A Literal Sandbox

Taking its cue its title, if not its cue, from Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, Slumbering Ursine Dunes is a mini-sandbox style setting designed for characters of between Second and Fourth Level for use with Goblinoid Games’ Labyrinth Lord. Published by the Hydra Collective LLC following a successful Kickstarter campaign, it is the first part of a trilogy of supplements which continue with Fever-Dreaming Marlinko and Misty Isles of the Eld and set in the Hill Cantons, a setting described as, “A Slavic-myth inspired, acid fantasy world of Moorcockian extradimensional incursions and Vancian swindlers and petty bureaucrats.” Much of this is true—Slumbering Ursine Dunes lacks the swindlers and the petty bureaucrats—but the setting is infused with Slavic myth and penetrated by Moorcockian Science Fantasy from beyond, and it is Vancian in its baroque feeling of age and the sometimes-retiring nature of the setting.

Although a sandbox setting which the player characters are free to wander where they will, Slumbering Ursine Dunes is not a hexcrawl, but a ‘pointcrawl’. This depicts a region as a series of connected nodes rather than hex grid of locations and wilderness spaced in between. This makes travel in a sense more direct and avoids the problem of having an adventuring party wandering endlessly in the wilderness trying to find specific locations. It turns the map of the region depicted in Slumbering Ursine Dunes into something representational rather than exact and topographical, much like the map of the London Underground. Cleverly though, the concept of nodes and distinct travel routes is supported by the topography of the setting itself. The Slumbering Ursine Dunes consists of a mass of huge dunes of scarlet sand, each dune all but insurmountable, so that the easiest way through the dunes is by the existing routes between and along their bases. That said, the number of points—and thus encounters—in this pointcrawl are quite small at just twenty-five and for any adventurers, getting across the Slumbering Ursine Dunes should take no more than a morning at most—in either direction.

The Slumbering Ursine Dunes are sudden plateau, some three-hundred-and-fifty feet high, that jut out of the landscape on the coast of the Persimmon Sea opposite the Misty Isles. They are known for the scarlet colour of their sand and for the annual pilgrimage of the soldier-bears who serve the hirsute and ursine godling, Medved, who rules over the plateau. The plateau is rumoured to be a place of great strangeness, whether it is the green pearls which carry the souls of evil men or the magical wheat fields where succour and sustenance is granted. The only access to the plateau is from the stairs that lead up from the settlement at Kugelberg—there is certainly none to be had from the coastal side. Two points of interest stand on the coastal side though: The Golden Barge and the Glittering Tower. To reach them, any adventurers will have to trek across the Slumbering Ursine Dunes, for the waters are not safe around the coast and there are no beaches.

Once atop the plateau, the player characters will encounter an array of the weird and the wonderful. There are War Bears and Centaur toll keepers, a hermit living in a Zardoz-like head, a magic rye field, and a reservoir which holds the remaining floodwaters of the last Great Deluge. This reservoir is home to a trio of crooning willow-like Rusalkas who like to drown their men and a band of Giant Beavers whose duty it is to maintain the dam, just as it has been for their forefathers before them. Their lair is in the dam and contains not just an aquarium, but also a gift shop! This is in addition to the encounters that the player characters are likely to have with the forces and representatives of the four factions vying for control of the Slumbering Ursine Dunes. They include Joromir the Old Smith, a tired warrior, who along with his family and friends wants little to change atop the plateau; Medved the Master, an old and tired god who commands War Bears, Centaurs, and Cave Dwarfs and who wants to be rid of the Eld and Ondrj; the Eld, extradimensional Melnibonéan-like elves wanting to reclaim the Golden Barge and who hate Medved the Master; and Ondrj the Reaver, cousin to Medved the Master and Wereshark who leads a band of pirates in a orgy of violence and hatred. Each of these NPCs is mapped onto the Alignment Lawful/Chaotic-Good/Evil axis, so that Joromir the Old Smith is Lawful Good, Medved the Master is Chaotic Good, the Eld are Lawful Evil, and Ondrj the Reaver is Chaotic Evil. Time is taken to describe how each of these NPCs talks and acts and will react to the player characters. For example, Ondrj the Reaver is described as being all politeness and sharp toothed smiles, but actually constraining his natural inclination to just kill the party, and even if the adventurers are working for him, there is a thirty percent chance that he will give in and try to kill them anyway. These are fantastic pointers and so helpful for the Dungeon Master.

The Golden Barge and the Glittering Tower serve as the dungeons for the Slumbering Ursine Dunes. The Golden Barge, long lost to the Eld, is more a space barge than a nautical barge and a strange combination of ancient alien and organic technology and mediaeval pleasure barge. The primary danger aboard the barge are the Ghul, organically grown servants and guards whose numbers will refresh over the course of a few days. The creepiest feature of the Golden Barge will be its furniture, human peasantry bent and shellacked into tables and chairs, but perhaps the most memorable will be the two-headed giant vulture with tumour-chest-tentacles atop a broken tower and the four-armed White Ape waiting at the top of the stairs to the control, complete with a supply of barrels…

In comparison, the Glittering Tower, home to Medved the Master, is not as interesting. It is more dungeon-like than the Golden Barge, but where that is quite sparse in its furnishings and fittings, the Glittering Tower is baroque, cluttered, and very much lived in. It is full of gewgaws and odds and ends and also of the Eld trying to oust Medved, who in turn would like to drive them out of his home. Unfortunately, the Glittering Tower is not functioning as well as it once did and so the demi-god needs help. Perhaps the player characters can help? As well as employment, there are plenty of opportunity to look the tower, even if that loot is just a little weird, and similarly, there is opportunity aplenty for the Dungeon Master to slip interesting items into all of this clutter.

