1986: Phoenix Command

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—

If the apogee of the military roleplaying game was Twilight 2000 in 1984, there was yet life in the genre still. Not in 1985, but in 1986, there were four military roleplaying games published. Delta Force: America Strikes Back! from Task Force Games, Eternal Soldier from Tai-Gear Simulations, Freedom Fighters from Fantasy Games Unlimited, and The Price of Freedom from West End Games were all published in 1986 and that is ignoring the paramilitary elements of the setting for 2300 AD from Game Designers’ Workshop. But in the four decades since, the straight military roleplaying game has been a rarity, and barring the return of Twilight: 2000 with Twilight 2000: Roleplaying in the World War III That Never Was from Free League Publishing, most, such as War Stories: A World War 2 RPG from Firelock Games and Alien: The Roleplaying Game from Free League Publishing, have been set in the theatres of World War 2 and Science Fiction. Of the four from 1986, perhaps the most famous—or should that be infamous?—was Phoenix Command.

Phoenix Command was published by Leading Edge Games, which had already released its first roleplaying game Rhand: Morningstar Missions, in 1984. It was designed as an accurate simulation of gunshot wounds with detailed aiming and firing rules, and authentic modern weapon data to create a simple, fast-paced game with an incredibly realistic feel. It came as a boxed set which included a forty-eight page, spiral-bound ‘Combat System Rule Book’; a twenty-six page, fully illustrated ‘Phoenix Command Modern Military Small Arms Supplement’; four double-sided Reference Cards; character sheets; and a single ten-sided die. Like many roleplaying books from Leading Edge games there was a streak of sly humour that ran through the quotations given in the extra-wide margins of the ‘Combat System Rule Book’. For example, ‘Blam. Blam. “Stop.” Blam. “Police.” Blam. Officer Axly.’ and ‘If you can’t dazzle them with style, riddle them with bullets.” Corley Norris’. The tone of that humour is set by the blurb on the back cover of the box:

“Are you tired of your current small arms combat system? Tired of inconsistencies and rules that simply don't work? If so, we invite you to conduct a short test:

Using your current small arms combat system, place the muzzle of a large caliber pistol between your character's eyes. Squeeze the trigger. Continue squeezing the trigger until he falls unconscious. Then have a friend put a band-aid over that nasty .45 caliber dent in his skull, and try not to get him shot too often in the week or two it takes to heal.

Now, using Phoenix Command, place the same pistol in the same place. Squeeze the trigger. You now have a choice: you can either roll up a new character or rush the body to a very sophisticated medical facility and discover the joys of role-playing a vegetable.

If you are nodding your head and smiling, and thinking that it would be nice to have a combat system that really works, welcome to Phoenix Command!”

This then sets out the stall for Phoenix Command. It was a highly detailed, highly accurate simulation of small arms combat designed to be used on its own, but more obvious as a replacement for the smalls combat rules that the Game Master and his players were dissatisfied with from whatever modern or military roleplaying game they were playing. There was fertile ground for this in 1986, whether it was The Morrow Project or Merc, Delta Force or The Price of Freedom, or more obviously, Twilight 2000. Essentially, just like the constituent parts of Rolemaster—Arms Law, Spell Law, Claw Law, Character Law, and Campaign Law—before it became a roleplaying game all on its own, were designed to replace the parts of the fantasy roleplaying game that a group was dissatisfied with, Phoenix Command was designed to bolt onto the modern or military roleplaying game of a group’s choice. However, unlike the various parts of Rolemaster which coalesced into a roleplaying game all of its own, Phoenix Command and its various supplements never would. Instead, stripped down versions of the rules would appear in Living Steel and the Aliens Adventure Game.

The spiral-bound ‘Combat System Rule Book’ is surprisingly short. However, do not in any way think that this means that Phoenix Command is not as complex as its reputation suggests it is. Phoenix Command is complex and that starts with Player Character. First, a player rolls three six-sided each for Strength, Will, Health, and Agility. Then the Game Master or player decides on the Player Character’s Gun Combat Skill Level. This ranges from one to twenty, with an average solider having a 2nd Skill Level, a veteran a 3rd or 4th Skill Level, an elite soldier a 5th Skill Level, 6th Skill Level, or 7th Skill Level, and a marksman a 9th Skill Level at the very least. What determines the actual Gun Combat Skill Level will depend upon the role that the Player Character has in whatever game or encounter that the Game Master is about to run or by the rough skill level in the roleplaying game that Phoenix Command is being used to replace. It should be noted that beyond noting that it represents the Player Character’s competence with small arms, there is no real explanation of what it is beyond that, and it is also the only skill in Phoenix Command.

What the player is instructed to do next is determine Encumbrance. This is the total weight of armour, clothing weapons, and equipment carried into combat. There is a surprisingly short equipment list and no real explanation of what each item is in comparison to the explanations of what each gun is in the ‘Combat System Rule Book’ and the ‘Phoenix Command Modern Military Small Arms Supplement’. After that, it gets complex with a lot of cross-referencing on tables. Base Speed is determined by cross-referencing Strength and Encumbrance on Table 2A and Base Speed and Agility on table 2B to find out the Player Character’s Maximum Speed. (This means that should a Player Character drop or shed a lot of weight, such as dropping a Squad Assault Weapon and switching to a pistol, all of this will need to be recalculated…) The Gun Combat Skill Level is checked on Table 2C for the Player Character’s Skill Accuracy Level, which measures his actual skill with weapons and knowledge of small arms tactics. Typically, a Player Character’s Skill Accuracy Level is six points higher than his Gun Combat Skill Level. Skill Factor is the Player Character’s Agility plus Gun Combat Skill Level, but there is no explanation as what it is. The number of his Combat Actions is determined by cross-referencing Maximum Speed with Skill Factor. Knockout Value is derived from Will and Gun Combat Skill Level. This is percentage chance of a combatant withstanding the pain of wounds and not falling unconscious.

Officer John Smith
Strength 11 Will 9 Health 11 Agility 12
Gun Combat Skill Level: 3rd Skill Level
Encumbrance 13.2 lb.
Base Speed: 2.5
Maximum Speed: 5
Skill Accuracy Level: 9
Skill Factor: 12
Combat Actions: 4
Knockout Value: 13

EQUIPMENT
Clothing (5 lb.)
Medium Flexible Armour (2.6 lb.)
Fighting Harness (0.6 lb.)
Holster (0.4 lb.)
Magazine Pouch (two magazines) (2.2 lb.)
Beretta M92F (2.4 lb.)

There is an example character, but not example of the creation process. There is also the basics of pre-generated troops intended to be used as quick NPCs.

Mechanically, there is no skill roll in Phoenix Command and no rules for handling actions that are not directly related to combat. So, the ‘Combat System Rule Book’ quickly moves on to weapons, movement, actions, and shooting. Each weapon has data for length, wait, reload time, rate of fire, ammunition capacity, and ammunition weight and feed device, which you would expect as per any roleplaying game with firearms. Added to this are Sustained Automatic Burst, a weapon’s accuracy during burst fire; Aim Time Accuracy Level Modifier, a measure of a weapon’s accuracy when time is spent aiming; Relative Impact Damage and Damage Class, which measures bullet penetration and bullet damage capability respectively; and Minimum Arc, the minimum number of hexes over which a burst of automatic fire is spread. Then each weapon has Ballistic Data and this is not for the weapon itself, but for different types of ammunition—Full Metal Jacket, Hollow Point, Armour, Jacketed Hollow Point, and Jacketed Soft Point—the Relative Impact Damage and Damage Class varying according to range.

