The Other OSR: Vast Grimm

The universe will not end with a bang, but a gnawing. A gnawing in your brain. A gnawing in the asteroid in which you make grimy, ramshackle home. A gnawing in the remnants of planets. A gnawing in the universe. A gnawing that will grow and grow until the parasites erupt. Erupt and unleash as Würms. Würms that will infect others and spread the gnawing. Würms that grow and grow and erupt from planets shattering them into pieces, to grow and grow and become the Grimm. There have been Würms and Grimm everywhere in the universe for centuries, where once they were only in one place. The Primordial Mausoleum of THEY. It was the Six, the Disciples of Fatuma, who following the prophecies put down in the Book of Fatuma, who made a pilgrimage to the Primordial Mausoleum of THEY and deployed the Power of Tributes to decrypt the Mystical Lock sealing the Mausoleum. It was then that the First Prophecy of Fatuma came to pass. They drew in the stale air of the Mausoleum, becoming one with the THEY and breathing out the parasites. The Six scattered, bringing the word and the infection of THEY to every corner of the ’verse. Almost seven centuries have passed and the survivors cling to life, looking out for any signs of THEY or hiding it inside them in the hope that it never erupt and spread… The Earth is gone. Shattered into large pieces. There are places and planets where the remnants of Mankind survive, squabbling over resources and power, fearing the parasitical infectious word of THEY, but not without hope. There are whispers over the Netwürk of a means to escape the end of this universe by entering another, one entirely free of THEY. The Scientifics call it the Gate of Infinite Stars. Yet time is running out. The First Prophecy of Fatuma came to pass and so has every other Prophecy of Fatuma since. Except the last Seven Torments. Will the last Seven Torments come to pass and allow the Würms and the Grimm to consume the ’verse and with it, the last of Mankind? Or will the lucky few find their way to the Gate of Infinite Stars and at last be free of the Würms and the Grimm in a better, brighter future? That is, of course, if everyone fleeing through the Gate of Infinite Stars is free of the gnawing…

Welcome to the dark, grim future of Vast Grimm. Published by Infinite Black, it is a pre-apocalypse Science Fiction roleplaying game compatible with Mörk Borg, the Swedish pre-apocalypse Old School Renaissance style roleplaying game designed by Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell and published by Free League Publishing. Not only compatible in terms of mechanics, but also in tone and structure, with little more than a handful of prophecies standing in the way of the Player Characters’ continued survival in the face of uncaring, dying world, in this case, universe. Where it differs though, is offering that hope, that chance of finding the Gate of Infinite Stars and escaping one dread future for another better one. The last Seven Torments are not set in stone though. The Game Master rolls a die, the size collectively chosen by the whole, at the start of each day. If the result is a one, then a Torment comes to pass, randomly determined from the thirty-six given. They are all eschatologically grim, such as “And a pocket will form in the darkness of space. Anything that goes near will be swallowed by its emptiness, and in 11 days the empty will have wallowed no less than 7 planets.” or “Tears of blood will flow from all who have sired children. One hour wept for each seed that has sprouted and taken root.”

A Player Character in Vast Grimm is defined by four abilities—Agility, Presence, Strength, and Toughness. Of the four, Presence is the odd one out. It is not just used for Charisma checks, but also for perception checks, ranged attacks, and wielding Neuromancy. The four abilities range in value from -3 to +3, these being equal to ability modifiers found in Dungeons & Dragons and other retroclones. He will also have a Class of which Vast Grimm offers eight. Each provides equipment, arms and armour, ability modifiers, possible past life events and skills particular to that Class. The eight include the MAnchiNe, a twisted fusion of flesh and machine who fought in the trenches with the Legions; the Soul Survivor, a wretch driven to survive no matter what the cost; the Lost Techno Maniac, who would prefer to be studying the Tributes in order to fully understand Neuromancy; the Twisted Biochemist who has become infected with the Würms in the course of his attempt to find a cure for the infection, and who yet may find that or succumb to the Grimm and self-pity; the Treacherous Merc, a bastard who thinks only of himself and will use violence to prove it; the Emobot’s mechanical mind and body means it is immune to infection, but its soul means it is not immune to the loss of people it cares about to the Grimm; the Devout is a blindly faithful Disciple of Fatuma who works to do all he can to bring about the prophecies of THEY; and the Harvester literally harvests Würms from the bodies of the dead in return for handsome bounties. To create a character, a player rolls for his Abilities, selects a Class, rolls for the details of that Class, and then for his character’s Misspent Youth, Battle Scars, Irritating Idiosyncrasies, and Starting Equipment.

Kratar

Twisted Biochemist

Addicted to Science: Always top of the class, your peers and teachers hated you.

Misspent Youth: Distracted

Irritating Idiosyncrasies: StarDust junkie. If there’s dust around, it’s going into your oxygen tank.

Battle Scars: Missing middle fingers, flipped off the wrong person.

Agility +0 Presence +2 Strength -1 Toughness +1

Hit Points: 6

Armour: Thin grade Carbon Fiber (-d2 damage)

Weapon: Inoculation Dart Gun (range 20’, holds 8 doses)

Equipment: Portable nanotech/chemical laboratory, today’s creations (two doses of Nanite Dance Party and two doses of Ass Blastin), 50 credits

Favours: Two

Mechanically, Vast Grimm is simple. To have his character undertake an action, a player rolls a twenty-sided die, modifies the result by one of his character’s Abilities, and attempts to beat a Difficulty Rating, typically twelve, but it can be higher or lower depending on the situation. Vast Grimm is also player-facing, meaning that the player always rolls whereas the Game Master does not. So, a player will roll for his character to hit in melee using his Strength and his Agility to avoid being hit. Armour is represented by a die value, from -d2 for light armour to -d6 for heavy armour, representing the amount of damage it stops. Medium and heavy armour each add a modifier to any Agility action by the character, including defending himself. This is pleasingly simple and offers a character some tactical choice—just when is it better to avoid taking the blows or avoid taking the damage?

Combat is potentially deadly. If a Player Character has his Hit Points reduced to zero, he is broken. As a result, he may be unconscious for a few rounds, lose a limb or eye and in the process also Ability points, haemorrhage and bleed to death, or possibly die! If his Hit Points are reduced to less than zero, he is definitely dead!

In addition, characters have access to Favours, of which a Player Character typically has one or two a day. They can be used to deal maximum damage on an attack, reroll any die—not just that player’s, lower the damage die rolled against a character, to neutralise a critical success or fumble, or to lower the Difficulty Rating on a test.

Instead of magic or the scrolls of Mörk Borg, what Vast Grimm gives are Tributes. These take advantage of the Neuromantic energy released at the same time as the Grimm when THEY opened the Primordial Mausoleum of THEY. This Neuromantic energy can be captured and stored on data chips called Tributes. They can be found on data chips or randomly downloaded from the Netwürk. A Tribute can be used by any Player Character. All it requires is a successful Presence Test and the expenditure of Neuromancy Points, which are derived from a Player Character’s Presence Ability. The effects are random, although some have been hacked so that work in a way that was not intended, such as “You’ve Been Spaced: One random creature within 30’ of the Tribute has the air around it sucked away for d6 rounds losing d4 damage each round.”, or still encrypted, clean and clear as intended as in, “Hive Mind Speak: To one of The Grimm, ask questions. For 3 rounds it will answer truthfully before the würm inside of them explodes.” Some twenty example Tributes are given. However, failure to activate a Tribute has its consequences. A simple failure results in the loss of Hit Points and dizziness for an hour. Worse are the results for a critical and a fumble result. Then the player has to roll on the Cataclysmic Condemnations table! (This is actually suggested as being optional, but where would be the fun in that?)

