Friday Fantasy: The Tomb of Grief

King Leland never wanted to be king, but he reluctantly took up his duty as others had before him. He found no favour with the lords and ladies of his court, heeding little of their advice or their wishes, and only entering into a marriage of convenience to appease them upon becoming king. Instead, he favoured Sir Eardwulf, a lowly knight who was at first a friend and then a lover, who he wished to raise to rank of Earl. This outraged the nobles of the court such that a faction led by Lord Blacklow moved against the king’s wishes, capturing and beheading Sir Eardwulf before his ennoblement could come to pass. King Leland was apoplectic with grief such that it fuelled years long retribution upon those lords who had conspired to kill his lover, soaking fields and forest in their blood. So he became known as the Red king. Now King Leland lies dead and his grief continues to be felt across the land. Crops fail, livestock dies, and the people are driven into madness by a sorrow that was never theirs. At the heart of this dolorous malaise stands the Tomb of Grief, the last resting place of King Leland. Can the curse be lifted? Which riches were buried with the Red King?

This is the set-up for The Tomb of Grief. This is an adventure written for use with ‘5E+’, so Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition and Dungeons & Dragons 2024. It is a playtest adventure, the second, in an anthology of scenarios published by No Short Rests! called One Room One Shots. The first was Temple of the Forgotten Depths. Each entry in the collection is a short adventure themed around a single room or structure and intended to be slotted readily into a campaign or more readily, played in a single session with either no preparation or preparation required beforehand. This might be because some of a group’s players are unable to attend; because they want to play, but not want to commit to a longer scenario or campaign; or because a group wants to introduce new players to the roleplaying game. The Tomb of Grief is written for a group of Player Characters of First Level. The scenario has no other requirements beyond this and its setting, but both a Cleric and a Rogue will be useful, and a character of Noble background may have a minor advantage.

The scenario proper begins with the Player Characters at the entrance of the Tomb of Grief itself. Here amidst the rubbish-strewn floor and the broken, battered, and vandalised statues, the Player Characters can begin to search for hints and clues as to what lies in the burial chamber beyond. This search involves a variety of different skills, not just Investigation and Perception, so multiple Player Characters can be involved in the process. There is the challenge of how the Player Characters actually get past the heavy gate between the entrance and the tomb, but again, multiple means to get through are given and even when it feels like they are being punished, the scenario makes clear it is only temporary.

Inside, the tomb is embraced in darkness, resting over an abyss. The first challenge that the Player Characters face will be King Leland’s ‘Knight Protectors’, serving him in unlife. Thematically, each of the four is associated with the four stages of grief and this is applied not just in their special attacks, but also in their memories. For example, when a combatant hits or is hit by Sir Ben the Negotiator, there is a chance that they will be convinced that the ‘Knight Protectors’ are no longer a threat and that the everyone in the party should lay down their arms. This only lasts for a turn, but each effect of the different ‘Knight Protectors’ has a different attack.

The second part of the scenario focuses upon roleplaying. It consists of four, dedicated encounters consisting of memories of the ‘Knight Protectors’ who swore to serve the king and who the Player Characters have just defeated. Some are the significant memories that some of the ‘Knight Protectors’ have of the king they served, others are memories of significant events during his reign. All together, they chart the reign of King Leland. In each one, the Player Character will experience an event in a Knight Protector’s life and be tested in how the Knight Protector responded to it. There are three different responses per memory, each involving a different skill and each memory is also tied to several different Backgrounds. What this means is that the Dungeon Master can help tailor each roleplaying encounter to specific Player Character and test their skill accordingly. Of course, none of this will affect the outcome of scenario, or indeed, its set-up, since King Leland was sent mad with grief and took that grief out upon the land. What it will do though, is reveal the history of what brought about the fall of both King Leland and the land. This is a grim tale that gets ever grimmer, and what it will do ultimately, is influence how the players and their characters feel about King Leland and his actions.

The third and final part of the scenario is divided into two parts. In the first, the Player Characters face the real villain of the story and a giant of a knight hinted at the memories, whilst in the second they will confront the former king. How they decide that, ideally based upon the memories that revealed his history and characters, will determine the nature of the scenario’s conclusion. One last touch here is that the material reward that the Player Characters can earn, King Leland’s Sword of the Red King, will actually have different effects depending upon the outcome.

Physically, The Tomb of Grief is reasonably well presented. It is lightly illustrated, but the artwork is excellent. It does need an edit and the map is rather too dark to read with ease, but simple enough that it should impede the Game Master too much. If there is an issue with The Tomb of Grief, as with the earlier Temple of the Forgotten Depths, it is that the text is small, making it a challenge to read!

The Temple of Grief delivers a solid, enjoyably thematic scenario for a good session’s worth of play. It is presented as a playtest adventure, but in truth, it is ready to play, whether that is as a one-shot for an evening or an encounter for a campaign, and ready to play with a minimum of effort. The Tomb of Grief sets out to tell a story and it is an epic story, such that it is surprising that the scenario manages to pack all of that story in a single session. Ultimately, it is a tragedy, one reminiscent of A Game of Thrones that if The Tomb of Grief is played as part of campaign, the Player Characters will be able to tell the truth of what happened during the reign of King Leland and so reveal that tragedy.

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One Room One Shots: Epic D&D Adventures in a Single Session! is currently on Kickstarter.

Magazine Madness 42: Senet Issue 17

The gaming magazine is dead. After all, when was the last time that you were able to purchase a gaming magazine at your nearest newsagent? Games Workshop’s White Dwarf is of course the exception, but it has been over a decade since Dragon appeared in print. However, in more recent times, the hobby has found other means to bring the magazine format to the market. Digitally, of course, but publishers have also created their own in-house titles and sold them direct or through distribution. Another vehicle has been Kickststarter.com, which has allowed amateurs to write, create, fund, and publish titles of their own, much like the fanzines of Kickstarter’s ZineQuest. The resulting titles are not fanzines though, being longer, tackling broader subject matters, and more professional in terms of their layout and design.

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Senet is a print magazine about the craft, creativity, and community of board gaming. Bearing the tagline of “Board games are beautiful”, it is about the play and the experience of board games, it is about the creative thoughts and processes which go into each and every board game, and it is about board games as both artistry and art form. Published by Senet Magazine Limited, each issue promises previews of forthcoming, interesting titles, features which explore how and why we play, interviews with those involved in the process of creating a game, and reviews of the latest and most interesting releases. Senet is also one of the very few magazines about games to actually be available for sale on the high street.

Senet Issue 17 was published in was published in the winter of 2024 and if the cover stands out for its singular look and stark simplicity which makes it stand out on the newsstand, it should be no surprise that the editorial talks about the importance of a good cover. The cover itself is an illustration taken from the board game Emberleaf and the editorial applies that importance to board games as much as its own cover. Which gives space to highlight the artist interviewed in the issue, ‘The Mico’, and the rich detail of his covers that ensure the games that he illustrates standout on the shelves.

