[Free RPG Day 2026] Fossilized Violence QuickStart – Second Bite

Now in its nineteenth year, Free RPG Day for 2026 took place on Saturday, June 27th. As per usual, Free RPG Day consisted of an array of new and interesting little releases, which are traditionally tasters for forthcoming games to be released at GenCon the following August, but others are support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera or a quick-start. This included dice, miniatures, vouchers, and more. Unfortunately, due to vagaries of International Customs, Free RPG Day in the UK did not take place until Saturday, 22nd August.

This review is possible due to the generosity of Waylands Forge in Birmingham.

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Quick-starts are a 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.

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What is it?
Fossilized Violence QuickStart – Second Bite is the quick-start for Fossilized Violence, the roleplaying game of prehistoric warrior cavemen hunt and kill the dinosaurs that are found lurking everywhere across the primeval supercontinent of Pangeon, published by R. Talsorian Games, best known for the roleplaying game, Cyberpunk RED.

Fossilized Violence QuickStart – Second Bite is a thirty-two page, full colour booklet.

How long will it take to play?

Fossilized Violence QuickStart – Second Bite will take five minutes to set up and about an hour or so to play through.

What else do you need to play?
Fossilized Violence QuickStart – Second Bite requires a set of polyhedral dice to play, at minimum (and probably more), whilst the Game Master also needs a plenty of extra twelve-sided dice. In addition, the Game Master will ideally want some terrain and lots of plastic dinosaurs as plastic cavemen. Alternatively, if playing at home, Fossilized Violence QuickStart – Second Bite encourages the Game Master to scavage what items she can find about the house to create the arena where the Player Cavemen will fight the dinosaurs.

Who do you play?
Fossilized Violence QuickStart – Second Bite includes four pre-generated Player Characters. They are all Cavemen Warriors armed with a variety of weapons.

How is a Player Character defined?

In Fossilized Violence QuickStart – Second Bite, a Player Caveman is defined by three stats—Attack, Defence, and Trait. These are defined by a die type, up to maximum of a twelve-sided die. He eight Traits—Brain, Eyes, Mouth, Skin, Arms, Hands, Legs, and Feet. Each has a Difficulty value attached to it, four at Difficulty 6, three at Difficulty 7, and one at Difficulty 8. He will also have some Hit Points, some armour, and some weapons and gear.

How do the mechanics work?

Mechanically, to have his caveman attempt a task a player rolls his caveman’s Trait die plus the four-sided die of Fate and compares the total with value of the associated Trait for the task. If the roll is higher, the Player Caveman succeeds. If the roll is failure, the player can reroll, but loses the ability to roll against that Trait until the next session. The four-sided die of Fate also explodes on a roll of a four and a player can keep rolling and adding as long as the result is four each time.

How does combat work?

Combat in Fossilized Violence QuickStart – Second Bite is where it gets exciting! To make an attack, the attacker rolls his Attack Stat die plus the four-sided die of Fate whilst the defender rolls his Defence Stat die plus the four-sided die of Fate. If the result of the Attack roll is higher than the Defence roll, the attack succeeds. If the roll is five or more higher than the Defence roll, the attacker inflicts a Critical, and if it is ten or more higher than the Defence roll, the attacker inflicts a Super Critical. There are critical tables for bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing attacks, plus a Super Modifier table.

A Player Caveman is encouraged to enact ‘Fossilized Moves’ and so fight with style. ‘Battlecry’ will get a Player Caveman and an ally each a Violence Point; ‘Fight Together’ means that a Player Caveman and an ally gain a Violence Point, both temporally roll a twelve-sided for all Stats, and gets an extra Movement when the other moves; and ‘Plunge Your Weapon’, a Player Caveman thrusts his weapon into an enemy, automatically inflicting an Impale piercing Critical, but lose hold of the weapon in the process. Many of have failure conditions too and many can also be used by dinosaurs as well as a Player Caveman.

