Things Better Than Crypts

UKM1: Tomb of the Necromancers is a scenario for Crypts & Things, the Swords & Sorcery inspired variant of Mythmere Games’ Swords & Wizardry published by D101 Games. Designed for four to six characters of Sixth to Eighth Level, Tomb of the Necromancers takes place in the north of the Continent of Terrors default setting. There the ruins of the Unknown City sit at the edge of the Death Wind Steppe, surrounded by the foothills of the Wolf Head Mountains. Now all that stands in the ruins is the fishing village of Tetronis, protecting the secrets of the great and terrible, but now lost, god known as Orlusz—and his worship.

The player characters are hired to explore a hidden building below the ruins surrounding Tetronis. By the time they reach the village, someone has got there before the adventurers and put many of its inhabitants to the sword. Thus the party will need to deal with this problem if its erstwhile employer is to be found and its members are to progress into the dungeon. This has some nasty moments and fun encounters and these have the grim feeling of the Conan tales. Once they get past these—plus a well handled revelation—Tomb of the Necromancers becomes a whole lot less interesting. The dungeon of the scenario’s title is bland in comparison, barring an encounter or two. The whole of the dungeon feels like it should be baroque and ornate, but it is far from that. 

Unfortunately, in terms of physical presentation and production, Tomb of the Necromancers has a number of issues. Whilst the artwork is good, the scenario’s cartography is inconsistent—the map of the village is much, much better than that of the dungeon. In fact, the map of the dungeon is just simply bland. Worse, the scenario reads like a first draft and really, really needs a good edit. Barring a couple of issues, the poor editing will not get in the way of running the adventure, but without it, Tomb of the Necromancers is just not as professional as it should be.

Further, Tomb of the Necromancers is a scenario of two halves. The first half, getting to the village of Tetronis and dealing with the threats and dangers above ground is more interesting than the second half, that is, the dungeon below which never quite rises above being just another Dungeons & Dragons dungeon. This is primarily because above ground scenes make much more use of Crypts & Things’ Continent of Terrors setting. Despite these issues and the lack of a professional presentation, Tomb of the Necromancers is welcome as an adventure for higher level adventurers.

-oOo-

D101 Games will be at UK Games Expo.

The Wrong Father's Day

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 plus the 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 eighteenth adventure is Feast of the Father.

Feast of the Father is written by Jason Bulmahn, co-author of various titles for Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition and the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, most notably Expedition to the Ruins of Castle Greyhawk. It is the sixth adventure written for characters who have entered the Expert Path, that is of Third Level or higher, and comes as an eight page, 13.22 MB PDF. It is designed as a standalone adventure that slots easily into a campaign as an encounter when the player characters are travelling, especially near the coast or other large body of water.

It takes place in the small fishing port of Argron’s Dock, a settlement whose isolation has forced the inhabitants to their own traditions and faiths to keep them safe. For the people of Argron’s Dock, their faith is placed not in the Cult of the New God, but a god they call The Father. Every few months they hold a holy day upon which they give thanks to The Father for his bounties from the sea and receive further gifts. It is on one of these holy days that the adventurers find their way to Argron’s Dock. It is not a welcoming place. It is run down, parts of it have burnt down, and its inhabitants are a slovenly, lumpen lot, suffering it seems from a lassitude. Nevertheless, the player characters are invited to join in the festivities by the locals.

As a scenario, Feast of the Father is little more than a single session in length, its structure and plot echoing that of so many other scenarios in which an isolated village turns to another faith and becomes a nest of cultists, unguided or otherwise. In fact, the scenario could all but be described as a cliche--and in various ways it is. That said, Feast of the Father lifts itself above such clichés with a strong vein of body horror and the sense of listlessness that pervades the community. Over all, a short but enjoyable combination of the bilious and the sluggishness.

The 13th Age Starts Here

Shadows of Eldolan is the first scenario published for use with 13th Age, the Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG with an emphasis on storytelling as well as high action published by Pelgrane Press. An investigative and combat orientated adventure written for use with five or six characters of First Level, it is designed to ease the GM into running 13th Age—in particular the use of the RPG’s Icons to bring in story elements—and thus perhaps lay foundations for a campaign. 