As usual, ‘Behold’ begins the issue proper, highlighting some of the then forthcoming games with a preview and a hint or two of what to expect. The releases of note here Emberleaf, from which the issue’s front cover comes, a game about restoring a forest after it has been attacked by a villainous overlord; A Nice Cuppa, a mini-game about relaxing with a nice hot cup of tea amongst today’s travails; and A Wayfarer’s Tale: The Journey Begins, a roll-and-write game about exploring and charting new islands. The other opening sections of the magazine continue to underwhelm the reader, but for different reasons. The regular column of readers’ letters, ‘Points’, continues to be constrained to a single page, waiting for room to expand build into something more, but in this issue, the letters continue to show that the audience for magazine is wider than letters in previous issues have suggested, with letters from older readers and highlight the benefits of playing board games. With ‘For Love of the Game’ the journey of the designer Tristian Hall continues towards the completion and publication of his Gloom of Kilforth—and beyond. By now, very beyond. In ‘The Art of Success’ he asks how you can measure success when it comes to publishing board games. As he makes clear, it is not money, but rather bringing a project that he loves to the market and hopefully, successfully so. Besides comparing the process of creating board games to creating art, and whilst that is not a bad comparison, nothing is added to the conversation about games and the process of their design that has not be said before.

Every issue consists of two interviews, one with an artist and one with a designer, plus an article about a theme in games and an article about a mechanic in games, and of course, Senet Issue 16 is no exception. The tried and tested formula begins with ‘The Wolf Man’, Matt Thrower’s interview with designer and publisher, Ted Alspach. Through his company, Bézier Games, he is best known for titles such as Castles of Mad King Ludwig and One Night Ultimate Werewolf. The interview charts him from shifting from player to designer via expansions for the highly regarded railway game, Age of Steam, and then the Werewolf games. One interesting fact revealed in the interview is that Castles of Mad King Ludwig was actually inspired by the designer drawing maps as a Dungeon Master for Dungeons & Dragons and wanting originally to apply that theme. It is clear that Alspach is enthusiastic about his own games and seeing other playing them. It is an engaging affair as is the second interview in the issue by Alexandra Sonechkina, which is with the North Macedonian artist known as The Micah. ‘Monster Mash’ showcases his artwork with space given for him to discuss the origins and inspirations for the numerous illustrations he has supplied to innumerable board game designs. The monster illustrations for Monster Lands 2 are amazing, whilst despite his not liking drawing buildings, his cover to the board game Merchants Cove is rich in detail and really could have been benefitted from being larger so the reader could have better seen some of that detail. As with the best of the artwork shown off in the pages of Senet, the illustrations serve as mini-portfolio for the artist, intriguing for the reader to want to look at the games they are for.

Between the two interviews is Tim Clare’s ‘Boards and Borders’ which explores the contentious theme of immigration in board games. The article notes that immigration has actually been a means of spreading the play and popularity of board games, such as that of Mancala across India and the adoption of Mahjong by middle-class Jewish women in the twenties and thirties, but also points out although the subject matter for some board games would historically involve immigrants, the board games themselves do not address this, for example the building of the railways in the United States in almost any train game. However, other board games do focus on immigrants and the immigrant experience, more often than not in the USA, since the country experienced notable influxes of immigrants in relatively recent times. For example, Alea’s Chinatown explores the growth of the Chinese population in Manhattan in the late sixties following the relaxation in immigration laws, whilst Pandasaurus Games’ Tammany Hall sees the immigrant groups being used as bargaining chips and the means to garner votes and thus power by corrupt politicians in the late nineteenth century and again in Manhattan. Manhattan is major location for immigrant-themed board games since it was the key entry point for immigrants coming to the USA. The article does not shy away from challenging nature of the subject matter and highlights the artwork for later versions of Chinatown for perpetuating stereotypes. This is an interesting look at a theme that appears not be commonly explored in board games.

The mechanic is ‘pick-up-and-deliver’, one that is very much more commonly used in board games. ‘Delivering the Goods’ is the double-meaning title of Dan Thurot’s article about games in which the players pick up goods or passengers and transport them to specific locations. Mayfair Games’ Empire Builder series is the first series of board games to make use of this mechanic, but Lancashire Railways from Winsome Games followed by Age of Steam from Warfrog Games, both by designer Martin Wallace have continued and expanded its use. All of them see players not only laying routes between locations, but picking up goods or passengers and delivering them elsewhere. The structure has spread far beyond the romance of the railways to other modes of transport, such as sailing ships in Merchants & Marauders from Z-Man Games and starships in Xia: Legends of a Drift System from Lavka Games though. Oddly, no canals, though. However, what the article shows is that the further designers gets away from the simple elegance of the ‘pick-up-and-deliver’ seen in Age of Steam, the more complex their designs get, even up to the point where mathematics and mass-thrust ratios need to be considered in the early days of space exploration board game, Leaving Earth from The Lumenaris Group, Inc.

Senet’s reviews section, ‘Unboxed’, covers a wide array of titles as usual. They are led by a review of Undaunted 2200: Callisto, the Science Fiction version of the highly praised Undaunted series from Osprey Games. However, whereas titles in the Undaunted series have been awarded ‘Senet’s Top Choice’ in previous issues, not so here, though it gets a big review. Instead, the award goes to CMYK’s game of warehouse organisation, memory, and imagination, Wilmot’s Warehouse, which is bright, breezy, and very colourful, and sound a lot of fun. The oddest choice reviewed is Blackwell Games’ For Small Creatures Such As We, a solo journaling game in which the player controls and tells the story of a crew of a spaceship. It is odd because it strays into the roleplaying space rather than board games and thus feels out of place. This is not the only time that the issue strays into the realm of roleplaying though.

As per usual, the last two columns in Senet Issue 16 are ‘How to Play’ and ‘Shelf of Shame’. In ‘When board gaming meets therapy’, therapist Alex Roberts explores ways in which board games can be used as part of therapy, as vehicles via which patients can be tell their stories. This is a fascinating subject and consequently, a fascinating article, but again oddly, it uses not a board game to illustrate the possibility of organised play the author suggests, but a storytelling game, a roleplaying game. This is For the Queen, which is not a board game. Simply, there is a disconnect here between the title of the article and the content.

Lastly, the team behind Knightmare Live pull a game from their ‘Shelf of Shame’. This is Blood Rage from Cool Mini Or Not in which the players lead clans of Vikings in battles against monsters during Ragnarök to earn a place in Valhalla. They come away having enjoyed the game, describing as fun, but not in their top ten.

Physically, Senet Issue 17 is shows off the board games it previews and reviews to great effect, just as you would expect. The most interesting article in the issue is ‘Boards and Borders’ because of the difficult subject, but the issue is treated fairly, showing where it has been used to best effect and where it has been poorly handled in board game designs of recent years. Elsewhere, the missteps in roleplaying feel out of place, but otherwise, an enjoyable, if serviceable read.

Zombies on the Thames

It is the year 1829 and polite society’s horror and disgust at the poor and the great unwashed is once again being stoked by reports of them shambling about at night, faces ashen, and looming out of the miasma along the River Thames to scare anyone and everyone, whether going about legitimate business or not. In sordid South London, in the notorious slum that is Jacob’s Island, right on the banks of the Thames, people are going missing—and worse, they are coming back very much in discombobulated fashion! It is a very strange matter indeed, and despite it having been brought to the attention of Sir Robert Peel and his recently founded Metropolitan Police Force, there is not the manpower, or indeed, the political willpower to do a great about it. Which is why the Apollonian Society, whose members investigate the unseemly and the unnatural, is approached to look into the matter.

