Friday Fantasy: They’re Making Hostage Sausage at the Dragonmeat™ Processing Plant!

In the far north, on the slopes of Mount Khamois stands the city of Olgendsongrad. It is a city that has helped to make the world a safer place from the Chaotic dragons, campaigning against and capturing these aerial menaces that swoop from the sky to steal flocks of sheep and herds of cattle and raze villages and expect princesses to be delivered, bound, but screaming to their cave entrances. It is city that has grown rich and fat on capturing, breeding, and butchering black, blue, green, red, and white dragons and making use of every single body part and organ. Of course, wizards and sorcerers queue up to buy a ready supply of draconic components for their spells and research—even from other realms and dimensions, but more popular is Dragonmeat™! Kept fresh in easy to open and easy to carry tins, Dragonmeat™ is a wonder of the age. A single tin will keep a man fed for week and keep him happy and ready for work. Except the wheels of the Dragonmeat™ Processing Plant have ground to a halt and there no more fat dragon corpses going in and no more tins of Dragonmeat™ rolling off the conveyor belts. The Dragonmeat™ Processing Plant, located in the old Highroad King’s former state of the art prison, is silent and under siege. The authorities and the city’s three competing militias—the Copperbreath Guards and Copperbreath Riot Troops (both of whom would rather be collecting fines and/or bribes), the Bronzeclaw Dragoon Bravos with their wing-clipped hellfire-spouting draconic steeds (who would rather be invading another country), and the Silverwing Scouts (who would rather be in the air, looking cool)—are stuck outside, unable to get in because of Dragonmeat™ Processing Plant’s magical defences. Inside, some of the workers have halted work, revolted, and are demanding some rights. They have also taken hostages. Which makes breaking in and beating up the uppity workers a whole lot more difficult. If there were no hostages, the militias and the city authorities would only to worry about damage to the processing plant.

Enter the Player Characters, because amongst all of this mess, someone wants them to break in, end the siege, rescue the staff, and even smuggle in a sociologist! That is not all though, other people want to know what Dragonmeat™ is really made of, smuggle out as many tins as they can, grab some CARAT (Citizen Appraisal and Review According to Treasure) medallions (used for identification and status in Olgendsongrad), and more. The good news is that each one of these objectives pays well—very well. The bad news is that the Player Characters have about four hours (probably less) to get in, do what they need to do, and get out again before the authorities decide to get even more heavier-handed than normal…

Imagine if the world of How to Train Your Dragon got industrialised and then unionised, and then you wanted to run Ocean’s 11 in that world in a factory with Stephen King’s The Mangler at the heart of it. Then you turn it into an adventure using the retroclone of your choice. Pretty much what you would have is They’re Making Hostage Sausage at the Dragonmeat™ Processing Plant!.

They’re Making Hostage Sausage at the Dragonmeat™ Processing Plant! is from TheMerry Mushmen. Published following a Kickstarter campaign along with Drought Dragon Desolation, this is an adventure for OldSchool Essentials from Necrotic Gnome and is designed to be played with characters of Third and Fourth Level. It is a heist adventure. The Player Characters attend a briefing from their employer—by remote—and then case the joint, decide how they are going to break in, and then get out again, whilst attempting to achieve multiple objectives inside what is an arcano-mechanical dungeon. It can be played in a single session, and there are notes on how to do that, but that is a challenging prospect given how busy an affair this is and how detailed the Dragonmeat™ Processing Plant and its environs are. It is primarily designed to be played through in four or five sessions, giving the Game Master to bring the city of Olgendsongrad to life and her players and their characters the opportunity to enjoy its industrial weirdness.

What the scenario does not include is a full description of the city of Olgendsongrad. Instead, the introduction, ‘Olgendsongrad – City of the dragon butchers’, is more of a travelogue that takes the players and their characters in through the ‘Gate of the Three Golds’ (dedicated to the three gold dragons that inaugurated its status today) and to the dive that is the Lowlives Hostelry and The Old King’s Bones where they can find a room and then get a drink from the owner’s undead staff—five skeletons with a limited understanding of spoken Common—for which he has a ‘Perpetual Licence to Necroanimate on the Premises’. There is an overview of the city, but it is limited. Instead, the scenario focuses upon the set-up and the location of the heist. This includes the weird briefing that the Player Characters will receive, details of the factions and persons/beings inside and out with interest in what is going on in the Dragonmeat™ Processing Plant. There some delightfully weird individuals here—a Pigeon Army for hire, a bowler hat-wearing sentient crab on secondment from another plane, and the Kobold Sociologist who wants to accompany the Player Characters on the heist—for the Game Master to portray.

There is also timeline which serves as a countdown of events that will trigger the longer it takes the Player Characters to execute the heist as well as tables of events, alerts, and the environment inside the Dragonmeat™ Processing Plant for when it is quiet or the workers inside are alerted. The Dragonmeat™ Processing Plant is described in some detail as you would expect. It continues the scenario’s combination of dark fantasy and unfettered industrialisation, from the rooftops and towers of the former castle down to the sewers and dungeons below ground, now turned into breeding pens for the stunted, wing-clipped dragons. The high degree of detail does mean that the Game Master has a lot to prepare, in particular, understanding how the Dragonmeat™ Processing Plant would normally operate and how the players and their characters might go about planning and executing breaking in, and then impart the information that both would need to know to do that without revealing too much information or bias. It does not help that there is no advice on how to do that or no-one included who might be able to give information about possible ways in. The Game Master may well want to prepare an NPC or two who might be able to furnish the Player Characters with this information when they go looking.