The descriptions of the locations and the NPCs take up roughly two thirds of the book, the remainder consisting of an optional mechanic and various appendices. The optional mechanic is a ‘Chaos Event Index’, Like many a sandbox, the Slumbering Ursine Dunes exist more or less on a fulcrum, awaiting agents of change and of course, those agents of change are the player characters. Their influence, their actions, even their very presence are enough to upset the apple cart and throw the balance of the region into chaos. To that end, the ‘Chaos Event Index’ turns that up a notch or two, with the player characters’ mere presence combined with their actions and the actions of the factions serving to drive the index up and increase the chaos and the weirdness. Initially this might be for blood rain to fall, but monsters might attack, demi-gods appear, and so on. As this escalates, it pushes the setting further and further into the weird.

The appendices include a bestiary, a list of new spells, two new Classes, and a list of hirelings. The bestiary provides stats and write-ups for the new monsters—the Cave Dwarf, the War Bear, the Anti-Cantonal Eld, the Ghuls, and so on. Several monsters, such as the Grue and the Pelgrane are directly drawn from Jack Vance’s Dying Earth novels, whilst the two new spells, Kazimir’s Resplendent Couture and Summon and Bind Sandestin, are utterly Vancian. The Cave Dwarf and the War Bear are also given as playable races, in the Race as Class format of Labyrinth Lord. The Cave Dwarf is essentially a Neanderthal Dwarf, whilst the War Bears are fighters with a love of polearms. What is interesting about both Classes is that neither are initially available to the players, instead available only as NPCs. The Dungeon Master has the option to ‘unlock’ them though, perhaps after a player character has died. Lastly, the lists of hirelings provide a fun set of NPCs for the Dungeon Master to roleplay as they accompany the player characters.

Physically, Slumbering Ursine Dunes is well written—certainly the author has a lot of fun getting obvious and not so obvious references into the setting and there is plenty of good descriptive content to help the Dungeon Master run the adventure. It is also very nicely illustrated. In fact, the artwork, if only in greyscale, is excellent. Yet the book is not well organised, with tables often spread over two pages making them awkward to use. The dungeon maps, those of the Golden Barge and the Glittering Tower, are placed too far away from their text descriptions for easy use. The maps of both locations are also bland and somewhat disappointing. As is the lack of an index, but the book is relatively short, so this is not as much of a problem as it could have been.

If there is a problem with Slumbering Ursine Dunes, it is the lack of a hook. There are no suggestions as to how or why the player characters should or want to come to the mini-region and quite possibly no reason for them to stay unless they ally themselves with one of the factions. There is plenty for them to do and explore once they do, but without this motivation…? The Dungeon Master will need to create some hooks and suggestions perhaps to provide this. If there is a second problem it is that the outcome of the player characters’ actions on the mini-region are not really explored. What happens if they do one action and not another is very much left up to the Dungeon Master to decide.

One of the big advantages of Slumbering Ursine Dunes is that it is so small and it is so self-contained that it can be dropped into many other settings. With its ancient Hyberborean links, one option would be North Wind Adventures’ Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea: A Roleplaying Game of Swords, Sorcery, and Wierd Fantasy, but doubtless any Dungeon Master will be able to find a good home for this mini-region.

Overall, Slumbering Ursine Dunes packs a lot of adventure into its pages. The ‘pointcrawl’ works very well here as a means for handling wilderness travel and thus a means for handling a Dungeon Master’s first wilderness type adventure. Where it fails is in getting the adventurers onto the plateau—or at least in giving them a reason for getting on to it—and this lacking undermines the scenario’s design as a Dungeon Master’s first wilderness adventure. More experienced Dungeon Masters will doubtless be able to come up with motivations and reasons where a less experienced Dungeon Master may not be able to. Once there though and once they have reasons to be there, both the Dungeon Master and players will get to enjoy the weird and wonderful, evocatively described and detailed setting that is Slumbering Ursine Dunes, get involved in its politics, make some truly singular friends, and have some interesting encounters.

The ‘I Got The Altered Morphology Blues’ Trio

Despite there being being some well-known and highly-acclaimed comic book series about the policing of superheroes—including Alan Moore’s Top 10, Brian Michael Bendis’ Powers, and Ed Brubaker and Greg Rucka’s Gotham Central—it is surprising that few superhero roleplaying games have explored the subgenre. One notable exception is Mutant City Blues, superpowered roleplaying game written by Robin D. Laws and published by Pelgrane Press in 2008, and powered by the GUMSHOE System.

Mutant City Blues posits a near future in which following the outbreak of ‘Ghost Flu’, approximately 1% of the population exhibits ‘Sudden Mutation Event’ (SME) and subsequently manifests strange and wondrous powers and abilities. Most of these individuals go on to lead normal lives, some of course, become celebrities and politicians, whilst others turn to crime. In response, most big city police forces establish a Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit (HCIU) or similar department, staffed by the super powered and tasked to investigate and solve SME related crimes, whether committed by or against SME sufferers. The HCIU also serves as a combination liaison/bulwark between these mutants and ordinary folk, both civilians and fellow police officers. The result is a roleplaying game which more an investigative Police Procedural—such as NYPD Blue or C.S.I.—with and about powers rather than a ‘Four Colour’ affair. Sadly, Mutant City Blues received just the one supplement in print, Hard Helix. There is though, another scenario anthology, one which only appeared in PDF.

Brief Cases presents a trilogy of cases to add a Mutant City Blues campaign or a change of pace—with some adjustment—in another superhero campaign. All three cases involve plenty of investigation, just about the right amount of combat, and lots of roleplaying. None of the three scenarios should take more than a good session or two and would work as single cases or scenarios to slip in between longer investigations.

The trilogy opens with ‘Shoulder to Shoulder’ and the chance discovery of a bomb-making workshop. Closer investigation reveals a plot against an anti-mutant rally. This cleverly puts the loyalties of the characters and the members of the HCIU to test as they have to protect someone who hides their anti-mutant prejudice under a veneer of respectability and concern. This is Adria Dawson, a former celebrity chef, who is now the motherly face of Families First and passive anti-mutant prejudice. Mutant opposition to her means that there are plenty of suspects and opportunities for the player characters to keep the peace and handle the press. The scenario though calls for solid forensic skills and good use of the Quade Diagram, the means of selecting powers for characters and NPCs alike and of HCIU officers determining what powers are used at a crime scene. The Game Master has some fun NPCs to portray and there is a nicely constructed clue trail for the players and their characters to follow in what is a really enjoyable investigation that in 2018 has some parallels with the prevailing social climate.

