[Free RPG Day 2026] No Place Like Homebrew

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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No Place Like Homebrew is a sampler for No Place Like Homebrew, a supplement from Roll & Play Press, which provides the Game Master with hundreds of settlements, factions, NPCs, monsters, countries, and more. Everything is clearly laid out and colour-coded—purple for characters, brown for factions, green for locations, and red for creatures—such that the Game Master can consult the supplement and find something that she wants in the right section. Further, where needed it has stats. In the supplement, these are for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, making it compatible with the world’s number one roleplaying game, but these are neatly compartmentalised such that a Game Master could easily ignore them and develop the content using the system and stats of her choice. The No Place Like Homebrew sampler has no such stats, but is colour-coded and thus everything is easy to find and identify what category each falls into.

The No Place Like Homebrew sampler opens with a handful of countries, leading with a description of Theotalis, ‘Opulent country rich in silver.’, known for Castle Theotalis and its gleaming spire as well as the fact silver views run in abundance across the county. The citizens are wealthy and silver is held as sacred though the mines are now mechanised. Dotted across the country are old silver statues which may be a source of riddles, advice, or snippets of lost history depending upon who you ask. Conversely, ‘Fozanzia’, a ‘Magical, smog filled-wasteland’, was once a centre of arcane research, but was reduced to an unhabitable wasteland following a failed attempt to artificially recreate dragon’s breath as a weapon. It is now shrouded in thick, draconic fog, scorching golden yellow by day, freezing grey by night. Except for the dragons and wyverns that roam the sky, the only things that live under the pall of magical fallout are hardy, but have mutated. However, if a creature survives long breathing in the miasma, it develops its own dragon breath… All six entries are categorised ‘Setting’ and ‘Country’, but also fall into a combination of the ‘Exploration’, ‘Safe’, ‘Magic’, ‘Horror’, ‘Dangerous’, and other categories. 

Under ‘Realms and Leaders’, the sampler details three different dragons. ‘The Winged Terror’ is a wounded wyvern, recently escaped from a gladiatorial arena and clumsily trying to adapt to outside world; ‘Precept Regent’ are father, mother, and son Gold Dragons travel the world learning and giving lectures on all manner of different subjects; and ‘The Underking’ claims dominion over all that lies under the ground and sees mining efforts as invasions! Thus, we have a creature that is wild new threat to the countryside, a trio that might be the very sages that the Player Characters are looking for, and a would-be ruler of the Underworld.

The centre part of the sampler is devoted to the widest selection of interesting options to import into the Game Master’s campaign—people, organisations, and the occasional monster. Unfortunately, whether it is the ‘Syphapods’, translucent underground octopi that drop on people and suffocate and constrict them or the ‘Duneshredders’, landsharks that swim in the desert sands, the monsters in the sampler manage to be uninspired and uninspiring. Much, much better are the NPCs. ‘Cerulea Prim’ is a Stone Giant renowned for cave paintings, occasionally takes commissions to paint murals, but lets others add to the paintings in her cave and now wants to find an inspiring band of heroes to feature in her next work. The ‘Shardpick Syndicate’ is a band of Dwarves known for their diamond-tipped picks which enable them to rework old mines and dig out previously inaccessible seams of ore and gems, but this is all a front for its leader’s true aim—finding a lost city! ‘Nym’ is a Nothic fascinated by the surface world and tortures those it captures for their knowledge and secrets, but giving up the knowledge beforehand might prevent her from attacking you. Other entries include a  popular author looking for inspiration in the wilderness, a high priest to a sun god wanting donations to restore his remote temple whilst pining for the love that his faith denies him, and an assassin who uses scorpion venom, but who has lost his favourite and mostly deadly scorpion! Overall, it is a nice range and there is definitely something or someone that the Game Master can add to her campaign.

Pride of place goes to ‘The Copperpot Arms’, an inn so large it has capacity for five hundred guests. It is fully detailed and ready to use, and even though the map is too small, it gets across a sense of its layout. Lastly, the No Place Like Homebrew sampler gives an idea of its ‘Campaign Primers’. These include tone, inspiration, and pitch, as well as campaign overview, lore and mechanics, key locations, important characters, and inciting incident. Lastly, there are some Session Zero questions to put to the players about their characters. The included ‘Pirate Campaign: King of the Blue’ is inspired by One Piece meets Monster Hunter and consists of a world of drifting island nations, one of which is Theotalis from earlier in the sampler (and the book), and the big hook is the hunt for a shipwreck said to be laden with pirate treasure. The primer comes with NPCs; lore and mechanics such as building crew reputation, upgrading ships, and using knock-off electrum coins in a world where the silver coin is the prime currency can get a pirate or a Player Character into trouble; and an inciting incident to get the campaign started. Overall, it is a good page of details, but still with room aplenty for the Game Master to add her own content.

Physically, the No Place Like Homebrew sampler is well presented. It readable and accessible and the artwork is decent.

The obvious problem with the No Place Like Homebrew sampler is that it it bitty, lots of little things rather than one whole that can be used as is. As a preview though, it does a good job of showcasing what is in the actual No Place Like Homebrew book and there is content in the sampler that the Game Master can take inspiration from. It is far from the best item published for Free RPG Day 2026, but where others might get immediately used, it might be something that the Game Master dips into at a later date.

2016: Shadowrun: Anarchy

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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Shadowrun had a problem in 2016 with Shadowrun, Fifth Edition and it is a problem that continues today with Shadowrun, Sixth Edition. Originally published by FASA, Inc. in 1989, but now published by Catalyst Game Labs, the roleplaying game has always had a great setting and been a great combination of genres. Fantasy and Cyberpunk in a future in which man meets machine and magic, corporations are states unto themselves, dragons are CEOs and media personalities. The problem is with the mechanics. At their core, they consist of a dice pool mechanic determined by attribute, skill, and other bonuses, the aim being to roll as many successes—five or six on the dice—as possible, which is simple enough. Shadowrun though is a game of different character types—Adepts, Mages, Shamans, Deckers, Street Samurai, Riggers, and Technomancers—and effectively, the rules for each one is essentially a different subsystem. Which meant different rules for each player to master and a lot of different rules for the Game Master to understand. Plus, with different rules and different variations upon rules in each edition, no player or Game Master could quite agree upon which edition of the roleplaying game they preferred.

