Slasher Serial

There is someone stalking us. Someone faceless or wearing a mask that hides his features, makes him anonymous, who wants us dead. He will catch us. He will slice us. He will stab us. He will play elaborate pranks on us. Pranks that do not make us laugh, but make us die. Then he will fade into the background, allowing a moment of respite to recover, only to come stalking out of the darkness, relentless, unstoppable. Picking us off, one by one. Perhaps always targeting the same person. Again, and again. All for reasons only he understands. Perhaps he has a weakness, something that will stop his unflagging hunt for you all. What will it take for you to survive? What will it take to stop him? What will you tell your family, your friends, your children about this determined horror? This ‘Slasher’ insistent upon bringing your life to end? Nothing? Or reveal the truth? Or let the trauma of your experience fall upon their heads until the Slasher from your youth comes looking for them and they realise that it was all real…

The slasher film is a subgenre of horror films that involves one or more killer stalking and killing people with knives and other sharp implements. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Halloween, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Child’s Play, Scream, and I Know What You Did Last Summer are considered to be classics of the subgenre and most of them have spawned sequels and even franchises of their own, as well as books, games, and more. It is the idea of the Slasher film as a franchise complete with a returning Slasher such as Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, and Chucky that is explored in SHIVER Slasher: Generation Murder.

SHIVER Slasher: Generation Murder is a stalking, slashing, stabbing sourcebook and campaign for Shiver – Role-playing Tales in the Strange & the Unknown, the horror roleplaying game published by Parable Games. It not only analyses the Slasher subgenre, but also provides six different scenarios all from the subgenre and different eras of the subgenre. These can be run as a single campaign with generational play, the players creating and roleplaying characters who are related to or descendants of the characters who were victims of a Slasher in the previous scenario. The playthrough of each film or scenario follows the structure of the Slasher film, with its advance and retreat format and its building of terror, all to a final confrontation with the Slasher. In turn, they take the Player Characters from the nineteen thirties to the twenty-tens, via the nineteen fifties, eighties, nineties, and noughties, forcing them to confront a different type of Slasher each time. Any one of the six scenarios in SHIVER Slasher: Generation Murder could be run as a single one-shot, but ideally not, because in-between, the survivors will pass on an inheritance to subsequent Player Characters. In effect, the entirety of the campaign in SHIVER Slasher: Generation Murder can be seen as one big Slasher film, with the inheritance interludes between each scenario as the only respite.

Although the campaign in SHIVER Slasher: Generation Murder has its own Slasher(s), the supplement handily categorises the various types as monsters that the Game Master can use them in scenarios of her own creation. So, for the Jason Vorhees or Michael Myers type there is the Unstoppable Force, the Supernatural Terror for Freddy Kreuger or the Candyman, and even the Apex for the Xenomorph or the Predator, which obviously points to a different interpretation of certain Science Fiction film series. There are full stats for all of these and discussion too, of possible attacks and signature weapons, and of course, resistances and weaknesses, the discovery of the latter typically enabling the Player Characters to defeat their Slasher. Lastly, there are some thought upon what the Slasher is going to look like, what makes his appearance iconic. The advice here is fairly broad, but in that, it certainly fits the horror subgenre.

The inter-generational nature of the campaign in SHIVER Slasher: Generation Murder is handled via ‘The Inheritance System’. This starts with the players deciding upon why their characters or one of the characters in their group has inherited the ire of the Slasher stalking them. This can be due to a curse, a transgression, or a prophecy, but whatever the cause the legacy means that they will inherit two things—a Boon and a Cost. A Boon can be an artefact or wisdom, a Cost a certain trauma or a fear. An artefact might be a Lucky Rabbit’s Foot or a Diary; the Wisdom might be First Aid Skills or knowledge that ‘The Truth is Out There’; the Trauma could be Fear Paralysis or Panic Attacks; and the Fear could be of Fire or Masks. The campaign makes use of these and more.

The campaign in SHIVER Slasher: Generation Murder presents six very different scenarios. Each is very nicely formatted, including a set-up, suggested characters for use as both Player Characters and extra NPCs, a Classification Board, details of what the Director knows, enemies, weapons, and items, the epilogue, and the Doom Events. The Doom Events are the four events per scenario that can be triggered over the course of the script, whilst the Classification Board categorises the scenario. Actually the ‘SHIVER Board of Classification’, for each scenario it lists the length of play time, number of players required, Subgenre, Film Age Rating, Content Warning, Recommended Ability Level, and Watchlist. The latter includes the archetypal films that the script references and that the Game Master should watch for inspiration. The six are all quite linear in terms of story and lengthy too, so will probably take two sessions to play through.

The campaign opens with a prequel, ‘The Quiet Isle’. It is set in the 1920s and inspired by King Kong and Cannibal Holocaust. The Player Characters are the cast and crew of the groundbreaking film, The Lost Temple. Groundbreaking because it is going to be shot on film with the new technology. However, despite the director having sent out an advanced scouting party to get things set up on what is a lost world, by the time the Player Characters get there, it seems to have doubled down on being abandoned. Even getting to the base and the film sets is fraught with danger, and that is before things begin to go badly wrong. And that is all whilst the director is trying to get scenes shot. The scenario switches into a big chase sequence as the Player Characters try to get out of the ancient temple below the island. The scenario would be easier to run if there was a map of the sequence and it feels more Indiana Jones than King Kong in places, but it sets everything up for what is to come. This includes the villain of the whole campaign and a secret organisation with an interest in what he will doing in the next one hundred years! Its filmic nature also means that there is scope for a crossover with the publisher’s other anthology-campaign, SHIVER Blockbuster: Legends of the Silver Scream.

It leaps forward to the fifties with ‘Static Zone’. The setting is small town America and the inspiration is Stephen King’s It and Channel Zero. Thus, the Player Characters are children and the subject matter is the technological marvel of the age—television. They get to explore the town of Wayville and get a hint of what the lives are like for some of the adults in small town America. In this case, living in a box that is suburban and conservative. As children they do get see behind the façade, if only a little, and may gather a few clues that might be useful in the second part of the scenario. This takes place behind the television screen, first in an unreal reflection of the Player Characters’ own home life, then wider suburbia, and lastly, in a series of very dark versions of children’s television programmes. They will encounter dangerous mannequins, cartoon bullies, a killer pig, and Chippy, an axe-wielding maniac, who could be a man in a beaver costume or a big, animated beaver! Thematically, ‘Static Zone’ takes the conservatism of the fifties and gives it very scary twist.

