shadows. This is a challenging fight, both for the Player Characters to fight and the Judge to run.

Physically, DCC Day #1: Shadow of the Beakmen is decently done. It is lightly illustrated, but the artwork is decent. If there is an issue with the artwork, it is that the Weaver is not illustrated and considering that she has the possibility of her playing a role in the future lives of the Player Characters, not illustrating her was a missed opportunity. Both maps are well done though, and the monsters stats being placed on their stat cards at the back of the adventure makes them easy to use.

DCC Day #1: Shadow of the Beakmen starts with the cliché of a village in peril and gives it an immediacy rarely embraced by that cliché, throwing the Player Characters straight into the action and facing some very strange creatures! The scenario has a couple of really good scenes and plenty of action and really makes for a good low-Level one-shot or convention scenario.

Friday Filler: Jurassic Park: Danger! Adventure Strategy Game

Jurassic Park is thirty years old in 2023. It was a big hit in 1993, and although it has developed into a franchise, the original is the one that is best remembered. After all, with what was then grounding breaking CGI, the dinosaurs were brought to life like never before, and the combination of a rousing score from John Williams and a new sound system in cinemas meant the impact of seeing the film in the cinema, it is still recalled today. Sadly, Jurassic Park does not have any roleplaying games based on it, but it does have a board game or two. Published in 2018—on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the film—by Ravensburger, the Jurassic Park: Danger! Adventure Strategy Game is a light, semi co-operative game for two to five, aged ten and up. In the game, the human players must work together to achieve their goals and escape the island whilst avoid being eaten by the dinosaurs, whilst the dinosaur player must eat as many humans as he can! (well, not literally, three is enough.)

The human players control one character at a time, although the game gives them a choice of ten to choose from. Every character has his or her own deck of cards, character mat, and meeple. Although every character’s deck has Run, Sneak, and Climb cards, each character’s deck also has its special cards. For example, Doctor Alan Grant has ‘Give Me Your Hand’, which lets his move another character on an adjacent tile to move to his tile and Lex Murphy has ‘Piercing Scream’ which gives her a chance to sneak and distract without being attacked. Each character has their own Character Goal which must be achieved before the character can get to the Helicopter Pad and escape. A character who achieves his goal is awarded a Goal Token. For example, Doctor Alan Grant’s goal is to distract the Tyrannosaurus Rex, Doctor Ian Malcom’s is to successfully guess whether a die roll will be odd or even, and John Hammond’s is to not have any character be eliminated whilst he is in play. He actually starts play with his Goal Token and loses it if another character dies. Even if it is Dennis Nedry.

The dinosaur player controls three dinosaurs—a velociraptor, a tyrannosaurus rex, and a dilophosaurus. Although the dinosaur player has the one deck of cards, each card gives two or three actions—Run, Sneak, or Climb—that the dinosaur player must do when drawn. No matter the number of actions on the card, a different dinosaur does each action. In addition, the dinosaurs can do two things. First, each has its own special action. The velociraptor can run two spaces in a straight line, the tyrannosaurus rex can attack twice, and the dilophosaurus can attack a character on an adjacent tile with its venomous spit. A dinosaur special action like this cannot be done on two consecutive turns. Second, a dinosaur can attack. This occurs when they are on the same tile—except for the special action of the dilophosaurus—as a human and neither are sneaking. Attacks always succeed otherwise, and force a player to discard a card from his hand. This is removed from the game and cannot be retrieved. When a character loses all ten cards in his deck, he is eliminated. Lastly, it should be noted that the meeples for the dinosaurs are attractively illustrated, but the meeples for the characters are plain and unillustrated.

What is interesting is that when a character exits the game—either because he has been eaten by a dinosaur or has managed to successfully escape via the helicopter, his player can select another character and continue playing. Either way, this keeps a player involved from start to finish and removes the element of player elimination, if not character elimination.