The second scenario, ‘Blastback’, starts with an interesting premise, a mutant-only gym and sets a murder there. Playing upon the concept of the Danger Room from the X-Men comics, the Danger Room is a gym where mutants go to practise and exercise their powers and now one of its customers has been killed, stabbed to death by a knife machine despite his having the Blade Immunity power. This is more of a labyrinthine investigation, delving back into the history of both the gym and mutant culture. Getting to one NPC is a bit awkward and could have been better handled as he important clues to pass on, and although lengthy, the investigation is not as satisfying as ‘Shoulder to Shoulder’. The climax is more challenging though, involving organised crime and illegal mutant fights. This is should not be a problem for player characters with combat related skills, but for a group with more investigative skills the final scenes will need police backup and that may not be quite as satisfying an ending.

The third scenario, ‘The Kids Aren’t Alright’, takes the investigators back to school when a lawyer falls out of the sky and lands on a car in the local high school’s carpark. It looks like there might be an unidentified mutant in the school, either a student or a teacher. There are plenty of suspects, some of whom are hiding their powers, some of whom they are not. Good interview and interpersonal skills are required to identify suspects and further leads despite a red herring or two, and as the investigators close in on the culprits there are some nicely paced action scenes. Unlike the previous two scenarios, the investigators will be dealing with more mutants than just the one or two perpetrators and as they stick together, getting them to crack is a bit more difficult. The scenario comes to a bit of a clichéd ending, but the consequences to the player characters’ investigation are interesting and have gaming potential in themselves, especially if the HCIU decides to do an outreach programme.

Physically, Brief Cases comes as a thirty-four page, black and white, 5.41 Mb PDF with a good full colour cover. The internal illustrations are few in number and do not always quite fit the scenario. There are no maps, but then none of the scenarios have scenes and locations which are not familiar from television cop shows. Of course, that just makes each of the scenes in the trilogy of scenarios easy to frame. The writing is clear and the scenarios are easy to understand throughout bar the awkwardness of the investigators getting to one NPC in ‘Blastback’.

As an addition to a Mutant City Blues campaign, then the trilogy of scenarios presented in Brief Cases is thoroughly useful. All three are good scenarios and enjoyable investigations which may also be a useful source of ideas for other superhero roleplaying games.

Looping Your Home

It is not an unreasonable claim to suggest that the ENinie award-winning Tales from the Loop – Roleplaying in the '80s That Never Was, published by Modiphius Entertainment, was the best roleplaying game released in the English language in 2017. Based on the stunning artwork of Simon Stålenhag, also used to illustrate the roleplaying game, Tales from the Loop depicts an alternate past in which children discover that the landscape around them is rife with mysteries, many of which seem to stem from the advanced scientific research institutes that their home towns are built around. And all this whilst having to deal with an often troubled home life and adults who never believe what the children have seen.

The first supplement to be released for Tales from the Loop is Our Friends the Machines & Other Mysteries. This presents three full scenarios, a mixtape of scenario hooks and threats, four blueprints for threats, and a guide to putting a Loop around your hometown. All bar the latter is written with the setting of Mälaröarna, the islands of Lake Mälaren, which lies to the west of Stockholm in Sweden, the default setting in Tales from the Loop. As in the core rulebook, they are supported by notes and indicators to help the Game Master adapt the content to the roleplaying game’s other setting of Boulder City, though it would be interesting to see a collection of scenarios written with Boulder City as the base setting rather than Mälaröarna.

All of the scenarios in Our Friends the Machines & Other Mysteries as well as the scenario hooks of the Mixtape, are inspired by various aspects of the nineteen eighties. So there are stories about the commercialisation of toys and the craze for certain toys, the moral panic about video nasties, hooks based on classic eighties rock and pop tracks, and so on. As to be expected, this is all very well presented, with a clean layout, fantastic illustrations, and some very nice cartography. That said, the editing is a little scrappy in places and it does feel as if the book was rushed into English translations. Nevertheless, Our Friends the Machines & Other Mysteries is a handsome looking book.

The supplement opens with the titular, ‘Our Friends the Machines’. In this mystery, the Kids’ hometown has been selected to launch a new toy line based on the animated series, Our Friends the Machines. The toys in this series are robots, divided between the Convoys and the Deceivers, each capable of transforming into ordinary vehicles and objects. After the chaos of the launch at the local toyshop, strange things begin happening in the town, the adults begin acting obsessively, and the toys…? Very obviously inspired by The Transformers, devotees of the animated series will get a kick out of playing what is a fun Mystery. Groups who have a Computer Geek archetype amongst their number will have a certain advantage, but any Kids with Tech skills will be useful.

There are creepy moments to be had in ‘Our Friends the Machines’, but the tone of the book definitely makes a shift to the creepy in the second scenario, ‘Horror Movie Mayhem’. It starts with the Kids’ hometown being beset by a moral panic at the video nasties—or at least the horror movies—that the youths are swapping and watching. Led by the Parent-Teacher Association, this escalates into an attack on the local video store and then just out of sight, against anyone or anything who is different or stands out from the social norm. The one by one the adults begin changing their behaviour and of course, this includes many of the Kids’ parents. Somehow, the Kids need to find out what is going on and who is responsible, before finding a solution before its effects spread even further. Given the video-based theme of the scenario, the inclusion of some movie inspiration is a nice touch and a slight pity that the other scenarios did not include similar lists.