In addition to the fully mapped Dragonmeat™ Processing Plant, the scenario also includes several appendices. These in turn, list the possible side effects of eating too many tins of Dragonmeat™; new magical or special items, like the AutoXbow 2000 (which gives the choice of four shots before reloading or one shot before reloading at +4 to hit and damage) and Goblin’s Eyeballs (candied meat that when consumed grant infravison for twelve hours, but a penalty to sight checks during the day); and the full list of people and dragon in the adventure; and names of people and places of Olgendsongrad. The penultimate appendix consists of a short scenario, ‘Smuggling Gig’, in which the Player Characters are hired to smuggle a dozen tins of Dragonmeat™ out of the city, which can be run as a prequel to the main scenario in They’re Making Hostage Sausage at the Dragonmeat™ Processing Plant!. The last appendix consists of a full set of ‘Ogender adventurers’. These are intended to be used replacement characters or as hirelings. They all have slightly weird and wonky backgrounds as befits the setting. It is a pity that there is not a set of pre-generated Player Characters included as they would have helped some of the toe and weirdness of the setting more personal.

Another issue with They’re Making Hostage Sausage at the Dragonmeat™ Processing Plant! is that its setting, an arcano-mechanical, industrialised city, does not fit the typical fantasy setting, and neither does its satirical tone. Which is a pity because there a lot more of the city of Olgendsongrad to explore and likely more adventures to be had. That said, its northern or Scandinavian-style setting does actually make it easier to place in a world, even if the other elements do not. One option might be the Midderlands setting from Monkey Blood Design, which does have a similar tone and could have suitable places to locate Olgendsongrad. Of course, the Game Master devise more of the setting as directed or fit the scenario into her setting, making the adjustments, as necessary.

Physically, They’re Making Hostage Sausage at the Dragonmeat™ Processing Plant! is as well presented as you would expect a title to be from The Merry Mushmen. The artwork is good, but perhaps a little busy. The cartography is good too.

They’re Making Hostage Sausage at the Dragonmeat™ Processing Plant! is not a traditional city supplement or a traditional scenario either. It leaves much of the city of Olgendsongrad to the imagination or until the publisher sets more scenarios there and the scenario is one that requires planning and speed upon the part of the players and their characters. To be fair, the scenario does not actually need a great of information about Olgendsongrad, since as a heist scenario, the Player Characters are meant to get in and get away, rather than hang around to see what happens next. In comparison to the previous scenarios from this publisher—Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow and The Horrendous Hounds of Hendenburgh—this is spikier where they are sharper. In addition, it is also harder to set up and run than either of those two scenarios because there is more information to impart to the players and their characters, and unfortunately the scenario does not help with that as it should.

They’re Making Hostage Sausage at the Dragonmeat™ Processing Plant! is an entertaining scenario which introduces a weird, off-kilter fantasy setting that you definitely want to know more about. A meat processing plant is a great setting for a heist and if she can put the effort to prepare the scenario as it needs, both the Game Master will have a lot of fun with They’re Making Hostage Sausage at the Dragonmeat™ Processing Plant!.

Cthulhoid Choices: The Rats in the Walls

H.P. Lovecraft’s 1923 short story, ‘The Rats in the Walls’, tells of an American, Delapore, the last descendant of the De la Poer family, inherits the family estate of Exham Priory in England following the Great War and much to the dismay of local residents, decides to restore the estate. Once they have moved in, both Delapore and his cat are plagued by the sounds of the eponymous ‘rats in the walls’. Together with several friends, including the comrade of his son who died in the war, Delapore investigates the source of the sounds and following a series of dreams discovers the terrible history of his family. That they were cannibals, feeding on a herd of ‘human cattle’ raised and maintained in an underground below the house for centuries. Enraged by the loss of his son and maddened by the revelations about his family, Delapore snaps and gives into his filial urges, attacking and feeding upon his companions, before being captured and condemned to an insane asylum.

This story has now been adapted to Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. Published by Dungeon Matters , the ‘R’lyeh Rising Adventure Series’ adapts classic cosmic horror and pulp fiction into adventures for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. Of course, links between cosmic horror and the Cthulhu Mythos and Dungeons & Dragons are not new. They go all the way back to the original version of the Deities & Demigods, the pantheon guide for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition. The connection would come to the fore at the end of the millennium with Death in Freeport from Green Ronin Publishing. It moved back and forth with Realms of Crawling Chaos for Labyrinth Lord and other retroclones and with adventures like Carrion Hill for Pathfinder, before coming up to date with a supplement and set of campaigns for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition with Ghoul Island Act 1: Voyage to Farzeen and its sequels, written and published by Sandy Petersen, the designer of Call of Cthulhu no less!

The ‘R’lyeh Rising Adventure Series’ does not consist of classic fantasy adventures, but instead of Lovecraftian investigative horror set in the early twentieth century. The series does provide a guide to ‘Running Lovecraftian Horror in 5e’ which gives an overview of the line and the setting—primarily Arkham and Innsmouth; the themes and elements including the Great Old Ones and Elder Gods, mad cultists and forbidden knowledge, insanity and madness, and so on; and of course, new rules. It suggests the Cleric, Fighter, Monk, and Warlock as possible Classes, and suggests Naval Veteran, Occult Investigator, Prohibition Agent, and Spiritualist as possible Backgrounds. There are rules too for firearms, vehicles and vehicle chases. The setting overview is broad, whilst the rules are serviceable, tending towards Pulp horror feel rather than a Purist tone.

Given that the line is an adaptation of Lovecraftian investigative horror, it should be no surprise that there are rules for madness and the effects of being exposed to the cosmic horror of the Mythos. Saving throws against Madness are a Wisdom check and the type of Madness can either be short-term, suffered after a minor shock, long-term, gained after accumulated horror exposure, or indefinite, due to reading forbidden tomes or seeing cosmic entities, or suffering long-term madness three or more times. The actual effects for each type are determined randomly. It is possible to cure madness through the Lesser Restoration, Remove Curse, Dispel Evil, and Greater Restoration spells. Overall, there is a brusqueness to both overview of the setting and the rules, but they are workable.