The game is played on a map of Isla Nublar. This requires some construction prior to play, but the coastal perimeter frame keeps everything in place. The Start Tile—for the humans—goes in the middle, whilst the perimeter and centre tiles are placed randomly. The marked Locations are the Control Centre, Visitors’ Centre, and Maintenance Shed, plus the Helicopter Pad, whilst the dinosaurs also have their own starting tiles. Some tiles have mountains on them and these need to be climbed, as do the electric fences marked on some tiles, when they are turned off. Once activated, the three marked Locations are activated, they become safe spaces for the humans.

On a turn, each player, both human and dinosaur play a card face down on their respective mats. The dinosaur player plays his first as well as any optional actions. Then the human players do the same, plus any optional actions. The Climb and Sneak actions require a successful die roll to complete, as does activation of the three Locations. Cards can be burned or permanently discarded to gain a boost to the roll.

Play in Jurassic Park: Danger! Adventure Strategy Game proceeds one card at a time. The dinosaur player is at an advantage with the choice of special actions and is aiming to prevent access to the three Locations for as long as possible whilst constantly snapping at and attacking the humans. Blocking is possible because a character cannot use his Run or Climb Cards to enter a tile with a dinosaur. Conversely, a human player can use Sneak and Distract cards to get past a blocking dinosaur. A human player can also turn on the electric fences from the Maintenance Shed, which block both human and dinosaur movement. Both human and dinosaur players have limited choice of cards to play from one turn to the next, their hands being limited to just three. Because of positioning—either dinosaur or human—and because of terrain like the electric fences and the mountains that has to be climbed, the choice of card to be played can also be restricted. The humans will often find themselves running even as they get close to their intended destination.

Jurassic Park: Danger! Adventure Strategy Game is won in two ways. For the dinosaur player, all he has to do is eliminate three humans. For the human players, they have to reach all three locations and activate them, fulfil their individual goals, and only then escape from the island. If three humans escape from the island, then the humans win.

Physically, Jurassic Park: Danger! Adventure Strategy Game is well presented, with nice artwork used to illustrate the various characters from the film. The card stock for the mats and the cards feel a little thin and whilst the dinosaurs are eye-catching, the meeples for the humans are, in comparison, bland. The rulebook is well written, easy to read and understand—clearly marking the text for the human players and the dinosaur player is a very nice touch, and includes advice on how to win for both players.

Jurassic Park: Danger! Adventure Strategy Game is okay—and for a family game, especially one that embraces modern design, is also okay. It introduces co-operative play, the humans having to work together, the options are simple, and the film will be familiar to almost everyone. With ten cards to lose humans are more resilient than at first seems, but the dinosaurs are tenacious, have more options and more powerful options as to what they can do, and at best the humans can only corral them with the electric fences or sneak past them. And that, for the human players is not very interesting, because whilst Jurassic Park: Danger! Adventure Strategy Game does have plenty of theme, it feels as if the humans are avoiding the theme as much as they are the dinosaurs. The problem is that the game ignores some of the tensions in the film. For example, Dennis Nedry, the villain, is a playable character, and his special action is that he is always attacked first by the dinosaur if there are more than the one human on a tile. Which seems appropriate, because nobody likes Dennis Nedry, but he does not get to be the villain in the game. He does not betray John Hammond and you wish that he could. Robert Muldoon is not armed and cannot act against the dinosaurs in anyway. In fact, no human can do anything to to affect the dinosaurs bar turning on bar the electric fences, so the interaction between the humans and the dinosaurs is all too often one way—the dinosaurs affecting the humans. The result is a lack of tension between the humans and the dinosaurs because the dinosaurs have a human player and their actions are going to predictable. Perhaps if the game has automated to movement of the dinosaurs, it might have made their actions less predictable and so increased the tension?

Jurassic Park: Danger! Adventure Strategy Game is a serviceable, modern family game that can be enjoyed by casual or younger board gamers. For the more experienced board gamer, Jurassic Park: Danger! Adventure Strategy Game is slightly underwhelming, leaving him wishing that it had a bit more bite.

