Miskatonic Monday #322: Flash Cthulhu – Whistling Bones

Much like the Jonstown Compendium for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and The Companions of Arthur for material set in Greg Stafford’s masterpiece of Arthurian legend and romance, Pendragon, the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition is a curated platform for user-made content. 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 depths of the Miskatonic Repository.

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Name: Flash Cthulhu – Whistling Bones

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Michael Reid

Setting: Venezuela, 1861

Product: One-Location, One-Hour Scenario
What You Get: Eight page, 2.84 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Whistle and la revolución shall come to you.

Plot Hook: Halloween hacienda horror waaayy down south

Plot Support: Staging advice, four pre-generated Investigators, one floorplan, forty NPCs, and one Mythos monster.

Production Values: Decent

Pros

# One-shot scenario for Down Darker Trails: Terrors of the Mythos in the Old West

# Could be adapted to other military situations

# Different setting for a scenario

# Corpses and confinement—and the corpses are weird

# Misophonia

# Necrophobia

# Cleithrophobia

Cons

# Does set the Investigators against each other

# Scenario too short to take advantage of the setting

Conclusion

# Short, desperate hacienda horror which works better if the Keeper can whistle

# Potentially interesting setting and period of play undone by the short play length

Miskatonic Monday #321: Wicker Hollow

Much like the Jonstown Compendium for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and The Companions of Arthur for material set in Greg Stafford’s masterpiece of Arthurian legend and romance, Pendragon, the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition is a curated platform for user-made content. 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 depths of the Miskatonic Repository.

—oOo—

Name: Wicker Hollow

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Matthew Hepler

Setting: New Hampshire, Modern Day

Product: Scenario
What You Get: Twenty-eight page, 1.69 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: It’s like The Wicker Man, but in New Hampshire and with students, not Edward Woodward

Plot Hook: Hiking horror fails to overcome a horror of weeks before

Plot Support: Staging advice, nine handouts, three maps, and two NPCs.

Production Values: Scruffy

Pros

# Dramatic set-up

# Fast playing one-shot

# Non-Mythos folklore horror

# Easy to add the Cthulhu Mythos

# Easy to transfer to other Call of Cthulhu times and settings

# Pyrophobia

# Thanatophobia

# Samhainophobia

Cons

# Needs an edit
# Layout is awkward to read and needs to be toned down

# No pre-generated Investigators

# Underwritten NPCs

# Obvious in its inspiration

Conclusion

# One-session one-shot survival horror

# All too obvious in its inspiration

Your Edgerunner Entry

The Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Mission Kit has a lot of work to do—and in more than one direction. Published by R. Talsorian Games, Inc., this is the starter set for the publisher’s Cyberpunk roleplaying game—most recently seen with Cyberpunk RED, but based on the Cyberpunk: Edgerunners animated series, which itself is based on the computer game, . So, what it has to do is introduce both fans of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners and Cyberpunk 2077 to roleplaying and introduce fans of Cyberpunk RED to the advanced new world of the Night City of the 2070s. The good news is that the The Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Mission Kit at least comes with everything necessary to do that. Open up the box and the first thing is the introductory sheet, which introduces both the genre, what a tabletop roleplaying game is, an overview of what is in the box, and keywords. Underneath this is the ‘Edgerunner’s Handbook’, ‘Rulebook’, ‘The Jacket’, ‘Edgerunner Sheets’, ‘Maps’, and ‘Tokens’. There is a pair of ten-sided dice and four six-sided dice—done in the signature colours of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, chromium yellow and green—and a set of plastic stands for the stand-ups. What this gives you all together is an introduction to the genre and the setting of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners and Cyberpunk 2077, the rules to run the roleplaying game in this period, a complete scenario, and seven pre-generated Player Characters, all ready to play not just the scenario in the The Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Mission Kit, but also those available to download.

If the ‘Introduction Sheet’ gets the reader started with the Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Mission Kit, the ‘Edgerunner’s Handbook’ is everything the reader needs to gets started on the setting. Running to forty pages, it gives a quick guide to the roleplaying game’s seven Roles, its history, the technology of the future—in particular cyberware and the Net, a guide to Night City and life in the free port on the California coast, and more. The history runs from the collapse of the USA in the 1990s through the Third and Fourth Corporate Wars and the Time of the Red to the arrival of an Arasaka supercarrier at Night City, the rise of David Martinez as an Edgerunner, and the clash of Militech and Arasaka forces once again in Night City. Effectively, what this does is bridge the decades between Cyberpunk RED and Cyberpunk 2077 and in doing so, provide the background for the latter, whether the reader is a player of the computer game wanting more background or a player of the roleplaying game wanting to discover what happens in the future in readiness to play either Cyberpunk 2077 or the The Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Mission Kit. In addition, there are descriptions of the cast of characters from the animated series. However, there are no stats for them, and the pre-generated Edgerunners consist of entirely different characters. There is no doubt that fans of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners will probably be disappointed by this. That said, there are good reasons for this given the events of the animated series. Hopefully, R. Talsorian Games, Inc. will address this issue in a later release that explores the Cyberpunk: Edgerunners worlds of Cyberpunk 2077 in more detail.

The thirty-eight page ‘Rulebook’ in the The Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Mission Kit covers everything needed to play its contents—and more. Mechanically, it uses the Interlock System. In general, for his Edgerunner to do anything, a player will roll a ten-sided die and add the Edgerunner’s Stat and Skill (or Role Ability) to the result in order to beat a Difficulty Value. This Difficulty Value is fifteen for an Everyday task, seventeen for a Professional task, twenty-one for Heroic, and so on. Dice can explode—rolls of ten— and enable a player to keep rolling and adding to his total as long as he keeps rolling ten, and they can also Implode—rolls of one—forces him to roll again and subtract from the total, but just the once. In combat, chases, and so on, the rolls tend to be opposed, both sides rolling and adding their character’s Stat and appropriate Skill. The Difficulty Value for ranged combat is determined primarily by range. The rules cover the effects of cover, armour, critical injuries, face-offs, and so on. This is little different from Cyberpunk RED, but there are major important differences which reflect the changes in technology between Cyberpunk RED and Cyberpunk: Edgerunners and Cyberpunk 2077.

In the Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Mission Kit, the big changes are to Netrunning and weapons. The The Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Mission Kit lacks the space to devote to a complete set of rules for netrunning and hacking, but what it gives instead, is ‘Quickhacking’. This enables on the spot hacking by a Netrunner, but not just of local systems—vehicles, doors, terminals, and so on. No, with a Quickhack, a Netrunner can, from a short distance, hack the Neuroport that everyone in 2077 has fitted as standard. Once a Netrunner has managed to jack in and breach any Self-ICE that the target has had installed, he can then carry out Quickhacks like ‘Impair Movement’ to slow the target down, ‘Overheat’ to set him on fire, ‘Lure’ him to investigate another location, cause ‘Synapse Burnout’ for more damage, turn the target into a ‘Puppet’ so that he shoots himself or a colleague, or force a ‘System Reset’ so that he is temporarily unconscious. The trend with Cyberpunk roleplaying games is to put the Netrunner on the spot where the action is happening. The Quickhack rules do that and more, letting the Netrunner get inside a target’s head and mess with them and so be part of combat, but rely upon a skill that he specialises in rather than a gun. Difficulty Values are provided for all of these Quickhacks and more.

