Weird Wizard Wondrousness II

Shadow of the Weird Wizard introduced us to the divided land of the Great Kingdom and other nations in the west and the lands once dominated by the Weird Wizard in the east. For centuries, he ruled from his capital, the Forbidden City, over a land in which he worked great changes—raising mountains to the stars, making rocks flow like waterfalls, islands set to float in the sky, growing forests of mushrooms, and setting clockworks to run his capital. Long is the reach of his shadow, its touch still felt despite his recent disappearance that has triggered civil war in the west and chaos as refugees fled east to escape the conflict and monsters from the east—cruel faeries, hybrid beasts, the undead, multilegged hulking collectors, and floating eyes that hang in the air trailing their nerve endings—have skulked west. Now there exists a borderland between the lands of the east and the west where people and refugees need protecting and from where monsters can be tracked back into the old lands of the Weird Wizard and expeditions can be launched into his lands. It is a time for heroes and a time for the brave to make a name for themselves. Written for use with the Demon Lord Engine, first seen in the publisher’s grim dark, horror fantasy roleplaying game, Shadow of the Demon Lord, the difference is that the fantasy of Shadow of the Weird Wizard is high fantasy and heroic fantasy, and thus much more positive in tone. However, although it introduces the setting, provides means to create Player Characters, and gives rules for acting and action, combat and magic, it is not complete. The Sage—as the Game Master is known and a self-confessed reference to Skip William’s long-running ‘Sage Advice’ column in the pages of The Dragon magazine—will still need its companion volume, Secrets of the Weird Wizard.

The reference to both Skip Williams and The Dragon magazine is only the first of the references to Dungeons & Dragons throughout the pages of Secrets of the Weird Wizard. These are very knowing nods, but Shadow of the Weird Wizard is not doing Dungeons & Dragons per se. Rather that it offers heroic fantasy roleplaying using a simpler, slicker rules system, a multiplicity of character options, and a standard campaign structure.

Secrets of the Weird Wizard is effectively, the book for the Shadow of the Weird Wizard Game Sage. With that in mind, Secrets of the Weird Wizard does something surprising. Something for the players. This is that it addresses the lack of non-Human ancestries to be found (or rather not found) in Shadow of the Weird Wizard. From Archon, Cambion, and Centaur to Sprite, Spriggan, and Woodwose, as well as the traditional to fantasy Dwarf, Elf, and Halfling, Secrets of the Weird Wizard gives the player access to twenty-four ancestries and thus a wider choice in terms of what characters he can play. That said, the Weird Ancestries supplement is a handier supplement to use for that purpose and it does include six more than is given in Secrets of the Weird Wizard.

Other than this, Secrets of the Weird Wizard is very much for the Sage and to that end, it is divided into three chapters. The first chapter is dedicated to advice for the Sage, the second provides a more detailed description of Erth, the setting for Shadow of the Weird Wizard, and the third is a bestiary for Shadow of the Weird Wizard.

The advice begins from the moment that the Game Master opens the book. The introduction opens with an explanation as the mood and tone of Secrets of the Weird Wizard, that its setting is one of a world in crisis, as old nations war and collapse and the new lands offer opportunity and danger in equal measure. That the new lands are ripe for adventure by heroes who seek to make it a better and safer place, to undo damage done by the machinations of the Weird Wizard, and looking to better future. This is in deep contrast to the blood, mud, and horror of Shadow of the Demon Lord. There is solid basic advice, like that of taking time to learn and play through the rules, to keep what the players and their characters simple, to keep the Player Characters foremost in the game, and so on. Much of the ‘Sage Advice’ is familiar, but it also suggests collective origins for the Player Characters, such as explorers, merchants, and outlaws, as well as adventurers. It breaks down the overarching structure of the Shadow of the Weird Wizard, categorising its quests into ‘Novice’, ‘Expert’, and ‘Master’ Quests which represent greater and greater challenges for the Player Characters. Together they will take the Player Characters’ progress from First to Tenth Level, at which point a campaign typically ends. There is guidance though for play beyond and for what the Player Characters might do in their downtime.

There are rules for travel and guidance on the many things typical to fantasy roleplaying. This includes terrain types, doors and gates, locks, walls and structures, and the like, before detailing a plethora of traps, including a hungry chest trap, flooding chamber, falling blocks, and much more. There is a guide to creating NPCs and roleplaying, combat and making it exciting, and rewards. In terms of treasure, there are oddities and items of power. The former are minor artefacts whose manufacture is lost, whilst the latter are devices of great history and power, often dangerous power. Several examples are included. Overall, the advice is excellent, giving a good idea of what the roleplaying game is about, how to handle the rules, and more.

