Magazine Madness #45: Knock! #4

The gaming magazine is dead. After all, when was the last time that you were able to purchase a gaming magazine at your nearest newsagent? Games Workshop’s White Dwarf is of course the exception, but it has been over a decade since Dragon appeared in print. However, in more recent times, the hobby has found other means to bring the magazine format to the market. Digitally, of course, but publishers have also created their own in-house titles and sold them direct or through distribution. Another vehicle has been Kickststarter.com, which has allowed amateurs to write, create, fund, and publish titles of their own, much like the fanzines of Kickstarter’s ZineQuest. The resulting titles are not fanzines though, being longer, tackling broader subject matters, and more professional in terms of their layout and design.

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Published in January, 2024 by The Merry Mushmen, the fourth issue of Knock! An Adventure Gaming Bric-à-Brac comes as jam-packed as the previous issues. There is content drawn from blogs and content that is wholly new, there are new rules and new ways of doing old things, there are monsters and NPCs, there are spells and spellcasting, there are swords and scenarios, and there are thought pieces and threads that run through the issue. There is just about anything and everything in the issue that a reader with any interest in the Old School Renaissance might want to read about. There is even a ten-page section at the end of the issue called ‘Welcome to the OSR’ that explores how various authors encouraged Old School Renaissance style play at their table. (Despite the title, the section is not intended as an introduction to the Old School Renaissance, but the issue’s editorial does give pointers to that.) Along the way to that last section, there is plenty of art, some of it new, some of it in the public domain, some drawn from unexpected sources (Vincent Price makes a surprising appearance), and honestly, just almost too much stuff, too much to read, too much to use, too much to think about. Knock! An Adventure Gaming Bric-à-Brac #4 really does pack a lot into its two-hundred-and-ten-pages.

Published following a successful Kickstarter campaign, the content in Knock! An Adventure Gaming Bric-à-Brac #4 begins with the dust jacket which contains with ‘The Lost City Sandbox’, Eric Nieudan’s homage to Tom Moldvey’s B4 The Lost City, the classic scenario for Basic Dungeons & Dragons. Along with the cover, this is a great start to the issue which does explore several themes. The first of these draws upon the influence of J.R.R. Tolkien upon the hobby. Josh McCrowell develops its ideas into two articles. The first is ‘The Hobbit as a Setting’ which asks, “What if The Hobbit was the only inspiration for roleplaying?”, whilst the second, ‘In search of better travel rules’ looks at where travel rules go wrong and how they might be improved for the Old School Renaissance. The first examines some of the elements of The Hobbit not normally seen in roleplaying, such as song do a lot of work—means to remember, appeals to authority, taunts, and more—and the importance of journeys means that Experience Points should be earned from them. There are new rule suggestions for each aspect like spending Experience Points to name yourself or an item following a critical success, to add both a story and a bonus to play, and that animals can speak their own language. There is even the observation that The Hobbit alludes to the existence of guns in Middle-earth! The second article expands upon the point about travel in the first, pointing out its potential mishaps if handled poorly and offering solutions to those problems. The second article can be seen as adjunct of the first, but can be used also be used in general Old School Renaissance too, not just one directly drawn from The Hobbit. Nevertheless, the first article could be the basis for a mini-roleplaying game and campaign all of its own.

A second theme will be more familiar; the design of adventures (and dungeons). They lead off with Idiomdrottning presenting her ‘BLORB Principles’, a preparation-focused, no-plot preparation, playstyle. The aim is to have the elements to place and engage the players and their characters with, but not plots, and then advice on how to develop and add to those elements in play. Then designer Chris McDowall takes a look at them in ‘Patching’ and develops them further to look at the more immediate effects of encountering something in play that the Game Master did not prepare for as part of her preparation. McDowall suggests ways of improvising a fix in play rather than leaving it for subsequent preparation. In some ways, the advice is obvious, but the second article complements the first and together they make a thought-provoking pair.

The theme is further explored by a trio of articles by Joseph Manola. ‘Elements of Incongruity’ suggests adding unexpected elements alongside elements, including traits, individuals, and nature, and ‘Localism – The Adventure as Microclimate’ decries the genericism in modern Dungeons & Dragons and suggests that the Game Master focus on small regions and populate with unique, even singular monsters and perhaps with races that are not found elsewhere, the aim being to make them memorable. Good solid advice and both backed up by examples, but Manola’s ‘Romantic Fantasy and OSR D&D’ takes Dungeons & Dragons in another direction. At the heart of the article, is the simple idea that not every solution has to be resolved with violence and its shows a number of ways in which the mechanics of Dungeons & Dragons—the reaction system, the morale system, the combat system, and the retainers system—can be all used to support that. The result is a game that focuses on relationship-building and non-violent forms of resolving conflict and getting rewarded for it.

Since Knock! #4 is for the Old School Renaissance, there are articles aplenty on magic, monsters, and treasure. Some of these are specific, some are not. The specific includes a complete magic system in ‘d200 Power Words of Sorcery!’, inspired by a gamebook from the eighties, but feeling very much like the television series Knightmare; the ‘Menagerie’ gives full stats and details for creatures such as Zedeck Siew’s Mob Demon, Danilo Moretti’s Mirror Mare, and James V. West’s Raptor Knight as well as Islayre d’Argohl gives four fully detailed villains; and a selection of swords awaiting stats in Letty Wilson’s ‘The Sword Librarian’. The less specific includes Jens Turesson’s weird ‘Telephone Pictionary Game as Spell Research’, which fortunately is completely untested; a ‘4d8 Golem Generator’ by Chance Dudhack; and Glynn Seal’s complete to what happens following the ‘Desecration’ of a grave for its goods and treasure. There is even a little crossover by Eric Nieudan. So, his ‘Dragons Should Be Unique!’ gives the means to create dragons from alignment, age, and element to personality, hoard, and quirk, whilst the accompanying ‘The never-ending saga of the Wyrm’ shows how it works with a complete example.