Published in 2016, Shadowrun: Anarchy was offered as an alternative ruleset to the then Shadowrun, Fifth Edition, notably a narrative driven ruleset which kept the core mechanics, but also simplified Shadowrunner creation. At its heart though, is the Cue System. This first appeared in the publisher’s pulp Sci-Fi roleplaying game Cosmic Patrol and then in the superhero roleplaying game, Valiant Universe Roleplaying Game. Both are storytelling games with some traditional mechanics, but unlike some storytelling roleplaying games, they do not forego a Game Master. Instead, in addition to roleplaying their characters, whether members of the Cosmic Patrol or superheroes in the Valiant Universe, the players take in turns to serve as the Game Master. Shadowrun: Anarchy uses the Cue System, but makes one significant change to it. Instead of each player being the Game Master for a scene, Shadowrun: Anarchy maintains the role of the Game Master as in traditional roleplaying games. The Game Master sets the brief and at the beginning of each scene narrates the situation, what the Shadowrunners see, smell, hear, and so on. Then the game play proceeds around the table with each player narrating what his character does. Each player’s narration ends when it is appropriate, either in terms of the story or the scene, or if the player needs to roll dice for his character, whether that is to attempt a particular objective or combat is initiated. A player is free to narrate his character’s actions in the scene and to develop the scene as long as any addition is not going to break it, usually inspiration from the ‘Cues’ or story or situational tags, that can either be ones the Game Master presents at the start of the scene or ones that are on the player’s character sheet.

The role of the Game Master here is to decide when a player needs to roll a Test for his character’s action, and then what Skill and Attribute are appropriate to the Test as well as what modifiers apply. She also roleplays the NPCs, rolls their Defence rolls, handles any rules difficulties, and decides when a player’s narration comes to end, either because it is too long or stretching the limits of credulity. The Game Master also needs to know the details of the Contract Brief, the scenario that she is running. When it is a player’s Narration, it is his role to keep the character’s opposition on its toes, to make his character stand out, to explore and highlight what is great about the Sixth World, and to work with the other players to make the story and the game better. When it is not his turn, it is the player’s duty to prepare for his next Narration, building on the Narrations of his fellow players, and to have his character interact with their characters in their Narrations. Lastly, the player is there, when needed, when need to make suggestions to his fellow players, in particular, if another player has difficulty creating Narration, again working from the Cues for the scenes and the Cues for the narrating player’s character.

Play proceeds like this through Scenes and Turns from the start of the ‘Contract Brief’ to its execution and its conclusion. However, Scenes can be broken by ‘Talk Time’, which is when conversations can take place—most typically with a Mr. Johnson—and when planning can take place. Both the Game Master and players have access to ‘Plot Points’. A Player Character starts play with three and can have at most five at any one time. More are awarded for great Narrations and certain Shadow Amps grant bonus Plot Points at the start of combat. A player can spend a Plot Point to ‘Live Dangerously’ to add a Glitch Die to a player’s roll (either their own or that of another player); ‘Shake it up’ by making a Narration and have his character take an action when it is not his Narration; ‘Double time it’ to take two movement actions; to add a ‘Surprise threat’, such as having unseen corporate security guards show up; carry out ‘First aid’ and heal a point of Physical or Stun damage; cause a ‘Malfunction’ in the spirits or devices of an NPC or another Player Character temporarily; ‘Take the hit’ if a weaker or injured character is successfully hit by a combat action; or deliver ‘A dish best served cold’ and immediately have his character take a free attack action against the NPC who just attacked him.

The Game Master starts a Contract Brief with a single Plot Point and earns more as the players spend them. She cannot spend her Plot Points to aid or hinder a Player Character, but can spend them to add a Glitch Die to an NPC’s action and also to change the turn order, whether that is in reverse or randomly! This is to shake up the play pattern and to keep the players on their toes.

In general, this is well explained and there is good advice on how to handle this switch to shared narration. Encouraging the players to build up, rather than tear down, encouraging a player to use all of his character’s options instead of using the most powerful, and where necessary, offer hints and recapitulating on the current situation, plans that the characters have already made, and twists already introduced. However, there are issues with the explanations in places. For example, the explanation never goes into how exactly a player rakes inspiration from a Cue, but worse, having told the Game Master and her players how to play a Contract Brief and thus Shadowrun: Anarchy, what it does not do is show them. There is no example of play anywhere in the book. Go back and read that again… Such an omission is a fundamental flaw in the design of any roleplaying game, but in a roleplaying game such as Shadowrun: Anarchy which is making a radical shift in its style of play, from traditional, simulationist to narrative, storytelling, this is worse. It is not a catastrophe in that its omission makes the game unplayable, but it hinders the learning of how the roleplaying game is run and played and it hinders the teaching of how the roleplaying game is run and played.

To be a little nuanced here, if the Game Master and her players have some experience of storytelling, narrative roleplaying games, this is much less of an issue. Even less of an issue if either has experience of the previous Cue System roleplaying games, Cosmic Patrol and Valiant Universe Roleplaying Game. If not, if the Game Master and her players are wanting to play Shadowrun for the first time or have played Shadowrun for a long time and are looking for a lighter ruleset, then it is a grave error of judgement upon the part of the designers.

In terms of the rules, Shadowrun: Anarchy starts with Shadowrunner creation. A Shadowrunner is defined by Attributes, Skills, Shadow Amps, Weapons, and Gear, plus Qualities and Cues. A Shadowrunner will also have a Metatype, either Human, Elf, Dwarf, Ork, or Troll. This Metatype provides various bonuses and adjustments. The Attributes consist of Strength, Agility, Willpower, Logic, and Charisma, which typically range between one and six for Humans, but can be higher or lower for different Metahumans. There is a wide range of Skills and a Shadowrunner will have some Skills in common with his colleagues—combat skills in particular—but specialise in a particular area, whether that is magic, vehicle use, hacking, or even combat. All skills have Specialisations, which increase the number of dice a player rolls when using them. Shadow Amps are what makes a Shadowrunner special. These can be Awakened so that the Shadowrunner can cast spells (the spells cost extra) or Emerged which gives the Shadowrunner access to Technomancer Amps. There are Amps for Adepts, Bioware and Cyberware, Matrix Amps for hacking, Drone Amps for the Rigger, Gear Amps, Social Amps, and Critter Amps. Installing too Bioware or Cyberware has its cost though, reducing a Shadowrunner’s ability to handle the effects of magic, including healing. Cues are often common phrases that a Shadowrunner might say or how he might react.