Exploring remains of the known universe, perhaps looking for the Gate of Infinite Stars, is fraught with danger. Vast Grimm both details six of these locations, whilst leaving plenty of space for the Game Master to create her own, like the ‘Waste Barges of Khallar’, the dumping ground for the universe’s trash where it builds and builds into mountains of filth and waste, protected by Shit King Saule’s rat-like army of trash people, and the Marauder’s Cryosfear, home to space raiders who have anchored their ships to the ice planet with multiple ships connected to form havens, and the threats that the Player Characters might face. The worst of these are the six parasitic Würms, which have a chance to infect anyone who comes in close contact with The Grimm. Each of the six—the Flesh Würm, the Blood Würm, the Brain Würm, the Heart Würm, the Gut Würm, and the Spinal Würm—is connected to one of the THEY and the Grimm god they each worship. Each parasite induces both pain and pleasure in the infected as it grows and grows, and has its own set of tables for the various effects, until at some point it gains total control over the character who their player must then give to the Game Master. A new character is then needed…

Other threats include random spaceships, rotten Earth Animal Mutations, Astro Zombies, Big Würms, and more, for a nasty selection of things that re almost, but not quite as bad as the Grimm. Oddly, the advice given in the back of Vast Grimm is more for the player than the Game Master, which probably would have been better placed towards the beginning of the book rather than after the entries for the monsters. The roleplaying game comes to a close with a beginning adventure, ‘DEATH aboard the CONUNDRUM: An Introductory Adventure for Vast Grimm’. The Netwürk is abuzz with rumours of an artefact, needed to operate the Gate of Infinite Stars, located aboard a spaceship, and it happens that the Player Characters are nearby. Unfortunately, so is a band of space raiders and then everyone is on their way to ransack the ship and take possession of the artefact. It is a solid ‘dungeon in space’ style adventure with lots of creeping about in the dark and dealing the people and other things already aboard… lastly, there are tables of adventure sparks, encounters, and so on, to spur the Game Master’s imagination.

Unfortunately, beyond randomly determining where the Gate of Infinite Stars might be located, Vast Grimm is short on advice for the Game Master and playing it beyond the single scenario included. Thus, there is no discussion of campaign or long-term play. In so far as the Player Characters will hopefully find the Gate of Infinite Stars and use it before the end of this universe. Then of course, what happens next... Even though it would have been useful, the experienced Game Master will probably have no issue with this, but the Game Master with less experience may struggle to develop a campaign around the nihilistically grim horror of Vast Grimm.

Physically, Vast Grimm shares a lot of its production values with Mörk Borg. Both embrace the Artpunk aesthetic with its use of vibrant, often neon colours and heavy typefaces. It looks amazing, a swirling riot of colour that wants to reach out and infect everything, but it has to be said, it is not always the easiest of books to read.

Vast Grimm could be seen as Mörk Borg in space and that would not be an unfair assessment. However, Vast Grimm scales up the eschatological horror of Mörk Borg’s pre-apocalypse to cosmic levels and makes it horribly, infectiously personal with the plague of the Würms contaminating and breeding within every aspect of the universe, including, possibly, probably, the Player Characters. Then it offers hope, an objective, in the form of the Gate of Infinite Stars, for the players and their characters to aim for, though sadly it does not develop this aspect of the setting. This objective, though, is just enough to balance out the dread—even ever so slightly—as a glimmer of comfort and hope, and that actually makes Vast Grimm not quite as, well, grim. Overall, Vast Grimm is a eschatologically nasty Science Fiction horror game made all the more enjoyable because there is hope.

Quick-Start Saturday: Fallout

Quick-starts are means of trying out a roleplaying game before you buy. Each should provide a Game Master with sufficient background to introduce and explain the setting to her players, the rules to run the scenario included, and a set of ready-to-play, pre-generated characters that the players can pick up and understand almost as soon as they have sat down to play. The scenario itself should provide an introduction to the setting for the players as well as to the type of adventures that their characters will have and just an idea of some of the things their characters will be doing on said adventures. All of which should be packaged up in an easy-to-understand booklet whose contents, with a minimum of preparation upon the part of the Game Master, can be brought to the table and run for her gaming group in a single evening’s session—or perhaps too. And at the end of it, Game Master and players alike should ideally know whether they want to play the game again, perhaps purchasing another adventure or even the full rules for the roleplaying game.

Alternatively, if the Game Master already has the full rules for the roleplaying game for the quick-start is for, then what it provides is a sample scenario that she still run as an introduction or even as part of her campaign for the roleplaying game. The ideal quick-start should entice and intrigue a playing group, but above all effectively introduce and teach the roleplaying game, as well as showcase both rules and setting.

—oOo—

What is it?
The Fallout: The Roleplaying Game – Quickstart Guide is the quick-start for Fallout: The Roleplaying Game, the post-apocalyptic roleplaying game based on the computer game, Fallout 4, developed by Bethesda Game Studios. It is set in the year 2287, two centuries after a nuclear holocaust that ended a war between the United States and China, in the remains of New England, including Boston, an area called ‘The Commonwealth’.

It is a sixty-four-page, 119.56 MB full colour PDF.

The quick-start is very nicely illustrated with artwork taken from the computer game that captures the retrofuturism of the Fallout 4 setting. The rules are clearly explained and are a moderately complex version of the 2d20 System.

How long will it take to play?
The Fallout: The Roleplaying Game – Quickstart Guide and its adventure, ‘Machine Frequency’, is designed to be played through in one session, two at most.

What else do you need to play?
The Fallout: The Roleplaying Game – Quickstart Guide requires at least two twenty-sided dice per player, four six-sided dice, and tokens to keep track of Action Points.

Who do you play?
The six Player Characters in the Fallout: The Roleplaying Game – Quickstart Guide consist of a Vault Dweller skilled in computers, a charismatic Survivor with gambling debts, a Ghoul who fears mental degeneration, a Super Mutant bibliophile with long history, a Brotherhood Initiate with medical training, and a Mister Handy with personality problems.

How is a Player Character defined?
A Player Character in the Fallout: The Roleplaying Game – Quickstart Guide—and thus the Fallout: The Roleplaying Game—will look more familiar to anyone who has played Fallout 4 than anyone who has played a 2d20 System roleplaying game. A Player Character has seven ‘S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Attributes’. These are Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck. These are rated between four and ten and will be familiar to anyone who has played Fallout 4. He will ratings in skills including Athletics, Barter, Big Guns, Energy Weapons, Explosives, Lockpick, Medicine, Melee Weapons, Pilot, Repair, Science, Small Guns, Sneak, Speech, Survival, Throwing, and Unarmed. Skills are ranked between zero and six. Some skills are marked as Tag skills, indicating expertise or talent. Tag skills improve a Player Character’s chances of a critical success. Each twenty-sided die rolled for a Tag skill that gives a result equal to or under the skill rank is a critical success, counting as two successes rather than one.

One noticeable difference between Fallout: The Roleplaying Game and other 2d20 System roleplaying games is that the Player Characters have hit locations. This reflects the nature of the computer game. A Player Character will also have several Perks and Traits, essentially the equivalent of advantages and disadvantages, and he will have Luck Points equal to his Luck Attribute. He does have a biography and a list of gear as well.

How do the mechanics work?
Mechanically, the Fallout: The Roleplaying Game – Quickstart Guide—and thus the Fallout: The Roleplaying Game – Quickstart Guide—uses the 2d20 System seen in many of the roleplaying games published by Modiphius Entertainment, such as Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20 or Dune – Adventures in the Imperium. To undertake an action in the 2d20 System in Fallout: The Roleplaying Game, a character’s player rolls two twenty-sided dice, aiming to have both roll under the total of an Attribute and a Skill to generate successes. Each roll under this total counts as a success, an average task requiring two successes, the aim being to generate a number of successes equal to, or greater, than the Difficulty Value, which typically ranges between zero and five. Rolls of one count as a critical success and create two successes, as does rolling under the value of the Skill when it is a Tagged Skill. A roll of twenty adds a Complication to the situation, such as making noise when a Player Character is trying to be stealthy or breaking a lock pick when opening a safe.

Successes generated above the Difficulty Value are turned into Action Points. Action Points are a shared resource and a group can have up to six. They can be used to purchase more dice for a Skill test, to Obtain Information from the Overseer, Reduce Time spent on a test, or to take an Additional Minor Action or Additional Major Action.

With Luck of the Draw, a player can spend his character’s Luck Points to add a fact or detail or item to the area he is in that would benefit him. Other uses include Stacked Deck, which enables a player to substitute his character’s Luck Attribute instead of another, Lucky Timing, which lets a survivor interrupt the Initiative order, and Miss Fortune to reroll dice.

The Overseer—as the Game Master is known—has her own supply of Action Points to use with her NPCs.

How does combat work?

