Malice & Miasma

The people and land of Painyme roil in fear and resentment as the Last Day draws near. Already, the first and youngest of the lascivious and unruly Lamentides, Pestilence, has escaped his imprisonment at the hands of his parents Life and Death’ leaving many of his siblings to only reach out to the real world when he can instead touch it and breath pox and disease upon the land and the living. Already Death has closed the First Gate to Heall and turned the dead away, leaving the unquiet dead to wander forcing the Gravediggers’ Guild to not just inter the dead in the ground, but also to prevent them from rising again. As the peasantry wail and a crusade has been declared by the Templars upon the Traitor Gods, those that killed Immortal, their father and grandfather and revelled in his death, and their worshippers, the Gravediggers’ Guild has turned to those heretics who have abjured their dissenting faith and are willing to serve instead of being thrown on the pyre. Already, the Templars’ crusade has killed its first god, but not Pestilence. Pestilence still stalks the land and worse, may be responsible for one of the greatest losses that the Ecclesiarch, His Excellency Boniface Pontfex IV, has faced to date. The border kingdom, Lethe, vanished fifty years ago in yet to be explained circumstances, consumed by the Weald surrounding the Petty Baronies before the great city of Assartum. Yet whilst Lethe is thought long lost, there is a chance that it can be saved and restored to the mortal world in a great defeat to Pestilence. Can the Heretics seeking absolution in the Gravediggers’ Guild find its first Guildhouse and from there search Lethe far and wide and below for the clues as to what caused its disappearance and it to be bound to Pestilence, and also find the means to undo his unholy work?

Lord Have Mercy Upon Us is an opportunity to see what a campaign for Doomsong looks like. Doomsong is the eschatological, pre-apocalyptic roleplaying game of heretical temptation and divine punishment and survival horror published by Cæsar Ink. which is described as a ‘Roleplay Macabre’. It is presented as a sandbox—or is that plague box?—called a ‘Plaguescape’ that can be played in one of two ways. The first option is as chronicle, a more traditional style of play in which case the Gravediggers, that is, the Player Characters, are pulled into the Plaguescape via the campaign’s starting location of the Crossroads, whilst the guild marches allows for more players and begins at the Guildhall for the Gravediggers’ Guild. Each subsequent session will start and end there too. The Guildhall for the Gravediggers’ Guild forms the base for the Player Characters in either style of play and as well as serving as sanctuary also offers a means for the Gravediggers to improve themselves. This is by taking up the various offices at the Guildhall, such as Cellarer, Chaplin, Florist, Steward, and so on. A Player Character can only hold one office and must meet its qualification and fulfil its duties. Some also require projects to be created at the Guildhall before they become available, but once they are, grant Guild abilities that a Player Character can learn. For example, once the Herb Garden has been built, any Player Character with the ‘Plantwise’ trait can become the Florist. He then receives the ‘Herbalist’s Pouch’ ability and in play can ‘Dignify a Funeral’ to gain the ‘Funeral Director’ ability, ‘Maintain a Grave, Statue, or Memorial’ for an Experience Point bonus, ‘Study a Plant’ to learn its properties and add to his ‘Herbalist’s Pouch’ ability, and ‘Befriend a Herbalist’ to gain a benefit from of the NPC herbalists in the campaign. The Guild roles provide lives and responsibilities for the Player Characters in the Guildhall as well as a home and a sense of community that they can foster over time, but benefits too that come from exploring the walls outside of the Guildhall.

The heart of Lord Have Mercy Upon Us is the Plaguescape, an area eight squares by six squares, with each square roughly a day’s travel across. It is divided into six regions and both the regions and the individual locations are given two-page spreads each. Each of these has a map and an overview on the left-hand page and more details and a random encounter table on the right-hand page. There are some sixty or so locations detailed in the campaign, most of which adhere to this format. Of those that do not, most are four rather than two pages long, whilst three are much longer. Two of these are locations. One of these is the Gravediggers’ Guildhall that is the base of operations for the Player Characters, whilst the other is Castle Lethe, the last known location of Lethe’s royal family. The castle has a weird feel that combines pestilence with paralysation as it is frozen in time. It is the largest and most detailed location in the campaign. The third is the Leech market, a group of traders that circulates the Plaguescape on a regular schedule. Its members are a group of NPCs that the Player Characters can encounter again and again as the campaign progresses and trade with for goods as well as details about the places along their regular route.

The primary antagonists of the campaign—the Lamentides, Pestilence, who stalks Lethe as Father Plague and his servant, the Wycce of Pestilence called The Lice Mother, who was the one who summoned him originally—are powerful as you would expect and are detailed on two pullout spreads. Below this is a gallery of grotesques, including a miller and murderer who transforms his victims into undead he controls and grinds dried leeches into a black flower that spreads disease; a ranting lord imprisoned on Pillory Cliffs and fed hispid nectar to keep him ebullient and amnesiac; feral orphans that run rampant in the Sunken Orphanage and are beholden to Granny Redwork, who eats them when they reach the age of thirteen; and creatures such as the spider-like Laceworkers whose webs and venom are capable of heretical feats and the hare-like Lagomorphs, each born with disease that rots their eyes and a single desire—to eat and eat and eat and eat.