The given inspiration for the next part is Alien and Stage Fright, but at times it touches a little on The Running Man as well as video nasties. Moving into the eighties, ‘Curse of the Owlman’ shares some of the unreality of ‘Static Zone’, but this time of film-making rather than television. The Player Characters are only a little older, teenagers in their school’s Audio/Visual Club who sneak into a film studio shut down following a series of on-set deaths, for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see a never before released film. Unfortunately, there is a very reason as to why the film was never released, which the Player Characters discover as the Slasher on-screen climbs out into the screening room and begins chasing them through the studio, including across sound stages which are set up just like they have seen on the screen! There is more of a mystery to this scenario and some puzzles to be solved before the final confrontation and the Owlman is sucked back onto the silver screen!

As the title of the fourth scenario suggests, ‘Be Kind, Rewind’ is all about VHS video cassettes. Set in the nineties and inspired by Saw and Squid Game, the Player Characters are now adults, looking for a ‘get-rich-quick scheme and desperate to sign up for a business conference promising wealth and success, held at a rundown Las Vegas-style hotel undergoing renovation. The villain of the piece, Mister Flick, only appears on screen for most of the scenario as the Player Characters ascend the hotel being made to play one deadly game after another. The scenario does involve scenes of torture that the Player Characters will need to find a way to stop, typically by winning the various games.

A cross between Terminator and Bubba Ho-tep, though there also hints of the novel, The Thursday Murder Club, ‘Fear, Scream-Lined’ takes place in the noughties at Shaded Pines, a retirement village. The Player Characters are retirees, members of the ‘Midnight Mystery Society’ to stave off the boredom of life in the highly regulated community, when the leader of their group goes missing. Investigating—or rather, being overly nosy—ends with them all following in her footsteps and receiving personalised care in the Shaded Pines’ medical facilities. Investigating further reveals that the retirement home is a front for a secret project to create the next evolution in fear, a biomechanical homunculus capable of transforming into the other Slashers. Which in this case means those Chippy, Mister Flick, and the Owlman! Of course, the creation turns on the creator in the final scene before the Player Characters have to battle it in the laboratory. This is weirdly creepy and made all the more challenging by the players having to roleplay retirees.

The campaign comes to a head in the last and final scenario, ‘Re-Slasher-Ed’. Combining Cabin in the Woods, Monster Squad, and Freddy vs Jason, it brings back the Slasher for 2010s at ‘Slash-fest 201X’, a convention dedicated to the horror subgenre and the works of a late director renowned for his horror films. It unsurprising that this final scenario is self-referential, with room for Player Characters from previous instalments to star as attendees much as Slashers from those previous episodes do, and there are plenty of callbacks to those instalments along with room for more. These include a playdate with Chippy and facing Mister Flick in a virtual realm, all the Player Characters have a final showdown with the villain behind it all. It brings the campaign to a decent close, but is less useful as a standalone affair given that it references so much of the rest of the book.

Physically, SHIVER Slasher: Generation Murder is another good-looking book from Parable Games. Although there are moments of respite, the artwork looms out of the darkness at you, cartoonishly horrifying in its depiction of the monsters and maniacs that will threaten one set of Player Characters after another. Unfortunately, it does need an edit in places and the writing feels a little rushed.

Unfortunately, SHIVER Slasher: Generation Murder does not work quite as well as the publisher’s other shared anthology campaign, SHIVER Blockbuster: Legends of the Silver Scream. Whereas in SHIVER Blockbuster: Legends of the Silver Scream, the players are roleplaying the same characters from one film or scenario to the next, although performing a different role each time, in SHIVER Slasher: Generation Murder, the players are not roleplaying the same characters in each of its scenarios. They are roleplaying different characters, some or all of whom are related to characters who appeared in a previous scenario. They are also playing in different eras, decades apart, with each scenario showcasing a different type of Slasher each time. Whilst there is the connection of the villain between scenarios, the overall connection between the scenarios is not as strong or as immediate because of the campaign framework. Obviously, the supplement has to showcase the different types of Slasher and different types of Slasher particular to each era, but this weakens the connections between the scenarios and the campaign, because unlike the film franchises which inspire the supplement, there is no horrifying realisation that Michael Myers or Freddy Kreuger has come back from the grave to hunt us down again.

Conceptually, SHIVER Slasher: Generation Murder is a great idea, but the supplement really shows how difficult that idea is to bring to fruition and make it engaging for the players. This is not to say that the idea is unplayable or indeed, that SHIVER Slasher: Generation Murder is unplayable. Rather that ultimately, SHIVER Slasher: Generation Murder is easier to run as an anthology of disconnected Slasher scenarios than as a connected campaign.

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Parable Games will be at UK Games Expo which takes place on Friday, May 30th to Sunday June 1st, 2025.

Friday Filler: Village Rails

Osprey Games is primarily known for its wargames rules, such as Frostgrave: Fantasy Wargames in the Frozen City, but it also publishes board and card games and roleplaying games too. The latter includes Gran Meccanismo: Clockpunk Roleplaying in da Vinci’s Florence, Jackals – Bronze Age Fantasy Roleplaying, and Heirs to Heresy: The fall of the Knights Templar, whilst the former includes titles such as Undaunted Normandy, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, and Village Rails: A Game of Locomotives and Local Motives. The latter is rail-themed board game designed for two to four players aged up fourteen and over, and designed to be played in less than an hour. It has a delightfully cosy feel to it, being set in the English countryside during the Age of Steam during the thirties, forties, and fifties. Play is simple with each player only having to make a few choices and the game ends once everyone has taken twelve turns after which each player’s tableau or rail network is scored and the player with the highest score wins.