This is the set-up to Mists of Old London, a scenario for use with Vaesen – Mythic Britain & Ireland, the campaign supplement for Vaesen – NordicHorror Roleplaying, which details the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in the nineteenth century and the clashes the arose between the old ways and the new with rapid industrialisation. The scenario is set primarily in the rotten rookery and sodden slum of Jacob’s Island, home to some of the city’s poorest inhabitants, on the south bank of the river, notable as being the home of Bill Sykes in Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist. Investigation will reveal the are is rife with tension. There has been a recent influx of immigrants from Jamaica into the slum as well as the people vanishing into the mists and then reappearing at their homes, as cold as the grave. There are also strange figures stalking the streets. One is hooded in rags and mutters curses and incantations as she clambers across the rickety walkways and bridges that connect many parts of Jacob’s Island, whilst the other strides purposefully, a gentleman in frock coat and top hat as well as a mask. She is Madame Otay, he is Monsieur Thursday.

It should be pretty clear that to the players that what their characters are facing is an infestation of zombies, appropriate for the threat that the Player Characters face, though since the word would have been little known at the time when the scenario is set, it is very unlikely that the characters will initially know they are facing and extremely unlikely that they will have come across the term before. There are opportunities for both Madame Otay and Monsieur Thursday to educate the Player Characters though. Being a scenario for Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying, there is a countdown in which things get worse, the mists will rise and worsen, and the zombies will walk the streets of Jacob’s Island openly. There are a limited number of lines of investigation, but the Player Characters should get enough clues to work out what is going and where they need to go—whether either of the major NPCs want them to, or not. All of which will lead to classic showdown at a summoning by the villain of the piece and the Player Characters in position to stop it.

This is a most serviceable scenario with a pleasing tense and strong, if sodden atmosphere of fear, tinged just a little with a fear of the unknown. Smart or experienced players will probably crack on through and complete it in a single session, though it should take no more than two sessions’ worth of play at the most for other. It could work as a convention in the case of the former, but it is not really set up for that. Thematically the plot could work with the Rivers of London: the Roleplaying Game or period wise with Regency Cthulhu: Dark Designs in Jane Austen’s England, both from Chaosium, Inc. In fact, retooling it for the latter for the Miskatonic Repository would work rather well.

Mists of Old London is not without its issues and the likelihood is that the complaints about are going to come from both end of the spectrum. One is that the scenario makes use of African diaspora religion of Obeah as a feature of its plot. The other is that one of the NPCs is called ‘Nigel Barrige’, who as MP for Southwark, “…[N]ow seeks to consolidate his power by stoking parliaments [SIC] fears of the working class and social revolution.” The author goes further than this though, in what is a parody of a contemporary British political figure. To be fair, the first of these is more of an issue than the second, but the author does make clear that it is not intended faithful representation of the religion, but stick to being a Western, dramatised version for the sake of the scenario’s plot. The author also suggests that if the Game Master is unhappy with this, then it is possible to some research and adjust as necessary. A link is provided should the Game Master want to get started. As to the second, it is parody, and parody is fair game.

Mists of Old London is published via the Free League Workshop, the community content programme for Free League Publishing, so not professionally produced. As a consequence, physically, Mists of Old London is rough. The layout and the few pieces of illustration are fine, but it really, really needs a good edit. There are also no maps.

Mists of Old London is far from a bad scenario. It just needs to be more clearly and tidily presented and supported with a map or two. Otherwise, Mists of Old London is eminently serviceable, enjoyable scenario.

Miskatonic Monday #395: Alabaster Amphora – An Egyptian Adventure

Much like the Jonstown Compendium for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and The Companions of Arthur for material set in Greg Stafford’s masterpiece of Arthurian legend and romance, Pendragon, the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition is a curated platform for user-made content. It is thus, “...a new way for creators to publish and distribute their own original Call of Cthulhu content including scenarios, settings, spells and more…” To support the endeavours of their creators, Chaosium has provided templates and art packs, both free to use, so that the resulting releases can look and feel as professional as possible. To support the efforts of these contributors, Miskatonic Monday is an occasional series of reviews which will in turn examine an item drawn from the depths of the Miskatonic Repository.

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Name: Alabaster Amphora – An Egyptian Adventure

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Sean Liddle

Setting: The Nile, 1958

Product: Outline
What You Get: Sixteen page, 1.08 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Death on the Nile meets Without a Clue meets The Mummy

Plot Hook: A murder puts the Investigators in the frame

Plot Support: Staging advice, five pre-generated Investigators, two handouts, and two Mythos entities

Production Values: Plain

Pros

# Pulp horror, murder mystery

# When the detective dies, someone has to step into his shoes

# Detailed outline ready for the Keeper to develop

# Krokodeilophobia

# Elaiophobia

# Thanatophobia

Cons

# Needs an edit
# Detailed outline that the Keeper will need to develop

# No NPC stats

Conclusion

# Death of a detective up the Nile and into horror!

# Detailed outline that needs development and some NPC stats

Review 3000: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness

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 1984 and 1985, the breakout comic was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, written and drawn by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, and published by their Mirage Studios. It was an independent black and white comic that told the adventures of the eponymous quartet of four genetically-mutated turtles trained under a pet rat, Master Splinter, to fight rival ninja, including the Foot Clan, and other threats, including aliens. Combining humour and stories with a darker edge that Marvel Comics such as Daredevil and The New Mutants, the comic book was a hit and not only continued to be published by Mirage Studios for the next thirty years, but was heavily licensed, pushing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles into the mainstream. Since 1987, there have been five television series based on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and eight films. However, in the forty years since the first issue of the comic, there has only been one roleplaying game—Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness was published in 1985 by Palladium Games, a company best known at that point for 1983’s Palladium Fantasy Role-Playing Game and 1984’s Heroes Unlimited. It was designed—or rather redesigned in a matter of weeks after Palladium Games was unhappy with the original submitted version—by Erick Wujcik, who most notably would go on to create Amber Diceless Role-Playing. The result was a fast-paced, engaging, if imperfect roleplaying game packed with art from Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman, that looked like it was a lot of fun. And if you were a teenager when Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness was released, it was, because Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was and were cool. Perhaps because of the speed in which it was rewritten, perhaps because it is a Palladium Games book, there is ‘cookie cutter’ feel to some parts of the roleplaying game—the alignment system, the equipment list, and the weapons—which all very feel imported from Palladium Games’ other roleplaying games that used the  Megaversal system, like the earlier Ninjas & Superspies. There are certainly some parallels between the two, not least of which are the fact that they were both written by Erick Wujcik, but they do not feel like a natural fit to the comic book universe of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. That aside,  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness  proved to a be a big hit for Palladium Games, selling very well until the release of the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles television series and the first film, when the toning down of the edginess and darkness of the original material meant that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was no longer cool.

Nevertheless,  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness  was cool in 1985. At just one-hundred-and-twelve pages, it does not have a lot of space to waste. It starts by pointing out the animal characters are common to comics, if not roleplaying games, so the roleplaying game is giving players that option.  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness  is designed as a supplement to Heroes Unlimited, the superhero roleplaying game published by Palladium Games, but can be played as a standalone game as it is complete. It also rationalises why it uses a random character generation system rather than a point buy system, which was then becoming popular, such as with Mayfair Games’ DC Heroes Roleplaying Game, Victory Games’ James Bond 007: Role-Playing In Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and Steve Jackson’s Man to Man: Fantasy Combat from GURPS, the precursor to the full release of the system the next year. What this boils down to is that “Excellent players can role-play ANYTHING…”, the Game Master can create interesting villains as much the players interesting characters, and randomness reflects real life. This is followed by quite description of what a roleplaying game is before leaping straight into character creation.