The middle chapter, ‘Borderlands’ focuses on the lands between the Old Country and the New Lands. This covers social groups, societies and institutions, such as Bards, Druids, Free Companies, and more, so in its way looking at both classic fantasy roles and groups. Some of these are cults, like the Cult of the Last Door dedicated to Lord Death and Daughters of Hate detailed under the pantheon also detailed. The pantheon itself is conceptual in its depiction and naming of some of the gods—Want, Calamity, and Hates, for example—others less so. In the main, what the description of ‘Borderlands’ is trying to do is hit the high spots and in doing so, show off the weird and the traditional, all whilst still leaving room for the Sage to add her own content. For example, Asylum, City of Thieves, is the largest, wealthiest, and safest city-state because its government is the actual Thieves’ Guild and the most efficient organisation in the city; the Cinder Peak Isles grow in number with every new eruption; the Sylphs of the Cloud Islands are fiercely xenophobic and allow no-one to land or climb onto their islands in the sky, except the Cloud market, which they winch customers up to; the arrival of Augustus, wizard and sage in the pirate town of Eastport, echoes the ride of Emirikol; ruled by four guilds from four different towers, the primary industry of the city of Four Towers is catering the delving companies that explore the extensive and deep dungeons under each tower; and the Wyvern Forest has long overgrown a fairy realm where in its deepest parts, the Horned Lord and the Wild Woman gods are known to walk. There are notes too, on the lands beyond the New Lands, including the Weird Wizard’s Forbidden City, but these are not as extensive or as detailed. There is a good mix here of elements that the Sage or her players are not necessarily going to be surprised to find in the Borderlands, but there are plenty that they are. Plus, there is room for the Sage’s ideas as well as room for the author to expand too.

The third and final chapter is the longest. The ‘Bestiary’ takes up almost two thirds of Secrets of the Weird Wizard. The ‘Bestiary’ takes up almost two thirds of Secrets of the Weird Wizard. As well as the aforementioned entries for races or species that have options as Ancestries for the Player Characters and NPCs (handily listed all together in the PDF), there is again, a good mix of the familiar and unfamiliar. Often this is a case of making the former into the latter. As well as Slimes, Oozes, and Goos, there is a Blob, a leathery-skinned corrosive liquid-filled bladder that has eyes, mouths, and other organs dotting its skin, so is much more Lovecraftian; the Hydra are actually classed as Angels, having sprang from the blood spilled when Lord Death defeated Draconus, but are otherwise the multi-headed serpents who regrow lost heads; Kobolds are fairy folk, the diminutive miners of Germanic folklore; Ogres are the creation of Trolls, made from human stock and spawned from the Trolls’ flesh-forges; and Orcs are victims of a magical sickness that affects the soul, infecting anyone—Humans, Elves, Dwarfs, and others—who has lived too close to one of the imprisoned Ancient Ones and instantly transforming them into the hate-fuelled Orcs. The origin of the Orc here not only divorces it from its traditional cultural difficulties, but suggests new story possibilities and adds to the lore of Shadow of the Weird Wizard. The bestiary in Secrets of the Weird Wizard does this again and again, just shifting the familiar to make it that little bit different and that much more interesting. There are remnants too, of the Weird Wizard like the Observers, floating eyeballs that monitored his lands passively unless attacked and signs of the OM collective, the invaders from another dimension that the Weird Wizard fought so hard to hold off, but which are now making a resurgence with his disappearance. The OM Collective is not the only ‘alien’ incursion which threatens the new lands. All of the entries are in the bestiary are neatly organised and often multiple variants under each entry, giving the Sage more options in terms of tailoring threats and encounters to her Player Characters.

There are no real issues with Secrets of the Weird Wizard. From a useability standpoint, a bigger map of the Borderlands would have been a good idea, perhaps presented inside the front or back cover. The one given is too small to read with ease. The inclusion of a bibliography—perhaps the equivalent of the ‘Appendix N’ for Shadow of the Weird Wizard would have been a nice touch.

Physically, Secrets of the Weird Wizard is very presented. It is well written and engaging, especially the chapter describing the Borderlands, whilst the illustrations vary a little in quality. For the most part though, the illustrations in Secrets of the Weird Wizard are excellent.

Secrets of the Weird Wizard is not just the companion volume to Shadow of the Weird Wizard, but the second half of the full rules, providing as it does a bestiary of NPCs and monsters, advice for the Sage, and setting details for the roleplaying game. The advice is good, but the setting content is really good, providing details and information to make the Borderlands intriguing and playable whilst leaving room for more content, as the bestiary adds extra little details and populates the setting with the old and the new, the familiar and the unfamiliar. The Shadow of the Weird Wizard Sage is definitely going to want—even need—to have Secrets of the Weird Wizard and she will not be disappointed.