[Fanzine Focus XXXII] High Passage Issue One

On the tail of 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 showcased how another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. As new fanzines have appeared, there has been an interest in the fanzines of the past, and as that interest has grown, they have become highly collectible, and consequently more difficult to obtain and write about. However, in writing about them, the reader should be aware that these fanzines were written and published between thirty and forty years ago, typically by roleplayers in their teens and twenties. What this means is that sometimes the language and terminology used reflects this and though the language and terminology is not socially acceptable today, that use should not be held against the authors and publishers unduly.

High Passage Number One was published by the High Passage Group in 1981, providing content for Classic Traveller published by Game Designers’ Workshop. Its content focuses on the Old Expanses sector of the Third Imperium between Terran and Vilani space, providing a scenario, a new ship, numerous pieces of equipment, and more. From the outset, it is clearly written by fans and despite their best efforts, the fanzine is rough-looking in places. Nevertheless, it still contains plenty of interesting and playable content.

The issue opens with the scenario, ‘The Solar Flare Mystery’. It requires nothing more than the basic Traveller rules and comes with a set of six pre-generated characters. The requirement for the adventure is that the Player Characters have access to a ship. It begins in the Larmix system in the Dethenes subsector of The Old Expanses sector. The plot starts on an odd note. A friend of the Player Characters has been kidnapped. They are not to pay a ransom, but deal with a situation that the kidnapper cannot—the rescue of his father from aboard a starship called the Solar Flare. The Referee is told to dissuade the Player Characters from either investigating the starship in detail—beyond determining its location or the kidnapper. They can discover the ship’s universal ship profile, though that is not actually given in the scenario. So essentially, the plot of the scenario is to move to the Solar Flare as quickly as possible, and whilst that is made difficult in terms of discovering its location, it is not as impossible as following any other line of enquiry. It feels as if the scenario should just start en media res, with the Player Characters aboard their scout ship, scanning the Solar Flare and the shuttle adrift alongside it. The Solar Flare is a large vessel, but there are no stats or technical details for it, only descriptions of the various sixty-eight rooms, spaces, corridors, and shafts across three decks.

As the Player Characters explore the ship, it appears to be a liner, but they will discover that it is a floating casino, running an illegal gambling operation. One that will hold those who cannot pay their debts to ransom until someone can. They will find the kidnapper’s father. They will also find the crew of the Solar Flare—surprisingly few of them given the size of the ship—dead and dotted around the ship, with strange stingers protruding from their chests. They will also find evidence that a newly discovered creature, a ‘Struped’, was being carried aboard the ship. It is of course, free of its confinement and scuttling around the Solar Flare. In addition, they will encounter the many robots aboard, including steward/valet robots, security robots, and gambling attendant robots. Only the security robots are a threat.

Initially, ‘The Solar Flare Mystery’ is an utterly confounding affair. Beyond the set-up provided to the players and the characters, the Game Master has as much idea as the players and the characters as to what is going on. That is, until nineteen pages into a twenty-one-page adventure. All of the information which explains what the scenario is about, is at the back rather than being upfront. The adventure, once the Game Master gets this far turns out to be decent, with much more to it than at first seems. Because at first glance, it looks like a sort of dungeon in space and given that the bulk of the scenario involves traipsing round a seemingly abandoned ship, it feels like it too. Given the nature of the scenario and the nature of the explanation, the Game Master has some work to do. Starting off with creating the kidnapped victim, then deciding where the Solar Flare might be found, where the Struped is aboard the ship, and then, what happens next. Then there are a lot of plot points left dangling… This includes the response to the missing Ministry of Justice agent who was aboard, who owns the Solar Flare now that the crew are dead, and what has happened the Player Characters’ friend? The biggest omission though, are stats for the ship itself. They would have been very useful if the Player Characters had decided to keep for themselves.

‘Small Craft’ details and illustrates several vehicles. They include the Sandcrab ATV; the Star Dart, a TL 14 fighter craft assigned to Azhanti High Lightning Class vessels prior to the replacement by the Rampart close support fighter and the Deception Drone, whose transmitter can be programmed to appear like that of another starship and confuse the enemy. In all three cases, the descriptions of each are nicely detailed and thematic.

