This is the setting for SHIVER Classified, an expansion setting for Shiver – Role-playing Tales in the Strange & the Unknown, the horror roleplaying game published by Parable Games. It consists of two volumes, SHIVER Classified: Agents of L.A.N.C.E. and SHIVER Classified: The Unseen War. The first of these supplements introduces the setting and L.A.N.C.E. itself, explains its mission and its organisation, including its various departments and sub-agencies, and standard equipment carried by agents of L.A.N.C.E. It also provides guidance on creating agents of L.A.N.C.E. as Player Characters and investigations and case files that the Director can run as part of a SHIVER Classified campaign. The second supplement expands the setting with a complete timeline for L.A.N.C.E., details of its allies and enemies, a trilogy of adventures, and more case files. Where SHIVER Classified: Agents of L.A.N.C.E. focuses on investigative horror in a very familiar style, SHIVER Classified: The Unseen War goes to war with the Player Characters as members of Point Guard, the elite para-military arm of L.A.N.C.E., dedicated to fighting evil in all its forms, whether that is Doomsday cults, spectral killers, or malicious aliens.
The set-up and support for both the Director and her players is relatively light. It includes a standard guide on how to use a SHIVER supplement, most notably the Classification Board, which categorises each scenario as if it were a film passed by the British Board of Film Classification, and the Doom Clock, which tracks time and triggers certain events that intensify the terror of any scenario as it is played through. This will, of course, be familiar to the Director and fuller details can be found in the core rulebook. The advice for the Director is short and to the point, emphasising that the Player Characters, that is, the agents of L.A.N.C.E. are there to do a job—investigate, exterminate, contain, or carry out the orders of the agency to protect mankind, rather than simply survive the horror. In other words, play in SHIVER Classified is focused and proactive rather than reactive. Given the familiarity of its set-up and style of play, it is fair to say that SHIVER Classified is not really a setting that needs a great deal of advice for the Director. The background to the setting is more of a detailed overview than a complete guide, since more information is provided in SHIVER Classified: The Unseen War. This is slightly disappointing since the Director might not be interested in the anti-supernatural Special Forces campaign in SHIVER Classified: The Unseen War, but still needs SHIVER Classified: The Unseen War to access that information. That said, SHIVER Classified: Agents of L.A.N.C.E. has more than enough information to run the scenarios and case files it contains.
In terms of Agent options, SHIVER Classified: Agents of L.A.N.C.E. suggests several options from the core rules. Thus, a Scholar could be a research agent, a Socialite a public liaison, and so on, but added to these are new options in terms of what a player can roleplay as well as their abilities and flaws. For example, the ‘Livestreamer Star’ captured an otherworldly encounter on film, but it was denounced as fake and the star as a fraud. After L.A.N.C.E. cleaned the situation up, it recruited the now disgraced ‘Livestreamer Star’. This Agent type has the ‘Evidence Capturer’ Ability, which enables him to capture information even in the most dire of situations and perhaps be able to learn a vital piece of information about whatever threat L.A.N.C.E. team is facing, but also the Flaw of ‘Disgraced Star’, meaning that he might be recognised and his reputation means that he is not trusted. The other new roles include ‘Archaeologist’, ‘Research Scientist’, ‘Ex-Military’, ‘Police Officer’, ‘Firefighter’, and ‘Paramedic’. The strangest though are the ‘Sole Anomaly Survivor’ and the ‘Recovering Cultist’. As the name suggests, the ‘Sole Anomaly Survivor’ is only survivor from an encounter with the supernatural and whilst he knows he can survive them (his ‘I Will Survive’ Ability restores Hit Points when a Doom Event is triggered), he suffers from ‘Survivor’s Guilt’ and is penalised when an ally is killed. The ‘Recovering Cultist’ is physically marked and imbued with occult power making his unarmed attacks dangerous to all, but as the messiah for a prophesied apocalypse, is a ‘Doom Magnet’ and can add minutes to the Doom Clock! Of course, many of these roles could be used in other SHIVER settings, not just SHIVER Classified. In addition, new equipment includes the hands-free torch, shortwave radio, stab vest, standard agency pistol, and unmarked agency car.
SHIVER Classified: Agents of L.A.N.C.E. contains four investigations that can be run as is and four case files that provide playable content, but will need development by the Director. The investigations are given a briefing for the Director which provides a retrospective overview of the case as if an agent had pulled the file from the Archives before presenting the investigation as a traditional scenario, including the ‘Shiver Board of Classification’. The first is ‘The Hangman’, set in 1955 in the village of Roost, North Yorkshire at a festival to celebrate its most famous son, Albert Bernard Clayton, one of England’s most prolific hangmen! Against this ghoulish backdrop, L.A.N.C.E. receives a letter from a figure identifying itself as the ‘Hangman of Roost’ and promising swinging vengeance upon the village. Could the spirit of Albert Bernard Clayton have returned from the grave to punish the villagers for crimes unknown or is there something else going on? ‘The Hangman’ is as much a murder mystery as a supernatural mystery—though it does lean a bit towards Scooby Doo—and it has an enjoyably parochial feel against its backdrop of rural gothic.
The action shifts to 2004 and deep under the North Pacific for a salvage operation in ‘The Ancient Aquanaut’. The set-up does not actually involve L.A.N.C.E. Instead, the Player Characters are employees of Cornwall Consolidated, assigned to conduct a salvage operation on the N7 Swordfish, which was lost on its first assignment mapping the ocean floor. However, L.A.N.C.E. suspects that Cornwall Consolidated developed the experimental submarine to investigate the otherworldly, so there is the option to include a secret L.A.N.C.E. agent as part of the crew. With the action taking place deep under the ocean, the result is a classic science versus the supernatural mystery in the claustrophobic confines of a submarine, as the salvage crew is stalked by a faceless hulking figure, similar to the ‘Big Daddies’ found in the BioShock series of computer games.