R’lyeh Rising #1: The Rats in the Walls is the first in the series. It is designed for four First Level Player Characters who are engaged to investigate the activities of Lord Arthur de la Poer at Exham Priory. This might be because a friend or colleague is concerned about him, because a local mother is worried about the disappearance of her son, or simply because the Player Characters met the mad Lord Arthur de la Poer in the street. The Player Characters can conduct some investigation and ask a few questions in and around the village of Anchester, near Exham Priory. They will definitely be able to confirm that something odd is going on at the house and may be able to discern some hints as to what it is. Then they can make their way to Exham Priory, perhaps with an ally or not, discovering further signs of Lord Arthur de la Poer’s madness, before descending into the caves below the house. This is linear in nature rather than the expansive city which the original story suggested, but along the way, the Player Characters can find the means that will help them defeat the evil thing below the priory and so end the curse that has beset the de la Poer family.

One nice touch is that the thing, the ‘Feaster’, “A hulking mass of mouths and flesh, embodying hunger and madness itself.” will offer the Player Characters a bargain. It is a very nasty bargain, but its bonuses are decent if a player decides that his character will give in! Instead of magical items, there are ‘Special Items’, including a helpful tome bound in human flesh and the vile, Ceremonial Knife of the Feast. Whether through combat or dismissal, the Player Characters should be able to defeat the ‘Feaster’. This will gain them a new Level.

The scenario includes advice on adjusting to lower or higher player counts, a suggested timeline, and the NPC and monster stats. There are no pre-generated Player Characters, which would have been useful given the change in genre.

Physically, R’lyeh Rising #1: The Rats in the Walls is a plain affair. It is lightly illustrated and some of the illustrations are good. The cartography is decent, if a little dark.

R’lyeh Rising #1: The Rats in the Walls is not a sophisticated affair. There is some scope for roleplaying early on, but once the Player Characters enter Exham Priory, the scenario is more dungeon-like, and the scenario is very much going to end in a fight. Veteran players of roleplaying games of Lovecraftian investigative horror will not find much here to engage them and will very likely have read the story that it is based on anyway. For players of Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition who want to try some Lovecraftian investigative horror, R’lyeh Rising #1: The Rats in the Walls offers a straightforward opportunity with a short taster than can be played in a single session.

Miskatonic Monday #430: Last Dance in Shoreditch

 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: Last Dance in Shoreditch

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Seyed P. Razavi

Setting: London, Modern Day

Product: One shot
What You Get: Thirty-page, 15.87 BB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: “There’s always some amount of gradual, slow burning destruction over the course of partying.”—Gavin DeGraw

Plot Hook: Jenny Muir is missing

Plot Support: Staging advice, five pre-generated Investigators, seven handouts, three NPCs, and one Mythos monster.

Production Values: Decent

Pros

# Nightlife nightmare in the streets of East London

# Nicely done ‘sights, sounds, vibes, and smells’

# Easy to prepare

# Eisoptrophobia

# Scoptophobia

# Melophobia

Cons

# One pre-generated Investigator a little too like the missing NPC

# One pre-generated Investigator has a high Cthulhu Mythos skill

# It will make you feel old

# Avoid any jokes about murder on the dance floor

Conclusion

# Queasy, sweaty descent beyond the ecstasy of London’s nightlife

# Drop the bass, drop the horror

Miskatonic Monday #429: Crappy Detour

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: Crappy Detour

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Phanzar

Setting: USA, Modern Day

Product: One shot
What You Get: Seventeen-page, 8.22 BB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds meets Call of Cthulhu

Plot Hook: A forced detour confronts the Investigators with a shitty situation

Plot Support: Staging advice, five pre-generated Investigators, five handouts, one map, four Mythos spells, one Mythos tome, and three Mythos monsters.

Production Values: Decent

Pros

# A terrible pun rather than a case of nominative determinism

# Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds writ large

# Decent map

# Easy to prepare

# Easy to adjust to other times and places

# Customisable Investigators

# Ornithophobia

# Coprophobia

# Pteronophobia

Cons

# A terrible pun rather than a case of nominative determinism

# Needs an edit

# No floorplans

# Sadly, no phobia of Afred Hitchcock

Conclusion

# Obvious pastiche that is not as bad as it sounds

# Decent one-shot that rises above nominative determinism

Christianity & Cosmology

The Straight Way Lost: Adventuring between Heaven and Hell in a Fantastical Renaissance Italy is a campaign for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, but do not let that put you off. This is as different a campaign for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition as you could imagine. It is a low fantasy campaign that is highly fantastical. It treads a fine line between the Possibility of magic and the Permeance of non-magic. It is historical. It will take the players and their characters to places rarely thought about and rarely visited in roleplaying. Its scope is grander than ever imagined, taking the Player Characters from High Renaissance Florence to the gates of Hell—and beyond. Down all nine circles of Hell and out of the bottom to climb the Mountain of Purgatory to reach Paradise, before returning to the mortal world and stopping a great evil. Inspired by Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso, the three parts of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, the campaign will literally take the Player Characters through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, and thus across a Ptolemaic model of the universe. Dungeons & Dragons has visited Hell before. Most notably with 1980’s Inferno for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition, from Judges Guild, which detailed the first four circles of Hell as detail by Dante, and which has been more recently completed in Inferno: Journey through Malebolge by Spellbook Games. A Paladin in Hell, published in 1998, allowed the players to visit Hell once again, complete with actual devils rather than ‘baatezu’, whilst the Guide to Hell, followed a year later. Both were for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Second Edition. Unlike those releases, The Straight Way Lost is not designed for traditional Dungeons & Dragons-style play.