The issue’s special feature ties back into the scenario, ‘The Solar Flare Mystery’. This is the ‘Ministry of Justice Special Branch’. A development of the Naval Intelligence Department, the existence of the Ministry of Justice Special Branch or ‘JSB’ has only recently been revealed by Emperor Strephon. It is an elite organisation that conducts counter insurgency, intelligence reconnaissance, protection duties for the Imperial family and visiting dignitaries and typically recruits agents who have already had a career behind them, especially in the military given the JSB’s close ties with the Imperial Navy. As well as background, the JSB is provided as a post-career career for Player Characters and NPCs. The agency has high standards and is difficult to join, but the agent will be highly trained, receiving four skills in the first term of service, let alone those from a commission and promotion. Including the extra skill rolls from receipt of commission and promotion, the Player Character receives one each for the increased rank. So a Player Character could receive a total of eight skills—three automatically for rank and five rolls—in the first term! The Career does feel overpowered as a consequence, but then again, Ministry of Justice Special Branch are meant to be highly trained, elite operatives.

‘The Armoury – Book One Weapons’ suggests the best equivalents of the antique weapons—TL 7 and TL 8—in Traveller Book One. Thus, the Heckler and Koch MP5 A2 is suggested for the submachine gun, the Springfield M14 and Fn FAL for the rifle and autorifle, and so. Not necessarily by name, but rather by illustration, which is odd. That said, any one of the illustrated weapons would have been familiar to viewers of film and television at the time of High Passage Number One’s publication. Nevertheless, the article feels like it is filling space.

For the ‘Starship Files’ section of the issue, High Passage Number One gives full details and deckplans of the Exocet, an intelligence cruiser operated by the Ministry of Justice Special Branch. It is an eight-hundred-ton, TL 15 Jump-3 capable starship armed with eight triple turrets containing beam lasers and sandcasters. It features advanced sensors and an advanced second computer for handling intelligence data. The Reserve Light Cruiser Exocet is a refitted Tral Wolf Light Cruiser, an Imperial Navy design typically assigned to security and patrol duties in the trailing regions of the Imperium. It has not service in any major conflicts to date. Some sixty of the Tral Wolf class light cruiser are listed and this followed by the details of the Exocet and its deckplans. These are both decently done.

Rounding out High Passage Number One is the first part of the fanzine’s detailing of The Old Expanses sector. In this issue it provides the statistics and basic information for the fifteen systems of the Dethenes subsector. It is very bare bones, but that is how the information was given.

Physically, High Passage Number One is decently presented. Apart from the backwards presentation of the scenario, ‘The Solar Flare Mystery’, everything is easy to use, and throughout, the artwork is really not that bad.

—oOo—

High Passage Number One was reviewed by Tony Watson in the Reviews column of Different Worlds Issue 15 (October 1981). He noted of the authors that, “Their magazine/playaid, High Passage no. 1 is a good example of what ‘amateurs’ with some good ideas and the desire to present them in an attractive and informative manner can do.” before concluding with “I was pleased with High Passage and can give it a solid recommendation. The authors have made a concerted effort to mesh their information with the already large body of Traveller material available elsewhere. The booklet is well worth the asking price, when one considers the large amount of material included. Judging the playaid as an initial offering from a group of relative unknowns, I was very impressed.”

William A. Barton reviewed High Passage Number One in the ‘Capsule Reviews’ department The Space Gamer Number 40 (June 1981). He wrote, “If issue one is any indication, HIGH PASSAGE should prove a welcome addition to the growing family of Traveller-related supplements.” He noted that the fanzine was very professional-looking and that a lot of thought had gone into its production, and praised much of its content. He also noted that it was flawed in places, including typesetting errors, printing errors, and crude illustrations, before concluding that, “Although there is room for improvement in future issues, High Passage, based on its first issue, stands quite high among the many approved-for-Traveller items now on the market.”