After having done a certain whimsy with ‘Our Friends the Machines’ and creepy with ‘Horror Movie Mayhem’, the third scenario, ‘The Mummy in the Mist’, takes the supplement in a weird direction. Rumours spread round the school of an actual mummy being seen in nearby woods. Ideally this should be enough to pique the curiousity of the Kids. This may not be enough motivation for some groups and the Game Master may have to provide further options or nudges. At the same time as the Mummy appears, the nearby lake appears to be fog bound all of the time and the police are more active. What this scenario buys into is the curiousity and seeing everything as dare attitude of Kids rather than the rationalism of adults, for of the three scenarios in Our Friends the Machines & Other Mysteries, this one the Kids have to go looking for the mystery rather than the mystery coming to them. This is also a scarier, weirder scenario and it feels markedly different in tone from the previous two.

All three of the scenarios are well organised and follow the pattern set in the core rules by being divided into five phases—‘Introducing the Kids’, ‘Introducing the Mystery’, ‘Solving the Mystery’, ‘Showdown’, ‘Aftermath’, and ‘Change’. Details of countdown events are given to push each Mystery along as well as suggested scenes and other advice. The three scenarios are followed by ‘Mixtape of Mysteries’. These follow the minor Mystery format to be found in the core rules, but what sets them apart is that they are inspired by particular rock and pop tracks from the nineteen eighties. So the tracks include ‘Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” by the Eurythmics and ‘Thriller’ by Michael Jackson as well as Belinda Carlisle’s ‘Heaven is a Place on Earth’ and The Police’s ‘Every Breath You Take’. The authors then build plots around them, including the theft of dreams by rogue robots, a trio of women offering a refuge—or could the rumour that they are witches be true, a la the film, The Witches of Eastwick, a vagrant with the power to steal away children, and more. Barring a couple which do play upon a ‘Pied Piper’ effect, there is a decent medley here, all of which should be relatively easy for the Game Master to develop into full scenarios.

‘Machine Blueprints’ details four of the signature machines to be found within the environs of the Loop—wherever it is located. They include the Alta ABM100 fire patrol robot, the Paarhufer MK 79 service and maintenance robot, the Lieber-Alta M75 Locomotive Ship, and MG/S Sierra Nevada bulk freighter. One lovely tidbit here is the idea of teenagers taunting Alta ABM100 fire patrol robot with flares and driving away in a car chased by the robot. Each of the write-ups is accompanied by a Mystery suggestion or two, which will need much more development than the Mixtape Mysteries. 

Rounding out Our Friends the Machines & Other Mysteries is ‘Hometown Hack’, a guide to dropping a Loop onto your hometown or where you live. It sets a few criteria for a Loop and takes the Game Master through the few steps necessary, including preparing and placing the agency. In Sweden it is Riksenergi and in the USA it is DARPA, in the worked out example and third Loop, ‘The Broads Loop’, it is ReGIS or ‘Regional Geomagnetic Information Sciences’, part of the Ministry of Defence (and not Department of Defence as given here). It really is only a quick example, so it would be nice to see it further developed and it is an indication of Modiphius Entertainment and Free League Publishing working closely together.

Besides providing support for Tales of the Loop, what Our Friends the Machines & Other Mysteries also does is point to possible further support—more Mysteries and Mystery Hooks, more blueprints, and sample Loops (though of course, it is possible to have too many Loops). Overall, this is good, solid support for a solidly good roleplaying game.

Miskatonic Monday #4: Plague

Between October 2003 and October 2013, Chaosium, Inc. published a series of books for Call of Cthulhu under the Miskatonic University Library Association brand. Whether a sourcebook, scenario, anthology, or campaign, each was a showcase for their authors—amateur rather than professional, but fans of Call of Cthulhu nonetheless—to put forward their ideas and share with others. The programme was notable for having launched the writing careers of several authors, but for every Cthulhu Invictus, The Pastores, Primal State, Ripples from Carcosa, and Halloween Horror, there was a Five Go Mad in Egypt, Return of the Ripper, Rise ofthe Dead, Rise ofthe Dead II: The Raid, and more...

The Miskatonic University Library Association brand is no more, alas, but what we have in its stead is the Miskatonic Repository, based on the same format as the DM’s Guild for Dungeons & Dragons. It is thus, “...a new way for creators to publish and distribute their own original Call of Cthulhu content including scenarios, settings, spells and more…” To support the endeavours of their creators, Chaosium has provided templates and art packs, both free to use, so that the resulting releases can look and feel as professional as possible. To support the efforts of these contributors, Miskatonic Monday is an occasional series of reviews which will in turn examine an item drawn from the far reaches of the Miskatonic Repository.

—oOo—

Name: Plague

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.

Author: Matt Ryan & Noah Lloyd

Illsutrations: Sam Mameli

Setting: Arkham, Modern Day, Lovecraft Country

Product: One-Shot Scenario

What You Get: 26.2 MB, 36-page full colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Against the clock, medical emergency to defeat the shrubbry of death

Plot Hook: The investigators are members of a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention team assigned to investigate the outbreak of an unknown and deadly disease in an old house.

Plot Development: Inter-team rivalries; the demands of the building's tenants; a rapidly developing disease.

Plot Support: Fully plotted out with eighteen NPCs, scenes and events, timeline, and medical investigation. Plus six pre-generated inter-connected investigators.

Production Values: Needs an edit. Clear maps. Good house map. Investigator backgrounds not with their investigator sheets.