Qualities are the equivalent of advantages and disadvantages and a Shadowrunner has two positive Qualities and one negative Quality.

To create a Shadowrunner, a player assigns points to his Shadowrunner’s Attributes and Skills, purchases Shadow Amps, selects weapons and gear, and then creates Cues, at least two or three, and optionally add Tags, which give a quick ideas as the theme and style of the Shadowrunner. He also selects Qualities. The number of points the player has to spend on Attributes, Skills, and Shadow Amps, as well has many weapons and how much gear he has to select, will vary by game level, either Gang-Level, Street Runner, or Prime Runner. The rules allow for a player design the Shadow Amps he wants for his Shadowrunner, but the Shadowrun: Anarchy includes lots of off-the-shelf options which ease the creation process. The process overall is not difficult, except that is for coming up with Cues and Dispositions.

Name: ‘Rávdos’

Metatype: Ork

Tags: Ork • Barrens Girl • Rat Shaman • Wet Behind the Ears

Cues: Oh shiny! • The darkness is my friend • I know a shortcut (if you’re squeezy enough) • You lost something? I can find it • The pack is family • Eyes most places

Dispositions: Twitchy • Not run to fight another day. Just run • The streets always deliver • Pack player

ATTRIBUTES

Strength 3 Agility 4 Willpower 5 Logic 4 Charisma 3 Essence 6

SKILLS

Agility: Athletics 1, Close Combat 2

Willpower: Conjuring 2, Sorcery 2

Logic: Knowledge (The Barrens 1, Greek 1), Tracking 1

Charisma: Negotiation 1

SHADOW AMPS

Awakened (2), Vermin Control (1), Analyse Truth (1), Clairvoyance (1), Natural Weapons (1)

QUALITIES

Mentor Spirit (Rat), Home Ground (The Barrens), Low Pain Threshold

WEAPON

Knife (STR/2+1)P

GEAR

Synthleather jacket: 6, Trauma Patches, Crowbar, Smoke Grenades

Mechanically, Shadowrun: Anarchy uses a dice pool system that will be familiar to players of Shadowrun. When a player wants his Shadowrunner to act, he forms a dice pool of six-sided dice consisting of Skill Dice and Attribute Dice, plus any Modifiers from the situation, Shadow Amps, and Qualities. This roll is made against the Game Master’s Opposing Dice pool. Results of five or six count as Hits and if the player rolls more Hits than the Game Master, his Shadowrunner succeeds, if not, he fails. Edge can be spent—and a Shadowrunner typically starts with a single point of Edge—to alter the results. If spent before the test, four, fives, and sixes count as Hits, but after the test, any results that are not five or six can be rerolled. A player can also spend a Plot Point to add a Glitch Die to a dice roll. This is a die of different colour. If the result of the Glitch Die is a one, bad luck has befallen the Shadowrunner, even if the result overall means that the Shadowrunner has succeeded. For example, a Close Combat attack could not only fail, but the attacker falls over as well; a gun could jam; a Hacking Test results in the Hacker deleting or downloading the wrong file; and so on. However, if the result on the Glitch Die is a five or six, then good luck has befallen the Shadowrunner, such as bypassing armour in a fight, finding something interesting on a Hacking mission, and so on. Again, this good luck will still occur if the overall result indicates that the Shadowrunner has failed.

Combat is more complex, though some elements, such as ammunition tracking, shots fired per turn, firing modes, reloading speeds, and so on, have been removed to simplify player choices and keep things moving. When a player wants his Shadowrunner to attack, he forms a dice pool of six-sided dice consisting of Skill Dice and Attribute Dice, plus any Modifiers from the situation, Shadow Amps, Qualities, and Weapon effects. For the opponents, the Game Master is rolling a dice pool formed from the Agility Dice and Logic Dice, plus any modifiers and Shadow Amp effects. If the attacker rolls more Hits than the defender, the difference is added to the damage of the attack. If fewer or none, the attack fails and no damage is inflicted. Armour is treated as ablative and reduces damage, but is damaged in the process, though it can be repaired. Damage can either be Phsyical or Stun and is applied to the appropriate track of a Shadowrunner’s Condition Monitor. As it is filled in, modifiers reduce the number of dice a player will roll on every Test. Eventually, a Shadowrunner will either be knocked out or killed.

Combat is slower than standard task resolution in Shadowrun: Anarchy. Although there is an optional rule for handling Mooks, that is being able to subdue or kill numerous opponents in one attack, it is not the default. The problem here is that adds an element of grit that otherwise is at odds with the cinematic simplification of some rules elsewhere, such as removing the need to reload or track ammunition use.

There is a brilliant piece of writing when it comes to ‘Attack Limits’. “A character can only take a single attack action during their Narration. What is an Attack action? An action that intentionally and directly damages another living being (including NPCs, critters, spirits, and whatever). Want to debate the meaning of Attack action beyond that? Have fun, and we’ll be here for you when you’re ready to play!” It is just saying, get on with it, because Shadowrun: Anarchy is not the kind of roleplaying game where that kind of detail should be causing any sweat. This is not to say that Shadowrun: Anarchy manages to avoid causing any sweat, but it is a point well made.

An interesting side effect of there being no Nuyen in Shadowrun: Anarchy is that a Shadowrunner cannot simply go out and buy new armour. A Plot Point can be spent repairing a single point, but for a full repair, the player has to pay a point of Karma (usually awarded at the end of missions and spent to improve a Shadowrunner) or promise a favour to the Game Master. This allows the Game Master to select the next Contact Brief—normally the players do it—and if multiple favours are owed, the players at least get to choose the order in which they do them. This adds a narrative wrinkle as an urgent job suddenly gets in the way of what their Shadowrunners might want to actually do!