Each issue of Knock! always includes some new Classes with ‘Retinue of Rogues’ and this issue is no exception. Joseph Manola’s ‘The Ghoul Blooded’ lets a player create a character who gets more Ghoulish as he goes up in Levels, from having an acute sense of smell and very tough fingernails to learning all the benefits of cannibal cookery and tunnelling through the ground, and even though he will become an unliving monster, he is not undead! Manola follows this with ‘The Inquisitor’, who can pass judgements on others for various effects, and is an interesting variant upon the Cleric Class. Pierre Vagneur-Jones also details two new Classes. ‘The Cynocephasus’ is a dog-headed human who may be born that way or cursed and may, through good fortune, transform into a full human and take Levels in another Class. It is inspired the medieval legend of St. Christopher. ‘The Skiapod’ draws from the writings of Pliny the Elder to present a very agile one-legged human. They prefer to kick with their feet rather than use weapons, but there are no details to reflect this. These second two Classes are less useful than the first two and ‘The Skiapod’ is underwritten in comparison to ‘The Cynocephasus’.

Penultimately, Knock! #4 gives four short adventures in ‘Extraordinary Excursions’. Numbered Work’s ‘Swamp Renewal’ involves the Player Characters in an ecological battle between a wizard who is using golems to dig out peat in a swamp and a Lizardfolk Druid who wants him stopped. The scenario does not give a set ending, so it will be entirely down to the players, but there are consequences to whatever side the Player Characters choose. ‘Grandma’s Cottage, Inc. and Gift Shoppe’ by Glenn Robinson has a cosy feel until it does not as the Player Characters go in search of a lot of missing orphans. When the king puts out the call for the softest of feathers for his bed, the Player Characters are off in search of the softest feathers in the land only to be found on the Giant Arboreal Goose in Martin Orchard’s ‘A Fistful of Feathers’. A cross between a race—there are rival groups—and a pointcrawl, this is an entertaining scenario. Lastly, ‘The Mountain Hall of the Iron Witch’ by Rosie Grey is written for The Merry Mushmen’s CRACK!, but is easily adapted to the rules of the Game Master’s choice. The Player Characters find themselves shackled and forced to work in the Iron Witch’s mines and have to escape. This is a fun campaign starter. In fact, all four scenarios are easily adapted and would work with a number of different roleplaying games.

Lastly, Knock! #4 rounds out the issue with ‘Welcome to the OSR’. Here the issue explores some of the responses to the attempt by Wizards of the Coast to rewrite the terms of the Open Game Licence. The aim here is for the members of Old School Renaissance hobby to show this section to players of Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition and point them in the direction of the possibilities in the different play style. There is discussion too of several Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition-retroclone hybrids. For the most part, this preaching to the choir, but the first article, ‘Back to the Future (of D&Deering)’ by Daniel Norton gives a good comparison between the play styles and why a player might want to switch.

Physically Knock! #4 is impressively bright and breezy, just as with the previous three issues. The layout is cluttered in places and the text a little too busy, but on the whole, it is clear that a lot of attention has been paid to the layout. It needs a slight edit in places, but the artwork is good and the cartography excellent.

The honest truth is that the Game Master is never going to use everything in the pages of Knock! An Adventure Gaming Bric-à-Brac #4. There is just too much. It is an embarrassment of riches. However, it gives the reader a lot of things to choose from and lots of ideas to think about. It is an absolute treasure trove of content for the Old School Renaissance and with so many contributors from the hobby, Knock! may well serve as a candidate for a focal point for the Old School Renaissance hobby. The reader could spend hours surfing the Internet for similar ideas and other content in Knock! An Adventure Gaming Bric-à-Brac #4, or he could just get the issue and have it all at his fingertips in another literally solid issue of the magazine.

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An unboxing of Knock! #4 An Adventure Gaming Bric-à-Brac can be viewed here.

Your Pirate Borg Starter

The Pirate Borg Starter Set is the introduction to the self-described, “Worst Pirate RPG Ever Made™!” that is Pirate Borg. This Old School Renaissance-style roleplaying game is set in the Dark Caribbean, a sea of tropical islands marked with European towns and fortresses and ruins of civilisations long gone, of shipwrecks with rich cargoes and even richer treasures, and of the Scourge. The Scourge made the dead walk once again, ghosts return to haunt the living, and monsters lurk ready to smash the foothold that the Europeans have established in the region. The governors and the viceroys, representatives of kings and queens, have forced to adapt and rule with no contact from home following the Scourge and even take advantage of the situation, especially since the discovery of the abilities and addictive nature of ASH, the ash of the burned and ground undead. Some seek to make money from the trade in ASH and some seek to control it, whilst others seek to repress it. This is another cause of the conflict in the Dark Caribbean. Pirate Borg casts the players as members of a crew who will sail the ASH-tinged waters the Dark Caribbean, raiding and smuggling, carousing and drinking, adventuring and exploring, and the Pirate Borg Starter Set comes with everything necessary for a group of two to seven players to enjoy a mini-campaign set within the Dark Caribbean.