Cyber-Dungeon Classics

NetCrawl does something strange and different. Strange because it pulls the Player Characters into a liminal space, a virtual space known as the WorldNet, an unreality where hours and minutes might pass in seconds in the ‘real’ world, and where they must overcome ICE—Intrusion Countermeasures—in order fulfil their mission in Cyberspace. This might simply be to pull of a robbery or steal some information, locate a piece of software or a person, and so on, but it needs to be done without attracting the attention of the god-like A.I.s which control everything! Different because unlike most roleplaying games that access Cyberspace, such as Cyberpunk Red or Shadowrun – Sixth World, what NetCrawl does is involve all of the players and all of their characters in that translation into Cyberspace, where they will work together to achieve their aims. Netcrawl is a roleplaying game that also works as a supplement for use with the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game and the Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic, both published by Goodman Games. Published by Horse Shark Games, it shifts the Player Characters, or ‘Users’, out of ‘Reality’ and into ‘Cyberspace’ as ‘Avatars’. Inside this virtual world, they face not I.C.E. or Intrusion Counter Electronics per se, but Intrusion Counter Entities. There is not so much a virtual world as a cyber-dungeon. These are not the only dangers in Netcrawl. There is a chance of being detected and worse being noticed by the deities that are the A.I.s. Netcrawl is a setting suitable for one-shots as perhaps the Player Characters from another setting suddenly find themselves transported into a virtual world, hacking into a system in a Science Fiction setting like Mutant Crawl Classics as well as various also third-party settings such as Cyber Sprawl Classics, Crawljammer, Umerica, Terror of the Stratosfiend, and Star Crawl Classics. Plus, of course, it can simply be a roleplaying setting all of its own.

In NetCrawl, the Player Characters are ‘Avatars’. An Avatar has six characteristics—Power, Agility, Vitality, Wits, Psyche, and Hack. The latter enables an Avatar to manipulate the code which runs the WorldNet and its modifier affects critical hits, fumbles, and the like, and points of it can be permanently expended to gain a one-time bonus. It is the equivalent of Luck in Dungeon Crawl Classics, and can only be regained by great acts or courage, the Ciphomorph and Grifter Classes. An Avatar has access to three categories of skills—Security, Investigative, and Code Execution—of which he will typically be trained in one. Security covers breaking into and avoiding hazards in secured systems; Investigative skills provide clues; and Code Execution is exactly that. An Avatar will also have a certain amount of RAM. This varies by Class and Level, but is spent to purchase Daemons or equipment, Mod Chips, Programs, and Scripts.

Netcrawl has five Classes. The Avartarist sees the WorldNet as being alive and can Repattern WorldNet and holographic objects to heal them, receives a bonus Holo Die to run programs, and is bonded to an A.I. The Ciphomorph is native to the WorldNet and gains bonuses when rolling for Execute Program and the use of Hack, as well as being able to share Hack with others. The Cybernaut specialises in running Programs and can Burndown Vitality, Wits, or Psyche score to enhance the Program check. The Grifter specialises as either an Intrusion Specialist, Threat Eliminator, or Data Savant. The Intrusion Specialist is good at breaking into systems and hiding his tracks; the Threat Eliminator can harm ICE; and the Data Savant focuses on finding, analysing, and synthesising data. The Grifter also uses finished Scripts, programs with a static outcome and is also good at using skills. The Wardriver focuses on speed and power, relying on Mod Chips rather than Programs or Scripts, as well as Daemons for offensive and defensive countermeasures. Mod Chips give bonuses in combat and the Wardriver has a number of slots for his Mod Chips, being to swap and activate them, as necessary. There are different models for each type of Mod Chip, each proving a better bonus than the earlier ones and as the Wardriver’s Mod Die improves the better the bonus he gains from the Mod Chip. For example, the Brute Mk. I Mod Chip grants a +1 bonus to unarmed attacks, but the Brute Mk. II Mod Chip gives a bonus to both unarmed attacks and damage. Then with a Mod Die of three, the Wardriver gains +1 to his Armour Class whilst unarmed, whereas with a Mod Die of three, he gains the Armour Class modifier and an additional attack with a fourteen-sided die. The various Mod Chips cover ranged attacks, rate of fire, initiative, and more

What is important here is that this Avatar is a projection of a person into the WorldNet via a mix of hardware, software, and data, together known as a ‘Rig’. This person could be a ‘real-world’ person jacked in, a server in the Cloud, or other virtual entity, and is known as the ‘Host’. The ‘Host’ grants an Avatar a Hack modifier, much like the Star Sign does to Player Characters in Dungeon Crawl Classics. For example, ‘Samurai Mk. VII’ grants a modifier to ‘Daemon melee attack rolls’, whilst ‘Grid Punch Gold’ modifies the Avatar’s ‘Speed’. This is rolled for all Player Characters, including Zero Level Avatars who can then be run through ‘The Gig’. This is an entry-level scenario, the equivalent of the Funnel, one of the signature features of both the Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game and the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game that Netcrawl is mechanically based upon—in which initially, a player is expected to roll up three or four Level Zero characters and have them play through a generally nasty, deadly adventure, which surviving will prove a challenge. Those that do survive receive enough Experience Points to advance to First Level and gain all of the advantages of their Class. As entry-level software, the Avatars are essentially network & system software, developer toolkits, and hacker tools.

