The Other OSR: Wraithborn

What happens when you die? Does your soul ascend to heaven and eternal peace as a reward for your piety and lifetime’s worth of good deeds? Are you cast down into hell as punishment for your sins and impropriety, suffering an eternity of torment and agony? Or are you washed ashore of somewhere in between, a liminal space that might be a purgatory, a place from which you move on, your soul washed of your sins, or simply trapped in the lands that border on nothing? Awakening under a blood red moon in lands of perpetual night, not living, not dead, but undead, the memories of who you once were stripped away from you and what cords of faith you had in life with the gods cut in twain. In lands where vampires proudly walk the streets and quest for more lands to conquer and blood to take, where the Fae quail from their vengeful god in their Lonely Isles, where mechanical monsters hunt the Mystland to taunt and torment the people hidden within their fortresses, and where in the perpetual lunar night, silver falls as rain the Ever Dusk to burn and scourge the skin and souls of the undead. Renounced, rejected, and reviled by those gods, the majority undead take on lives and roles that they might have had in life, though they cannot recall what they were. Others rise above that, perhaps becoming the monsters that their new forms embody, revelling in their new nature and imposing it on others, but others seek to rise above that, seeking honour and enlightenment even though there is no way to pass through the Veil that the gods have placed around the lands that make up their new home. These lands are the Tortured Isles in the world of yh  , where the undead know that if they die, it is not permanent and they cannot pass on. Instead, they can only be reborn as undead again, memories lost of what they were, ready to start again.

This is the setting for Wraithborn: Role Play in the Realm of the Undead, a roleplaying game published by Theatre Macabre following a successful Kickstarter campaign. Mechanically Wraithborn is based upon Mörk Borg, the Swedish pre-apocalypse Old School Renaissance style roleplaying game designed by Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell and also published by Free League Publishing. A player rolls a twenty-sided die, modifies the result by one of his character’s abilities, and attempts to beat a Difficulty Rating of twelve, though the Difficulty Rating can be higher or lower. The Difficulty Rating may go up or down depending on the situation, but whatever the situation, the player always rolls, even in combat or as Mörk Borg terms it, violence.

In terms of what you play, creating Player Characters in Wraithborn  adds tables for determining personality, physique, wealth, and monstrous feature. There are optional rules for each Player Character’s cursed existence—inspired by his monstrous feature, what his destined purpose might be, and Omens. The latter are tied to the Player Character’s destined purpose and work as gifts, and as he gains Levels, gives him options in terms of altering reality, reading the passage of time, hearing the unsaid, and manipulating the aether. All of these are optional, but they add depth and detail to a Player Character. One notable addition to a Player Character in Wraithborn is a fifth stat, ‘Clarity’, which is measure of a Player Character’s magic casting ability, memory, and intelligence, pushing Wraithborn away slightly from its Mörk Borg roots and towards a more traditional roleplaying game. 

 The ten Classes in Wraithborn consist of Blood Seeker, Damphyr, FaeBound Daemon, Ironclad, Lunari Mage, Stormbringer, Wraithborn, Wyld Kin, Wyvern Rider, and Zarowka. The IronClad are faithful warriors who serve the IronLairds and who sought out and destroyed Heaven’s Gate, one of the events which triggered the Veiling of the Tortured Isles by the gods, and now protect the MystLand. Vampires come in several types, but hunger for blood and all practise Haematology or Bloodcraft and cast Blood Curses. Vampires in the Tortured Isles thirst for domination and sail from the north across the Severed Seas in their red-sailed ships and in the cities they conquer, they store the blood they tithe in banks. All vampires need to drink blood, and they suffer penalties if they do not . However, unlike a true Vampire, the Damphyr must drink daily, but can transform into vampiric beasts, create tonics, grow vampiric wings, gain greater presence, call forth the legions of the dead, and so on. Damphyr also suffers from ageing. The Blood Seeker is a hybrid Damphyr-arachnid whose spider-like protrusions can pierce victims and directly draw blood from them to store in the blood abdomens on his back and collect them for his master’s blood banks or sell them as part of the Blood trade. The Wyld-Kin connects to the natural world—both flora and fauna—through lyrical telepathy, can transform into both, taking on bestial forms such as arachnids, bears, and more.