Although the campaign proper can begin at The Crossroads after the Player Characters have accidentally wandered into the Plaguescape and found themselves trapped, it really begins at the Guildhall for the Gravediggers’ Guild. Here, Allardyce the Guildmaster insists the newly arrived Gravediggers re-swear their oath to the Guild (reinforcing for the players who their characters are and what they do) and explains where they are and what the situation is. This includes the presence of Father Plague and Allardyce’s desire to destroy him and hopefully restore the Kingdom of Lethe to its rightful place as part of the mortal world of Painyme. Guildmaster Allardyce has plenty of tasks that she can assign the Player Characters, but the primary one will be to investigate several disturbing shrines that have appeared since Lethe was disconnected from the world. These she will mark on a map that she will also give the Player Characters. This will give the location of some of the shrines, but not all, and the Player Characters can learn the location of the others from other maps and NPCs. Guildmaster Allardyce will always replace the Player Characters’ map if they lose it.

Each shrine is different, but possess a token, such as The Last Meal, The Severed Left Hand, and The Hand-Stitched Doll. These can be destroyed to weaken Father Plague and ultimately the Plaguescape. Each also is accompanied with a cryptic clue that hints at what the Player Characters need to do with it to destroy it as it is not simply a matter of battering it into bits or burning it into ash. For example, the Shrine of The Last Meal is close to the Gravediggers’ Guildhall and its token is a sewn up stomach containing a fresh meal. Accompanying it is the cryptic message, “He stole my last meal, meagre morsel to share with truest love.” The message suggests that the food inside the stomach needs to be fed to someone, but who that someone is and where they are requires further investigation. In other words, finding these clues is not the challenge, deducing what they mean and how to resolve them is. Player Characters who simply destroy the tokens will be hampering their progress and likely result in their failing to save Lethe. Lastly, each token represents a danger in itself because all of them are connected to Father Plague and come with vile gifts that he gives.

Although it is the primary one, the search for the shrines and ultimately finding a way to kill Father Plague is not the only questline in Lord Have Mercy Upon Us. The others include aiding the settlements scattered across Lethe and killing the Misenmeists, originally the knights of Lethe who served the royal family, transformed by Father Plague into his most trusted generals. Killing the Misenmeists requires finding items other than the tokens and using them against them, but killing them helps transform the Plaguescape. The travelling Leech Market will often be a source of quests passed on from the settlements it has visited recently on its journey around Lethe.

Lord Have Mercy Upon Us is a challenging and dangerous campaign. More so given the fragility of the Player Characters—think ‘Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, First Edition in gritty mode without its traditional Player Character progression’. Player Characters will die and there really is a chance of failure in the campaign which will mean that Pestilence will have won. However, a Total Party Kill will not necessarily end the campaign. The Gravediggers’ Guild has many members and more are wandering into the Plaguescape of Lethe everyday, so that there is a ready supply of replacement Player Characters! Plus, it helps that character creation in Doomsong is quick and easy.

Physically, Lord Have Mercy Upon Us is notably very well organised. There is good advice for Game Master at the start as part of the set-up and then every location is presented in an accessible fashion, as are the entries for the campaign’s important characters, denizens, creatures, diseases that the Player Characters can suffer, profane relics, and so on. The questlines are also clearly marked and explained and everything is expertly linked through page references, and everything is easy to find with a very good index. The artwork is also excellent, the writing easy to read, and the cartography good.

The consequence of this expert organisation is that Lord Have Mercy Upon Us is actually easier to use and is more accessible than the Doomsong rulebook. Where the latter is dense and hard to navigate, Lord Have Mercy Upon Us has room for the foul setting of Lethe to breathe its pestilence and for the Game Master to use it easily at the table.

Lord Have Mercy Upon Us is grim and gritty, let alone grimy, but it still promises hope. Yet to fulfil that hope, the players and their Gravedigger characters need steely resolve and patience, as simply running at everything and attempting to put it to the sword will ensure their failure. Lord Have Mercy Upon Us brings to life the pre-apocalyptic world of Painyme and the vision of Doomsong in a fantastically foul and punishingly pestilent campaign.

Affirmation & Alarm

With Vaesen – Mythic Carpathia, the roleplaying game, Vaesen: Spirits and Monsters of Scandinavian Folklore goes east! The investigative horror game set primarily in Scandinavia during the nineteenth century that explores the clash between modernity and folklore explores the curve of the Carpathian Mountains as they stretch from Bohemia and the city of Prague in the west through the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Kingdom of Prussia, Poland and Ukraine of the Russian Empire, before turning south into Rumania and Transylannia of the Ottoman Empire. Primarily occupied by the politically and culturally suppressed Slavic peoples, parts of the region have seen political and cultural awakenings following the ‘Spring of Nations’ in 1848 combined with the Romanticism movement which encouraged inspiration, subjectivity, and individualism, including of specific ethnic groups. Nowhere more so than in Bohemia and the city of Prague, where the Czech population has asserted its identity whilst still remaining part of Austro-Hungarian Empire. The city is home to ‘The Society for the Integration and Adaptation of the Carpathian Tradition, Based in Prague’, known locally as ‘Pravda’ (or ‘Truth’) which for decades since its move to Prague, and hundreds of years before that, been dedicated to the study, and if necessary, repulsion of vaesen, much like its cousin, the Order of Artemis, based in Castle Gyllencreutz in Upsala, Sweden. In comparison to the Order of Artemis’ whose remit is confined to Scandinavia, the territory that ‘Pravda’ has to cover is vast, from the Baltic regions of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in the north to the Ottoman Empire-occupied Balkans in the south and from Poland in the west to Ural Mountains in the east. It means travelling great distances and across different empires and it means encountering a wide variety of vaesen.