Avatars wield a variety of Daemons, or items of equipment, which are divided in several categories—Melee, Ranged, Protective, and Support. The weapons and armour are mix of the old and the new, but all with a Cyberpunk theme. Thus, the katana alongside razor claws and the monowire whip. Some of these are nicely adjusted so that nunchuku has a bonus to Fumble rolls and the ICE pick will subvert ICE! In general, the melee weapons are more fun than the ranged weapons, though going into battle with a screamin’ skull that fires a cone attack or a viral gun that shoots malware is entertaining. The Protective daemons are more descriptive, but it is possible to use a Firewall as temporary ablative armour, although some versions reduce a character’s Action die. There are also Datagrams which provide small, one-off boosts to an action, such as ‘Electric jolt’, which forces a target to lose its next action if it fails a Reflex saving throw or ‘Logon credentials’, which grants a bonus to a False Identity check.

In general, combat in Netcrawl works like combat in the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game. However, there are some changes to account for the change in genre and setting. This includes ICE being able to enact ‘Traceback’ and track and even attack an intruding Avatar, HupLock an Avatar to prevent it from logging out or a Kick to force a disconnection. Lost Health is regained in Maintenance Cycles, whilst an Avatar reduced to zero Hit Points is de-rezzed, begins to pixelate and lose digital cohesion, but can be re-rezzed, either through certain programs or the Avartarist’s Repattern ability and restored to positive Hit Points. Some Avatars—Ciphomorph or Grifter—can channel their Hacking ability to attack opponents, shatter objects, and even launch a counterattack against program assaults. This requires the expenditure of points of Psyche, the result determined by a roll on the ‘Hacking Result Table’ or compared with the roll made for the program targeting the hacker, this being resolved as per the rules for spell duelling in the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game.

In addition, an Avatar can install Mod chips that boost his combat abilities. For example, ‘Punisher’ grants extra damage and deadlier critical hits, ‘Stutter’ glitches an opponent’s movements and actions, and ‘Hardware’ provides defence and protection from special attacks. These are graded from ‘Mark I’ to ‘Mark IV’, as well as ‘Advanced’, and each has a minimum character Level.

Avatars have access to a variety of Programs. There are different types of code in the WorldNet of NetCrawl, but Programs are inert packets of static code that when run generate a variety of different effects in order to complete a specific function. They include Decrypt/Decompile, which makes the source code of a program human readable; Glitch causes a robot, A.I., or computerised target to buzz quietly and do nothing for one or more rounds; and Exploit allows an Avatar to implant malice code—computer virus, worm, backdoor, and the like—and so mechanically, impose a penalty into a creature biological or artificial. When an Avatar wants to execute a Program, his player rolls a Program check and compares the result to the table for the Program being run. A critical roll grants extra benefits, whilst a fumble means that a bug, fault, or critical error has occurred, and the player must roll on the tables for these possible effects. Mechanically, Programs work the same as spells in Dungeon Crawl Classics and mutations in Mutant Crawl Classics, but thematically, they are in some ways very different. Many help with particular skills, such as Pattern Recognition for the Data Analysis skill and some model the effects of classic Dungeon Crawl Classics spells in the WorldNet, like Subjugate works similar to Charm and Clone creates holographic images of the Avatar much like Mirror Image creates images of the casting Wizard. Other Programs draw from the world of computing and hacking, like Crack, a Program that breaks through Intrusion Countermeasures Electronic and other defences through brute force.

There is a list of potential Patron A.I.s, though the Judge is advised that they are option. They do provide their own Programs, and a bonded Avatar can run Invoke Patron A.I. to trigger further benefits. The main issue with the Patron A.I.s given in NetCrawl is that the Judge will need access to other content, including Mutant Crawl Classics, and both Scions of the Computarchs #1, Scions of the Computarchs #2, and Scions of the Computarchs #3.

There are some notes on visualising the WorldNet and running Netcrawl, and a guide to creating the various A.I.s, Avatars, ICE, Viruses, and Bots. This is because there no generic ‘monsters’ in NetCrawl. There are some examples though along with the tables of options for the Judge to create her own. Of course, this enables a Judge to individualise the threats that here players’ Avatars will face, but it does require more input and thought than using a traditional bestiary would.

Rounding out NetCrawl is the short adventure, ‘The Core Queen Slumber’. It is designed for First Level Avatars, who have to infiltrate a data server and locate a one-eyed wizard who has the information that they are looking for. They will need to manipulate the systems around the data server, hopefully without alerting the Core Queen, in order access it. There is a puzzle element to the adventure, which will definitely take a playing group less than a session to complete. It works as a taster for the setting or as task to slot into a loner and fuller scenario.

Physically, Netcrawl is decently written, but the layout is often jarring because it uses a lot of vibrant colours on black backgrounds which some may have difficulty reading. The switch to the standard layout for spells in the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game or mutant powers in the Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game for the Programs is also jarring, although more easily red. The artwork is decent and a nice touch for ‘The Core Queen Slumber’ adventure is that the locations are drawn as per the ray-traced depiction of the virtual world a la the film Tron.