Shadows of Eldolan comes as a seventy-two page greyscale book that contains both the adventure and a description of the town of Eldolan. This description is not of the whole town, only those parts which are pertinent to the adventure, although an overview of the town is given. Eldolan itself is a small port along the coast from the city of Horizon, located in a flat gap between the cliffs. The town is best known for its wizard academies and guilds, their strong influence upon the town’s politics and the fact that much of the town is kept lit at night by network of magical street lights maintained by the Lamplighters’ Guild. The player characters come to Eldolan for a meeting with someone connected to their Icon relationships, but before they get to the meeting, its location is attacked by zombies! The question is, who in a town dominated by wizards—and thus where the Archmage is an important Icon—would be creating zombies, a task more associated with the Lich King?

Answering this question lies at the heart of Shadows of Eldolan. There are four clues to investigate, each of which leads the adventurers down certain plotlines. These are are designed so that getting to the end of one can lead to another and so on and so on until the player characters can find the clues that will lead it on to the revelations that lead to the climax of the scenario. The four can be played in any order, there being notes for the GM as to what clue to use to send the player characters onto the next plot thread and then eventually onto the final clues and subsequent showdown.

The scenario has a reasonable balance between combat and investigative encounters. Some effort has gone into making the combat encounters exciting and a little different, for example, the pumpkin-throwing zombie in the first encounter and the use of stage scenery in a later encounter. The party will also face a good mix of monsters and combatants, nicely showcasing the capabilities of the antagonists in 13th Age in just a few lines in each case that make them ever so easy to use. That said, some of the combat encounter set-ups are repetitive, such as the adventurers being ambushed from both ahead and behind them at the same time. Notably, the scenario makes great use of having the party ‘fail it forward’, that is, when the party fails to find a clue or undertake an action with any degree of success, have them actually succeed, but with subsequent consequences, such as having to face more foes in a later combat.

The 13th Age RPG brings two particular elements to Dungeons & Dragons-style roleplaying that actively work to engage the player characters in the story and the setting—Icons and ‘One Unique Thing’. The former are archetypal beings or personalities that mold part of the world, driving and directing it. They include the Archmage, the Diabolist, the Emperor, and others, and each player will have a relationship with one, two, or three of these. The latter is what makes each player character stand out in the world of the 13th Age. Now the scenario cannot make much use of the ‘One Unique Thing’ element of each character, because there are just too many for both the author and the publisher of the scenario to take account of. What they can do though, is bring in each of the characters’ Icon relationships. Each session the player roll their ‘relationship’ dice, with any result of ‘6’ granting a player a boon and any result of ‘5’ granting a player both a boon and a complication. What the GM has to do here is create or improvise what these boons and complications might be. Now this will not be an issue for the experienced GM, and whilst there are notes on involving the player characters’ Icon relationships at certain points—particularly when it comes to finding clues, but for the less experienced GM, a few more suggestions might not have gone amiss.

There is also no doubt that Shadows of Eldolan needs these Icon relationships. They serve to pull the player characters into the scenario and involve them further in the plot and hunt for clues. Without them and the input of the GM, the adventure does otherwise feel slightly flat and bland in places. Further, although Shadows of Eldolan is well-plotted and there is plenty of advice on handling its plot, there is one plot point that may annoy the players. The problem is that the villain gets away at the end—and this is built into the plot. Of course, this lends itself to the villain’s reappearance later as a recurring villain and that is no bad thing. Nevertheless, there will be some playing groups that will find this dissatisfying, despite 13th Age being much about storytelling and action as opposed to just the action...

Physically Shadows of Eldolan is slightly disappointing. It is not a bad looking book, but it does need another edit. Although there are stylistic issues, the real problem lies with the adventure’s maps and their descriptions. The maps are decent enough—no surprise given that Pelgrane Press’ sister company is ProFantasy Software—and whilst it would have been nice of them to have been in colour, that they are in greyscale is understandable—though colour maps are available to download for all purchasers, the problem is that they are unnumbered. Although the maps are not necessarily difficult to read, their accompanying descriptions do not readily or easily match the maps. This is disappointing and it does make the adventure just ever slightly harder to run.