A character in  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness  is defined by eight attributes—Intelligence Quotient (I.Q.), Mental Endurance (M.E.), Mental Affinity (M.A.), Physical Strength (P.S.), Physical Prowess (P.P.), Physical Endurance (P.E.), Physical Beauty (P.B.), and Speed (Spd.). The base attributes range from three to eighteen, with results of sixteen or more granting bonuses, though low rolls do not impose any penalties. A character will also have Hit Points and Structural Damage Capacity or S.D.C., essentially stun points. He has an Animal Type, which be anything from dog, cat, mouse, frog, monkey, cow, pig, chicken, goat, sheep, turkey, wolf, coyote, fox to elk, moose, boar, sparrow, robin, blue jay, eagle, owl, escaped pet bird, lion, tiger, leopard, baboo, camel, and buffalo. All animals found in North America, including those in zoos and safari parks. The list, of course, includes the turtle. He will have a Cause of Mutation, the reason why he is anthropomorphic and intelligent. This can be due to a random mutation or an accident, but will primarily because he was a research project of some kind, either growing up in a researcher’s home or even being deliberately trained as an assassin! This background will determine how many skills he will have and often, how good a combatant he is, and his basic attitude towards humans, the default attitude being one of distrust.

Creating a Player Character in  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness  involves fives steps. These are rolling for attributes, animal type, and cause of mutation (this will also determine the organisation that will have created the mutated animal and his degree of education), and then spending ‘Bio-E’ or ‘Biological Energy Points’ to mutate the animal. Each animal type has a pool of ‘Bio-E’ points that a player can spend to make it more anthropomorphic and give it hands that grip like a human, speech like a human, and stance like a human, as well as its own intrinsic animal abilities. For example, the aardvark has tunnelling and digging, and the elephant has a prehensile trunk, advanced hearing, and thick skin. ‘Bio-E’ points also account for size. So, if an animal is small, the player has to spend ‘Bio-E’ points to make it bigger, but is given ‘Bio-E’ points to spend if a bigger animal needs to be smaller. The aim here is to make the Player Characters roughly about the same size and of roughly the same capability. It was a way of balancing wildly different character types, but still left something to be desired. In addition, ‘Bio-E’ points can be spent on psionic powers.

After this the player chooses his character’s skills. These will include a variety of skill programmes, scholastic and physical skills, and secondary skills. From amongst these, a Player Character should definitely select a martial arts package, whether that is Hand-to-Hand Basic, Hand-to-Hand Expert, Hand-to-Hand Expert, Hand-to-Hand Assassin, Hand-to-Hand Martial Arts, or Hand-to-Hand Ninjitsu, since part of the roleplaying game’s title includes the word ‘Ninja’ and it does have an emphasis upon combat. Plus, there is a variety of Weapon Proficiencies for various weapons, many of the melee weapons drawn from Japanese culture and history. There are Modern Weapon Proficiencies too, but these tend to be the province of NPCs rather than Player Characters, in keeping with the source material, though there is nothing to stop a Player Character learning one. Lastly, the player selects an Alignment and purchases equipment. The process is not difficult, but slightly cumbersome. It does allow for players to create a group of similar characters a la the turtles of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Name: Aaron
Level: 1
Alignment: Principled (Good)
Animal Type: Aardvark
Mutation Cause: Rescued and adopted from a private company by a friendly researcher whilst it hunted him. 
Human Features: Full Hands, Full Speech, Full Stance
Natural Weapons: Claws (1d6)
Animal Powers: Digging, Tunnelling
Psionic Powers: Sixth Sense

Intelligence Quotient 12 Mental Affinity 12 Physical Strength 19
Mental Endurance 12 Physical Prowess 16 Physical Endurance 18
Physical Beauty 07 Speed 29
Hit Points: 22
S.D.C.: 32

SCHOLASTIC SKILLS
Mathematics: Basic 82%, Read/Write English 60%, Speaks English 60%

MILITARY/ESPIONAGE SKILLS
Pick Locks 35%, Tracking 35%, Wilderness Survival 45%

PHYSICAL SKILLS
Acrobatics (Sense of Balance 65%, Walk Tightrope 65%, Climb Rope 82%, Climbing 44%, Back Flip 65%), Athletics, Boxing, Prowling 64%, Running

SECONDARY SKILLS
Automotive Mechanics 53%, Cook 65%, Computer Operation 65%, Dance 45%, First Aid 55%, Hand-to-Hand: Martial Arts, Land Navigation 44%, Pilot: Basic – Automobile 80%

COMBAT BONUSES
Two attacks/round, +4 Damage, +1 to Strike, +5 Roll with Punch/Fall, +7 Parry, +11 Dodge, +2 Strike with Body Block/Tackle (1d4), +2 to Save versus Coma, Death, and Toxins

NOTES
Fearless of Heights

Mechanically,  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness  uses Palladium Games’ Megaversal system and is in general, quite straightforward. Skills are percentiles and cannot rise above 98%, with bonuses gained high attributes, training in physical skills, and gaining Levels. Otherwise, the emphasis in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness  is on combat. Once initiative is determined, usually by a roll of a twenty-sided die, combatants roll to attack and defendants roll parry, dodge, or entangle, and so on. A roll of five or more on a twenty-sided die always hits. If the attack roll is less then defendant’s Armour Rating (either natural body or worn armour), damage is deducted from his S.D.C. only. If the roll is over the defendant’s Armour Rating, damage is deducted from his S.D.C. first and then actual Hit Points. A roll of natural twenty is a critical hit and inflicts double damage. If a defendant is hit, his player or the Game Master if an NPC, can choose to parry, dodge, or entangle the attack. This requires a roll greater than the attack roll. This can be done automatically if parrying, but dodging uses up one of a combatant’s attacks. Bullets and energy blasts can be dodged, but not parried. If the attack is with a blunt weapon or with fists, the player or Game Master can for roll for character or NPC to roll with the punch and if successful half the damage. Hand-to-hand combat allows for a variety of different attacks, including punches, kicks, jump kicks, leaps, throws, and so on, as well as the use of various martial arts weapons. The rules for firearms allow for multiple shots per round, since a round actually lasts fifteen seconds, and also automatic fire. They add some complexity to combat and are likely to slow things down whilst melee and hand-to-hand combat is going to flow back and forth a lot more easily.

