Meddling Mysteries

It could be the seventies. It could be the eighties. It could be nineties. It could be now. Whatever the decade, the world is in danger and refuses to believe it. Creatures of the night stalk the darkness and only you have the knowledge and bravery to face their danger head on. So ready your UV torch, sharpen your stakes, bless your holy water, and load up the mystery wagon, because tonight you are going monster hunting! Are you ready to save the world and have nobody notice? Then that makes you a vampire hunter—fearless or otherwise! This is the simple set-up to Bite Me!, a scenario and mini-supplement for ACE!—or the Awfully Cheerful Engine!—the roleplaying game of fast, cinematic, action comedy, published by EN Publishing, best known for the W.O.I.N. or What’s Old is New roleplaying System, as used in Judge Dredd and the Worlds of 2000 AD and Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition. Some of the entries in the series have been expansive, such as Orcs & Oubliettes and Strange Science, providing a detailed setting and an scenario, whilst others in the series have tended to be one-shot, film night specials. Bite Me! falls into the latter category.

As with other supplements for ACE!, both the genre and inspiration for Bite Me! are obvious. However, there is a twist. The genre involves vampires and vampire-hunting, so the obvious inspiration is Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It is not though, the only inspiration for Bite Me! and the other adds very tongue (or is that fang?)-in-cheek tone to the whole affair. That inspiration is the Hanna-Barbera cartoon series, Scooby-Doo. So, this injects an extra dose of cheesiness into the play of the Awfully Cheerful Engine!. The bulk of Bite Me! is dedicated to a single adventure, ‘Darkness, BITES!’ and to that end, it provides four pre-generated Player Characters. However, it also gives the means for the players to create their own characters. These include suggested Roles such as talking Animals, Clerics, Druids, Slayers, Vampires, and Werewolves. To these are added the new Roles of Fortune Teller and Paranormal Investigator. The Fortune Teller gains the Power stat and can cast magic, but to begin with, does not know any spells. The Role also grants a bonus when using a tarot deck and knows if spirits are harmful. The Paranormal Investigator begins play never having encountered the supernatural, but has unveiled a lot of hoaxes. The Role gains a bonus when looking for clues and interacting with the authorities, and starts play with the Mystery Wagon, a mid-sized van.

In addition, various items of equipment are listed as being of use. These include garlic, holy symbol, tarot deck, EMF meter, pure salt, and more. In addition, there are stats for various things that the Player Characters might encounter, such as devil, mummy, poltergeist, and wolfman. The most amusing of these are the Crooked Property Developer (all together now, “And I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you meddling kids!”) and the Pirate Ghost.

The four pre-generated Player Characters consist of Fluffy Winters, reluctant vampire slayer; Lilo Thornberg, witty fortune teller; Rooby Roo, faithful dog; and Ted Bones, cheery paranormal investigator. All of whom are very knowingly tongue-in-cheek in being drawn from their sources.

The adventure, ‘Darkness, BITES!’ begins with news reports of strange occurrences at a rundown amusement park. It could be ghosts or it could be something else! In fact, it is both, because the adventure really leans into both of its inspirations. So, if the players are expecting there to be a Crooked Property Developer, they will not be disappointed, and if they are expecting ghosts, they will not be disappointed either. That though, is not the end of the scenario. The Crooked Property Developer is hiding something and that tips the Player Characters into a much darker storyline, which will see them race around town to find signs of occult and even vampiric activity—helped by a local psychic and chased by another classic monster—before finally tracking the evil down and confronting it in its lair. Not so much Transylvania, as Transylvania USA! The scenario is nicely detailed and plotted out and easy to run. It is not set in a specific city, so can be set anywhere the Game Master decides. It just needs to be big enough to have an abandoned amusement park. The play of it should take two sessions or so to play through.

Physically, Bite Me! is well presented with reasonable artwork. It needs a slight edit in places.

Bite Me! is very light in terms of its treatment of its inspirations—but then it has to be. The aim is to make those inspirations easy to grasp by Game Master and player alike and enable the players to engage with them as little or as much as they would like. Which is all part of making the main focus of Bite Me!, the adventure ‘Darkness, BITES!’, just as easy and as quick to prepare. Bite Me! should provide the Game Master and her players with a session or two’s worth fang-tastic and snacka-licious fun. All they have to is provide the snacks.