Pros

# Works as a convention scenario

# Good one-shot or first exposure to the Mythos

# Passing resemblance to The Monolith Monsters

# Lots of well-drawn NPCs for the Keeper to portray

# Simple plot with few timed events
# Mythos underplayed
# Link to 'The People of the Monolith'
# A very giving Gug

# Easy to adapt to Delta Green   

Cons

# Finding a cure feels underplayed

# Feels like there is just the one possible outcome

# What happens next?

Conclusion

# Medical investigation underwritten

# NPC reactions and motivations nicely handled

# Limited possible outcomes

# Delivers some good 'shocks', but the one potential shock is the best
# What happens next?

Reviewing Bad

Here is an interesting situation. Almost a decade ago, in 2009, I wrote a review of Age of Cthulhu II: Madness in London Town. It was one of the infrequent negative reviews that I have written and as exercises in writing and reviewing, they can be quite fun to do. At the time, my editor asked me if I wanted to reconsider. After all, the review was not written in a discursive style and it was direct and to the point about the issues that I had with the scenario. I reread the review and decided that I wanted to stick to what I had written. The editor duly posted the review and I moved on to the next review. To this day, I cannot recall what that review was, or the one before it, but I do remember my review of Age of Cthulhu II: Madness in London Town. I also remember how I was unprepared for how unhappy the publisher was with the review and the relatively minor controversy this caused. At the time it was strange experience, to watch online as a furore swirled around a couple of thousand words I had written.


Now in 2018, another reviewer, Bryce Lynch of tenfootpole.org, has posted a review to https://rpggeek.com/ of a scenario called Deadly Delves: Reign of Ruin. It should be noted that this review is written in line with Lynch’s particular standards when it comes to writing reviews of Old School Renaissance titles, but like my review of Age of Cthulhu II: Madness in London Town, this review of Deadly Delves: Reign of Ruin has attracted some attention and not necessarily for the right reasons.

Published by Jon Brazer Enterprises, this is a dungeon adventure designed to be played by six characters of Sixth Level using Swords & Wizardry Complete, the retroclone published by Frog God Games. Previous versions of the scenario were written for use with Pelgrane Press’ 13th Age, Paizo’s Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, and Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition from Wizards of the Coast. This version of Deadly Delves: Reign of Ruin is the publisher’s first offering for Swords & Wizardry and the Old School Renaissance.

The adventure opens with the line, “Northam has been razed. None survived. Send reinforcements immediately.” It is delivered by an injured man who staggers into the adventurers’ camp before promptly dropping dead. The party has camped on the edge of a boggy area known as the Crannogs, at the heart of which is the Great Swamp. The area is policed and patrolled by the Stormhammer Rangers—and the dead man happens to be a Stormhammer scout. When the party reaches Northam, the adventurers find that its buildings smashed, livestock slaughtered, its inhabitants either dead or missing, and the following words burned into the ground: “Beware The Blackener Of Bright Waters, For She Is Come Again.” They also learn that the town was attacked by a force of lizardmen and wyverns from the nearby Ixtupi tribe and that the force stole the skull of Nyrionaxys which was mounted on the wall of the town’s mead hall. 

Long ago, the Crannogs was a country known as Greenacre governed by a society of druids. Then the Ixtupi tribe, led by the black dragon queen, Nyrionaxys, attacked, destroying the druids, despoiling their temple, and as well as establishing draconic rule and turning the land into a greater swamp. Eventually, Nyrionaxys’ rule was overthrown, the Ixputi tribe driven back, and ultimately, Nyrionaxys herself was cut apart as she slept… The question is, why has the Ixputi tribe returned to attack the peoples of the Crannogs and what does it want with Nyrionaxys’ skull? Clues point to another upcoming attack and from there to the Temple of Ixputi…

The main focus of the adventure is on the Temple of Ixtupi, which offers five levels of dungeon exploration and combat. Over the course of their exploration, the adventurers will face an interesting mix of monsters, some wholly new, some modified. They include Befouled Spirits—Air, Earth, Fire, and Water, Mud Zombies, a variety of Black Dragon-Lizardmen hybrids, and more. In fact, the design of these monsters is actually one of the best features in Deadly Delves: Reign of Ruin, the author clearly having had fun in mashing the various creatures into hybrids. On the downside, the Dungeon Master may need to refer to The Tome of Horrors Complete and Monstrosities supplement for the full details of some of the monsters used in Deadly Delves: Reign of Ruin.

One further indication of how well the monsters are handled in Deadly Delves: Reign of Ruin are the notes titled ‘Thinking Like A Black Dragon’. This boxed section gives four or five ideas as to how the Dungeon Master might like to use Nyrionaxys, the aim being to make her a memorably dangerous and deadly foe. Some of it is obvious, such as the fact that Nyrionaxys will not simply await the arrival of the player characters, but it nevertheless adds to the ‘deadly’ aspect of Deadly Delves: Reign of Ruin.

If the design and handling of the monsters is entertaining and well thought out, the dungeon not always so. The Temple of Ixtupi is part-temple, part-tomb and so it suffers from being rather linear. The dungeon design also relies quite a lot on secret doors, which sets up two possible problems. One is that the player characters’ progress may be hindered and the others is that a lot of the scenario’s secrets will remain hidden, which in some cases may deny the player characters an advantage in facing their foes. Another problem is that the scenario may not offer enough Experience Points for a party of Sixth Level characters to attain Seventh Level.

Deadly Delves: Reign of Ruin comes as a thirty-four-page, full colour, 3.4 MB PDF. In fact, it is highly colourful. The artwork is excellent in its depiction of the monsters to be found in the scenario, though more illustrations of the monsters would have been great for Dungeon Master to show to his players, especially of Nyrionaxys. The maps are problematic in that some of their details are unclear, primarily because of the use of colour. That said, the scenario comes with a separate PDF of the maps for easy reference.

Now Deadly Delves: Reign of Ruin is not a perfect scenario. There are two issues with the scenario’s beginning. One is that this beginning, although striking, may not be strong enough to spur the player characters to act and perhaps a stronger beginning might have been to have them attacked by Nyrionaxys’ forces. The other is that the scenario’s background is overwritten and conveying a lot of this information to his players may be a challenge for the Dungeon Master.

Despite its imperfections, Deadly Delves: Reign of Ruin lives up to the series title of ‘Deadly Delves’. It is dangerous and the foes the adventurers will face are fearsome. It should provide a session or two’s worth of solid play, which is what every reasonable adventure should provide.