Combat in the Fallout: The Roleplaying Game – Quickstart Guide is quite detailed in comparison to other 2d20 System roleplaying games. A Player Character can attempt one Minor Action and one Major Action per round, but Action Points can be spent to take one more of each. Minor Actions include Aim, Draw Item, Move, Take Chem, and more, whilst Major Actions include Attack, Command an NPC, Defend, Rally, Sprint, and others. During combat, Action Points can be expended to purchase more dice for a Skill test, to Obtain Information from the Overseer, to take an Additional Minor Action or Additional Major Action, or to add extra Combat Dice.

Damage is inflicted per random Hit Location and it is possible to target a particular Hit Location. The number of Combat Dice rolled to determine damage is based on the weapon, Action Points spent to purchase more Combat Dice, Perks, and other factors. Combat Dice determine not only the number of points of damage inflicted, but the ‘Damage Effects Trigger’ of the weapon used. This has an extra effect, such as Piercing, which ignores a point of Damage Resistance or Spread, which means an additional target is hit. Both damage inflicted and Damage Resistance can be physical, energy, radiation, or poison. If five or more points of damage is inflicted to a single Hit Location, then a critical hit is scored. Ammunition is tracked.

Radiation damage is handled differently. It reduces the Maximum Health Points of a Player Character rather than his current Health Points. Until cured, this reduces both his Maximum Health Points and the number of Health Points which can be cured.

What do you play?

‘Machine Frequency’ assumes that the Player Characters are travelling when they encounter Scribe Galen Portno, an elderly member of the Brotherhood of Steel. he operates a listening post and recently monitored a distress call from a Brotherhood Vertibird which crashed. He is awaiting reinforcements, but asks the Player Characters to go to the rescue of the downed crew. They have a chance to conduct some scavenging before reach the Vertibird where they find it being attacked by robots. Further clues will lead them to the controller of the robots as well as provide opportunities to explore and scavenge.

‘Machine Frequency’ is a good mix of exploration, scavenging, and combat. Players who have played Fallout 4 will feel right at home.

Is there anything missing?
No. The Fallout: The Roleplaying Game – Quickstart Guide includes everything that the Overseer and six players need to play through it.

Is it easy to prepare?
The core rules presented in the Fallout: The Roleplaying Game – Quickstart Guide are not too difficult to prepare. A Overseer who already run a 2d20 System roleplaying game will need to adjust for the extra complexities and details of the system used in Fallout: The Roleplaying Game, but will otherwise have no problem with this.

Is it worth it?
Yes. The rules and the scenario presented in allout: The Roleplaying Game – Quickstart Guide really do feel like you are playing a tabletop version of Fallout 4. It is grim and gritty, with a little bit of knowing humour. Fans of both the computer game, the post apocalypse genre, and the Fallout television series will enjoy the chance to play this.

Where can you get it?
The Fallout: The Roleplaying Game – Quickstart Guide is available to download here.

Friday Fantasy: The 13th Skull

Dungeon Crawl Classics #71: The 13th Skull begins in grim, if slightly bonkers fashion. The Player Characters are present at a public execution. The thirteenth Duke Magnussen has condemned a man to death for the prophecies he has made across the city, calling for the death of the duke’s daughter lest the city be beset by a great disaster. As father and daughter watch the condemned man and his executioner climb the scaffolding, both hooded, one by a burlap sack, the other by a black leather executioner’s hood, and the executioner’s axe falls upon the neck of the condemned, everything seems to go wrong. The decapitated head has the face of the Duke himself and the executioner pulls off his hood to reveal a grinning silver skull. As the grinning metallic visage turns to face the Duke, a great winged lizard flaps down out of the sky to snatch up the Duke’s daughter, before the Silver Skulled executioner leaps on its back and leaps into the sky, heading for the Duke’s mountaintop keep. The city is in uproar and the Duke is determined to get his daughter back and will pay any souls brave enough to do so handsomely for it. The Silver Skull and its beast of burden was last seen entering a mountain cave said to be connected to Duke Magnussen XIII’s family crypts, which is why the brave Player Characters find themselves standing before a stout oak door, ready to venture into the Magnussen mausoleum, rescue the Duke’s daughter, and in the process, discover some dark family secrets.

This is as much set-up as there is for Dungeon Crawl Classics #71: The 13th Skull, the fifth scenario to be published by Goodman Games for use with the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. Designed by Joseph Goodman for a group of six to ten Fourth Level Player Characters, it is an important scenario for four reasons. One is that it is the fifth scenario to be written for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game and the fourth to be written for Player Characters who are not Zero level, and the fourth is that it is the first scenario for Fourth Level Player Characters. It is a short affair, designed to be played in a single session or so, so it can be used as a convention scenario. Alternatively, it can be played in a more leisurely fashion and be played through in two sessions rather than the single session. Either way, it is nasty, deadly affair. The eponymous scenario though, is not the only content in The 13th Skull. There is also a second scenario, ‘The Balance Blade’, designed for Second Level Player Characters and a companion piece, ‘Seven Strange Skulls’, both by Daniel J. Bishop.

The Player Characters have the opportunity to learn a rumour or two before they enter the crypts, which can either given out at the start of the adventure or roleplayed for if running the scenario as part of a campaign. The rumours revolve around suggestions that the first Duke Magnussen made a pact with something—though nobody knows what—and that family is somehow connected to the Silver Skull. Once inside the crypts, the scenario proceeds in rather linear fashion. There is really only one direction and that is down. After a dark and deadly encounter with lurking shadows that are a pleasingly creepy twist upon the classic Dungeons & Dragons version of the monsters, the Player Characters will descend to the main stage for the scenario where most of the action will take place.

The grand set piece for ‘The 13th Skull’ is an enormous cave, split in two by a river that flows out of the mountain via a waterfall and which contains both ‘The Stinking Pit of Hell’, a literal hellhole, and a fifty-foot-wide column whose base has been worn thin by the rushing waters, atop which is a magical circle containing the resting place of the Silver Skull. On either side of the river there is a circle of skulls, a pile of corpses, and access to a room containing a book containing pages that will transport the reader to different planes of existence. There is a sense of momentum to the scenario as the Player Characters explore the cave and move from one encounter to another, ultimately to attempt two tasks. One is to defeat and destroy the Silver Skull, and since this takes place atop a column in the middle of the river with a pit to Hell also in the middle of the river, if the Player Characters defeat it, they really are lined up to throw it off the top and into Hellhole, more or less, below. The other is find the Duke’s daughter and rescue her. This is incredibly difficult to achieve—and intentionally so. The Barbed Devil holding her ready for sacrifice has an area attack likely to kill given that she is Zero Level NPC. To that end, there is advice and playtest reports throughout The 13th Skull and what they make clear is the difficulty of saving the daughter and that few of the playtest groups succeeded. If their characters do manage to save the daughter, then they and their players should definitely feel a sense of achievement and their characters will be rewarded by the Duke. If not, he will castigate them for their failure and they will be dismissed without any reward, bar the fantastical magical items that they might have found below the crypts. Ultimately, ‘The 13th Skull’ feels more like a convention or tournament scenario, although in the case of the latter, a table of possible scores would have been useful.

The second scenario in The 13th Skull is ‘The Balance Blade’. It is designed for Second Level Player Characters and is again intended to be played in a single four-hour session. It has particular requirements in the form of a Wizard Player Character with a patron, and a mix of Alignments in the party, as well as index cards and coloured stickers to use in the adventure. In addition, a Thief is an absolute must. The adventure is littered with traps that will kill—or effectively kill—a Player Character if a Saving Throw is failed.

The set-up is that the wizard’s patron asks to retrieve a weapon called The Balance Blade from The Tomb of the Last Colossus, the resting place of the last of a race of cosmic colossi. The scenario is even more linear than ‘The 13th Skull’ and it only works as a convention scenario, as the last two encounters in the scenario are designed to trigger inter-party conflict. The penultimate scene is one which will be viewed differently depending upon the Alignment of the Player Characters. Lawful Player Characters will see a lonely woman sitting on a bed, Neutral Player Characters will see a lonely woman sitting on a bed with a child, and Chaotic Player Characters will see a succubus sitting on a bed with a strange spider-like creature—and none of this will change. The illusion will be maintained until the woman/woman and child/succubus and strange spider-like creature are dead. So, if a Chaotic Player Character attacks the succubus and strange spider-like creature, the Neutral Player Character will see the Chaotic Player Character attacking a woman and child, and the Lawful Player Character will see the Chaotic Player Character (and possibly the Neutral Player Character as well) attacking the woman, but will never, ever see the child. It is a challenging scene to run, one that really is designed to mess around with the perceptions of the characters and their players.