Although Shadows of Eldolan takes place in what a ‘high fantasy, high magic’ town, the plot of the scenario takes the adventurers some way away from the bright lights of the well lit town. It is a self-contained affair, with plenty of room for both combat (or not, depending upon the player characters’ actions) and investigation, and if it feels a little flat in places, then there means are still there to make it a more memorable adventure by involving the Icons and their relationship with the player characters. Overall, Shadows of Eldolan is a solid first adventure for players new to 13th Age with the GM being accorded good advice on running it.

Unparalleled Alternatives

For many British gamers, their first encounter with Luther Arkwright came with Imagine #14, the June, 1984 issue of TSR (UK)’s house magazine. The issue gave an introduction to the character and to the seminal and award-winning comic strip by Bryan Talbot, The Adventures of Luther Arkwright, as well as presenting a scenario, ‘The Fire Opal of Set’, written for use with Classic Traveller and TSR, Inc.’s own Star Frontiers, which came complete with pre-generated player characters that could be played as a gaming introduction to the setting. The setting for the comic is not one Earth, but many, across which a war is being fought between one parallel, Zero-Zero, and the Disruptors. The latter seek to destabilise and control multiple parallels, typically through advanced technologies and the backing of totalitarian governments, to their own ends. Zero-Zero, an advanced scientific utopia, seeks to prevent this, its primary agent being Luther Arkwright, an escaped Disruptor trainee, who as the next step in Human evolution is unique in all the parallels and can psychically transport himself across the parallels.

The Adventures of Luther Arkwright, recently reprinted in a collected volume, is exquisitely drawn, its setting and central character a nod to the works of Michael Moorcock and the swinging television adventure series of the 1960s—The Avengers, The Champions, Adam Adamant Lives, and so on. Originally conceived in the 1970s, it would not be fully published until 1989 and go on to receive multiple awards as well as a sequel, Heart of Empire, or the Legacy of Luther Arkwright, a decade later. An audio adaptation was released in 2005. In terms of gaming, 23rd Parallel Games published The Adventures of Luther Arkwright, in 1992, but unfortunately it was ill received. More recently, the second iteration of Hogshead Publishing, announced that Zero-Zero, an RPG based on The Adventures of Luther Arkwright and using the d20 System, was due to be published in 2004, but it did not come to fruition. Then in 2015, The Design Mechanism, the Canadian publisher best known for RuneQuest 6 released Luther Arkwright: Roleplaying Across the Parallels.

Luther Arkwright: Roleplaying Across the Parallels though, is not a roleplaying game in its own right, but supplement that requires the use of RuneQuest 6. It casts the player characters as agents of Valhalla Project, a programme directed by the computer W.O.T.A.N on Zero-Zero, to monitor and counter Disruptor operations. Each is highly gifted being trained experts in their field and in many cases also possessing psychic powers, perhaps being in the progenitors of homo novus, the next step in human evolution. Whether they are indigenous to a particular parallel, able to operate through empathic links forged with other selves on other parallels, or shunting between parallels via advanced technology, the agents of Valhalla will be participating in missions that will ultimately lead into the events of the first series—roughly analogous the early 1980s.

Character or Agent Zero-Zero creation in Luther Arkwright: Roleplaying Across the Parallels follows the step-by-step process as RuneQuest 6 and other Basic Roleplaying derived RPGs. A player rolls dice for his attributes and from them derives the starting values for his skills. Then the player has three sets of points to assign—one for his Culture, derived from his Parallel Type and his Social Type; one for his Career; and lastly a set to spend as he likes, representing his training by Valhalla. Several new skills included, whilst others are updated, to reflect the fact that the many Earths of  Luther Arkwright: Roleplaying Across the Parallels are far more technologically advanced than the Bronze Age of RuneQuest 6.

It should be noted that the character creation process is not an easy one. Primarily this is due to having to flip back and forth between Luther Arkwright: Roleplaying Across the Parallels and the RuneQuest 6 rulebook. This is exacerbated by the supplement’s slightly poor organisation and the need to work out which skills an Agent needs to represent the selected background.