Netcrawl is an interesting roleplaying game and setting that expands the format of the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game and the Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game into a virtual realm. It is well done and is perfect for the Judge who wants to drop her players’ characters into the realms of cyberspace and have them explore its virtual reality.

Yet conceptually, NetCrawl raises two issues. One is technical in nature. This is that there is a radical shift for the Judge and her players, not in terms necessarily of what their Avatars do, since it is suggested that the WordNet is a cyber-dungeon, but in terms of terminology, language, and how they do it. Adjusting to this is going to take some effort upon the part of both player and Judge, especially if they are not overly familiar with the Cyberpunk genre. To that end, examples of play and a bibliography would have been helpful.

The other issue is conceptual. Why play Netcrawl? After all, although not necessarily an unfamiliar genre, it is a niche roleplaying game, and it is not easy to use. This is because there is no ‘real world’ space against which to play the WorldNet off of, which raises questions where the WorldNet is, how it relates to the real world, and why are the Player Characters jacking into it? There is no discussion of motivation in NetCrawl and that is something that the Judge and the players will need to develop to have their Avatars explore the WorldNet. However, the liminality of NetCrawl does open up possibilities as it being a connecting space between worlds, so that a party of Player Characters could find themselves entering the WorldNet and after adventuring there, popping out again in another world, or roleplaying game setting. Alternatively, those worlds or roleplaying game settings could actually be massively virtual spaces within WorldNet itself. So there are ways of using NetCrawl, but as a roleplaying game on its own, it lacks strong underlying Player Character motivations and reasons to explore its setting in the long term.

The Air is Ours

It is 2045 and the biggest difference between the haves and have-nots is access to clean air. The air is so contaminated that everyone in the city must wear a filter mask fitted with daily does of ‘Hexi’, a compound derived from the Hemigraphis Exotica plant in order to breathe. Only the rich and powerful live their lives above the contamination which poisons the air and sits like fog, quite literally so in the city’s central megascrapers. Four MegaCorps control the city, holding monopolies on the manufacture and sale of respirator masks and industrial filters, agriculture including the growing and manufacturing of Hemigraphis Exotica, communication and media. Most of the inhabitants of the City live a downtrodden existence with little hope of advancement or improvement, yet there are those who resist the control of the MegaCorps over their lives. ‘Breatheless’ is a resistance group dedicated to removing this control over the lives of the masses, conducting acts of computer hacking, vandalism, and sabotage to both take back control and prevent further ecological damage from the production of Hemigraphis Exotica. Cells of ‘Breatheless’ operatives work in secret to avoid coming to the attention of the Stewards who police the city.

This is the set-up for White Sands: A Role-Playing Game the Fight for Clean Air, a game of ecological resistance set in the near future, published by Critical Kit Ltd, best known for Be Like A Crow – A Solo RPG and Aces Over the Adriatic: A Solo RPG. The Player Characters are Activists, newly activated members of Breatheless. An Activist is simply defined by six skills—Strength, Speed, Sneak, Shoot, Smarts, and Sway, plus an Area of Expertise. Examples of the latter include Hacker, Driver, Construction, Engineer, Gardener, and Accountant, but the player is free to create his own. Player Character creation is very simple. A player simply has to assign a set of dice types to the six skills, decide on an Area of Expertise, and then flesh out the Activist’s details, including a description of how his respirator mask is decorated and a ‘handle’ rather than an actual name—since they must never reveal their actual names.

Mechanically, White Sands is equally as simple. To have his Activist undertake an action, a player rolls the appropriate Skill die. On a result of one, the Activist fails and he suffers a knock in confidence, temporally reducing the size of the die type attached to the Skill. A result of two is failure without any complications; three indicates a success with a complication; four is a straightforward success; and five or more is a total success with potentially better outcomes. If the Activist has an appropriate Area of Expertise that applies or has the ‘Upper hand’ in this particular situation, then the player rolls two dice instead of one and selects the best result. Combat uses opposed dice rolls, the Strength Skill versus Speed Skill for melee combat, the Shoot Skill versus Speed Skill for ranged combat. Combat is fast and potentially deadly, an NPC or Activist having anywhere between two and nine Injury Points. An unarmed attack will inflict a single point of damage, whilst a melee weapon or a hit by a rubber bullet fired by a riot gun typically used by the Stewards both do two points of damage. The roleplaying game advises that a player create a replacement Activist given how deadly the combat system is. Overall, the rules to this roleplaying game are very simple such that specific outcomes are going to rely on narrative rather than mechanical outcome.

White Sands includes the scenario, ‘Havana Down’, which is intended to provide an introduction and single session’s worth of play. The Player Characters are newly activated Activists living in the former beach resort town of White Sands. They are asked to locate an Activist called Havana who has not been seen for a few days after successfully obtaining a keycard that give Breathless access to important MegaCorp facilities. The Activists must at least find the keycard if not Havana. It is not a complex investigation, but offers a decent mix of action and interaction, and if the players want to carry on beyond the scenario, hooks for possible further adventures.