Village Rails: A Game of Locomotives and Local Motives consists of eighty Railway Cards, thirty-eight Terminus Cards, four Reference Cards and four Scoring Dials, Border Pieces, and almost fifty coins. The Border Pieces and coins are done in thick cardboard, as are the Scoring Dials, which do require some assembly. The Border Pieces are marked with the start of seven railway lines and are used to create an ‘L-shape’ into which the Railway Cards are placed as a three-by-five twelve-card grid. The Railway Cards are double-sided. On one side is Track, which depicts two single tracks running across terrain such as fields, pasture, forest, lakes, and villages. The Track side are also marked various symbols, including Barns, Farms, Halts, and Sidings. When they appear on a completed line, these will all score a player points, except for Sidings which are scored at the end of the game. On the other side of the Railway Cards are Trips, which score a player if their conditions are met. For example, ‘2 per type of feature on the line.’, ‘No Bulls on the line: 4 points’, and ‘Only straight tracks on the line: 6 points’. Terminus Cards earn a player money when played, the amount depending on the indicated features on the cards, for example, the number of tractors on the line, number of different terrain features on the line, and so on. The greater the number of features on the line, the more money a Terminus Card will earn.

At the start of the game, each player receives an ‘L-shape’ border and £5 in coins. Once the Railway Cards are shuffled, cards are drawn to form two markets—the Track Market and the Trip Market. These are two lines of cards from which a player can select a single Track card and a single Trip card respectively on his turn. The first card in each market is always free to take, but the cards further along the line and closer to the deck must be purchased, with cards closer to the deck being more expensive. This money is placed on the cards further away from the deck and if a player subsequently selects one of the cards with money on it, he receives both card and money. Each player receives three Terminus Cards which he keeps secret until played. On a turn, a player can conduct two actions. The first is to build tracks, which the player must do, the second is to plan a trip, which is optional, but can be done before or after building tracks. Planning a trip always costs money and the Trip card selected is placed next to the player’s L-shape border at the start of a line. Each line can have two Trip cards like this. When selected a Track card is placed into a player’s tableau, either next to a border or another Track card. If as a result of a Track card being placed, a railway line runs from the player’s ‘L-shape’ border to the edge of his tableau, it is considered completed and can be scored. Points are scored for the features on the line, for the bonus provided by the adjacent Trip card, and money if a Terminus card has been played. The Reference Cards help scoring easy for each player.

In Village Rails, each player is working to complete his own tableau and the game does not involve any direct interaction with each other. The interaction comes indirectly through the game’s two markets—the Track Market and the Trip Market. Here each player will be watching them for the best cards to become available, hopefully free in the case of the Track Market and cheap in the case of the Trip Market, and before another player takes them. Another reason to take a card is that it has money on it. Money will enable a player to purchase a better Track or Trip card than before another player can, or simply just buy a Trip card, and the right Trip card will score more points. What this means is that the players have to spend their money with care and take the opportunity of their Terminus cards to earn more. A player will always have three Terminus cards, so fortunately, there is always the opportunity for him to earn money when completing a line.

Placement of the Track cards also takes care and players tend to place their first Track cards at the outer corners of their L-shape and work inwards to fill in all twelve spaces in their tableaus. This is because those placed at the corners can often be completed first, scoring a player some points and potentially earning him money. It also initially gives a wider choice as to what cards a player can draw and play, but as more and more Track cards are placed, the choices begin to tighten as a player tries to balance trying to find the right Track card to add to a tableau and purchase the Trip card which will score him the most points. Throughout, a player will always be considering how he can maximise the number of points he can score and how much money he can earn. Play continues until every player has placed his twelfth Track card and the final scoring is done for the Sidings.

Physically, Village Railways is delightfully and sturdily presented. The first thing that you notice upon lifting up the rules booklet from the box is one single piece of design to the components—and not to the components of the game, but the packaging of the components that the players pull out to assemble the Scoring Dials and the Border Tiles. There is a notch in the corner where a finger can be inserted and the thick sheets of card pulled out. This only has to be done the once, but it just makes things that little bit easier. Otherwise, all of the game’s components are sturdy, appropriately cosy in theme, and easy to use, although the symbols on the Track Cards are not always easy to spot, especially on the Track Cards with a darker theme, such as the forests. The rule book itself is clearly presented and includes a good example of a single turn, and the artwork has a lovely period feel, especially the locomotive illustrations on the Trip cards.

If there is an issue with Village Railways, it is that it pitches itself as a railway game set in the English countryside where the locals are happy to allow tracks to be built by the players or railway companies, but make specific demands of them. Which sounds like the players are laying tracks, but where they go will often be dictated by intervening or vociferous busybodies or persons of note, but it is not that. It is instead, more of a puzzle game in which each player attempts to fill a grid with tracks and maximise their points. Essentially, Village Rails combines drafting from a marketplace, tile placement, and route planning and building with the almost puzzle-like element of placing Track cards and connecting railway lines in a way which every player hopes will optimise his railway network and his score. Not as light a game as it first seems, Village Rails: A Game of Locomotives and Local Motivess is simple to learn and quick to play, but it is more challenging and thoughtful than the average filler game.

A B-movie Quick-Start

Party Beach Creature Feature! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beneath the Sea! is a quick-start for They Came From Beneath the Sea!, the roleplaying game of the B-movies of the fifties and sixties in which the small-town beaches of America are imperiled by Communist crustaceans, aquatic agitators, and tentacular terrors. This is a roleplaying game of bad acting, no-budget budget breaking special effects, inspired by The Creature from the Black Lagoon, It Came From Outer Space, The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, Them!, Monster From the Ocean Floor, and many, many others! Published by Onyx Path Publishing, Party Beach Creature Feature! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beneath the Sea! provides everything necessary for a gaming group to give the roleplaying game a try and perhaps even use it as the starter scenario to a campaign set on the cheapest, schlockiest film sets of the nineteen fifties. This includes a basic explanation of the rules, a nine-scene scenario—the ‘Party Beach Creature Feature!’ of the title, and six pre-generated Player Characters or Survivors, plus Trademarks for all of the Player Characters, Quip Cards, and Cinematic Cards.