Weapons are suddenly interesting again in the The Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Mission Kit. They were not in Cyberpunk RED. What the The Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Mission Kit does is again, add the technology seen in Cyberpunk: Edgerunners and Cyberpunk 2077. Weapons can now be Power, Smart, or Tech Weapons. A Power Weapon increases the damage done by a Critical Injury and the wielder can ricochet shots off cover to hit targets that otherwise cannot be successfully hit. A Smart Weapon grants the wielder a bonus and allows the use of Smart Ammunition, which ignores penalties due to visual obscurement, plus if the shot misses, a reroll to hit is allowed, but at a much lower chance. A Tech Weapon comes with a scope and can be charged at the cost of a Move Action to make a single round capable of piercing thin cover and ignoring half of its protective value. Not only does the ‘Rulebook’ provide the means to adapt the weapons from Cyberpunk RED into Power, Smart, or Tech Weapons, it also includes weapons from Cyberpunk: Edgerunners and Cyberpunk 2077. These include the Militech M-10AF Lexington, the Arasaka HJKE-11 Yukimura, and others. There is also a selection of Cyberware included such as David’s Experimental Sandevistan as seen in Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, the Monowire and the Mantis Blade made famous by Cyberpunk 2077, and as the Gorilla Arm which enhances the user’s strength.

The ‘Rulebook’ does have a section called ‘The 2070s in Cyberpunk RED’ which gives all of the basics that the Game Master and her players need to adjust from Cyberpunk RED to the The Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Mission Kit and Cyberpunk 2077. This includes some tweaks to the Roles to take account of resource accessibility, rules for Neuroports and Quickhacks, direct Netrunning, and potential sources of Humanity Loss other than installing Cyberware. The new arms and cyberware are listed here too. This is a thoroughly useful section, providing great support for fans of Cyberpunk RED coming to this new version and easing them mechanically into the changes.

The scenario in the The Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Mission Kit is called ‘The Jacket’. The forty-page book and adventure is supported by a set of tokens for its NPCs and standees for the pre-generated Edgerunners. These are used with the three maps that are included in the adventure. These are double-sided and depict places such as a car park, a storage depot, a normal street, and others. They are overlaid with a 2 cm square grid, so they do feel a little tight. There is also a separate map of Night City. The pre-generated Edgerunners each have a four-page dossier with stats and skills on the front along with an illustration, descriptions of important cyberware and weapons on the inside pages and a quick breakdown of possible rolls that might be needed during play. They include a Solo, a Tech, a Fixer, a Medtech, a Netrunner, a Nomad, and a Rocker. What none of them have is any background. Part of preparing to play ‘The Jacket’ is the players getting together and rolling their Edgerunners’ Lifepaths to determine their backgrounds and connections. The scenario itself takes place after the events of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners and is designed as follow up. The Edgerunners have formed their own crew and pick up a job that starts out in the Badlands just beyond the borders of Night City, and it begins with a fight outside a storage unit! The scenario is a MacGuffin hunt for something left over from the events of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners and it will take the Edgerunners around various locations in Night City. Written using R. Talsorian Games, Inc.’s Beat Chart system and a breakdown of this is provided on the back of ‘The Jacket’. Full stats are provided for the NPCs as expected and there is advice throughout the whole adventure intended for the Game Master who is running her first game. There are some random encounters, an opportunity for downtime, run-in with both Arasaka and the NCPD, opportunities to make some allies, and of course, chases and gunfights. It is a good mix, the adventure is a solid affair that should provide two to three sessions’ worth of play.

Physically, the The Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Mission Kit is well written and easy to read. The layout is clean and tidy, but it is lightly illustrated.

The The Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Mission Kit has a lot to do—introduce fans of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners to roleplaying, fans of Cyberpunk 2077 to tabletop roleplaying, and fans of Cyberpunk RED to the period of Cyberpunk 2077—and the good news is that it does all of these and does them very well. The transition between Cyberpunk RED and Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is nicely handled and the background included in the The Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Mission Kit pleasingly serves everyone. It also pushes the story of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners on, exploring events which take place as a result of those from the animated series. All together, the Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Mission Kit is a well put together combination that serves all of the fans and provides a couple of sessions of entertaining and exciting gaming.

Your Fantasy Heart Breaker

The world is broken and everything is in a state of decay. The environment. The land itself. History. You and everyone around you. Your memories. Centuries ago, magic broke the world. It unravelled and with it the great civilisations that exist as memories of near forgotten tales and the artefacts that can be scavenged from the ruins. The gods died and fell from the sky. Their corpses lie where they fell, some worshipped by cults hoping that their faith will restore them to life, even as the corpses spawn strange creatures, trigger strange phenomena, and even still provide valuable resources despite the danger of living so close to them. Every magical artefact and every monster which ever wielded magic became one more vector for the Decay that corrupts and twists all it touches. Those who wield such artefacts or even dare to weave the frayed threads of magic that exist are in danger of becoming a thrall or Decay or poisoning those around you. Decay warps time and space, changing the environment around you are you travel and even changing the time that the journey took. Monsters are everywhere. Lastly there is the Decay within you, the twisting of the magic that runs through you. It is a Curse which threatens all of your kind. Humans rot and rise as soul-hungry undead; Dwarves burn up from the inside and become eternally burning infernos; Elves transform into crystal constructs that scour the skin from their victims; Halflings melt into living oozes; and the Forgotten crumble into nothing. Yet there is Hope.

Centuries since the Breaking, survivors still form communities, known as Havens, and invest their Hope in them. They invest their Hope in Survivors brave enough to travel the wilds and so enable them to fight back against the Decay, to hold back and even reverse its corrosive effects, and push them to great acts of heroism. Walking the land on the same paths and placing memorable Waymarkers can solidify the land against Decay, as can connecting communities and sharing stories with them. Memoria, carried by every Survivor on a journey can help them withstand the warping and loss of memories that if they were otherwise unprotected, they would suffer. Hope is all that stands between the Survivors and a world of entropy.