Elsewhere, there is a lot of streamlining in Shadowrun: Anarchy compared to previous editions of Shadowrun. Nuyen and Lifestyle Costs are treated as abstract, narrative elements rather than players needing to track the numbers; weapons and gear are simplified for fast play; hacking in the Matrix is distilled to single rolls and reactions such as triggering alarms and the Overwatch Score are narrative elements; magic remains much like Shadowrun, but there is no Drain effect; and Technomancers have no Drain effect. In many ways, this is an improvement, often really simplifying quite complex subsystems in Shadowrun, such as the Matrix rules. This does come at a cost, in terms of limiting the number of spells a caster can have, the spirits that a summoner can bring into play, and the Complex Forms a Technomancer knows. Combat in the Matrix though, works exactly as it does in the real world. Optional rules do allow for hacking to be more detailed if desired, but that does add extra complexity. In comparison, the Rigger, the one role which would have benefited from streamlining is underserved by the lack of details for drones and vehicles, except some drones described in the NPC descriptions.

Shadowrun: Anarchy does give the Game Master and player with a lot of support. There is a solid introduction to the setting with some fiction, the characters from which appear as NPCs or potential Shadowrunners elsewhere in the book, and there is decent account of the history up until the year 2077 when Shadowrun, Fifth Edition is set. The Big Ten megacorporations from Ares Macrotechnology to Wuxing Incorporated are detailed, as well as organised crime, gang, the law, politics, major powers, and more, as well as a look at life in the Sixth World. Thirty sample Shadowrunners, including an Elf combat archaeologist, Dwarf parkour adept, Human ganger razorgirl, Troll face, and Ork reporter, are given full descriptions and character sheets, plus there are stats for twenty-three NPCs, though twenty-three definitely does not feel enough. There is a good guide to Seattle as well.

The star though of this support, is the twenty-five ‘Contract Briefs’, several of which are multi-part affairs. Each starts with ‘Mr. Johnson’s Pitch’ and then lists the objectives, the setting, and the plot scene by scene. There are suggestions as the NPCs for each scene and a list of Tags for the whole mission. There is even one called ‘Food Fight’, an obvious nod to the original scenario/encounter given in Shadowrun. Overall, the selection of ‘Contract Briefs’ is very good and will provide multiple session of play if the Game Master decides to use all of them. Most of them can be played through in a single session or two. Lastly, there are notes on Shadowrun: Anarchy and Shadowrun, Fifth Edition and on using source material from the latter as well as adapting Shadowrunners from one to the other or vice versa. These are serviceable.

Physically, Shadowrun: Anarchy is a good looking book. The artwork is excellent and the layout clean. However, it definitely needs another edit.

Unfortunately, Shadowrun: Anarchy is a book with problems. Not least of which is the fact that there is no map of Seattle and its environs in 2077, let alone North America or the world. There are places where rules could have been clarified, but either never are or are very later on, such as placing the ‘Anarchy Catalogue’ with its ready-pick Shadow Amps right at the end of the book rather than with the rules for Shadowrunner creation or rules for a particular in a ‘Contract Brief’ rather than in the general section for the pertinent rules or in the NPC section. The selection of NPCs or ready-to-play Shadowrunners is great, but not all of them are consistent in their design. So, if player or Game Master wants to use one, they need to be redesigned to make the costs balance.

The issue with Shadowrun: Anarchy is threefold. First, it set out to address the crunch and mechanical complexity of Shadowrun, Fifth Edition that made it difficult to learn run, and whilst it can be argued that it very much did that, offering a streamlined, faster-playing system, in switching to the more narrative, player-involved Cue System, it asked player and Game Master alike to make a radical change in playing style, but did not explain it enough. How exactly does a ‘Cue’ work? Or a ‘Tag’ or a ‘Disposition’? It is possible for the Game Master and her players to grasp the fundamentals, but the nuances are lost they are not fully explained or given a full example of play, which if done right would have been the best teaching aid of all. Second, Shadowrun: Anarchy cannot decide who it is for. The old Shadowrun veteran who wants to try a simpler system for his favourite roleplaying game? Someone who is completely new to Shadowrun? Or someone who has played a Cue System roleplaying game and wants to try a Shadowrun roleplaying game? All three? It is unclear. Third, is the lack of development to make it coherent and have more of the pick-up-and-play aspect that you get the impression it is aiming.

Shadowrun: Anarchy is a great idea. A fast playing roleplaying game with narrative elements in one of the best developed and entertaining settings in the roleplaying hobby. In fact, it is not actually unplayable, but the lack of development, the underwhelming lack of presentation in terms of its idea, and its organisation make it almost as difficult to play as the then current version of the main roleplaying game, Shadowrun, Fifth Edition. Which misses the point of what it was intended to do.

[Free RPG Day 2026] The Weaver & The Redcaps

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?
The Dolmenwood Quick-Start: The Weaver & the Redcaps is the quick-start for Dolmenwood, the weird fairy tale adventure game. It is published by Necrotic Gnome, best known for Old School Essentials, the retroclone based on the 1981 revision of Basic Dungeons & Dragons by Tom Moldvay and its accompanying Expert Set by Dave Cook and Steve Marsh.

The Dolmenwood Quick-Start: The Weaver & the Redcaps is a twenty page, full colour booklet.

How long will it take to play?
The Dolmenwood Quick-Start: The Weaver & the Redcaps includes the scenario, ‘The Weaver & the Redcaps’, a short scenario which can be played through in a single session.

What else do you need to play?
The Dolmenwood Quick-Start: The Weaver & the Redcaps needs a full set of polyhedral dice per player.

Who do you play?
The Dolmenwood Quick-Start: The Weaver & the Redcaps includes six pre-generated Player Characters. They consist of a Human Cleric, a Human Fighter, a Human Friar, a Breggle Magician, an Elf Thief, and a Mossling Hunter.

How is a Player Character defined?

In Dolmenwood, a Player Character is defined by his Kindred, Class, Level and Abilties. These will help determine his Armour Class, Hit Points, Attack, Speed, Magic Resistance, Save Targets, and Skill Targets. The six Abilities are Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution, and Charisma. Of the pre-generated Player Characters in Dolmenwood Quick-Start: The Weaver & the Redcaps, Elves are fairy folk, a Breggle is a goat-headed humanoid whose folk rule part of south-west Dolmenwood, and a Mossling is a part-mortal flesh/part-plant or fungus humanoid from the dank, fungal-infested lowlands to the east.

