Monks & Mysteries

Standing at the foot of the alps in northern Italy, the Abbazia di Palissandro is a refuge away from the politics and turbulence to the south between the Holy Roman Empire, Lombard League, and the Papacy. Here, the brothers of the Fratres Herodoti dedicate themselves to the writing, copying, and illuminating of manuscripts, and over the years, have greatly expanded the monastery’s library thanks to the donations of patrons and revenues earned from locally produced goods. Nearby is a village whose inhabitants the monastery and its brothers take a paternal view of, feeding the poor, caring for the sick, and educating its children. As far as the Abbot is concerned, this is as much dealings as the brothers should have with the villagers, but again and again, circumstances dictate otherwise. Superstitious and often misguided, many villagers resort to exaggerations, lies, erroneous beliefs, rumour, and folklore when attempting to explain fortune that befalls them, for good or ill. The brothers deny the validity of such claims and beliefs, let alone the suggestion made by some of the villagers that either the village is or the monastery is home to a saint or a heretic. This leads to doubt and uncertainty and even mysteries, and in order to dispel confusion and credulity, some of the Fratres Herodoti investigate these mysteries and persuade the superstitious and credulous otherwise.

This is the set-up for Rosewood Abbey: The play-to-find-out tabletop RPG of monastic mysteries. Published by The Rolistes, it is inspired primarily by The Name of the Rose, the 1981 novel by Umberto Eco, and its 1986 film, as well as the television mystery series, Cadfael, based on the books by Ellis Peters. The tone of the roleplaying game is one of mundanity, that is, there are no spiritual, folkloric, or horrifying explanations to events in and around the abbey and the village, though they are something that the brothers will have to refute and disprove. In fact, because Rosewood Abbey has roots in Walloon, Flemish, and European folklore, its attitude towards religion is irreverent. Thus, it engages with imagery of both the Catholic Church and God, as well as actions regarded as being sinful or virtuous. This includes acts of criminality, blasphemy, and intimacy and sexuality, as well as violence and murder. What this means is that Rosewood Abbey is a roleplaying game for mature players.

Rosewood Abbey is a Carved from Brindlewood roleplaying game, which means that it uses the same rules as Brindlewood Bay: A Dark & Cozy Mystery. This roleplaying game is notable because it changed how mystery scenarios in roleplaying are run and played. Traditionally, the Game Master starts the game knowing the answers to the mystery—the victim, the suspects, the culprit, the means, and the motive—and the players and their characters have to deduce which of these is correct. In Brindlewood Bay—and thus in a Carved from Brindlewood roleplaying game—there is no set solution to any mystery. Instead, the Game Master has a slew of suspects and motives, and it is up to the players and their characters to hypothesise who the culprit is and why he committed the heinous act, and put it to the test. If it passes, the mystery is solved. If not, the players and their characters must continue their sleuthing. In Brindlewood Bay: A Dark & Cozy Mystery (and Mavens of Mystery), this is as elderly female amateur detectives; in Cryptid Creeks, it is as young River Scouts; and in Rosewood Abbey, it is as monks, or Friars, of Fratres Herodoti.

However, what is noticeable about Rosewood Abbey: The play-to-find-out tabletop RPG of monastic mysteries is that half of its one-hundred-and eighty pages are not devoted to setting or rules as much as an example of a playthrough or ‘Replay’. This relates the complete transcript of the third playtest of the roleplaying game and in particular, its first scenario. Such lengthy presentations are extremely rare in roleplaying outside of the Japanese roleplaying hobby, and this at a time when not every roleplaying game includes useful or even any examples, whether of the rules or play. It gives the reader a good idea of how Rosewood Abbey is played, but it is as a whole rather than showcasing specific aspects of the roleplaying game. What this means is that if the reader wants to look up a specific example of a rule in play, he may have to flip through all eighty pages of the Replay.

A Friar is defined by his Name and Moniker, Place of Birth, a Monastic Purview, Abilities, a Friar Move, and several items that give him ‘Joy in Small Things’. The Monastic Purview is what his primary task is at the abbey, such as beekeeper, copyist, or illuminator and he has five Abilities—Vitality, Composure, Reason, Presence, and Community—each rated between ‘-3’ and ‘+3’. Of the Abilities, Community, used when a Friar attempts to sway a large group of people, replaces the standard Sensitivity of Brindlewood Bay, as obviously, the world of Rosewood Abbey is devoid of the supernatural. His Friar Move is a special benefit or action that can be brought into play, typically providing a bonus to an Ability, another item that gives him ‘Joy in Small Things’, a separate Move that only he can do, and so on. A Friar Move also indicates a saint that the Friar is devoted to or reveres. For example, the Friar Move of ‘St. Brendan the Voyager’ indicates that the Friar has travelled to the various courts across Europe and has given him a touch of charisma, represented by a bonus to his Presence Ability; ‘St. Agatha the Nursing’ means that the Friar has a medical background and thus a medical bag which grants him Advantage when used, but is never marked as used; and ‘St. Ralph the Liar’ which enables the Friar to potentially distract or deflect from the consequences of a failure by advancing a Rumour from the Rumour Mill by making a Move roll. The Friar has several ‘Joy in Small Things’ items, each of which can be used once to grant him Advantage on a Move roll.