—oOo—

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

Inside the Thunder Dome

In the not-too-distant future, 2020, civilisation is no more. It was wiped away by the falling of bombs, by the plagues that ran rampant, by raging starvation, and the desperate, resulting scramble to survive. This was the Boom. It took place years, probably decades ago. What remains is the Waste, where communities cling together for support and protection, as well as access to supplies of clean food and water, hoping with to withstand the predations of marauders, cannibals, and worse. One such community is Paradise City and in recent months, its inhabitants have suffered an outbreak of the plague known as Bleeding Fever. Fortunately, Paradise City’s leaders managed to obtain a cure from the Science Council of Heartbeat City. Unfortunately, the truck carrying the antidote was captured by the Saint, a local warlord who notoriously runs fights in her ‘domes of thunder’, or rather in electrified cages. Many communities send fighters to participate in these fights, but not Paradise City. Until now, that is… In order to get the antidote its citizens need, Paradise City is sending a fighter for the first time, backed up with a team, to the Saint’s next tournament, called ‘Lectric Buggalu’. However, the team is not there just to support the fighter, because if he does not win and cannot get the antidote back, the team is going to have to steal it and drive it all the way back to Paradise City.

This is the set-up for Domes of Thunder, a scenario and mini-supplement for ACE!—or the Awfully Cheerful Engine!—the roleplaying game of fast, cinematic, action comedy. Published by EN Publishing, best known for the W.O.I.N. or What’s Old is New roleplaying System, as used in Judge Dredd and the Worlds of 2000 AD and Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition. Some of the entries in the series have been expansive, such as Orcs & Oubliettes and Strange Science, providing a detailed setting and an scenario, whilst others in the series have tended to be one-shot, film night specials. As with other supplements for ACE!, both the genre and inspiration for Domes of Thunder are obvious. The genre is Post Apocalyptic and the inspiration is the Mad Max series of films, specifically, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. This is a setting where guns and bullets are scare, petrol (or gasoline) is precious, and leather and scrap armour along with a pink mohawk are the only thing seen as fashionable since before the Boom. The book provides some basic background and some rules additions before leaping into the scenario itself, which makes up two thirds of the supplement.

Domes of Thunder starts by suggesting some old Roles suitable for setting, as well as giving some new ones. The old include the Barbarian, Bounty Hunter, Cowboy, Outlaw, and more, and these are joined by the Cyborg, Driver, Gladiator, Mechanic, Mutant, and Survivalist. Each has a simple benefit, such as the Cyborg being able to do a Brawling attack and inflict double damage by spending a point of Karma, the Driver gains the Driving Focus for free in addition to his other Foci, and the Mechanic can spend Karma to scrounge enough metal and plastics and parts to restore the Health of any vehicle. Since this is a cinematic setting, it adheres to the ‘Rule of Cool’ when it comes to personal armour. If it looks cool, it provides personal protection. Vehicles in Domes of Thunder—automobiles, motorcycles, trucks, and armoured RVs—have all been scavenged, patched, and repaired again and again, and players need to roll at the beginning of every Act to see if their characters’ vehicles have enough fuel. A vehicle is defined by four stats—Health, Bash, Steering, and Plating. Health is the amount of damage a vehicle it can take, Bash how much it can deal out when ramming or sideswiping another vehicle, Steering is its manoeuvrability, and Plating how much damage it stops. A handful of vehicles are given stats, but the game does not really need any more than that.

One of the things that Domes of Thunder makes clear is that it is not a setting in which speed matters. In fact, none of the vehicle have a speed rating. There are two reasons for this. One narrative, one physical. The physical is that the roads are strangely still maintained, but being marked by cracks and potholes, it is impossible to go too fast. The narrative is that all the interesting things happen when vehicles get close to each other, rather than one racing away simply because it is faster. It is possible to get away from another vehicle in a chase and catch up with another vehicle in a chase, but in Domes of Thunder, what determines this is the narrative and manoeuvring rolls. This is about as far as the driving rules and driving duel rules go in Domes of Thunder, essentially keeping them simple and fast.