How do the mechanics work?

Mechanically Magic works very much as other retroclones, in particular those based on Basic Dungeons & Dragons. It is Vancian in nature, meaning that each day, a spellcaster memorises spells daily and once cast, the magical imprinting of a spell on the caster’s memory dissipates.  looks any other retroclone from the Old School Renaissance, but with minor changes. Both Ability Checks and Skill Checks are rolled on a six-sided die. For Ability Checks, the Ability modifier is applied to the die roll to beat a typical target of four. For Skill Checks, the appropriate Ability modifier is applied to the die roll to beat a target. All Player Characters have the Search and Listen skills, whilst the Thief Class will have its usual range.

Saving Throws are rolled on a twenty-sided die as per other retroclones. The five Save Categories are Doom, Ray, Hold, Blast, and Spell, each representing a different type of hazard.

In addition to the Basic Rules, the Dolmenwood Quick-Start: The Weaver & the Redcaps also provides explanations of the supernatural abilities of clerics, friars, and magicians, the roleplaying game’s skills, and how to handle encounters and combat.

How does combat work?

Combat works very much as other retroclones, in particular those based on Basic Dungeons & Dragons.

How does magic work?

Magic works very much as other retroclones, in particular those based on Basic Dungeons & Dragons. It is Vancian in nature, meaning that each day, a spellcaster memorises spells daily and once cast, the magical imprinting of a spell on the caster’s memory dissipates. 

What do you play?

It is a short, whimsical encounter that is easily added to a Referee’s Dolmenwood campaign. Griselma Harrow, a weaver and embroiderer renowned for crafting magical garments for various notable figures in Dolmenwood and recently rejected a demand from the capricious fairy lord, Prince Mallowheart, craft him a new coat. In spite, the Prince has sent a quartet of Redcaps to persuade her otherwise and are causing chaos inside Griselma Harrow’s cottage, starting with making a mighty oak to grow underneath it and thrust it up into its boughs. This is when the Player Characters arrive, having been invited to afternoon tea by Griselma Harrow.

The Redcaps are not those of traditional folklore, so no dipping of caps in blood to keep their colour, but bandits who whilst sly and malicious, prefer to taunt, beat, and rob others. They are also not the brightest sparks in the forest and in many cases, the Player Characters can talk or trick their way past the Redcaps scattered about Griselma’s cottage. Thus, there is scope for roleplaying and interaction with the Redcaps rather than just fighting them, whereas the Player Characters are more likely to be confronting and fighting the consequences of the Redcaps’ causing chaos and havoc in the cottage. The result is a delightfully quaint adventure that captures the peculiarly eccentric nature of the Dolmenwood setting.

Is there anything missing?
No. The Dolmenwood Quick-Start: The Weaver & the Redcaps is complete as is.

Is it easy to prepare?
Yes. The Dolmenwood Quick-Start: The Weaver & the Redcaps is easy to grasp and prepare. The adventure requires a close read as it is quite detailed.

Is it worth it?
Yes. The Dolmenwood Quick-Start: The Weaver & the Redcapse includes everything for a great introduction to the Dolmenwood setting with a thoroughly entertaining and whimsical adventure,  whether run as a one shot or added to a campaign.

The Dolmenwood Quick-Start: The Weaver & the Redcaps is available to download here.

Squawk Borg

If Pirate Borg pitches itself as the “Worst Pirate RPG Ever Made™!”, then get ready for the “Worst Parrot RPG Ever Made™!”. Well, to be fair, compared to pirates, there really is not any competition when it comes to parrot-themed roleplaying games. In fact, the only other one that springs to mind is Pirates of Pugmire from Onyx Path Publishing, and that actually also does pirates and parrots (as well as other anthropomorphic animals). To be even fairer, this review is not even of actual roleplaying game, so arguably, Pirates of Pugmire does not have any competition at all when it comes to actual pirates and parrots roleplaying games. Instead, Parrot Borg: A Scenario for Pirate Borg is an adventure for the the “Worst Pirate RPG Ever Made™!” published by Limithron via Free League Publishing, especially for ‘International Talk Like a Pirate Day’—or is that ‘International Squawk Like a Parrot Day’?—which takes place on Saturday, 19th September each year.

Parrot Borg: A Scenario for Pirate Borg is both a scenario and a mini supplement for Pirate Borg. It enables players to create and roleplay the parrot companions to their usual pirate characters, either as essentially what is a new character Class (though the Game Master will need to decide on the improvements should a Player-Parrot ever level up) or as an animal companion to each Player-Pirate. (And if you want to take a narrative note from Wraith: The Oblivion, you could even have each player’s Parrot companion be played by another player!) A Player-Parrot is treated just like a Player-Pirate in Pirate Borg with the same ability scores and limited Hit Points and Devil’s Luck. A Player-Parrot is of course capable of flight and has simple attacks including claws and beak, but also a ranged poo attack (which requires some reload time—or that straining time?) that each do minimum damage. A Player-Parrot also has a Type, Physical Trademark, Starting Weapon, and a Special Ability. The Type is a Player-Parrot’s species such as Macaw, Parakeet, Cockatoo, Grey, and Amazon, whilst the Physical Trademark can be clipped wings and scruffy, missing leg, or even being a skeleton or ghost! Starting Weapons include sharper beaks or talons, a weapon, a deadly spit, or even Mega Poo! A Special Ability can be an ability improvement, starting play with a random relic or ritual, or simply being lucky. Of course, Player-Parrots are meant to be throwaway—or is that ‘flyaway’?—characters, but as a mini-supplement, Parrot Borg: A Scenario for Pirate Borg provides a good mix of character types and abilities that a player can take as inspiration too for his parrot’s personality in less than half a page.