Vaesen – Mythic Carpathia is the sourcebook for Vaesen: Spirits and Monsters of Scandinavian Folklore which covers this area, highlights some of its notable vaesen, and introduces ‘The Society for the Integration and Adaptation of the Carpathian Tradition, Based in Prague’ as well as providing three scenarios which take the Player Characters across the region. Published by Free League Publishing, some of its vaesen have appeared in the roleplaying game before, notably in the fan-based Vaesen: Spirits and Monsters of Mythic Ukraine, but like Vaesen – Mythic Britain & Ireland before it, Vaesen – Mythic Carpathia is written by authors local to the region, so it has an authentic tone to it.

In terms of a region sourcebook, Vaesen – Mythic Carpathia is very much an overview. This covers the history of the Slavs across the four empires—the Austro-Hungarian Empire, German, Ottoman, and Russion—but is not an examination of those empires. Instead, it looks at the conditions under which people lived as the nineteenth century progressed, mostly from the revolutions of 1848 onwards. The primary focus is on Bohemia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (what will eventually become Czechoslovakia) and then on the city of Prague. A detailed description is provided of the city, the aim being that it serves as the Player Characters’ base of operations as Upsala is in the core rulebook. This includes its key sites, history, and of course, the details and history of Pravda. Like the Order of Artemis, it is based in a fortification, in this case, the Prašná brána or Powder Gate, a gothic tower that was once Prague’s gunpowder store. Unfortunately no floor plans are provided for it, but suggested upgrades are included as well as books held in its library and possible threats it faces. Notably, it has a very different feel in comparison to the Order of Artemis. Where the latter’s base of operations, Castle Gyllencreutz, is very much in need of restoration, Pravda’s Gunpowder Gate headquarters are organised with clerks and a library and it is organised, possessing a lay membership as well as experts and investigators, and being led by a president and council.

Only one new archetype is given in Vaesen – Mythic Carpathia. This is the Vampire Hunter. Its Key Attribute is Precision and its Key Skill is Close Combat and its Talents consist of ‘Hateful of Bloodsuckers’, ‘Impaler’, and ‘On the Hunt’ which all together make the archetype very focused in what it does. Which is combat against vampires. This focus and its inclusion in the supplement are understandable given that the region is infamous for its vampires, and vampires are predatory monsters. Yet this is at odds with the usual game play of Vaesen: Spirits and Monsters of Scandinavian Folklore where the aim is to resolve any conflict between men and vaesen rather than fight the vaesen. Its inclusion is also obvious. Which leaves you to wonder what other archetypes could have been included alongside it?

In terms of vaesen, their appearance and activities are still very driven by the loss of knowledge of how to interact with them as rural life declines and urbanisation and industrialisation attracts people away from the countryside and into the towns and cities. Vaesen – Mythic Carpathia adds another interesting reason—Romanticism. The Romantic movement’s interest in culture and ethnicity has gone hand in hand with an interest in folklore and this has caused some vaesen to wake up, resulting in conflict with the local inhabitants. This is a really nice touch, essentially laying the blame for the rise in vaesen activity upon the poets and authors who only see them as part of the folklore of ethnic groups and a possible bone of contention if the Player Characters includes a poet amongst their number.

Vaesen – Mythic Carpathia details sixteen vaesen. They include the Dhampir, Strigoi, and Vampir, because this is Carpathia after all, but other familiar vaesen include the Golem and Baba Yaga. In terms of roleplaying, they feel very traditional, but they are all very well presented with examples of conflicts which serve as scenario hooks. Alongside these are vaesen that are unlikely to be as familiar. These include the Babai, an evil night spirit of the forest who looks like an old man with eyes that glow like ember and steals naughty children and carries them in the bag over his shoulder; the tiny, lizard-like Khocca-Yarokha which collect children’s baby teeth; and the Udinytsia, an evil female spirit who steals luck, fate, and talent, preying on the unborn and their mothers. There is plenty here that Game Master can use to enhance her Vaesen campaign and all are very nicely presented stats, descriptions, examples of conflict, and a secret.

The second half of Vaesen – Mythic Carpathia consists of three scenarios of varying length and complexity. The first, ‘A Treaty of Blood’, initially appears to be a classic vampire story when Pravda is asked by the noble ruler of an isolated valley in Transylvania, in the Carpathian Mountains for help in dealing with a beast that has killed two farmers. However, trapped in the valley by the winter weather, the Player Characters need to look beneath the surface to work out what is going on and who the culprits are. There is more than one ‘monster’ involved in what is a Gothic horror story that pleasingly tweaks expectations about what a roleplaying game investigation into vampires involves.

‘The Gathering Storm’ sends the Player Characters even further east into the Ukraine and Brygidki, the oldest prison in the city of Lemberg (now known as Lviv) where several prisoners have fallen ill and others died. The investigation is hampered by prisoners who will not speak if the guards are around and will often ask for banned items in return for their information, prison guards who want to keep the prisoners in order, an outbreak of what looks like chickenpox, and a constant chilly wind blowing through the building. This is a shorter scenario, much grimmer and grimmier given its prison location and involves a monster that will likely be unfamiliar to most players.