Our sample Zero-Zero Agent is Lucretia Raslo, an airship mechanic on Parallel 13.16.94. Her family runs shipyards in New New York, building and repairing airships. Lucretia followed in her father’s footsteps, her mechanical aptitude being noted at an early age, and became a mechanic and engineer. This was despite her mother’s efforts to teach her the social niceties. With little chance of finding an eligible suitor for Lucretia, her mother’s attention turned to her younger daughter. This left Lucretia to work where she is happiest, that is, with machinery. Her knack for diagnosing and solving mechanical problems—represented by her Technical Trait—was what brought her to the attention of Valhalla Project Agents.

Lucretia Raslo
STR 8 CON 10 SIZ 10 DEX 11 INT 17 POW 16 CHA 11

Action Points: 3 Damage Modifier: -1D2 Experience Modifier: 0 Healing Rate: 2
Build: Heavy Height: 161 cm Weight: 67 kg
Hit Points
Head 4 Chest 6 Abdomen 5 L. Arm 3 R. Arm 3 L. Leg 4 R. Leg 4
Luck Points: 3
Prana Points: 16
Tenacity Points: 16
Movement Rate: 6
Strike Rank: 13

Standard Skills:
Athletics 19%, Brawn 53%, Conceal 27%, Customs 80%, Dance 37%, Deceit 28%, Endurance 45%, Evade 28%, First Aid 28%, Home Parallel 39%, Influence 22%, Insight 33%, Native Tongue 70%, Perception 48%, Sing 27%, Stealth 28%, Swim 18%, Unarmed 19%, Willpower 52%

Professional Skills:
Commerce 43%, Craft (Blacksmithing) 57%, Craft (Embroidery) 37%,Drive (Land Vehicle) 42%, Electronics 53%, Engineering 64%, Gambling 58%, Mechanisms 73%, Pilot (Airship) 44%, Streetwise 26%

Passions
Loyalty to Society 53%
Love (Sister) 47%
Hate (Gang) 53%
Dependency (Gambling) 20%

Parallel Type: Industrial Age
Sociological Type: Manufacturing

Trait
Technical

In addition to the various changes to the skills to reflect the width of technology found across the parallels, the Magic Points of RuneQuest 6 are replaced with Prana Points that fuel the setting’s Psionics and Mystic talents. Each Agent also has an attribute new to RuneQuest 6. This is Tenacity. It is equal to an Agent’s Power attribute and works like the mental or psychological equivalent of his Hit Points. Loss of Tenacity Points from shocks or sanity-shaking events can lead to an Agent loosing his mind.

Further, each Agent has one or more Traits that brought to the attention of the Valhalla Project and lead to his recruitment. These can be as simple as Charming, Polyglot, Quick, and Unshakeable, and most of these provide a base advantage rather than require the use an Agent’s Prana Points. Conversely, the rules for Psionics are more complex, though only slightly so, and do require the use of an Agent’s Prana Points. Once an Agent has rolled, or selected, the Psionic Trait, it opens up further options—Disciplines such as Biokinesis, Empathy, Telekinesis, Telepathy, and so on. Each Discipline possesses a number of Talents. For example, the Talents for Telepathy include Mental Scan, Mental Shield, Mind Probe, Telepathy, Thought Implant, and Psychic Wrack. Each Discipline will have its own skill, for example, Discipline (Biokinesis), that is rolled whenever a Talent is used from said Discipline.

As long as an Agent has Prana Points to spend and can make the appropriate Discipline checks, he is relatively free to use his Psionic abilities as he wants. What stops him is the Psionic Intensity he has for each Discipline. Equal to one twentieth of his Discipline, it governs the number of Talents he can use at any one time as well as the effects of some Talents. For example, the Focus Force Talent can be used to inflict damage equal to the user’s Intensity, whereas the protective value provided by Mental Shield is also equal to his Intensity.

Another option, representing the route taken by Luther Arkwright himself in the comics, is that of Mysticism. Consisting of a number of Paths of Enlightenment, such as Focal Yoga, Shaolin Monastics, and Transcendentalist Meditation, each of which have their own Talents. Where the Psionics of Luther Arkwright: Roleplaying Across the Parallels presents a whole new set of powers and mechanics for RuneQuest 6, the rules for Mysticism in this supplement function exactly as they do in RuneQuest 6. It is possible for an Agent to begin the game already on one of these Paths of Enlightenment, but their primary use is twofold. Initially as abilities for NPCs—Luther Arkwright has them, but later on, as a campaign progresses, as something for the Agents to aspire to.