Phoenix Command is intended to be played on a grid of two-yard hexes in a continuous stream of two-second phases. In each phase, the player will expend his Combat Actions on movement and actions that have an Action Cost. Movement takes into account direction of movement—forward, backward, oblique, and sideways; stance, including crouching, hands and knees, and belly crawl; elevation and terrain and depth of water; injury; and more. Actions include assuming a firing stance, ducking, changing facing, getting up and down, breaking and clearing glass from a window, drawing a pistol from multiple different types of holsters, tossing a grenade, and so on. The list is extensive, but advice is included on how to work out what the Action Cost is for any action not listed.

Each phase is broken down into three periods. First, in the Allocation period, players and Game Master allocate their Combat Actions. A player does not have to allocate all of them, but can save some of them for the Response period. In the Movement Period all combatants expend their Combat Actions assigned to movement, whilst any remaining Combat Actions are spent in the Response period. This can be on type of action, except movement. Primarily, it is spent is on combat actions. Fire resolution takes place at the end of the phase.

Fire resolution assumes that combatants take time to aim. The rules allow for hip fire and snapshots, both of which are done at a penalty, but otherwise to gain the full accuracy of a weapon, a player needs to assume a firing stance, which takes Combat Actions, and then spend one or more Combat Actions aiming. The Odds of Hitting is determined by aim time, firing stance, range, visibility, movement, and size of target. Each of these provides an Accuracy Level Modifier (ALM), which are in turn the Aim Time ALM, Target Range ALM, Firing Stance/Situation ALM, Visibility ALM, Movement ALM, Target Size ALM, and Effective Accuracy Level ALM. The Aim Time ALM will vary according to weapon and every weapon has a table for the number of Combat Actions spent aiming and the resulting modifiers. Visibility ALM accounts for smoke, darkness, optical scope, and so on. The Target Size ALM not only includes the stance and position of the target, but modifiers for the head, body, arms, and legs, which can be applied if an attacker wants to shoot at a specific body location. The total number of Accuracy Level Modifiers are called the Effective Accuracy Level and the higher this is, the greater the Odds of Hitting. This is cross-referenced on the Single Shot Odds Table to get a percentile chance and this is rolled equal to, or under, for a single to hit a target.

In addition, Phoenix Command also takes into account visibility of a target if the target moves. So, a target might be visible at the start and in the middle of the Movement Period, but not at the end, it allows a shooter to potentially fire at a target before he moves behind cover. It simply applies an Action Count penalty, the longer the target is out of line of sight the higher the Action Count penalty.

So far, this is the only time that anyone has made a dice roll. And what is important here is that it is not a skill roll of any kind—at least not in the traditional sense of a roleplaying game. Rather it is determined by the choices made by the player as to what stance his character will take, how many Combat Actions will be spent aiming, what weapon he is using, and so on. The character that a player has created and is controlling has no immediate effect on how good, or how accurate, a shot he is. Ultimately what the factors created during character generation influence is how many Combat Actions he has in a single phase. The more he has, the more can move, take cover, and so on, but ultimately, the more time he can spend aiming.

This though, is only for single shots. The process for fully automatic fire is slightly different. It is done in half second bursts into an Arc of Fire that indicates how many bullets are fired into each hex and thus at each target. Target visibility, which already accounted for the amount of time that the target was visible over the course of a single phase also indicates how many bursts can be fired at a target. In addition to aim time, firing stance, range, visibility, movement, and size of target all being factors in finding out the Odds of Hitting, automatic fire adds elevation as well as Arc of Fire. Automatic Elevation target size modifier replaces Target Size ALM and is taken from the Burst Elevation Odds Table. It is rolled first and if successful, the burst is at the correct elevation and a roll to hit using the Automatic Weapon Hit Chance Table. The chance of hitting depends on the Arc of Fire and Rate of Fire and is rolled per target, with the result also indicating how many bullets hit. An attacker can continue to first bursts or fully automatic fire from one phase to the next, but there is a Sustained Automatic Burst penalty for each weapon which is applied to the Effective Accuracy Level on each subsequent rounds of firing.

The next dice roll is to find out where a target is hit. This is a simple roll on the ‘Hit Location and Damage Table’ which gives different results based upon the target was looking around or over cover, if he was firing around or over cover, and if he is in the open. The amount of Physical Damage inflicted is determined by the weapon’s Damage Class and Effective Impact Damage. However, first you need to know what the Effective Impact damage is and that is worked out by subtracting the Protection Factors of any armour worn from the Relative Impact Damage. Relative Impact Damage is a measure of a bullet’s penetrating power and both that and the Damage Class depend upon the range of the attack and the type of ammunition fired. Armour is by location and its Protection Factors will vary from four for Light Flexible to thirty for Heavy Rigid. If the Effective Impact Damage is reduced to zero by the Protection Factors, the shot does not penetrate and no damage is inflicted. If the Effective Impact Damage is more than zero, but less than the Protection Factors, the shot penetrates, but its damage is reduced. To learn how much, the roll for the hit location is cross referenced with the correct Effective Impact Damage for the Damage Class of the weapon. If the Effective Impact Damage is greater than the Protection Factors, the shot penetrates and inflicts the full amount of Effective Impact Damage listed under the Damage Class. (The term used here is “full Damage Class (DC) column”, but there is no Damage Column marked ‘Full’, so presumably, the authors meant the maximum value.) Depending upon the Effective Impact Damage, the Damage Class, and the hit location, the Physical Damage inflicted can range from one to millions of points. Hit locations run from forehead to ankle-foot and also include glancing blows to general locations. In general, hits to the head—forehead, eye/nose, and mouth—will inflict anywhere from hundreds of points of Physical Damage to hundreds of thousands of Physical Damage.

The rules also allow for disabling blows if the shot hits an arm or leg and a target being knocked out by damage suffered. Any damage suffered greater than a target’s Knockout Value and there is a 25% chance that he will be rendered unconscious. This rises to 75% if the damage suffered is more than twice the target’s Knockout Value and 98% if is more than three times the target’s Knockout Value. And to remind ourselves, Knockout Value is not determined by Health, but by Will and Gun Combat Skill Level, so effectively, the better you are at firing guns, the less likelihood you have of falling unconscious due to pain.