A Player Cavemen also has access to Violence Points. He starts with one when combat starts and many more can be gained from using Fossilized Moves as well as good roleplaying in and out of combat. They can be spent for a variety of effects, including rerolling incoming damage and taking the lower result; to decrease a Super Critical to a Critical the Player Caveman is about to suffer; to spend the die type rolled by a dinosaur for its Attack Stat; to increase a Critical to a Super Critical when a Player Caveman attacks; and to roll a twenty-sided die instead of a Stat die.

How does magic work?

There is no magic in Fossilized Violence QuickStart – Second Bite.

What do you play?

The scenario in Fossilized Violence QuickStart – Second Bite is not so much a scenario as an arena battle. The Game Master is encouraged to run round the house and grab a bunch of things—books, bottles, newspapers, and craft supplies—and throw that down as the arena. The Game Master also secretly sets a timer that countdowns until a point when the Player Cavemen can escape the arena. Movement is not handled in squares, and instead uses a player’s hand length or finger length to determine movement and range. If a Player Caveman’s Hit Points are reduced to zero, there is a chance that he will recover, but with one Hit Point. Otherwise, he will die and an ally will gain a Violence Point. Dinosaurs do die when their Hit Points are reduced to zero. The last Player Cavemen standing has his Stats increased to twelve-sided dice for the reminder of the combat.

Fossilized Violence QuickStart – Second Bite includes four dinosaur types. These are the Allosaurus, Anzu, Brontosaurus, and Velociraptor. The bigger ones have two attacks and all of them have their own Critical tables.

Is there anything missing?
No. The Fossilized Violence QuickStart – Second Bite is complete as is.

Is it easy to prepare?
Yes. The Fossilized Violence QuickStart – Second Bite is easy to grasp and prepare.

Is it worth it?
Yes. The Fossilized Violence QuickStart – Second Bite includes everything for a solid battle in the world of Pangeon. It showcases the rules more than the setting, but that is good for an hour’s worth of dinosaur battling.

The Fossilized Violence QuickStart – Second Bite is available from the R. Talsorian Games.

2008: Saga of the Rat King

1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.

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In 2003, Goodman Games launched its long running Dungeon Crawl Classics series, which combined old style play with modern rules, with Dungeon Crawl Classics #1: Idylls of the Rat King. In that scenario, the Player Characters’ investigations into raids by Goblin bandits on caravans carrying silver ore lead to the nearby Gannu Silver Mine which turned out to be infested by not just Goblins, but rats and Wererats. The final confrontation in the mine is with Lawrence Gannu, cursed by the villagers of Silverton to be a Wererat after they blamed his father for a dangerous discovery in the mines, returned to take his revenge upon the villagers. This scenario was more recently republished as Fifth Edition Fantasy #31: Idylls of the Rat King, for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. In 2006, the publisher released a sequel, Dungeon Crawl Classics #27: Revenge of the Rat King. The Player Characters have an opportunity to confront Aaron Gannu, father of Lawrence, in this sequel. However, he has other designs on the Player Characters and they are tested sorely as he lures them into his lair, weakens them and depletes their resources, before capturing them. Fortunately, the Player Characters, only armed with luck and wits, do have the opportunity to escape, find their possessions, and fully arm themselves once again before the final showdown. Both Dungeon Crawl Classics #1: Idylls of the Rat King and Dungeon Crawl Classics #27: Revenge of the Rat King were written for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition, rather than the publisher’s own (not yet published) Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game.

Dungeon Crawl Classics: Saga of the Rat King is not written for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition or Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game. Published in 2008 for sale at Gen Con Indy in 2008, it is instead a special module in more ways than one, First, it is written for use with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition, rare in 2008 as it would be for today. second, it combined both Dungeon Crawl Classics #1: Idylls of the Rat King and Dungeon Crawl Classics #27: Revenge of the Rat King. Third, it not only compiles the previously published scenarios, but includes a third new part, ‘The Scourge of Silverton’. This connects the two scenarios and it means that together, all three parts can be played as a single campaign taking the Player Characters from First Level all the way up to Sixth Level.