Party Beach Creature Feature! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beneath the Sea! employs the Storypath system. A distillation of the earlier Storyteller system, it is simpler and streamlined, designed for slightly cinematic, effect driven play. The core mechanic uses dice pools of ten-sided dice, typically formed from the combination of a skill and an attribute, for example Pilot and Dexterity to sail a boat, Survival and Stamina to cross a wilderness, and Persuasion and Manipulation to unobtrusively get someone to do what a character wants. These skill and attribute combinations are designed to be flexible, with a character’s preferred method being described as a character’s Favoured Approach. So a character whose Favoured Approach is Force, would use Close Combat and Might in a melee fight; if Finesse, Close Combat and Dexterity; and if Resilience, then Close Combat and Stamina.

The aim when rolling, is to score Successes, a Success being a result of eight or more. Rolls of ten count as two in They Came From Beneath the Sea!, rather than the capacity for the player to roll again for further Successes. Typically, a player only needs to roll one Success for a character to succeed at a task, though it can be as many as three, and ideally, he will want to roll more. Not only because Successes can be used to buy off Complications—ranging between one and five—but also because they can be used to buy Stunts which will impose Complications for others, create an Enhancement for another action, or one that makes it difficult to act against a character. Stunts cost at least one Success and a range of stunts is given in the pages of Party Beach Creature Feature! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beneath the Sea! These include ‘Government Trained Sharpshooters’, which for one Success lowers the Degree of Difficulty when attacking a specific target; ‘Always Another Way’, which enables a Survivor to get out of a tight spot or around difficult situation for two Successes; and ‘Forensic Eye’, which grants clues about the aliens involved in the mystery for two Successes. Instead of adding to the number of dice rolled, equipment used adds Enhancements or further Successes for a player to expend, but the player needs to roll at least one Success for equipment and thus the Enhancement to be effective.

Under the Storypath system, and thus in They Came From Beneath the Sea!, failure is never complete. Either a player can spend a Rewrite to reroll; accept the failure, accept its consequences and a Consolation; or if the roll was a failure and a one was rolled on the die, suffer the consequences of a Botch and earn two Rewrites for the Writer’s Pool.

Party Beach Creature Feature! and They Came From Beneath the Sea! uses a number of mechanics which help enforce the genre. Every Survivor has access to a number of Trademarks, each tied to a particular skill, for example, ‘Big Stick’ for the Persuasion skill or ‘Subaquatica’ for Athletics, which can be used once per story. These typically grant the player two extra dice on a related roll per Trademark, but when activated and there are some Successes left over from the completed task, a player can actually gain Directorial Control of the film. In this case, the player can add or remove one detail from a scene for each Success spent in this fashion. A Survivor also has Quips, like ‘I’ve seen some aquatic nightmares before, but this takes the caviar…’ or ‘Not to be nosy, but… do those eyes belong to you?’ When used, they require everyone around the table to vote whether or not their use is appropriate, but if a Quip is successful, it earns a player another die to roll. Further uses of it can gain a player more dice. If the roll resulting from a Quip consists of three or more Successes, that Quip is considered Award-Winning and gains the player an additional Quip and the immediate use of a Cinematic without using Rewrites.

Rewrites are another genre-enforcing mechanic and are drawn from the Writers’ Pool, which is a group resource. They require all players to agree to their use, but with that agreement, a Rewrite can be used to make rerolls or add dice to a roll, as well as to active Cinematics. Five such Cinematics are included in Party Beach Creature Feature!—there are more in They Came From Beneath the Sea!—and these are ‘Call the Understudy’, ‘Cheap Set’, ‘Deleted Scene’, ‘Scene Missing’, and ‘Summon the Stuntman’. One last genre-enforcing mechanic is the Death Scene in which a Survivor gets to make one last chance to impart wisdom, make a request, give a soliloquy, and so on…

The rules in Party Beach Creature Feature! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beneath the Sea! are in general clearly explained and all easy to use in play. They are specifically designed to encourage and support cinematic play, even badly cinematic play, and whilst they are genre-enforcing, there are quite a few of them. So as much as the players need to lean into the genre and their Survivors, they also need to lean into the genre-enforcing mechanics—the Rewrites, the Cinematics, the Trademarks, and more—to get their full effect. This is not an impediment to play as such, but more of a requirement than players might expect of the roleplaying game.

A Survivor in Party Beach Creature Feature! and They Came From Beneath the Sea! has nine Attributes—Intellect, Cunning, Resolving, Might, Dexterity, Stamina, Presence, Manipulation, and Composure; a range a skills, some with associated Trademarks; and Connections, Quips, Tropes, and Favoured Stunts. Attributes and skills range in value between one and five dots, each dot adding a die to a dice pool. Trademarks are equivalent of advantages and Quips wisecracks, both of which grant a player extra dice, whilst Tropes are more personal advantages, such as ‘Hand-to-Hand Fighting’, which grants an extra die when in melee combat or ‘Eureka!’, which means the Survivor is good at putting clues together and can gain an in-depth understanding of a clue once per session. A Survivor also has a Path each for his Archetype, Origin, and Ambition, but these do not play a role in the jump-start, whilst of his three Aspirations, or goals, only the two short term Aspirations really count in Party Beach Creature Feature! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beneath the Sea!

The five characters included in Party Beach Creature Feature! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beneath the Sea! consist of an Everyman Department Store Clerk, an Adventuring Psychologist, a Disgraced Cop from the local police force, an Everyman Beach Bunny, an Investigative Girl Next Door Journalist, and a Preparation Enthusiast. Each is presented in full colour over two pages with the character sheet on one and an illustration and background on the other. The character sheets are easy to read and the background easy to pick up.

