It is a full colour, Seventy-six page, 97.90 MB PDF.
Where is the Quest Set?
Where will the Quest take the Knights?
It is a full colour, Seventy-six page, 97.90 MB PDF.
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.
For example, Arabella Bellange is playing a high stakes Poker game. If she wins, she gets top billing at the speakeasy where she has been performing. If she loses, she has to work for the owner, Domenic ‘Peanuts’ Conigliaro, in the speakeasy for free for a year. Arabella wants to play this as straight possible, since she does not want to suffer any slight to her reputation that an accusation of cheating would cause, so is counting the cards and working the odds rather than resorting to deception. This will use her Expertise Trait, which gives her a base Card Count of two. Her Sciences skill will increase this by one to a total of three. The Game Master sets the Task Difficulty at Challenging or ten.Combat in Capers: A Super-Powered Game of Gangsters in the Roaring Twenties uses the same mechanic. Each participant will make an Agility/Sense Reaction Check to determine his place in the Initiative order, whilst Agility/Guns or Agility/Ranged Weapons are used for ranged attacks and Strength/Fisticuffs or Strength/Melee Weapons are used for melee combat. In either case, the Target Difficulty for the attacker is equal to the Defence value of the defender’s Body value. The amount of damage inflicted is determined by the Suit and Colour of the card used for the attack, Black and Spades inflicting the most damage. Damage typically ranges between one and six points, but can be higher, as the weapon used will modify this. If a Player Character’s Hits are reduced to zero, he is either temporarily removed from the story or dead, player’s choice. If a player chooses to have his character die, then he gets one final turn in which he can use all of his Moxie to affect the narrative. Similarly, if a character reduces an enemy to zero Hits, his player get to decide whether he is merely knocked unconscious or is killed.
Arabella’s player turns over the top card of her deck. The card is a three of Hearts. This is not good enough to beat Arabella’s boss’ hand, so her player draws a second card, the nine of Spades, followed by the seven of Spades. Again, not enough. Arabella’s player decides to spend some Moxie. First to increase her Card Count by one. This means she can draw another card, but she spends a second to reshuffle her deck. Then she uses Probability Manipulation Power and its Control Boost to look at the top three cards of her deck and rearrange them. The cards are the ten of Diamonds, the eight of Clubs, and the Ace of Hearts in that order. Now the ten of Diamonds is enough to win the Poker game, but the Ace of Hearts is a surefire win and it grants Arabella a boon. She moves this to the top of her deck and with her last card drawn because of her increased Card Count draws the Ace of Hearts. Arabella’s boon is not only top billing at the speakeasy, but a better clothing allowance because a girl has to look her best… The Game Master agrees to this, but also because this ties in with her Vice of Vanity, awards her a point of Moxie.
Quick-starts are means of trying out a roleplaying game before you buy. Each should provide a Game Master with sufficient background to introduce and explain the setting to her players, the rules to run the scenario included, and a set of ready-to-play, pre-generated characters that the players can pick up and understand almost as soon as they have sat down to play. The scenario itself should provide an introduction to the setting for the players as well as to the type of adventures that their characters will have and just an idea of some of the things their characters will be doing on said adventures. All of which should be packaged up in an easy-to-understand booklet whose contents, with a minimum of preparation upon the part of the Game Master, can be brought to the table and run for her gaming group in a single evening’s session—or perhaps two. And at the end of it, Game Master and players alike should ideally know whether they want to play the game again, perhaps purchasing another adventure or even the full rules for the roleplaying game.
Alternatively, if the Game Master already has the full rules for the roleplaying game the quick-start is for, then what it provides is a sample scenario that she still run as an introduction or even as part of her campaign for the roleplaying game. The ideal quick-start should entice and intrigue a playing group, but above all effectively introduce and teach the roleplaying game, as well as showcase both rules and setting.
It is a twenty-page, 5.24 MB full colour PDF.
Dungeon Crawl Classics #66.5: Doom of the Savage Kings is a special scenario for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. For although it was not the first to be published as a standalone scenario—that would be Dungeon Crawl Classics #67: Sailors on the Starless Sea—Dungeon Crawl Classics #66.5: Doom of the Savage Kings was the first scenario that many players roleplayed, for it was included as a separate item in the rulebook for Dungeon Crawl Classics as the first scenario to be played after they had played through the roleplaying game’s signature feature, a ‘Character Funnel’. Written by Harley Stroh, It is designed to be played by between six and twelve First Player Characters and mixes the classic ‘village in peril’ set-up of so many a fantasy roleplaying scenario with the classic tale of Beowulf and the Sherlock Holmes novel, The Hound of the Baskervilles with more than a dash of Hammer Horror. Much like the author’s later Dungeon Crawl Classics #72: Beyond the Black Gate, it has a grim, northern European feel to it that suggests Saxon or Scandinavian influences upon its dark Swords & Sorcery.