To create a Friar, a player chooses his Name, Moniker, Place of Birth, Monastic Purview, assign a single point to an Ability, and chooses one Friar Move, whilst the items that give him ‘Joy in Small Things’ are selected by the other players and the Cantor (as the Game Master is called in Rosewood Abbey). The process is simple, but is hidden in the Cantor section of the rulebook and does feel underwritten.

Friar Mathias of Dorsetshire
Place of Birth: England
Monastic Purview: Bookbinder
Friar Move: St. Gabriel the Herald

ABILITIES
Vitality 0 Composure 0 Reason +1 Presence 0 Community 0

JOY IN SMALL THINGS
Needle and thread, quill, parchment, cross, knife

Mechanically, Rosewood Abbey uses the Carved from Brindlewood rules, a stripped down version of Powered by the Apocalypse, the mechanics first seen in Lumpley Games’ Apocalypse World. To undertake an action or ‘Move’, a player rolls two six-sided dice, adds one of his Friar’s Abilities and aims to roll high. The results are either a ‘Miss’, a failure on a roll of six or less or a ‘Hit’ and a success on seven or more. Some Moves provide a more granular ‘Hit’ with different results if the roll is seven or more, ten or more, or twelve or more. Under certain circumstances, the player may roll with Advantage or Disadvantage, meaning that he rolls three dice and counts the highest two if he has Advantage or or lowest two if he has Disadvantage. Advantage can be gained from a Move, use of an unused item from the Friar’s ‘Joy in Small Things’, or the situation, whilst Disadvantage can come from a Condition the Friar is suffering from or is appropriate for the situation.

Every Friar has access to the Basic Moves of Rosewood Abbey as well as his own Friar Move. Providence Moves are only triggered under certain circumstances. The Basic Moves include the ‘Pious Move’ for when a Friar does something risky or faces a fear when inside the walls of the abbey, whilst the ‘Profane Move’ does the same, but when outside the abbey. Searching for a Clue, conducting research, gathering information, and so on is covered by the ‘Meddling Monk Move’. The ‘In Horarium Move’ is a way of removing Conditions—which when suffered typically inflict Disadvantage to a Move—when two Friars directly interact with each other, whilst the ‘Every Work of the Lord Move’ enables the Friars to draw upon an inspirational passage that is relevant to a situation to introduce an element to the Mystery that the Friars are investigating. Lastly, the ‘Confabulation Move’ enables the Friars to conjecture a solution to the Mystery. The roll is modified by the total of Clues found so far and the Complexity of the Mystery. If the result is a ‘Hit’, the solution is correct, but if the roll is not high enough, it can result in complications, whereas a very good roll can have additional benefits.

Rosewood Abbey is more confrontational than most roleplaying games in terms of the Cantor exposing the Friars to adversity, even to the point of Friar death. However, a Friar has access to the ‘Prick of a Thorn Move’. This is an automatic Move that is used after the outcome of another Move has been narrated to change the outcome by shifting the result by one tier, so a ‘Miss’ becomes a ‘Hit’ and a ‘Hit’ can be improved. In this way, a Friar can change his fate, but it is not without its consequences. The ‘Prick of a Thorn Move’ will be tied to a Thorn of Virtue or a Thorn of Sin depending upon the circumstances. At a subsequent point in the Friar’s routine, the player narrates a memory associated with the virtue or the sin whether it applied to the Friar himself or someone else. When this happens, a rumour in and around the village or abbey will be designated as virtuous or sinful.

Much of the play of Rosewood Abbey revolves around the Rumour Mill which tracks the rumours flying around the village and the abbey over the course of a campaign. These rumours attribute mundane events to the work of God or malicious spirits, though underlying all the other rumours is the speculation that a deity known as the Ancient exists and maybe revealed soon, though the Friars very much doubt it. In the long term, at the end of a campaign, as more rumours are marked as either virtuous or sinful and they are associated with a particular individual, the reputation of that individual can arouse the adulation or the ire of the mob. If the individual is associated with virtuous rumours, then he attracts the attention of the Apostalic See which will investigate see if he deserves to be canonised, but attracts the attention of the Papal Inquisition, which will likely torture him and excommunicate him as heretic if the rumours are sinful. Effectively, the last scene of a campaign is likely to be the Friars going before the bishop to argue the case for or against the person under scrutiny. Depending upon the roll, this can end badly for any Friar involved!