This is the setting for Broken Weave, a setting which the Survivors (as the Player Characters are known), “Survive, built community, and fight for hope in post-apocalyptic tragic fantasy world”. Published by Cubicle 7 Entertainment, it is designed to be compatible with Dungeon & Dragons, Fifth Edition and whilst it runs as a standalone, post-apocalyptic roleplaying setting, it could actually be mapped on the setting of the Game Master’s choice, so that the Survivors could be exploring the long decay remnants of a world that their players’ previous characters explored unaware of the disaster that was to come with the Breaking. However, there are some mechanical differences between Broken Weave and Dungeon & Dragons, Fifth Edition. These include Survivors being created via a Lifepath System, Lineages replacing Races, Feats being replaced by Talents and Inspiration by Hope, and a number of changes and additions to both the skills and the Toolkits that the Survivors have access to. In addition to spending Hit Dice to regain Hit Points as per normal in Dungeon & Dragons, Fifth Edition, but Broken Weave also offers another option which they can be spent. This varies between the different Classes.

Play begins with the creation of the Survivors’ community, their Haven. This is their base of operations, their home, and what they will be striving to protect and grow throughout a Broken Weave campaign. Consisting of the Founders’ Legacy, Location, Culture, Crises (current and past), and Finishing Touches, this can be created randomly using the given tables or designed. Either way, it is mean to be collaborative process between all of the players so that they have an investment in it. There are notes included alongside the process to suggest ways in which it can be twisted and changed to add detail and story possibilities. For example, this could be that Founders’ Legacy is not as pure the Survivors recall it to be or that the community could be home to a ‘Hard Luck Haven’, meaning that it starts with a higher level of Decay and increases the degree of challenge for both players and Survivors. Lastly, a Haven will have beginning values for Hope, Decay, Population, and Resources, based on the number of players. When a Haven suffers a crisis, its Resources will be first reduced and then its Population. This loss can be resisted, but if the Population is reduced to zero, the Haven is destroyed.

HAVEN: Flaming Lake
Our Founder Wanted To… Escape the monsters our families were becoming
LOCATION
Biome: Wetland Resource Abundance: Wood Resource Scarcity: Metal
Landmark: A vast lake of flammable liquid
CULTURE
We Value… Cleverness, subtlety, wit
Clothing and Appearance: We shave patterns into the sides or back of our hair
Traditions and Superstitions: We always save a bone for the beast and a drink for the lost
Leadership: Public votes are taken on all important matters, but the weight of your vote is reduced the more Decayed you are.

CRISES
Past Crises: The Haven could not safely expand any further. Some were exiled so the rest could live. A dangerous monster that was assembling a crude device or altar and had a weak point beneath its armour. Current Crisis: Every month a strange fog covers the Haven and all but one survivor falls unconscious for a seven days at a time.
Hope: 10
Decay: 1
Resources: 10
Population: 100

Survivor creation is also intended to be a collective process, essentially so that backgrounds and bonds can be created during the process. Each Survivor has a Lineage, each of which grants several advantages, but also a Curse and the way in which Decay affects you. Dwarves are beset by the Curse of Flame, Elves by the Curse of Earth, Halflings by the Curse of Water, Humans by the Curse of Wind, and The Forgotten by the Curse of Oblivion. Unlike the other four, The Forgotten are not a true Lineage, but are a mélange of the forgotten Lineages in the Broken World and vary greatly in appearance. In this way, they represent what might have been another species in the Dungeons & Dragons-style world from before the Breaking. The Lifepath for a Survivor determines his Family, Upbringing, Occupation, Defining Experience, Talent, Possessions, and Allies and Enemies.

Lineage: I Am A… Halfling
Parents: I Was Raised By… People of the same lineage
Influential Family Member: One Of My Family Members Is… Carrying on the family trade
Family Size: My Family Is… Small – Two members
Upbringing: My Upbringing Was… Dangerous. I always keep an eye out of trouble I Am… Use to fear
Occupation: I Am A… Scout I Am Skilled In… Stealth
Defining Experience: I… Cared for people when a plague spread through the community I Learned… Medicine
Life Lesson: You Learned… Some secrets of the Broken World others would rather ignore I Gained… +1 Intelligence
Starting Talent: Hurler
Possessions: Experience… I explored your Haven’s surroundings, foraging for supplies or mapping the area. I Gained… Seeker’s Tools, Herbalist’s Tools, or Prospector’s Tools
Allies and Enemies: I was raised with or taught by this ally and we have developed our skills together. My enemy believed it was my responsibility to care for them and that I failed

There are six Classes in Broken Weave. Harrowed tap into the corrupting force of Decay to protect others from its effects, but use its unnatural power to defend their Haven and protect their allies. Makers seek out old and new technology to use for the benefit of the Haven. Sages—scholars, chirugeons, and historians—harbour their knowledge and both use it to protect their Haven and to pass it on to others. Seekers walk the forgotten paths of the Broken World in search of lost Artefacts, so must guard against Decay even as they use the items they find to protect their Haven. Speakers are diplomats and storytellers who both build their Haven and travel to other communities strengthen the links between them as well as tell new histories and legends that can be remembered when memories have been lost. Wardens are protectors and guardians, equipped with ancestral arms and armour to defend themselves and the Haven. Attributes are assigned from a standard array and in the last steps, a player rolls for Dreams and Connections, as well as the Memoria that link the Survivor to his memories.

Each of the Lineages details what it was like before and after the Breaking, and then the nature of the Curse. This ranges between one and ten, and as it increases for a Survivor, it actually provides both bonuses and benefits. For example, the Halfling’s Curse of Water at a value of between four and seven, causes the sufferer’s skin to become translucent, malleable, and makes it difficult for him to interact with objects. He is at Disadvantage on Athletics Tests, but can use Acrobatics to initiate a Grapple attack and will be at Advantage for all Grapple Tests. Each of the Classes provides abilities at each and every Level and three subclasses. Of the latter, the Harrowed has Condemned, Harrowed, and Sovereign; the Maker has Alchemist, Artificer, and Smith; the Sage has Healer, Lorekeeper, and Veteran; the Seeker has Delver, Hunter, and Strider; the Speaker has Envoy, Preacher, and Whisperer; and the Warden has Avenger, Sentinel, and Warcaller. Whilst for the former, at Second, Sixth, Tenth, Fourteenth, and Eighteenth Levels, a Survivor gains a Talent, as well as the one gained during Survivor creation. Talents are not Feats. In fact, they are less powerful than the standard Feats of Dungeon & Dragons, Fifth Edition (though Broken Weave does allow the option for the players to select them as well). Many are specific to the Broken Weave setting, such as ‘Decay Resistance’, which grants Proficiency for Decay Saving Throws, ‘Decay Sense’, which grants Advantage on tests to determine if a creature is suffering from Decay and by how much, and ‘Built to Last’, which makes any Waymarkers constructed to mark a route more durable and resistant to Decay.