When the Danté Grandé Hotel goes up in flames the fire services respond exactly as they should, but for one unfortunate company of firefighters, their night is about to get doubly worse. First because they find themselves trapped in the burning building and second because as they climb to avoid the spreading conflagration, it seems that something devilish, even impish, is actively spreading the fires! ‘The Impossible Fire’ takes place in 2016 in the big city of the Director’s choice and casts the Player Characters as the trapped firefighters. There are no pre-generated Player Characters provided, but suggestions are made as to what they could be. The whole adventure is portrayed as a public relations exercise for L.A.N.C.E. rather than something in which the agency was involved, though there is the possibility that one or more of the surviving firefighters could have been recruited by L.A.N.C.E. after the event. In this way, it could actually be used as an origins story for one or more agents in an Agents of L.A.N.C.E. campaign proper.
The last investigation, ‘Smog Under London’, takes place in London in 1922 and has a strong Lovecraftian and thus more tradiational feel as the agents of L.A.N.C.E. investigate a strange fog, cultists, and more in the capital’s lost metropolitan borough, Arkenbury. The Knights of Arkenbury, a sub-agency of L.A.N.C.E. was formed specifically to defend the threats emanating out of the borough. As a poisonous fog descends on the district, the investigation leads from a swanky business and society soiret held at a local observatory to London’s docks and then underground where the fog is at its thickest and most deadly for a confrontation with the cultists. Of the four investigations in SHIVER Classified: Agents of L.A.N.C.E., this has the pulpiest feel, enforced by the set piece of the middle act, which has the Agents aboard a London double-decker bus being chased through the streets by a Shoggoth!
The four investigations are followed by four case files. These come with everything necessary that the Director needs to run them, but need a little further development to be ready to run. ‘The Killer Queen’ can switch between 1966 and the high school massacre by a killer prom queen at Perennial Heart High School and its reinvestigation in 2006, possibly on the set of a horror film inspired by the event. In ‘The Crooked Ghost’, the agents of L.A.N.C.E. are asked by the owner of a Lancashire house to investigate why he and other members of his family cannot spend a whole night within its walls. This is a classic haunted house investigation set in 2005. ‘The Plague Doctor’ is set in 1998 and concerns a L.A.N.C.E. agent gone missing whilst investigating a rash of missing visitors, strange illnesses, and weird sightings at a national heritage site, the medieval village of Derleth Marsh. ‘Cruise Along Cephalopod’ is set in 2015 aboard the final voyage of the cruise-liner, Great Destinations. The scenario needs more construction than the previous three, but ultimately, should involve the agents (or other Player Characters) being chased through the halls of the ship by angry psychic octopuses!
All together, SHIVER Classified: Agents of L.A.N.C.E. presents multiple declassified files drawn from the archives of L.A.N.C.E. This enables the Director and her players to explore the history of L.A.N.C.E. and some of its most famous—or infamous—cases. What this means is that it presents a series of one-shots rather than a cohesive campaign involving Agents of L.A.N.C.E. Indeed, the investigations and case files in SHIVER Classified: Agents of L.A.N.C.E. could be used as one-shots, whether involving L.A.N.C.E. or not, but some of the investigations and case files, particularly those set in the last thirty years or so, could be used as origin stories that tell how Agents came to be recruited by L.A.N.C.E. Or they could even be used as training missions before the fresh-faced Agents are sent out on a case of their own. However, what this does mean is that the Director wanting to run a SHIVER Classified: Agents of L.A.N.C.E. campaign in the here and now will be disappointed by the lack of support that the supplement provides to that end. In such a case, the Director will need to create her content or perhaps even adapt the investigations and case files given to the modern day. (Another option, of course, is to look at SHIVER Classified: The Unseen War.)
All together, SHIVER Classified: Agents of L.A.N.C.E. presents multiple declassified files drawn from the archives of L.A.N.C.E. This enables the Director and her players to explore the history of L.A.N.C.E. and some of its most famous—or infamous—cases. What this means is that it presents a series of one-shots rather than a cohesive campaign involving Agents of L.A.N.C.E. Indeed, the investigations and case files in SHIVER Classified: Agents of L.A.N.C.E. could be used as one-shots, whether involving L.A.N.C.E. or not, but some of the investigations and case files, particularly those set in the last thirty years or so, could be used as origin stories that tell how Agents came to be recruited by L.A.N.C.E. Or they could even be used as training missions before the fresh-faced Agents are sent out on a case of their own. However, what this does mean is that the Director wanting to run a SHIVER Classified: Agents of L.A.N.C.E. campaign in the here and now will be disappointed by the lack of support that the supplement provides to that end. In such a case, the Director will need to create her content or perhaps even adapt the investigations and case files given to the modern day. (Another option, of course, is to look at SHIVER Classified: The Unseen War.)
Physically, SHIVER Classified: Agents of L.A.N.C.E. is another good-looking book from Parable Games. The artwork is great throughout, a mix of the creepy and the looming out of the page, whilst the writing does not an edit in a palace or two.
Inspired by television series such as The X-Files and Warehouse 13, SHIVER Classified: Agents of L.A.N.C.E. is instantly accessible and a good introduction to the Agents of L.A.N.C.E. setting and supports it with lots and lots of single scenarios that explore the history and most notorious files of the agency. However, its focus on the history of L.A.N.C.E. does limit its use as a whole rather than in parts. The investigations and case files are entertaining though, and there is some flexibility in the way in which they can be used.