In the short term, play focuses upon solving mysteries and refuting rumours. There is good advice for the Cantor on running and presenting a mystery, as well as structuring to set a campaign up, including creating Friars. There is relatively little advice on creating individual mysteries, but the Cantor can build them around the rumours that appear and spread and model them on the three included in Rosewood Abbey. They start with ‘The Rose in the Garden’ in which a rose that bloomed recently in the cemetery orchard despite the cold weather goes missing. This is intended as an introductory mystery and is used for the Replay earlier in the book. In ‘Mocking Grotesquery’, the Friars try and find out why one of the grotesques in the abbey has changed its appearance to a likeness of a local person, whilst in ‘Fugit Inreparabile Tempus’ the Friars are tasked with discovering why the abbey’s bell was not sounded at the appropriate time as this has dire consequences! All three mysteries come with clues, locations, and suspects that the Cantor can lay before the Friars and their players to investigate and deduce a solution to each mystery.

Physically, the small and compact Rosewood Abbey: The play-to-find-out tabletop RPG of monastic mysteries is well presented. It is lightly illustrated, but the writing is engaging and in the form of the Replay, also entertaining.

If the Cantor and her players have any experience with playing another Carved from Brindlewood roleplaying game, the likelihood is that they will have no issues adjusting to playing Rosewood Abbey. Even a Cantor with experience of other storytelling games should have no problem running the mysteries given in Rosewood Abbey, but the Game Master or players coming to the roleplaying game afresh may be daunted by its play style and certainly its campaign structure. The Replay at the front half of the book does show the Cantor how the roleplaying game is intended to be played, but as a learning tool it is imperfect. The problem is that it is not written to be consulted so much as read through from start to finish, so cannot be used as a workable reference. It does need more and clearer advice in terms of set-up for both the campaign framework and individual mysteries, but Rosewood Abbey: The play-to-find-out tabletop RPG of monastic mysteries is thematically accessible and lends itself first to one-shot mysteries, but second offers a depth to short campaigns that pull the Friars into a swirling morass of rumour and superstition that can escalate and put them onto a potentially dangerous stage at odds with their previously provincial existence.

The SHIVER Files

The Mass Incursion Anomaly changed everything. It cracked the fabric of reality in such a way that dimensional incursions were reported around the world. Creatures, beings, and other things entered the world and made the supernatural, long derided as superstition and ignorance, an undeniable reality. In response, the United Nations passed the United Nations Paranormal Act in 2020 and adopted a previously secret British organisation that had been investigating and dealing with the supernatural since the nineteenth century. This is the ‘Legion Against Nefarious and Clandestine Evils’, better known as L.A.N.C.E. Today the organisation is better funded and better equipped to fight the unknown and the uncanny like never before, but where it once operated in secret, now it is a publicly known organisation, forced to act in a transparent fashion. Some of its files remain classified and there are some things about the Mass Incursion Anomaly and some of the supernatural threats that mankind faces that L.A.N.C.E. continues to keep secret to avoid worldwide panic. With the change in its remit and with it becoming a public-facing organisation, the tenets of L.A.N.C.E. have also changed. These are to ‘Protect’ the innocent; to ‘Learn’ about the supernatural secrets and so be better able fight evil; and maintain the ‘Secrecy’ necessary to protect the world.

This is the setting for SHIVER Classified, an expansion setting for Shiver – Role-playing Tales in the Strange & the Unknown, the horror roleplaying game published by Parable Games. It consists of two volumes, SHIVER Classified: Agents of L.A.N.C.E. and SHIVER Classified: The Unseen War. The first of these supplements introduces the setting and L.A.N.C.E. itself, explains its mission and its organisation, including its various departments and sub-agencies, and standard equipment carried by agents of L.A.N.C.E. It also provides guidance on creating agents of L.A.N.C.E. as Player Characters and investigations and case files that the Director can run as part of a SHIVER Classified campaign. The second supplement expands the setting with a complete timeline for L.A.N.C.E., details of its allies and enemies, a trilogy of adventures, and more case files. Where SHIVER Classified: Agents of L.A.N.C.E. focuses on investigative horror in a very familiar style, SHIVER Classified: The Unseen War goes to war with the Player Characters as members of Point Guard, the elite para-military arm of L.A.N.C.E., dedicated to fighting evil in all its forms, whether that is Doomsday cults, spectral killers, or malicious aliens. 

The set-up and support for both the Director and her players is relatively light. It includes a standard guide on how to use a SHIVER supplement, most notably the Classification Board, which categorises each scenario as if it were a film passed by the British Board of Film Classification, and the Doom Clock, which tracks time and triggers certain events that intensify the terror of any scenario as it is played through. This will, of course, be familiar to the Director and fuller details can be found in the core rulebook. The advice for the Director is short and to the point, emphasising that the Player Characters, that is, the agents of L.A.N.C.E. are there to do a job—investigate, exterminate, contain, or carry out the orders of the agency to protect mankind, rather than simply survive the horror. In other words, play in SHIVER Classified is focused and proactive rather than reactive. Given the familiarity of its set-up and style of play, it is fair to say that SHIVER Classified is not really a setting that needs a great deal of advice for the Director. The background to the setting is more of a detailed overview than a complete guide, since more information is provided in SHIVER Classified: The Unseen War. This is slightly disappointing since the Director might not be interested in the anti-supernatural Special Forces campaign in SHIVER Classified: The Unseen War, but still needs SHIVER Classified: The Unseen War to access that information. That said, SHIVER Classified: Agents of L.A.N.C.E. has more than enough information to run the scenarios and case files it contains.