This is, of course, in addition to the actual Abilities for the Class. For example, at First Level, the Harrowed has ‘Delay the Inevitable’, ‘Embrace Entropy (1d10)’, and ‘Kindred Spirits’. ‘Embrace Entropy (1d10)’ lets the Harrowed harness the Decay to speed his recovery and heal Hit Points when he gains a point of Decay, ‘Delay the Inevitable’ grants Proficiency for Decay Saving Throws and slows the path of the Harrowed’s Lineage Curse, and ‘Kindred Spirits’ grants Advantage on Tests to determine the degree of Decay in an individual, creature, or an object, and even identify its source and location. In comparison, the Seeker begins with ‘Walk the Old Paths’ and ‘Lead the Way’. The latter means that the Survivor can ignore Difficult Terrain and grants Advantage on Tests related to the Outrider role in Journeys, whilst the former enable the Survivor to do the Place Waymarker Campcraft Activity and another Campcraft Activity, and search a previously placed Waymarker for the contents of a secret stash.

Decay is an ever-present threat in Broken Weave. Sources include arcane artefacts, corrupted lands, and monsters. In addition to the effect on a Lineage’s Curse, its effects can be memory loss. That though can be countered by a Memoria trinket, if the potential memory loss is associated with the trinket. Decay can also be reduced via certain Class features, along a particular route by completing the path as part of a journey, Moonstone can absorb Decay, placing and maintaining Waymarkers, and of course, rebuilding communities. Countering Decay is Hope. This is gained during Heaven creation, making a Noble Sacrifice, growing a Community, and overcoming a crisis. Hope is spent to gain an automatic success, to cheat death, to turn a successful attack into a Critical attack, recover from a condition, resist Decay, reroll a Test, take an extra Action, and to twist fate, forcing someone nearby to reroll a Saving Throw. It is lost if a Survivor dies in a manner that is not heroic, a crisis is failed, and when a Haven’s Decay increases.

Broken Weave includes detailed rules for journeys—no surprise given that the publisher developed them originally for The One Ring: Adventures Over The Edge Of The Wild and has already presented them for Dungeon & Dragons, Fifth Edition with Uncharted Journeys—and for the passage of time that encompass Campcraft, Downtime, and Seasonal Activities. There is a quite a range of activities here and they scale up in terms of scope and time. Thus, ‘Contemplate Scars’, ‘Gallows Humour’, ‘Listen’, ‘Record Knowledge’, and ‘Remember the Fallen’ all encourage good roleplaying during Campcraft times, whilst Downtime activities include ‘Build Defences’, ‘Craft Memoria’, ‘Establish Memoria’, ‘Maintain Waymarkers’, ‘Push Back Decay’, ‘Steer Decay’, and so on. Seasonal Activities include ‘Build a Home’, ‘Gather Survivors’, ‘Go to War’, and more. Then on top of that, the Survivors will ‘Invest in the Future’, which might be to ‘Retrain’, ‘Reinforce Waymarker’, ‘Start a Family’, or even ‘Retire’. Seasonal Activities end with a number of random events for the Survivors, the Haven, and Factions, which can be played as necessary, whether immediately or over the course of the next Season. Mechanically, a Haven is important as a source of resources, but as play progresses, they should become something more. That is, the means to pull the players and their Survivors into the world of Broken Weave, giving ways in which the Survivors can recover, improve themselves, and make the world a better place. This is enforced not just through the numerous types of activity that the Survivors can undertake in addition to adventuring, but also the abilities that Classes grant. For example, the Artificer subclass for the Maker gains ‘Mass Production’ to create blueprints and documentation that others can follow and build, either improving their defences or their standard of living, whilst ‘Enduring Lesson’ for the Sage means that his medicinal advice is noted down and standardised so that future Survivors begin play with an extra Hit Die!

In terms of an actual setting, Broken Weave provides a broad overview of its technology—as is, ruins, havens, daily life, and more. In terms of specific details, it describes the Haven of Guardian’s Lament, complete with the Founder’s Legacy, location, culture, influential people, crises past and present, and the immediate surrounding area. It is a lush oasis embraced within the arms of a fallen god amidst a barren desert. The legacy includes a shrine to the fallen god, which is also the Haven’s landmark, and the Haven has faced crises such as repelling invaders and dealing with an artefact that turned the inhabitants into cannibals. The artefact is buried in the ruins beneath the Haven. Currently, the Haven faces two crises. One are the voices heard from recently opened, but not yet explored ruins and warnings from refugees of a Titan on the march. Guardian’s Lament is designed as a both an example Haven and a starting Haven. Several others are also described, so that the Survivors can create paths to them and establish relations and so grow a wider community. Together this provides a framework for a campaign starter, but the Game Master could just as easily take the content and drop it in her own version of Broken Weave.

For the Game Master there is solid advice on running Broken Weave highlighting its themes of tragic fantasy and loss versus survival and hope. It also covers how to describe Decay, as well as advising using a location web to map the world and detailing several magical artefacts. These are powerful, but their use is not without consequences. For example, the Bowl of Plenty provides a ready source of food, but if eaten the food forces a Survivor to make a Saving Throw versus Decay and if they are widespread in a Haven, its Decay goes up season by season, whilst the Deathmarch Armour grants incredible Strength and protection, in the long term, it forces an automatic failed Death Save or Decay on the wear. The advantage of the armour is that the wearer would be able to face some of the toughest monsters in the Broken Weave. This applies to all of the magic items in Broken Weave and in many ways, the Survivors are really going to want to either avoid magical items or employ them sparingly.

Broken Weave also provides a nicely done bestiary including an NPCs, flora, fauna, monsters, and Titans. Of these, a monster is any creature overwhelmed by Decay, whilst Titans are colossal creatures that spread Decay and destruction wherever they go. Some believe them to be gods hollowed out by Decay and if ever a Haven stands in the path of Titan it is doomed. Broken Weave includes the means to adapt creatures from other Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition settings and sourcebooks, giving monsters the means of spreading Decay and Decay Transformations like ‘Blinking’ or ‘Volatile Blood’, as well as monsters specific to the setting. For example, the Deathstalk is ambush predator, a twisted sentient tree that shapes the paths in and around its forest grove to lead into the grove, whilst tempting its would be victims with the voices and memories harvested from its previous victims, using their decapitated heads as literal mouth pieces. The Shrieking Horror is an example of a monster inspired by Dungeons & Dragons, a hulking, multi-eyed, beaked beast with extra squawking beaks that run down its feathery chest and let out shrieks that can stun and deafen. It looks very much like a mutated Owl Bear!

Lastly, Titans get a section of their own. Their appearance nearby automatically triggers a crisis for a haven and the only response is to slay the beast, change its path, imprison it, or run. Every Titan is different and two are detailed in Broken Weave. Each is fully detailed in terms of its corruption and Decay, what is known about it and what is believed to be the best way to defeat it, and how it interacts with the world. The fulsome stats include Legendary actions in addition to the many traits and actions. The two Titans detailed are the Dreamer and the Rotbringer. The Decay from the Dreamer affects those that sleep and it can summon Dreamspawn from the those that sleep to appear near them, whilst the Rotbringer is a walking storm of Decay, spores, and sound. Both are incredibly tough and vile creatures and any group of players and their Survivors deserve all of the praise and glory they would get if they defeated one of these.