The ‘Domes of Thunder’ adventure begins in the post-apocalyptic equivalent of the tavern in fantasy roleplaying—an old rest stop, now barricaded and fortified. The Player Characters are hired by the fighter from Paradise City and his manager to provide support and back-up on their journey to Saint’s Compound and help in getting the antidote out if things go wrong. And since, Domes of Thunder is effectively a one-shot, film night special, things are definitely going to go wrong. This starts with the Paradise City fighter being challenged by a rival fighter and ultimately ending up dead the next morning. Which also makes things more complex as one of the Player Characters will have to enter the ‘dome of thunder’ as the fighter representing Paradise City. There are other complications, but they are just bumps in the road. The main action takes place at Saint’s Compound, which turns out to be more like ‘Santa’s Compound’ if it was protected by armed ORCs and Elves. This is because it used to be a shopping mall and it was the mall’s Christmas Santa who fortified the mall not long after the Boom.

Apart from the Player Character who is going to fight in the dome, the other Player Characters are going to have to sneak around and investigate Saint’s Compound in search of the truck with the antidote for Bleeding Fever, try not to get caught—but hey, it is definitely more dramatic if they do as they have to escape the Saint’s (prison) workshop and then have to escape her compound too, and eventually race out of there in the truck with the antidote. It is fairly freeform in its structure and there is scope for the Game Master to add her own encounters and situations or simply play out the story to see where it goes. Ultimately, the scenario will end with the Player Characters with the truck containing the antidote driving hell for leather to Paradise City. There is good reason for this—the Saint is very annoyed with the Player Characters and she unleashes her dragon on them! This is not a dragon, but a helicopter, but it is so unfamiliar to the Player Characters that it might as well be. Finish the ‘dragon’ off, and the Player Characters can ride off into the sunset…

The ‘Domes of Thunder’ adventure is straightforward and should take a session or two to complete. If there are issues, it is that it introduces an NPC under one name and then changes it to another name and that it skirts around what the nature of the apocalypse is. There are mutants and there is prejudice against them. For example, only pure strain humans with neither mutation or nor mechanical modification can participate in the games. Further, the scenario does play around with the fantasy genre a little so it may not be clear to players in particular, if the setting embraces elements of fantasy as well, and if so, quite how far. This is because the security for the Saint’s Compound are called ORCs and Saint’s infiltrators are called Elves. The ORCs are derived from the name of the shopping mall, which was the Odessa Retail Centre, whilst the Elves are essentially Santa’s ‘little helpers’. Nominally, the scenario actually be taking place at Christmas, but that is not entirely clear. So, tonally, Domes of Thunder feels slightly odd in places, but not enough to disrupt the scenario.

Physically, Domes of Thunder is well presented with reasonable artwork. It needs a slight edit in places.

Domes of Thunder is as straightforward an adventure as you want it to be. The plot is none too complex and what the Player Characters have to do is easy to grasp. Where the the complication comes in is whatever mess the Player Characters get themselves into. There is plenty of room for Game Master to add her own content, but as is, Domes of Thunder is easy to prepare and bring to the table for a session or two’s worth of uncomplicated post-apocalyptic, cinematic action.

Web Watch

Webworld is a disc-shaped planet spinning through the cosmos tethered to the web of the great spider, An’Ansee. It is a world of fantasy and magic, of dragons and dungeons and trolls and tunnels and orcs and oubliettes, where all manner of creatures and peoples can be found, but there is no better place to the start than the heart of the realm, the city that welcomes all visitors from next door and the next universe, which dangles at the centre of the web spun by An’Ansee, who hangs below. This is Heq Moreveg, whose inhabitants can look up to the fantastic disc from which their home hangs and out into the night sky of the universe from they came. Just as the disc dwellers have the pleasure of looking down on the Heq Morevegians! It is a raucous city of dwellers from hither and thither, who rub along at the best of times, brawl with each at other times, and riot at the worst of times. Under the shadow of the disc above, it is the dubious duty of the Dusk Watch to keep the peace, whether through hard graft, honest graft, or dishonest graft—and if that fails, through serendipity and stupidity. And sometimes, if a dusk’s patrol goes very, very badly, the members of the Watch have to descend into the Underweb… Unfortunately, on their very watch, some new members of the Dusk Watch are not only going to find themselves voluntarily being led into the Underweb, but they are also going to find themselves very involuntarily being thrown into it! And with the future of Heq Moreveg at stake, they are going to have to find their way back out again. This is the set-up for Orcs & Oubliettes, a scenario and mini-supplement for ACE!—or the Awfully Cheerful Engine!—the roleplaying game of fast, cinematic, action comedy. Published by EN Publishing, best known for the W.O.I.N. or What’s Old is New roleplaying System, as used in Judge Dredd and the Worlds of 2000 AD and Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition, where previous entries in the series have tended to be one-shot, film night specials, here the given scenario (or scenarios) is more expansive.