In terms of Agent options, SHIVER Classified: Agents of L.A.N.C.E. suggests several options from the core rules. Thus, a Scholar could be a research agent, a Socialite a public liaison, and so on, but added to these are new options in terms of what a player can roleplay as well as their abilities and flaws. For example, the ‘Livestreamer Star’ captured an otherworldly encounter on film, but it was denounced as fake and the star as a fraud. After L.A.N.C.E. cleaned the situation up, it recruited the now disgraced ‘Livestreamer Star’. This Agent type has the ‘Evidence Capturer’ Ability, which enables him to capture information even in the most dire of situations and perhaps be able to learn a vital piece of information about whatever threat L.A.N.C.E. team is facing, but also the Flaw of ‘Disgraced Star’, meaning that he might be recognised and his reputation means that he is not trusted. The other new roles include ‘Archaeologist’, ‘Research Scientist’, ‘Ex-Military’, ‘Police Officer’, ‘Firefighter’, and ‘Paramedic’. The strangest though are the ‘Sole Anomaly Survivor’ and the ‘Recovering Cultist’. As the name suggests, the ‘Sole Anomaly Survivor’ is only survivor from an encounter with the supernatural and whilst he knows he can survive them (his ‘I Will Survive’ Ability restores Hit Points when a Doom Event is triggered), he suffers from ‘Survivor’s Guilt’ and is penalised when an ally is killed. The ‘Recovering Cultist’ is physically marked and imbued with occult power making his unarmed attacks dangerous to all, but as the messiah for a prophesied apocalypse, is a ‘Doom Magnet’ and can add minutes to the Doom Clock! Of course, many of these roles could be used in other SHIVER settings, not just SHIVER Classified. In addition, new equipment includes the hands-free torch, shortwave radio, stab vest, standard agency pistol, and unmarked agency car.

SHIVER Classified: Agents of L.A.N.C.E. contains four investigations that can be run as is and four case files that provide playable content, but will need development by the Director. The investigations are given a briefing for the Director which provides a retrospective overview of the case as if an agent had pulled the file from the Archives before presenting the investigation as a traditional scenario, including the ‘Shiver Board of Classification’. The first is ‘The Hangman’, set in 1955 in the village of Roost, North Yorkshire at a festival to celebrate its most famous son, Albert Bernard Clayton, one of England’s most prolific hangmen! Against this ghoulish backdrop, L.A.N.C.E. receives a letter from a figure identifying itself as the ‘Hangman of Roost’ and promising swinging vengeance upon the village. Could the spirit of Albert Bernard Clayton have returned from the grave to punish the villagers for crimes unknown or is there something else going on? ‘The Hangman’ is as much a murder mystery as a supernatural mystery—though it does lean a bit towards Scooby Doo—and it has an enjoyably parochial feel against its backdrop of rural gothic.

The action shifts to 2004 and deep under the North Pacific for a salvage operation in ‘The Ancient Aquanaut’. The set-up does not actually involve L.A.N.C.E. Instead, the Player Characters are employees of Cornwall Consolidated, assigned to conduct a salvage operation on the N7 Swordfish, which was lost on its first assignment mapping the ocean floor. However, L.A.N.C.E. suspects that Cornwall Consolidated developed the experimental submarine to investigate the otherworldly, so there is the option to include a secret L.A.N.C.E. agent as part of the crew. With the action taking place deep under the ocean, the result is a classic science versus the supernatural mystery in the claustrophobic confines of a submarine, as the salvage crew is stalked by a faceless hulking figure, similar to the ‘Big Daddies’ found in the BioShock series of computer games.

When the Danté Grandé Hotel goes up in flames the fire services respond exactly as they should, but for one unfortunate company of firefighters, their night is about to get doubly worse. First because they find themselves trapped in the burning building and second because as they climb to avoid the spreading conflagration, it seems that something devilish, even impish, is actively spreading the fires! ‘The Impossible Fire’ takes place in 2016 in the big city of the Director’s choice and casts the Player Characters as the trapped firefighters. There are no pre-generated Player Characters provided, but suggestions are made as to what they could be. The whole adventure is portrayed as a public relations exercise for L.A.N.C.E. rather than something in which the agency was involved, though there is the possibility that one or more of the surviving firefighters could have been recruited by L.A.N.C.E. after the event. In this way, it could actually be used as an origins story for one or more agents in an Agents of L.A.N.C.E. campaign proper.

The last investigation, ‘Smog Under London’, takes place in London in 1922 and has a strong Lovecraftian and thus more tradiational feel as the agents of L.A.N.C.E. investigate a strange fog, cultists, and more in the capital’s lost metropolitan borough, Arkenbury. The Knights of Arkenbury, a sub-agency of L.A.N.C.E. was formed specifically to defend the threats emanating out of the borough. As a poisonous fog descends on the district, the investigation leads from a swanky business and society soiret held at a local observatory to London’s docks and then underground where the fog is at its thickest and most deadly for a confrontation with the cultists. Of the four investigations in SHIVER Classified: Agents of L.A.N.C.E., this has the pulpiest feel, enforced by the set piece of the middle act, which has the Agents aboard a London double-decker bus being chased through the streets by a Shoggoth!