A Wyvern Rider is tethered or soul-bound to the wyvern he rides, whilst the Zarowka is an incorporeal practitioner of umbral magic, his player spending Reaction Points to cloak others in Umbral Armour or with Drown in Darkness, suffocating and blinding them, or set them alight with Radiance or set a Light Trap of crystalline shards. The Stormbringer is so attuned to the Aetheric Elements that he can adapt and strange his physical form to embody Elemental properties of S’Gàth—flesh, gold, oil, salt, and stone. The Lunari Mageis a Fae who draws upon the light of the lost sun reflected off the Moon to cast magic, the power varying according to the Lunar cycle, whilst  the FaeBound Daemon is drawn from the Realm of Infernal Fire and bound in the body of a dead Fae and so suffer persistent Red Rot, but command powers of flame outside of magics of S’Gàth. Unfortunately, the creation process is not easy with a lot of paging back and forth through the book to look at the basic steps and then looking at individual Classes and then the various elements of each Class.

Wraithborn uses a unique magic system built around Aetheric Elements—flesh, gold, oil, salt, and stone. Instead of simply casting spells and forgetting them or using a simple points system, spellcasters invest dice of three types in spells to cast them. Ritual or six-sided dice are a caster’s inherent magical ability; Moon or four-sided dice represent the fleeting magical influence of the Aether; and Phase or eight-sided dice represent the phases of the Moon, but are only available to Fae. Ritual dice are gained as part of the Player Character’s Class and refreshed daily, whereas Moon dice are gained from in-game activities, such as killing foes, absorbing power, making offerings, and so on. When a player wants his character to cast a spell, he invests dice in an attempt to equal or exceed the casting threshold of the spell. Moon dice can also be used to boost the subsequent die roll. This is a standard roll of a twenty-sided die and its result will not only determine if the spell is successfully cast or not, but also if the dice are expended as result of the casting attempt. Further, elements can be combined to create new elements, so that a combination of flesh and oil make blood, gold and stone make steel, and so on. This is not without its complexity in comparison to spellcasting systems in other roleplaying games—especially those in the Old School Renaissance—but it also means greater player involvement and flexibility. The roleplaying game’s spellcasting Classes grant extra bonuses with the system. For example, the Stormbringer attunes to two elements daily to grant extra dice, whilst the Lunari Mage gains extra dice that are better depending upon the phase of the Moon.

Wraithborn oozes flavour and atmosphere, but it is a roleplaying game with problems. It provides some great Player Character options and a nicely done new magic system, but it does not help the Game Master with advice on how to run it—beyond addressing the horror of the setting before play and not revelling in this aspect of the setting—or really how to set up a campaign or what to do with it. It does not help in this with the lack of a scenario, whilst there are solo play rules, these are brief, and perhaps best work better as a series of prompts for the Game Master rather than something to use to generate long term solo play. To be fair though, there is a scenario at the end of The Tortured Isles, the campaign setting for Wraithborn, but that is in another supplement.

Physically, Wraithborn: Role Play in the Realm of the Undead is vibrant swathes of black and red, swirled in with other colours and classic pieces of art. As good as it looks and as much atmosphere as it imparts, it is a problem. It takes the Doompunk art style of Mörk Borg and over-energises it, not only making it a challenging read (especially if you have conditions such as colour blindness or dyslexia), but also making content and details difficult to find. This could and should have been offset by an index, but it lacks one. This is an error of judgement for a volume that really needs one. 

Wraithborn: Role Play in the Realm of the Undead is the grim dark of Mörk Borg twisted and made even darker and grimmer under a perpetual night and a waxing, waning blood red moon and storm clouds of silver in which the undead twist and turn, wondering where they came from and wondering what the future holds, knowing that it holds nothing. It is potentially, a great sequel to the apocalyptic drowning of the last land of Tveland, as foretold by the prophecies of the Two-Headed Basilisks in Mörk Borg. Of course, it also stands as a roleplaying game in its own right. Or rather not quite. Amidst the interesting Player Character options and the sharp tang of its magic system, as well as the descriptions of the Tortured Isles, Wraithborn hints at possibilities and ideas, but it never really examines what the objective of the roleplaying game is or what it is that the Wraithborn do in S’Gàth. Wraithborn: Role Play in the Realm of the Undead is ripe with play options and drips atmosphere, but really is awaiting a Game Master with good ideas or a campaign.