The scenario in Parrot Borg: A Scenario for Pirate Borg is a hexcrawl—or is that ‘wing-crawl’?—with a simple set-up and simple solution. The Player-Parrots’ pirate crew have gone ashore on a small archipelago to raid a small town and fort held by the English/Spanish/French (delete as appropriate), but left their parrot companions aboard ship because they heard a rumour that the commander of the fort has a menagerie of animals dangerous to parrots. Several days have passed and still the pirates have not returned. So, either the pirates have successfully raided the fort and town and have been celebrating since, or they have been captured or killed by the authorities. Either way, the Player-Parrots need to check.

From the Player-Parrots’ sloop, they can wing their way out over the islands looking for the missing pirates. There are twelve locations, each neatly detailed. There is a graveyard and a sea cave to explore as well as a villa—home to the fort’s commander, the small town, and the fort itself. Soldiers will take pot-shots at the Parrot-Players and there are birds who will harass them, but in some ways the biggest problem for the Player-Parrots will be the capuchin monkeys which will cause a nuisance wherever they are. They chase a ghost in the Graveyard to get a bite of her for the ASH and caper and agitate for fruit (but not bananas, they hate bananas). There are small stories here to be told too, some of which will play out the Player-Parrots explore.

Of course, what the Player-Parrots are looking for is their Pirates. Some are held in the gaol as you would expect, but others are scattered around islands. Some need rescuing, some do not, and some even need saving! How this is done is all up to the Player-Parrots, but their players will need to be inventive and work together to achieve their aims. This is primarily because the Player-Parrots are fragile and really should avoid combat if they can. However, if the Player-Parrots rescue a pirate, that pirate becomes a Player-Pirate. A player can either switch to playing a pirate or stick with his parrot, but if not, the pirate becomes a back-up or replacement character.

Lastly, Parrot Borg: A Scenario for Pirate Borg is different to other scenarios. One reason is, of course, the fact that the players are roleplaying parrots. The other reason is that the scenario has winning conditions. Rescuing pirates, finding treasure, killing soldiers, and pooing on things will all score points. If the scenario is being run on its own, then the points are not that important. However, Parrot Borg: A Scenario for Pirate Borg could be run as a tournament event and then the (parrot) points would mean a whole lot more.

Physically, Parrot Borg: A Scenario for Pirate Borg is very nicely presented. It is a trifold, pamphlet adventure done in full colours with a great cover and a very lovely map. The format means that the writing style is concise, but the content is neatly organised and laid out so the Game Master can run it straight from the one side.

Parrot Borg: A Scenario for Pirate Borg is a very silly affair, but it is also a fun affair. Whether as a one-shot from other roleplaying games or a diversion from a Pirate Borg campaign, Parrot Borg: A Scenario for Pirate Borg is a chance for the players to squawk if they want to fly faster and get polymerous with their parrots.

[Free RPG Day 2026] Water & Mist

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.

—oOo—

For Free RPG Day 2026, Magpie Games published not one book, but six—Adventure Booklet 1: Earth & Root, Adventure Booklet 2: Fire & Brimstone, Adventure Booklet 3: Ash & Steel, Adventure Booklet 4: Air & Wind, and Adventure Booklet 5: Water & Mist as well as the Expanded Rules supplement. These are all for Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game, one of the most successful Kickstarter campaigns for any roleplaying game. This is the roleplaying adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra, animated series which are inspired by the indigenous cultures of North America and Asia, in particular, China, Chinese martial arts, and the ability to ‘bend’ or manipulate the four elements—water, earth, fire, and air. Only one person can bend all four elements, and he is known as the ‘Avatar’, and not only does he serve as the link between the physical world and the spirit world, but he is also responsible for maintaining harmony between the world’s four nations. In the roleplaying game, the players roleplay characters, or companions, who are capable of bending one of the elements as well as practising martial arts, all with the aim of protecting the world from harm and those unable to stand up to misuse of power.

As with the other four Adventure Booklets, Adventure Booklet 5: Water & Mist originally appeared in Wan Shi Tong’s Adventure Guide, which explores and presents adventures in the different eras of the Avatarverse, including the Kyoshi, Roku, the Hundred Year War, Aang, and Korra periods. Adventure Booklet 5: Water & Mist presents an adventure during the Korra period that will involve the Player Characters in a tale of revenge that takes them into a mess of city politics and city crime in Republic City. In what first looks like a missing persons case, the Player Characters are asked by Zhu Li Moon, the president of the United Republic, to look for her husband, First Gentleman Iknik Blackstone Varrick, who has gone missing. Now this is not the first time he has gone missing, but on previous occasions, he always turned up in some absurd situation or another, leading to the adoption of the ‘Varrick Rule’ under which his disappearances do not warrant too much concern. However, this time it looks to be different and the President wants her husband found quickly and quietly, the inference being that as a recently elected head of government, she wants to avoid a scandal!

In comparison to Adventure Booklet 3: Ash & Steel and Adventure Booklet 4: Air & Wind, the previous entries in the series, which were both chase stories, Adventure Booklet 5: Water & Mist is a detective story and involves a deep investigation into city politics. It begins with the Player Characters meeting President Zhu Li Moon at the Presidential Box at the Spring-Pro-Bending Tournament Qualifier and being asked for their help. After that, the Player Characters are free to conduct the investigation how they want, much as they were in the fairly first entry in the series, Adventure Booklet 1: Earth & Root. This time though, what the Player Characters will not be aware of, is that they are actually up against a deadline. To handle this, the scenario includes a ‘Clock’ as means of tracking how long it takes the Player Characters to act. As they progress, but are either too slow or travel to a new location, the Clock is filled in and when enough segments are filled in, certain events are triggered which go from helpful to ominous. If the Clock is completely filled in, then the Player Characters really only have moments before disaster strikes and they fail in their assignment!

What this means is there is much more of a sense of tension to Adventure Booklet 5: Water & Mist, a race to not only find First Gentleman Varrick, but also finding out why he has gone missing. Unlike the previous entries in the series there is a plot at the heart of the scenario, but like the previous entries in the series, there is no story plot of there being one scene after another. Instead, the scenario is very determined by the actions and decisions of the players and their characters. To that end, the Adventure Booklet 5: Water & Mist lists all of the NPCs and groups together and all of the locations together. Although the various NPCs will have things to tell the Player Characters, more importantly, the location descriptions include details of clues that can be found at each and leads which will link to other NPCs and locations. Effectively, the Player Characters can work their way through mystery, scene-by-scene, with the Game Master throwing in the odd complication or encounter, as determined primarily by the number of segments filled in on the Clock.