Lastly, ‘The Secret of the Maharal’ is set in Prague. The city is on the verge of uproar over a series of deaths involving a lot of blunt force that the police have been unable to solve and so they turn to the Pravda Society for help. Of the three scenarios, this is the most obvious in terms of knowing what the culprit is, which means that the players need to roleplay against their knowledge until their characters know what is responsible. Where the scenario is interesting is working out why the deaths are happening and in the need to navigate the politics of Prague and attitudes in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. What this means is that some of ethnic tensions highlighted earlier in the book’s background do feature in the scenario and thus they do need to be handled with care.

Vaesen – Mythic Carpathia is a good introduction to the region, but it is in no way a comprehensive guide, and to be fair, it cannot be. The region of the Carpathian Mountains and their surroundings is just too vast for one book to really cover. That really leaves the Game Master with no little research to conduct should she want to set a scenario outside of Bohemia and Prague, and perhaps a bibliography would have been useful to that end since the region and its history is not going to be familiar to everyone. Both parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire would be worthy of a supplement of their own, let alone Poland, and hopefully setting gets more support. Another issue perhaps is that the scenarios focus too much on the well known vaesen over lesser known regional ones, but to be fair, the two scenarios involving familiar vaesen twist and tweak their plots in unfamiliar and interesting ways. Plus, it leaves the unfamiliar vaesen for the Game Master to use herself and thus surprise and challenge her players.

Physically, Vaesen – Mythic Carpathia is as well presented as you would expect a book for Vaesen: Spirits and Monsters of Scandinavian Folklore to be. The artwork is excellent, the layout clean and tidy, the handouts good, and the index is useful. Also, the cultural issues raised by the history of the region and its peoples are handled with sensitivity. The separate map of Prague is good, but the regional map takes a little careful study to really understand.

If its background and history does leave the reader very much wanting more, Vaesen – Mythic Carpathia does a fantastic job of introducing a new region and a new, more organised and focused society dedicated to the investigation of vaesen, ready for the Player Characters to make their enquiries and ease some of the conflicts between man and monster. It supports this with some lovingly presented vaesen, both familiar and unfamiliar, and three solid scenarios. In Vaesen – Mythic Carpathia there is a wonderful sense of hope and optimism in Bohemia and the city of Prague, which ebbs away as the investigations of the Pravda Society take the Player Characters east and into the grimmer, foreboding realities of lives under the dark peaks of the Carpathian Mountains.

Trenchcoats & Tinies

Small Folk in Big Coats is a roleplaying game about small folk not getting noticed in the big world and deciding to work together to get noticed and get what they want done by collectively wearing the same outfit and trying to work together. Of course, whilst the temporary small folk collective might share an aim or two, every individual has his aims and wants to be in charge. So whatever the agreed plan might have been at the start, the attempts to fulfil that are going to go awry as chaos ensues… Fortunately, everyone around the collective just thinks that they are dealing with a hopefully charming, if hapless and probably accident prone eccentric rather than what they actually are. And what they actually are is several small creatures in an overcoat! Small Folk in Big Coats is a roleplaying game that draws the roleplaying meme of ‘three kobolds in a trench coat’ or ‘three goblins in a trench coat’. The meme is humorous and thus so is Small Folk in Big Coats. It is also designed to be played with as minimum an amount of preparation possible—even no preparation at all—and as one-shots. What this means is that Small Folk in Big Coats works as well for convention sessions as well as those nights when not everyone is available to play.

Small Folk in Big Coats is published by Armstrong Games following a successful Kickstarter campaign. The game needs a single six-sided die and ten tokens per player, and it works best with at least three or four players who together choose from or roll on the tables that make up the first half of the slim rulebook. This includes ‘Species’, ‘In A’, and ‘Flourishes’, the latter the only thing that the Small Folk Player Characters can agree on. So for example, this might be ‘Ratmen In A Plumber’s Outfit’, ‘Little Mushroom Guys In A Cocktail Dress’, or ‘Owls In A Suit of Full Plate’, and their Flourish might be to ‘Down your pint’, ‘Leave a generous tip’, or ‘Do a backflip’. Each player’s Small Folk has two objectives, one big, one small. A Small Objective might be ‘Show of Skill’ such as to ‘Juggle something valuable’ or ‘Lie’ and ‘Reassure someone by saying you’re a doctor’. A Big Objective could be to ‘Defeat A Dragon’, ‘Change The World’ and ‘Found a Religion’, or ‘Win A Quiz for Boffins’. These objectives are kept secret, whereas a Player Character’s skills, of which he has two, need not be. Skills include Pickin’ Pockets, Inciting Riots, Knives (Chopping), Seamanship, Correct Dinner Party Etiquette, and (knowing) The Exits. Lastly, each player begins play with ten tokens. Everyone is randomly assigned a role—Head, Legs, or Limbs—and anyone who is Limbs receives a Mischief which is a different colour to the normal tokens. Set-up like this is simple and quick.

There are three Roles in Small Folk in Big Coats, which all together form the Stack. At the top is the Head, at the bottom is the Legs, and in between are the Limbs. One Player Character is the Head, another is the Legs, and everyone else is the Limbs. The Head is in charge—nominally—and can interact with the world and speak. If the Head wants to act and failure is likely, or better still, funny, his player must roll a six-sided die. The action is a success on a result of six, though if the Head has a relevant skill, there is a bonus. Alternatively, a player can spend coins to adjust the roll. If the Head succeeds, he can continue to act, but any failure is automatically a dramatic failure and can trigger a ‘Contest’ with his ‘allies’ lower down in the trenchcoat (or other outfit). The Legs handle movement, and whilst the Head can tell the Legs where to go, the Legs can negotiate the exact details of where he goes. If this takes too long, the Game Master can decide that the Player Character to the left of the Legs kicks him out and replaces him.