The Pirate Borg Starter Set is a packed box. It contains a sixty-page ‘Player’s Guidebook’, the sixty-page ‘Trapped in the Tropics: A Pirate Borg Adventure’, six Player Character Creation Worksheets, a pad of twenty-five character sheets, ten poster maps, and a set of twelve dice. It also includes a set of twenty-two reference cards for general play and the scenario, tokens for use with the maps, and two Dry/Erase pens for use with the Player Character Creation Worksheets. The inclusion of the latter points to an absence of pre-generated Player Characters that would normally be expected to be found in a roleplaying game starter set. Instead, players have to create their characters to play through the ‘Trapped in the Tropics: A Pirate Borg Adventure’. This points to the fragility of characters in Pirate Borg because players may have to replace them as the Dark Caribbean is a sea whose waters are deadly. It also provides a player with the full Pirate Borg experience, and of course, the Player Character Creation Worksheets make that process easier and faster.

The ‘Player’s Guidebook’ is very much a cut down version of the full Pirate Borg rulebook, even down to having the same page numbers. This is intentional because it makes reference to the Pirate Borg rulebook easier. Inside the front page there is a replication of the Player Character Creation Worksheet, but beyond that there is an explanation of how to create characters, the rules, the roleplaying game’s six base Classes, plus the two optional Classes. A Player Character is is defined by his Abilities, Class, gear, and Devil’s Luck. The five Abilities are Strength, Agility, Presence, Toughness, and Spirit, each rated between ‘-3’ and ‘+3’. There are six Classes and two optional Classes. Each provides adjustments to Abilities, basic Hit Points, and starting Devil’s Luck. The Brute is a raging melee fighter who gets a trusted weapon like a ‘Brass Anchor’ or ‘Rotten Cargo Net’ and when he gets better, he might gain a ‘Boomstick’ or ‘Grog Breath’, the latter enabling him to belch in the face of an enemy and stun him! The Rapscallion is a sneaky, cutthroat scallywag, which as a Class requires an ordinary deck of playing cards to play. The Rapscallion starts with a single speciality such as ‘Burglar’ or ‘Sneaky Bastard’, and gain more or even double up on already possessed specialities. He can also drink Grog to heal himself. The Buccaneer is a sharpshooter and treasure hunter, and is also a skilled tracker. The Swashbuckler is a brash fighter, who might also be an ‘Ostentatious Fencer’ or ‘Inspiring Leader’, and when he gets better, he could be the ‘Shakespeare of Insults’ or a ‘Calculating Cutthroat’, the former adding damage to attacks with his wounding taunts, the latter letting the player achieve critical hits on a natural roll of nineteen as well as twenty. The Zealot has prayers like Heal, Curse, and Holy Protection, which are learned randomly and can be cast several times a day without the need to make a roll or a test. The Sorcerer draws power from supernatural spirits and ghosts to cast spells like Spiritual Possession, Clairvoyance, and Raise the Dead, not whilst near cold iron or holding metal.

The Haunted Soul is either a ghost, conduit for restless spirits, has an eldritch mind, is a zombie, suffers from vampirism, or is a skeleton. Each provides a benefit and a penalty. For example, restless spirits constantly communicate with the conduit to grant a random Arcane Ritual which can be cast without a Spirit test, but must be cast before dawn the next day or conduit suffers damage. The Tall Tale can be one of the Merfolk, an aquatic mutant like a crab or The Great Old One, or a sentient animal such as a ‘Foul Fowl’ or a ‘Clever Monkey’. Although both the Haunted Soul and the Tall Tale are given as optional Classes, they are not really Classes, but closer to a Race or a Species as in other Old School Renaissance roleplaying games. This is because not only do they not get any better with experience, but the player also then rolls for an additional ability out of the standard six. Their inclusion, though, is unbalancing, granting a Player Character extra abilities that other Player Characters without either the Haunted Soul or Tall Tale options simply does not have the equivalent of. Further, the six core Classes not balanced either, especially when it comes to their progression. Several of the Classes like the Rapscallion or Buccaneer have multiple specialities or features that can be taken twice, whereas the Brute and the Swashbuckler do not. Of course, there is no need for the Classes to be equally balanced, but some rough equivalency would not have gone amiss.

To create a character, a player rolls for his Abilities, Class, gear, and Devil’s Luck. Gear includes weapon, clothing, and a hat. Optional tables provide for backgrounds, distinctive flaws, physical trademarks, idiosyncrasies, unfortunate incidents and conditions, and thing of importance. Of these which a group might want to avoid is rolling for Class since it avoids too many of the same Class serving in a ship’s crew.

Mechanically Pirate Borg is based upon Mörk Borg—hence the name—the Swedish pre-apocalypse Old School Renaissance style roleplaying game designed by Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell and also published by Free League Publishing. A player rolls a twenty-sided die, modifies the result by one of his character’s abilities, and attempts to beat a Difficulty Rating of twelve. The Difficulty Rating may go up or down depending on the situation, but whatever the situation, the player always rolls, even in combat or as both Mörk Borg and Pirate Borg terms it, violence. 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? Armour can also be damaged, due to a Fumble when defending, reducing its protective effectiveness, and a critical hit in combat inflicts double damage or allows another attack. A Player Characters whose Hit Points are reduced to below zero is dead, but at zero, is broken and can recover.

Every Player Character also has the Devil’s Luck. Each Class receives a different amount of this, but all can spent to inflict maximum damage on a single attack, reroll any die, lower the Difficulty rating of a Test, neutralise a Critical or a Fumble, and to lower damage suffered by a random amount.