To return to the review which sparked this one, it is often asserted that reviews have no effect. Not so in the case of my review of Age of Cthulhu II: Madness in London Town. In the aftermath of the kerfuffle around my 2009 review, the publisher was gracious enough to come to me and ask if I wanted to edit future titles in the Age of Cthulhu line. I have since edited several entries in the line and I have a good working relationship with the publisher and it was a pleasure to finally meet him at GenCon 50 last year.

In the case of Bryce Lynch’s review of Deadly Delves: Reign of Ruin, the immediate outcome of the publisher some three hours after reading the review was his decision to withdraw from releasing further titles for use with Swords & Wizardry. Effectively, this cemented the company’s previous decision to put its Old School Renaissance plans on hold—permanently. For a time, the publisher also made the scenario free to purchase. These are, of course, only the immediate effects of the review, it being too early to see if there will be any greater effect upon either the reviewer or the publisher. Yet whenever someone says that reviews have no effect or influence in our hobby, sometimes that is not always the case.

Friday Filler: An OSR Miscellany

Tim Shorts—via Gothridge Manor or GM Games—is one of any number of small press publishers who are garnering support for their output via Patreon. Many similar publishers put podcasts funded via Patreon, for example, The Good Friends of Jackson Elias and the GROGNARD Files, but GM Games provides support for use with Swords & Wizardry Light, but there is no reason that this support would not work with the more recent Swords & Wizardry Continual Light or other retroclones.


The end of the year for 2017 package for GM Games comes in a digest-sized envelope. Inside there are four types of item, each of which is handily sized and easy to bring to the table and drop into an ongoing game.

The first of the four items actually consist of two items—or rather two Character Records for Swords & Wizardry Continual Light. Now the character presented at the end of Swords & Wizardry Continual Light is bland at best, but awful at worst. Done on heavy paper, those presented here are little pamphlets just four pages in length. There is room on the front for a player character’s name and then the stats, Class and Race abilities, Saving Throw, Base Hit Bonus, Armour Class, Spells, and equipment on the inside pages. There is probably not quite enough space in the boxes given for this information unless the character’s player has small writing. Pleasingly on the back page there is an Experience chart for the character where a player can tick off the number of adventures that have been played. Overall, these character sheets are a bit cramped, but they are charming and if there is ever a Swords & Wizardry Continual Light Whitebox Set, then they—or something like it—should be in the box.

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The second of the four items is an NPC Card. The NPC Cards series presents NPCs on a single A6-sized laminated card in full colour. The NPC this time around is ‘Harker, Goblin Warrior’. A two Hit Dice creature, Harker is a big goblin who wields his grandfather’s sword, Arm Eater, his father’s goblin armour, and his own Imp Helm—actually an Imp’s horn atop an iron cap, which regenerates Hit Points for him. Harker is perhaps best described as cunning, preferring to pick and choose his fights. Although nicely presented, the NPC himself, Harker, is not all that interesting and really it should be suggesting ways to use this NPC in way that is interesting for the players and their characters—that is, interesting enough for the players and their characters not to simply kill the NPC.

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The third of the four items is a Micro-Location. Micro-Location #19, ‘Oubliette’, is also in full colour and comes on a laminated card, roughly six inches by three-and-three-quarter inches. It describes a pit, twenty feet deep, and an adjoining room. Both are shown in cross section. The location is both small in size and small in scope. Both the cross section and the illustration are nicely done. The monster is more of a trap than a monster, but no less deadly, and the given magic item is of limited use, but useful nevertheless. Overall, this location is easy to drop into most settings, whether that is in a dungeon, the ruins of a castle or manor house, and so on. 

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The fourth of the four items is a Micro-Adventure. These are where GM Games began with its Patreon output and ‘Iron Crawlers’ is Micro-Adventure #70. It is written for use with Swords & Wizardry Continual Light and has a simple plot, fairly mundane opponents, and actually, a down-at-heel charm. It opens with the player characters being hired by Sir Carl the Swindler to recover his signet ring, which he lost to a local gang of ruffians known as the Iron Crawlers, in a game of cards. Despite his reputation, Sir Carl the Swindler has the money to pay the party. The gang has its headquarters in the cellar of a burnt-out manor house and the player characters will have to break in and confront the gang. Essentially a mini-dungeon with just ten locations, everything is decently described and the NPCs are fleshed out enough for the Dungeon Master to portray them. The members of gang—variously described as the Iron Crawlers and the Iron Mongers—will protect themselves, but will not necessarily attack. If they do, they may not use lethal force. It should be pointed out that the members of the Iron Crawlers gang are strictly small time and greedy rather than necessarily evil.

‘Iron Crawlers’ comes on an orange-brown stiff paper pamphlet with a large map of the ten-location dungeon, or cellar, on the inside. The production values are not quite as high as on the NPC Card and the Micro-Location cards, but overall, ‘Iron Crawlers’ is good adventure to bring out in an urban location. It has a grim and gritty feel which means that it would work best in a Low Fantasy setting rather than a High Fantasy setting. So with some adjustment, it would work well with Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay as well as the Zweihänder Grim & Perilous RPG, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, and Lankhmar: City of Thieves for use with Savage Worlds, among many options.

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So if you are running for Swords & Wizardry Continual Light, then the character sheets in this selection would be a nice addition to your game. The NPC Card is attractive, but perhaps a bit underwritten, whereas Micro-Location #19, ‘Oubliette’ is perhaps a little overwritten, but does not suffer for it. Iron Crawlers – Micro-Adventure #70 is a good little adventure and really easy to use with very little preparation and should provide a session’s worth of decent play. Overall, this is a solid package and an entertaining medley of Old School Renaissance goodness.

Cthulhu Classics VIII

From one week to the next, Reviews from R’lyeh writes reviews of new games and supplements with an emphasis on Call of Cthulhu and other games of Lovecraftian investigative horror. This series concentrates on Call of Cthulhu and other games of Lovecraftian investigative horror, but not those recently released, but those of the past. There have been innumerable titles published over the years and this is an opportunity to appraise them anew, often decades after they were first released.