Player Characters who are Limbs cannot handle either the walking or the talking, but can add to the chaos by causing something that the Head has to deal with such as grabbing something, pushing a button, knocking a pile of crockery over, and so on. This requires a Mischief token. This is the only way in which Mischief tokens change hands and if the current Head later ends up as a Limb, then his player now has one or Mischief tokens to cause mayhem with.

Contests occur when everyone else in the Stack decides the Head is having it too good or too bad. A closed auction occurs with everyone bidding as many or as few of their tokens as they want. Whomever bids the most becomes the new Head, whilst whomever bids the lowest becomes the new Legs, and everyone becomes Limbs. However, everyone, but the new Head keeps his bid, half of which goes to the new Legs and the other half is lost. What this means is that both tokens and Mischief tokens can flow back and forth between the different roles and players can bid low in order to refresh or gain more tokens in readiness to try and grab the Head position later in the game. Game play continues until all but one player offers an empty fist in a bid to be the new Head.

Small Folk in Big Coats is a competitive roleplaying game, meaning that a player can win. This is determined by whomever scores the most points and points are scored by achieving Objectives and performing a Flourish. A Flourish can only be performed once an Objective has been achieved and the Head only has a short time in which to do it before the Legs and Limbs trigger a Contest.

Physically, Small Folk in Big Coats is decently, simply presented, with daft pictures. The writing is clear and simple.

Small Folk in Big Coats is a very quick and easy roleplaying game in every sense. That includes preparing it, learning it, and teaching it. That can all be done in minutes and so it is a perfect back up roleplaying game to have in the bag or on the shelf.

Friday Fantasy: The Serpent in the Henhouse

The Serpent in the Henhouse is a scenario for Shadow of the Weird Wizard, the roleplaying game from Schwalb Entertainment set on the world of Erth in the Borderlands between the remnants of once great empires and the realm of the Weird Wizard greatly changed by his magics. The unexplained disappearance of the Weird Wizard allowed all manner of creatures and strangeness to flood into the empires and kingdoms causing strife and civil war, as refugees fled into the borderlands and adventurers ventured into the Weird Wizard’s lands into explore its strangeness, hopefully stop any dangerous threats, and perhaps return with treasures both magical and mundane. Player Characters progress from Level One to Level Ten, their progress divided between three Paths—Novice, Expert, and Master, gaining greater ability, skill, and specialisation. A Novice Path begins at Level One, an Expert path at Level Three, and a Master Path at Level Seven. Adventures for Shadow of the Weird Wizard are tailored to these three Paths. The Serpent in the Henhouse is designed for Master Heroes and can be run as a scenario for experienced players and characters for Shadow of the Weird Wizard. It presents the Player Characters with a strange situation and a dark tomb to explore late into their careers for Shadow of the Weird Wizard.

The Serpent in the Henhouse takes place in and around an abandoned town in the borderlands. Word has reached the authorities that not only has the town been abandoned, but also that strange things have been happening in the surrounding area. People have disappeared, never to be seen again, but then statues started appearing in the middle of nowhere, in fields and forests, and some of them actually looked like the people who disappeared and others like the sheep who disappeared! Others looked like bandits and some were even posed as if they were running away. Which begs the questions as to who would sculpt and carve sheep and who would sculpt and carve bandits? With all of this strangeness going on, the inhabitants of the surrounding area are convinced that some terrible monster is stalking the land, something probably left over from when the Weird Wizard disappeared! So the authorities have hired a respectable group of adventurers to investigate the problem, see if they can solve it, and report back. These, of course, will be the Player Characters, likely working for a patron or someone who knows them by reputation.

What the Player Characters discover is a long abandoned town, surrounded by statues of villagers and other travellers, with the tracks of what appear to be large chickens or turkeys. Now most experienced characters, even most experienced players of fantasy roleplaying games, will have some idea of what the threat is given that so many animals and people have been petrified. They will also probably guess right as a nasty ambush is sprung upon the Player Characters in the deep grassfields. With careful work, they should be able to clear out the town of the immediate threat, but perhaps the most curious feature of the town is that close by stands a hill. A single hill that is the only hill for miles around and atop are the ruins of a temple whose carvings suggest that it was dedicated to Draconus. The bulk of the adventure concerns what can be found below the temple. This is a small tomb complex used by the cult which worshiped in the temple long ago. Obviously, it is full of undead, but it is also full of puzzles. Now none of the puzzles are challenging, more requiring some experimentation to work out how things operate in the tomb complex, though there are dangers too if the experimentation goes wrong. It is possible to use brute force to break through some of the puzzles, but this alerts the surviving denizens of the tomb. However, if the players do work out how the puzzles work, their characters can control access to different parts of the tomb complex, which will make exploration that bit easier.

Physically, Serpent in the Henhouse is cleanly and tidily laid out. It is well written and the map of the tomb below the temple is easy to read.