As powerful as Psionics and Mystic can be in Luther Arkwright: Roleplaying Across the Parallels, their use, along with the difficulties and dangers of combating the machinations of the Disruptors, places a lot of stress upon an Agent and makes them prone to certain Dependencies. These can be as mundane as Alcoholism or Gaming (gambling), or as antisocial as Stealing or Voyeurism, or worse. Every Agent begins play with at least one Dependency—and can have more—and the strength of a Dependency also weakens his Tenacity, that is, his mental fortitude. Each Dependency has a percentage value that works like a skill, but any checks against it are ones that an Agent wants to fail lest it grow like any other skill. Again, this is another reflection of the comic series in which the characters, including Luther himself, suffer from addictions, whether drugs or behaviours. In game though, the effect of any Dependency will primarily be part of a scenario or ongoing campaign. These rules also mark Luther Arkwright: Roleplaying Across the Parallels as a setting for mature players.

Although Luther Arkwright: Roleplaying Across the Parallels has to encompass a wide range of technology, much like the comic, it places an emphasis upon steampunk and clockpunk devices. This does not mean that other technologies are not ignored as various examples of alchemical and chemical, psionic and multiversal, and computer and nanotech technology are also given. For the Agent who likes to tinker, there are rules for creating devices of their own, including vehicles and firearms. These feed into the supplement’s new rules for handling firearms and vehicles, which again encompass a wide array of types and technologies.

Having got the technical aspects of a Luther Arkwright: Roleplaying Across the Parallels out of the way, the last third of the supplement devotes itself to the background. This starts with W.O.T.A.N, the Valhalla Program, and the Disruptors, but as much as they figure in the setting, the focus of this background is the infinite number of Parallels and the means to travel between them. Each parallel is significantly different to its neighbours and the further a parallel is away from ZeroZero, the more likely it is diverge from ZeroZero. Some parallels might be radioactive wastelands or frigid icehouses following runaway climate change, but there are common themes running across a great many of them. These are known as ‘variations’, for example, an Aztec Empire variation in which Christopher Columbus was executed for heresy and Spain is now the vanguard against an invasion from the New World; a British Empire variation in which the Great Fire of London did not happen, allowing mathematician Sir Christopher Wren to become astronomer royal and spur a scientific revolution that would lead to better timekeeping and thus improved navigation by the Royal Navy, ensuring its dominance decades earlier; and German Republic variation in which Franklin D. Roosevelt is lost at sea on a trip to Clipperton Island and an isolationist president is elected in 1940; and so on. 

The discussion of Parallels is supported by numerous examples, each ready for the GM to drop an adventure into, as well as guidelines for creating his own. These are very much pointers to spur the GM’s imagination rather than a set of tables to create Parallels from start to finish, though perhaps such a set of tables might have been of use for the GM new to The Adventures of Luther Arkwright. The inclusion of such a set of tables would also support the other technical aspects of Luther Arkwright: Roleplaying Across the Parallels that aid in construction of devices, weapons, and vehicles. Perhaps they could be included in companion volume?

Advice for the GM is kept relatively short, but is supported by full stats for the various characters from The Adventures of Luther Arkwright and Heart of Empire as well as a short scenario. ‘On Thin Ice’ sees Valhalla Program Agents attempt to thwart a Disruptor plan to destabilise 13.16.94, a Parallel caught in a new ice age. Amusingly, it takes place in Design Mechanism’s home country of Canada and even has a chance for the Agents to encounter a Baron Harkonnen-like alternate version of Mayor Frode! Any fans who remember Imagine #14 may also note that illustrations from its adventure, ‘Fire Opal of Set’, also appear in ‘On Thin Ice’ as thumbnail portraits for various NPCs. Rounding out Luther Arkwright: Roleplaying Across the Parallels are a complete write-up of the Luther Arkwright Saga—The Adventures of Luther Arkwright and Heart of Empire—and an appendix of extra sources and inspirations, all of them worth investigating in their own right, though that said, the inclusion of some nonfiction sources on alternate history would have been nice additions.