The four investigations are followed by four case files. These come with everything necessary that the Director needs to run them, but need a little further development to be ready to run. ‘The Killer Queen’ can switch between 1966 and the high school massacre by a killer prom queen at Perennial Heart High School and its reinvestigation in 2006, possibly on the set of a horror film inspired by the event. In ‘The Crooked Ghost’, the agents of L.A.N.C.E. are asked by the owner of a Lancashire house to investigate why he and other members of his family cannot spend a whole night within its walls. This is a classic haunted house investigation set in 2005. ‘The Plague Doctor’ is set in 1998 and concerns a L.A.N.C.E. agent gone missing whilst investigating a rash of missing visitors, strange illnesses, and weird sightings at a national heritage site, the medieval village of Derleth Marsh. ‘Cruise Along Cephalopod’ is set in 2015 aboard the final voyage of the cruise-liner, Great Destinations. The scenario needs more construction than the previous three, but ultimately, should involve the agents (or other Player Characters) being chased through the halls of the ship by angry psychic octopuses!

All together, SHIVER Classified: Agents of L.A.N.C.E. presents multiple declassified files drawn from the archives of L.A.N.C.E. This enables the Director and her players to explore the history of L.A.N.C.E. and some of its most famous—or infamous—cases. What this means is that it presents a series of one-shots rather than a cohesive campaign involving Agents of L.A.N.C.E. Indeed, the investigations and case files in SHIVER Classified: Agents of L.A.N.C.E. could be used as one-shots, whether involving L.A.N.C.E. or not, but some of the investigations and case files, particularly those set in the last thirty years or so, could be used as origin stories that tell how Agents came to be recruited by L.A.N.C.E. Or they could even be used as training missions before the fresh-faced Agents are sent out on a case of their own. However, what this does mean is that the Director wanting to run a SHIVER Classified: Agents of L.A.N.C.E. campaign in the here and now will be disappointed by the lack of support that the supplement provides to that end. In such a case, the Director will need to create her content or perhaps even adapt the investigations and case files given to the modern day. (Another option, of course, is to look at SHIVER Classified: The Unseen War.)

Physically, SHIVER Classified: Agents of L.A.N.C.E. is another good-looking book from Parable Games. The artwork is great throughout, a mix of the creepy and the looming out of the page, whilst the writing does not an edit in a palace or two.

Inspired by television series such as The X-Files and Warehouse 13, SHIVER Classified: Agents of L.A.N.C.E. is instantly accessible and a good introduction to the Agents of L.A.N.C.E. setting and supports it with lots and lots of single scenarios that explore the history and most notorious files of the agency. However, its focus on the history of L.A.N.C.E. does limit its use as a whole rather than in parts. The investigations and case files are entertaining though, and there is some flexibility in the way in which they can be used.

Solitaire: Bow

The Shoaling Festival is an annual event that celebrates the greatest of the free divers in Praelora, as well as commemorating those who have been lost at past events. Each diver has spent the last twelve months preparing for the boat upon which he will set sail out across the Gasillica Ocean, facing the dangers of the open water, including destructive spore storm, predators of the sea, cutthroat pirates, dragon hunters, and even rivals to reach the first of four Key Markers. At these points, each diver, alone yet knowing that if he is successful, he will return to Praelora to a hero’s welcome, makes a free dive into the depths of the ocean. He will hold his breath for as long as he can, attempting to withstand the pressures pressing upon him. What lies below are the sunken remains of a long dead civilisation. There he will find artefacts and relics that if brought back to Praelora will ensure his fame for another year.

This is the background for the BOW Solo Journaling Game, in which a player—or Freediver—explores a dangerous aquatic world hoping to survive and return to tell the tale. It is published by Hatchlings Games, best known for Inspirisles, the Deaf-aware, sign-language as magic, Arthurian roleplaying game, and shares much in common with another solitaire roleplaying game from the publisher. This is Dragon Dowser: A Journalling Game for One Player, in which the player will use his dowsing crystal to overcome the elements, uncover ancient secrets, battle long-buried machinery, and in the process, save the last of the dragon eggs. Both Dragon Dowser and BOW take place in similar, if not the same world (dragons appear in both); are inspired by Japanese anime, in particular, Studio Ghibli’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind; and share the same mechanics and play structure, the Carta System from Peach Garden Games. So as with Dragon Dowser, what a player requires in BOW is a standard deck of playing cards, a six-sided die, a set of tokens, and a journal for the Free Diver to record his story. As an alternative to the deck of playing cards, the roleplaying game has its own deck of cards. These have their art and text, so that the player does not have to refer to the book for the card descriptions, although the rulebook can still be used as a reference guide for all of the cards.