Orcs & Oubliettes is actually very slightly more than a scenario and mini-supplement for ACE! In fact, it is actually a roleplaying game all of its very own within the various worlds of ACE! There are numerous points within the adventures set in these worlds when the Player Characters can relax, take time out of their own adventures, to play out fantasy adventures with characters of their own. (Even to point as in thirties-set Montana Drones and the Raiders of the Cutty Sark where roleplaying games would have been an anachronism.) The genre for Orcs & Oubliettes is, of course, fantasy, and in particular, as its ‘noun-ampersand-noun’ name suggests, the roleplaying game fantasy of Dungeons & Dragons. Yet, Orcs & Oubliettes is not fully a parody of Dungeons & Dragons, for it is also by inspired by another fantasy, that of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series of novels. It is not set on a disc-shaped world per se, but rather Heq Moreveg is suspended in the webs spun by An’Ansee below it.

Heq Moreveg is described in broad detail, noting that although ruled by a king, but that the role is not hereditary, chosen from the members of the ‘Brazen Yeopersons of the Elective Council of Keepers’—or ‘BY’ECK’, whose are themselves elected representatives from amongst the city’s many and varied trade bodies. The city is built on stone slabs suspended in the web and subject to the strange cycle of light and dark from a sun that loops around the disc above casting regular periods of day and night. The three main districts of the city swirl out from the city centre—the Monarch’s Spiral, which contains the government buildings, guild headquarters, and houses of the rich; the Residents’ Spiral where most Heq Morevegians live; and the Traders’ Spiral, where most of the city’s trade and business is conducted.

In terms of characters, Orcs & Oubliettes provides four pre-generated members of the Dusk Watch. One is an experienced Watch Captain, a silver-plated mechanoid with a heart, but the other three are totally inexperienced. They include a larcenous faerie Sprite, a teenage wizard, and an inattentive Troll, but details of the Sprite and the Troll are included for the players to create their own using the ACE! rules. There is also a list of equipment and gear to buy and find, all the way up to magical items like a Climbing Potion and a Riveted Rod that always stays in place, Bag of Storing and Lidded Eye lantern whose light reveals anything invisible, Bracers of Giant Strength and even a Lamp of Wishes!

More than half of Orcs & Oubliettes consists of the eponymous scenario. On their very first shift, the Dusk Watch’s newest patrol is caught up in a diplomatic incident. An emissary from a warlike and carnivorous plant species has been kidnapped and dragged into the Underweb, so they have to rescue the diplomat before war breaks out! Despite their efforts, the newest members of the Dusk Watch find themselves ex-members after the rescue attempt goes awry, the emissary turns on them in a murderous rage, and they are not only blamed for his death, but put on trial and found guilty too! Their sentence is to be thrown into the Orphic Oubliette, an interdimensional pocket where the city’s most notorious criminals and darkest secrets are dumped and forgotten. The Orphic Oubliette actually turns out not be quite as dangerous as its reputation suggests, and the Player Characters will find some help coming from unexpected quarters—at least in traditional fantasy roleplaying terms—a tribe of helpful Orcs, and be able to get back out with relative ease. They will also have found the means to clear their names, but that still leaves the question as to what is actually going on and who is responsible.

‘Orcs & Oubliettes’ clips along at a handy pace, a classic fantasy tale, slightly tongue in cheek in tone, of despicable plans and unbridled ambition. Along the way, the Player Characters will bargain with a demon, gain a mighty forgotten weapon, and uncover a grand conspiracy hidden within a grand conspiracy, all before facing a dragon, stopping the city from going up in flames, and so saving the day! The scenario itself should take a secession or two, to play through, three at most.

Physically, Orcs & Oubliettes is well presented with decent, if dark artwork.