The scenario, ‘Party Beach Creature Feature!’, is set on a hot summer’s night in Darien, Connecticut. The Director will need to decide if the budget of the movie is low, big, or art, and to what degree Exploitation plays a role in its filming. Involving nine scenes over three acts, the scenario begins with everyone on Weed Beach before several fearsome fishmen rise from the waves and attack! The Survivors must not only hold off the attack but discover why the fishmen are so interested in the ‘jazz cigarettes’ which local small-time dealer, Sonny McGee, has been selling. This will lead the Survivors in a most unexpected direction. ‘Party Beach Creature Feature!’ is a short mystery, though with decent opportunities for inaction and investigation, combat and stealth, and it is supported with staging advice for the Director throughout. Each of the nine scenes is very clearly organised with explanations of how the Survivors got there, what they need to accomplish, the opposition they face, and the goal of the scene all laid out for the Director, making them easy to run. The plot is linear, but that is not really an issue in a Jump-start which is intended to introduce both setting and mechanics of They Came From Beneath the Sea! It should take a session or so to play through, which will mean that each player is only likely to get to use one or two Quips or Trademarks at the most. The short length means that, barring the adult element of ‘jazz cigarettes’, ‘Party Beach Creature Feature!’ could also be run as a convention scenario.

Physically, Party Beach Creature Feature! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beneath the Sea! is a slim softback, done in black and white bar the Survivor backgrounds and illustrations. The artwork is decent and captures a little of that beach party giddiness before something walks from the waves and wreaks havoc! It could have benefited from a little better organisation so that all of the content for the players and their Survivors could have been placed together, but if there is a real issue with Party Beach Creature Feature! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beneath the Sea!, it is that above and beyond the Storypath system, the rules in the Jump-start do add a handful of new moving parts. As good as those new rules are, and as much as they help enforce the genre, what the Jump-start could have done with is a cheat sheet explaining all of them for the benefit of the players, rather than having to explain them more than is necessary.

Although it needs a little more preparation than perhaps is necessary to ready the players for the rules, Party Beach Creature Feature! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beneath the Sea! has everything the Director and her players need for one night’s session of seaside scares, aquatic agitation, and B-movie budget beastliness. Anyone looking for chills on the cheap and scenery scrunching stagecraft should get ready to ham it up to the horror that comes ashore in Party Beach Creature Feature! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beneath the Sea!

Miskatonic Monday #80: Without Warning

Between October 2003 and October 2013, Chaosium, Inc. published a series of books for Call of Cthulhu under the Miskatonic University Library Association brand. Whether a sourcebook, scenario, anthology, or campaign, each was a showcase for their authors—amateur rather than professional, but fans of Call of Cthulhu nonetheless—to put forward their ideas and share with others. The programme was notable for having launched the writing careers of several authors, but for every Cthulhu Invictus, The Pastores, Primal State, Ripples from Carcosa, and Halloween Horror, there was a Five Go Mad in Egypt, Return of the Ripper, Rise of the Dead, Rise of the Dead II: The Raid, and more...

The Miskatonic University Library Association brand is no more, alas, but what we have in its stead is the Miskatonic Repository, based on the same format as the DM’s Guild for Dungeons & Dragons. 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: Without Warning

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: William Adcock

Setting: 1950s Arctic Canada

Product: Scenario
What You Get: Twenty-seven page, 18.30 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Mini-King Kong on ice (with added Mythos)!

Plot Hook: An evacuation flight leaves an aeroplane and its stranded, but not alone...

Plot Support: Detailed plot, one good handout, a single floor plan, one Mythos monster, and six pre-generated Investigators.

Production Values: Excellent.

Pros
# Suitable as a one-shot or convention scenario

# Good use of the historical background

# Straightforward Mythos monster movie plot

# Could be run using Pulp Cthulhu: Two-fisted Action and Adventure Against the Mythos

# Inspired by H.P. Lovecraft’s short story, ‘Polaris’  

# Inspired by Howard Hawk’s The Thing From Another World 

# Could be adapted to a pulp Sci-Fi setting for ‘The Thing On Another World’ 

Cons
# A map or two would have helped

# No female pre-generated Investigators
# May require access to Malleus Monstrorum

# Primary inspiration makes the plot obvious

Conclusion

# Short of the flaming carrot, the scenario’s inspiration crashes you onto the ice, then the Mythos socks you on the jaw.

# ‘B’ movie horror one-shot

# Whither Blood Brothers III?

Miskatonic Monday #77: The Oxford Articles

Between October 2003 and October 2013, Chaosium, Inc. published a series of books for Call of Cthulhu under the Miskatonic University Library Association brand. Whether a sourcebook, scenario, anthology, or campaign, each was a showcase for their authors—amateur rather than professional, but fans of Call of Cthulhu nonetheless—to put forward their ideas and share with others. The programme was notable for having launched the writing careers of several authors, but for every Cthulhu Invictus, The Pastores, Primal State, Ripples from Carcosa, and Halloween Horror, there was a Five Go Mad in Egypt, Return of the Ripper, Rise of the Dead, Rise of the Dead II: The Raid, and more...

The Miskatonic University Library Association brand is no more, alas, but what we have in its stead is the Miskatonic Repository, based on the same format as the DM’s Guild for Dungeons & Dragons. 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 Oxford Articles

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: David Wright

Setting: 1950s Oxford

Product: Scenario
What You Get: Fifty-eight page, 61.95 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Missing books amongst Oxford’s dreaming spires

Plot Hook: Missing books and arson, could they be connected?

Plot Support: Highly detailed plot, eight good handouts, eight maps, seven NPCs, one Mythos monster, and six pre-generated Investigators.

Production Values: Fulsome.

Pros
# Good use of the historical background and city

# Richly detailed investigative plot

# Cluedo-like floor plans

# Compact scenario in terms of time and setting

# Could be adapted to the Jazz Age or Cthulhu by Gaslight

# Scope for a sequel?

Cons
# Requires a strong edit

# Too richly detailed investigative plot?
# Mythos threat underwhelming?

# The Dreamlands rather than Yog-Sothoth?

# Oxford and no J.R.R. Tolkien?

Conclusion

# Oxford Bibliophilia noir

# Mythos may not fit the feel or nature of the scenario

# Compact, but thoroughly detailed (perhaps overly so) investigation

Miskatonic Monday #64: One for One – Old Man Tompkins

Between October 2003 and October 2013, Chaosium, Inc. published a series of books for Call of Cthulhu under the Miskatonic University Library Association brand. Whether a sourcebook, scenario, anthology, or campaign, each was a showcase for their authors—amateur rather than professional, but fans of Call of Cthulhu nonetheless—to put forward their ideas and share with others. The programme was notable for having launched the writing careers of several authors, but for every Cthulhu Invictus, The Pastores, Primal State, Ripples from Carcosa, and Halloween Horror, there was a Five Go Mad in Egypt, Return of the Ripper, Rise of the Dead, Rise of the Dead II: The Raid, and more...