BOW requires some set-up before play begins. Key to this set-up is deciding upon the Marker for the playthrough. This is the location that the Freediver must reach in order to win the competition and is represented by one of the deck’s four Ace cards. Each of the Aces and its associated suit is linked to a particular theme. Clubs to ‘Sea Life’, Diamonds to ‘Secrets’, Hearts to ‘Seafarers’, and Spades to ‘Survival’. The player chooses one of the four Key Markers and draws twenty-three cards from the deck. Together with the selected Key Markers, these are placed face down in a six by four grid. Two Haven cards are placed to either side, represented by the Jokers in a standard deck of playing cards. The player’s die is put on one of these Haven cards as harbour from which his Freediver will set sail. Together, this forms the play area, that is, the sea across which the Freediver travels and explores.

On a turn, the player moves from one card in the play area to another in any direction. This costs a single ‘Seaworthy Token’, each a representation of the seaworthiness of the Freediver’s boat. The Freediver starts play with ten ‘Seaworthy Tokens’ and if he runs out of them, he is not lost, but stranded at sea. He will be rescued and brought ashore at the other Haven, from where he can set out again. Should this happen again, the Freediver’s rivals reach their goals before can reach his, effectively ending the game.

Each card turned over reveals three factors. The first is whether the card is ‘Negative’, ‘Negative Chaos’, ‘Positive Chaos’, or ‘Positive’. This indicates how many ‘Seaworthy Tokens’ the Freediver gains if positive or loses if negative. The loss or gain in terms of ‘Seaworthy Tokens’ ranges between one and five, or is rolled on a six-sided die if ‘Negative Chaos’ or ‘Positive Chaos’. The second part is a ‘Description’ and the third a ‘Prompt’. The ‘Description’ details the situation, whilst the ‘Prompt’ suggests what the Freedriver might want to address in his journal. Cards valued seven and lower are negative, whilst those valued eight or more are positive. It is also possible for the Freediver to discover another Ace, that is, a Key Marker for another Freediving competitor, giving him a moment of Respite, whilst the player is free to describe what his Freediver finds there. 

For example, the ‘6 of Hearts’ is Negative and costs the Freediver a single ‘Seaworthy Token’. The Description says that, “Residents of an island previously thought to be friendly to competitors now seem to be hostile. You had hoped to replenish supplies here, instead you need to beat a hasty retreat.” The ‘Prompts’ consists of “What is behind this hostility? How do you feel it can be resolved?” Then the ‘9 of Clubs’ is Positive and gives the Freediver a single ‘Seaworthy Token’, and has the ‘Description’ of “An abandoned wreck lies just off-shore guarded by an enormous octopus. While considering where to risk a dive, a dragon soars overhead, its vast shadow luring the guardian far from the wreckage.” Its ‘Prompts’ consists of “What is the octopus guarding? What makes it so unexpected?”.

The rules to BOW are simple and easy to learn and play. The process is helped by an extended example of play at the end of the rulebook and this, combined with the fact that the Freediver cannot die, merely be rescued once and once again (and in the case of the latter, fail at the attempt), serves to make it suitable for younger players. 

Physically, BOW is well presented. It is a small, landscape format book with some excellent artwork, much of it replicated from the game’s cards. The writing is clean and simple, making the game easy to pick up and play. With only half of the deck being used at any one time, there is plenty of replay value in the game.

Like Dragon Dowser before it, BOW is light and easy to play in terms of its rules and positive and uplifting in terms of its tone. This reflects its Solarpunk genre, optimistic and environmentally affirming, though there are potentially darker elements to the setting such as the pirates and the dangers of the sea. There is potential for the rivalry with the Freediver’s competitors to add further darker elements, though BOW does not quite make as much of them as it should, leaving it up to the player instead to develop their presence. The great feature of BOW—because it uses the Carta System—is its replayability, since the number of cards required to play are less than half of the total number of the cards in the game. This means that a player can have his Freediver participate in the Shoaling Festival year after year without exhausting all of the storytelling experiences that BOW offers and even revisiting cards previously drawn can mean developing stories told in previous playthroughs. BOW has the feel of wind through the hair, the taste of salt on the air, and the calm of the waves, with the open sea leaving plenty of room for the player to interpret the journalling game’s prompts as his Freediver sets sail for the Shoaling Festival.