Although Orcs & Oubliettes does indeed involve orcs and oubliettes, and does descend into dungeons—or oubliettes—not once, but twice, this supplement for ACE! is not the parody of Dungeons & Dragons that the title suggests it to be. Instead, this is more about the weird mélange of a city hung in strange circumstances above the oubliettes and the schemes and shenanigans going on there. The obvious inspiration and its familiarity may result in some players finding it too familiar and some finding that it is not familiar enough, so Orcs & Oubliettes is not going to sit—or like Heq Moreveg, hang—in everyone’s sweet spot. Nevertheless, Orcs & Oubliettes is an entertaining scenario that will provide a couple of fun sessions’ worth of play.

Quick-Start Saturday: Outgunned

Quick-starts are a means of trying out a roleplaying game before you buy. Each should provide a Game Master with sufficient background to introduce and explain the setting to her players, the rules to run the scenario included, and a set of ready-to-play, pre-generated characters that the players can pick up and understand almost as soon as they have sat down to play. The scenario itself should provide an introduction to the setting for the players as well as to the type of adventures that their characters will have and just an idea of some of the things their characters will be doing on said adventures. All of which should be packaged up in an easy-to-understand booklet whose contents, with a minimum of preparation upon the part of the Game Master, can be brought to the table and run for her gaming group in a single evening’s session—or perhaps two. And at the end of it, Game Master and players alike should ideally know whether they want to play the game again, perhaps purchasing another adventure or even the full rules for the roleplaying game.

Alternatively, if the Game Master already has the full rules for the roleplaying game the quick-start is for, then what it provides is a sample scenario that she still run as an introduction or even as part of her campaign for the roleplaying game. The ideal quick-start should entice and intrigue a playing group, but above all effectively introduce and teach the roleplaying game, as well as showcase both rules and setting.

—oOo—

What is it?

Outgunned – Hero to Zero is the quick-start for Outgunned, the roleplaying game of action movies from the eighties and nineties (and beyond), inspired by Die Hard, True Lies, Lethal Weapon, Kingsman, Ocean’s Eleven, Hot Fuzz, and even John Wick.

It is also the English language quick-start for the Italian roleplaying game of the same name.

It is a seventy-one-page, 83.90 MB full colour PDF.

How long will it take to play?
Outgunned – Hero to Zero and its adventure (also known as a ‘Introductory Shot’), ‘Race Against Time’, is designed to be played through in a single session, two at most.

What else do you need to play?
Outgunned – Hero to Zero can be played using a total of nine six-sided dice, ideally per player. (The full game uses its own set of Action Dice.)

Who do you play?
The four Player Characters—or Heroes—in Outgunned – Hero to Zero consist of an undercover police officer, a hotshot driver and pilot, an ever cheerful bounty hunter, and a charming martial artist.

How is a Player Character defined?

A Hero in Outgunned – Hero to Zero is defined by his Name, Role and Trope, Job, Age, Catchphrase, and Flaw. The Role and Trope determine a Hero’s starting Skills, whilst the Job grants access to information and contacts. Together with the Catchphrase, they can be combined by the player to define an action film archetype. The Catchphrase is a tag line or a creed, something guides the Hero to act when it comes time for action. The Flaw is an aspect of the Hero that will hinder him throughout his adventures.

A Hero has five Attributes and twenty Skills. The Attributes are Brawn, Nerves, Smooth, Focus, and Crime. Brawn handles action, Nerves handles reflexes and steady hands, Smooth is used for interaction and manipulation, Focus is for concentration, perception, and recall, and Crime is for awareness and secret action. Feats are granted by a Hero’s Role and Trope and typically allow a ‘Free Re-Roll’ when the Hero acts according to one of his Feats.

Experiences, of which there are four types—Achievements, Scars, Reputations, and Bonds—will affect a Hero’s dice rolls. These are not used in Outgunned – Hero to Zero.

Damage suffered is handled by Grit, ‘You Look’, and the ‘Death Roulette’. Grit is the amount damage a Hero can suffer, whilst the ‘Death Roulette’ is what the Director rolls against if there is a chance that the Hero will die. The chance—or the number of Lethal Bullets it holds—increases each time the Director rolls and the Hero survives. ‘You Look’ is actually a measure of how the Hero looks to others, as in, “How do I look?” and is actually a way of keeping track of the Conditions that a Hero might suffer.