Physically, Luther Arkwright: Roleplaying Across the Parallels is a slim hardback down in black and white. In some ways this is a pity, since the Luther Arkwright Saga has been done in colour. That said, black and white certainly suits the exquisite and beautifully detailed line art of the first series. In places Luther Arkwright: Roleplaying Across the Parallels does need a tighter edit, but really it needs to be slightly better organised for ease of use, mostly because the GM will need to refer to RuneQuest 6 for its rules and because of the complexity of the setting. Some may also  find the choice of a smaller typeface wearying on the eyes.

Luther Arkwright: Roleplaying Across the Parallels is not necessarily a setting nor a supplement for the uninitiated or the non-fan of Luther Arkwright. If you fall into that category, then go read the graphic novels and then come back to this review, because The Adventures of Luther Arkwright is far, far better than this or any other review of mine. Luther Arkwright: Roleplaying Across the Parallels definitely feels like a toolkit for running a game across the Parallels. It is solidly done toolkit, but nevertheless, given the complexities of the setting and of the rules, Luther Arkwright: Roleplaying Across the Parallels is a sourcebook for the experienced GM and players alike.

Now with actual Steampunk

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 plus the 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 seventeenth adventure is The Last Train to Darksville.

The Last Train to Darksville is written by Matt Forbeck, the designer of the Brave New World RPG and co-author to numerous other sourcebooks. It is the sixth adventure written for characters who have entered the Master Path, that is of Seventh Level or higher, and comes as a five page, 11.3 MB PDF. Notably the adventure is the first to make use of content from the Demon Lord’s Companion and the first to make real use of the RPG’s steampunk elements, something that previous scenarios have overlooked in favour of its dark fantasy and despite being a relatively simple, straightforward affair, The Last Train to Darksville is a tough, almost epic adventure with a silly pun of a title.

Ideally, the scenario takes place between Sixton and Foundry in the Northern Reach where the Darksville Railway runs between Darksville and Devil’s Breach, although it can be set anywhere to suit the Game Master’s campaign. Wherever the adventure is set, the Darksville Railway has a problem—missing trains! The player characters are hired to ride the rails and ensure that the last train gets through. Of course they get to find out what happened to the previous trains and then they face the cause in an epic battle! The problem is that trains have become the target of a dragon and any scenario that involves a dragon versus train battle with the adventurers aboard has to be epic—not to say fun!

The Last Train to Darksville is short and to the point, though there is the possibility of further adventures. Once battle is joined, the Game Master should ramp up the action as much as possible as it is not every day that the adventurers get to fight a dragon and certainly not aboard a train.

For Cultured Friends V

The fifth issue of The Excellent Travelling Volume  continues James Maliszewski’s support for TSR Inc.’s Empire of the Petal Throne: The World of Tékumel, only the third RPG to be published and the first to come with its own background. It also marks his continued involvement in the ‘Old School Renaissance’, though one more ‘cultured’ and not as prominent or as public as its once leading light via his blog, Grognardia. As with previous issues—one, two, three, and four—the fanzine showcases his own campaign, ‘House of Worms’, although with this issue, he introduces a second campaign. Although the fanzine is firmly aimed at ‘Petalheads’, devotees of Tékumel: Empire of the Petal Throne, the linguistic and RPG setting devised by the late Professor M.A.R. Barker, it is not aimed at the deep cultural aspects that the setting and thus the RPG is rightly renowned for. Rather, it sets out to provide material that has been played and can be played.

As with previous issues, The Excellent Travelling Volume #5 comes as a thirty-two page, digest-sized booklet, illustrated with greyscale pictures. Inside are just six sections, most of which will be familiar to readers of previous issues. It opens with ‘Mu’ugalavyáni and N’lüss Characters’, a guide to creating characters from Tsolyánu’s greatest rival, the Empire of Mu’ugalavyá and N’lüssa, the lands of the giant N’lüss, the barbarians to the north of Mu’ugalavyá. The article covers the basic information needed to play characters from either region, alignment, gender, skills, Level Titles, gods, and both names and clan names, and so on. The Mu’ugalavyáni get more of a detailed treatment than the N’lüss, but then the N’lüss are an ‘uncultured’ lot in comparison to the Mu’ugalavyáni, who make up one the Five Empires. As with previous articles in the series, this provides excellent support for both NPCs and player characters.