Friday Fantasy: The Hunt for the Storm Calf

In anticipation of the upcoming raiding season, the tribes of Prax have come together at the Paps, the sacred ground at the mouth of Deep Womb of the Goddess, home to Eritha herself, where their leaders perform the annual ceremonies that herald its start. Although the various tribes have their long histories between them, some of them have heated rivalries, which at times can break out into open war, all that is put aside for the time spent together at the Paps. This will provide some succor to the members of the Sable Riders tribe chosen to accompany their Tribal Queen Delenda Rock Speaker and her consort, Sable-Khan Boronwaha, as the reputation of the tribe was sullied in the eyes of many by its close links to the Lunar Empire. When the High Priestess of the Paps and the Khans of all the tribes emerge from the ceremonies, it is not only to announce the start of the raiding season, but to make a portentous proclamation. Whichever Khan returns to the priestess and presents her with the most cattle will be declared to be the ‘Khan of Khans’ and thus become the year husband of the Most Respected Elder. This is a position of great respect and the Khans of all of the tribes want to win this role, but for the Sable Riders it would be a chance to restore their reputation and their standing with the other tribes. In addition, there is another factor that might persuade the High Priestess of the Paps to acclaim Tribal Queen Delenda Rock Speaker Khan of Khans, and that is the appearance of one of the Storm Calves, the cattle holy to Storm Bull, the god dedicated to destroying Chaos. Whilst Tribal Queen Delenda Rock Speaker prepares to lead the tribe west to raid the rich and fertile lands of Sartar, she turns to the trusted tribe members of her entourage to capture the Storm Calf. In other words, the Player Characters!

This is the set-up for The Hunt for the Storm Calf, a scenario for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha published by Chaosium, Inc.. It is not all that there is to the scenario, but the scenario itself is very different to other official support from the publisher. Primarily, this is because it takes place on the plains of Prax, the dry, dusty lands between Sartar in the west and the city of Pavis in the east, and most of the supporting content for the setting has focused on Sartar. It is thus designed as an introductory scenario to the region and some of the culture of the Praxian nomadic tribes that wander the region, but thematically, it is actually inspired by the card game, Khan of Khans, which is also about cattle raiding. As an introductory scenario it includes six-pre-generated Player Characters, which together with the stats and sheets for their mounts and all of the NPCs, actually doubles the length of the scenario! as an introductory scenario, it can also be run using just the RuneQuest Starter Set.

This set-up though, is really for the second, all-action two thirds of the scenario. In the first part, the Player Characters have some time on their hands whilst their tribal leaders are at the ceremony. This gives them the opportunity to interact with the other tribes, perhaps make some friendships, help make some deals, and so on. No conflicts are allowed as the tribes are all together on sacred ground, though there is nothing to stop the Player Characters stepping outside of the area and the Player Characters are encouraged to play pranks on members of the other tribes. This allows for the players to be inventive in what pranks they can play, as slightly disappointingly, there are no suggestions given as to what pranks their characters might pull.

The middle part of the scenario is the race to capture the Storm Calf—and it is a race. The Player Characters do not start at the front, but must ride hard for many hours over hard ground. There are random encounters for what happens if the Player Characters do rest, but not on the race itself. There are two location encounters along the way, but it does seem unbalanced given that the Game Master will use both of those, but only one of the random encounters and only then if the Player Characters decide to rest.

Once the Player Characters reach the Day’s Rest oasis, they have a mystery on their hands—where is Storm Calf? It will be easier for them to find it the better the result they achieved in the race there, but a timeline nicely explains what each of the tribal rivals does, depending upon the position in which they finish in the race. With everyone looking for the Storm Calf, the Player Characters will need to conduct any investigation with some speed and follow it up before someone beats them to it. The scenario’s finale takes place somewhere unexpected and may be challenging for the Player Characters more used to wide open spaces of the Praxian wastes. Lastly, the scenario gives the players and their characters a moral dilemma to resolve.

The scenario includes six pre-generated Player Characters as well as their mounts. They are all members of the Sable Riders tribe and consist of a still ardent and proselyting Seven Mothers cultist; an older cavalry rider unhappy with the tribe’s former alliance with the Lunar Empire; a Seven Mothers cultist and healer at a loss with the breaking of the alliance with the Lunar Empire; a cavalry rider whose parent was a Lunar emissary and having suffered for it, loathes the empire; and a Storm Bull initiate; and an apprentice shaman of the Earth Witch. It is a good mix and there are some interesting tensions between the six over the tribe’s alliance with the Lunar Empire just as there is between the Sable Ride tribe and the other tribes of Prax.

Physically, The Hunt for the Storm Calf is nicely presented in the house style of RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. It is well written and laid out, and both the cover and the single illustration inside are excellent. The character sheets pack a lot of information onto a single page, but there are no illustrations of the characters themselves.

The Hunt for the Storm Calf works well as a one-shot scenario, playable in a long session or two. It also works well as an introductory scenario to RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and the plains of Prax and some of its peoples. It highlights the importance of tribal status, recent Praxian politics, and inter-tribal tensions as well as the importance of traditional events, whilst also placing the players and their characters as the outsiders due the inter-tribal tensions, which can lead to some interesting roleplaying in the scenario. However, as an introductory scenario, it could have done with a background sheet for the players that explained the recent history of the Sable Rider tribe and its relationship with the other tribes so that they would have a better understanding of the situation and these tensions. In the long term, another issue is that there is not the support readily available to continue playing these characters in the Prax setting. This should not be an issue for an experienced RuneQuest Game Master though, who should also be adapt the scenario to a different tribe should she want to for the purposes of her campaign.

Although it will need a little effort to bring out some of the tensions in the scenario to their fullest, The Hunt for the Storm Calf is an exciting scenario that offers a good mix of roleplaying opportunities and plenty of action as the Sable Riders race to restore their reputation.