After a battle, all wounded characters must check to see if they will live. Physical Damage Total is how much damage a character has suffered, whilst the Damage Total is a measure of the severity of the injuries suffered. To get the Damage Total, the Physical Damage is multiplied by ten and then divided by the character’s Health. The Medical Aid And Recovery Table is consulted to discover the Critical Time Period during which time the character must receive aid and the Recovery Roll to be made at the end of this period. This will vary according to whether the character receives no aid, first aid, goes to an aid station or field hospital, or is sent to a modern trauma centre. There are suggested adjustments for trauma centres, or hospitals, from 1831 to 2345—even though the weapons listed in the ‘Phoenix Command Modern Military Small Arms Supplement’ cover the period from 1910 to roughly 1990. The Recovery Roll is a percentile value and if the roll is made, the target will survive, the Critical Time Period also indicating how long it takes for the target to recover. Results of “00” on the Medical Aid And Recovery Table mean that the character cannot survive. The rules also account for the lingering effects of old injuries.

In general, if a target suffers a Damage Total of one hundred or more, he is in trouble without dedicated medical aid. At a Damage Total of a thousand and more and the Recovery Roll values plummet. However, there is no chance of a character dying in actual combat. There is a chance of being knocked out—a good chance—and only after a combat is it discovered whether a character has lived or died. For all that Phoenix Command claims to be accurate simulation of gunshot wounds, there is no means of working out if a character is dead in the midst of a shootout and no rules for rendering first aim whilst in combat. Experienced players of Phoenix Command can estimate the likelihood of a target not recovering from the amount of damage suffered, but both omissions make no sense.

Now all of this takes up sixteen pages of the ‘Combat System Rule Book’! Which begs the question, “What the hell is in the rest of the book?” There is some advice for running Phoenix Command, which includes delegating some of the tasks, using a ranging stick, and using markers to indicate each character’s status. There are two sample scenarios. Scenario one is ‘The Bridge of Oppenheim’, a beginning scenario for five to eight players and involves German and NATO forces facing a Russian invasion just outside Mainz and Wiesbaden. Each player controls a single figure, so all together equal to two squads who must hold off forty-eight Russians! It is designed to teach the rules for Odds of Hitting and damage. The second scenario is ‘The Defence of the Apollo Rey’. It places for four SAS (Special Action Squad) commandos aboard a vessel that has been taken over by nine terrorists. It is not as static as ‘The Bridge of Oppenheim’, with the terrorists searching for passengers and the commandos trying to incapacitate the terrorists without alerting them. Both scenarios come with maps and pre-generated characters.

The remaining ten pages of provide optional rules. These differentiate between non-blocking cover—that is, cover that blocks sight, not penetration and blocking cover that does both; field of view which can be increased by expending Combat Actions to look around; shotguns which involve Base Pellet Hit Chance and a Pattern Radius in working out the resulting Effective Accuracy Level; explosives and grenades, which includes the possibility of damage from both shrapnel and concussion; improved accuracy for all weapons; spotting and sound detection; defensive skills, initiative, and morale; Master Phasing Count; and second shot accuracy, pinned targets, and semiauto bursts. Of these, the Master Phasing Count is a means of determining when detailed timing of fire occurs, such as who fires first. This is discovered by cross-referencing a character’s number of Combat Actions with the Action Count and is measured in tenths of seconds. The defensive skills are the only rule to use a character’s Intelligence and the first mention that a character should have an Intelligence characteristic, but the inference is that it comes from the roleplaying game whose combat rules Phoenix Command is replacing rather be rolled for as in a standard roleplaying game.

The ‘Combat System Rule Book’ packs a lot of rules and a lot of detail in its forty-eight pages. There are moments where it is possible to see what the designers intended and grasp the rules as written, helped by numerous examples. However, turn the page and there is another set of rules for another specific situation and they have their own complexity. And then again. The advice for the Game Master suggests delegating tasks to her fellow players, but that assumes they understand the rules. The complexity of the game means that it is challenging to teach and none of it is necessarily intuitive or easy to grasp, whilst the constant need to consult the tables at the back of the ‘Combat System Rule Book’ can only serve to slow down the play of the game. At the very least, what Phoenix Command needs is a set of flow charts per player, one flow chart per action, and even as much as that would ease play, there is no denying that it would still be intimidating.

In comparison to the ‘Combat System Rule Book’, the ‘Phoenix Command Modern Military Small Arms Supplement’ is straight forward. It lists almost one-hundred-and-twenty handguns, submachine guns, assault rifles, squad automatic weapons, general purpose machine guns, light machine guns, heavy machine guns, shotguns, grenade launchers, anti-tank rockets, and rocket propelled grenades, and twenty-four grenades. The earliest weapon given is the Browning M1911A1, whilst the then most recent are the Italian Benelli CB-M2 submachine gun, German Heckler & Koch G11 assault rifle, and British XLE85E1 assault rifle, all of which were underdevelopment at the time of Phoenix Command’s publication. The only thing missing perhaps is a standard .38 caliber revolver instead of just the Smith & Wesson M36 2” Barrel, Chief’s Special.

Physically, Phoenix Command is well-presented and the production values are high. With its spiral bound format, the ‘Combat System Rule Book’ definitely looks like the technical manual it is supposed to be. There is a glossary of terms, and even though it is only forty-eight pages long, the ‘Combat System Rule Book’ could have done with an index. Arguably, ‘Phoenix Command Modern Military Small Arms Supplement’ could have done with one too. Otherwise, the illustrations—nearly all of them guns—are fine and the maps serviceable.

—oOo—

Roman J. Andron reviewed Phoenix Command in ‘Game Reviews’ in Different Worlds. No. 47 (Fall 1987). He opened with, “IMPRESSIVE. THAT is the first word that comes to mind when Phoenix Command is implemented in a game. Never before have such high degrees of realism and playability been achieved simultaneously in the gaming world. Compared to this, all other combat systems are nothing.” His only issues were with the use of English (or Imperial) measurements rather than Metric and that the high number of abbreviations slowed down the process of learning the rules. Other than that, the review was very positive and Andron awarded it four stars before concluding with “I heartily recommend this system to weapons buffs or anyone wanting to put realism into their role-playing or wargaming. Phoenix Command provides for a simple yet highly-realistic simulation of modern firearms combat. However, my recommendations cannot do justice to the system. It has to be used to be fully appreciated.”

—oOo—

Although Phoenix Command can be praised for its degree of detail and accuracy, in terms of game design it is a developmental dead end. It represents the simulationist drive for accuracy and detail pushed to the nth degree, to the point of not necessarily unplayability, but at the cost of playability and engagement. More skirmish wargame than roleplaying game, Phoenix Command is a love letter to statistics, the nadir of the trend of military roleplaying games in the nineteen eighties, and today, a dinosaur.

Dirt & Danger

Dust & Blood: Two Scenarios of Gaslight London is a duology of scenarios for Cthulhu by Gaslight, the expansion for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition which explores the place of the Cthulhu Mythos in the last decades of the Victorian era. Its two scenarios take the Investigators into the grimier and grimmer side of Victorian life. The first, ‘Ashes to Ashes’, is a short, one session scenario, suited to both a new Keeper and new players, but with an intriguing set-up that veteran players and history lovers will still enjoy. Its running length also means that the scenario can be used as a demonstration or convention. Whilst ‘Ashes to Ashes’ is new, the second scenario, ‘Signs Writ in Scarlet’ is not, having first appeared in Sacraments of Evil, the 1993 anthology for Cthulhu by Gaslight, Second Edition. It is a much longer, more open world sandbox affair best suited for the more experienced Keeper and her players. Of the two, ‘Signs Writ in Scarlet’ is easier to add to an ongoing campaign and could be run as an indirect sequel to ‘Ashes to Ashes’. ‘Ashes to Ashes’ could also be used as a campaign starter. Both scenarios are supported by a plethora of maps and handouts, as well as ten pre-generated Investigators. Four of them are specifically designed to be used with ‘Ashes to Ashes’, but the introduction includes advice on how to use the ten of the pre-generated Investigators with the two scenarios.