The Straight Way Lost: Adventuring between Heaven and Hell in a Fantastical Renaissance Italy, published by Vortex Verlag following a Kickstarter campaign is both a sourcebook for fifteenth century Florence, a guide to the cosmology of Dante’s Divine Comedy, and a complete campaign for Player Characters of Third Level. Should they survive and complete the campaign, they will attain Eighth Level. However, there is relatively little scope for continued play beyond the campaign and anyway, the world portrayed in The Straight Way Lost is unlike Dungeons & Dragons. It is set in High Renaissance Italy where magic is known and studied in private, but deeply frowned upon by the church since it could lead to the study and practice of necromancy. Man is not the only intelligent species in this world, though the Elves, Half-Elves, Dwarves, Half-Dwarves, Tielfings, and Nephilim try not to bring too much attention themselves. There are no obviously non-Human species, but even the acceptable species ten to hide their non-Human traits. So, no Dragonborn, Halflings, or Half-Orcs. In terms of Dungeons & Dragons’ Classes, the Bard, Fighter, Ranger, Rogue, and Wizard are unproblematic, whereas the Barbarian, Druid, and Monk are unsuited to the setting. The Cleric and the Paladin require some consideration in terms of their faith, though it is likely to be Christian; the Sorcerer’s magical nature is likely to at odd with the rationality of the age; and the Warlock is provided with a list of alternative Patrons to select from, though there are no ‘Great Old Ones’ to choose from. These include Archfae, Infernal, and Titan Patrons.

Besides the new species, The Straight Way Lost also introduces two new Classes and a Sub-Class. Under the Polymath, the Philosopher, who understands and uses reason and logic to weave the powers of creation, whilst the Artist uses creativity and imagination. Mechanically, both expend Weave Points to fuel a mix of powers, some which they share in common. The Philosopher begins with the powers of ‘Language Master’, ‘Linguistic Recall’, ‘Peer Connections’, and ‘Caustic Remark’, whilst the Artist has ‘Likeness’, ‘The Artist’s Eye’, ‘The Artist’s Hand’, and ‘The Artist’s Favour’. The ‘Courtier’ is a Sub-Class for the Bard which focuses on social interaction rather than performance. In addition, The Straight Way Lost adds the new skills of Arts Liberales, Courtly Manners, Diplomacy, Fine Arts, and Law. What this offers is a range of character options that emphasises brains over brawn and manners over murder—and as the authors make clear, The Straight Way Lost is a campaign that emphasises roleplay versus rampage. Yes, some martial skills will be needed, but a Player Character entirely focused upon them will probably get less enjoyment out of the campaign.

Further, to encourage player and character involvement and roleplaying, The Straight Way Lost suggests possible character motivations, reasons for group cohesion, and motivational drives. The character motivations include Family Duty, Holy Duty, Heritage, Informant, and more, whilst the group cohesion suggestions include Family, Powerful Patron, Business, and so on. Both of these can be rolled or chosen, and if two or more Player Characters share one, the Game Master is encouraged to tie their backgrounds together. The motivational drives, such as Truth Seeker, Danger Seeker, God is Truth, and Fear Itself, are designed to encourage the player to get his character involved in the campaign’s plot and its ongoing storyline, and when roleplayed, will reward the player with Inspiration.

The Straight Way Lost notably eschews the standard Alignment system of Dungeons & Dragons. Instead, each Player Character will have a Dark Secret from a flaw or a committed sin; a Good Deed, committed because of a virtue; and a Happy Memory. All three will be tested and examined in the campaign, especially the Dark Secret and its associated sin in Hell. One of the advantages that the Player Characters will have in relation to the other souls in Hell is that they are mortal, should not be in Hell, and cannot be automatically confined to the Circle of Hell pertaining to their Dark Secret. The Straight Way Lost also adds a new mechanic in the form of Dismay, representing the effects of the trauma that the Player Characters can suffer as a result of traversing through Hell. Wisdom checks are made against a Difficulty Class which varies between eight and a shocking incident and fourteen and extreme terror. A Player Character’s Dismay can range in value between one and ten, and as it rises he will become increasingly apathetic and may fall into a ‘State of Dread’, a ‘State of Madness’, or ultimately, suffer a ‘Breakdown’. Both player and Game Master are encouraged to work together to portray the effects of Dismay in a manner that everyone is comfortable with.

The Straight Way Lost does include a sourcebook for the city of Florence in the year 1492. This is not an extensive look at the city, but rather a good overview and that is sufficient to run the campaign. The campaign proper begins in March, 1492, with the Player Characters invited to attend a feast hosted by the Capponi family, allies of the Medici family, to celebrate the achievements of a noted philosopher. They will have the opportunity to interact with their fellow guests and even attend an audience with Lorenzo de’ Medici, already in clearly poor health. Unfortunately, the event is thrown into disarray with the discovery of a dead woman, clearly murdered, lying in an arcane circle in the cellar. As the news of the murder spreads through Florence, it threatens to discredit Lorenzo de’ Medici and his family for simply being there, so he hands the investigation into the death to his fiercest critic, Girolamo Savonarola, a prior of the Dominican convent of San Marco. This includes Father Savonarola who will interview the Player Characters and ask them to help. This is not to investigate the murder directly—though the campaign does allow for that if the players decide that their characters want to—but rather to consult with Ofelia, a holy hermit who lives three days outside of the city and ask if she can pray to determine who has let his evil into the city of Florence…