The article though, marks a radical shift upon the part of the author since it describes peoples to the west of The Empire of the Petal Throne, whereas previous issues have focussed upon the east with discussions of Sokátis, the City of Roofs, and articles about the Salarvyáni and the Pecháni and the Yán Koryáni and the Sa’á Allaqiyáni. The shift is explained by the author’s fascination with the Mu’ugalavyáni and his recently having set up a new campaign set in the city of Gashchné.

It is followed by another entry in one of the continuing highlights of The Excellent Travelling Volume—‘Patrons’. Except that where in the past the author has presented potential employers suitable for civilised and cultured clan members as well as uncultured, uncivilised, nakome scum*, here he takes us to ‘At the Clanhouse’ to present five patrons that Tsolyánu player characters might encounter. As before, each is accorded full stats, background and a story hook, plus options as to what is really going on. The various NPCs include a legion veteran, a matchmaker, a respected elder, and so on. Encountering may lead one or more player characters enlisting, getting married, covering up indiscretions, and more. The five patrons here are aimed at the campaign that involves Tsolyánu clan members and in particular work well with a single-clan campaign, though there would be little adjustment needed to use them in a campaign set in Mu’ugalavyá or the other Five Empires. However the GM uses them, these are good adventure hooks, especially for getting the players involved in clan life and politics.

Continued in The Excellent Travelling Volume #5 is ‘A Portion of the Underworld of Sokátis’, a description of part of the ‘Tsuru’úm’ or underworld that lies beneath the city’s Foreigners’ Quarter first described in issue #2. This completes both halves of the portion detailed so far. Now complete it still feels much like a sandbox for the player characters to explore and adventure in, the issue being that the player characters lack reasons to delve into its musty halls and tombs. Of course, a competent GM would be able to create reasons and hooks for his own campaign, but perhaps the regular Patrons section could be devoted to potential employers to lead on to adventures in the ‘Tsuru’úm’ described in the ‘A Portion of the Underworld of Sokátis’ series.

The ‘Bestiary’ describes two types of the undead that might be found in the ‘Tsuru’úm’ below Sokátis. One is the Mnéktan, ‘the sword-handed’, whose arms have been sharpened into swords, whilst the Turuvándu, ‘the scuttler’, bends over backwards and is capable of walking up walls and across the ceiling. Each is a type of reanimated corpse that is used as tomb guards, the Mnéktan being the creation of the Temple of Ksáru, the Turuvándu the creation of the Temple of Sárku. Further creatures are described, but not given stats, in ‘The Underpeople’. These are the various nearly- and non-human species that live below the planet and who have been forgotten by, or are looked down upon by mankind. The author begins with those mentioned in Man of Gold, M.A.R. Barker’s first novel set in Tékumel, that is the Hehegánu and the Hehecháru, before going on to describe those that he developed for his own campaign and presenting a means for the GM to create his own. They are a means to further highlight the long history mankind’s future history on Tékumel and the activities of the Ancients, the xenophobic attitudes of the Five Empires and the weirdness of the setting. Rounding the coverage of monsters and creatures in The Excellent Travelling Volume #5 is a trio of ‘demons’ in ‘Demons of Belkhánu & Qón’.

Lastly, ‘The Tomb of Vrikheshámma’ describes the step-pyramid tomb of an ancient and once revered sorcerer. Located in some distant desert or badlands, this is a nicely described destination that consists of just a few rooms which should keep a group of  adventurers occupied for a session or two. As written, it just needs a good reason for them to go looking for it and it is all ready for the GM to drop it into a convenient hex in his campaign or sandbox.

Physically, The Excellent Travelling Volume #5 is solidly presented. Both its artwork and its cartography continue to be excellent. That said, another edit would not have gone amiss, but there is a solidly assured feel to this issue.