A Player Character may also have access to Arcane Rituals, such as Dark Delusions, which creates illusions in the minds that can see the caster; Phantasmal Fauna, which summons a ghostly hound or shark until sunset; and Thalassomancy, which fill the lungs of targets with sea water, causing them to suffocate. There are some truly nasty Arcane Rituals in this list. For example, The Black Spot which literally marks the target for death or Release the Kraken, which summons one of these great creatures in the nearby sea. If a Player Character fails to cast an Arcane Ritual, then a roll may be made on Pirate Borg’s Mystical Mishaps table. Other forms of magic in Pirate Borg include a quick and dirty pair of tables for handling alchemy and a list of Ancient Relics, such as the Conch Shell of the Abyss, which enables the wielder to ask a corpse one question or Mermaid Scales that when eaten grant the ability to breath underwater for a few hours.

Pirate Borg being a pirate roleplaying game, the one thing that it definitely needs is rules for ships and nautical combat. A vessel is defined by its Hit Points, Hull, Speed, Skill, Broadsides, Small Arms, Ram, Crew, and Cargo. Hit Points includes its condition and the health and morale of the crew; Hull, its armour; Skill the skill and training of the crew; Broadsides, the damage inflicted by a vessel’s main cannons; Small Arms the damage done by swivel guns and muskets; Ram, damage done in a ram action; and Crew, the minimum and maximum number of crew the ship can carry. Combat is conducted in thirty second rounds, and in that time, the captain moves the ship, the Player Characters take an action, and the Crew can take actions such as ‘Fire Broadsides’, ‘Full Sail’, ‘Boarding Party’, and more. Speciality Crew includes Legendary Captains, Strict Bosun, Deck Sorcerer or Priest, and so on. The rules cover crew skill, morale, cargo, repairs, and optionally—surprisingly, weather! An earlier section gives a list of sea shanties that the crew can perform each day, which might be to raise the crew’s morale or put out all the fires on a ship! Stats for the various ships are given on the Reference Cards included in the box.

What the ‘Player’s Guidebook’ does lack—and understandably so—is a bestiary and such things as tables for generating random encounters. What it does include is summaries of the rules, including those for naval combat, for ease of play.  Overall, the ‘Player’s Guidebook’ is attractive and functional, providing only the absolutely necessary details that a player is going to need.

For the Game Master there is ‘Trapped in the Tropics: A Pirate Borg Adventure’, which promises British Redcoats, rival pirates, booby traps, hordes of zombies, and cursed relics. It is specifically designed to teach the Game Master and her players the rules and how the game is played. So, there is more advice here for the Game Master than might be found in another scenario, but as a scenario in a starter set, it makes sense. It tells the Game Master how to prepare for the first session, gives her notes for tone, stye, and inspiration, of which there is lots (and pleasingly, is not afraid to suggest looking at other piratical games, especially wargaming rules), and suggests a way in which the adventure can be run as a one-shot. There is advice on running different aspects of the rules and a handy list of the tenets for both the Game Master and the player. The scenario is designed to be played using the included maps and tokens.

The scenario begins en media res and essentially in the same fashion as Pirates of the Caribbean! The Player Characters and their vessel have been hired by the Spanish Inquisition to locate a shipwreck on Eel Island. As the Player Characters emerge from the jungle, they find themselves on the beach, betrayed by a crewmember, attacked by Red Coast. Then zombies! It is an exciting start and the cues from Pirates of the Caribbean continue with the exploration of the island and the discovery of the target ship—hanging almost upside down deep into the jungle. Then on to a neighbouring island which is close by. One interesting aspect of the scenario is that in introducing both Pirate Borg and its setting of the Dark Caribbean, it also introduces the concept of ASH, how it is made, and how it is consumed. It is a fairly grim process and the scenario does suggest alternatives if the gaming group is unhappy with the concept. On Scrub Island the Player Characters can acquire a ship, and armed with a major clue they should have been able to acquire, set sail properly! This gives them a bit more freedom of action and opens up the play style a bit, first enabling the players and their character to experience some naval combat and explore Gibbet Town, a British port on a neighbouring island. The scenario will culminate in a disaster and a delve deep under an island in search of treasure leading to a confrontation with its guardians.

The scenario is well designed and written, taking the Game Master and her players hand-in-hand through the different aspects of Pirate Borg’s play. There is good advice throughout on the different aspects of the rules and the scenario, plus useful discussion of what to do next once the Player Characters have completed the adventure. The scenario is also entertaining and fun, both for the Game Master and her players, the former being giving a pair of intriguing NPCs to portray.

The ten poster maps show a mixture of maps and artwork. There are maps of the various islands and Gibbet Town, deck plans, and an illustration of the hanging ship in the jungle. There is also a plain sea map for use with the naval combat rules and one of the whole Dark Caribbean and even a double-sided treasure map that the Game Master is expected to tear in half! The tokens include ships for naval combat, NPCs and monsters, and one for each of the Classes in Pirate Borg. There are even tokens for the chicken, crocodile, and parrot companions (and there are other animals on the other side) that the Player Characters could have! There are even tokens to represent the approximate time of day. All together, the tokens are simply useful and their inclusion is well thought out.

Physically, the Pirate Borg Starter Set is fantastic. Both the ‘Player’s Guidebook’ and the ‘Trapped in the Tropics: A Pirate Borg Adventure’ books are sturdy and colourful, and the maps, along with the tokens, are going to look great on the table. Both books are both very well written, the scenario in particular being full of little extra details such as suggestions how to portray the major NPCs by referencing various films. Lastly, both inside of the lid and the inside of the base box have tables on them to help the Game Master run the game. There is even the detail of the embossed lid that gives  the Pirate Borg Starter Set a pleasingly tactile feel.