[Free RPG Day 2026] Lore Master’s Deck Sampler Pack

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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If there was an award for the most generically useful item released for Free RPG Day 2025, it would have been the Deck of Worlds Sampler Pack. Published by The Story Engine, this is an introduction to The Story Engine: Deck of World, a deck of cards designed to help users create worlds complete with cultures, geographies, histories, flora, and fauna, simply by drawing and combining cards. Containing just thirty-five cards, little more than a tenth of the two-hundred-and-forty cards to be found in The Story Engine: Deck of World, all packed into a seven-by-seven centimetre box, what it provided was one-hundred-and-four prompts across five card types and then the same number of traits on the reverse side, with which the Game Master can create micro-setting after micro-setting complete with location, origins, points of interest, and an interesting event. What the Deck of Worlds Sampler Pack did for locations for Free RPG Day in 2025, the Lore Master’s Deck Sampler Pack aims to do the same for factions for Free RPG Day in 2026.

The Lore Master’s Deck is designed to create new factions, NPCs, items, locations, monsters, and so on with the draw of a few cards and the Lore Master’s Deck Sampler Pack provides a few of those cards. The Lore Master’s Deck Sampler Pack comes in a box that holds the cards firmly in place, but when opened up, forms the instruction sheet, which takes the user through the creation process step-by-step. The card types in the Lore Master’s Deck Sampler Pack consist of Factions, Figures, Locations, Objects, and Creatures, whilst the full set adds Events, Materials, and Modifiers. The cards are colour-coded on the one side for the primary cue and white on the reverse for the secondary cues.

To create something, the Game Master draws a single card and picks one of its four Primary Cues and then draws a card of the same colour and flips it and selects a secondary cue. The card for this secondary cue is slipped under the first card so that only the cue is showing. This is done a total of three times so that there are secondary cues below the primary cue and to its left and right. Some of the secondary cues may have an icon—for either a Faction, Figure, Location, Object, and Creature—which indicates a Link Cue. This adds another Primary Cue. The whole thing forms a Lore Cluster, but each Link Cue connects to a whole Lore Cluster of its own. At this point, the Game Master can start interpreting her creation.

So, for example, an Object is drawn with the Cues ‘Claw’, ‘Shield’, ‘Thread’, and ‘Telescope’. ‘Claw’ is selected as the Primary Cue and a second Object card is drawn and this is flipped over to reveal several Traits that can be used as Secondary Cues as Background. The four consist of ‘Created In Or Alongside A Location’, ‘Linked To A Mysterious Death’, ‘Memory-Affecting Properties’, and ‘Dispels, Boosts, or Shapes Magic’. ‘Linked To A Mysterious Death’ is selected and since that has a ‘Figures’ Icon, a Figures card is drawn. It provides the Cues of ‘Elementalist’, ‘Pirate’, ‘Prize-fighter’, and ‘Sovereign’, and the last Cue is selected and slotted under the ‘Linked To A Mysterious Death’ Cue. Two more Secondary Cues are chosen, ‘Vampiric Leeching, or Draining Properties’ and ‘Created to Counter or Complement an Object’ are selected from the options on their cards. However, the latter Secondary Cue is marked with an icon for another object. A new Object card is drawn, from which ‘Book’ is selected and that forms a Link Cue to another Lore Cluster which can be developed using the same process.

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The example item is the Claw of Onelazar the Rotting. It is said to be last body part of the infamous necromancer preserved created in accordance with the Tome of Black Leaves. The full extent of its powers are detailed in the book detailing its creation, but it is known to possess the ability to leech the lifeforce of others and pass them on to its wielder. Once a year this must include the blood of a member of a royal house. The first victim is believed to have been Prince Albrun Hohenstadt, scion of the Margraviate of Thalunser, who swore revenge against his father, the Margrave, for exiling him and turned to help him raise an army.