The plot to both Dungeon Crawl Classics #1: Idylls of the Rat King and Dungeon Crawl Classics #27: Revenge of the Rat King remain the same. In the former, the Player Characters explored the apparently abandoned Gannu Silver Mine and find it crawling with Goblins and Wererats, one level of the mine being reworked with zombie slaves, and Lawrence Gannu the Wererat overseeing it all as well as something else hidden deep in the bowels of the mine. In the latter, the Player Characters are in the city of Soulgrave tracking down a ring of slavers and are lured in one big dungeon trap by Aaron Gannu, father of Lawrence, who will have his revenge! Divided over three acts, the Player Characters will be tested in each. First, with a series of challenging dungeon encounters designed to wear them down; second by capturing them and stripping them of all their equipment; and third, with dangerous battle against Aaron Gannu’s minions and finally, Aaron Gannu himself. It remains an evil dungeon. However, there are changes to both because, understandably, this is a compilation for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition, not Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition.

The most obvious change is from a roleplaying game with intrinsic rules for skills, skill checks, and other activities to a roleplaying game without those. Here we are in classic ‘rulings not rules’ territory, Dungeon Crawl Classics: Saga of the Rat King leaving it very much up to the Dungeon Master to decide upon the specifics of how resolve a Player Character action. Unfortunately, this is not consistently applied throughout the adventure anthology, giving it slightly unbalanced feel. Without the suggested mechanic solution for each and every situation, it feels authentic to the design and play of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition, but where they are included, they intrude rather than feel natural.

However, the adaptation from Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition has been less consistently applied to the ‘Idylls of the Rat King’ part of the campaign. One of these is narrative in that as a section of boxed text explains whilst Dungeon Crawl Classics #1: Idylls of the Rat King had Goblin Wererats as its main monsters, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition restricts lycanthropy to Humans only. Thus, there are no Goblin Wererats in Dungeon Crawl Classics: Saga of the Rat King, only Human ones. Neither are there any Goblin Clerics in Dungeon Crawl Classics: Saga of the Rat King, these also having been changed to Human Clerics, though still devoted to the rat gods Narrimunth and Nimlurun. Similarly, the Goblin Wizard of the original has been changed to Human Wizard, but in this his illustration is that of the Goblin in the original, and whilst the bandit chief and his guards are now described as Human, their illustration still shows them to be Goblins. Lastly, Half-Orc slavers have been added to the scenario. These effectively replace the Goblins who would fight to the death to protect the young Goblins in the tribe’s nursery. So now the Half-Orc slavers will fight to the death to protect their slaves, which though ties in with the slave ring theme found in ‘Revenge of the Rat King’, it still does not make sense narratively.

It should be noted that ‘Revenge of the Rat King’ still retains the story element of the Player Characters being captured by the Rat King. As problematic as this in terms of storytelling and player agency, it is very difficult to change this because it is pivotal to the events of the scenario.

In between ‘Idylls of the Rat King’ and ‘Revenge of the Rat King’ is ‘The Scourge of Silverton’. This is designed for Player Characters of Third and Fourth Level. It is designed as a short bridging affair between the two scenarios, but it is not a full enough adventure to provide sufficient Experience Points to take the Player Characters from ‘Idylls of the Rat King’ to ‘Revenge of the Rat King’, so the Dungeon Master will want to run other content before it as ‘The Scourge of Silverton’ is a direct prequel to ‘Revenge of the Rat King’. It provides a specific reason for the Player Characters to travel from Silverton to Soulgrave. The scenario draws the Player Characters back to Silverton, which has been restored to its fortunes with the death of Lawrence Gannu and the driving out of his bandits at their hands. Lawrence’s younger half-brother, Marcus, equally as evil, has heard of his brother’s death and working with their father, has concocted a plan to take revenge upon the Player Characters. This will play out in ‘Revenge of the Rat King’, but to set this up and draw the Player Characters in, Marcus kidnaps several of the villagers from Silverton and holds them to ransom. The villagers of Silverton ask the Player Characters to deliver the ransom to the Deveraux Silver Mine and ensure the safe return of the hostages.

The Player Characters have the choice of handing over the ransom or fighting their way into the mine. Either way, they will have a fight to get to the hostages as the situation is not simply a ransom and hostage exchange, but of course, a trap! Marcus has seeded the mine with traps and groups of his men, who will snipe and harass the Player Characters as they work their way to where the hostages are being held. Ultimately, there will be a confrontation with Marcus, but he and his chief henchman will escape the mine in Indiana and the Temple of Doom style in a mine cart with the Player Characters in hot pursuit.