For example, Aaron the Aardvark is out on patrol one night when he spots Bill the Burglar attempting to break into a house. Aaron’s player states that the Aardvark is going to sneak up on Bill the Burglar and attempt to knock him out. The Game Master calls for Prowling roll first, but Aaron’s player fails this by rolling 83% rather the 64% needed. Since Aaron has failed, the Game Master rules that since Bill the Burglar was being quiet too, he heard the sound of Araon’s claws clicking on the slabs of path. She calls for an initiative roll. The Game Master rolls 17, but Aaron’s player rolls only a 12. With the initiative, the suddenly shocked and frightened at the sight of a five foot tall aardvark Bill the Burglar reaches into his jacket and pulls out a 9 mm Smith & Wesson Model 59 and opens fire! Bill the Burglar has done time at the range and has the Weapon Proficiency: Handgun, but in his state, he opts to blast Aaron with a burst of shots. This gives him a +1 bonus instead of the +3 for an aimed short. Aaron is wearing a vest which gives him an Armour Rating of 10 and 50 S.D.C. The Game Master rolls 16 and one of the shots from the burst hits Aaron, meaning that the damage will be deducted directly from his own S.D.C. rather than the vest’s. Instead of taking the damage, Aaron’s player opts for him to Dodge the attack. Aaron’s player rolls the die and adds his Dodge bonus of +11. He rolls 16 to get a result of 27, meaning he leaps out of the way. This uses up one of Aaron’s actions. Realising that whatever this creature is that is in front of him, Bill the Burglar realises that just blasting away at it, is not going to work. This time, he takes an aimed shot, which gives him a +3 bonus to hit. This time he rolls a 3 for a total of six, which means that Aaron’s vest has stopped the round. Aaron’s player chooses not to Dodge, but instead pounces on Bill the Burglar with a body tackle. Aaron’s player rolls 19, adds +2 to get a result of 21, which definitely means he hits. Aaron’s player rolls for damage, a four-sided dice, +4 for his damage bonus, and inflicts eight points damage to Bill the Burglar’s S.D.C. that he is not fast enough to avoid. There is an oof from Bill the Burglar as Aaron slams into him!

One aspect of  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness  that is decently handled is Experience Points. Player Characters do improve going up Levels, and so increasing their Hit Points, Skills, hand-to-hand combat skills, and Weapon Proficiencies. Experience Points are awarded not just for killing or subduing menaces, but also ideas clever and useful, performing skills, endangering your life to save others, avoiding violence, and good roleplaying. There is a lot in the list that encourages good gaming.

There is a decent equipment list other modern-set roleplaying games from Palladium Games as well as an extensive list of Japanese and Ninjitsu weapons, plus equipment for the latter. The Game Master or player wanting more is recommended to check out Heroes Unlimited or The Palladium Book of Contemporary Weapons. The list does include energy weapons since they appear in the comics. A lot of the equipment is intended for use by the police or in espionage.

In keeping with the relative shortness of  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness, the section for the Game Master is also short. It is supported by helpful examples of combat and character creation, and there are some notes on matching the scenario to the capabilities of the Player Characters, creating villains and villainous organisations, and how to use  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness  with Heroes Unlimited. The bulk of the Game Master dedicated to five scenarios. They include ‘Caesar’s Weasels’, in which the Player Characters track down a gang that has been looting meat packing plants; ‘The Terror Bears’ in which a gang of mutated bears have using their psionic powers to terrorise and then hide in a neighbourhood; ‘Doctor Feral: The Genius of Bio-Spawn’, which details a highly respected scientist who kidnaps mutant animals to vivisect them; ‘Terror on Rural Route 5’, in which mutant animals have taken a school hostage; and ‘The Leg of the Ninja’ which details a Ninja organisation that could grow into a major threat for the Player Characters. ‘Terror on Rural Route 5’ is intended as an introductory scenario, but to be honest, none of the five are actually full scenarios, but rather, set-ups. None of them are bad per se, but rather that the Game Master will need to develop each of them further. Of the five, ‘The Terror Bears’ is the most memorable, since it introduced the four anti-Care Bears—Pain Bear, Fear Bear, Doom Bear, and Nightmare Bear—that parodied a popular animated series of the day. One thing that all five scenario seeds did was provide the Game Master with good range of sample threats.

Rounding out  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness  are the stats and write-ups for characters from the comic. This includes the four Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, their friend April O’Neil and others, Shredder, the leader of the Foot ninja clan, and the T.C.R.I. (or ‘Techno-Cosmic Research Institute’) aliens, as well as the Sparrow-Eagles, the sample team characters outlined earlier in the book.

Physically,  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness  feels a little scruffy around the edges, and not quite up to Palladium Games’ usual neat and tidy standards. That may be due to it being rushed or the artwork that sometimes intrudes into the page. It is engagingly written and what really stands out is the artwork. This is either taken from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic or drawn for the roleplaying game and it really is good, including as it does a couple of short strips, one of which depicts the origins of the turtles. The artwork also gives the book a sense of energy and excitement like you really want to take up your katana and battle ninja in the sewers or aliens on the rooftops of New York. Lastly, it is short—at barely more than one hundred pages—and if not quite as well organised as it could be, its short length makes everything easy to find. It also suffers from none of the bloat or utter lack of organisation that have plagued books from the publisher since, most obviously, Rifts.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness  is not perfect. One problem is character generation, which though fun is very far from balanced because it is entirely random. Only very high attributes provide bonuses of any kind, and whilst taking some physical skills will improve them, any Player Character with attributes high enough to provide bonuses is at an advantage. The end results can also vary, so that one character might be a relatively mild manner creature with a college level education or a wild creature with barely any, whilst another is a super-soldier assassin killing machine trained by the military. This in addition to some Player Characters who might look humanoid, others not, and maybe not even able to talk, and given a roleplaying game as heavily focused on combat as  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness, the super-soldier assassin killing machine trained by the military is what everyone wanted to play. Another problem is that focus on combat, means that other aspects of the game may suffer such as roleplaying. The advice for creating NPCs is underwritten and the Game Master wanting to create ordinary humans will need to work out how to do that. It is not difficult, but advice would have been useful.

Unfortunately,  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness was not free of controversy. In the first printing of the roleplaying game, it included the option for a Player Character to start play with a form of insanity or gain a random later in play as the result of trauma, for example, demonic possession, near-death experience, or torture. Under the list of insanities, it included a list of sexual deviations, which notably featured paedophilia and homosexuality. The idea here was that one of the effects of the trauma was to compel a Player Character to change his sexual orientation. Another bizarrely, was that the Player Character would want to retrain as a psychiatrist! Even so, at the time, this was a tasteless, even offensive, treatment of sexual orientation, especially as homosexuality had been officially declassified as a mental illness for over a decade in 1975. At first, the offending section was covered up by Palladium Books, but then excised from later printings.

Alignment in  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness  is also a potential problem. An Alignment represents a Player Character or NPC’s attitudes and moral principles and can be one of seven options divided into three categories. ‘Principled’ and ‘Scrupulous’ are both ‘Good’; ‘Unprincipled’ and ‘Anarchist’ are ‘Selfish’; and ‘Miscreant’, ‘Aberrant’, and ‘Diabolic’ are ‘Evil’. The problem, specifically, is that of torture. Only the ‘Principled’ character or NPC will never resort to torture, whereas even the ‘Scrupulous’ will, but “Never torture for pleasure, but may use muscle to extract information from criminals or evil characters.”; the ‘Unprincipled’ will “Not use torture unless absolutely necessary.”; and ‘Anarchist’ “Will use torture to extract information. But not likely to do so for pleasure.” The ‘Evil’ Alignments are worse, and this treatment of Alignment was common to all roleplaying games from Palladium Games, but that does not excuse in any way the suggestion that a Player Character should or can use torture.

—oOo—

Marcus L. Rowland reviewed  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness  in ‘Open Box’ in White Dwarf Issue 78 (July 1986). He did not come to any clear conclusion, but said, “Fans of the comic will already know what to expect, other readers will need enlightenment. The heroes are exactly what the title implies: large intelligent turtles, trained in Oriental martial arts, and equipped with a variety of Ninja weaponry. Apart from this central joke, the comics pretend to take themselves very seriously. To reflect this, the style of play is completely deadpan, setting intelligent and deadly animals against a background of urban terrorism, gang warfare, juvenile delinquency and random violence.” A more positive comment was made by Robert Neville in ‘Open Box’ in White Dwarf Issue 83 (November 1986) when he reviewed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures!. He opened the review by saying, “TMNT has been one of the surprise hits of the last year, with multitudes of gamers snapping up copies of the rulebook as fast as importers can freight them over to the UK.”