Ofelia will direct the Player Characters on the campaign’s great quest. They will be accompanied by a guide who can advise them and help them, if necessary, but the Game Master will need to be careful in her portrayal so that it does not appear that she is not leading them by the nose. The path through the campaign is obvious, that is, down and eventually up. First descending down through the funnel formed on the other side of the world, at each Circle confronting its keeper, encountering the souls whose sins have cast them into Hell and exploring the consequences of their sins, confronting any Player Character whose Dark Secret corresponds to the Circle, and then finding a way to progress to the next lower Circle. The encounters also include famous persons from history, some of whom are pertinent to the campaign and the city of Florence, but all of whom have, according to Dante’s Divine Comedy, have been cast into Hell. The confrontation with the personal Dark Secret will automatically increase that character’s Dismay, but it throws the spotlight on the character and player, giving the latter an opportunity to examine and roleplay his character’s darker side and its consequences. It requires careful handling by both player and Game Master, whilst altogether, the group might want to spread the choice of Dark Secrets their characters’ possess. This would avoid the possibility of replication and spread such scenes out over the course of the Player Characters’ descent, rather than having them all at once. How the Player Characters get past the keeper of each Circle varies, combat invariably not being the best option. The path down is intentionally gruelling and by the time the Player Characters have descended to the lowest Circle of Hell, their Dismay levels will be quite high and they will be drawn and traumatised by what they have seen and experienced.

Fortunately, whilst the climb up the Mountain of Purgatory is more challenging, it is the path to redemption. Where the Player Characters were condemned for their Dark Secret and its associated sin on their descent into Hell, here they have them purged as they climb to the Earthly Paradise and by the time they have ascended to the top, they will hopefully be cleansed. Their time there will come as a relief after the literal hell and the Player Characters will also be able to get the answers they are looking for as well as a means to heal Lorenzo de’ Medici. With this in hand, they can return to the mortal realm, a path that will take them through Paradice, an awe-inspiring view of the Ptolemaic cosmos. Ultimately, they will descend to Earth and make their way back to Florence where they have a chance to heal Lorenzo de’ Medici, but not before a confrontation with the villain behind it all. Success is not guaranteed and failure will mean that Lorenzo de’ Medici dies and history plays out as it did in our own timeline.

Beyond the expected stats and descriptions for all of the NPCs and monsters in the campaign, The Straight Way Lost includes notes on what could happen next and potentially allow play beyond the end of the campaign. These are only suggestions though and, in each case, the Game Master will need to develop herself. An appendix suggests music for the campaign, provides a list of Italian Renaissance names, and a bibliography. There is an index for the NPCs in the campaign and a general index as well as a de’ Medici family tree.

Physically, The Straight Way Lost is an incredibly fantastic looking book. Notably, its pages are colour-coded. A light, earthy brown for Florence and its surrounds, deep black for Hell, a smoky blue-grey for Purgatory, and rich gold for Paradise, the effect enhancing the tone and feel of each of the associated acts in the campaign. In addition, the illustrations by Jana Heidersdorf, Mark Smylie, and Gwenevere Singly are excellent and should definitely be used by the Game Master to show to her players. On the downside, the book does need an edit in places and it is a little untidy in places. That said, the writing is clear and the advice for the Game Master never less than direct, even pointed at times.

The Straight Way Lost: Adventuring between Heaven and Hell in a Fantastical Renaissance Italy is a campaign for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, but not really a campaign for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. At least not in the traditional or the mechanical sense. Mechanically, its stats, Races, Classes, and monsters are written for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. Yet beyond that, the mechanical complexities within the campaign are so light that it does not feel like Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. Adapting it to a system that the Game Master and her players prefer would take some effort, but not necessarily as much effort as a more traditional campaign would demand.

In the traditional sense of a Dungeons & Dragons campaign, The Straight Way Lost is unlike any campaign for the roleplaying game—or indeed any roleplaying game. Its themes of sin and redemption are mature subject matters and given its nature, it should be no surprise that there are scenes of terror and torture. Yet there are also scenes of hope and succour. Structurally, The Straight Way Lost is a journey and does want to tell a story, so it is linear, with no real options other than forward. Thus, the player agency comes in the individual scenes and small decisions that the characters are faced with. It is not a long campaign by any means, but requires no little commitment because of its themes and nature, as well as the roleplaying required in exploring the sins and Dark Secrets of the Player Characters.

The Straight Way Lost: Adventuring between Heaven and Hell in a Fantastical Renaissance Italy is not so much a fantasy campaign as a campaign of classical fantasy. It takes the players and their characters to places unseen and of wonder and of awe, and it challenges their roleplaying too. The Straight Way Lost: Adventuring between Heaven and Hell in a Fantastical Renaissance Italy is proof that sometimes the system matters not—not when you have a campaign as unique and literately inspired as this.

1976: Monsters! Monsters!

1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary, and the new edition of that, Dungeons & Dragons, 2024, in the year of the game’s fiftieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.

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By the end of 1976, Ken St. Andre had published three roleplaying games, two of which can be argued were genuinely ground-breaking. The first was Tunnels & Trolls, designed as a lighter, easier, and faster alternative to Dungeons & Dragons and published in 1975. It would be followed in 1976 by Starfaring, the first Science Fiction roleplaying game, which like Tunnels & Trolls, was published by Flying Buffalo Inc. Then, there was Monsters! Monsters!, also published in 1976, which inverted the by now traditional style of fantasy. That is, of great heroes descending into dungeons and defeating monsters and solving puzzles and returning with the treasure looted from below. Monsters! Monsters! was a roleplaying game for “When YOU want to be monster!” because instead of the players roleplaying heroes, they roleplayed the monsters. As Dragons, Goblins, Black Hobbits, Gorgons, Mummies, Snollygosters, Slime-Mutants, Night-Gaunts, Giant Slugs, Unicorns, Shoggoths, and Human Scum, the Player Characters—or rather Player Monsters—could swarm up out of their dungeon homes or other hidey holes and go on the rampage and take their revenge on the Humans, Dwarves, Elves, Fairies, and Hobbits living in whatever village, town, city, castle, palace, or plantation that the Game Master has created. Monsters! Monsters! was, as St. Andre’s co-author, Jim ‘Bear’ Peters, intimates in the book, a call for the equal rites of your dungeon-dwelling monster.