—oOo—

To start with the bad, the organisation of ‘The Solar Flare Mystery’ is annoyingly nonsensical, hindering the Game Master’s grasp of the scenario, let alone running it. The scenario is underdeveloped in places and it is also annoying that no statistics are provided for the vessel given that it could fall into the hands of the Player Characters. These though, are the only real issues with High Passage Number One, and for the most part, they can be overcome with some effort upon the part of the Game Master. Nevertheless, there is a pleasing thread of connectivity throughout the articles in High Passage Number One. Thus ‘The Solar Flare Mystery’ is set in the Dethenes subsector, detailed at the back of the fanzine; there is a Ministry of Justice Special Branch agent involved in the scenario, and the Ministry of Justice Special Branch described in detail in the issue; and the Reserve Light Cruiser Exocet, the refitted Tral Wolf Light Cruiser operated by the Ministry of Justice Special Branch is also fully detailed. Consequently, there is a verisimilitude to the ‘The Solar Flare Mystery’ and to the issue as a whole. High Passage Number One is a good first issue and the Traveller fan would have been pleased to have had this at the time of its publication.

[Fanzine Focus XXXII] The Beholder Issue 1

On the tail of 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 showcased how another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. As new fanzines have appeared, there has been an interest in the fanzines of the past, and as that interest has grown, they have become highly collectible, and consequently more difficult to obtain and write about. However, in writing about them, the reader should be aware that these fanzines were written and published between thirty and forty years ago, typically by roleplayers in their teens and twenties. What this means is that sometimes the language and terminology used reflects this and though the language and terminology is not socially acceptable today, that use should not be held against the authors and publishers unduly.

The Beholder was a British fanzine first published in April, 1979. Dedicated to Dungeons & Dragons and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, it ran to twenty-seven issues, the last being published in July, 1981. It was popular and would be awarded ‘Best Games Fanzine’ at the Games Day convention in 1980. After the final issue of The Beholder, the editors would go on to release a number of anthologies which collected content from the complete run of the fanzine such as Beholder Supplement Glossary of Magic, which collected many of the magical items which appeared in the fanzine and collated them into a series of tables for easy use by the Dungeon Master, and Fantasie Scenarios – The Fanzine Supplement No. 2, the first of several scenario anthologies.

Opening with its editorial, editors Guy Duke and Michael Stoner set out their stall. The Beholder was intended to be printed monthly, it was dedicated to Dungeons & Dragons, although content for other roleplaying games such as Chivalry & Sorcery and Traveller might creep in, and whilst it would accept contributions, they state that, “we will only print what we consider to be good quality stuff, take note: we are not an APA.” (Amateur Press Association). This a comment upon the poor quality of such periodicals in that they would accept any old thing. The editors also promised to include a ‘competition dungeon’ in each issue as that would be more useful than a mini-dungeon as they would not necessarily fit in the Dungeon Master’s world and severe changes would have to be made for them to do so. What they mean by a ‘competition dungeon’ is one designed to be played as part of a tournament at a convention with pre-generated Player Characters, for example, classics such as S1 Tomb of Horrors and Goodman Games’ own Dungeon Crawl Classics #13: Crypt of the Devil Lich—more recently updated for use with Dungeon Crawl Classics. However, this was not a policy that they would adhere to and later issues included standard adventures and dungeons.

Actual content for The Beholder Issue 1 begins with a new Class, ‘The Trickster’. This was designed to countering the Thief being too weak at high Levels when compared to spell-casting Classes. The Class combines certain Thief abilities with spellcasting and the Trick ability. The Thief abilities are limited to Pick Pockets, Hear Noise, Open Locks, and Climb Walls, and the Trickster’s spells are set per Level. Thus the Trickster knows Ventriloquism at First Level, Charm Person at Second Level, and so on. Only once a Trickster reaches Eleventh Level, does he get to choose his spells. That said, the spells are useful to his role, rather than offering the flexibility of choice of the Magic-User. Modified by Level, Charisma, shared Alignment, and Hit Dice of victim, the Trick ability is a percentile skill which when successfully rolled can Distract, Stall, Befriend, Confuse, or Convince that victim. The Class is a mish-mash, but modified to be highly vocal and interactive, rather than relying upon force or other means. It is an interesting design which would work well in social or urban situations, but might not be suitable for the dungeon. Nevertheless, it provides an archetype that fills a role not present in Dungeons & Dragons.