The Miskatonic University Library Association brand is no more, alas, but what we have in its stead is the Miskatonic Repository, based on the same format as the DM’s Guild for Dungeons & Dragons. 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: One for One – Old Man Tompkins
Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Sean Liddle

Setting: 1950s Massachusetts

Product: Introductory Scenario
What You Get: Six page, 387.14 KB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Sometimes the Old Man who lives at the end of the lane really is the monster...

Plot Hook:  No town can be this perfect—and it takes teenagers to see it.

Plot Support: Map, plot, and staging advice.

Production Values: Rough.

Pros
# Decent introductory scenario

# Solid, single-session horror scenario

# Potential convention scenario

# Keeper can design her own NPCs
# Different historical setting

# Mythos-lite
# Simple, direct plot

# Inexpensive

Cons
# Needs an edit
# Keeper needs to create her own NPCs

# Does not name the books

# Mythos-lite

# Inconsistent Sanity losses

Conclusion
# Needs an edit
# Simple, single-session horror scenario

# Requires some preparation

Miskatonic Monday #51: Prison for a Thousand Young

Between October 2003 and October 2013, Chaosium, Inc. published a series of books for Call of Cthulhu under the Miskatonic University Library Association brand. Whether a sourcebook, scenario, anthology, or campaign, each was a showcase for their authors—amateur rather than professional, but fans of Call of Cthulhu nonetheless—to put forward their ideas and share with others. The programme was notable for having launched the writing careers of several authors, but for every Cthulhu Invictus, The Pastores, Primal State, Ripples from Carcosa, and Halloween Horror, there was a Five Go Mad in Egypt, Return of the Ripper, Rise of the Dead, Rise of the Dead II: The Raid, and more...

The Miskatonic University Library Association brand is no more, alas, but what we have in its stead is the Miskatonic Repository, based on the same format as the DM’s Guild for Dungeons & Dragons. 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: Prison for a Thousand Young

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Jessica Gunn & Skippy

Setting: A Correctional Centre in 1950s USA

Product: Scenario
What You Get: Eleven page, 5.15 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Sometimes escaping one prison means ending up in another.
Plot Hook:  Escape is your only hope of getting out of here.
Plot Support: Five handouts/maps/Mythos tomes, five NPCs, and four pregenerated inmates (investigators).
Production Values: Tidy layout, needs another edit, but double-page spreads.

Pros
# Focused one-shot
# Different time, different setting
# Good mix of stealth, action, investigation, and roleplaying
# Potential convention scenario
# Horrible flashback scenario?
# Easily transported to other times and places

Cons
# Linear plot
# Double-page spreads
# Difficult to work into a campaign

Conclusion
# Good mix of stealth, action, investigation, and roleplaying
# Different time, different setting
# The Shawshank Redemption meets Shub-Niggurath

1959: Risk

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—and so on, as the anniversaries come up. 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—

1959 marks the publication of two classic wargames. One is Diplomacy: A Game of International Intrigue, Trust, and Treachery, the other is Risk: The Continental Game. Although they are both set in past times, one Napoleonic, one Edwardian, they could not be more different. One is card and dice driven and has been hugely successful, probably the most successful mass market wargame ever published, but the other is entirely trust and decision driven. The former is Risk, the latter Diplomacy. Both are sixty years old in 2019.

Risk was originally invented and released in France in 1957 as La Conquête du Monde—The Conquest of the World—by French film director Albert Lamorisse. It was then bought by American publishers Parker Brothers and released as Risk: The Continental Game in 1959, later as Risk: The Game of Global Domination. Today, it is published as Risk: The Game of Strategic Conquest by Wizards of the Coast as part of its Avalon Hill brand. Although the game has seen numerous variations and alternative settings, such as the acclaimed Risk Legacy or Risk 2210 AD, the core game remains much the same as the original. Two to five players (although it comes with six armies), aged ten and up, attempt to defeat each others’ armies and conquer the world.

Risk is played on a map of the world, each of the six continents colour-coded and divided into separate territories, for a total of forty-two. Some of the continents are connected by sea routes, for example, Brazil to North Africa or Iceland to Greenland, allowing sea travel between territories, but otherwise, Risk entirely concerns itself with land battles. There is a card corresponding to each territory and these forty-two territory cards are used to determine the initial placement of the players’ troops. The cards are also marked with one of three symbols—infantry, cavalry, or artillery—and when collected in suits of three (one of each, three of the same, or two of the same and a wild card), they can be turned in to gain a player new troops. To gain new territory cards, a player will need to attack the territories of his rival players, defeat their troops, and capture them.

Game set-up is simple. Each player receives his army and is dealt a random set of territory cards. These indicate where his troops start, the player placing one or more troops in each of these starting territories. The cards are then handed back to form the deck from which a territory card is drawn when a player captures one or more territories on his turn. On his turn a player receives new troops according to the number of territories and any whole continents he holds, makes as many attacks against his rivals as he wants, and then moves any of his troops to adjacent territories as long as there is always one unit left in each territory. Each army consists of infantry, cavalry, and artillery, with the cavalry pieces being used to represent five infantry and artillery used to represent ten. Neither cavalry and artillery have any other role in the game bar to make mass troop handling easier.

Battles are handled simply enough. The attacking player makes his attack with between one and three troops, whilst the defending player defends with between one and two troops. The attacking player rolls a single red six-sided die for each of his attacking troops, whilst the defending player rolls a blue die for each of his defending troops. The highest die rolls from each side are compared with each other, the higher result of a pair defeating the other and resulting in removal of the defeated enemy troop unit. Ties are awarded to the defending player, but where the defending player can only defeat a maximum of two attacking troops in an exchange, an attacking player can defeat both defending troop units with a good roll. The attacking player can continue attacking until he runs out of troops or he captures the territory he is attacking. If the latter, then he draws a new territory card.