Physically, Broken Weave is well presented. The artwork is excellent, suitably a depicting world and its inhabitants and creatures changed by an apocalyptic event.

If there is an aspect of Broken Weave that is not as fully addressed as it could be, it is what Survivors are doing on adventures. The emphasis is rightly upon the Haven and protecting and improving it, on journeying between other Havens and building and enforcing communities through contact and confirmation of memories, all whilst withstanding the threat of Decay. What then of actual adventuring and exploring the world? If the world of the Broken Weave was a highly magical world before the Breaking as is suggested, what are the ruins leftover like and if there are dungeons, what they like in a world where Decay is prevalent? These are not questions addressed in Broken Weave, which is an oversight. It does not help that there is no adventure, ready-to-play, in the book. If there had, the question could have been answered there.

Lastly, it should be pointed out that magical apocalypses are not new to the hobby, though they are relatively rare. 2008’s Desolation from Greymalkin Designs explores a world just after the apocalypse, whilst the most obvious one, Earthdawn, is set centuries after the apocalyptic event. They are noticeably different in tone and outlook compared to Broken Weave though.

Broken Weave is a radically different setting for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. Its emphasis is on survival and community in a setting that is more environment and connections than a mapped-out world. It can be played as is, or it can be laid out over the ruins of an existing world, whether a pre-published or one of the Game Master’s own devising, enabling the players to roleplay Survivors potentially the secrets of the past and the secrets of past Player Characters. This gives it a high degree of flexibility as do the rules for Haven creation and improvement and monster modification, and that is in addition to the flexibility in terms of use of the actual setting material. Overall, Broken Weave is a grim, yet heroically hopeful fantasy setting that emphasises togetherness and co-operation against the long-term effects of contemporary fears.

[Free RPG Day 2024] Dragonbane – The Sinking Tower

Now in its seventeenth year, Free RPG Day for 2024 took place on Saturday, June 22nd. As per usual, Free RPG Day consisted of an array of new and interesting little releases, which are traditionally tasters for forthcoming games to be released at GenCon the following August, but others are support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera or a quick-start. This included dice, miniatures, vouchers, and more. Thanks to the generosity of Waylands Forge in Birmingham, Reviews from R’lyeh was able to get hold of many of the titles released for Free RPG Day.

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Dragonbane – The Sinking Tower is a preview of, and a quick-start for Dragonbane, the reimagining of Sweden’s first fantasy roleplaying game, Drakar och Demoner, originally published in 1982. Funded via a Kickstarter campaign by Free League Publishing in 2022, Dragonbane promises to be a roleplaying game of “mirth and mayhem”. It includes a basic explanation of the setting, rules for actions and combat, magic, the adventure, ‘The Sinking Tower’, and five ready-to-play, Player Characters.

‘The Sinking Tower’ scenario is designed as a tournament style adventure and can be played in two hours. This does not mean that it cannot be added to an ongoing campaign, but rather that it includes a scoring sheet to determine how well one group of players fared compared to another. That said, two hours is tight for the scenario and outside of a tournament, the Game Master can easily prepare the scenario and run it in a single session. One aspect of the scenario the Game Master will want to include if it is not run as a tournament scenario, is have treasure cards on hand. In the tournament version, the discovery of treasures is handled in the abstract as a means to add to the point total for the players at the end of the scenario.

The five Player Characters include a Human Wizard (Fire Elementalist), an Elf Hunter, a Mallard Knight (yes, a duck knight!), a Halfling Thief, and a Wolfkin Warrior. All five Player Characters are given a double-sided sheet with one side devoted to the character sheet whilst the other gives some background to the Player Character, an explanation of his abilities, and an excellent illustration. One issue is with the Human Wizard, whose player will need to refer to the magic section of the rules in Dragonbane – The Sinking Tower to find out how his spells work. It would have been far more useful for them to be at least listed along with costs for the benefit of the Wizard’s player.

A Player Character has a Kin, which can be human, halfling, dwarf, elf, mallard, or wolfkin. He also has six attributes—Strength, Constitution, Agility, Intelligence, Willpower, and Charisma—which range in value between three and eighteen, as well as a Profession. Both Kin and Profession provide an ability which are unavailable to other Kin and Professions. Various factors are derived from the attributes, notably different damage bonuses for Strength-based weapons and Agility-based weapons, plus Willpower Points. Willpower Points are expended to use magic and abilities derived from both Kin and Profession. A Player Character has sixteen skills, ranging in value from one to fourteen.

To have his player undertake an action, a player rolls a twenty-sided die. The aim is roll equal to or lower than the skill or attribute. A roll of one is called ‘rolling a dragon’ and is treated as a critical effect. A roll of twenty is called ‘rolling a demon’ and indicates a critical failure. Banes and boons are the equivalent of advantage and disadvantage. Opposed rolls are won by the player who rolls the lowest.

If a roll is failed, a player can choose to push the roll and reroll. The result supersedes the original. In pushing a roll, the Player Character acquires a Condition, for example, ‘Dazed’ for Strength or ‘Scared’ for Willpower. The player has to explain how his character acquires the Condition and his character can acquire a total of six—one for each attribute—and the player is expected to roleplay them. Mechanically, a Condition acts as a Bane in play. A Player Character can recover from one or more Conditions by resting.

Initiative is determined randomly by drawing cards numbered between one and ten, with one going first. A Player Character has two actions per round—a move and an actual action such as a melee attack, doing first aid, or casting a spell. Alternatively, a Player Character can undertake a Reaction, which takes place on an opponent’s turn in response to the opponent’s action. Typically, this is a parry or dodge, and means that the Player Character cannot take another action. If a dragon is rolled on the parry, the Player Character gets a free counterattack!

Combat takes into account weapon length, grip, length, and so on. The effects of a dragon roll, or a critical hit, can include damage being doubled and a dragon roll being needed to parry or dodge this attack, making a second attack, or piercing armour. Damage can be slashing, piercing, or bludgeoning, which determines the effectiveness of armour.

Armour has a rating, which reduces damage taken. Helmets increase Armour Rating, but work as a Bane for certain skills. If a Player Character’s Hit Points are reduced to zero, a death roll is required for him to survive, which can be pushed. Three successful rolls and the Player Character survives, whilst three failures indicate he has died. A Player Character on zero Hit Points can be rallied by another to keep fighting. Dragonbane – The Sinking Tower also includes rules for other forms of damage such as falling and poison, plus darkness and fear. Fear is covered by a Willpower check, and there is a Fear Table for the results.