‘Spells: Use & Misuse’ is the first of three thoughtful and interesting articles in The Beholder Issue 1. This looks at how players find loopholes in the use of spells to create inventive, and typically more powerful, uses of a spell than the designers originally intended. For example, Reduce, the reverse of the spell, Enlarge, is incredibly powerful, enabling the Magic-User to temporarily destroy something and so gain an advantage. In addition, it can be used to reduce the size of a door in its door frame and so bypass a door barred with Wizard Lock, reduce the size of a hole to trap a monster, and so on. It highlights spells that last until triggered, such as Explosive Runes, are a pain for the Dungeon Master to deal with, and suggests the damage inflicted when Explosive Runes are triggered be reduced over time when the object the spell is cast on, for example, the Magic-User’s spell book, is carried about. ‘View Point’ begins with the line, “In D&D the unusual becomes the norm.” In other words, the Player Characters quickly adapt to a situation or monster and find ready means to handle them each time they encounter said monsters. For example, knowing that Ochre Jellies will divide if attacked by swords and that Rust Monsters are best faced wearing leather armour and wielding clubs. In other words, the mystery of play is not only lost for the players, but also for the Dungeon Master, who will rarely be surprised by the actions of their Player Characters. The solution is surprises. So new monsters, items, tricks, traps, and so on. That though, is the traditional response. The article also suggests having the player select his Magic-User’s spells in secret from the Dungeon Master in order to surprise her in play, which is a radical step. It is supported by an amusing example of play. The other suggestion is more obvious and that is to create unusual encounters. Some fun ones thrown out here include, “A djinni with hayfever, a cowardly dragon, a short giant, a lost minotaur.”

In between the second and third of the interesting articles in The Beholder Issue 1 is ‘Monster Summoning’. This is a collection of of some seven First Level monsters. It includes creatures like the Kobold-like ‘Deep’, whose claws have the same effect as the Slow spell, the ‘Dala’, a living dagger which can swim or fly and charges its victim to poison him on the first attack; the ‘Pigwidgeon’, being pigfaced humanoids like the then pigfaced Orcs, notable only for their use of the bolas; and ‘Malnutrite’, long-haired, pot-bellied, dirty humanoids who smell, seek out, and ask for food. If they are not given it, they will attack, and if killed, their slayer suffers a random curse. The only creature of any interest is the ‘Gop’, wasp-like insects that infest dungeons and are actually harmless except for the fact that they eat anything, but especially wolvesbane, garlic, and belladonna. These monsters fall under the category of monsters for monsters’ sake, designed to intrigue and surprise the players and their characters with something new. None of the monsters are interesting. In fact, they are boring. By modern standards, the depiction of Orcs and thus Pigwidgeon is controversial, even offensive, but then The Beholder Issue one was published over forty years ago. By the standards of The Beholder, as set out in the editorial, ‘Monster Summoning’ fails to meet its own standards.

Fortunately, ‘Thoughts on Treasure’ rights this first issue of The Beholder on its course and completes its trilogy of genuinely interesting and thoughtful articles. The article is based on the importance in early Dungeons & Dragons of treasure and loot as a source of Experience Points and asks why limbless creatures such as a giant snake would have treasure, let alone keep it in a chest, and why Chaotic Evil monsters possess Lawful Good treasures? Suggestions include it being on the body of victims, of lesser monsters serving bigger monsters and having mundane abilities such as tool use! More intriguing is the possibility of trade, so that monsters might be holding a magical item that they cannot use in order to trade for something better. Trade means that the Player Characters should be able to interact with them other than fighting and lesser monsters serving bigger monsters means that dungeon design and the dungeon population process can be less random, more thoughtful, and even establish an ecology of sorts. Also discussed is the inflationary effect of treasure and loot as a source of Experience Points, as it means dungeons have to be stocked with increasing amount of coin and the Player Characters no longer needing mules to carry everything back to civilisation, but mule trains and then wagon trains! The solution given is reduce the amount of coin found and increase its Experience Point value by the same amount. Overall, an interesting look at a style of play and its inherent problems that would have been highly relevant back then.