Play continues like this until one player has defeated his rivals and conquered the world. This then is Risk, a game about the ‘risk’ of attacking the enemy, defeating them, and capturing their territory. It is not a game about defence or withstanding your opponents’ attacks—although that will happen in the game—but a game which rewards the attacking player who is successful in capturing territories. The rewards are always more troops and come in various ways. Capture and hold more territories and a player will be rewarded with more troops at the start of his turn; capture and hold a continent and a player will be rewarded with more troops at the start of his turn; and capture more territories and a player will be rewarded with a territory card each turn, which suites of three can be turned in at the beginning of his turn for more troops. Notably, each time a player hands in three territory cards, he is rewarded with more troops than the last player who did so, whether that was himself or a rival.

Famously, Risk is more a game of luck than skill or strategy. It rewards success or luck by giving the winner more troops with which to defeat his rivals. Of course, his luck can change and go the other way, but the result either way is a fairly long game, especially the more players who are involved, with not a great deal for the players to do when it is not their turn. On the plus side, the simplicity of the rules make Risk easy to teach and learn, then set up and play.

This though is Classic Risk, a game of global domination played until one player resoundly defeats the others. In today’s version, Risk: The Game of Strategic Conquest, it is only one of several game types suggested—and not even the first. ‘Game 1: Secret Mission RISK’ is the first and the default game in Risk: The Game of Strategic Conquest and sees each player assigned a secret mission card from the twelve included in the game, for example, ‘Destroy all ORANGE  troops’ or ‘Conquer the continents of EUROPE and AUSTRALIA’. Should a player meet all of the conditions of his secret mission card, then he wins the game. This can happen even if another player unintentionally helps him out, for example, if a player defeats all of the orange troops, then the player with the ‘Destroy all ORANGE  troops’ secret mission wins.

‘Game 1: Secret Mission RISK’ counters one of the criticisms of Risk, providing more focused objectives for a shorter game. ‘Game 2: Classic RISK’ is what the standard game of Risk was before the introduction of secret missions and will be the version remembered by many when they recall the game. ‘Game 3: RISK for 2 Players’ requires one player to defeat the other, but adds a neutral army which can both players can attack, yet when one player does so, the other player rolls for its defence. Otherwise, this two-player variant plays the same as the classic variant. Lastly, ‘Game 4: Capital RISK’ gives each player a headquarters located in one of their territories. This version is won by capturing all of your opponents’ headquarters.

Physically, Risk: The Game of Strategic Conquest looks, feels, but is not as cheap as it  should be, given the quality of its components. The armies included in the game—the infantry, cavalry, and artillery—are of cheap plastic, the cards of thin card, and the game board, although illustrated with an attractive map, on slightly thick card rather than being mounted. The map board does not quite sit flat and will need to be weighted down. Fortunately, the rulebook is neatly laid out, easy to read, and comes with a little playing advice, making it the best produced item in the less than sturdy box.

Many will claim that Risk: The Game of Strategic Conquest is a classic game. This is undeniably true, but not because it is a good game. It is not a good game because it takes too long to play, because it luck based, because it favours the victor and so often leaves the other players with long periods with nothing to do. All of these are acknowledged issues with the game, some of which are addressed by the different game types in the current version. Yet this does not mean it is unplayable nor inaccessible, but does often mean that other games are designed as the anti-Risk, just as some games are designed as the anti-Monopoly.

Rather Risk: The Game of Strategic Conquest is a classic game because it is the most mass-produced and most sold wargame of all time, having been on sale in toy shops, department stores, game shops, and on-line for sixty years, and thus been on our shelves for just as long. Where games like Monopoly, Cluedo, and Scrabble are the games of our childhood, acceptable to all of the family, Risk: The Game of Strategic Conquest is one step away from those, acceptable still, but not to all of the family because of its subject matter and playing time. Like those other games it benefits from simple rules that everyone can understand and quickly master, so can be played by anyone, no matter what their skill level is. Indeed, despite it being a confrontational wargame, such is the element of luck in the game, the losing players can blame invariably part of their loss down to the dice rather than their lack of skill or their opponent’s greater skill. 

Ultimately, Risk: The Game of Strategic Conquest is our first experience with wargaming, an acceptable introduction to the hobby and a childhood classic worth revisiting out of nostalgia rather than because it is a good game. Accessible, playable, but at best a stepping stone to better and more interesting games. 

1959: Diplomacy

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—and so on, as the anniversaries come up. 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—

1959 marks the publication of two classic wargames. One is Diplomacy: A Game of International Intrigue, Trust, and Treachery, the other is Risk: The Continental Game. Although they are both set in past times, one Napoleonic, one Edwardian, they could not be more different. One is card and dice driven and has been hugely successful, probably the most successful mass market wargame ever published, but the other is entirely trust and decision driven. The former is Risk, the latter Diplomacy. Both are sixty years old in 2019.

Published in 1959 by Games Research Inc. and later Avalon Hill, but now Wizards of the Coast under the Avalon Hill brand, Diplomacy is the grandfather of grand strategy games, an exploration of European national and political tensions prior to the Great War. A game of trust and negotiation, it appeals to the historian and the diplomat, whether that is the armchair historian or diplomat—like you and I, or the actual historian or diplomat—famously John F. Kennedy and Henry Kissinger. It is a game of decision and trust and negotiation, there being no dice or luck involved whatsoever. Designed for two to seven players aged twelve and over, in Diplomacy each player will control one of the great European powers—Austria-Hungary, England, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, and Turkey—and will have under his command a number of armies and fleets. He will also hold his traditional or home provinces that his country held in Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century. Between them are several neutral provinces, such as Norway, Tunisia, Portugal, Bulgaria, and so on. Switzerland is also neutral, but cannot be entered by any army. Some of these provinces, both home and neutral, are supply centres. Possession of these enable a power to build another army or fleet, likewise loss of these will force a power to disband an army or fleet. There are a total of thirty four such supply centres on Diplomacy’s map of Europe. If one player or power controls eighteen of these, then he wins the game. Winning though, is far from easy, and can take anywhere from between four and twelve hours—Diplomacy is a long game and it takes dedication to play.