When the Player Characters offer to help deal with the creature, nicknamed the ‘Hound of Hirot’, the Jarl seems oddly disinterested in offer of aid, rebuking them for their meddling and suggesting instead that giving themselves as sacrifices to the creature is the best thing that they can do. In comparison—and despite their pessimism, the thegns and the commoners will be welcoming, looking to the Player Characters for hope and perhaps a solution to the ghastly situation in which the village and its inhabitants find themselves in. Both Jarl and his thegns will tell the Player Characters why the situation is hopeless. Simply that the ‘Hound of Hirot’ cannot be killed. Of course, this is not the case, because the creature be dealt with. It is not easy though, and will require some investigation and interaction, some exploration, some brute strength upon the part of the Player Characters. Or combination of all three. The scenario provides multiple means—shackles woven from the hair of the dead that will bind the hound, the Wolf-spear of Ulfheonar which can pin the creature in place, and simply wrestling with it—and it is just up to the Player Characters to find out about these methods and decide which ones they want to use. Of course, in the first means, they will need to find some dead men with hair still on their heads and bring it back, whilst in the latter, they need to find where the Wolf-spear of Ulfheonar is and how they can get it.
The scenario consists of three distinct acts. In the first, the Player Characters arrive at Hirot and investigate the village, talking to the inhabitants, and winkling out some rumours and secrets that might help them defeat the beast. To that end, the Judge is furnished with a table of ready rumours and a detailed description of the villager and its inhabitants. The descriptions nicely brings to live the morose sense of hopelessness that pervades Hirot whilst also providing the players with plenty of opportunities to roleplay. The encounter with the village’s old crone, known as the mad widow, is a delight and has a fantastic payoff at the end of the scenario. What is also great about the encounters in the village is that none of the NPCs are truly evil. Venal, desperate, resigned, and most of all, fearful, but not evil.
If the emphasis in the first act is on investigation and interaction in the village of Hirot, the second is on exploration of the ‘Tomb of the Ulfheonar’, where hopefully the Player Characters will be able to find the other primary means of defeating the ‘Hound of Hirot’, the Wolf-spear of Ulfheonar. The barrow-mound is quite sparse in look and feel, all rough stone slabs and earth and roots. It is quite small and barely—and only recently—inhabited by a nasty trio of monsters, that lurk in the dark ready to ambush intruders. The tomb also narrows towards the end setting up a really nasty, claustrophobic ambush that should really scare the players, let alone their characters. Combined with a deadly trap at the end—this being a tomb after all—the Player Characters will likely be very relieved to get out of the tomb. And the moment when they exist is when the Jarl strikes, ambushing them as threat to even the dark situation and his hold over it in the village of Hirot. Of course, if the Player Characters decide not to hunt for the Wolf-spear of Ulfheonar, then the entire dungeon is optional. (In some ways, this spoils the adventure for the Judge, denying her the opportunity to throw some horrible little encounters at her players, but that does not stop her from repurposing the dungeon-tomb and placing it elsewhere in another adventure.)
The third act of the scenario is the confrontation with the beast, using whatever means the Player Characters have gathered. Here the emphasis is on exploration and combat, a slog through the mire of a foul swamp and down into the maw of the creature’s lair. The sinkhole is a nasty place to have a fight, but it makes a great scene for a grand climax.
Physically, Dungeon Crawl Classics #66.5: Doom of the Savage Kings is a good-looking book. For the most part, the artwork is good, but the cartography is excellent. The adventure is well written and explained, making it easy to prepare.
Dungeon Crawl Classics #66.5: Doom of the Savage Kings packs a lot of adventure, a good monster, and plenty of decent NPCs into its sixteen pages. It also includes quite a bit of treasure, all nicely unique and different as well as lots of little details that might play out well beyond the pages of the scenario. Finally, Dungeon Crawl Classics #66.5: Doom of the Savage Kings has atmosphere aplenty, grim and foreboding, a genuinely epic mini-saga for First Level Player Characters.
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.
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.