Physically, White Sands is decently presented. It is actually very nicely illustrated such that you wish there was more to the setting than is given in the text. The book also comes with a location map for the scenario and a map of the city.

There are two ways in which White Sands can be used. One is as a one-shot, the Game Master running the included scenario, ‘Havana Down’. This makes it suitable for use at a convention. The other is as a more traditional roleplaying game, the Game Master running the included scenario, ‘Havana Down’, and then using it as the basis for a continuing campaign. That though requires more effort upon the part of the Game Master, since there is not a huge amount of detail to the poisoned future of White Sands, and she will need to develop more of the world upon which to build her campaign. Either way, White Sands: A Role-Playing Game the Fight for Clean Air feels like a low-budget television series on the Sci-Fi Channel from the nineties—playable, but leaving the reader to wonder what more there is to the world.

Philippines Peril

Achtung! Cthulhu is the roleplaying game of fast-paced pulp action and Mythos magic published by Modiphius Entertainment. It is pitches the Allied Agents of the Britain’s Section M, the United States’ Majestic, and the brave Resistance into a Secret War against those Nazi Agents and organisations which would command and entreat with the occult and forces beyond the understanding of mankind. They are willing to risk their lives and their sanity against malicious Nazi villains and the unfathomable gods and monsters of the Mythos themselves, each striving for supremacy in mankind’s darkest yet finest hour! Yet even the darkest of drives to take advantage of the Mythos is riven by differing ideologies and approaches pandering to Hitler’s whims. The Black Sun consists of Nazi warrior-sorcerers supreme who use foul magic and summoned creatures from nameless dimensions to dominate the battlefields of men, whilst Nachtwölfe, the Night Wolves, utilise technology, biological enhancements, and wunderwaffen (wonder weapons) to win the war for Germany. Ultimately, both utilise and fall under the malign influence of the Mythos, the forces of which have their own unknowable designs…

Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Operation Talisman is a scenario that takes Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20 to a theatre of war that it rarely visits, instead focusing in the main upon the home front and Western Europe. That theatre of war is the Pacific and in particular, the invasion of the Philippines by the Japanese. It is early March, 1942, and with the attack on Pearl Harbour by the Japanese Imperial Navy only three months before having delivered a blow to American pride that still stings, the USA is about to suffer another defeat. That is the loss of the Philippines. Already, General MacArthur has been ordered to evacuate to Australia lest he be captured by Japanese forces, but there is still intelligence to be gained from the enemy—some of it of an outré kind. This is an opportunity for Majestic to learn more about the occult activities of the Japanese. What they know, what they wield in the Secret War, and what alliances they might already have made. Just three months into the war, this is an opportunity for Majestic to prove itself and what it is capable of. Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Operation Talisman is a one-shot scenario with five pre-generated Player Characters. It can be played as a one-shot, as the start of campaign in the Pacific developed by the Game Master, or as a potential source of Majestic agents who have been sent on their first important mission and if they survive, could be assigned elsewhere.

The scenario is a three-act affair which opens with the Majestic agents quickly brought together and briefed on their mission to go behind enemy lines and gain actionable intelligence about enemy occult efforts and assets, what their briefing officer describes as ‘Special Assets’, as well as confirmation of disappearances and massacres at the hands of Japanese forces. They are to trek north through the jungle and check on various villages near Mount Naib as they go. The biggest problem that the Player Characters face is that they are up against a deadline—less than five days. They definitely need to hurry up and they are likely to need to make a run for it on the way back.

Initially, the difficulties faced by the Player Characters on their north are natural—slippery underfooting, quicksand, a difficult river crossing, and more, but quickly they will come across more and more signs of Japanese activities, including an initial encounter with the scenario’s primary antagonists, Colonel Takeshita Fuyuto and a strangely silent, long haired and robed woman who appears to strike fear in the surviving villagers. At this point, the characters are not expected to intervene, the Game Master being expected to tell her players that the odds are overwhelmingly against their characters. However, the knowledge they can gather is useful and will help them in the river port of San Domingo where the Colonel Takeshita Fuyuto has established a base and is planning a ceremony of some kind the very night that the Player Characters arrive. Ideally, they should arrive beforehand, have time to reconnoitre the town and hopefully prepare a plan of action.

The summoning is the climax of the scenario and the Player Characters are free to deal with it as they wish. Given that maps are given for the town and the compound where Colonel Takeshita Fuyuto has his headquarters, this final encounter (as well as an earlier encounter at a village), can be run narratively or involve the use of tokens or miniatures—depending upon the inclination of the Game Master and her players. It is a challenging battle as there are still plenty of Japanese soldiers about and the Player Characters are lightly armed (though there is a scene early in the scenario where they have the chance to gain more or better equipment). The aftermath of the climax is a race back through enemy lines to report back to headquarters. Depending upon the outcome of the battle in San Domingo this can extremely unnerving or it can be a relatively safe journey bar a run in with a Japanese patrol or two.