Like any good starter set, the Pirate Borg Starter Set can be used as more than an introduction to the setting of Pirate Borg. An experienced group can still play ‘Trapped in the Tropics: A Pirate Borg Adventure’ and beyond the adventure, the other content in the Pirate Borg Starter Set can be used as part of an ongoing campaign. The ‘Player’s Guidebook’ as a rule reference guide, several of the maps can be reused as can the Reference Cards, and the Player Character Creation Worksheets can be used over and over. Plus there are the dice…

The Pirate Borg Starter Set is an impressive box, offering a combination of simple, but highly thematic rules and an engaging, entertaining scenario, all supported by some useful play aids that will extend its usefulness beyond the completion of the scenario. Which all together is a great introduction to Pirate Borg. If other publishers within the Old School Renaissance were thinking of producing a starter set, the Pirate Borg Starter Set has just set the standard by which they will all be judged.

Decay & Destruction

The city of Spire is in a constant state of wrack and ruin. As its overlords, the Aelfir, live a life of indolence and intrigue, the walls crack and parts of the structure shear and fall the many storeys to smash crumble on the ground below. The rot though, does not come from without, the cold and the wet finding cracks in the walls, working them and snapping them open, but from within. Deep below the city of Spire is the Heart, a ruinous tear in the fabric of the world that bleeds upwards, spreading disorder and chaos and blighting souls with rot. Unseen, its consequences have found a home in the harsh and uncaring undercity of Red Row, making the lives of its Destra inhabitants ever more dangerous, ever more dreadful. Gangs engage in open warfare, the sound of their gunfire marked by palls of spireblack gunsmoke, unable to agree on any one cause or able to resume the wary respect that kept their weapons holstered and a peace between them. Families bicker and divide, casting children aside. The Crimson Vigil, a group of violent anti-aelfir reactionaries, is openly recruiting soldiers for their forbidden cult, and with its numbers growing, how long before its actions bring the attention of the authorities down upon the whole neighbourhood? And yet despite the violence and despite the dissension that seems rife in every home and on every street, what the people of Red Row are talking about is The Weeping Maiden, a new play currently on tour! Society seems to be tearing itself apart at the seams and everything is going to wrack and ruin. This cannot be natural. There has to be someone or something behind it. Surely? This is the set-up for Blood and Dust: A Campaign Frame for Spire RPG.

It is a mini-campaign for Spire: The City Must Fall, the roleplaying game of secrets and lies, trust and betrayal, violence and subversion, conspiracy and consequences, and of committing black deeds for a good cause. It is set in a mile-high tower city, known as the ‘Spire’, in the land of the Destra, the Drow, which two centuries ago the Aelfir—or ‘High Elves’—invaded and subjugated the Dark Elves. The Drow have long since been forced to serve the High Elves from their homes in the city’s lower levels and allowed only to worship one facet of Damnou, the moon goddess, instead of the three they once did. However, not all of the Drow have resigned themselves to their reduced and subjugated status and joined ‘The Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress’, or simply, the Ministry. Its members—or Ministers—venerate the dark side of the moon, the goddess of poisons and lies, shadows and secrets, her worship outlawed on pain of death, and they are sworn to destroy and subvert the dominion of the Aelfir over the Drow and the Spire. Published by Rowan, Rook, and Decard Ltd., Spire: The City Must Fall inverts traditional fantasy, making the traditional enemy in fantasy—the Drow—into the victim, and certainly the protagonist, but not necessarily the hero.

Blood and Dust: A Campaign Frame for Spire RPG is not a traditional roleplaying scenario. It foregoes the traditional construction with prewritten encounters that the Player Characters play through one after another. Nor does it not suggest any plot or story threads, something that other campaign frameworks for Spire: The City Must Fall, such as Eidolon Sky: A Campaign Frame for Spire RPG do. Instead, it outlines an intrigue and a greater plot of sorts whose chaotic effects are playing out on Red Row and which the Player Characters are driven to investigate, and beyond the initial set-up of getting the Player Characters together, it focuses on the six factions involved. These consist of the Retroengineers employed to operate the devices that are destabilising the neighbourhood and helping to sow the chaos; the Sunlight Collective, a theatre group of radical artists and occultists fascinated to see the effect that its latest play is having on Red Row; the Knights of the North Docks, the strutting bully boys whose factionalism has turned them into extortionists; members of the City Guard, overworked with all of the unrest they have had to deal with; the Church of Absolution, a burned-out magicians and sages, destitute oracles and defrocked priests, that worships decay and wants revenge on those that stole its ideas; and the Crimson Vigil, anti-Aelfir zealots ready and happy to stir up more chaos. Some are more detailed than others—the Game Master will need to refer to the Spire: The City Must Fall for more details—but all are given motivations and suggestions as to what they might do as well as some notable NPCs.

The most detailed advice for the Game Master is on how to set the scenario up and involve the Player Characters, whether they are the pre-generated Player Characters or not. This is because there are no staged encounters or scenes, so there is no advice on how to handle them. What happens instead is the Game Master will reacting to the directions in which the players want to push their characters, which character hook and motivation and thus which faction that the want to investigate. Having set this up, the authors leave it to the Game Master at the table to respond to her players and their characters to determine what happens. There are some notes on how to end the story, primarily concerning what the remaining factions that the Player Characters do not investigate might do.