Having looked at the releases from Games Workshop, culminating with Green and Pleasant Land: The British 1920s-30s Cthulhu Source Pack, Reviews from R’lyeh now moves on to another early licensee for Chaosium, Inc. This is T.O.M.E. or Theatre of the Mind Enterprises, a publisher best known for the five titles it released for use with Call of Cthulhu and Gardasiyal: Adventures in Tékumel, the 1990s roleplaying game set in the world of Tékumel: Empire of the Petal Throne. Between 1983 and 1984, T.O.M.E. would publish five collections of scenarios—The Arkham Evil, Death In Dunwich, Pursuit To Kadath, Whispers From The Abyss And Other Tales, and Glozel Est Authentique!—for use with Call of Cthulhu, Second Edition. The second release though, and the subject of this review, is Death In Dunwich.

As with The Arkham Evil, it is initially difficult to determine what Death in Dunwich actually is. The extent of the back cover blurb runs to, “The Nightmare Continues . . . The police aren’t talking . . . The coroner is terrified . . . But it’s Business as Usual in Dunwich! Another macabre adventure from: Theatre of the Mind Enterprises, Inc.” Not only is this unhelpful, elements of the blurb are inaccurate. There is no indication as to what nightmare is continuing from, is it H.P. Lovecraft’s story ‘The Dunwich Horror’, or is it from The Arkham Evil? It is certainly no sequel to The Arkham Evil and despite being set in Dunwich, it has very little to do with that story. As to the inaccuracies, the police will tell the investigators what they want to know, so they are talking, and as to the coroner, he is more mystified than terrified.

So what is Death in Dunwich? Well, it is a scenario set in 1922 which takes place in Massachusetts and New York. The mystery at its heart is the death of Dale Plunckett, an art expert with French citizenship whose body has been found a few miles outside of the Massachusetts town of Dunwich. The investigators are hired by a mysterious stranger to determine how he died, who killed him, and why he was killed. They are given a week in which to conduct the investigation and paid handsomely for it. Exactly what the interest of this mysterious stranger has in the fate of Dale Plunckett is unclear, adding further to the number of obfuscations littering the pages of Death in Dunwich.

The investigation begins with the state police in Springfield, Massachusetts and they will be happy to answer the investigators’ questions as will be the coroner. There are one or two clues to be found in Dunwich, but the next step of the investigation hinges on the discovery of a key. If this is found, then the investigators can access a treasure trove of clues—some twenty-five or so individual clues across some eight pages, nearly a quarter the length of Death in Dunwich’s thirty-six pages. If the investigators do not get the key, then both they and the scenario are basically derailed. There is a way to get them back on track, but it essentially involves the investigators being arrested after the disappearance and death of the investigating officer and the Keeper having the interrogating officers drop enough clues for the investigators to know where to go next.

As to what is going on in Death in Dunwich, this kept hidden from the Keeper, let alone the players and their investigators, for nearly all of the book, and even then it is barely spelt out. The background to the plot begins with two brotherhoods. The Right Hand is good and seeks to protect various relics and artworks against the Left Hand, which of course being ‘sinister’, is dedicated to evil. This background has no relevance to the plot of Death in Dunwich, except that Roland Dunkelherz, an agent of the Left Hand has enveigeled himself into the service of the world’s richest man, the octogenarian, J.D. Rothenfelder, and found a way of providing him with unique works by the Old Masters that he so craves. This is by resurrecting Old Masters, including Da Vinci, Rubens, Caravaggio, and so on, and forcing them to create new masterworks. Somehow, Dale Plunckett came across one of these unique works of art, a previously unknown painting by Leonardo da Vinci, and was investigating its provenance when he was killed.

The denouement of Death in Dunwich essentially involves the investigators arriving at the door of J.D. Rothenfelder who has moved to the tiny, isolated town of Dunwich, discovering something that there is something odd going on, the least of which is the fact that he has a pet gorilla. Then having a fight. Getting there is an awkward journey as without the clues from the trove, the investigators will have no reason to visit him, or indeed, stay in Dunwich once they have learned all that they can. This is despite the scenario devoting a lot of space to detailing the town and its inhabitants, who will not have a bad word to say against him. The investigators may learn about the events which Lovecraft described in ‘The Dunwich Horror’ and which the inhabitants of the town are reluctant to talk about, but of course, this is just one more aspect of the Death in Dunwich which is irrelevant to the scenario’s plot.

If The Arkham Evil has a poor reputation, then Death in Dunwich deserves an equally poor, if not a worse, reputation. At the back of the book, in the ‘Advice to Keepers’ section, the designer states, “This scenario should be run as follows: the Introduction should be intriguing, the Middle Game should be frustrating, and the End Game should be an orgy of violence.” The scenario more than lives up to all three claims. The set-up is intriguing of that there is no doubt. After all, there is the dead body of man who died under mysterious circumstances and that of course, raises questions. So having got the players and their investigators intrigued with a set-up, the scenario literally locks the second two thirds of the scenario away unless the investigators find the key. What this means is that this physical key is the literal key to completing the scenario.

This also has the effect of undermining any semblance that the scenario has of a second act. If the investigators do not get the treasure trove of clues, they have nothing to do except wander around Dunwich not being told anything by the inhabitants because they lack the questions to ask and so cannot move onto the third act and its climax. This is unnecessarily frustrating and even if they do find the treasure trove, then the players and their investigators spend the entire second act sifting through a lot of clues before moving onto the climax.