Monsters! Monsters! is both a standalone roleplaying game and a supplement for Tunnels & Trolls, expanding upon the details of enemies faced by heroes in the latter, but does not require Tunnels & Trolls to be played. Where Tunnels & Trolls is likely to be useful is the expanded spell section since those given in Monsters! Monsters! only go up to Level Four. Notably, Monsters! Monsters! was not published by Flying Buffalo Inc. Rather, it was published by Metagaming Concepts, best known for publishing Steve Jackson’s first designs, particularly Ogre, G.E.V., and The Fantasy Trip. It was subsequently published by Flying Buffalo Inc. and more recently in expanded editions by Trollhalla Press Unlimited. As the editorial explains, the roleplaying game’s origins lay in a catchphrase that grew out a cry of fear and then a battle cry in game. Its ethos was simple.

“So it was only natural that eventually the monsters should come out of their tunnels and dungeons to strike back at the smug world of the Men, Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits, etc., who had been so greedily despoiling their homes and treasures. This turning of the tables, to play monsters as protagonists, has proven to be even more hilarious than the original games. A monster lives by a completely different code of ethics, affording a splendid opportunity to get rid of the impure and perverted impulses which affect most of us – impulses it’s hard to express while playing a hero. Monsters get experience points for wanton cruelty and destruction above and beyond the call of duty.”

In other words, if this was Dungeons & Dragons, then Monsters! Monsters! lets the players roleplay evil (or Chaotic or Chaotic Evil) characters. Unlike Tunnels & Trolls, the aim in Monsters! Monsters! is not to accumulate treasure take from monsters underground—though recovering it from those annoying dungeon interlopers is bound to be very nice—but to “…[P]ile up “experience points”. Then, “The more experience points a character gains, the more powerful it becomes, and the more interesting are its adventures. Also, the higher levels your character reaches, the more you (the real person out there, reading this) will be respected by your fellow players. As long as you keep your characters alive and gaining experience, you are winning. When you overextend yourself and a character dies, that is your loss.” So, Monsters! Monsters! is in effect, the anti-roleplaying game. Evil Player Characters, revenge and rampage as core game play, and as a roleplaying game, there are actual winners.

Morally, it is another matter. Monsters going on a rampage and enacting revenge is not moral. Admittedly, there is not a list of ‘evil’ acts that the Player Monsters will be rewarded with Experience Points for enacting, though a Player Monster will gain Experience Points for engorging itself (it does not say engorging itself on what though…), taking valuable captives—especially if particularly handsome or beautiful, and for general acts of destructiveness. So, the Player Monsters are not heroes. Nor is Monsters! Monsters! in any way introspective as later roleplaying games exploring the roleplaying of monsters would examine. Tonally though, Monsters! Monsters! is tongue in cheek, retaining the humour of Tunnels & Trolls, but with a darker edge. Further, as “…[A] splendid opportunity to get rid of the impure and perverted impulses which affect most of us – impulses it’s hard to express while playing a hero.”, it is cathartic, a chance for some manic mayhem, even a palate cleanser. Though likely no more than that, given its limited scope for extended play. A campaign of Monsters! Monsters! is likely to get only so far before a group tire of it or in game, a bigger force of heroes turns up to smash the evil threat represented by the Player Monsters.

Monsters! Monsters! includes everything necessary to play. Rules for Player Monster creation, combat and magic, Experience Points, and more. There is even a complete location—Woodsedge Inn and its surrounding cottages and wilderness—that is ripe for the Player Monsters to attack. Most of the inhabitants are Zero Level ‘Monster Fodder’, but there are a handful of Third and Fourth Level inhabitants who pose much more of a threat and a challenge to the Player Monsters. If any of them can rally the ordinary locals living near by the Woodsedge Inn, the Player Monsters could have a tougher challenge on their claws…

As with a Player Character in Tunnels & Trolls, the details of a Player Monster in Monsters! Monsters! can be recorded on three-by-five-inch cards. A Player Monster has six Prime Attributes. These are Strength, Intelligence, Luck, Constitution, Dexterity, and Charisma. Unlike a Player Character in Tunnels & Trolls, a Player Monster does not need to note the amount gold it has and pretty much starts with equipment needed—depending upon the monster type, some monsters do lack arms and hands. So, he may have some arms and armour and some languages too if his Intelligence is high enough. What he does not have is a Class. Thus, he cannot be a Warrior, Magic-User, or Rogue. Instead, he has a Monster type. Monsters! Monsters! lists some fifty-two monster types, which a player can either pick from or draw a card from an ordinary deck of playing cards to determine which type.

The list of Monster types includes the usual ones you would expect from both fantasy fiction and roleplaying fantasy. So, Goblins, Orcs, Trolls, Minotaur, and Dark Elves all the way up to Dragons and Balrogs! However, Monsters! Monsters! draws from a weirder and more diverse range of sources. These include the ‘Demon’ from L. Sprague de Camp’s The Fallible Fiend; the ‘Shadowjack’ from Roger Zelazny’s Jack of Shadows; the Shoggoth from At the Mountains of Madness and the Night-Gaunt from The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, both by H.P. Lovecraft; the ‘Snark’ from Lewis Carroll’s ‘The Hunting of the Snark’ (misspelt as ‘shark’ in its description, so no, a player cannot roleplay a shark in Monsters! Monsters!); and the ‘Tsathoggua’ from Clark Ashton Smith’s ‘The Tale of Satampra Zeiros’. Another oddity, not taken from fiction is the ‘Snollygoster’, meaning a shrewd, unprincipled person, especially a politician, but here a hybrid between a large cross-eyed dog and a half-truncated crocodile. The last entry aside, Monsters! Monsters! would have broken copyright laws in 1976 when it was published and would still do so today!