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Physically, the Lore Master’s Deck Sampler Pack is a delightfully simple package. It is compact, but opens up easily and the instructions on the inside of the packaging are clear. There is no artwork on the cards, but the text and icons are easy to read.

Of course, the Deck of Worlds Sampler Pack is only a taster of the full The Story Engine: Deck of World—a quick-start if you will… It does not give the full flexibility of the full set since it omits any Event, Material, and Modifier cards, but even with seven cards in five different categories, that still provides the means to create numerous Factions, Figures, Locations, Objects, and Creatures. It also brings a pleasing physicality to the creation process that simply rolling dice on a table would not have provided.

Yet it offers a surprising degree of versatility, even with just six Region types and twelve Landmarks, on top of which the Namesake, Origin, and Attribute cards add twenty-four options of their own, that can all be combined to create micro settings that a writer or a storyteller or a Game Master can start her world from and then add to it with further micro settings, developing it micro setting by micro setting, or even just focus on the one micro setting. The Deck of Worlds Sampler Pack is a great introduction to The Story Engine: Deck of World and offers Cues aplenty for long after Free RPG Day.

Friday Fantasy: Weird Ancestries

Shadow of the Weird Wizard does something odd in terms of fantasy roleplaying games. It places non-Human species as an ‘other’, rarities and oddities once primarily confined to the mysterious and strange and wondrous lands to the east of the Weird Wizard. It meant that the lands of the Great Kingdom are humanocentric. This though, is the situation at the very start of the roleplaying game designed and published by Schwalb Entertainment, and it is one that changes at start of Shadow of the Weird Wizard when the Weird Wizard suddenly disappears, removing the divide between his lands and those of the Great Kingdom. As refugees from the former lands of the Weird Wizard flee west into the Great Kingdom and pioneers and settlers begin to explore the newly opened lands to the east, the peoples of the Great Kingdom are exposed to a wider range of peoples and species. This has a consequence narratively and mechanically. Mechanically, a player is only able to create a character whose Ancestry is Human using the core rules, although there are basic notes on Ancestries to be found in the Bestiary chapter of Secrets of the Weird Wizard. Narratively it means that with the core rulebooks, a campaign would have a Human-centric basis and thus be able to explore a world in which they did not have to rely on other species and even explore a world that is changing and one those changes is the appearance of other peoples. Now to be clear, Shadow of the Weird Wizard does not make non-Humans aliens or intrinsically threats. They are just different.

Weird Ancestries is a supplement that changes both the situation in Shadow of the Weird Wizard and the options available to the players. It describes in some detail thirty Ancestries for the roleplaying game, six more than those found in Secrets of the Weird Wizard. There is no structure to anyone of the entries as such, though each one will always end with a section on adventurers of that Ancestry. This will include broad details of the Paths that an Adventurer of that Ancestry might take, followed by the common traits of the Ancestry and then its ‘Ancestry Path’. This is a new addition to Shadow of the Weird Wizard which not only grants benefits upon Player Character creation, but also at Second Level and Fifth Level in addition to the bonuses and extras the Player Character gains from his Novice, Expert, and Master Paths. The bulk of the write-up foreach Ancestry explains its role and appearance in the New Lands that were once under the control of the Weird Wizard, where they live, their relationship with the Weird Wizard, and the nature of their society, enabling a player to have a good understanding of the typical background to his character’s Ancestry. Then, of course, the Haren Traits enable the creation of characters by the players and NPCs by the Sage from that Ancestry.