Diplomacy is played out year by year, with two turns—Spring and Fall (Autumn)—per year beginning in 1901. On his turn, a player writes orders to each of his fleets and armies. These are to Hold (stay in position), Move (to an adjacent province), Support (support another army or fleet in moving into a province), or Convoy (a fleet transports an army across a sea province to another land province). Once written down, the orders from all powers are resolved simultaneously and this sets up the primary difficulty in taking provinces. All units are of equal strength or value—there is no rolling of dice or means to determine the strength of an attack or unit—and so when two opposing units attempt to capture the same province or one attempts to force another from a province, nothing happens. To successfully attack and hold a province, a player needs to support the attacking unit with another unit in another province. This can be a unit belonging to the attacking player or that of an ally. If successful, the defending unit can be forced to retreat, the attacking unit taking the province.

These orders are issued twice a year, but after the Fall turn, if a player has captured a Supply Centre, he can build a new army or fleet in one of his home provinces. If a player has lost a Supply Centre, he loses a unit. Play proceeds like this, from year to year until one player or power captures the eighteen supply centres necessary to win the game.

Now mechanically, this sounds simple enough, and it is. Within a turn or two though, as the powers send their armies and fleets out to capture first the supply centres in neutral territories they will clash with rival powers. Then, once the neutral supply centres have been captured, the powers will be brought into direct confrontation, and at this point, a stalemate is likely to ensue… In order to break such a stalemate, the powers and thus the players will have to co-operate and form alliances, much like the Entente Cordiale between France and Great Britain and the Triple Alliance formed between Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy. This is where Diplomacy begins to get interesting, challenging, and duplicitous.

Writing the orders for each turn—Spring and Fall (Autumn)—per year takes a few minutes, but a fifteen minute phase is allowed before this for negotiation between players. During this time, they can negotiate what they will write as their respective orders, reach agreements, form alliances, and so on. This might be to support an allied player’s move into a particular province, hold against an enemy, allow a convoy move for an ally, and so on. Forming alliances makes their member players very powerful, but the question is, how far can they trust each other? For not only is it within the rules of Diplomacy to reach agreements and make alliances, it is within the rules to break them as well. A betrayal and a breaking of an alliance at the right time can break a stalemate and hopefully give the betrayer the advantage to defeat his former ally, who is unlikely to make the same mistake of trusting the betrayer twice...

It is this capacity to break alliances, typically to the detriment of one member over another, to betray the trust between allies, which gives Diplomacy its primary reputation, that of being a game which breaks friendships. That though, is really down to the friendship rather than the game itself, because the game can be played by more mature players who will not necessarily put their friendships to the test by playing Diplomacy. By modern standards, if you can play The Resistance or Battlestar Galactica, both with built traitor mechanics, then Diplomacy should not be so of a test of friendships. But arguably, those games have traitors built into them by design and from the start, so the players know what to expect and can blame the game’s mechanics as much as the player betraying them. In Diplomacy is there no inbuilt mechanic for there being a traitor and it comes about through play and duplicity rather than anything else. Further, because of the trust placed in fellow allies, the betrayal of trust is likely to be all that more painful…

Nevertheless, forging the trust between players and building alliances is very much part of the play and the skill in Diplomacy. For it is a game built around negotiation and interaction as much as it is ordering fleets and armies across Europe—and in fact the need to make those order calls for that negotiation and interaction. 

In the sixty years since it was first published, there have been many editions of Diplomacy, published by many different publishers. The current version is the fiftieth anniversary edition published by Wizards of the Coast as part of its Avalon Hill imprint. It comes with eighty-four army counters and eighty-four fleet counts for the seven great power; one-hundred-and-forty-seven control markers to indicate who has control of the various supply centres; a large game board depicting Europe marked with the provinces held by the great powers at game’s start and the neutral provinces; a pad of maps for marking up orders; and the rulebook.

All of the components are solid, although it would have been nice if the armies and fleets had been wooden rather than the sturdy cardboard they are. The map is very clear and easy to read. As is the rulebook, although it would have been nice if some colour had been included in the maps used to show the examples of play. Although the rules are simple, time is taken to go through them with plenty of examples and explanations. There is also advice on how to play with fewer players and an example play through of the first seven turns of the game. This is a typical race for the supply centres in neutral territory. It is a pity that there are no illustrations for these moves, but it encourages the player to act them in order to see how the game plays.

Diplomacy is a game which demands the full seven players—it is not as fun with fewer—and the time in which to play it to its final outcome. Of course, few of us have that opportunity as often as we would like and almost from almost the very start, the play of Diplomacy was conducted via the post and in fanzines, then later online, so that games can be conducted at a more leisurely pace with greater scope for negotiation (and betrayal). Its age, its theme, and its set-up means that there has probably been more written about Diplomacy and how it can be played than any other game, except Chess (which of course, is centuries older). By modern standards, at the height of the Eurogame, Diplomacy is too confrontational, too much the wargame. It could be argued that from the start, though not necessarily later on in the game, its situation places the players and their powers finely balanced against each other. Breaking that is part of winning the game and even though Diplomacy is not strictly a wargame, it is not a Eurogame either. 

The lightness of the mechanics and the historical set-up, means that Diplomacy has the capacity to be something more. As a game of confrontation and negotiation between the European powers prior to the Great War, it has the capacity to work as an exploration of the nationalism, the politics, aims, and international relations between the powers. There is scope here for roleplaying too, as the players take on the roles of the Kings, Emperors, Sultans, Czars, and Presidents leading the great powers , and by increasing the number of players, perhaps their various ministers and generals. Such scope lies outside of Diplomacy as it comes in the box and arguably it would also require at least one Game Master.

Again by modern standards, Diplomacy is a game design with flaws. Its play is too long and by its very nature, will lead to player elimination who will have nothing to do whilst the surviving powers jockey for position and then confront each other. These are likely to be contributing factors to the game not being as popular as it once was. Another factor may well be the theme to Diplomacy, that of the great powers of Europe prior to the Great War, no longer having the significance that it once had, as those events were within living memory when the game was first published. And yet, Diplomacy: A Game of International Intrigue, Trust, and Treachery remains a classic because it emphasises the negotiation and interaction aspects of playing it as being key to the wargame aspect and mastering that is the path to victory—eventually.