Creating a Player Monster is an easy process. A player picks a Monster Type or draws a playing card to determine what it is. The Monster Type will primarily determine the attribute modifiers that need to be applied after the player has rolled three six-sided dice for each. The modifiers can lead to a wide range of attribute values depending upon the Monster Type. This includes caps on maximum attribute values and in the case of Charisma, replacing them entirely because the Monster Type is so fearsome!

Name: Glurk

Type: Slime-Mutant

Strength 28 Intelligence 05 Luck 03

Constitution 60 Dexterity 13 Charisma °

Combat Adds: +8

Speed: Slow

Monsters! Monsters! is a played as a series of turns, of which there are two types. The first type is general in nature and last about five minutes, during which time a Player Monster can move, loot, or pillage an area or room, or simply wait, whilst the Game Master will check for wandering monsters. The other is the combat turn, which lasts an entire minute.

Mechanically, Monsters! Monsters! is essentially Tunnels & Trolls. Thus, there are two main rules. One is the Saving Throw, rolled to avoid a trap, to dodge a missile weapon attack, to withstand a poisonous brew, and so on, and it is always rolled using a character’s Luck. The target number is dependent on the ‘Danger Level’ rather than the Level of the dungeon as Tunnels & Trolls. This is twenty at Danger Level #1, twenty-five at Danger Level #2, and so on. The Player Monster’s Luck is subtracted from the Danger Level and this is the target number that the player has to roll equal to or exceed to overcome. The roll is on two six-sided dice and doubles allow the player to roll and add again.

Combat in Monsters! Monsters! is like that of Tunnels & Trolls. Both sides, the Player Monster and the heroes or mobs it is facing, are rolling handfuls of six-sided dice. In Tunnels & Trolls, the number of dice rolled for a Player Character is determined the weapons he wields plus an ‘Add’ value if he has high Strength, Luck, and Dexterity. Then for Monsters, it is their Monster Rating. Monsters! Monsters! treats each Player Monster as a Player Character and apart from mobs, also treats the NPC enemies as Player Characters. This makes it more complex in a than Tunnels & Trolls. A Player Monster who lacks hands and so cannot use weapons, instead will roll a number of dice derived from its Strength attribute. The lower result is subtracted from the higher result and that is the number of hit points of damage the losing side suffers. This is deducted from the Constitution of the NPC or Player Monster. If worn or carried, armour and shields will protect against incoming hit points, but armour will be damaged in the process. The rules take into account unarmed combat, the bigger weapons wielded by bigger creatures, movement, speed, and so on. Combat is decently explained and it helps that there is a detailed example of it in action.

Player Monsters can learn magic, but cannot make magic staves. Only ‘good’ Magic-Users can make magic staves, so if a Player Monster wants to gain the benefit of the lowered cost of casting magic using a magic staff, it will have steal one or kill a Magic-User and take his. Spells have a cost in the caster’s actual Strength Primary Ability to cast, which then has to regenerate. A Player Monster pays the cost of the spell if it wants to learn it, so there are limits on what spells it knows. This though, is not clearly explained. The spells included only go up to Fourth Level, and a copy of Tunnels & Trolls is needed for spells beyond that. Some Player Monsters will automatically know various spells, such as Demons putting Bats Wings on any other creature; Dragons are immune to spells cast by anyone less intelligence than themselves; and various Monsters have innate spells such as Wise Disguise for the Ogre and Vampires get Oh boy obey, Going Batty, and Ha, Ha, Ya Mist Me.

Physically, Monsters! Monsters! is presented well enough. It is readable and the artwork is excellent. The Maps are reasonable.

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Monsters! Monsters! was not widely reviewed at the time of its original or later publication. Jon Freeman in The Playboy Winner’s Guide to Board Games (Playboy Paperpacks, 1979) said, “Monsters! Monsters! (Metagaming) is Tunnels & Trolls in reverse: Players take the part of various monsters and evil creatures and get points for rape, pillage, and slaughter. It’s an irresistible idea that could be adapted readily to any FRP system.”

Ronald Pehr reviewed the roleplaying game was in The Space Gamer Number 34 (December, 1980) in ‘Capsule Reviews’. He said, “Necessarily and deliberately, there is a lot left to the referee’s imagination. More so than any other FRP game, if he doesn’t take charge the proceedings give way to meaningless slaughter. It is a constant challenge to provide a challenge to the monsters.” He was highly critical of the combat system, describing it as boring as it was fairly easy to determine who would win before any fight and suggested substituting a different system. He concluded by saying, “MONSTERS! MONSTERS! is a good game for beginners, or anyone who wants to be a troll, but experienced gamers who enjoy complex campaign games offering more than bloodlust won’t find what they want here.”

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Monsters! Monsters! is innovative. It does make you think about fantasy roleplaying from the enemy’s perspective by casting you in a different role. However, it does not make you think too deeply—as similar and later roleplaying games would—since the roleplaying game is about the monsters’ revenge and everything to do with it. That and the lack morality does have the potential to shift the play of the game into a much darker place in terms of story and Player Monster actions. That shift may not necessarily happen, since Monsters! Monsters! does not possess scope for long term play, more likely a one shot, possibly a mini-campaign at best. Where that shift does happen, the place will vary from group to group and today, would definitely require a discussion as to where the place is and what acts that the Player Monsters might carry out are acceptable. This does not mean that the ideas in Monsters! Monsters! are invalid, but that they have been explored with more sensitivity in more recent roleplaying game designs. Nevertheless, Monsters! Monsters! got there first and upended our ideas about fantasy roleplaying.