Friday Faction: At Death’s End

The world is dying and everyone knows it. The seas rise and the crops fail and war continues apace without reason, and the peasantry suffers taxes, plague, and worse. The prophecies of the Two-Headed Basilisks are coming to pass and for the great masses huddled on the handful of lands amidst the Endless Sea, there is no hope, only despair. Some take advantage of this empirical ennui, using the strength of their arms, to take what they want, pillaging and plundering gold and jewels, food and wine, and more—to make the time before the end, whether months, weeks, or days, at least less unpleasant, if not actually comfortable, even if this comes at the cost of the comfort, and likely the lives, of others. It is not enough for some. Three men make their way to a cemetery. The first is Lord Arrant von Shatten, a prince with something dark and offering power attached to his soul. The second is the soldier, Alstor Ironhead. The third is the dissolute wizard, Snaga. At the centre of the cemetery stands the Gates of Eternity, beyond which, if they can be opened, lie a dungeon and beyond that, on the other side of time and reason, at Death’s End, is the key and gate’s guardian. Confront them perhaps and they will find a destiny that transcends the fate that will befall the rest of the world.

The story of the three men is told in At Death’s End, a graphic novel set in a world that will be familiar to the roleplaying hobby. This is Mörk Borg, the Swedish pre-apocalypse Old School Renaissance style roleplaying game designed by Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell and published by Free League Publishing. Written by Alex Jarcor and drawn by Chucho Mendoza and published by Sanity Check, this is a graphic novel that takes the reader far from the failing world, somewhere that is never depicted, but only hinted at in the setting of the roleplaying game. It is a gruelling journey, often pushing the protagonists to call upon themselves in ways that they would otherwise forget as they first seek to open and enter the gate before anyone else can and then march across the deserts of death in search of their desired destinies. Lord Arrant von Shatten wishes for the restoration of his kingdom and to be rid of the thing that leeches his soul and whispers promises of power in his ear (much like the sword Stormbringer does to Elric of Melniboné); Snaga wants to be recognised for his power and his thwarting of death; and Alstor Ironhead desires to be free of his bloody past as a soldier. In comparison to the options presented in terms of what you can play in Mörk Borg, these three are not grotesques, but they are each flawed and failed men. They arrive at their intended destination bruised, battered, and bloody, just as you would expect from a Mörk Borg tale, and once there, they do each achieve their destiny, though of course, not necessarily as they imagined. In this way, and in showing the journey through the Gates of Eternity to Death’s End, the Game Master could take inspiration should her Player Characters ever aspire to escape the fate that the mortal world otherwise has for them

If the endgame is perhaps familiar, getting there is a story of desperate violence, bloody and brutal even as the protagonists are trying to escape it. There is a tightness to Mendoza’s artwork and Jarcor’s writing that again and again explodes into swathes of frenzied action and savagery, as the three men are forced to rely on what has enabled them to make the journey, but now want to escape. At Death’s End is a dark and disturbing story that takes the protagonists and the reader to places only previously imagined in Mörk Borg, yet leaves it open for further tales that will perhaps explore its wider, doom-wracked world.

Miskatonic Monday #472: Warm Transfer

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: Warm Transfer

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Authors: Christopher Vu Gandin Le

Setting: Tonight

Product: One-shot

What You Get: Twenty-five page, 2.67 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Call centre of madness

Plot Hook: What if the medium becomes the Mythos?

Plot Support: Staging advice, six NPCs, and three handouts.

Production Values: Clear

Pros

# One shift of escalating weirdness

# Familiar setting

# Telephonophobia

# Logophobia
# Ergophobia

Cons

# Scenario plot and plotting could be clearer

# No pre-generated Investigators

# Portraits do not always match

Conclusion

# Workplace horror that uses the medium to infect with the message

# Prompt-like organisation makes it feel underwritten

Miskatonic Monday #471: An Ominous Herald

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: An Ominous Herald

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Authors: Kat Clay

Setting: Third Century CE, Ancient Rome

Product: Scenario

What You Get: Forty-eight page, 18.20 KB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Recognition places the life of the Emperor and the future of the Empire in their hands

Plot Hook: A comet in the sky heralds great change as a murder mystery plays out at the Emperor’s party

Plot Support: Staging advice, six pre-generated Investigators, four NPCs, seven handouts, two maps, one Mythos spell, and three Mythos monsters.

Production Values: Excellent

Pros

# Murder mystery with the fate of the empire at stake

# Highly detailed scenario

# Potentially places the Investigators at the Emperor’s command

# Includes some nasty set pieces

# Investigators can win big, even the empire loses!

# Oneirophobia

# Ophidiophobia
# Toxiphobia

Cons

# Requires experienced Investigators

# A lot for the Keeper to prepare

# Some of the individual locations could have been benefited from maps

Conclusion

# Imperial party turns to peril as the omens look inauspicious

# The grandest of cosy ‘country house’ murder mysteries in Ancient Rome with an evil streak

# Reviews from R’lyeh Recommends