The Excellent Travelling Volume #5 continues James Maliszewski’s exploration and development of his own campaign for Tékumel: Empire of the Petal Throne. Although perhaps some more adventures and more involved adventures might be a nice idea, especially for Sokátis and its ‘Tsuru’úm, for future issues, the mix of articles in this issue feels like a good balance and is never uninteresting. The Excellent Travelling Volume #5 is as close to a professional magazine as a fanzine can get. If you are a ‘Petalhead’, a fan of Tékumel: Empire of the Petal Throne, then The Excellent Travelling Volume #5 is a must.

Fanzine Focus II: Vacant Ritual Assembly #2

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 began with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another 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 tcompatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, such as The Undercroft and Vacant Ritual Assembly.

Published in the Spring of 2015 by Red Moon Medicine, Vacant Ritual Assembly #2 follows on from the solidly done issue #1 and like that first issue is devoted to Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay and the campaign of the editor, Clint Krause. Unlike that first issue there is no real theme to Vacant Ritual Assembly #2, but this does not mean that the contents of this issue suffer for it.

Once past the editorial and the editor’s campaign update, Vacant Ritual Assembly #2 opens with a pair of slight pieces, a list of names for a dark fantasy game and a reinterpretation of the Zodiac as part of character creation. This is followed by ‘Dretcher’s Bay’, a description of a forlorn, Innsmouth-like hamlet. Governed by ‘the captains’, the village is best known for the Bell Crab, the rich meat of which sells for high prices. Each of the captains commands rival crews of crabbers that dive upon the nearby submerged ruins of Acray to harvest the crabs, though the creatures are sacred to the strange lobster-like Nephroids who herd them. The description of Dretcher's Bay does not include any plot hooks or scenario ideas, but the setting itself has plenty of opportunities, whether the player characters want to get involved in village politics, dive for Bell Crabs, or scour the ruins for its secrets. It feels old and mouldering and is easily dropped onto any suitable coastal spot in a Referee’s campaign.

The only piece in Vacant Ritual Assembly #2 offered by an author other than the editor is ‘Oarsmen & Their Woes’ by Anxious P. This describes a strange Charon-like race that might be encountered singly when someone needs to escape from a situation or environment. The Oarsman offers a way to somewhere safe—or at least somewhere safer—aboard his ferry along impossible creeks, but there is a price. The Oarsman will not only share the woe that lead to him becoming an Oarsman, but also demand a price for their passage to be paid by one of the adventurers. This is usually something personal and vital to the adventurer. ‘Oarsmen & Their Woes’ offers both something useful and something creepy to a campaign and really works if used more than once because no two woes and no two prices should be alike. To that end, a few more suggested prices might not have gone amiss, but a competent Referee should be able to devise a few more.

‘With Thine Eye Beheld’ offers a short encounter with a strange cargo cult obsessed with a cyclops-God and his eye. It details the small, family cult and its temple, essentially a small dungeon. There is relatively little to the scenario, but it carries its eye motive as far as it can in a few pages, right up to a sort of bonkers magic item. Just as ‘Dretcher's Bay’, this scenario lacks the hooks to get the adventurers involved, but unlike ‘Dretcher's Bay’, this scenario lacks the depth for the Referee to really develop interesting hooks. So the Referee will need to work harder to work it into his game, but it is nevertheless easy to drop ‘With Thine Eye Beheld’ into a hex of your sandbox.

As with the first issue, rounding out Vacant Ritual Assembly #2 is a lengthy interview. This time it is with Greg Gorgonmilk, the co-author and publisher of Dolmenwood - Character Archaics. It is informative, but at six pages, it is somewhat lengthy given that the fanzine is just twenty-four pages long. Essentially it is a magazine-sized article and perhaps it could have been split over two issues?

Physically, Vacant Ritual Assembly #2 is well presented, and there are decent maps whilst the illustrations do vary in quality. Where second issues—whether of albums or fanzines—might seem to have a difficult gestation with ultimately unsatisfactorily results, this is not the case with the Vacant Ritual Assembly #2. It contains some satisfying and usable content in both scenarios, an interesting creature to encounter, and even page filling pieces that can be used. Overall, a solid issue with a few problems which can easily be overcome for issue #3.