In addition, Blood and Dust: A Campaign Frame for Spire RPG includes five pre-generated Player Characters, all members of ‘The Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress’. They consist of an ex-military revolutionary and firebrand; a beautiful artistic and revolutionary idol; a Knight of the North Docks (effectively a gangster in plate armour); a Lajhan, a priest of Our Glorious Lady, the light side of the moon, the one aspect of the Drow goddess that is legal to worship, whose temple has been despoiled; and a Vermissian Sage, who hides knowledge in the Vermissian , the broken mass-transit system that runs up and down Spire. All five have their own character sheets and reasons to get involved in the investigation and adventure, such as the Lajhan’s temple having been bespoiled and the Vermissian Sage having recently been denied access to the Vermissian.

Physically, Blood and Dust: A Campaign Frame for Spire RPG is well presented and its contents are neatly organised and easy to reference, done in an easy-to-grasp style from start to finish.

Blood and Dust: A Campaign Frame for Spire RPG is not a ‘campaign frame’ as its subtitle suggests. Its emphasis and thus is structure is all on the set-up. It is described on the back cover as “…[A] series of prompts, suggestions, factions, pre-generated characters and personalities…” and it is very much that rather than a frame or framework that provides anything akin to structured campaign or plot line. Nor is it necessarily a campaign, since it is intended to be run in a few sessions. Yet as a set-up, it does work, giving the elements that a Game Master would need to run it. However, the lack of the frame and the fact that the Game master will be improvising the responses to the Player Characters’ actions does not make Blood and Dust: A Campaign Frame for Spire RPG either easy to use or necessarily suitable for the inexperienced Game Master. For the experienced Game Master, Blood and Dust: A Campaign Frame for Spire RPG provides a good set-up and content suitable for several sessions’ worth of player-driven play.

Friday Fantasy: Stealing the Eye

Stealing the Eye is a smash and grab scenario. The Player Characters have to break into a temple, steal a jewel, and get out again. It is as simple that. Or rather, it is not that simple, because Stealing the Eye is a scenario for use with RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, the roleplaying game of myth and legend published by Chaosium, Inc.. That means there is vengeance and honour thrown into the mix. In the north of Dragon Pass, the lands of Tarsh have for decades been divided between Lunar Tarsh and Old Tarsh, the former under the heavy-handed influence of the Lunar Empire to the north which has long sought to spread its influence and that of the Red Goddess south. Part of this involves repurposing local temples and one of these, once dedicated to a daughter of the Earth goddess, Ernalda, has been rededicated to the worship of Yara Aranis, Goddess of Six Arms, Goddess of the Reaching Moon, and Goddess of the Glowline, the literal line that marks the magical border of the Lunar Empire. Now a band of adventurers from a Orlanthi clan of exiled traditionalists have decided to strike at the Lunars when they and their magics are at their weakest, on Black Moon Day, by breaking into the Temple of Yara Aranis, prying the opal from the forehead of her statue, and striking a blow to Lunar pride, for Orlanthi honour, and the prestige of their clan.

Stealing the Eye is a short and direct scenario, intended to be played in a single session. It comes with a set of four pre-generated Player Characters and can be played as a one-shot, making it suitable for convention play, or it can be added to an ongoing campaign, with the players’ own characters replacing those of the ones provided. Should the players bring their own characters, the Climb, Jump, and Move Quietly skills will probably be the most useful along with their combat skills. One character type that will be useful and one not normally found in typical Player Character groups in RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, is the Thief, whether a worshipper of Eurmal or Lanbril. One of the four pre-generated Player Characters is a thief. There is also another reason why a thief is needed and that is because Stealing the Eye has a bit of history to it—thematic history, that is.

Long time fans of RuneQuest and Glorantha will recognise that the cover of Stealing the Eye is a homage to the cover painting by Tom Sullivan for Gods of Glorantha, a box set published by Chaosium, Inc. and Avalon Hill in 1985. That depicts a pair of adventurers about to do exactly what the Player Characters are doing on the cover of Stealing the Eye. In turn, Tom Sullivan’s cover was inspired a classic piece of roleplaying art—the cover by Dave Trampier of The Player’s Handbook for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition. Which of course, depicted another adventuring party attempting to prise the jewels as eyes out of the statue of a demon. That cover to The Player’s Handbook is perhaps one of the most emulated and copied pieces of artwork in roleplaying history, both as homage and parody, but mainly within the Old School Renaissance segment of the hobby, so it is a pleasure to see it given a nod here.

The scenario begins en media res. The Player Characters, consisting of a Dancing Woman of Maran Gor and the group’s leader, a thief and initiate of Eurmal the Trickster (and also a Duck), an Orlanthi warrior, and a Humkati warrior. Both warriors are brothers. Their task is to break in, get past the guards and temple staff, and make their way to the statue of Yara Aranis—and that is the easy part. How the Player Characters deal with the statue is another matter. The Player Characters have been told that the old Earth spirits, active before when the Lunar Empire arrived and took over the temple, may still be present, just suppressed by Lunar magic. If the Player Characters can appease them, then they may be of some whelp whilst they are in the temple. This would be difficult at the best of times, but again, it is Black Moon Day, so the Lunar magics are at their weakest in the temple—so there is a good chance.

The Player Characters can approach the mission however they want, but the objective is straightforward enough and the scenario covers numerous ways in which they can break into the temple and carry out their mission. The emphasis is on stealth and action as well as making the best use of their magic, rather than roleplaying, and it is designed to be used with the RuneQuest Starter Set or the full rules of RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. That said, if the Game Master is running the scenario for players new to Glorantha, it might be worth creating a cheat sheet for each of the Player Characters, in particular, highlighting how Runes, Passions, and spells can be used, since they are pivotal to the play of the scenario.