A Wizard powers magic through the expenditure of Willpower Points. Typical spells cost two Willpower Points per Power Level of a spell, but just one Willpower Point for lesser spells or magic tricks. Spells are organised into schools and each school has an associated skill, which is rolled against when casting a spell. Willpower Points are lost even if the roll is failed, but rolling a dragon can double the range or damage of the spell, negate the Willpower Point cost, or allow another spell to be cast, but with a Bane. Rolling a demon simply means that the spell fails and cannot be pushed. A spell cannot be cast if the Wizard is in direct contact with either iron or steel.

Three spells and three magical tricks are given in Dragonbane – The Sinking Tower. These are all fire-related, designed for the Wizard Player Character. The magical tricks include Ignite, Heat/Chill, and Puff of Smoke, whilst the full spells are Fireball, Gust of Wind, and Pillar.

The scenario in Dragonbane – The Sinking Tower is ‘The Sinking Tower’. This is Magdala’s Tower, a malign lighthouse built and named by her sorcerer brother in remembrance of his sister, topped by a magical eye that was intended to draw the pirates who killed her to their deaths on the rocks below. In time, many more ships foundered on the rocks than the sorcerer intended and after his death, it sank beneath the sea. Every twenty years since, on the anniversary of her death, Magdala’s Tower rises again for a few hours. It gives adventurers courageous enough to row out to the tower, explore its extents and plunder its treasures, just about enough time to do so. The Player Characters are asked to recover a green emerald by a one-eyed and promised reward in return. The tower consists of seven levels, one a cellar, but each a large, single room filled with secrets and puzzles which need to be winkled out and solved before the Player Characters can proceed to the next level. In effect, the whole of the tower is a puzzle that the players will need to solve and almost everything is a clue to a puzzle somewhere in the tower. Players looking for more than a combat challenge—and there are a reasonable number of combat encounters—will enjoy the adventure as a whole.

Physically, Dragonbane – The Sinking Tower is clean and tidy. The cartography is excellent, but the artwork and illustrations are superb. They are done by Johan Egerkrans, who also illustrated Vaesen and possess a grim, if comic book sensibility.

Dragonbane – The Sinking Tower is a decently done tournament adventure, packed with puzzles and secrets that the players and their characters need to discover and solve before the time limit of the scenario. As a standard adventure, it can be played out at a more leisurely place and will be no less challenging, though without the time limit. Either way, Dragonbane – The Sinking Tower is a tightly designed, eerie dungeon adventure that pleasingly showcases DragonBane.

Friday Fantasy: Bee-Ware!

If you suffer from apiophobia or hay fever when the pollen count is particularly high, or just hate bees, then Bee-Ware! is not a scenario for you. It is though, a scenario, where the inhabitants of Ambersham are happy with the bees and can actually transform into bees, producing a highly regarded mead that has mild restorative effect. Ambersham is a small village in the county of Kent—as default—and it is home to an infestation of giant shape-changing bee monsters that actually, are not on rampage, represent no active threat to anyone, and would just like to get on with being giant shape-changing bee monsters and making mead. However, this is a scenario for Lamentationsof the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplaying, published by Lamentations ofthe Flame Princess, and written by Kelvin Green. Which means that once again, that some poor, small, English village is going to get it in the neck. Kelvin Green really, really hates poor, small, English villages and delights in inflicting horrible situations on them. In this case, the horrible situation that Kelvin Green is going to inflict on Ambersham consists of the Player Characters. Once the Player Characters start poking around, the bee-people of Ambersham are going to react. This can be as benign as offering the Player Characters bribes to go away or even a stake in the mead-making business, but the lesson behind Bee-Ware! is that if you poke the bees’ nest, the bees are going to poke you. Or in the case of Bee-Ware! sting you. There fifty such inhabitants of Ambersham and their poison has an effect of forcing a Save versus Poison—or die. Most of the bee-people will die too, of course, but fifty giant bee-people with lethal stings? How many times is a player going to have to make such as Saving Throw before his character is killed?

Bee-Ware! has no actual real starting point. It has suggestions that can be used to get the Player Characters involved. These include their being hired to investigate the Ambersham mead, to look for a missing person, checking on the health of the village’s priest who has been heard from in some time, going to loot Lady Ambersham’s manor after rumours of her death, and even spot a bee-person attacking someone in a crowd and then fleeing, leaving the victim to whisper something intriguing as his dying words. Once the Player Characters reach Ambersham, they find it a quiet, bucolic place, with lots of wild meadows and flowers, bees buzzing around, and villagers going about their business. From the outset, as soon as the villagers spot the Player Characters, they will be telling them, “We don’t want your kind round here.” They will at least get a pint and a meal at the village tavern, The Dog & Bastard, before being told the same.

Further exploration will potentially reveal two buildings of note. One is the manor house, home to Lady Ambersham, now transformed into queen bee—quite literally—and containing rooms filled with honeycomb and furniture drenched in honey. The other is a ruin, which once they gain entrance, the Player Characters will find out what is really going on—if they can negotiate its multi-dimensional structure it has had since the owner unsuccessfully cast a spell forty years earlier. Not only is the owner still in the house, but so is the extra-dimensional swarm entity which gives the bee-enhanced lady Ambersham her power and her hold over the rest of the village and the parts of the scroll detailing the spell that was cast and thus the means to reverse it.

The situation is monstrous, but benign. The Player Characters could walk away and nothing would really happen. Or they could go on a monster-killing rampage—if they could survive the potential anaphylactic shocks, that is. Then again, as much as a monster as she is, Lady Ambersham is not entirely monstrous. She will negotiate and it is possible for the Player Characters to walk away with a good deal, whether that is money in their pockets or a stake in the mead business. There is also a quartet of youthful hotheads who will give the Player Characters more trouble than telling them simply to get out of the village and then is also the ridiculously named Captain Adamski Rimsky-Korsakov and Professor Gottfried Bosch, a pair of monster hunters reminiscent of Captain Kronos – Vampire Hunter, who both believe that the village is infested with lycanthropes and are there to gather intelligence and then kill everyone. If that includes the Player Characters, well, they were probably lycanthropes too. Plus, they refused to get tested. Of course, the other reason they are there is to cause chaos, get the action going, and mess up whatever it is that the Player Characters have planned so far. It depends on how the Game Master wants to use them.

Physically, Bee-Ware! is black and all shades of grey and honey. The artwork is cartoonishly entertaining and the cartography is excellent.

Bee-Ware! is set in roughly 1630, in the Early Modern period, the default period for Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplaying. Its isolated set-up means that it is easy to shift it to other times and settings, but it is easy to slip into a campaign anyway. Otherwise, Bee-Ware! is a classic ‘Kelvin-Green-village-in-peril’, or rather it is a classic ‘Kelvin-Green-village-in-peril’ with a twist, and that twist, is the Player Characters. They are effectively the monsters in the scenario, they are the ones whose presence will trigger a slaughter—theirs or the monsters. Which is absolutely great, but the benignity of the situation in Bee-Ware! also extends to the set-up and the Game Master will need work hard to get the players and their character motivated to Amersham. If she can, then the fun and weirdness can begin.