‘Ashes to Ashes’, the first of the two scenarios in Dust & Blood has one of the more interesting set-ups for any Call of Cthulhu scenario, let alone for Cthulhu by Gaslight. A set-up that outside of Charles Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend is little known and a set-up that asks, “How did the Victorians get rid of their rubbish?” In Tudor times, the infamous gong farmers dug out and collected the ordure from privies and cesspits, but by the end of the Victorian era, extensive sewage systems had been built to prevent pollution and outbreaks of disease. That though, still left the household rubbish to be dealt with and that included tonnes of coal dust from each household. ‘Dustmen’ were employed by ‘dust yards’ to collect this dust and brought back to the dust-yard where it would be picked through by dust-sifters and fillers for anything valuable, including catskins, cinders, cork, oyster shells, and rags.

In ‘Ashes to Ashes’, the Investigators are employees at Lange’s Dust-Yard, either dustmen who collect the dust, totters who are rag-and-bone-men, dust-sifters, fillers, or workers on the destructor crew. All of these occupations are Lower Class roles, whilst the yard’s clerks are lower Middle Class roles. The scenario suggests minimum skill values for all of these Occupations and provides several NPCs who can be replaced by an Investigator if a player wants to take a particular role in the scenario. This gives the option for the players to create their own Investigators as well as choosing from the provided pre-generated Investigators. Also discussed are ways in which a Middle Class Investigator can be included, but at its core, ‘Ashes to Ashes’ is set in a working class environment which intentionally enforces the society of the time’s limits on where the Investigators can go, what they can do, and where they can be seen.

Given its length, it should be no surprise that ‘Ashes to Ashes’ starts with a bang. Or rather, with a bag. A bag that seems to be squirming. Has a pet been put out with the dust and the rubbish by mistake? It turns out not to be so, but something much stranger—a monstrous figure made of grey dust that that attacks the Investigators and other workers at the dust yard. This encounter begs the obvious question, “Where did the grey man and the bag he was in, come from?” The subsequent investigation quickly leads to a house at the posh end of the district that the dust yard works. Here the Investigators are confronted with a situation quite typical of Call of Cthulhu made all the more challenging by it being very much out of their Class and the location being very much not their place. It is a chance for them to see how the other half lives and the consequences of that. ‘Ashes to Ashes’ is a very likeable scenario, made all the more so by its genuinely different set-up and straightforward plot, made all the more difficult by the differences of Class.

The second scenario, ‘Signs Writ in Scarlet’, is longer and more demanding for both the Keeper and the players. It takes place over the course of three weeks beginning in October, 1889, and takes the Investigators down the streets and up the alleys of a Whitechapel scarred by the Jack the Ripper murders of the year before. In fact, the scenario is modelled on the murders and the reaction to them, but tells a story of its own rather than exploiting them or associating them with the Mythos. The district is beset by a new series of murders, this time of men rather than women, but found in similar circumstances in the fog and their flesh carved with curious symbols. The Investigators are either hired by the East End Citizens Committee, get intrigued by the newspaper reports, or are called in by Scotland Yard for their expertise, and so begin to look into the deaths. The scenario has twin parallel tracks that the Investigators will need to follow, one attending the many days of the coroner’s inquests held for each of the murder victims, the other working the streets and trying to gather clues via legwork. Both the coroner’s inquests and the deaths give the scenario a tight timeline and structure. What it means is that the Keeper will need to switch back and forth between the two investigative strands, one static, one free roaming. Players and Investigators will have more freedom of choice in the latter rather than the former, but the former is not without its incident and scope to ask questions.

The freedom of the street investigation is complicated by the fact that the Investigators are not the only ones looking into the deaths and searching for the culprit. Some of the groups conducting their own investigations have their own agendas and will not take kindly to the Investigators’ involvement. ‘Signs Writ in Scarlet’ has many more moving parts than ‘Ashes to Ashes’, is more detailed and involving, and has more NPCs for the Keeper to maintain a track of. The scenario also has two endings because it is not so much a matter of finding out who the murderer is, but a matter of finding out why. Investigating further will lead to some horrible revelations, although it is possible that the scenario will end in a bloody massacre should the players and their Investigators not continue their enquiries. This possibility and the complexity of the scenario are why it warrants more experienced Keeper and players.

The scenario update is not extensive, but it does include an option for use with Pulp Cthulhu: Two-fisted Action and Adventure Against the Mythos which links the perpetrator to the character of Sweeney Tood, first seen in the penny dreadful serial The String of Pearls. This does feel like the overegging the scenario, given how judiciously it makes use of the Jack the Ripper legend, but otherwise the scenario benefits from some careful staging advice. If ‘Ashes to Ashes’ is grimy, then ‘Signs Writ in Scarlet’ is grim, but richly detailed and a classic worth updating and reprinting given that it has been out of print for over three decades.

Physically, Dust & Blood: Two Scenarios of Gaslight London is as well presented as you would expect for a Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition supplement. The illustrations are also good, those for ‘Ashes to Ashes’ actually having a lighter feel then those for then ‘Signs Writ in Scarlet’.

One quibble with the writing is that in places it favours American terminology first rather than British terminology. For example, in ‘Ashes to Ashes’ , the description of the disposal of household waste opens with “Recycling of household garbage (or rubbish as it is known in England)…” rather than, “Recycling of household rubbish (or garbage as it is known in the USA)…” Obviously, Call of Cthulhu and Cthulhu by Gaslight are published by an American company and their largest audience is American, but what it feels like is that an explanation is being given to non-American readers about a setting that is not American. Whereas the explanation should be for the American reader because it is not an American setting. Similarly, for the storeys of a house, the scenario uses “First (Ground) Floor” and “Second Floor” rather than “Ground (First) Floor” and “First (Second) Floor”. Again, this is a quibble, but given that Cthulhu by Gaslight is set in Victorian Britain and both scenarios are set in London, this phrasing is inconsistent, reads oddly, and is just slightly jarring.

Dust & Blood: Two Scenarios of Gaslight London provides very solid support for Cthulhu by Gaslight with something new and something old. The new gives a new angle from which to explore the Mythos in the Victorian era, whilst the old examines the Victorian attitude to murder following a public panic. In all honesty, two scenarios feels just two slight and it is easier to add one to an existing campaign than the other, which limits its use. Nevertheless, both scenarios in Dust & Blood: Two Scenarios of Gaslight London are very welcome support for the Keeper of Cthulhu by Gaslight, one new and inventive, one old, but a classic.