‘The Scourge of Silverton’ is a set-up and also a set-up to a set-up, that of ‘Revenge of the Rat King’. It is short and serviceable, playable in a single session or so, and primarily combat focused. The addition of Marcus Gannu is the main addition to the trilogy in terms of its storytelling, but the main problem with ‘The Scourge of Silverton’ is that it sets up Marcus Gannu as a villain, but then lets him exit the trilogy of scenarios as he does not appear in the updated version of ‘Revenge of the Rat King’.

Physically, Dungeon Crawl Classics: Saga of the Rat King is done in the then style of the Dungeon Crawl Classics line. The artwork is decent, though not always befitting the text, and the cartography varies in style and quality. This is from the very plain, even dull, maps of ‘Idylls of the Rat King’ to the detailed maps for ‘Revenge of the Rat King’ and ‘The Scourge of Silverton’. Unfortunately, Dungeon Crawl Classics: Saga of the Rat King is not let down by its adaptation to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition, but rather by its lack of consistency when it comes to terminology and phrasing. Errors are strewn throughout the book. Not necessarily to make Dungeon Crawl Classics: Saga of the Rat King unplayable, but more than enough to irk the veteran of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition and potentially confuse the Dungeon Master who has less experience of playing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition.

Dungeon Crawl Classics: Saga of the Rat King provides three different styes of dungeons. ‘Idylls of the Rat King’ is a dungeon crawl; ‘The Scourge of Silverton’ is an extended combat encounter, a game of cat-and-mouse through the mines; and ‘Revenge of the Rat King’ is a challenging, even evil, obstacle course that will test the players’ lateral thinking and dungeoneering skills perhaps more than those of their characters. This gives it variety that is neatly tied to its theme of revenge that runs through all three parts.

Dungeon Crawl Classics: Saga of the Rat King is really a trilogy in two parts because ‘The Scourge of Silverton’ is not enough to bridge the gap between the events of ‘Idylls of the Rat King’ and ‘Revenge of the Rat King’. It does, however, provide a reason for the Player Characters to play through ‘Revenge of the Rat King’, so very much a mini-prequel. Which means that Dungeon Crawl Classics: Saga of the Rat King is not really a mini-campaign either, since it has a beginning and an end, but no real middle. The Dungeon Master will have to provide that, and perhaps one way of doing it, is to use Dungeon Crawl Classics: Saga of the Rat King as a precursor to the classic campaign, Against the Slave Lords, since there are elements in ‘Revenge of the Rat King’ inspired by that campaign.

[Free RPG Day 2026] The Crooked House

Now in its nineteenth year, Free RPG Day for 2026 took place on Saturday, June 27th. As per usual, Free RPG Day consisted of an array of new and interesting little releases, which are traditionally tasters for forthcoming games to be released at GenCon the following August, but others are support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera or a quick-start. This included dice, miniatures, vouchers, and more. Unfortunately, due to vagaries of International Customs, Free RPG Day in the UK did not take place until Saturday, 22nd August.

This review is possible due to the generosity of Waylands Forge in Birmingham.

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The Crooked House is a haunted manifestation of the Crooked Queen, a twisted wooden edifice in the American Gothic edifice that stands on the hill above the village and has many names and owners. Today it is known as Druskenvald Manor, named for the current owners Philip and Adela Druskenvald, given the building and its grounds as gift from the local mayor, eager to have someone own and restore it and perhaps bring some life to the village. In the past, it was Lockwood Estate, but they died or disappeared in a great tragedy, it has stood empty until the Druskenvalds arrived. Now they are in danger, for the building twists all who stay within its walls, playing on their worst fears, the minions of the Crooked Queen driving them to madness and preparing them for sacrifice within its walls! Now Philip and Adela Druskenvald are the next victims of both the house and the Crooked Queen, and the Player Characters have invited to dine with them. Most obviously to celebrate their good fortune, but also because Adela has been suffering from unsettling nightmares…

The Crooked House: Folk Horror Roleplaying for Four 3 Characters is a scenario for The Crooked Moon, the folk horror roleplaying game setting for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition published by Avantris Entertainment. It includes a dark and dangerous mystery and some thoroughly vile monsters and villains, all wrapped up in an atmospherically twisted haunted house.