The last scene and thus the scenario ends with betrayal upon the part of the Wizard’s patron and then upon the part of the Wizard as he turns on the other Player Characters. The Wizard and his player have no choice in this and the scenario will end in the Wizard’s death no matter what his player decides to do. His player may well have some fun with his Wizard battling his fellow Player Characters, wielding the powerful blade of the title and the extra power granted to him by his patron, a la Elric and Stormbringer. For the other players and their characters, it is a distinctly underwhelming climax and an underwhelming scenario as a whole. As with the first scenario, there are some remarks about the playtest results and they are probably more interesting then the scenario itself.

The third and final entry in The 13th Skull is not another scenario, but an article vaguely connected to the eponymous scenario. ‘Seven Strange Skulls’ describes seven weird and magical skulls, two of them with their tables that use the thirty-sided die beloved of Dungeon Crawl Classics. The Crystal Skull of the Alien Juggernaut is the skull of a gigantic creature from another world that gives off a glow and a bonus to spellcasting, but has a chance of exploding when it gives this bonus. Grandmother’s Skull is the skull of a matrilineal ancestor which grants various spell effects to the wearer if sacrifices are made to it in the household shrine it also requires. Of course, the spirit in the skull will have demands of her own which a player and his character will find out if the former rolls a one! The Living Skull of the Emerald Enchanter is a weirdly legged skull with a nasty poisonous bite created in conjunction with the Emerald Enchanter, so would be an entertaining callback for any Judge who has run and player who has roleplayed Dungeon Crawl Classics #69: The Emerald Enchanter. Overall, these skulls are entertaining and fun to add to any game.

Physically, The 13th Skull is a very nicely done book. The maps are good—for both adventures—and the artwork is excellent.

Despite the additions of ‘The Balance Blade’ and ‘Seven Strange Skulls’, The 13th Skull is not a satisfying anthology of scenarios for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. Both scenarios are effectively convention or even tournament scenarios, but not presented as such, because otherwise, they are difficult to use in campaign play. ‘The 13th Skull’ is the better of the two scenarios because it is easier to use, it is linear, but not to the point of a railroad, and it has room for player and character agency. ‘The Balance Blade’ has none of these in comparison. Whereas, in comparison, ‘Seven Strange Skulls’ is actually fun and entertaining. Ultimately, The 13th Skull is the first poor release for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. If The 13th Skull was presented as a pair of tournament scenarios and supported as such, that would have been more truthful and made the scenarios easier to use.

Friday Filler: Sea Salt & Paper

Imagine if you will, that instead of filling your aquarium with fish and crabs and sharks and penguins and boats and mermaids and light houses, you did exactly that, but the fish and crabs and sharks and penguins and boats and mermaids and light houses, were made out of Origami? This is almost, but not quite the theme to Sea Salt & Paper, a beautiful little card game in which every card is illustrated with Origami in delightfully soft pastel colours and uses its own set of folded paper icons to ensure that the game is accessible for any language and also colour blindness. It makes for a strikingly attractive game and although play at first looks simple, there is enough strategy and choice to keep the game being brought back to the table again and again. Published by Bombyx and Pandasaurus Games, Sea Salt & Paper is designed for two to four players, aged eight and over, and combines hand management, open drafting, pushing your luck, and set collection in a lovely little game. Although it did not win, it was on 2023 Spiel des Jahres Recommended list and like Scout before it, this is a little card game which is highly portable and easy to play at the coffee shop as it is at home.

Game set-up is simple. The deck is shuffled and two cards are drawn. These are placed face up to form two separate discard piles. None of the players begin the game with cards in their hand. On his turn, a player can either take a card from either discard pile or draw two from the deck, keep one, and place the other in the discard pile of his choice. He can play ‘Duo’ cards to trigger their effects and if the cards in his hand are work seven points or more, he can trigger the end of the round. In this way, game play is as simple as the set-up. What the cards do though, is where Sea Salt & Paper gets interesting.

Sea Salt & Paper consists of four card types: ‘Duo’ cards, ‘Collector’ cards, ‘Point Multiplier’ cards, and ‘Mermaid’ cards. ‘Duo’ cards are played together as pairs to enable a player to do a particular action. Thus, two ‘Crab’ Duo cards let a player go through one of the two discard piles, select a card, and add it to his hand; two ‘Boat’ Duo cards let a player have a second turn; two ‘Fish’ Duo cards let a player take the top card off the deck; and a combination of the ‘Shark’ and the ‘Swimmer’ enables him to steal a card from another player. A player can play as many ‘Duo’ cards he wants in his turn and is able to. Further, ‘Duo’ card combinations are worth a victory point for the pair, being played on the table.

‘Collector’ cards are the ‘Shell’, Octopus’, ‘Penguin’, and ‘Sailor’ cards. The more a player has of these in his hand, the more points he will score for each particular type of ‘Collector’ card. The ‘Point Multiplier’ cards score points for the other types of card and their icons in the game. ‘The Lighthouse’ scores points for the number of ‘Boat’ Duo cards a player has, whilst ‘The Shoal of Fish’ does the same for the number of ‘Fish’ Duo cards in a player’s hand. The other two ‘Point Multiplier’ cards are ‘The Penguin Colony’ and ‘The Captain’.

Lastly, the ‘Mermaid’ cards score a Victory Point for each of the cards of the single, most common colour in a player’s hand or on the table. Only one ‘Mermaid’ card is applied per colour, so a player might score three Victory Point s because he has a ‘Mermaid’ card and three cards in light pink, but he had two cards in light green and a ‘Mermaid’ card, he would score two Victory Points for those.

From initially having no cards in their hands, players draw cards and begin to build their hands of cards, looking for pairs of ‘Duo’ cards to play and give them an advantage, collecting sets of the ‘Shell’, Octopus’, ‘Penguin’, and ‘Sailor’ cards in conjunction with the ‘Point Multiplier’ cards. Throughout, each player is keeping track of his score. Victory Points will come from the ‘Duo’ cards played and from the ‘Collector’ cards and ‘Point Multiplier’ cards, which will remain hidden in their respective hands. When a player has accrued a score of seven or more Victory Points, he can call an end to the round. This is done in one of two ways. One is to simply call ‘Stop’ and the round will end and the players will add up their total Victory Points for the round. The other is to call out, ‘Last Chance’. This is done when a player thinks he has accrued more Victory Points than the other players and thus will win the round. In this case, the round does not end immediately, but every other player—that is, the one who did not declare, ‘Last Chance’—gets one more turn in an effort to get more Victory Points and potentially outscore the player who brought the round to a close.

Effectively, the player who shouted, ‘Last Chance’ is making a bet that he has outscored the other players. If he has, he scores Victory Points based for cards he has played and also a bonus for the most cards of a single colour he has, whilst the other players only score points for the bonus for the most cards of a single colour they have. However, if he loses, the player who shouted, ‘Last Chance’ only receives bonus for the most cards of a single colour he has, whilst the other players score Victory Points for the cards they played and the cards in their hands as normal.

Play continues like this over multiple rounds until one player has scored a combined total of between thirty and forty points, the target varying according to the number of players. The first player to do so wins the game. The other way to win the game is to have and place all four ‘Mermaid’ cards in the game on the table. When a player does this, he automatically wins the game. This rarely happens, so everyone will likely be amazed when it does.

There are really two issues with Sea Salt & Paper, but they are minor. One is that the card quality could have been slightly better and sturdier. The other is that the game is not that easy to learn because it has multiple icons on the different cards and it is a case the players needing to learn what the multiple different cards do.