The advice for Game Master covers how to handle and fill in the Clock and throwing in escalations to raise the tension, but dedicates most of it attention to running detective stories. It suggests highlighting the passing of time to impress upon the Player Characters the sense of urgency and the consequences of the Player Characters not conducting the investigation in a quiet manner, but above all, it advises that the truth not be hidden from the players and their characters. In other words, the mystery is more fun if it gets solved, so the Player Characters should be able to find the clues and they should be able to undercover the truth. Overall, the advice is solid and useful.

There is advice too on how to set up the scenario if the players are using their own characters rather than the pre-generated quintet which is included in Adventure Booklet 5: Water & Mist. Whether or not the scenario is being run with the pre-generated Player Characters or ones of the players’ own creation, the players will still need to explain the relation between them and President Zhu Li Moon. The five pre-generated Player Characters include Enuk the Guardian, a new Airbender who has come to Republic City to learn Air Nation Ways and wants to keep an eye on a sibling; Changunak the Successor, a Waterbender and technologist from the Southern Water Tribe who wants to main her family’s fishing village; Zhu Song the Hammer, a weapon-wielding former Terra Triad gang member with a grudge against its new boss; Slate the Pillar, an Earthbender trained to lead to a specialised metalbending anti-mecha police force; and Pianchir Jing the Rogue, a Firebender and street orphan who knows Republic City well.

Also included are details of the Basic Moves and Balance Moves in Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game—in addition the Moves for all of the Player Characters—and the techniques that are not in the core book, plus the combat exchanges, statuses, and basic techniques. The Legendary NPC in Adventure Booklet 5: Water & Mist is First Gentleman Varrick, a technologist who could become a teacher to a Player Character (and of course, whether he survives) in the future beyond the scenario.

Physically, Adventure Booklet 5: Water & Mist is well presented, sturdy booklet.

Adventure Booklet 5: Water & Mist is the most sophisticated of the scenarios in the series released for Free RPG Day 2026. The Game Master needs to maintain a tension through between the mystery and its truths, between the actions and decisions of the Player Characters and the countdown of the Clock triggering events, whilst also pushing the players and their characters forward just little to keep the story and mystery unfolding. It is supported by good advice though and the scenario has every that the Game Master needs to run an entertaining blend of intrigue, interaction, and action. Again, as with other entries in the series, Fans of Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra will enjoy the background too and overall, Adventure Booklet 4: Air & Wind is great support for Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game.

2006: Revenge 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.

—oOo—

This is an evil dungeon. For example, the first room consists of a set of stairs which lead down to a door. Murky water is pooled in front of the door. That is simple enough. However, the door cannot be opened because the passage on the other side has been filled with rubble, which will take several hours to clear and that after the strenuous effort to smash the door down. Whilst the Player Characters are doing that, they are standing in the pool of water which hides several caltrops whose points have been laced with poison called Vein Rot, which does Strength damage and halves movement. Ah, I hear you say, “What about secret doors?” Well, yes, of course. There is a secret door, but you know what? That has been trapped too. Opening the secret door releases clouds of finely powdered glass, which if a Player Character breathes in, causes Constitution damage. Which is evil and just the first room. Then the dungeon proceeds to batter the players and their characters over their heads with another fourteen encounters with different mechanics and different traps and monsters, but in a very similar vein… If it sounds like someone has it in for the players and their characters, that is because someone has—and it is not Harley Stroh.

Obviously, the clue to fact that this is the start of a revenge scenario is in the title, Dungeon Crawl Classics #27: Revenge of the Rat King. Designed for a party of between four and six Player Characters of Fourth to Sixth Level, this is the twenty-seventh entry in the original line-up of Dungeon Crawl Classics from Goodman Games. Being published in 2006, it is not written for use with the publisher’s own Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, but for Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition published by Wizards of the Coast. It is also a sequel to the very first entry in the series, 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. Now Aaron Gannu, father of Lawrence, has discovered that it was the Player Characters who killed his son and has engineered a plot to snare them in his clutches and their certain deaths. He will have his revenge!

Dungeon Crawl Classics #27: Revenge of the Rat King is really a dungeon in three acts. The first part opens with the Player Characters in the city of Soulgrave tracking down a ring of slavers and having found an entrance to one of its staging areas under its streets. Very quickly, the Player Characters will find themselves facing challenging situations, both in terms of traps and foes. Monsters harry the Player Characters, scampering away when they get too close and barely giving them time to recover before the next encounter, whilst a rattish figure taunts them all the way. It is linear, including some nasty traps and an unguided and consequently perilous ride on a skiff down a raging storm sewer, and gruelling. The latter intentionally so. Intentionally because Aaron Gannu wants to capture the Player Characters rather than kill them—at this stage. Ultimately, he will. In the second act, the Player Characters wake up dressed in rags, chained up, and bereft of their equipment. After escaping, they must find their way down another rushing waterway and eventually, their equipment, arming them ready to face their captor at the end of the scenario. The third and final act of the scenario is shorter and just as bruising, but the Player Characters have the benefit of their equipment and so the encounters leading up the finale are almost a relief for the players if not their characters.

The scenario requires some preparation in terms of hooking the Player Characters in. It does suggest several ways to do that, all of them tied into the slave ring hook. Yet the Dungeon Master may still want to develop some background in her campaign involving a slave ring before the Player Characters get to this scenario, whether that is in the city of Soulgrave or one of her own choosing. Ideally though, the Dungeon Master should run Dungeon Crawl Classics #27: Revenge of the Rat King as a sequel to Dungeon Crawl Classics #1: Idylls of the Rat King, otherwise the revenge plot at its heart will not just be as significant to either the players or their characters.