The competition dungeon in The Beholder Issue 1 is ‘Pyrus Complex’. This is for five Player Characters of Fourth and Fifth Levels, and comes with eight pre-generated Player Characters. Written for use with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, it describes a small, twenty-five location dungeon, a set of natural caverns that have been extended and expanded by a pair of adventurers, now long gone. Unfortunately, as a ‘competition’ dungeon, it does not make a lot of sense. It is populated in semi-random fashion—there is a Hobgoblin guard post, but no Hobgoblins anywhere else in the dungeon, caves filled with acidic water next to cave filled with non-acidic water, a tropical woodland whose only purpose is to charm the Player Characters, have them charge through thorns and underbrush for minimal damage—and that is it, a labyrinth for making mapping difficult, and so on. When it comes to the points awarded for completing certain tasks, they do not always make sense, such as gambling with an elephant in the Mites’ treasury. There are Carnivorous Apes locked up there, but no elephant. The dungeon comes across as a cross between B1 In Search of the Unknown and S1 Tomb of Horrors. There is no reason to play or use this dungeon, except to see how many points can be scored at the end and the scenario advocates doing this. Playing it with one group after another to compare their points’ totals. Which is potentially fun for the Dungeon Master, but how many times would she want to run this? It should be noted that as a ‘competition dungeon’, the set time limit for ‘Pyrus Complex’ is sixty Turns or ten hours. So roughly two to three sessions with penalties for the competition points if the allotted time is exceeded. Lastly, it lacks the short account of a ‘guinea pig’ party’s exploits—or ‘Competition Chronicles’—which was a potential inclusion for this and future ‘Competition Dungeons’ in The Beholder, which might have alleviated the tedious nature of the dungeon’s design.

There is no hook or reason to enter, especially if it was placed in a campaign world. Random and pointless, the good news is that future dungeons and adventures in the pages of The Beholder would be vastly superior to this unmitigated morass of ill-thought-out and dully executed ideas.

Rounding out The Beholder Issue 1 is ‘Magic Jar’. This is a collection of nineteen magical items. There are some nice items here, such as the Monk Gloves, leather gloves with a strip of metal, typically mithril or adamantine, that the unarmed monk can wear to gain extra damage and be able to strike magical creatures which require magical weapons to be attacked, and do so with the ‘Open hand’ attack. The Eyes of Viewing enable the wearer to view invisible and out-of-phase creatures, but cannot see anything in the material world when worn, the Cursed Warhammer acts like a normal Warhammer, but when thrown loops back and hits its wielder for damage—more if he is a Dwarf, Tenser’s Disc is a permanent version of the spell Tenser’s Floating Disk, and the Anti-Spell Shield can be used to absorb missile-style spells, like Magic Missile, but will do so until its capacity is exceeded and the shield breaks. The article is a good mix of magical items, some now familiar, but new then, and some even new today.

Physically, The Beholder, Issue 1 is a bit scruffy in places, but readable. The layout is tight and that does make it difficult to read in places. The illustrations and the cartography is not actually that bad. Of course, the first issue of the fanzine was published when personal publishing was still analogue and the possibilities of the personal computer and personal desktop publishing were yet to come. In the case of The Beholder that would never be taken advantage of.

The Beholder has a high reputation for content that is of good quality and playable. The Beholder, Issue 1 does not match that reputation, let alone alone meet its own high standards in this first issue. The monsters are boring and the given scenario playable, but without any real purpose except to see if one playing group is better than another and rhyme or reason to the design. Yet there are flashes of better things to come. The Trickster Class looks interesting and would be playable in the right campaign, whilst the articles are interesting and thoughtful. The Beholder Issue 1 is a promising, but not great start for what would go on to become a highly regarded and highly sort after fanzine. It is fascinating to see where it began, nevertheless.