The Other OSR: Unconfirmed Contact Reports

It is curious to note that since its original publication in 2018, the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG from Tuesday Knight Games has been reliant upon the single rulebook, the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG – Player’s Survival Guide. First as a ‘Zero Edition’ and then as an actual ‘First Edition’. Curious, because despite the horror roleplaying rules detailing no alien threats and giving no advice for the Warden—as the Game Master is known in Mothership—the has proved to be success, with numerous authors writing and publishing scenarios of their own as well as titles from the publisher. What the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG offered was a stripped down, fast playing Science Fiction system that supported a number of sub-genres. Most obviously Blue Collar Science Fiction with horror and Military Science Science Fiction, the most obvious inspirations being the films Alien and Aliens, as well as Outland, Dark Star, Silent Running, and Event Horizon. Yet the authors of third-party content for the roleplaying game have also offered sandboxes such as Desert Moon of Karth and Cosmic Horror like What We Give To Alien Gods, showing how the simplicity of Mothership could be adjusted to handle other types of Science Fiction. This combination of flexibility and simplicity has made it attractive to the Old School Renaissance segment of the hobby, despite Mothership not actually sharing roots with the family of Old School Renaissance roleplaying games derived from the different editions of Dungeons & Dragons. It is thus, at best, Old School Renaissance adjacent.

With the publication of the Mothership Core Box and the Mothership Deluxe Box following a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2024, the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG has a complete set of rules for what is its first edition. The includes rules the construction and option of spaceships with Shipbreaker’s Toolkit, monstrous threats with Unconfirmed Contact Reports, and a guide for refereeing the roleplaying game in the form of the Warden’s Operations Manual.

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Unconfirmed Contact Reports is the monster book for the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG. It contains descriptions of fifty strange entities and horrendous abominations with which to scare the Player Characters, stalk them, and bleed them, infect them, feed on them, or worse… It is designed to do several things. Obviously, it is intended to provide a range of threats that will strike fear into the Player Characters, but the authors also want to spur the Warden’s imagination. The entries—where appropriate—have the minimum of stats, so mechanically they are all easy to use. The collection begins with ‘The 4youreyez Algorithm’ which infects electronics and completely wipes, but seems to affect androids in some way, and continues with ‘Angels’, those who have communed with the great eye-like portals that have opened up in space, and ‘The Body Politic’, an invasive colonial organism which forms parliamentary voting body in all of the host’s cells rather than a single collective. ‘Cabin 102-B’ is a locked cabin that appears aboard one spaceship after another, ‘The Engineer’ is an itinerant ship’s engineer who high on stimulants sabotages the spaceships he is hired to work whilst the crew are asleep, and ‘Good’ is an alien ‘subtle, psychotropic “oversight and ethics committee.” that makes people good and so corporations and governments fear it.

There are a lot of entries Unconfirmed Contact Reports and some of are less interesting than others. For example, ‘Granny’ describes a hole in the ground from which an old woman’s voice emanates, begging to be fed. Whatever is thrown in is not enough, and on the colonies where this hole appears, the colonists begin feeding her everything they can—supplies, pets, children, and ultimately themselves. It is enough and soon Granny will leave the hole to hunt. Similarly, ‘The Sea of Silence’ is a viscous and vicious protoplasmic organism that absorbs any body of water it can and immerses its victims, scouring away any sense of self and awareness. In too many cases, the entries consist of nothing more than this description and some colour fiction accompanying the illustration. To which the response amounts to no more than, “Yes, and…?” There is no obvious way in which to bring these monsters, memes, mutterings, mutations, and more into play and so make them threats that arouse more than a similar, “Yes, and…?”. The book states that it aims to spark the Warden’s imagination and that, “Importantly, much about these entities, from their history to their reasoning, and even how they may be defeated (if they can be at all) has been left absent.” The Warden is the encouraged to these descriptions in Unconfirmed Contact Reports as a starting point for creating a scenario.

What this means that the entries in Unconfirmed Contact Reports are as just much prompts as they are descriptions of monsters. In fairness, there is advice on running scenarios and using monsters in the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG. It is in the excellent Warden’s Operations Manual and it is called the ‘TOMBS Cycle’, which stands for ‘Transgression, Omens, Manifestation, Banishment, Slumber’ Cycle. This is neat little summary of how a horror scenario typically plays. So, in ‘Transgression’, the horror disturbs the horror and awakens; in ‘Omens’, signs of its activities appear; it begins to move openly in ‘Manifestation’; ‘Banishment’ can only be attempted once a means of destroying or stopping the horror has been found; and finally, under ‘Slumber’, it can be banished or subdued, at least temporarily, until someone else triggers the ‘TOMBS Cycle’ once again.

The ‘TOMBS Cycle’ is brilliantly succinct and not only a great way to outline a scenario, but to categorise a horror. Imagine if the ‘TOMBS Cycle’ had been applied to each and every one of the entries in Unconfirmed Contact Reports? Imagine how quick and easy it would have made each and every one of the entries in Unconfirmed Contact Reports to use? Imagine how quick and easy it would have made making a change to each and every one of the entries in Unconfirmed Contact Reports rather than think up any way to use them in a scenario from scratch? Imagine how not how much better Unconfirmed Contact Reports would have been if the ‘TOMBS Cycle’ had been applied, but simply just how useful?

It begs the simple question. Why was the ‘TOMBS Cycle’ not applied to Unconfirmed Contact Reports?

Physically, Unconfirmed Contact Reports is okay. The writing is okay. The artwork varies widely in quality and that is okay too.

If you have the Mothership Deluxe Box then you already own Unconfirmed Contact Reports. If you own neither, and perhaps want a good bestiary or book of threats to run with the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG, the sad news is that Unconfirmed Contact Reports is a poor choice. It lowers the quality of the Mothership Deluxe Box because it more a work of fiction than a game book and more a book of prompts than something that the Warden can readily use in her game. Unconfirmed Contact Reports could have been very, very good, but as it is, it is just not good enough. One for the completionist rather than either essential or actually useful.