Serpent in the Henhouse is a dungeon adventure with an emphasis on traps and puzzles, exploration, and combat. There is no real opportunity for roleplaying, but that should not be held against it as not every fantasy adventure needs to involve roleplaying. Plus, if the Sage wants to include some. she could add a scene with the patron of the Player Characters or have them talk to an inhabitant of the villages affected by the disappearances of people and subsequent appearance of the statues. Serpent in the Henhouse should satisfy players wanting some dungeon action and exploration for Shadow of the Weird Wizard.

Evade & Escape

The Imperials consider the psionically capable Zhodani as treacherous, mind-sucking scum, whereas the Zhodani believe the Imperials to be violent, expansionist, mentally disturbed, psionic bigots, and guilt-ridden liars and thieves. In other words, the peoples of the Third Imperium and the Zhodani Consulate hate each other and have fought multiple wars where their respective frontiers meet in the Spinward Marches. When there are no open hostilities, a state of Cold War exists between them as each side readies itself for the next conflict to come. As part of that preparation, Alspr Detspreflstebr, Vice-Admiral of the Cronor Fleet, Zhodani Consular Navy, renowned for her expertise in naval tactics, has analysed the current situation and has concluded that there is a weakness in the disposition of the 67th Frontier Fleet’s squadrons, especially along the ‘Dietevriabr Wall’, the border between the Third Imperium and the Zhodani Consulate that runs through the Cronor and Jewel subsectors. With tensions growing along the border in the run to what will later be called the Fifth Frontier War, the Admiral commandeers the Courier Priebr to get her, her assistant, and bodyguards—Naval Provost Marshals Dliant and Shetlke—to the frontier world of Chachtinch as fast as possible. Unfortunately, the journey does not go as planned, almost as soon as the Priebr enters Jump space, the sirens begin blaring. It is quickly obvious that the courier has misjumped, but where? The Admiral and her team as well as the crew of two have a week to wait and find out. A misjump could send them anywhere. When they exit Jump space, the news is probably the worst they could have expected. The Priebr has entered normal space, high above the ecliptic of a settled system, hurtling at high speed towards the system’s star, and if that is not dangerous enough, the world is in Imperial space! And then...

Delta 3 is Down is a scenario of danger and disaster for Traveller, the Science Fiction roleplaying game and setting published by Mongoose Publishing. The scenario itself is published by BITS UK Limited, or ‘British Isles Traveller Support’, a British organisation dedicated to supporting Traveller, especially at conventions. To that end, Delta 3 is Down began life as the BITS tournament adventure for Gen Con UK 1999. It is designed to be played in roughly four to five hours, but includes notes on pacing so that the Game Master can run it within the timeframe of a convention slot. It comes with six pre-generated Player Characters and is both demanding technically and in terms of roleplaying. Technically, because the Player Characters will be faced in the scenario by a series of technical challenges that cascade almost from the start. In terms of roleplaying because the six pre-generated Player Characters are all Zhodani and in standard Traveller scenarios and campaigns, the Zhodani are traditionally seen as the enemy! Although members of Humaniti, the Zhodani are also ‘aliens’ and have a decidedly different culture and outlook in comparison to Imperials. To that end, Delta 3 is Down does include a good overview of Zhodani society to provide to the players that gives them everything that they and the Game Master needs to know.

Delta 3 is Down is a scenario of escalating disaster and tension. First, the Player Characters realise that their ship has misjumped; second, it is hurtling towards the sun of the system it has misjumped into; third, the system is in the Third Imperium; fourth, the Imperial Navy is very quickly likely to spot their ship; and so on. The Player Characters are in a constant battle to prevent one disaster from overwhelming them before another strikes. Which does make the scenario feel like a series of skill challenges in places. Ultimately, the Player Characters will find themselves on the Imperial frontier world of Emerald and trying to either find the parts they need to repair their ship or find another way off world, all the whilst avoiding Imperial entanglements. As well as encounters with the local flora and fauna, the former including some large carnivorous plants, there are moments where the characters will be challenged in ways other than technical and allow the players some roleplaying creativity. This includes helping out a farmer who needs a tire changed, investigating a Scout Service research station, and even in the long term, helping to foment an uprising amongst the rebels in the outback!

The scenario is technical, and there are lots of things to analyse and lots of repairs to make from start to finish. Fortunately, the scenario breaks these tasks down succinctly so that the Game Master can work through them and present them easily to her players. It is also very well supported. It details and deckplans for both the Priebr, the Vehrsabl Class Courier that the Player Characters begin the scenario aboard and the Lintula Class Iiss Extended Duration Survey Vessel that the Player Characters might be able to steal towards the end of the scenario. There are details too and a map of the world of Emerald, as well as an assessment of its military capabilities by the Zhodani Consular Navy Strategic Intelligence Directorate; a list of the contents of the Ship’s Locker.

The six pre-generated Player Characters consist of the Admiral and her assistant, two Naval Provost Marshals who serve as her bodyguard, and the two crew of the Priebr. These come with backgrounds and thoughts on what each thinks of the five others, and are not only given stats that are compatible with most versions of Traveller, but also GURPS Traveller. If there is an issue with the pre-generated Player Characters, it is that the pilot is young and cocky at best, despised by the others at worst. He has the strongest and most adverse personality characteristics and in comparison the other five feel a little flat.