The first thing that strikes you about The Crooked House are its production values. Against its sepia tones that make it stand out from anything else released for Free RPG Day, the artwork is excellent, especially of the monsters that appear in the scenario. The three dimensional cutaway map of the house is good too, although perhaps a little dark to read proper. The standard maps are really good though, capturing the feel of a lived in house that has gone to seed due to its misuse by the Crooked Queen and her servants, including Vessla Browntooth, the Weasel Hag, and the Crooked Man, Vessla’s minion, who will taunt the Player Characters again and again, before fading away each time.

In fact, the Crooked Man is the first person that the Player Characters will encounter in the adventure, hinting at that the things they will find inside whilst also relishing what might become of them once they are inside. Some of that is also foreshadowed in the paintings that they find in the foyer that in turn unsettlingly depicting the former occupants and the current occupants, and worse, the Player Characters! Even then, the paintings have been cursed and have deleterious effect upon anyone who examines them. They are the first of many things that have been twisted in the crooked house and there is a constant pattern of the familiar features of a family home so twisted and turned to horror. Many of these things are classic haunted house elements, such as the spirit board in the parlour and need to hold a séance, a self-playing harpsichord in the music room, a rich feast that quickly reveals itself to be rotten and then attacks the Player Characters, and so on. Yet there are some little tweaks here and there, like the haunted wooden doll which instead of attacking the Player Characters begs for their help in checking for monsters, and instead of a deluge of blood flowing out of a room and into the hallway a la the film The Shining, the Player Characters are in the bathroom when it fountains up from the plughole! In nearly every instance, the Player Characters need to engage with these in order find a half dozen artefacts connected to the history of the house and its former occupants.

As the Player Characters advance through the house, they are harried by a variety of nasty creatures including a sneak of weasels, which does not give up and they all speak in voice, saying the same phrase over and over, as well as a Boogleswarm, a swarm of fey weasels that covets and collects teeth (like the Tooth Fairy, but without leaving a pound coin under the pillow). In fact, teeth are one of the recurring motifs throughout The Crooked House, the Player Character find them crunched under foot and inserted into nooks and crannies. The weaselly nature of the scenario does not stop there, for eventually, the Player Characters will make their way to the top of the house and manage to open the way to the secret chamber where Vessla Browntooth, the Weasel Hag is performing the ritual she needs to sacrifice the souls of Philip and Adela Druskenvald. Will the Player Characters be able to stop her?

Besides the excellent maps, the Game Master is given full stats for all of the monsters in The Crooked House. Notably, all of them have a ‘secret’, something that a Player Character might know about with an appropriate skill roll. These are suggested, but it would have been nice if there was a way to discover them narratively as part of the playthrough of the scenario. The Treasury details a pair of interesting magical items found the house, but which are actually cursed (of course, they should be). Also included is a quartet of Player Characters. They consist of a Gnarlborn Druid, a Plagueborn Monk, a Stoneborn Cultist, and a Threadborn Reveler. They are not poor example Player Characters, but there is no explanation though how they relate to each other, the scenario, or The Crooked Moon setting. They fit a Gothic horror-fantasy setting, not a modern setting of any kind, and both Philip and Adela Druskenvald are depicted as modern characters, dressed for the Jazz Age of the nineteen twenties. Consequently, they feel out of place alongside the scenario.

Physically, The Crooked House: Folk Horror Roleplaying for Four 3 Characters is very well presented. The artwork and the artwork are both great and the maps excellent.

The Crooked House: Folk Horror Roleplaying for Four 3 Characters is thoroughly enjoyable, Gothic horror, haunted house scenario. What lets it does as a whole are the sample Player Characters which not match the feel of the scenario. That said, there is nothing to stop the Game Master from running the scenario with a slight adjustment using standard Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition or a modern horror treatment such as FiveEvil.