Scott Dollinger reviewed  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness  in ‘Game Reviews’ in Different Worlds Issue 44 (November/December 1986). He awarded it three-and-a-half stars out of five, said, “What is unusual is that Eastman and Laird have not taken the easy route to fast money and licensed the characters to a combat [sic] that would produce a hastily-made product to cash in on the current popularity of the characters. Instead they have maintained the high quality of the comic by licensing the characters to a smaller but well respected gaming company that takes their time and produces an excellent product. In this case the game Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness was created by Palladium Books and the results are fantastic.” He also added that, “…[T]he $9.95 price tag makes Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness one of the best buys on the market.”

Arcane magazine and editor Paul Pettengale had reason to examine  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness  not once, but twice. First in Arcane Issue Twelve (November 1996) in which he made it the subject of the magazine’s regular ‘Retro’ department. He said, “Of the random character generation system and its consequently random results he said, “You can imagine how much potential this had for farcical situations.” whilst of the layout, which he said were badly organised, he added that, “The layout of the rulebook could have been clearer (the martial arts section was together with the skills rather than the combat).” Yet despite this, his conclusion was positive: “…[I]t was a quick and easy game to learn, and the rules for character generation are good ... together with Paranoia, TMNT&OS was one of the most fun, and funny games I have played.”

This was followed in Arcane Issue Fourteen (December 1996) by its inclusion in ‘The 50 favourite RPGs of all time’ based on a reader’s poll at position #36. Arcane’s editor Paul Pettengale commented that, “The rules are badly laid out, but the principles are easy to learn and combat is fluid. So, fine on that score. It’s a superbly fun game to play because of its quirkiness, and the fact that the post-apocalyptic setting has most of California under the ocean. Fantastic fun.”

—oOo—

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness  was a big hit upon release. It was the roleplaying game that everyone wanted and just like the comics it was based on, it was cool and it was fun. Tonally though, there are elements of the roleplaying game that are at odds with the comic, even though that comic is grim and gritty and full of cartoon violence. But remove them—and at least Palladium Games removed some of them—and there is still potential for a lot of fun in its pages. If you can get them roughly balanced, then the range of character options based on the eighty animals it includes is huge and the rules are straightforward, if only a little rough. Which to be fair, is an amazing achievement for a roleplaying game designed in five weeks! It is not the greatest roleplaying game or even the best roleplaying game of 1985, but  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness  opened up the world of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to roleplaying and let you roleplay strange mutant animals sneaking around in the shadows, fighting crime, stopping alien invasions from other dimensions, and facing off against ninja. Which was very definitely cool in the eighties, and if you want to whisper it to yourself now, it still is forty years later.

Caution & Chicanery

Rogues, thieves, con artists, burglars, pirates, fences, pickpockets, plunders, muggers, thugs, spies, ninja, let alone scouts and rangers. All use guile, deception, and chicanery to achieve their aims in one fashion or another, and they, along with cunning and stealth, are the subject of HARP Subterfuge. As the title suggests, this is a supplement for High Adventure Role Playing Fantasy or HARP Fantasy, the roleplaying game descended from 1980’s Rolemaster. It is designed as the definitive guide to the classic fantasy roleplaying figure, the thief, and just about anyone who might use subterfuge or stealth to achieve his aims. This includes not just the aforementioned thief—and the many variations upon that role—but also those that use such skills as part their role, yet are not thieves or rogues. The classic Ranger is foremost amongst them, but there are several others that use such skills and who are not wanted by the city watch as a consequence of their use. HARP Subterfuge gives new Professions and spells, a guide to creating the perfect thief, advice on using the right skill for the right job, ways in handle stealth and subterfuge goes wrong (and a Player Character winds up in the hands of the law), suggestions on setting up a suitable underworld for any would be thief Player Character, and more. Although it is a supplement for HARP Fantasy, what HARP Subterfuge really does is move away from the ‘high adventure’ of HARP Fantasy and into a legally and morally grey area, inspired as it is Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories as well as The Lies of Locke Lamora and its sequels by Scott Lynch. What this means is that its contents may not be suitable for a high fantasy campaign, but if the Game Master wanted to set her campaign on the mean streets of some city decried as a den of iniquity, then HARP Subterfuge would be the supplement to help her do that.

HARP Subterfuge primarily requires HARP Fantasy, being built around its Ranger, Rogue, and Thief Professions, but it also needs HARP Folkways for the Hunter, the Scoundrel, and Seeker. It typecasts these and the new Professions into three categories—physical, dextrous, and intellectual, and suggests not just ways in which to build them, including skills to prioritise and talents are useful, but also why you might play them. These include Assassin, burglar, Con Artist, Fence, Pickpocket, Pirate, Plunderer (or archaeologist), Ruffian, Spy, Ranger, Scout/Guide, and Wayfarer (or explorer). The new Professions are the Ninja, Nightblade, and Beguiler. The Ninja is obvious in what it does, but the Nightblade is a spy that specialises in movement, distraction, disguise, and poison, whilst the Beguiler is spell user that specialises in mental misdirection, manipulation, and deception, particularly the Sphere of Beguilement. This is coupled with the Racial and Cultural perspectives for all of the Races and Cultures given in both HARP Fantasy and HARP Folkways, as well as adding the Dark Warrens Culture. This represents growing up in a culture with a reputation for crime, sin, and evil. Social class is not ignored, though that does require access to HARP Martial Law.

Similarly, there is advice and a review of skills and Talents useful to thieves and rogues, as well as the new skills, Intimidation and Crafts: Trap Making and Setting, and numerous new Talents, including ‘Backstabbing’, ‘Master Negotiator’, Opportunistic Attacking’, and ‘Thieves’ Insight’. It then shows the Game Master how to apply these skills and Talents as Manoeuvres. Under ‘Tricks of the Trade’ it examines everything from stalking, hiding, and camouflage, perception, and pickpocketing to disguises and infiltration, streetwise, and trickery—and it does so in exhaustive detail. For example, for crafting and setting traps, it looks at the possible difficulties crafting and setting traps, trap components, purchasing readymade traps, improvising traps, snares and lures (or non-lethal traps), and even magical traps. It backs this up with examples of play and interestingly, draws parallels between magical traps and chemical warfare in that they can be particularly deadly, and their use can escalate. However, a similar ethical approach is not applied to the discussion on seduction under its otherwise well done treatment of Influence, which covers rumours, propaganda, bribery, blackmail, and reputation. Each of the ‘Tricks of the Trade’ is treated in similar, detailed fashion, as the ‘Tools of the Trade’, which covers climbing, picking locks, making a getaway, and more.

For poisons, HARP Subterfuge does consider their implications and effects upon culture and society. This includes their use as medicines (depending upon dosage), in mysticism and cults to instil trance, euphoric, or hallucinatory states, in hunting and war—the latter typically held as dishonourable, and in general, their use being regarded as taboo. Of course, this is not going stop the Player Characters or NPCs from using poison, so sources of poison are examined, rules for harvesting and cultivating sources, preparing, and using them are all provided. The later includes applying poisons to weapons, adding them to food, or blowing them as a dust. There is a guide too to ‘Mithridatism’, the immunisation against a certain poison through application or ingestion of tiny doses, as well as tables for the Game Master to create poisons for her own campaign.