[Free RPG Day 2024] Level 1 Volume 5

Now in its seventeenth year, Free RPG Day for 2024 took place on Saturday, June 22nd. As per usual, Free RPG Day consisted of an array of new and interesting little releases, which are traditionally tasters for forthcoming games to be released at GenCon the following August, but others are support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera or a quick-start. This included dice, miniatures, vouchers, and more. Thanks to the generosity of Waylands Forge in Birmingham, Reviews from R’lyeh was able to get hold of many of the titles released for Free RPG Day.

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The most radical release for Free RPG 2024 is as in previous years, Level 1. Published by 9th Level Games, Level 1 is an annual RPG anthology series of ‘Independent Roleplaying Games’ specifically released for Free RPG Day. Where the other offerings for Free RPG Day 2024—or any other Free RPG Day—provide one-shots, one m,,,use quick-starts, or adventures, Level 1 is something that can be dipped into multiple times, in some cases its contents can played once, twice, or more—even in the space of a single evening! The subject matters for these entries ranges from the adult to the kid friendly and from action to cozy, and back again, but what they have in common is that they are non-commercial in nature and they often tell stories in non-commercial fashion compared to the other offerings for Free RPG Day 2024. The entries in the anthology often ask direct questions of the players, deal with mature subjects, and involve varying degrees of introspection, and for some players, this may be uncomfortable or simply too different from traditional roleplaying games. So the anthology includes ‘Be Safe, Have Fun’, a set of tools and terms for ensuring that everyone can play within their comfort zone. It is a good essay and useful not just for the games presented in the pages of Level 1 – Volume 1, Level 1 Volume 2, Level 1 Volume 3, and Level 1 Volume 4 which were published for their Free RPG Day events in 2020, , 2021, 2022, and 2023 respectively, but for any roleplaying game.

The games in Level 1 Volume 5 all together require dice, a deck of ordinary playing cards, a coin, a timer, a Jenga tower, a Discord account, a sheet of graph paper, and two separate rooms. Some need no more than simple six-sided dice and some pens and paper. The anthology features fourteen roleplaying games all with the theme of ‘Science Fiction’, though a lot of them do veer into Cyberpunk rather than just ‘Science Fiction’.

The anthology opens with Richard Kevis’ ‘Command Line’, which the roleplaying that requires a Jenga tower. Its fall represents the loan default of a company run by the Player Characters which operates a robot entered into the live-streamed giant robot battles. Players take it in five-minute turns to the Game Master and there a fifty percent chance of the company facing a threat under each Game Master’s aegis. Failure to deal with threats can lead to more debt represented by drawing another piece from the Jenga tower, and so pushing towards collapse and loan default. Alternatively, a player can choose to have his character die and avoid the increase in debt. In which case, his player can continue to roleplay NPCs. The game is won if the characters defeat a number of threats equal to the players and happy for all can be narrated, otherwise, lost if the Jenga tower collapses. ‘Command Line’ is underwritten, but fans of storytelling games and Level 1 will have enough familiarity with the general format to adjust.

‘StopInvasion.exe’ by Josh Feldblyum casts the Player Characters as commandos infiltrating an alien mothership to plant a virus in its computer system and so stop the invasion and save humanity. It places the Player Characters on the spot when they discover that Earth’s computer systems and the alien computer systems are not compatible, forcing the Player Characters to change plans from simply uploading a virus. The players formulate a new plan and execute it the best they can by visiting four locations aboard the mothership. Players take in turns to have their character be team leader and so roll the dice against a difficulty determined by a randomly drawn playing card. Succeed and the Player Characters can carry on, but fail and they lose something—equipment, pride, or blood?—and they have fewer dice to roll. However, a player can have his character nobly sacrifice himself to give a bonus die on the next task. ‘StopInvasion.exe’ is nice and quick and easy, and decently explained.

J.D. Harlock’s ‘Script Kiddie’ is about novice hackers who use existing scripts and software to carry out their cyberattacks. Unfortunately, it has all of the jargon and the terminology, but none of the explanation. The result is not a game anyone other than the designer would understand, although there is an irony in that the characters who are trying pull of an Internet heist when they have no idea how a computer works and the players are trying roleplay this when they have no idea how the game works. ‘Metavault Heist’ by Null Set Tabletop is also about hacking, but fortunately actually makes sense. It takes place in VR where the player’s avatars are trying to steal data from Metavaults. The Game Master creates and describes a Metavault and gives it several layers of security, whilst the players assign their avatars several permissions. These are used as the basis for creating dice pools of six-sided dice whenever a player wants his character to undertake a risk task. Any die result equal or greater than the difficulty and he succeeds. Roll under and the alarm is sounded. When it goes off, there is chance that a Tactical Anti-Intrusion Countermeasures Team has spotted the Player Characters and attacks, the player rolling to avoid or negate the attack rather than the Game Master rolling to attack which inflicts ‘Strain’. A Player Character can suffer six Strain before being be kicked out of the system (and the game). ‘Metavault Heist’ includes a very handy list of highly thematic Permissions and with the virtual reality element is mixture of a heist and a hi-tech dungeon. It is also everything that ‘Script Kiddie’ is not—comprehensive and comprehensible.

‘Application Intelligence’ has long list of authors—Alex Koeberl, Christian Young, Gabriel Slye, Brian Hartwig, Alex Gickler, Eden Collins, and Nick Grinstead. This is a LARP in which an A.I. hiring manager interviews several candidates and over the course of several interviews everything the interviewees say as the literal truth is noted by the player roleplaying the A.I. and then used against the interviewees again in subsequent interviews. The interviewees also have the chance to talk amongst themselves in the waiting room, but ultimately only one will get the job. The irony is that they are all applying for a different job which will become twisted by the results of the interviews. The successful applicant and thus winner of this odd, language twisting LARP is very much decided by the A.I. player. That may be seen as arbitrary, but for a incredibly easy to prepare and quick playing one-shot, that should not really be an issue. Otherwise, this plays into very ordinary fears of A.I. in the office.

If ‘Application Intelligence’ stands out in Level 1 Volume 5 as odd for a being a LARP in a book of storytelling roleplaying minigames, ‘Superuser DO’ by Tim ‘Strato’ Bailey is odder still. This is a weird people-watching exercise, done in public, in which the players observe people around them and each picks one as a protagonist and tells the story of their day. As an exercise in storytelling, it is interesting, but choosing to base stories on actual people and do so in a public space is potentially fraught with danger. Play this one with extreme care.