Physically, Sea Salt & Paper is beautifully presented game. The artwork is a delight and the design on the cards is clear and simple. Notably, it is designed to be language independent and through the use of icons also suitable for any player who is colour blind. The rules are neatly explained in a small foldout sheet. There are reference cards for the rules and the colours—including their own icons for the colour blind—to make it easier to learn.

looks simple and its mechanisms are simple. However, there are some subtle choices to the play of the game and they really start with the dual discard piles. The players can see what is on the top of the two discard piles, so they can see what is drawn from each pile and going into everyone’s hands. This can give them some indication of what each player might doing, such as looking for particular ‘Duo’ cards or creating a set of ‘Collector’ cards. When a player has a ‘Duo’ card in his hand, playing it at the right time can really give him an advantage. For example, using the ‘Shark’ and ‘Swimmer’ ‘Duo’ card combination to steal a card from another player in the hope of grabbing the one the targeted player has just drawn which you need or two ‘Crab’ Duo cards to go through a discard pile looking for that card you know is there, but which has since been covered up by discarded cards… Which can be all the more satisfying if a player has drawn two cards from the top of the deck and they are both useful, but of course, one of them has to be discarded. Of course, drawing from the top of the deck keeps a player’s objectives a secret from his rivals.

So, there are some pleasing little nuances to Sea Salt & Paper, which combined with the multiple means of scoring, means that the game can be enjoyed by casual players and experienced players alike. Once the players have grasped what all of the icons mean and do in the game, Sea Salt & Paper plays fairly quickly.

Sea Salt & Paper is a lovely looking game that plays as good as it looks and its looks are good enough to attract players of any experience to play it.

Companion Chronicles #5: The Adventure of the Forester Knight

Much like the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition and the Jonstown Compendium for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, The Companions of Arthur is a curated platform for user-made content, but for material set in Greg Stafford’s masterpiece of Arthurian legend and romance, Pendragon. It enables creators to sell their own original content for Pendragon, Sixth Edition. This can original scenarios, background material, alternate Arthurian settings, and more, but none of this content should be considered to be ‘canon’, but rather fall under ‘Your Pendragon Will Vary’. This means that there is still scope for the authors to create interesting and useful content that others can bring to their Pendragon campaigns.

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What is the Nature of the Quest?

The Adventure of the Forester Knight is a scenario for use with Pendragon, Sixth Edition.

It is a full colour, eleven page, 7.51 MB PDF.

The layout is tidy and it is nicely illustrated.

Where is the Quest Set?

The Adventure of the Forester Knight is set in one of the remnants of the ‘Wild Wood’, the old forest which once covered the realm, such as the Forest Sauvage or the Forest Adventurous.

Who should go on this Quest?

The Adventure of the Forester Knight does not have particular requirements in terms of its Player-knights as written. However, Player-knights with a good Folklore score will be useful, whilst Pagan Player-Knights and Player-knights with a reasonable score in their Worldly Trait will have an advantage, whereas Christian Player-knights and Player-knights with a higher score in their Spiritual Trait will be at a disadvantage.

What does the Quest require?

The Adventure of the Forester Knight requires the Pendragon, Sixth Edition rules or the Pendragon Starter Set.

Where will the Quest take the Knights?

The Adventure of the Forester Knight begins with the Player-knights travelling through one of the older forests in the country. The beasts of the forest seem to huff and snuff around them in the undergrowth either side of the trail they are on, following them all the way to desolate glade where they come upon a fellow knight who has clearly spent the day chopping down the trees all around him. The knight, Sir Hervise, is the Forester Knight of the title, a forlorn figure, who as he later tells the Player-knights, has been cursed by his faerie mother-in-law who thought him an unsuitable match for her daughter. Sir Hervise asks the Player-knights for their help in lifting the curse.

There is some toing and froing, involving roleplaying rather than real investigation, but eventually the Player-knights will learn the answer to the riddle that is the means of the lifting the curse and step over into the faerie realms. There is the issue here that Christian knights will have difficulty doing so and if a player rolls badly, he will find his knight unable to participate in the climatic scenes of the scenario and thus unable to engage in the best part of the scenario which takes place in the faerie realm. This does not mean that they will not earn any Glory at the end of the scenario, but simply not gain the opportunity to use and potentially improve skills and Traits. If successful, at the end of the scenario there is an amazing reward for one Player-knight, especially if his favoured weapon is an axe!

The Adventure of the Forester Knight can be played through in a single session, two at most. It is easy to slip into a campaign as it begins as the Player-knights are travelling and it could easily run in conjunction with The Tree Hazardous, before or after, or even in the middle of!

Should the Knights ride out on this Quest?

The Adventure of the Forester Knight is decent mini- or sidequest that does take a while for the story to play out and the Player-knights to become involved in the action. Its easiest use is as mini-quest for a few Pagan Player-knights, since there is a chance that a Christian Player-knight will be stopped from playing out the final scenes, though this does not mean that such a Player-knight could not shine. Overall, The Adventure of the Forester Knight is an engaging quest that the Game Master can prepare and have ready to run when needed.

Miskatonic Monday #324: Lost and Found

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: Lost and Found: A Railway Scenario for Call of Cthulhu

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: SR Sellens

Setting: Great Britain, 1926

Product: Scenario
What You Get: Sixty-eight page, 66.47 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Classic railway murder mystery meets the Mythos

Plot Hook: “There’s an unexpected item in the baggage area!”

Plot Support: Staging advice, six pre-generated Investigators, ten handouts, one map and one train plan, ten NPCs, one cat, three Mythos artefacts, one Mythos tome, one Mythos spell, and two Mythos monsters.

Production Values: Ferroequinologically excellent

Pros

# Richly detailed scenario

# Wonderfully thematic layout
# Easy to adapt to Cthulhu by Gaslight or other periods with trains

# Easy to insert into a campaign

# Bonus histories

# Has notes on adapting it to The Children of Fear, Horror on the Orient Express, Masks of Nyarlathotep, Shadows of Yog-Sothoth, Tatters of the King, The Day of the Beast, and The Two Headed Serpent

# Ferroequinology!

# Cleithrophobia

# Teraphobia

# Siderodromophobia

Cons

# Ferroequinology!

# Warranted a bibliography

# Classic trapped with an unstoppable monster scenario

Conclusion

# Classic cosy railway murder gets trapped by the Mythos in a richly detailed and thematically presented scenario

# Highly flexible and adaptable to multiple periods and actual Call of Cthulhu campaigns!

# Reviews from R’lyeh Recommends

1984: CHILL

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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It is surprising to think, that even two years after its publication, Call of Cthulhu, was the only horror roleplaying game in the industry. Of course, it had its own particular brand of horror, the Cthulhu Mythos, cosmic horror rather than traditional horror. Even though it was not specifically designed to do more traditional types of horror, stats were included for monsters such as vampires, werewolves, and zombies. Soon though, it was followed by roleplaying games that did do the more traditional type of horror. First, Stalking the Night Fantastic, published by Tri-Tac Inc. in 1983, and then by CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown. It was published in 1984 by Pacesetter Ltd., a company set-up by a number of ex-TSR, Inc. employees, including Mark Acres, Troy Denning, and Stephen Sullivan. CHILL was the company’s first roleplaying game and it was designed to evoke the feel and tone of films from the Hammer and AIP and Universal studios and of television series like Kolchak; The Night Stalker. Together with fairly simple mechanics, this made it both accessible and familiar, and then the roleplaying game itself, published as a boxed set, made it even more accessible by presenting the adventure in the box, ‘Terror in Warwick House’, as being playable after only reading the ‘CHILL Introductory Folder’.

In CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown, the Player Characters are members or ‘Envoys’ of S.A.V.E., ‘Societas Argenti Viae Eternitata’ or ‘The Eternal Society of the Silver Way’. Founded in Dublin, Ireland in 1844, this organisation discovered the existence of a highly disciplined source of evil that was not recognised or perceived by the scientific community and set out to establish proof of its existence. S.A.V.E. launched expeditions to locate and study creatures around the world, including dragons, basilisks, ghosts, ghouls, and more. Many such expeditions were failures, adding weight to S.A.V.E.’s fears about it came to call the Unknown. S.A.V.E. changed to become a secret organisation dedicated to investigating, cataloguing, and ending the threat of the Unknown where necessary. Today, its primary goals remain the same, and it helps its Envoys with information, equipment, financial aid, and where necessary, legal aid. In return, the Envoys report what they find back to the organisation’s headquarters outside Dublin and keep what they report, what they find, and what they do secret from everyone else.