The point of ‘Deceptive Combat’ in HARP Subterfuge is that it does not involve what more martial types would call a ‘fair’ fight. Instead of meeting on the battlefield, a deceptive combatant uses every advantage he can—attacking first, ambushes, higher ground, knocking opponents down or stunning them, and so on. Scaling these up and what you have is guerrilla warfare, but either allows weaker or poorly equipped individuals or forces to fight the larger or better equipped. HARP Fantasy Professions which fall under this include the Ranger, Rogue, and Thief, as do the Hunter and Seeker from HARP Folkways, whilst HARP Subterfuge most notably adds the Ninja. ‘Deceptive Combat’ examines various ways in which a combatant will fight less than fair, including dodging, parrying, knocking prone and fighting from prone, taunting, flanking, and more. Then when things get ugly, it also looks at dirty fighting and brawling. Of course, much of this can apply to normal combat too, but it particularly applies to the new Profession of Ninja, which is given a chapter of its own covering Ninja tools, weapons, and martial arts.

Since all Professions in HARP Fantasy can have access to magic, HARP Subterfuge explores several paths via which the stealthy or the cunning can add a touch of magic to their arsenal. These scale up from not actually learning to use spells, but to better use the stored magic in charms, potions, and magical items to actually combining a spell-casting Profession with a Subterfuge Profession, with the new spell-casting Professions in HARP Subterfuge of Beguiler and Nightblade somewhere in between. The supplement examines these in turn, also adding lists of spells from other Spheres that will be useful to subterfuge Professions (some of which come from HARP College of Magics). There are useful lists too, of spells granted by their deity, such as a god of trickery or god of secrecy, for the Cleric/Thief Profession combination, and lastly, the ‘Sphere of Shadows’. This is for the Nightblade Profession and includes spells from the Spheres of Necromancy and Elementialism from the HARP College of Magics, as well as new spells particular to the Nightblade, such as Acute Senses, Phantasmal Duplicates, and Nightblade’s Focus, the latter enabling the Nightblade to enter into a trance state with his weapon to enhance his skill.

The last part of HARP Subterfuge looks at subterfuge and society. This includes its criminal elements or underworld, described here more as an overlay (or as it alternatively suggests, an ‘underlay’) which may or may not dominate a bad part of town. The Streetwise skill is what needs to know in order to get around either and who he might know such as informants, fixers, and fences, plus of course, who is in charge at any one time and who wants to be. This includes organisations too, from the classic fantasy thieves’ guild and rural to heist teams and spy agencies. Amongst these are nomadic groups, suggesting that not all members of a nomadic group engage in subterfuge and gypsies as an example. This is problematic as it veers towards stereotyping, and whilst ultimately that may come down to their portrayal by the Game Master, this could have been addressed in the book. ‘Robin Hood and his Merry Men’ are given as example of a rural organisation, complete with gaol and purpose, membership requirements, group structure, means and methods, which is a pleasing counterpart to the more generic treatment of a thieves’ guild that follows. It is more structured though, as you would expect in a classic fantasy roleplaying sense, and it provides a template that the Game Master can use or adjust as is her wont. There are sections too on loot that a thief might steal, the amount or type depending upon the wealth of the society he is preying on. It includes some new magical items like the Dagger of Silent Screams that five times a day dulls all sound with a foot, including screams and the Gloves of Finnius ‘Four-Thumbs’ (a nice gaming reference there) which an extra thumb, taken from the dead body of a master thief, sown into a finger outside the little finger! The gloves need time to adjust to, but give a bonus to pickpocketing and picking locks, but reducing the wearer’s chance of fumbling in combat!

Of course, the downside to carrying out acts of subterfuge is that a Player Character can get caught. HARP Subterfuge does not simply look at the ways in which a thief might be caught, treated by the legal system—if any, and if found guilty, punished, it asks what constitutes a crime taking into consideration a society’s norms, customs, and laws, and how that can affect a Player Character. It looks at these from point of view of the different Races from both HARP Fantasy and HARP Folkways, as well as what each generally thinks of capital punishment (important, because historically in the medieval-style cultures that fantasy roleplaying games are based, capital punishment was the punishment de jour). Although there is a decision tree that the Game Master can follow to make a quick and dirty ruling—based on the offender’s relation to a group, the justice he faces, the offender’s criminal history, object of the crime and the means, and more—there is no one size fits all system here and ultimately, the Game Master will need to design a justice system to fit her campaign, and possibly more than one, if the campaign focuses on thievery and subterfuge. In response to thieves, there are some suggestions as to possible countermeasures that the law-abiding and/or the rich can take to prevent the theft of their valuables.

Penultimately, and surprisingly, HARP Subterfuge steps away from the mechanics of playing a Thief or subterfuge-type character to look at the ethics—the principles behind right and wrong behaviour, and the morals—the attitude and behaviour of the individual. Backed up by examples, this examines how some actions and outlooks of certain Player Character types can be perceived as negative and ultimately affect both the other players and the other characters. This stems from that the fact that the character type in HARP Subterfuge is stealing or being underhanded, which in today’s society is regarded as immoral in the first case and at least frowned upon in the second. After all, the character type that is likely to be the most selfish is the Thief and if that extends to theft from the rest of the party, that can have consequences in and out of the game. Really, what the section is doing is suggesting that the Game Master and her players consider the personal versus group dynamics of the party and set boundaries in terms of what their characters will and will not do. Of course, not every group of players is going to want to address this or even feel the need to do so, but it is there if they do. Certainly, for some groups, it is definitely something to think about.

Lastly, HARP Subterfuge includes an appendix that outlines the long con, which like earlier chapters, looks at different applicable Professions and skills and Talents, how the different Races and Cultures regard them, how to handle the Manoeuvres necessary to carry one off, all the way down to the ethics and morals involved. This is a great addition to the rest of the book, since it sets up the possibility of a mini-campaign focused on a single job in which the Player Characters prey upon the trust and/or greed of others, but emphasising verbal interaction as much as physical action, if not more.

Physically, HARP Subterfuge is neat and tidy. The artwork varies in quality, and in the main, this is a text-heavy book with a lot of detail. This does not mean that it is hard to read by any means. Notably, each chapter is headed by a suitable quote and their sources are listed at the front, so the reader can use them as a bibliography.

How much use a playing group will get out of HARP Subterfuge will depend upon how much it focuses on the activities of the Thief Profession and other subterfuge-based Player Characters. There is content here that will always be of use to the Thief of the classic fantasy roleplaying, whether that is the ‘Backstabbing’ Talent or the use of various Manoeuvres like climbing, laying traps, and picking locks, all of which are described in detailed fashion. Beyond this, there is plenty here that will really benefit a Thief- or subterfuge-focused campaign, perhaps providing almost too much for the Game Master to work through and take into consideration when setting up such a campaign. Ultimately, HARP Subterfuge is the definitively exhaustive sourcebook for thieves and other ne’er-do-wells for HARP Fantasy, with plenty of ways to add variations upon the classic thief- or rogue-type character to an ongoing campaign or focus upon them for the entirety of the campaign.