The climax itself is likely to be violent and it has the possibility of being somewhat creepy, but whether or not it turns out to be horrifying is all down to the players. To begin with, they might not even encounter the resurrected artists. This might be because they simply never discover where they are being held captive, but it might because they kill Dunkelherz and since he was responsible for their resurrection and is now dead, they crumble back into dust. If the investigators do encounter the resurrected artists, it suggests that they stab them and send them back to dust. Whilst this is the humane thing to do, it ignores the fact that the first thing that the investigators will want to do is ask questions and then stab later…

This highlights another pair of issues with Death in Dunwich. One is that whilst there is mystery, there is barely any horror present and that in the scenario’s third act only. There is absolutely none in the first and second acts, and just the single Sanity loss mentioned in the scenario at all. The other issue is that there is barely any Mythos in Death in Dunwich, instead just dancing around the events of ‘The Dunwich Horror’ and using the mechanics of Call of Cthulhu to design Roland Dunkelherz as a difficult opponent to beat in a fight. So in a sense it barely qualifies as a Call of Cthulhu scenario and the fact that it uses the backdrop of ‘The Dunwich Horror’ as window dressing means that the scenario could just as easily be set in any small town. Certainly nobody would notice the difference just as they would not notice that the irrelevant links to ‘The Dunwich Horror’ have been removed.

Physically, Death in Dunwich is surprisingly well presented. The artwork is okay, but the cartography is clear and simple and there is some semblance towards creating some decent handouts. Many of them though will need to be photocopied and cut out, and there is rather a lot of them, but they do work as a set of handouts and clues. One annoying aspect of the writing is the use of slightly silly names of NPCs which serves to undermine the tone of the scenario. Right the middle of the adventure is a screen of sorts. It is a nice idea, but really all it does is reprint the maps that appear elsewhere in the book. The scenario also comes with some pre-generated investigators, though they will need fleshing out, and an envelope. This contains further information for the Keeper, in fact, the stats and description of the bad guy at the heart of the scenario. Its inclusion feels more like the designers forgot to add these details during the writing of the scenario.

Yet much like The Arkham Evil before, Death in Dunwich is not without its merits. It is of course the first scenario to present Dunwich for Call of Cthulhu. It has some good clues and they do support the mystery at the heart of the scenario. Further, they support what has the potential to be an interesting mystery, but not without a rewrite.

Reviewing Death in Dunwich in Dragon #91 (November, 1984) in ‘The butler didn’t do it: Mysterious adventures in role-playing’, Ken Rolston made several criticisms of the adventure, most notably, “No summary of the narrative is provided, and no chronology is listed, so it is difficult to get an orderly sense of the whole adventure. The gamemaster must pay close attention when reading the background information, and I often found it necessary to backtrack and scan ahead to make sense of what I was reading.”, but he was surprisingly positive, finishing the review by saying that, “The mystery itself is detailed, challenging, and dramatic. The horror is satisfactorily evil and gruesome in the Cthulhu style, and the setting, background, and characters are effectively detailed.” Similarly, Jon Sutherland, reviewing both The Arkham Evil and Death in Dunwich in Open Box in White Dwarf #48 (December, 1983), described Death in Dunwich as “...a much shorter, ultimately more satisfying adventure; the compactness of the information is useful, as is the Keeper’s screen which is stapled inside the book.” and in comparing it to The Arkham Evil said, “Death in Dunwich can be interesting, frustrating and terminal and consequently is the better of the two.” He gave the scenario an overall score of eight out of ten.

Death in Dunwich was discussed not once, but twice in the pages of The Space Gamer. The first time was in The Space Gamer #71 (Nov/Dec 1984) by William A. Barton, the designer of Cthulhu by Gaslight: Horror Roleplaying in 1890s England. In ‘Whispers of Things Lovecraftian: TOME’s Cthulhu Modules’ Barton provides an overview of the line published to date before reviewing, the fourth release from T.O.M.E., Whispers from the Abyss and Other Tales. As well as highlighting the scenario’s deficits and some of the criticisms made elsewhere of the scenario, Barton’s opinion was that “...[T]he scenario could also be viewed as an interesting change of pace for experienced CoC investigators (similar to a couple in Chaosium’s The Asylum and Cthulhu Companion). With a few changes, it could even prove suitable for use as an occult-oriented scenario for such systems as Mercenaries, Spies & Private Eyes, Daredevils, or Tri-Tac’s Stalking the Night Fantastic.” This was followed up with a capsule review in The Space Gamer #73 (Mar/Apr 1985) by Russ Williams  who pointed out that, “Unfortunately, most of the scenario’s background is hidden from the players, so from the point of view of this adventure, it is wasted space.” In general though, he was more positive than most reviewers of the day, ending with, “I recommend Death in Dunwich for players with  bit of experience and tact who are ready to concentrate on a murder mystery instead of the Cthulhu mythos.”

The scenario was reviewed in Different Worlds #32 (Jan/Feb 1984) by Larry DiTillio—the designer of Masks of Nyarlathotep—no less! He was enthusiastic about the plot, describing it as a “dandy idea”, but of the overall scenario, he wrote, “Summing up, Death in Dunwich leaves a lot to be desired in terms of a Cthulhu scenario.” but that the best thing about it from a Cthulhu standpoint, “...[I]s the detailing of Dunwich itself.” He finished by writing, “...with a little bit of hole-plugging and expansion, the mystery itself might make a good change of pace scenario in a Cthulhu campaign. My recommendation: think it over before buying it and if you do buy it, keep a grain of salt handy for the designer’s suggestions.”

It is difficult to sum Death in Dunwich up as anything more than a failed attempt to both write a mystery and provide the means to investigate it. Obviously, the scenario was released at a time when the concept and art of writing investigative scenarios was relatively new, but Chaosium was also new to the process and it was providing solid investigative scenarios at the time when T.O.M.E. was not. Ultimately Death in Dunwich feels like three parts—the opening mystery, the clues, and the climax—which were designed separately before being brought together to see if they work as a whole. Which of course, they do not—not without a lot of redesign upon the part of the Keeper. To return to the designer’s statement that “This scenario should be run as follows: the Introduction should be intriguing, the Middle Game should be frustrating, and the End Game should be an orgy of violence.” Well, Death in Dunwich is all of those things, but mostly an exercise in frustration.

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With thanks to Brandon Blackmoor and Stephen Ward for providing access to Dragon #91 as well as to Darren Happens for access to Different Worlds #32.