Physically, Stealing the Eye is nicely presented in the house style of RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. It is well written and laid out, and both the cover and the single illustration inside are excellent. The character sheets pack a lot of information onto a single page, but there are no illustrations of the characters themselves. The only thing that is missing that would have been useful, would have been a players’ map of the temple, since their characters are told about the temple in some detail.

Stealing the Eye is a highly serviceable and straightforward scenario that presents a Gloranthan treatment of a classic roleplaying situation. It is easy to set up and run and flexible enough to be run as a single session one-shot, or easily inserted into a campaign.

Friday Filler: Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window

The film Rear Window is a classic thriller, regarded as one of Alfred Hitchcock’s best. It combines claustrophobia and voyeurism in a murder mystery which plays out from one point of view, that of Professional photojournalist L.B. ‘Jeff’ Jefferies. Following an accident whilst getting a front cover shot, he is confined to a wheelchair with a leg in a cast in his Greenwich Village apartment. With nothing to do and armed with a telephoto lens, he starts watching his neighbours whom he can see through the rear window of his apartment and into theirs. Sitting in the darkness he observes them going about their daily lives and as he becomes more obsessed about them, he suspects that one of them has committed a murder. It is a fantastic set-up for a film and if you have never seen it, you really should. It has parties, knives, bickering, laughing, weeping, music… and a mysterious trunk! In fact, you should definitely see it before playing Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, a board game designed by Prospero Hall and published by Funko Games. However, you can play the game without watching it because the set-up is simple and you are not actually playing the role of L.B. ‘Jeff’ Jefferies and his friends, although they do play a part in the game.

Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window is designed to be played by three to five players, aged thirteen and over, and be played in less than an hour. The game is about solving the mystery of what can be seen through the eponymous window. Sometimes it will be murder and sometimes it will be not. One player takes the role of the Director who randomly sets up the mystery (or the murder if the mystery is a murder), whilst the other players are Watchers, who over the course of four days (or rounds), look through their window into the apartments of their four neighbours. However, they know nothing about their neighbours—who they are, what they do, and what they are like—and this constitutes the mystery at the heart of the game (in addition to the murderer, if there is a murderer) that they need to solve by the end of the fourth day. The elements that make up this mystery are represented by Resident and Attribute Tokens. Of course, the Director knows everything, but can only communicate to the Watchers via the cards he plays from his hand. For the Watchers, interpreting these correctly is key to winning the game.

At the end of the game, if there is not a murder, both Watchers and Director win if the Watchers correctly guess all eight spots taken up by the Resident and Attribute Tokens behind the Director’s Screen on the Solution Board. Otherwise, they all lose. If there is a murder, the Watchers win if they correctly identify seven or eight of the spots taken up by the Resident and Attribute Tokens and the identity of the Murderer. However, if the Watchers only correctly deduce six or seven of the spots taken up by the Resident and Attribute Tokens and fail to identify the Murderer, then they lose and the Director wins. Lastly, if the Watchers only work six or fewer of identities of seven or eight of the spots taken up by the Resident and Attribute Tokens and fail to work who the Murder is, then again, everyone loses. Thus, depending on the set-up, Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window is either a co-operative game or a semi-co-operative game.

Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window comes richly appointed. There are a Director Screen and a Watcher Screen, four Day Boards (one for each round), Solution Board, four Watcher Placards, seventy Window Cards, one-hundred-and-two tiles, forty-five Resident and Attribute Tokens, a Trunk Box, four wooden cubes, and the Rulebook. All of the components are of good quality, but the artwork is exceptional. Instead of using photographs from the film, the game uses painted illustrations which capture the period and feel for the film as well as the likenesses of the main cast on each of the four Watcher Placards. Even the front of the Rulebook replicates the photograph of the Grand Prix accident that L.B. ‘Jeff’ Jefferies shot and which landed him in a wheelchair!

At the start of the game, the Director randomly draws eight Resident and Attribute Tokens and lays them out on the Solution Board he keeps behind his Director Screen. Any Tokens not used, go into the Trunk—a little cardboard trunk made to like the one used by the murderer in the film! Each day consists of three phases, the ‘Window Phase’, the ‘Deduction Phase’, and the ‘Scoring Phase’. In the ‘Window Phase’, the Director draws eight Window cards and plays them on to the current Day Board to represent what L.B. ‘Jeff’ Jefferies (and the Watchers) can see from his apartment. Each Window card depicts a scene in a neighbouring apartment and shows an array of elements. One can show a woman in a yellow dress about to move a dining chair, there is a meal and a glass on the dining table, whilst on the wall there is a painting of a waterfall and a lake, whilst on another there is a low table upon which stands two full cocktail glasses and a very full jewellery case behind which on the wall is the shadow of two women clasping hands. Notably, there is even one of Hitchcock himself adjusting the hands on a clock that stands on a mantlepiece next to some books, whilst a phonograph plays in the foreground, just like his cameo in the film. There is no text on these cards and both Watchers and Director are free to interpret the images in any way that they like.

Most of the time, Window cards are played face up, but they can be played face down as if the window the Watchers are looking through is closed. The Director will do this if he feels that a Window card cannot impart any clues (or even too many clues if there is a Murderer!). If a Director does not like the Window cards he has drawn, he can use a Cut token to discard and redraw as many as he likes, but this can only be done three times.