All Envoys of S.A.V.E. are able to perceive the Unknown World to one degree or another. Those that can to greater degree are also aware of the Art, the ability to drawn energy from the Unknown and communicate with it. The founders of S.A.V.E. realised the existence of the Art and their successors have codified it into four forms—Communication, Restoration, Protection, and the Evil Way. All Envoys can detect when the Art is used, the traces left behind by creatures and monsters of the Unknown, and when the Evil Way is used. Some Envoys can do more than this, harnessing the disciplines of the Communication, Restoration, and Protection forms to combat the users of the Evil Way and the monsters of the Unknown.

Open the box for CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown and what you will find is the eight-page ‘CHILL Introductory Folder’ marked ‘READ ME FIRST!’, the sixteen-page ‘Terror in Warwick House’ scenario, the sixty-four page ‘CHILL Campaign Book’, and the thirty-two page ‘CHILL: Horrors from the Unknown’ book. Below this is the double-sided ‘The World of CHILL’ map, a sheet of counters, and a Range Finder. Both map and counters are double-sided. One side of the half-inch square counters depict a range of Player Characters, creatures, and monsters, all in colour, whilst on there are doors, windows, stairs, beds, tables, and other pieces of furniture. On one side of the ‘The World of CHILL’ map is a map of the world marked with various sites of interest like Stonehenge and Tunguska, whilst on the other is a plain squared battle board for handling combat and the floor plans for Warwick House in the introductory scenario. There are also three ten-sided dice in the box.

CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown begins with the ‘CHILL Introductory Folder’. Subtitled ‘Stepping into the Unknown’, this introduces the reader to roleplaying, explains what is in the box, tells him how to use the dice and play CHILL. It includes eight, ready-to-play character cards, and an explanation of the core mechanic. There is a short example of play as well, so that within a few pages, the prospective player is also ready to play, whilst the prospective CHILL Master—as the Game Master is known—is prepared to dive into ‘Terror in Warwick House’ and reader herself to run that. The eight, ready-to-play character cards cover a then diverse range of ages, genders, and races. They consist of a male Caucasian martial arts instructor, a female Asian drama teacher, a Mexican-American college quarterback (infamously with the ‘Throw: Javelin’ skill), a female Caucasian model, a male Caucasian professor of anthropology and archaeology (complete with pipe and safari suit, including pith helmet), a female Caucasian investigative reporter (in the Kolchak: The Nightstalker mode), a male African-American surgeon, and a female Caucasian biology student. One issue here is the terminology, such as using ‘Oriental’ to describe the female Asian drama teacher, which would have been fine in 1984, but is not acceptable as a term now. So, some of the language in CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown has dated, though of course, this is easily addressed in play and it should be made clear that the mix of pre-generated characters was and is well intentioned by the standards of the day.

‘Terror in Warwick House’ is an introductory scenario and the second thing that the CHILL Master needs to look at. The Envoys are all members of S.A.V.E., many of them with links to Severn College. Recently, the college decided that it wanted to knock down a colonial era mansion that has been shut up due to its poor reputation, in order to expand the car park. Unfortunately, two workmen have been killed before the clearance began, and S.A.V.E. suspects that the Unknown is involved. It contacts the nearest Envoys, that is, the Player Characters, and asks them to investigate. The scenario is effectively a nasty haunted house, deadly in places, one which is played like solo adventure, but with the whole group deciding to move between locations or take actions together—and not splitting apart—rather than individually. Throughout, the Envoys will be taunted and haunted, and there are some creepy moments, like the wooden stairs animating as hands and grabbing the ankles of anyone on the stairs, with the players being shown how to roll dice, have their Envoys engage in combat, and detect the Unknown. It is linear and basic, playable in a single session. Which is fine up to a point, as CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown is designed for players aged twelve and up, but there is no other scenario in the box. So, nothing more sophisticated for the CHILL Master to run properly for her players after running ‘Terror in Warwick House’ or simply a proper scenario that an experienced Game Master would want to run.

An Envoy in CHILL is defined by Abilities and Skills. He has eight Basic Abilities. These are Strength, Dexterity, Agility, Willpower, Personality, Perception, Stamina, and Luck. These range in value between twenty-six and eighty. The Basic Abilities have various uses, such as the basic chance to hit a target using a firearm for Dexterity, Willpower as the chance to overcome the fear of seeing a monster, Personality to persuade an NPC, Perception to notice things, and so on. Luck has more uses. First off, only Player Characters have Luck as a Basic Ability—NPCs and monsters do not. It is rolled to avoid certain death, spent permanently to avoid being shot, and of course, how fortunate or not, the Player Character according to the whims of the dice. Several other abilities are derived from the Basic Abilities. These include Unskilled Melee, Health, and more. The Basic Abilities can also grant bonuses to an Envoy’s skills.

Skills range in value between forty-one and one-hundred-and-thirty-five, and have a base value derived from a Basic Ability, such as Dexterity for combat skills and Stamina for Swimming, or a number of Basic Abilities which are then averaged. A skill is ranked at either Student, Teacher, or Master, and each provides a flat bonus to the basic skill value. This is either ‘+15’, ‘+20’, and ‘+25’ respectively (the ‘CHILL Campaign Book’ lists this as ‘+15’ for both the Student and the Teacher Rank, which is clearly an error). Some skills as Martial Arts cost double the skill points to acquire. The majority of the skills listed are appropriate for the eighties when CHILL is set and in terms of combat skills, all the way back to the medieval era. However, the only real technical skill available is Mechanics, and there are no skills for electronics or computers, which would feel odd in 1984, let alone today.

To create an Envoy, a player rolls three ten-sided dice, totals and doubles the result, and adds twenty to get the total for each Basic Ability. After working out the derived abilities, the player rolls a single die to determine the number of skill points the Envoy has, between one and five. If the Envoy has a Perception and a Willpower that are both high enough, then he will have a single Discipline in one of the Art. There are a lot of combat skills—including Boomerang slightly fewer professional skills, and very few common skills. The oddest skill is ‘Modelling’, is not making models or modelling a theoretical situation, but more social etiquette combined with the ability to walk poised fashion down a fashion runway… The skills are quite detailed in their use, especially the combat skills. So, although an Envoy starts off with relatively few skills compared to Player Characters in other roleplaying games, this is offset by a player and the CHILL Master needing to know how they work.

Veronica Puckett
Strength 42 Dexterity 66 Agility 60 Willpower 62
Personality 66 Perception 70 Stamina 58 Luck 64
Unskilled Melee Skill: 51
Current Stamina: 58

Skills
History (Student) 66 (81)
Language, Ancient (Student) 66 (81)

ART
Clairvoyant/Prescient Dream 68

Mechanically, CHILL is a percentile system that really uses two types of roll. A General Ability Check is a simple roll against a Basic Ability to determine whether or not an action succeeded or not. A General Skill Check works the same, but for skill use. A Specific Ability or Specific Skill Check is used whenever a more nuanced result is required and the CHILL Master needs to know how many degrees of success were achieved. To do this, the player has to make a successful roll and the Chill Master consults the CHILL Action Table. She subtracts the value of Basic Ability or the Skill being used from the value of the roll and cross references it in the appropriate column on the CHILL Action Table. This will give an outcome that is either a Limited, Moderate, High, or Complete Success. The specific outcome will vary from one skill to the next.

Combat in CHILL also uses the CHILL Action Table. Initiative is handled with a roll of a single die and the winning side then uses the Art, fires missile weapons, moves, and then engages in melee attacks. The defending side has the chance to return missile fire. Once done, the defending does exactly the same. Unsurprisingly, this feels like a wargame rather than a roleplaying game. Attacks can be Specific Ability Check or a Specific Skill Check, depending upon whether or not the Envoy has any skill ranks in the weapon he is wielding. What this means is that making a Specific Ability Check for an attack will give the Envoy a lower chance to succeed and a lower chance to get a better roll, whilst someone with the skill will have a better chance of both. As opposed to Specific Ability and Specific Skill Checks, there is more nuance to possible outcomes. The attacker is rolling to determine the Attack Margin which will cross referenced on the Defence Column. The Defence Column is determined randomly for missile attacks, modified by the defender expending points of Luck or by the defender’s skill for a melee attacks. Unarmed combat results can be Scant Damage, Medium Damage, Harsh Damage, Crushing Damage, or Knockdown, and most of these inflict a loss of Stamina points, but some of these can also inflict a Scratch Wound and a Light Wound. Armed combat results include Scratch Wound, Light Wound, and Medium Wound, all the way up to Critical Wound. These inflict greater Stamina loss and possibly continued Stamina loss, depending on the severity.