For example, the Haren are leporine Ancestry, egalitarian in their society and preferring to live in hilltop fortresses, with a dislike of the Weird Wizard despite the fact that he did them no harm, have no experience working metals, and are strict herbivores. In terms of adventurers, Haren fight to survive, so are good warriors; have no formal magical training, but can learn alteration, protection, and war spells from their elders; may worship nature spirits, though have no gods; and speed, stealth, and cunning make good rogues. They have ‘Keen Hearing’ and ‘Keen Scent’ and can learn great distances, but at First Level, they are ‘Battle-Trained’ and can attack with a Boon and treat spears and javelins as nimble weapons, and when hurt, can trigger ‘Lepus Fury’ to attack for a turn with another Boon and a critical result occurs on a roll of eighteen. At Second Level, a Haren gains increased Health, ‘Evasive Recovery’, and ‘Springing Attack’, and then at Fifth Level more Health and extra Hit Points, as well as ‘Great Leaper’.

Each of the Ancestries receives this treatment. The Ancestries are a mix of the familiar and unfamiliar. So, alongside the Dwarf, Elf, and Halfling of traditional fantasy roleplaying games, there are what would normally be classed as monsters in those other fantasy roleplaying games. Dhampirs, Goblins, Hobgoblins, and the like, but even they find their way into some fantasy roleplaying games as Player Characters, whereas creatures such as Demigods, Harpies, Naga, Revenants, Sphinxes, and Spriggans do not. Even the treatment of the traditional Ancestries is not always what the players might expect. Whilst the Dwarves are famous for their mountain holdfasts and the Elves for living in faeries realms, the Elves have a unique feature such as scales, feathers, or wings, which they can grow or change over time, and the Halflings are nomads, traders and travellers, with hairy ears, and only three fingers and a thumb on each hand and four toes on their feet. There is even some variation within some Ancestries, such as the divine heritage of the Demigod, whose divine parent might be Lord Death, making the Demigod pale and sickly with bruised eyes and sunken cheeks, or Revel, meaning that the Demigod smells sweetly of wine, fresh flowers, and honey! A Clockwork must have a function such as Artisan, Entertainer, or Soldier.

One notable absence for the list is the Orc, but Shadow of the Weird Wizard does not treat the Orc as a ‘race’ or Ancestry, but rather the result of a curse that causes a ‘Soul Sickness’ that can transform the sufferer into an Orc, as explored in the first scenario for the roleplaying game, One Bad Apple. Similarly, Goblins are selfish, mean, and cruel because their upbringing and association with the Goblin King, but can be good and selfless if exposed to the right circumstances, and the Cambion might have had an infernal origins and so be mistrusted, that is not what they are all like.

Physically, Weird Ancestries is well organised, laid out, and easy to use. The artwork is excellent.

In many ways, Weird Ancestries is very much a supplement for the player, providing with a diverse range of options in terms of kindred species for his character. All of them different and all of them wanting to make their mark on the Borderlands in Shadow of the Weird Wizard. It gives the player a chance to play characters of backgrounds that he would be unlikely to have access to in other traditional fantasy games, but does not expect him to play them like they are often depicted in those other roleplaying games. This marks Shadow of the Weird Wizard out as different and intentionally so. Of course, all of the background information on the Ancestries is useful for the Sage too. Shadow of the Weird Wizard is not a roleplaying game that needs or has lot of supplements, but Weird Ancestries is definitely one that both players and Sage are going to want.

[Free RPG Day 2026] The Dying Spire

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

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

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The Dying Spire is an adventure for Daggerheart, the fantasy roleplaying game which combines classic high fantasy roleplaying elements with a narrative element that was one of biggest successes of 2025. Published by Darrington Press, it is the 2026 Ennie Gold Winner for Best Game and Best Rules as well as Ennie Silver Winner for Product of the Year. It does two things. One is to continue the story and provide a sequel for ‘The Sablewood Messengers’, the scenario in the Daggerheart Quickstart Adventure. The other is to give an adventure that also stands on its own and is not necessarily holding the players’ hands as in the Daggerheart Quickstart Adventure. Thus, The Dying Spire is a Tier 2 adventure and one that designers advise the Game Master to take care if her players have not either played Daggerheart or are not used to how their characters work, lest they find the scenario too much of a challenge. In the Daggerheart Quickstart Adventure, the Player Characters are entrusted with transporting an important package to Hush, small village within the ancient forest of Sablewood, where they are to deliver it to the Whitefire Arcanist. Eventually they find the Whitefire Arcanist and protect him as he performs a ritual to ensure the continued safety of the village.