Solitaire: Ion Heart – Pilot’s Handbook

It is fifteen hundred years since the Astral Union was formed and sixty-five years since the Emergence Catastrophe occurred. Nephilim Strand Fleets emerged from the Galactic East and for a decade the Emergence War was waged across the galaxy. Over five decades have passed since and signs of the conflict can be found only almost every planet and in the spaces between. Remnants of the original invasion force, as well as individual Nephilim, can still be found lurking at the furthest reaches of the spatial translation Snap Rifts that bind the planetary systems of the Astral Union together. Bandits and pirates are a threat still, as are corporations running rogue operations. One icon of the war that can still be seen today is the Mech. Before the war, it had been designed as an industrial machine for use in construction and mining, and later developed as a combat vehicle, but the Mech rose to prominence during the defence of the Astral Union. Ion Core technology harnessed the latent psionic ability of all sentient beings using advanced A.I. systems to create a Sync-Bond between a mech and its user, enhancing the precision and dexterity of the Mech and enabling the Mech itself to develop a personality of its own and operate independently, but still linked to its Pilot. Today, Mechs are seen far and wide across the Astral Union, the bond between Pilot and Mech celebrated as if they were a knight and the Mech his steed of old. Together, they adventure and explore, help and hinder, protect and perform, often helping where they can, like itinerant, if hyper-armed, ronin of old.

This is the set-up for Ion Heart: Solo Mech Exploration RPG – Pilot’s Handbook. It is a solo journalling game published by Parable Games, best known for the horror roleplaying game, Shiver – Role-playing Tales in the Strange & the Unknown. In the roleplaying game, the player will take the roles of both Pilot and Mech, who together explore a universe ravaged by war and now recovering, growing together and strengthening their bond. The roleplaying game provides prompts that will drive the story of their adventures that the player will record in short mission logs. These missions typically take the form of an ‘Exploration Loop’—arriving on a planet, discovering a settlement, encountering a Story Circuit, and engaging in combat and travel encounters, as necessary. A Story Circuit is a narrative arc consisting of six parts. The player needs to play through a minimum of three of these before his Pilot and Mech can play out the finale of the Story Circuit, and so complete its narrative before moving. The Story Circuit is pre-written, but the rest is created at the beginning of each loop. To play, Ion Heart: Solo Mech Exploration RPG needs nothing more than some six-sided dice and a means to record a journal.

Ion Heart: Solo Mech Exploration RPG – Pilot’s Handbook includes some background to the setting really intended to provide flavour and detail, rather than mechanical support. This includes the history of the Astral Union, its organisations and what ordinary life is like, an explanation of the Emergent War and who the Nephilim are, and a timeline. Surprisingly, this also includes the various species which a player can chose from. These include Apollonians or humans from the Apollo-Theta system, the reptilian Varziss of the Varziss Triarchy, the bear-like Urvons of the League of Urvo, the winged and nocturnal bat-like Chiros of Chiros Coalition, the centaur-like Kirvae of the Kirvaen Prefecture, and the cat-like Mo’nau of the Mo’nau Republic. In addition to selecting one of these species during character creation, all of this material can be drawn upon when a player is recording in his journal.

The character creation is for both the Pilot and the Mech. The Pilot is defined by Pilot Body and Pilot Presence, whilst Mech is defined by Mech Brawn and Mech Reflex. Pilot Body is his physical capability and toughness, whilst Pilot Presence is his mental fortitude and reasoning skills. Mech Brawn is the Mech’s strength and toughness, whilst Mech Reflex is his speed and agility. All of these start at zero, but are first modified by the Pilot’s Temperament and the Mech’s Weight Class. The Pilot has an Origin—one of the species listed above, a Pilot Goal such as ‘Adventure Forth’, ‘Escape Past’, and ‘Fulfil Destiny’, and Pilot Temperament, which can be ‘Outgoing’, ‘Reflective’, ‘Analytical’, ‘Intuitive’, ‘Mercurial’, or ‘Rigid’. Each of these provide a benefit. For example, ‘Reflective’ means that the Pilot prefers to keep himself and thinks carefully before committing to anything, which grants ‘+3 Max. Mech Shielding’ and ‘+1 Pilot Body’, whilst ‘Intuitive’ means that the Pilot is empathetic, has a poet’s soul, and makes judgements based on what he feels to be right, and that allows his player can ‘Re-roll two failed Pilot Presence Checks per day.’

Creating or building a Mech is slightly—but only slightly—more complex. The Mech has a Class that can either be Light, Medium, or Heavy. This determines whether it favours speed, durability, and powerful weapons, or a balance between the two, and thus its starting values for Mech Shielding and Brawn and Reflex modifiers. Each Mech has a Ranged Weapons System, Melee Weapons System, and an Auxiliary System, which will also help in combat. Since the end of the war with the Nephilim, all Mechs have been reconfigured or designed to have a civilian Specialisation and thus the capacity to be useful out of combat. This can be ‘Shepherd’, ‘Harvester’, or ‘Bridgebuilder’, for example. All of this—for both Pilot and Mech—can rolled for or chosen by the player. Lastly, there is the Ion Core Sync Bond, which represents the connection between the Pilot and his Mech, and in play, determines how many Heroic Actions or Ion Core engagements that can be conducted per day.

Pilot Name: Makwa

Pilot Origin: Urvon

Pilot Temperament: Analytical (+1 to hit in first Ranged Step of any combat)

Pilot Goal: Save Others

Pilot Presence 0 Pilot Body 0

Mech

Origin: Working Relationship

Weight: Heavy

Ion Core Sync Bond 2

Mech Shielding 46

Battle Scars: 0

Mech Brawn +1

Mech Reflex -1

Attacks: 3

Weapons: Scattergun (Damage: 4+D6) [Buckshot: For every hit with this weapon, make an extra free attack with it]; Forge Hammer (Damage: 6+D6) [Crushing Smite: The Meteorite Thunderstrike Ion Core does an additional +4 damage]

Auxiliary system: TN Field Projector

Mech Specialisation: Repair & Rescue

Mech Quirks: 0

Mechanically, Ion Heart is simple. When a player wants either his Pilot or his Mech to succeed, he rolls a single six-sided die and rolls of four or more means the attempt is successful. A roll of one is always a failure, whilst a roll of six is always a success. For the Pilot, bonuses can come from his Presence or Body as appropriate, but if he fails, the player can decide to have his Pilot undertake a Heroic Action. This automatically succeeds, but at the cost of a Sync Bond slot for that day. The Mech can operate by itself when the Pilot is not in the cockpit. In which case the bonuses for the Mech’s own Mech Brawn and Mech Reflex are used, and the roll required to succeed is still four or more. When a Mech has no instructions, it will revert to the Specialisation it has been programmed with.

Combat uses the same core mechanic, but on attacks, a roll of six is critical hit and inflicts more damage. Similarly, a roll of six to defend against an attack is a critical and deflects part of the damage back at the attacker. A round consists of three steps—Ranged, Melee, and Disengage. A Mech’s Level determines the number of attacks per round, but if the Pilot or Mech decides not to attack, they receive a bonus to the rolls to defend themselves. Damage reduces the Mech Shielding, and this is both when the Pilot is out of the Mech and in the Mech. If the Pilot is out of the Mech, it means that Pilot is not taking damage as such, but his ability to pilot the Mech is being affected.