For example, Veronica Puckett, investigating a mausoleum in the town graveyard is confronted by a zombie. Veronica, as a member of S.A.V.E., has read about zombies and knows that they are slow and relentless, and that they can be destroyed by a bullet to the brain or having their mouths filled with salt and the mouth shut. In some cases, when chopped apart, she has read that a zombie’s limbs continue to attack. Unfortunately, Veronica does not have a gun, so she will have to improvise. Fortunately, the CHILL Master tells her player that there is a shovel left nearby by one of the graveyard workers, and that because the zombie goes last in the Initiative, she can snatch it up and attack. However, first Veronica has to overcome her fear and her player make a Fear Check.

The Zombie has a FEAR statistic of five. The CHILL Master consults the fifth Defence Column on the CHILL Action Table and Veronica’s player rolls the dice. He rolls ‘10’, which gives a result of ‘M’. Veronica is ‘Mildly Frightened’. She loses five points of Willpower, but can still act. Veronica is going to thack the zombie with her shovel. Unfortunately, Veronica has no combat skills, so is relying on her Unskilled Melee Skill, which is 51. She swings wildly! Very wildly as she rolls ‘02’! This is not the best result that she can get, but it is very close. The CHILL Master deducts the result of the roll from her Unskilled Melee Skill to give an Attack Margin of ‘49’, or ‘H’. This indicates a Heavy Wound, which means that the defender would lose Stamina from the blow and continue to lose Stamina from the wound. Unfortunately, zombies cannot suffer worlds, so just loses 42 points of Stamina—more than half of its total. Fortunately for Veronica, the zombie misses its attack and she decides that it would be good idea to find another way to deal with the undead creature. For that she needs a gun or some friends help her. Before the zombie can attack again, Veronica flees the graveyard.

As well as the individual outcomes and rules for the skills, CHILL includes rules for travel, weather, vehicle movement, poisons, diseases, and more. As a horror roleplaying, it handles scares and their possible outcome through a Fear Check. These are made against an Envoy’s current Willpower and compared to the column on the CHILL Action Table that corresponds to the Fear statistic for the creature or monster. A Failure on the check results in the loss of Willpower and the Envoy fleeing in panic, as do most results to lesser degrees. On an ‘H’ or ‘C’ result, the Envoy is Courageous and overcomes his fear. The rules for animals cover their reaction to fearful situations, especially in reaction to the Evil Way, and also for creating minor and major NPCs, and their possible reactions. This scales up to larger organisations too, in particular, their relation to S.A.V.E. including the civil authorities, the clergy, the press, and more.

The ‘CHILL Campaign Book’ details the Art, the secret weapon has in its arsenal to use against the Unknown and the practitioners of the Evil Way. There are three Forms—Communication, Restoration, and Protection—that members of S.A.V.E. employ, and then there is the Evil Way. Each Form has its own skill, and costs between two and twenty points to use. In addition, a player can also spend points of his Envoy’s Willpower to improve the chances of a Discipline working one a one-for-one basis. The process can be interrupted in combat, and when that happens, the Envoy will also lose any Willpower spent. The amount that can be spent also depends on the Envoy’s current Stamina. Each Form has three Disciplines and each one needs to be learned individually. Although all nine Disciplines are useful, with some like Mental Shield and Sphere of Protection from the Protection Discipline, providing defence against attacks and other dangers, none of the Disciplines are offensive in nature. What this means is the Envoys will need to find another way to defeat the Unknown rather than simply relying upon the Art. In nature, the Art is more psionics than magic.

Penultimately, the ‘CHILL Campaign Book’ provides both a history of S.A.V.E. and a timeline along with an overview of how it operates and how it helps the Envoys. It gives enough details without being overly specific. Lastly, there is advice for the CHILL Master on running the roleplaying games. The advice is decent, covering what the CHILL Master does and what her responsibilities are, plus writing scenarios, maintaining game balance, and using elements of horror. It also suggests using the locations marked on ‘The World of CHILL’ map as potential starting points as they are all sites that S.A.V.E. has sent expeditions to and they failed to return.

The final book in CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown is ‘CHILL: Horrors from the Unknown’. It describes the Evil Way, the dark counterpart to the Art, as detailed in S.A.V.E.’s own Manual 2B: Devices of the Enemy. Over forty disciplines of the Evil Way are given, from Animation of the Dead, Appear Dead (Self and Other), and Blind to White Heat, Wound, and Write. Categorised into two groupings, Distortion and Subjection, they are forceful and dangerous, and in comparison, to the Art, give creatures, monsters, and practitioners of the Evil Way the edge. Like the disciplines of the Art, those of the Evil Way cost the user Willpower to use, but where an Envoy will have a skill value in individual disciplines of the Art, the user of the Evil Way will have a simple ‘Evil Way Score’.

Nearly two thirds of ‘CHILL: Horrors from the Unknown’ is dedicated to the Evil Way and descriptions of its disciplines. The remaining presents it monsters, beginning with simple animals, before going on to describe some ten corporeal, incorporeal, and special creatures. They include the Ghoul, the Mummy, Werewolf, and the Zombie for the corporeal, and the Banshee, the Fetch, the Ghost, and the Hate for the incorporeal. The two special creatures are the Changeling and the Vampire. The latter is a simple Carpathian Vampire, the weakest of its kind. Nevertheless, it is still a tough opponent—and indeed, all of the entries in ‘CHILL: Horrors from the Unknown’ are hardy monsters, drawn from classic horror stories and films, which will be challenging opponents to the Envoys. There can be no doubt that ‘CHILL: Horrors from the Unknown’ is the highlight of CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown. It is easier to read and use than the ‘CHILL Campaign Book’. Both monsters and the Evil Way are nicely detailed and fantastically illustrated and ready to be used to scare the Envoys, if not their players. If there is anything missing from this list it is the Frankenstein’s Monster type creature and the Witch or Wizard, although it would not be that difficult for the CHILL Master to create them.

CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown is something of a misnomer because nothing in its pages and its horror is really ‘unknown’. All of its monsters are known and that is because they are all drawn from common folklore and from their depiction on screen. This gives them a familiarity that potentially makes them less scary and to certain extent breeds the disdain which CHILL would be held at the time as evidenced by the reviews. Of course, Call of Cthulhu was the ‘superior’ horror game. Its Mythos was then unfamiliar, nihilistic, and the protagonists, the Investigators, were fragile amateurs lacking the backing of a worldwide, secret organisation. Yet, what CHILL offered was a broader, though not deeper, choice in terms of its horror. It could do the Gothic horror of classic Americana and Hammer Horror films, it could do ‘monster of the week’, and yes, it could do Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! if you wanted. The familiarity means that in play, the players have to lean into and embrace the genre that much more. They are not necessarily going to be scared by the unfamiliar, but they can roleplay their Envoys being scared by what is otherwise familiar to them as players.

In terms of design, CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown aims for a universal mechanic with its CHILL Action Table, and almost succeeds. The problem is that the results are not themselves universal, varying depending upon if the player is rolling a Specific Ability or Skill Check, an armed or unarmed attack, a Fear check, and so on. Plus, every skill has its own set of results, so that mechanically, CHILL feels overwritten and fussy. However, the CHILL Action Table is printed on the back of both the ‘CHILL Campaign Book’ and the ‘CHILL: Horrors from the Unknown’ books, so the CHILL Master can refer to the table on the back of the latter, whilst the results of various Specific Skill Checks can be consulted in the former.

For a horror roleplaying game, and certainly one written and set in the eighties, there are some odd omissions from CHILL. There is only the one technical skill, Mechanics, and technology is not addressed at all in the roleplaying game. There is neither an equipment list nor even prices given for the weapons it does list. Some of that is due to the fact that S.A.V.E. pays for the Envoys’ expenses whilst they are on an investigation and they each start with standard set of equipment. Nevertheless, from a technological standpoint, CHILL did not and does not feel like a modern-set horror roleplaying game. The advantage to that is that it can easily be shifted from the modern period to earlier periods, and much of the artwork depicts encounters with the Unknown in the Victorian era. Further, CHILL would be just as easy to run in even earlier periods, although that would be outside of the time frame for S.A.V.E.