The Dying Spire picks up where the Daggerheart Quickstart Adventure left off. The Whitefire Arcanist asks the Player Characters to check on Vaya, the Spire Keeper for one of the tall structures which towers over the forest canopy atop which burns a signal fire that seems to protect the Sablewood. Of late, the fire appears to have weakened and nobody is quite sure how this will affect the woods. The scenario is divided into five acts. The first two deal with their journey and arrival at the Spire, descending into a valley where they first encounter a pair of injured travellers and then the goathogs that attacked them. Goathogs are normally passive creatures, but something has caused them to decay and made them suicidally aggressive, as the Player Characters will discover when another pack attacks them. Afterwards, at the Spire, the Player Characters can make several discoveries. One is that the tall structure protects an impossibly tall Elder Tree, so tall that it is potentially stressful to climb the height of the stairs that run round the inside of the tower.  A second is that Vaya is injured and the third is that the ‘Brambleheart’ has been stolen. This is a magical mesh of thorns that draws wild magic up the Elder Tree and creates and maintains the ‘Spire Weave’ which protects the Sablewoods and makes them verdant, and without it, the forest’s future is threatened. The third, fourth, and fifth acts consist of a chase across the Sablewoods in pursuit of the thieves, the scenario throwing some fun encounters into the Player Characters’ path. These include a race down a raging river, into an ancient cave network, and finally confront an ancient evil and discover an external threat to the Sablewood.

The scenario consists of a good mix of challenges. There are social and environmental challenges to be faced as well as plenty of combat. Throughout, there are clear explanations of how each encounter is handled, both narratively and mechanically, and where a situation relies upon an action dice roll, of what happens if the players succeed or fail, whether they rolled with Hope or Fear. There are lots of optional questions too, which the Game Master can ask her players, their answers flavouring the detail and feel of the scenario as it progresses. The scenario ends with the possibility of a sequel and publisher’s website has a ‘Downloads’ section [https://www.daggerheart.com/downloads/], which includes the Sablewood as a location.

The scenario uses the same set of six Player Characters as the Daggerheart Quickstart Adventure. They consist of Marlowe Fairwind, the Loreborne Elf Sorcerer; Barnacle, the Underborne Ribbet Rogue; Garrick Reed, the Highborne Human Warrior; Khari Nix, the Ridgeborne Giant Guardian; and Varian Soto, the Wildborne Katari Ranger. Copies of these are included with the scenario.

The scenario is solidly supported for both the Game Master and her players. There are standees and terrain, and a GM Guide for the former, plus a Play Guide for each of the players. This is in addition to sheets for all of the Player Characters. All of them are on perforated sheets for easy removal from the book.

Physically, The Dying Spire is very well presented. The artwork is excellent and the adventure is well written. The only downside is that the artwork is black and white.

The Dying Spire is an entertaining scenario for Daggerheart with plenty of action and a little bit of mystery. It works as a one-shot, but better as continuing support for the Sablewood setting.

Miskatonic Monday #451: Something Smells Fishy

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: Something Smells Fishy

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Ignacio Campos

Setting: Massachusetts, 1924

Product: Scenario

What You Get: Seven page, 3.84 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: If the Buffy the Vampire Slayer ‘Go Fish’ episode was written for Call of Cthulhu

Plot Hook: The swim team is being killed off just before the state championships
Plot Support: Staging advice, five pre-generated Investigators, six NPCs, two Mythos tomes, and three Mythos monsters (but plenty more in the sea).

Production Values: Good

Pros

# High school horror as the swim team splits apart

# Multiple endings considered—Will the Investigators keep the secret, flee, or destroy it?

# Thalassophobia

# Ichthyophobia

# Teraphobia (Internal and External)

Cons

# No maps

# Linear plotting

# Original staging, unoriginal plotting

Conclusion

# Could a title not be more apt?

# If your inspiration is Buffy the Vampire Slayer, why not run it using Bunny The Eldritch Slayer? 

[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 is 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.

—oOo—

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.