To support the play of the scenario, Delta 3 is Down does include some slightly alternative rules. The ‘BITS Generic Task System’ is designed to handle Classic Traveller, Mongoose Traveller, Traveller 4, GURPS Traveller, MegaTraveller, and Traveller T20, and despite all of those games systems were available in the noughties when Cold Dark Grave was first published, its inclusion has really been superseded by Mongoose Traveller as the dominant rules for Traveller. The ‘BITS Generic NPC System’ is more useful since it simplifies the handling and presentation of NPCs in the scenario.

Physically, Delta 3 is Down is solidly presented. The illustrations are all of a technical nature as is the writing in many places.

Delta 3 is Down is a good one-shot scenario, though likely too long for a traditional four hour convention slot. It has potential for combat, but firmly places an emphasis on avoiding combat and solving problems in order to engineer the escape attempt by the Player Characters. Its technical nature does mean that the Game Master has a lot of information to impart to her players and its technical nature means that it will not suit all players. lastly, and what Delta 3 is Down most enjoyably does is make the players roleplay characters who are traditionally regarded as the enemy in Traveller and see the Third Imperium from a different perspective.

Miskatonic Monday #474: The Black Tide Engine

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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A dockside explosion in which labourers and stevedores are killed is undoubtedly a tragedy, but when strange effects are reported and it appears that someone is attempting to cover up the cause and those effects, it becomes a mystery. A mystery which attracts the attention of the Bureau of Occult Clearance whose mandate is to investigate events that cannot be readily explained through conventional means. Witnesses reported their ears popping, headaches, dizziness, watches appearing to lose time, lights flickering, and metal vibrating, close things suddenly appearing faraway and faraway things suddenly appearing close, and the explosion itself was unlike anything they had ever witnessed—it seemed to explode both outwards and inwards! It is 1934 and on the docks of the city of Liverpool, a deadly explosion has been reported unlike any other. What is the cause of the explosion? Who is trying to cover it up and why? To gain answers, the agents of the Bureau of Occult Clearance will find themselves investigating a deadly accident and a desperate coverup in the city of Liverpool that hint at the activities of a dangerous conspiracy in the northwest of England and ultimately following the conspiracy to the Lancashire coast and beyond in an effort to thwart science so ambitious it threatens the fate of the world!

This is the set-up for The Black Tide Engine: An Industrial Horror Investigation, a four-part mini-campaign set in the northwest of England for Pulp Cthulhu: Two-fisted Action and Adventure Against the Mythos. Ordered by their superior in the Bureau of Occult Clearance to investigate the explosion at the dockyards in Liverpool, the campaign proper begins there two days after it occurred (though feeling as if it took place only hours before). After experiencing some of the strange effects described by the witness, the Investigators help in a rescue mission before having the chance to properly investigate the cause and who might have been behind the explosion. In traditional Call of Cthulhu, this would have involved interviews and visiting libraries for access to newspaper reports and occult tomes, but not so in The Black Tide Engine. Whilst there are plenty of NPCs to ask questions, the industrial nature of the campaign means that they are not consulting libraries or Mythos tomes—in fact, there is no Mythos involvement in this campaign—but looking through shipping manifests and railway timetables that point to conspiracy not of esoteric scale, but industrial scale. Whilst ‘Act 1: Smoke Over Liverpool’ begins in Liverpool, ‘Act 2: The Terncross Problem’ takes place in rural Lancashire where it becomes clear that the conspiracy has been operating as part of the country’s railway network and behind the cover of a former Admiralty programme which took place during the Great War and was subsequently and hastily shut down.

Along the way, and again and again, the Investigators will run into the agents of the conspiracy, revealed to be the Prometheus Foundation, a conglomerate of military, industrial, and criminal interests, whose total scope lies outside of the campaign. Their aim is harassment and diversion rather than termination, and whilst they are loyal to the Prometheus Foundation, they are not fanatics or insane. This is only one sign that there is a lack of madness to the campaign in comparison to others for Call of Cthulhu or Pulp Cthulhu.

If the first half of the campaign seems oddly geographically focused and bureaucratically obsessed with railways and railway timetables, it is in the second half where it begins to become clear why and the efforts of the Prometheus Foundation take on a scale previously imagined. Previous encounters and locations, like the furloughed construction sites, surely inspired by the shipyards of Barrow-in-Furness in neighbouring Cumbria, only hinted at the scale of the Black Tide Project and the aims of the Prometheus Foundation. The incongruous discovery of an underground railway like the London underground echoes both a James Bond villain’s lair and the BBC television series, Edge of Darkness, but until the ‘villain’ of the campaign is confronted in its final scene, it has more of a blue collar feel. There are yet more discoveries to be made alongside some moments of respite, but as the Investigators and the campaign hurtle towards the climax, the weird environmental effects escalate and the Investigators need to withstand them if they are to successfully confront the mastermind in his lair!

As a horror campaign, The Black Tide Engine leans more into its conspiracy and its industrial elements rather than its horror elements. It often feels as if the Investigators are facing the thirties equivalent of the ‘Men-in-Black’ rather than a horrifying threat. There is a surprisingly Sanity loss rate across the whole of the campaign and much like a ‘Men-in-Black’ style story, The Black Tide Engine is ultimately more about prevention and containment to the point that whatever the Prometheus Foundation is attempting to do or connect to, it is beyond the pay grade of the Investigators to know (or really, the Keeper).