If ultimately, there is a problem with CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown, it is that it lacks a proper scenario. That is, one that the CHILL Master can run for her players. ‘Terror in Warwick House’ is more like playing a novel—and doing so collectively—than actually playing a proper horror scenario. Without that example scenario to get an idea of what a scenario for CHILL would like, the advice on writing scenarios is consequently underwhelming. That said, the inspirations for the roleplaying game’s designers—the films of Hammer Horror and Universal Monsters—are also inspiration for the CHILL Master and so are a ready source of scenario ideas. This is despite the fact that CHILL does not include a filmography. Instead, its list of suggested reading consists of Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, H. Rider Haggard, Stephen King, Shirley Jackson, Edgar Allen Poe, Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker—and yes, H.P. Lovecraft.

Physically, CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown is very nicely presented boxed set. The cover to the box is eye-catching and the artwork is excellent, imparting feelings of dread and terror for the poor fortune stuck those situations. This is done by Jim Holloway throughout and it gives the roleplaying game a highly consistent look. The writing, and consequently, the rules, suffer in places from being overwritten unfortunately. The ‘CHILL Campaign Book’ could have slightly organised as certain chapters do feel as if they should be adjacent to each other.

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CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown was reviewed in ‘Horribly simple to learn: CHILL will leave you shivering for more’ by Jerry Epperson in Dragon #90 (October 1984). Although critical of the economics rules—or lack of them, and for not exploring options outside of being members of S.A.V.E., his main issue with the included scenario. “Experienced role-players will find that “Terror in Warwick House” is much like a guided tour of a national monument. While it portends to be a dangerous place, one gets the feeling that those who fell victim to the sinister occupants before the player characters were called to the scene were either idiots or invalids. The clues required by the characters to dispose of the evil are practically spoon-fed to the players.” Despite these issues, his conclusion was much positive: “At the risk of seeming to contradict all of the above complaints, it must be said that these problems are not major flaws in the game’s design; any CM should be able to alter them with little effort. All things considered, the CHILL game does just what it sets out to do. It doesn’t stall play with unwieldy rules or sub-systems, and it allows the CM to pace the storyline and preserve the intensity of a situation thanks to the game’s elegant simplicity. As an alternative to dungeon delving, superheroing, or chasing after Cthulhu, the CHILL game is something you can really sink your teeth into.”

As was a common occurrence, CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown was reviewed not once, but twice in the pages of Space Gamer. First by William Barton in the ‘Capsule Reviews’ in Space Gamer Number 71 (November/December 1984). He said, “Chill is an impressive and professional first release for Pacesetter and an excellent addition to the genre.” He criticised the turn sequence in combat and did not think that Player Characters started with enough skills, but praised the roleplaying game for its innovations, including the CHILL Action Table. He finished his review by saying, “Still, Chill is a viable alternative in supernatural gaming for those who desire less gunplay than is typical in Stalking or prefer more conventional creatures than the sanity-blasting horrors of CoC.”

Then, as part of an overview of the complete output from Pacesetter Ltd., Warren Spector reviewed CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown in ‘The Pacesetter Line’ as a ‘Featured Review’ in Space Gamer Number 75 (July/August 1985). He highlighted the inclusion of the adventure, ‘Terror in Warwick House’. “This adventure is worthy of comment. Many roleplaying games come packaged with adventures but, as far as I know, Chill is the first to include an introductory folder advising players to begin playing that adventure before they’ve read the rules of the game! To begin, players have only to read a four-page, READ-ME-FIRST! introduction to the rules, pick up the 16-page adventure booklet, and begin playing! And, sure enough, the cockamamie scheme works! The adventure itself is too straightforward and contrived (with CM instructions like “Don't let the players go upstairs yet!” How do you stop them?). But what the heck? At least you don’t have to wait for days while everyone learns the rules.” Although he felt that the mechanics needed work, Spector finished with, “Though superficially simpler than Call of Cthulhu, the clear leader in the horror field, Chill falls somewhat short of the mark.”

No less than Keith Herber reviewed CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown in ‘Games Reviews’ in Different Worlds Issue 37 (November/December 1984). As with other reviews, he paid particular attention to ‘Terror in Warwick House’, saying that, “For ease of use, this scenario offers a set of pre-generated player-characters that can be used and the adventure itself provides but limited choices for the players the results of these choices being clearly spelled out for the benefit of the novice gamemaster. While this does lead to a more or less predictable conclusion, the purpose of the adventure is to demonstrate the rules of the game and this it does admirably. It also proved to be one of the best introductions to role-playing games I have yet seen. While I might question the saleman’s [sic]claim that a group of beginning gamers can be playing within fifteen minutes of opening the box, it is certain they could enjoy an exciting first time with roleplaying on the same evening that they purchased the game.” Although he was critical of the low number of monsters in the books, especially given that once they have been defeated, the Envoys are no longer subject to Fear effects from them, he was positive about the game overall. “I found Chill to be a well thought-out, well-presented game that simulates the world of horror as represented in (particularly) the movies. The rules are flexible enough and complete enough to allow a gamemaster to set whatever tone or mood he desires his campaign to have and there is a large amount of written and filmed material from which to draw adventure designs.” Lastly, he awarded CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown three stars out of five.

Angus McLellan reviewed CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown in ‘Open Box’ in White Dwarf Issue 61 (January 1985). He too, was critical of ‘Terror in Warwick House’, saying that, “Even for an introductory scenario it's rather slow and distinctly lacking in excitement.” and found the creatures in the ‘CHILL: Horrors from the Unknown’ to be, “…a rather drab bunch of werewolves, vampires, ghouls, etc.” Before award CHILL a surprising score of seven out of ten, he finished with, “To sum up, Chill is ideally suited for beginners, the rules are not crystal clear, but the examples give a good idea of how it all fits together. The horrors are, alas, merely scary, the excitement soon palls, as the players expect more than the trick and tease style terror of Chill. Some hard work from the GM would help but for the money I'd want more than this. With both Call of Cthulhu and Daredevils available at the same sort of price why bother. A few years back this would have shaken the RPG community, now it’s second rate.”

In ‘Game Reviews’ in Imagine No. 23 (February 1985), Paul Mason was similarly critical of ‘Terror in Warwick House’. “Unfortunately, the introductory scenario just doesn’t make the grade. Not is it full of arbitrary manipulation (eg ‘Do not allow the players to go up the stars at this time’), but it has omissions, unnecessary repetition and poor explanations in places. I’m dubious of its merits as a means of introducing newcomers to roleplaying.” Nevertheless, in spite of this and objections to sometimes jokey side of the writing, he the review up with, “Still, if you fancy a game of investigation with gothic horror overtones, and you don't much care for H P Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos, then Chill would be the game to buy.”

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CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown is a horror roleplaying game aimed at younger players, in terms of its horror and tone, its choice of monsters and creatures. This makes its horror more accessible and more familiar, which combined with core ease of the rules and CHILL Action Table, make the basics of the game easy to learn and play. CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown emphasises this aspect by having it so that the CHILL Master and her players can open the box, read through the ‘CHILL Introductory Folder’ and then CHILL Master also read through ‘Terror in Warwick House’, and be playing in thirty minutes. However, beyond this, CHILL is not as complete or easy as it should be. The mechanics to the roleplaying game do feel fussy with lots of different skill and action outcomes depending on that the Envoys are doing, which hinders ease of play, and that despite the universal nature of the CHILL Action Table. The existence of S.A.V.E. suggests that CHILL can be played as campaign game, but what that might look like is barely touched upon and worse, the possible foundation for longer term play, a proper, starting scenario is not included.

Ultimately, if CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown feels lighter and tonally different, it is only in comparison to cosmic horror of Call of Cthulhu. It is still a horror roleplaying game, one that deals with the classic monsters of horror, and just as those confronting those can still be enjoyed in prose and on screen, so can confronting those can still be enjoyed in a roleplaying game. As a design, CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown is not quite as good as it could be, in terms of mechanics or content, but all of the elements are there to make it both playable, enjoyable, and incredibly, initially, highly accessible. Although it deals with classic horror, CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown is a very playable horror roleplaying game that falls short of being a classic.