Solitaire: Jude’s World

From the outset, Jude’s World faces a challenge in terms of the audience it will not appeal to. Not because it is a bad game, but rather because of its subject matter. It is a solo storytelling and journalling game, and over the two decades that the hobby has had storytelling games, they have generally dealt with generally non-commercial subject matters in a fairly direct manner. These have included love, betrayal, survival, community, mysteries, loyalty, magic, and many more. Jude’s World though, deals with divorce. And for a sizeable percentage of the gaming community—as in society, in general—that may be too sensitive a subject matter, especially one to turn into a game. And that is whether they were a child whose parents separated and divorced or an adult who has a child and goes through a divorce with a partner. For others though, Jude’s World may be as fantastical a concept as going down a dungeon and fighting monsters. More interestingly though, Jude’s World has also been written in response to the Walt Disney film, The Parent Trap, both the original 1961 version and the 1998 remake, which the author describes as being a very conservative view of marriage and relationships. This in addition to the quite bonkers nature of the films’ plot (and the German book it is based upon, Lisa and Lottie, by Erich Kästner).

Jude’s World is published by Button Kin Games, best known for its collaboration with the excellent Odd Jobs: RPG Micro Settings Vol. I and it requires nothing more than a means to record the player’s progress, two six-sided dice, and a deck of Tarot cards. In Jude’s World, the player takes the role of twelve-year-old Jude, writing a diary about the breakdown of the marriage of their parents, Mika and Jamie, and then their effort to get them back together again. Essentially, just like The Parent Trap, but without a twin. Of course, a player need not roleplay Jude and need not set their efforts in the default period of the here and now for Jude’s World. The player is free to assign whatever names he wants and set his playthrough where and whenever he wants.

Jude and their parents are very lightly defined. In fact, it comes down to the single sentence, ‘Jude is XXX, who XXX’, where the ‘XXX’s are defined by the player’s initials and those of his favourite teenage icons. So, for example, mine would be ‘Jude is a philosopher, who loves movie nights’, whilst those for Jude’s parents would be ‘Mika is social butterfly, who speaks multiple languages’ and ‘Jamis is a goody two shoes, who wants to go to space’. Besides this, Jude has a stat called ‘Teen’ which measures their progress from pre-teen to teen and rated from zero to five, beginning at zero. Their parents have ‘Hearts’ and ‘Hurts’. ‘Hearts’ runs from one to five and starts at one, and represents the love that Mika and Jamie had for each other. ‘Hurts’ runs between one and three, starts at two, and represents the pain they have caused each other. If it rises to three, Mika and Jamie have a fight and lose two Hearts! Ultimately, the aim of Jude’s World is for Jude to get her parents back together, indicated by increasing their parents’ ‘Hearts’ to five, whilst increasing their ‘Teen’ value represents their increasing maturity.

Set-up begins by having Jude ‘Build a Life’. This is done by creating a nine-card Tarot spread, roughly shaped like a house, that indicate what Jude and Mika care about apart from Jude, how they met and what drew them together, obstacles they overcame and what they sacrificed to have Jude, a personality trait for Jude, what Jude’s happiest memory of their family is, and what they know about their parents’ break up. This represents the past for Jude, whilst her future is defined by having her ‘Rebuild a Life’ using the same nine-card Tarot spread.

As he draws the Tarot cards, the player will interpret and use them to tell the story of Jude’s efforts to get their parents back together. The Minor Arcana consist of Pentacles representing wealth and work; Cups emotions, health, family, and friends; Swords are intellect and school; and Wands are creativity and hobbies. The Major Arcana, such as Death, The Sun, and Justice represent major milestones. ‘The Fool’, ‘The Magician’, and ‘The High Priestess’ form the Twists stack, whilst three Minor Arcana form Jude’s Keepsakes stack. It is not a matter of drawing a single card each time, since that would produce a build which could be interpreted as a story, but which was wholly random. Instead, the player draws three cards on a turn. One he keeps, the others he returns randomly to the deck. The drawn cards represent different aspects of Jude’s life and that of their parents. Numbered Minor Arcana are Keepsakes, such as ‘A picture of an old house’ or ‘A teddy bear holding a stuffed heart’, that their parents once held dear and which Jude uses to strengthen the emotional effect of the Traps they will lay for them. Face Minor Arcana are a foil or an accomplice, part of Jude’s life, such as a popular and ambitious older teen for ‘Knight of Cups’ or an authoritative, determined adult for the ‘King of Swords’. An accomplice will help Jude get their parents back together, whilst a foil will not. Major Arcana are Twists, big events in Jude’s life, such as standing up to a bully for ‘The Chariot’ or running away for the night for ‘The Fool’. Effectively, these are all prompts and all handily listed in Jude’s World, which the player is using to tell and then record Jude’s efforts.

There are twin drives to Jude’s World and the key them are the Twists, which can either be picked or used to ‘Spring a Trap’. Picking a Twist, a big event in Jude’s life, increases their Teen score and their maturity, whereas a Twist is used along with three Keepsakes to ‘Spring a Trap’. The player uses a Twist and three Keepsakes to trigger a Trap and then rolls for the results on the table. An Accomplice or a Foil add a bonus or penalty to the roll if present. Results vary widely. A ‘Failure’ increases Hurt by one. A ‘Partial Success’ gives three options—adding a Heart and changing an Accomplice to a Foil; increase Heart and Hurt by one each; or reduce Hurt by one. A ‘Full Success’ increases Heart by one. An ‘Outstanding Success’ also increases Heart by one and adds further options of turning a Foil into an Accomplice, Reducing Hurt to zero, or increasing Heart by one again. The three Keepsakes are discarded, as is the Major Arcana used for the Twist if the result was a failure. On any degree of success—Partial, Full, or Outstanding— the Major Arcana is added to the ‘Rebuild a Life’ spread.

Mechanically, the flow and aim of the game is to build up enough Minor Arcana as Keepsakes and one or more Major Arcana as Twists to set a Trap for Jude’s parents to make them remember what was good about their relationship and why they got together in the first place, and to try get them back together again. The player will do this multiple times, working to fill in the nine-card ‘Rebuild-a-Life’ spread. Thematically, the player is recording the story of how this happens and what the outcome is, as well as making discoveries about Jude’s parents using the cards of the Tarot deck together with the prompts listed in the book.

Also thematically, the player is exploring his past. Primarily, his memories of being both a pre-teen and a teenager, but also the breakup of his parents’ relationship and his reaction to that—if that happened. There is a degree of intimacy to both, meaning that the play of Jude’s World is potentially more personal and even more painful than other roleplaying games, even storytelling ones. Plus, that intimacy can be exacerbated because Jude’s World is played alone and the player is not just drawing upon personal thoughts and recollections, but considering them and writing them down. Of course, a player need not draw on his past so heavily or even at all, perhaps playing Jude’s World inspired more directly by the tone of The Parent Trap than is Jude’s World itself. That said, the potential remains. Of course, as the author points out, Jude’s World is not intended and should not be used as therapy.

Physically, Jude’s World is a decently presented book. The cover is striking, but whilst decent enough, the internal artwork is more functional. The layout of the book as a notebook with coloured tabs down the side is appropriately effective.

Jude’s World is a well designed and thought out game that showcases the types of stories that possible within the storytelling genre. This is a coming-of-age story, one of the trauma of family break-up, but also an attempt to repair that trauma and put the family back together. It also offers flexibility in how a player approaches its play and replayability in the use of the Tarot deck and the prompts in the book. However, its degree of intimacy and the feelings and memories it can engender make it less of a comedy, coming-of-age drama for some players than the author intended.