The Ion Core of a Mech and its A.I. means that it can learn over time as it synchronises with the Pilot and it can also overcharge the Mech’s systems. There is no truly safe way to do this, as even if the Pilot and Mech have enough Sync Bond points—which determines the number of times it can be done per day—engaging the Ion Core can still damage the Mech and will damage the Mech if the number of times it is used exceeds the Sync Bond points. When the Ion Core is engaged, it provides the player with a number of choices, such as the aforementioned ‘Heroic Push’, which allows a failed Mech Brawn or Mech Reflex check to succeed; ‘Shields! Full Power!’, which partially restores Mech Shielding; and ‘Meteoric Thunderstrike!’ which enables a single attack that round and has it automatically succeed with extra damage inflicted. In the long term, through play and combat, the latter if the Mech Shielding is reduced to zero and the Mech is disabled, the Mech can acquire Mech Quirks such as ‘Gallant Protector’, which grants a bonus to Defence rolls if Mech Shielding is seriously reduced, and ‘Ocular Misalignment’, damaging its targeting optics! If there is an issue with the Ion Heart: Solo Mech Exploration RPG, it is that it is hard for the Pilot to improve in comparison to the Mech and the Mech is always more interesting than the Pilot as he has no special abilities or skills.

The play of Ion Heart—the ‘Exploration Loop’—begins with the creation the next destination for the Pilot and his Mech. This includes world building, which drills down from system creation through world creation to settlement design. Examples are provided to choose from, but there are tables which a player can use to create his own. The tables are used to create systems, planets, biomes, and settlements as well as encounters that can be friendly, mysterious, or hostile. The latter are backed up with a range of threats that includes other Mechs and Nephilim enemies. What this provides is a broadly drawn environment that a Pilot and Mech can explore and adventure across. It is also the environment upon which the player will map and tell the tale of one or more Story Circuits.

Eighteen of these are detailed in Ion Heart: Solo Mech Exploration RPG – Pilot’s Handbook, taking up half of the book. There are six each of Peaceful, Protective, and Dangerous Story Circuits, and each one is broken down into five scenes, plus a finale. The player has to play through three of the scenes before playing the finale. The Peaceful Story Circuits include ‘The Remembrance Festival’ and ‘Mech’s Birthday’; the Protective Story Circuits include ‘An Ecologist’s Dilemma’ and ‘Volcanic Chaos’; and Dangerous Story Circuits include ‘Our Fight is Not Over’ and ‘Contested Territory’. This is a great mix of story ideas and gives the game a greater longevity than the average solo journaling game.

In addition, Ion Heart: Solo Mech Exploration RPG – Pilot’s Handbook includes guidance on playing it as a two-player game. Instead of each player controlling his own Pilot and Mech, one player roleplays the Pilot and the other player the Mech, and it suggests the players divide responsibilities between journalling and rules referencing, as well as working together to decide on the actions of their shared Pilot and Mech.

Physically, the Ion Heart: Solo Mech Exploration RPG – Pilot’s Handbook is a nicely done roleplaying game. It is fetchingly presented in swathes of soft colours and easy to read and understand.

Initially, Ion Heart is a challenging given that until a Pilot and Mech survive a Story Circuit and can go up a Level, there is not much in the way of modifiers to affect the dice rolls needed for many actions. This is why the Sync Bond and engaging the Ion Core is so important as it can get the Pilot and Mech out of a tight scrape, but it is more important early on in the game when there are fewer modifiers to skill rolls and fewer chances to engage the Ion Core with any degree of safety. However, careful play and some luck will get the Pilot and the Mech through most situations, and it may help if the player goes through a Peaceful Story Circuit first so that his Pilot can gain a Level.

Ion Heart: Solo Mech Exploration RPG – Pilot’s Handbook explores the relationship between Pilot and Mech, much like a knight and his horse. They are both bonded, literally in the case of the Pilot and Mech with the Sync Bond mechanic. What is so attractive about Ion Heart is that although there is danger to be found and threats to be confronted across the Astral Union, the universe it depicts is not a dark one, but one of hope and restoration, as the Pilot and Mech wander from place to place, in peripatetic fashion, ronin-style. Then unlike other solo journalling games, Ion Heart not only comes with eighteen Story Circuits to tell, but leaves the world open. There is no set ending that the player is striving for and when he has completed the eighteen Story Circuits, he is free to create his own and continue the story of his Pilot and Mech, or wait for expansions from the publisher. In other words, it is up to the player to decide when the story of his Pilot and Mech ends.

Ion Heart: Solo Mech Exploration RPG – Pilot’s Handbook is a rather charming journalling roleplaying game, enjoyably optimistic in tone, and with richness of stories to tell.

Friday Fantasy: The Grotesques’ Grotto

Up in the hills there is a grotto out of which a babbling spring rises where it is said that ghostly echoes of lurid ritual mania from millennia ago can be heard. Folklore says that the grotto hides a temple to Iakos, the ancient wild god who blessed the site and his followers with the power of delirium-inducing prophetic visions. The temple was sealed long ago after his worship was outlawed, but its hidden entrance was revealed two weeks ago when an earthquake hit the area. Drawn by the spreading news of the seal to the temple having been broken, four royal witch hunters—Aida, Crawe, Ric, and Oswin—arrived in a nearby town and set out to investigate. They have since entered the temple in an effort to suppress its heathen influence, but are yet to return. In response to this situation, perhaps the Player Characters are hired to go after them and rescue them; perhaps they are hired by a decadent noble to help bring about a prophecy associated with the temple and its destruction that would bring about a new world; or having learned of the temple having been unsealed and the witch hunters gone inside, the Player Characters simply want to follow them in and loot the place of its treasure and relics. This is the set-up and hooks for Quick Delve #2: The Grotesques’ Grotto.

Quick Delve #2: The Grotesques’ Grotto is an adventure for Old School Essentials from Necrotic Gnome and is designed to be played with six Player Characters of Second Level to Fourth Level. The scenario is the second in the publisher’s ‘Quick Delve’ series, following on from Quick Delve #1: Milk. Each is designed for one or two sessions’ worth of play and is intended to be perfect for side quests, one-shots, and conventions, as well as easily into any campaign. The scenario begins with the Player Characters outside the grotto. Inside is a temple that has long fallen into misuse, but more recently, extensively damaged by the earthquake. This also limited the Player Characters movement through the temple, effectively limiting them to edges before they can make their way into the middle. It has a strange, woozy atmosphere primarily because of three ‘Grotesques’ of the title, the servants of Iakos who have been trapped in the temple since it was sealed and desperately, monstrously welcome the arrival of interlopers after centuries. The creepy trio include Mu, Grotesque of Keeping, starved for new secrets to hoard; Thee, Grotesque of Disclosure, starved for new secrets to reveal; and Los, Grotesque of Revelation. The first of these has a hole where its face should be, the second has mouth framed by numerous empty eye sockets, and they both hate each other; whilst the third’s eyeless face sloughs off and regrows every five minutes (he is also the only one not to be illustrated). Their desires and rivalries will drive much of the Player Characters’ exploration of the temple and provide much of the scenario’s potential roleplaying.