Throughout, the staging advice for the Keeper from one act to the next and from one scene to the next is excellent. For the act, this includes its tone and feel, what the Investigators’ objectives are, and what they discoveries they might make and what they should have learned by the end of it, whilst for various scenes, it includes typical heroic actions that the Investigators might do depending on their role—physical, technical, social, and so on, staging particular scenes, whether it involves combat, action, or a chase, and also opportunities for them to learn more. Overall, the campaign goes out of its way to help the Keeper run it moment from moment.

One quarter of The Black Tide Engine is dedicated to support for the campaign and the campaign is for the most part, very well supported. There are eight appendices in total, the first of which details all of the campaign’s NPCs, including the leaders and notables of the Bureau of Occult Clearance and the Black Tide Project, as well as the subsequent Prometheus Foundation conspiracy, and other NPCs. The writeups for some of them include roleplaying notes too which nicely supplement the quotes given for each earlier in the campaign. The ‘Adversaries’ appendix covers the lesser figures in the Prometheus Foundation and its weird technology, whilst the third appendix presents the campaign’s technological wonders. First with an overview of the devices and weaponry developed by the Black Tide Project, though the Investigators are unlikely to get their hands on most of it during the campaign itself, and then with the Bureau of Occult Clearance experimental technology, which the Investigators do get use some of (and are amusingly given some warnings about their use at the start of the campaign). The fourth appendix details the campaign’s organisations, both the Bureau of Occult Clearance and the Prometheus Foundation, and their means of operation and this is followed by a detailed historical timeline for the campaign, the campaign’s handouts, Keeper Reference Sheets, and the pre-generated Investigator details in the remaining four.

The six pre-generated Investigator consist of an experienced sailor and salvage diver, an ambitious photo-journalist, an absent-minded scientist, a retired semi-professional boxer, a mystic and diviner, and a less-than retired smuggler and thief. All come with detailed backgrounds and some definitely have decent scores in the Electric Repair, Mechanical Repair, and Science (Engineering) skills that the campaign demands. These skills are likely to be the most useful throughout The Black Tide Engine.

Although the introduction to the campaign does prepare the Keeper, there is a lot in the appendices that she will need to read to fully understand the campaign and the motivations of the NPCs and the Prometheus Foundation as it gives more context and background. In terms of organisation, it does mean that initially, the campaign feels underwritten.

However, despite all of the background material presented, The Black Tide Engine lacks verisimilitude, feeling as if it was shot on a soundstage or film backlot like a Saturday morning serial in many cases rather than in actual places. This is not an issue in the campaign’s second half, as both ‘Act 3: The Deep Works’ and ‘Act 4: The Black Tide Engine’ are set deep underground, so there is a sense of unreality to them. Whereas in the first half, which is set in Liverpool in ‘Act 1: Smoke Over Liverpool’ and rural Lancashire in ‘Act 2: The Terncross Problem’, there is no real sense of place. There is no background to Liverpool or the Lancashire of the period, let alone England, so that the Keeper is likely to struggle to bring these parts of the campaign to life. More so if the Keeper is unfamiliar with either the period and the city and its adjacent county. Bringing the ordinariness of the setting of the campaign’s first half would arguably contrast very nicely with the outré nature of the second half.

The campaign’s maps and handouts are very well done. Many of them capture the bureaucratic nature of the campaign’s backstory and its current events very well. That said, it is a pity that the railway network map for ‘Act 3: The Deep Works’ is done across two pages rather than one and that there are no maps of the city of Liverpool and the county of Lancashire across which the events of the campaign play out as they would have also been useful

Physically, The Black Tide Engine: An Industrial Horror Investigation is well presented in an easy to read fashion. It uses period photographs rather than illustrations and these are generally well chosen. It does need an edit in places.

There are disappointing elements to the campaign such as the lack of period setting detail and ultimately the nature of what the Prometheus Foundation is trying to harness. In the case of the latter, how disappointing depends on how much the players and their Investigators want answers. It is in keeping with the conspiracy genre that the Investigators may never know, but for some players that may not be enough. However, The Black Tide Engine: An Industrial Horror Investigation has an energy pace and bureaucratic structure that gives it a markedly different feel in comparison to other campaigns for Pulp Cthulhu: Two-fisted Action and Adventure Against the Mythos, a surprising combination of the Pulp conspiracy and the railway timetable versus Pulp science!

Miskatonic Monday #473: Snowfall Over Arkham

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: Snowfall Over Arkham

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Authors: Gisle Kirkhaug

Setting: Christmas, Arkham in the 2000s

Product: Scenario

What You Get: Five page, 2.91 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: “Sleigh bells ring

Are you listening?

In the lane

Snow is glistening

A beautiful sight

We’re happy tonight

Walking in a winter wonderland”

– Walking in a Winter Wonderland, Felix Bernard and lyricist Richard Bernhard Smith.

Plot Hook: A cold snap is not the time for a zombie flash mob

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

Production Values: Clear

Pros

# Short one-session scenario in the style of Gateways to Terror: Three Evenings of Horror

# Easy to adapt to other cities with rivers

# Easy to adapt to any time in the last century

# Includes notes for adapting to the 1920s

# Easy to adapt to other cold-based Mythos entities

# Chionophobia

# Frigophobia
# Somniphobia

Cons

# Needs a slight edit

# Layout is cramped

# Does not explore the situation’s Mythos origins in depth

# Demands a scene of mass sleepwalkers in the snow and resultant Sanity loss

Conclusion

# Short, sharp, sub-zero scenario that is easy to prepare and run

# Mythos elements and origins are slightly underwritten