The scenario includes full stats for the chief villains of the piece, Colonel Takeshita Fuyuto and his thoroughly evil ‘great-great-aunt’, Oba-San, as well as Japanese soldiers. The five pre-generated Majestic agents consist of a female dilettante* and traveller of Japanese-Sicilian background, a combat engineer, a military policeman with a background in the occult, an ex-burglar turned soldier, and a Filippino soldier and jungle scout. All five are lightly equipped as there U.S. Army is running short of supplies in the face of the Japanese onslaught.

* Her name is Beverly Andrews. There is no indication as to which set of sisters she is related to.

Physically, Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Operation Talisman is generally well presented, though it could have been tidier in places. It does not have any artwork, which is a pity as it would have been nice for the chief villain and his ‘great-great-aunt’ to have been illustrated. The scenario’s four maps are good, but these are battle maps, not area maps. Again, it would have been nice if the area map that the Player Characters are given in game as part of their briefing had also been included as a handout.

Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Operation Talisman is a mission-based scenario. Which means it is quite linear in its plotting, but it will tests the Player Characters from start to finish, there is scope for roleplaying, and of course, there is plenty of action. Plus it takes the players to a different theatre of war and focuses more strongly on other factions in the Secret War. Plus its treatment of the Mythos is a little more restrained in comparison to other scenarios involving either Black Sun or Nachtwölfe for Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20, so the tone of the scenario is a bit more creepy rather than out and out pulp horror. Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Operation Talisman is a solid scenario that be run as a one-shot, as a change of pace from other Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20 scenarios, or with some effort from the Game Master be the beginning of a behind the lines campaign in the Philippines.

Friday Fantasy: EM1 – Eastern Spark

EM1 – Eastern Spark is a classic fantasy roleplaying scenario, set on the edge of an empire where the frontier promises work, adventure, and danger. The region is ‘The March’, a province of Mertannic Empire far from the capital. It is beset by brigands, pirates, dangerous creatures of all types, a bear beset by lightning, and more. It is specifically written for use with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition and its retroclones, such as OSRIC, but there is also a version available for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. It is published by Tarichan Games and designed to be played by five Player Characters of First Level. To get the best out of the scenario, at least one Player Character should be a Druid or have the capacity to speak to animals. The scenario offers some eight mini-adventures or extended encounters, across sixteen different locations, which all together should offer roughly ten to twelve sessions’ worth of play.

EM1 – Eastern Spark begins with the Player Characters on the road to the village of Hadd, the main settlement in the region. As they make way past a horse ranch, they see a trio of men dismantling the fence, enter the ranch, and approach the horses, who shy away. Clearly an act of horse theft is about to be carried out. It is not an unreasonable start to the scenario, as it drops the Player Characters straight into the action. However, there is no payoff to the encounter. There is no discussion of what happens next or how the sisters who run the farm react. It would be the perfect situation to get the Player Characters invested in the region, if only a little at this stage, and then an opportunity for the Dungeon Master to impart some information via the sisters. This lack of information compounds the lack of reasons why the Player Characters might want to travel to ‘The March’. There are no hooks to pull them towards the village of Hadd, no rumours to entice them to visit. Nor does it help that instead of going on to Hadd, the Player Characters could wander off to the nearby fishing hamlet of Fry, where the brawny inhabitants might hire the Player Characters to help them fish because they no longer have the manpower to do as much as they did, or they might attempt to drown the Player Characters because it turns out that the fisherfolk of Fry are evil cultists. What cult they belong to and what its aims are, is not explained, and certainly, there is no suggestion that the sisters at the horse ranch might hint that the people of Fry are a strange lot…

Things do pick up once the Player Characters reach Hadd. There are more NPCs to interact with and there are rumours that the Player Characters can pick up. There is a visiting herald who will spread the news and there are potential employers to be found. Jobs available include finding work as fishermen in the nearby hamlet of Fry, that an agent of the Guilds’ Bank wants someone to visit a nearby hidden village of Gnomes and collect a message from them, and even someone wanting some ‘night work’ done. In terms of presentation, these individual employment opportunities are the highlight of EM1 – Eastern Spark as they are neatly organised and easy to use with sections for each job’s ‘Origin’, ‘Destination’, ‘Description’, ‘Trigger’, ‘Engagement Opportunities’, ‘Successful Consequence’, and ‘Consequence if incomplete’, all handily encapsulated in half a page. What is interesting with many of these jobs is that some of them do not have any positive outcomes. For example, in the ‘Light Work’ plot, the Player Characters are hired for some ‘night work’, which actually involves their signalling with a lantern to a boat out to sea at the mouth of a nearby river. If the Player Characters get involved and successfully signal to the boat over successive nights, they will have alerted some pirates who on subsequent days will come ashore and either sell slaves and/or raid farms. However, even if the Dungeon Master and her players do accept slavery as an aspect of the scenario, the scenario does not say might want to buy them, if at all. If the Player Characters decline this task, the scenario suggests that others will be recruited in their stead, but the scenario does not say who they are. Potentially, they could be a trio of amoral, selfish adventurers that appear in the scenario’s climax, but again, the scenario does not say whether this is the case. Potentially, this is an interesting situation that can play out in several ways and have different consequences for the Player Characters. Is their involvement discovered and if so, are they blamed, and who by? If not involved, will they discover the involvement of the other NPCs? However, again, the ramifications are not fully explored.