Unfortunately, this leaves the rest of NPCs in the scenario—the surviving royal witch hunters and an NPC or two—markedly underserved in terms of roleplaying potential. They are sadly underwritten, leaving little for the Game Master to work from in terms of their portrayal, but possibly leaving lots of room to develop from that might fit her campaign. Another issue with the writing is the descriptions given of the various locations. The writing is sparse and punchy, but the boxes of descriptive text often veer into details that should not be initially apparent to the Player Characters. For example, the boxed text for the Crypt reads, “A large Martyr sits cross-legged atop an imposing stone sarcophagus. The east and south walls are lined with niches. Most are empty but 4 contain inanimate Martyrs. The archway north (to Area 12) is draped in strands of glowing moss, a humid, noisome atmosphere wafting through it.” It seems odd for this text to mention the presence of Martyrs when that instead should be information for the players and their characters to discover. What it also means is that what should be in other scenarios, boxes of descriptive text there for the Game Master to read out, fail to serve that function in Quick Delve #2: The Grotesques’ Grotto. As a consequence, Quick Delve #2: The Grotesques’ Grotto requires just a bit more effort to prepare than it really should—all of which could have been addressed during the development and editing process for the scenario.

Physically, Quick Delve #2: The Grotesques’ Grotto is generally well presented. Barring the issue with the boxed text, it is decently written. The cartography is good, but the artwork is better. In fact, the artwork is excellent and really capture the feel and atmosphere of the individual encounters in the dungeon. The depiction of two of the three Grotesques is appropriately disturbing, but the most unsettling illustration is of the near-cadaverous Nymph, Pity, as she preys on a victim ready to drown him.

Quick Delve #2: The Grotesques’ Grotto feels inspired by the Oracle of Delphi at the Temple of Apollo on Mount Parnassus, its trio of Grotesques echoing also the three Fates, but the scenario otherwise avoids being inspired by Ancient Greece. Its primary storytelling impetus for the Player Characters will be how they react to the drives of the three Grotesques. If they ignore them, the scenario is likely to be an underwhelming experience for the Player Characters. Engage in them and there are definite consequences, ones that are entertaining, but will not affect a campaign in a drastic way which would unpin it and send it in another direction. Quick Delve #2: The Grotesques’ Grotto is underdeveloped in places, but not fatally so, in what is otherwise a solid scenario easily dropped into a campaign.

Cyber-Dungeon Classics I: Arcolgies

Zapped by a hi-res laser. Take the red pill. Plug in. Within seconds and the Player Characters are no longer in their world, but another. Somewhere in between, a liminal space of data and information, infinite realities and variations, where corporations hold and protect their data in fortresses and millions work, and even more flock to explore worlds that previously they could only imagine. They no longer are Player Characters, but ‘Users’, shifted out of ‘Reality’ and into ‘Cyberspace’ as ‘Avatars’. Inside this virtual world, this WorldNet, they face not I.C.E. or Intrusion Counter Electronics per se, but Intrusion Counter Entities. Their new world is not so much a virtual world as a cyberdungeon. ICE are not the only dangers the Avatars will face. There is a chance of being detected and worse being noticed by the deities that are the A.I.s. This is the setting for Netcrawl, the cyberspace setting and supplement for use with the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game and the Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic, both published by Goodman Games. Published by Horse Shark Games, it works with other third-party settings such as Cyber Sprawl Classics, Crawljammer, Umerica, Terror of the Stratosfiend, and Star Crawl Classics. Plus, of course, it can simply be a roleplaying setting all of its own. Once zapped into this virtual world, what exactly does it look like?

Netcrawl: Arcologies is a supplement that attempts to address the infinite number of possibilities when it comes to what the virtual reality environments of Netcrawl and the WorldNet look like, what might be found there, and what threats that the Avatars might encounter. It is in effect a dungeon generator for a cyberpunk and virtual world setting that the Judge can use as prompts to develop the space into which the Avatars are cast and bring it to (virtual) reality. The first part of Netcrawl: Arcologies looks at its namesake with a set of tables for defining what a particular arcology is like. The generator determines an arcology’s tone and theme, functionality, appearance, and style, plus the primary form of travel to and within the arcology. So its tone might be disorientating or entertaining, its theme lines and vertices or grimy, functionality a beta release or fortified, and its appearance a polygon or shaped like a vehicle, and so on. In style it could be gridded or circuitry and if a polyhedral shape, a cylinder, cone, or rhomboid prism.

Thematically, one area that the supplement does not do is provide a means of determining who built the arcology and who runs it now. In the introduction, it acknowledges that an arcology can be run by numerous organisations, where that is corporate, governmental, or some other body, and that further this will suggest branding, function, and appearance. The inclusion of such details would have added further depth and detail to any arcology and help the Admin in the creation process.

The ‘System Raid’ tables set up a target and thus the basis of an adventure for Netcrawl. It sets the target as a random system building that is then layered into grids of nodes that are populated with agents or random I.C.E. These include connections, firewalls, agents, security portals, systems, and servers. This provides the target environment to be explored and worked through, but the look and feel of this space should be dictated by the previous Arcology Generator tables. Of course, the target can be determined wholly randomly by simply rolling on the tables, but the advice is to combine it with design choices. The process is not easy in part because although it is creating the equivalent of a virtual dungeon, it does not have the structure of a dungeon traditional to Dungeons & Dragons. So, it is harder to visualise.

The Admin can also personalise the A.I.s in charge of the arcology—or parts of it—with plans and personalities, and even give them hobbies to perhaps give them a weakness that can be exploited. Arcologies can further be populated by rolling the I.C.E. Generator that determines type, general appearance, colour, and form, and even allows for the possibility it could manifest in the outside world, from as ordinary a defence as a swarm of nanobots to a synthetic android.

The supplement takes the Admin to the seamier side of the virtual world with the Undernet, the equivalent of the Dark Web, but here treated like the back streets and alleys with a handful of encounters. Further, it is a bestiary of sorts, if the monsters and other threats are digital. There is Malware, virulent code that compromises a victim’s defences and can alter an Avatar’s appearance temporarily and even permanently reduce his stats, depending upon how badly the player fails his Avatar’s saving throw versus. Some of these are quite complex. For example, once installed, the reactive defensive code attack ‘Heartstopper’ automatically activates under certain circumstances and forces constant heart attacks on the victim, whilst ‘JOBE’ or ‘Joyous Omnipotent Brain Evolution’, grants a bonus to program activation checks and Wits check or Wits-based skill checks. However, if an Avatar succeeds by these bonuses only, it reduces his Hack stat and if reduced to zero, the sufferer is turned into a megalomaniac! In many cases, Malware can be removed with reversion control or quarantine.