If those issues can all be dealt with, the scenario’s primary problem is insurmountable. This is the fact that it is linear. In fact, each of its three acts is linear. Act one to get the Player Characters captured, act two to get the Player Characters free and to their equipment, and act three to get the Player Characters to the finale and the confrontation with Aaron Gannu. Each is testing in its way, the first act grinding the Player Characters down, the second acting stripping them bare, and the third building them back up again. The designer is telling not just a story of revenge, but a revenge epic! One, of course, starring a variable cast, yet that also means that the scenario’s plot has to run for it to work. That is, the Player Characters have to be captured, they have to lose their equipment, and they have to regain it. In effect, no matter how foolish or clever the players and their characters are in the first act—and clever play, along with lucky aplenty, can curtail the effect of some of the challenges they will face, it does not actually matter. For some Dungeon Masters and some players this may be too much of an imposition upon player agency.

Most obviously, Dungeon Crawl Classics #27: Revenge of the Rat King is connected to Dungeon Crawl Classics #1: Idylls of the Rat King, but there are one or two nods to other roleplaying classics in the book too. One is the cover, a delightful homage to the cover of the Player’s Handbook for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition, but with a statue of a rat god replacing the demon, larcenous adventurers swarming all over it of course and attempting to prise out the gemstones it has eyes! The Player Characters will discover this very statue towards the end of the dungeon. Inside, the scenario develops the slavers theme by taking inspiration in one or two locations to A1-4, Scourge of the Slave Lords, such as having to run along the tops of walls of cages holding captured slaves as in A2 Secret of the Slavers Stockade and the whole sequence to the second part of the scenario in which the Player Characters wake and find themselves clothed, but completely lacking equipment and must rely upon wits and abilities is inspired by A4 In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords.

The scenario includes some new magical items and a new monster too. The latter is the Redtooth Troll, a troll afflicted with wererat lycanthropy. His encounter in the scenario starts with him under a bridge and reaching up and over to knock the Player Characters off.

Penultimately—and notably, Dungeon Crawl Classics #1: Idylls of the Rat King and Dungeon Crawl Classics #27: Revenge of the Rat King have something else in common beyond one being the sequel to the other. This is that both have subsequently been adapted for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. These are Fifth Edition Fantasy #31: Idylls of the Rat King and Fifth Edition Fantasy #36: Revenge of the Rat King.

Physically, Dungeon Crawl Classics #27: Revenge of the Rat King is generally well presented. There is a lot to work through and prepare as many of the NPCs and monsters are highly detailed. The artwork is excellent throughout and there are many images here that the Dungeon Master can show to her players in addition to the handouts at the end of the scenario. One big improvement in Dungeon Crawl Classics #27: Revenge of the Rat King is the cartography which more detailed and interesting than in Dungeon Crawl Classics #1: Idylls of the Rat King.

Dungeon Crawl Classics #27: Revenge of the Rat King is not quite a death trap dungeon because it is not designed to kill the Player Characters. It is, however, designed to hurt them, scour at their resources, and put them through the wringer and make them as well as their players work really hard. Every encounter in the dungeon is challenging, but the first act is really testing and full of nastily inventive scenes. The Dungeon Master is going to really enjoy running Dungeon Crawl Classics #27: Revenge of the Rat King; the players not quite so much—unless they like a challenge.

[Free RPG Day 2026] Law and Obligation

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.

—oOo—

Law and Obligation is a scenario for the Cosmere Roleplaying Game, the roleplaying game based on the works if Branddon Sanderson. Published by Brotherwise Games and designed to be played using Third Level Player Characters, it is set during and designed to introduce the players to the Stormlight Campaign setting. It comes with six pre-generated Player Characters (plus an optional seventh) and can be played through in a single session as easily slipped into a campaign. Chronologically, it takes place before the events of the Everstorm and whilst there are notes to adapt the scenario to after it, it will take some adjustment by the Game Master.

In Law and Obligation, the Player Characters have arrived in the port of Kharbranth, an independent city-state on the Tarat Sea. A beacon of scholarship, medicine, and law, the Player Characters have been tasked with locating Tenilar Valtian, a runaway Alethi noble. They are to find him and deliver a message from his parents. The Player Characters are free to look for him however they want—search through the harbour master’s records, ask the locals, or scout out each of the ships docked at the harbour, and the Game Master is encouraged to push the story and reveal details whether the players succeed or fail at their rolls. What they soon learn is that they are not the only ones looking for Tenilar. A Marabethian investigator, Constable Janikk, is also looking for him, looking into allegations of smuggling, and once she has enough evidence, she plans to execute him! Eventually, however, they will be able to identify the vessel he is aboard, the Star of Natanatan, and find him. The investigator is hot on their tail though…

When spoken to, it turns that Tenilar has been smuggling—though with good reason—and even when told the easiest way to avoid being executed is leaving the city, does not want to go. The Player Characters may have an advantage if one of them speaking is a Radiant or demonstrates Surgebinding, as Tenilar is also a Radiant, but an untrained one. Whether the Player Characters manage to persuade him or not, the Marabethian investigator arrives with a pair of guards to arrest the noble and take him away to be executed. The situation can play out in several ways, depending upon whether they can persuade the captain of the Star of Natanatan to help them. The main thrust is a combat between Constable Janikk as she tries to apprehend Tenilar and the Player Characters as they try to protect him against a timed event which if completed means that the Star of Natanatan has sailed beyond the legal reach of the city. The scenario allows the possibility of the captain siding with Constable Janikk and even the Player Characters getting captured.

The scenario is supported with six pre-generated Player Characters, all of which are Human, bar one. They consist of a male Envoy from Natan, a female leader and Windrunner who is a mercenary, Thaylen Warrior and duellist, an Azish Scout who is a Hunter and Edgedancer, an Unkalaki investigator who is a Scholar and Hunter, and an Iriali Agent. If the Windrunner or Edgedancer Player Characters are chosen, there are Surgebinding sheets for both that explain how their powers work. Lastly, the seventh pre-generated Player Character is Singer, intended to be used if the Game Master runs the scenario after the Everstorm. There is a very nice deck plan of Star of Natanatan too.

Physically, Law and Obligation is very well presented. It is well written and both the artwork and the cartography are very good. The deck plan of Star of Natanatan is very nice, though it is a pity that only the top deck is depicted.

Law and Obligation is a serviceable scenario for the Cosmere Roleplaying Game—and that is it. It shows some of the tensions in the setting, but really does not show the setting at its best or really introduce the setting effectively. In other words, Law and Obligation is a scenario that is best appreciated by fans of the setting rather than anyone who is new.