The scenario’s two major plot strands include a druid under a curse and the Gnomes at their hidden village of Opus. Hadd’s druid Nehira has been struck with a curse that renders her unable to communicate because her links to a radical sect of primitive druids. Initially, the Player Characters’ involvement with this is peripheral, encountering an NPC who sets up Nehira’s assassination. In the meantime, the Player Characters are expected to visit the Gnome village and collect a letter. However, the Gnomes do not trust them and ask the Player Characters to deal with a problem that they have—an attack by a ‘Lightning-infused Black Bear’! This encounter with the strange bear takes place in a grove, the nearest that EM1 – Eastern Spark has to a dungeon.

When the Player Characters return to Hadd after revisiting the Gnomes of Opus, the scenario kicks into a higher gear with the penultimate encounter, ‘Savage Hadd’. All of the animals in the village are enraged and have gone berserk and not only are the villagers terrified, but they also blame the druid, Nehira! Here the scenario does bring the villagers to life, detailing the different ways in which the various households are under attack and what their inhabitants will do if the Player Characters saves them. There is a nice mix here. The likelihood is that the scenario will end with the Player Characters confronting Nehira. They may kill her, they may save her from whatever is affecting her—though that is likely to be through more luck than skill, since there is little in the way of clues as to the cause of her condition and how it might be relieved. Certainly, there are no clues as to who might have done it and why. Perhaps these and the other questions raised in EM1 – Eastern Spark might be answered in EM2 –Prelude to The March?

There are three primary issues with EM1 – Eastern Spark. One is that it raises more questions than it answers, such as the nature of the cult in Fry and who might purchase slaves from the pirates? The second is that the scenario is too often threadbare when it comes to making connections between people and places and plots and fleshing it out with smaller details that might arouse the interest of the players and their characters and so motivate them to act. The scenario looks like a hexcrawl, but it really is not given the main plot around Nehira’s madness. Arguably, it would have been better if that had been brought to the fore as the scenario’s spine and the other plots presented as side encounters.

Physically, EM1 – Eastern Spark is perfunctorily presented at best. The artwork is variable in quality and the cartography is serviceably done using a software mapping program.

EM1 – Eastern Spark is underwritten and underdeveloped and rarely clearly explained. There is the basis of a decent adventure within its pages, but the Dungeon Master will need to do some deconstruction and redevelopment, adding some much needed details of her own before it really fully works.

Miskatonic Monday #417: Party Favour

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: Party Favour

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: PJC

Setting: Australia, 1932

Product: One-shot
What You Get: Fifty-four-page, 11.61 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Revolution and reaction on the bloody streets of Sydney

Plot Hook: The favour is a hunt for missing Party loyalists

Plot Support: Staging advice, six pre-generated Communist Investigators, two major NPCs, twenty-eight handouts, two maps.

Production Values: Good

Pros

# Politically-themed scenario for Terror Australis: Call of Cthulhu in the Land Down Under

# Beer mat as a handout! (How very Australian)

# Historically detailed and annotated scenario

# Adjustable to run as a convention scenario

# Punch a Fascist moments built in

# Nice period maps

# Tyrannophobia

# Trypophobia

# Cuprolaminophobia

Cons

# Layout could be tidier

# Running it as a convention scenarios misses some of cultural subtleties

Conclusion

# Showcases the effects of the Great Depression from an Australian angle

# Politically-charged punch-up of a scenario

# Reviews from R’lyeh Recommends

Miskatonic Monday #416: Welcome to Silkwood Motel

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: Welcome to Silkwood Motel

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Niebosky

Setting: Jazz Age USA

Product: Scenario
What You Get: Nine-page, 9.45 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Arachnophobia at the Bates Motel

Plot Hook: A dark and stormy night forces a last stay at the Silkwood Motel

Plot Support: Staging advice, one NPC, one floorplan, and one Mythos monster and a swarm of Mythos monsters!

Production Values: Solid

Pros

# Very short, creepy session, suitable as a side trek or encounter in between longer scenarios.

# Suitable for small groups, but necessarily a single Investigator

# Would work with Spawn of Azathoth

# Easily adapted to other countries and eras

# Arachnobia

# Daknophobia

# Tokophobia

Cons

# Floorplans hard to read

Conclusion

# Single session, harrowing encounter that will put the put the Investigators off lonely motels
# Easy to slip into a campaign or between scenarios.