The ‘Code’ rules get under the structure under AI, arcology, and Avatar, whilst ‘Exploits’ are malicious code that can be injected into an Avatar. Again, like the Malware, there are basic and more detailed versions. For example, ‘Couch Pirate 3000 (CP3K) – The Slacker Hacker’ is whispered about in encrypted chatrooms or foreshadowed by icons of a worn-out couch appearing on dead servers, and asks the question, “Why burn the system when you can break

it lying down?” Sufferers are forced to lie down on the couch and lose all speed (moving 0#) and suffer a -4 penalty to their Hack. That said, the couch can be moved, so making the Avatar’s allies do yet more hard work! The ‘Zap Generator’ creates Zaps, virtual drug-like experiences that provide temporary boosts, but which can be addictive. They fit the setting, but they do feel like way to get drugs into the WorldNet, whereas ‘Abends’ enforce the weird nature of the setting, all being code written to crash in unusual ways, ending in critical errors and other unexpected ways. For example, ‘nessuna.tmp’ causes intense drowsiness and an hour-long dream state that renders an Avatar vulnerable. Effectively, ‘cybersleep’, it has transcendent effects that make many ciphomorph shamans actually infect themselves and gain prophetic abilities and access to ‘spirit’ realms. Mechanically, after waking up from this state, users are slowed to a zen-like state that means they go last in combat and are slowed to a single action, but do gain access to insight that grants a bonus to an action die, saving throw, or Armour class, which can be changed from round to round. There are only three of these Abends, but these add depth and feel to some of the software to be found in the WorldNet.

Rounding out Netcrawl: Arcologies is a ‘Guide to the WorldNet’ that further develops ideas for its many, many virtual reality environments. This gives tables of rumours, events, and news items to use across various ‘neighbourhoods’ of the WorldNet. They include locations such as ‘The Spine’, the main highway of the WorldNet; the hedonistic, yet upscale VR playgrounds known as ‘Les Loisirs’; and the ‘Nightzone’ is the always-on, always-dark, nightlife district. There are nine such locations, not so much detailed, as brought to reality through the rumours and news in their associated tables. These are full of lots of detail that will help the Admin bring them to life using the tables earlier in the supplement to give structure to her WorldNet.

Physically, Netcrawl: Arcologies is a vibrantly, neon affair. It is not illustrated, but the colours more than make up for it.

Netcrawl: Arcologies starts by selling itself as the equivalent of the dungeon generator for Netcrawl, but it is not as an expansive as traditional dungeon generators are for fantasy roleplaying. It is more focused on limited structures, though these can still be quite large. However, the supplement does not limit itself wholly to that, but adds general details and elements that can be brought easily into play and expand the setting. Ultimately, Netcrawl: Arcologies is more of a companion to NetCrawl providing general support rather just location-building, but that does not mean that it is bad support.

Miskatonic Monday #448: The Horror

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.

—oOo—

Name: The Horror

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Poul Erik Holmelund

Setting: Denmark, 1980s

Product: Scenario

What You Get: Forty-two page, 41.15 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Kidstigators do right by the Knights Templar
Plot Hook: ‘Troll’ terror at a Summer Camp gone Cthulhu

Plot Support: Staging advice, five pre-generated Kidstigators and sixteen Kidstigator portraits, one NPC, five maps and floor plans, one Mythos spell, and four Mythos monsters.

Production Values: Excellent

Pros

# First scenario to use the ‘Kidstigator’ rules from The Dare

# Good one-shot or convention scenario

# Solid, food-based investigation

# Genuinely jolly policeman

# ‘Murdertoys’ are exactly what you think they are

# iä iä Krôll´Bôll

# Possible resolutions fully explored

# Nice cover

# Now with added Citronmåne (you’re welcome and where’s my slice?)

# Pediophobia

# Teraphobia

# Ornithophobia

Cons

# Needs a light edit

# There really should be a phobia of seagulls

Conclusion

# Linear, but entertaining scenario that nicely balances the joy of childhood versus the terror of ‘trolls’!

# Pleasingly captures the wonder of childhood summer before the horror

# Reviews from R’lyeh Recommends

Snæland Sagas #05: Family Sagas

Much like the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, the Jonstown Compendium for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, and The Companions of Arthur for Pendragon, Sagas of the North is a curated platform for user-made content, but for material set in Iceland the other lands that the Vikings travelled to. It enables creators to sell their own original content for use with Age of Vikings. This can be original scenarios, background material, alternate Icelandic settings, and more, but none of this content should be considered to be ‘canon’, but rather fall under ‘Your Vikings Will Vary’. This means that there is still scope for the authors to create interesting and useful content that others can bring to their Age of Vikings campaigns.

—oOo—

What is the Nature of the Saga?

Family Sagas is a supplement for use with Age of Vikings.

It is a full colour, twelve page, 14.42 MB PDF.

The layout is tidy, but it does need an edit in places.

Where is the Saga set?

Family Sagas really begins at home, but ultimately it will take the Player Characters anywhere as they travel and undertake quests together.

Who should be the subject of this Saga?

Any type of Player Character can take part in this saga. It is intended for use with all types of Player Character because it is designed to bring them together and designed to be used with Player Characters.

What does the Saga require?

Family Sagas only requires the Age of Vikings core rulebook.

Where will the Vikings go in this Saga?

Part of the creation process in Age of Vikings is to create a family and family history for the character, and in the process, set up relations and relationships, tensions, and potential story and roleplaying possibilities. What though if the ties are not between each Player Character and a group of NPCs, but between the Player Characters? In other words, what if the Player Characters are all directly related and from the same family? This is the idea behind Family Sagas, a supplement for Age of Vikings which expands the character creation process for the roleplaying, but more tightly focuses its subject matter.  It does this by adding several new steps in the character creation process.

Unlike the standard process, Family Sagas begins with ‘Step 0: Talk About Your Family’ in which the Game Master and her players discuss who and what they want to play, how they want their Player Characters to be related, and also what family-related scenes, stories, and reactions do they want to see in the saga? Of course, this is going to be challenging, since family relationships can be difficult, there are going to be tensions, and what Family Sagas does is bring those tensions closer and make them more intimate than found in a standard Player Character and family set-up in Age of Vikings. Essentially, it is introducing a definite ‘Session Zero’ for Age of Vikings as part of the preparation and the supplement suggests several themes and topics that the players might want to explore (or avoid).

As part of the set-up it also suggests possible configurations based on the number of family members and cleverly, it allows players to still create separate family histories for their characters. This is because each player can still choose his character’s favourite grandparent and parent and these can be different or same, depending upon if they are related by blood or by marriage. Either way, it means that whilst family histories are rolled for separately, ideally, they should be created together to make connections and interactions, and ultimately what the process is does is, collectively, add depth and detail to the Player Characters’ shared family, even if—and especially when—it clashes.

Alternatively, Family Sagas suggests a simpler set-up if a Player Character is the child of another. Here the player of the parents suggests three Passions to represent things he wants to teach the child. The player of the child is free to accept these or not, but if not, that sets up tensions between their characters. The supplement also addresses the issue of age with regard to playing parents, suggests possible commonalities between family members—such as similar characteristic values and skills in common, similar spirit animals, and even distinctive features. 

What will the Skalds sing of this Saga?

Family Sagas explores an alternative campaign set-up which will make the players think more about the relationships and potential interactions between their characters ahead of play. The resulting suggestions are obvious when you think about it, but they are here in one place and the result has roleplaying potential aplenty.