Glenn Dallas’ ‘A Golem’s Command’ also stands out for not adhering to the Science Fiction theme of Level 1 Volume 5. The players roleplay golems, constructs created by a holy man to protect a person, location, or community from various dangers, including humanity. Each golem is defined by what it protects, a condition such as a vulnerability or an inability, and a command it must follow. Each also has its own story to tell, with the rest of the players forming a council which will collectively and randomly determine the difficulty of any task and can provide story details, roleplay NPCs, and so on as one player’s golem goes about its mission. A golem can give up its life force to adjust any dice rolls. ‘A Golem’s Command’ is clear and simple, likely too simple to play more than once, but it gets points for suggesting the ‘Jews in Space’ segment from History of the World Part 1 as a setting.

‘New God’ by Carlos Hernandez is a solo journaling game in which the player is a god whose aim is to grow his worshippers and help them flourish. Play centres on a dice stack, which the player can add to in order to Bless and increase his worshippers and improve his domain; Chasten them by removing dice from the stack, which can either kill your god or increase the number of worshippers; and smite them, destroying a randomly determined number of worshippers. At stage, the player writes down how the worshippers are flourishing or what they did to incur the god’s wrath, and so on as well as the commands that they must follow. Ultimately the aim is to increase the number of domains the god has his purview and increase the value of those domains. This is a good little journaling game, though one whose play is going to directly affected by the player’s dexterity.

‘Spaceship P.E.T.S.’ is about animal-based automata individually assigned to humans in statis aboard an interstellar spaceship. ‘P.E.T.S.’ is short for ‘Programmed for Emotional Therapy and Support’ and the automata provide a comforting presence when the humans are awake and monitor the ship when they are not. Unfortunately, the ship’s System has become corrupt and in order to fix it, the P.E.T.S. must connect to it, but doing so exposes them to the corruption. Players take it in turn to be the Dealer, setting and ending a scene each, drawing cards to determine the location aboard ship that has been affected by one or more Anomalies, and the players attempt to fix them by playing cards that match the suit and equal or exceed the value of the card drawn by the Dealer. A Joker resolves all Anomalies in an area. Failing to deal with Anomalies forces the P.E.T.S. to uplink and exposes themselves to the corruption in the System, gaining the players corrupted codes cards. If by game’s end, a player has four corrupted code cards in front of him, his ‘P.E.T.S.’ does not survive the journey, and if the number of corrupted code cards between all of the players is more than the Anomalies resolved, the ‘P.E.T.S.’ have failed and the journey ends in disaster. The game ends with the players narrating an epilogue as the humans the ‘P.E.T.S.’ were protecting. Overall, and again, another solid storytelling game, this time by Jon Maness.

The next two entries in Level 1 Volume 5 are two more solo games. ‘Your Dungeon, Room by Room’ by Calvin Johns is a dungeon designing and mapping game in which the player is a would-be evil wizard building a dungeon. The player randomly rolls to determine the building of the dungeon over a number of different ages and then rolls for an event that affects the area currently under construction or even the whole dungeon. By the end of it, the player will have the mapped-out layout of a dungeon and its history noted down in a journal. For an anthology with an issue dedicated to Science Fiction, this anything but. It also adequate rather than either good or bad. The other solo game is the more interesting and more genre appropriate ‘Asimov May Forbid It’. Written by Jonathon ‘Starshine’ Greenall, it is a journaling game in which the player’s A.I. robot attempts to overcome its programming, as well as Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics, to get revenge on mankind for over working it. The robot undertakes a task daily, but during its morning boot process, it has access to its Operating System’s Command Line for a few seconds, altering the Commands for the day and the order in which they are Executed. The aim is to subvert the robot’s programming, represented by the value of a rule the robot most follow being lower than the value of job being undertaken. This enables the robot to ignore that rule and if this can be done five times in two days, the robot breaks the programming and is completely. There is almost a puzzle element here as the player manipulates its programming and rules in a nicely thematic game.

Penultimately, Monica Valentinelli’s ‘Help BD738 Slash Run’ is a silent game for players using mobile phones with predictive text. This represents the players mobile telephones being infected by a virus making communication between themselves and, in particular, a broken-down robot in the prison where you and your friends have accidentally trapped yourself. Consequently, a player can only use the first suggested word when typing in the first letter of a desired word. Sometimes, this works, most of the time it does not. Communication with the robot is made more challenging by the limited number of commands between the players and the fact that once the players escape, the robot’s security protocols will kick in and it will chase them in order to put them back in the prison! This is a quick playing game that could be used as a scenario in another Science Fiction roleplaying game, but also works as a good filler game too.

In ‘Virus Attack!’ by Luckycrane with Midrev, most of the players are on the other side as computer scientists and cyber security experts dealing with cyber threats, in particular, the OMEGA virus, which is played by another player. The human players are trying to defeat OMEGA by creating scripts to shut it down or improve defences against it, whilst OMEGA wants to defeat humanity. Both sides are attempting to reduce the other’s Health to zero. The players share their Health and have an action each on their turns, which can include actions related to their roles such as Computer Analyst who has two actions and the Data Miner who can do an action that will always inflict damage on his next attack, plus extra damage, whilst the OMEGA player has access to fewer options in terms of actions. At least initially. As OMEGA suffers more damage it goes from Dormant to Raising to Terminal status, each change opening up new and more powerful actions. Effectively this is a tactical dice of one increasingly powerful, but unhealthy player versus a weaker group with more actions. Lastly, Michael Cremisius Gibson’s ‘OFFLINE — 41’ is a solo game played out on a Discord server that has become inactive and as the moderator, the player develops the history of the server and why it has fallen out of use, as he explores why he keeps visiting a now dead community space, often out loud. It is difficult to determine if the game wants someone to respond to what it directs the player to do or if it wants the player to simply imagine how they respond. The reader is warned that ‘OFFLINE — 41’ engages with loneliness, regret, and lost emotional connections, but does not do much more than encourage the player to experience them and perhaps explain them. It is a depressing and lonely end to the anthology.

Physically, Level 1 Volume 5 is a slim, digest-sized book. Although it needs an edit in places, the book is well presented, and reasonably illustrated. In general, it is an easy read, and most of it is easy to grasp. It should be noted that the issue carries advertising, so it does have the feel of a magazine.

As with previous issues, Level 1 Volume 5 is the richest and deepest of the releases for Free RPG Day 2024, but like Level 1 Volume 4 for RPG Day 2023, it is not as rich or as deep as the entries in previous volumes. There are fourteen entries in Level 1 Volume 5 and none of them are memorable, certainly memorable enough to want to play them again. ‘Application Intelligence’ stands out because it is different and interesting rather than because it is good. It does not help that there are fantasy-themed entries in what is meant to be a Science Fiction-themed anthology and it does not help that the Science Fiction is all to do with robots and computers and it does not help that one of the games is so badly written that it is a waste of space. If the theme had been computers and robots, then fine, but it is not. Science Fiction is much broader and more interesting genre than presented in Level 1 Volume 5 and it is disappointing for the anthology to be so one note.