In the ‘Deduction Phase’, the Watchers ponder the current Day Board that the Director filled out in the ‘Window Phase’. They can also look at any previous Day Boards as there may be linked clues, but on the current Day Board, after some discussion and deliberation between themselves, they place four Resident Tokens and four Attribute Tokens indicating who they think are involved in the mystery. If there is a murder and the Watchers think they know who the murderer is, then they also add a purple token to indicate that. The Watchers can also use the Watcher Placards, of which there are four, representing the film’s main cast. For example, the L.B. ‘Jeff’ Jefferies Watcher Placard is ‘Hand me the binoculars’ which forces the Director to discard a Window card placed face down and replace it, whilst the Lisa Fremont Watcher Placard is ‘Breaking and Entering’ which enables the Watchers to ask the Director which is the most important feature on a particular Window card.

In the ‘Scoring Phase’, the Director compares the four Resident Tokens and four Attribute Tokens on the current Day Board with those on his Solution Board and marks how many the Watchers have got right.

The play of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window is about imparting information that the other players will try and guess correctly, although that will change slightly if there is a murder, in which case the Director needs to impart enough information so that the Watchers can get some details of the solution correct and so avoiding having everyone lose, but not enough that they guess everything, including the identity of the murderer and so win. Not every play through of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window involves a murder, but when it does, it changes the way in which the game is played. The communication is done silently by the Director via the Window cards and since they are randomly drawn each Day, he will not always have the most obvious cards to play. He will thus be trying to play the best Window cards that he can, the ones that he thinks will impart the clues he wants to get across. After that, it is down to the Watchers and their interpretation.

As has already been pointed out, Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window is a very fine looking game. The rulebook itself is very well written and takes the players through the set-up process and the play of the game with ease. There is even advice on how to set up the tray that holds all of the tokens and there is an FAQ at the back. The rules are simple and clearly written.

The film Rear Window is the last film that you would think suitable for a board game adaptation. Yet it works and it works well, it has a fantastic sense of claustrophobia, voyeurism, and potential for the misreading of the situation, just as the film does. Plus, there is that question it constantly asks us, “How well do we know our neighbours?” Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window is a fine social deduction game that fans of the classic film will love and players of similar games will enjoy.

Miskatonic Monday #419: Broken Dreams

Much like the Jonstown Compendium for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and The Companions of Arthur for material set in Greg Stafford’s masterpiece of Arthurian legend and romance, Pendragon, the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition is a curated platform for user-made content. It is thus, “...a new way for creators to publish and distribute their own original Call of Cthulhu content including scenarios, settings, spells and more…” To support the endeavours of their creators, Chaosium has provided templates and art packs, both free to use, so that the resulting releases can look and feel as professional as possible. To support the efforts of these contributors, Miskatonic Monday is an occasional series of reviews which will in turn examine an item drawn from the depths of the Miskatonic Repository.

—oOo—

Name: Broken Dreams

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: John Almack

Setting: Jazz Age Kingsport and beyond

Product: One-on-one scenario
What You Get: Eighteen page, 1.98 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: “Nothing happens unless we first dream.” — Carl Sandburg

Plot Hook: A damsel in distress in the Dreamlands

Plot Support: Staging advice, one pre-generated Investigator, two NPCs, two handouts, one map, and twenty-four Dreamlands inhabitants and/or monsters.

Production Values: Serviceable

Pros

# One Investigator, One Keeper rescue mission into the Dreamlands

# Easy to replace the pre-generated Investigator (or add another)

# Is the pre-generated Investigator a stand-in for Lovecraft?

# Classic fairy tale quest, but for Call of Cthulhu

# Good for nights in between sessions

# Oneirophobia

# Goblinphobia

# Zoophobia

Cons

# Straightforward quest-type tale

Conclusion

# A fairy tale in the Dreamlands

# Solid, one-on-one scenario given a couple of genre twists

Miskatonic Monday #418: GOZU

Much like the Jonstown Compendium for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and The Companions of Arthur for material set in Greg Stafford’s masterpiece of Arthurian legend and romance, Pendragon, the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition is a curated platform for user-made content. It is thus, “...a new way for creators to publish and distribute their own original Call of Cthulhu content including scenarios, settings, spells and more…” To support the endeavours of their creators, Chaosium has provided templates and art packs, both free to use, so that the resulting releases can look and feel as professional as possible. To support the efforts of these contributors, Miskatonic Monday is an occasional series of reviews which will in turn examine an item drawn from the depths of the Miskatonic Repository.

—oOo—

Name: GOZU

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author Steven Goodison

Setting: Edo period Japan

Product: Scenario
What You Get: Twenty-five page, 43.72 MB PDF

Elevator Pitch: A blighted bath, a paper chase, and a ‘coloured’ curse

Plot Hook: Rest, relaxation... and horror for the season

Plot Support: Staging advice, eleven handouts, two maps, two NPCs, three mythos tomes, two Mythos monsters, and Colour-possessed Macaques!

Production Values: Underwhelming

Pros

# Set in Edo era Japan

# Third part of a five-part mini-campaign

# Inspired by Japanese folklore

# Sequel to Thing Torments Poet, Daimyo calls on Greatest Help, Will the Players Fail? and The Kofun Closes to the West

# Could be adapted for use with Japan – Empire of Shadows: A Call of Cthulhu sourcebook for 1920s Imperial Japan

# Deprecophobia

# Bovinophobia

# Dysmorphobia

Cons

# ‘Cow-Ju’

# Needs a good edit

# No suggestions as to how to create the Investigators

Conclusion

# Poisoned ‘paradise’ which puts the Investigators into the middle of the very obvious horror

# Engagingly, enjoyably unsubtle