A Hero has access to types of luck points, Adrenaline and Spotlight. A Hero has access to Adrenaline, up to maximum of six. It is earned for getting a success against all odds, making a great sacrifice, and so on. It can be spent to gain a bonus to a roll, to activate certain Feats, and to get an immediate Spotlight. The Director is encouraged to be generous with Adrenaline and every player is encouraged to spend it. A Hero can have three Spotlights and they can be expended to gain an ‘Extreme Success’ automatically, ‘Save a Friend’ who has lost at the Death Roulette, ‘Remove a Condition’, and even do something dramatic!

Weapons and gear will help under specific circumstances. There is an emphasis on guns and rides.

How do the mechanics work?

Mechanically, rolls in Outgunned are either an Action Roll or a Reaction Roll. The number of dice rolled for either always consists of the combined values for an Attribute and a Skill. For example, ‘Nerves’ and ‘Shoot’ to fire a gun at someone or ‘Smooth’ and ‘Streetwise’ to persuade a crook that you are one of them. Equipment and conditions will alter the number of dice a player has to a minimum of two and a maximum of nine. To succeed at a task, a player needs to roll sets of the same symbols (or numbers if not using Outgunned dice). The size of the set indicates the level of success. Two of a kind is a Basic Success; three of a kind is a Critical Success; four of a kind is Extreme Success; five of a kind is an Impossible Success; and six or more of a kind is a Jackpot! If the roll matches the difficulty of the task set by the Director—the Difficulty being either Basic, Critical, Extreme, Impossible, or Jackpot!—the Hero succeeds. A higher success can grant a better outcome, an advantage, or even extra actions, whilst a Jackpot! means that the player becomes the Director temporarily.

If the roll is not a success and the player has one success, he can reroll any dice that do not match. If the re-roll is a success, he keeps them, but if not, he loses a rolled success. Certain Feats allow a free re-roll without any possibility of losing successes. Lastly, after a re-roll, a player can go ‘All In’, push his luck and re-roll all dice that do not match any successes. However, if he fails, he loses everything, including all of successes rolled.

Even after a Re-roll and an ‘All In’, a roll that does not succeed is not a failure. Instead, a hero succeeds, but with consequences. Essentially the equivalent of a ‘Yes, but’.

How does combat work?
Combat in the Outgunned – Hero to Zero as per the rules above, but actions become ‘Dangerous’, which means that a Hero can lose Grit if a roll is not a success. If he loses too much Grit, he will suffer from one or more conditions, and even force rolls of the Death Roulette on the Hero. In comparison, the enemies—Goons, Bad Guys, and Bosses—have only Grit, not the Death Roulette, and when this is reduced to zero, they are knocked out. Bosses have Hot Boxes on their Grit track, indicating that they receive Adrenaline to spend on special actions of their own. The rules for combat cover range, cover, counting magazines (rather than bullets), and so on. There are also rules for car chases as well

What do you play?

‘Race Against Time’ is the ‘Introductory Shot’ in Outgunned – Hero to Zero, a classic movie action plot involving a hunt for a MacGuffin. Naturally, it involves lots of a fights, a chase, and an exploding aeroplane! It is, of course, an entertaining affair and is made all the better by the staging advice given alongside the length of the scenario. The advice is excellent, suggesting possible maneouvres that the Heroes might take in the various situations they find themselves in throughout the scenario.

The scenario is open-ended, so the Director could run a sequel by adapting some of the content in Outgunned – Hero to Zero.

Is there anything missing?
No. Outgunned – Hero to Zero includes everything that the Director and four players need to play through it.

Is it easy to prepare?
The core rules presented in Outgunned – Hero to Zero are not easy to prepare. They are not difficult to prepare, but rather they take a slight adjustment as they are not as straightforward or as obviously intuitive as most rules are. So they require careful attention upon the part of Director.

Is it worth it?
Yes. Outgunned – Hero to Zero presents the basics of an exciting action-orientated game that plays fast and encourages the players to both indulge in all of the clichés of the action movie genre and be inventive in when it comes to their Heroes being cool and cinematic. The rules are just different enough to make them initially a little challenging, but after that, the session is full of bullets flying, fists lashing, and wheels screeching action.

Outgunned – Hero to Zero is published by Two Little Mice and is available to download here.

1984: Time Master

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, and the new edition of that, Dungeons & Dragons, 2024, in the year of the game’s fiftieth 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—

The first roleplaying game about time travel was the quite appallingly useless Timeship: A role playing game of time travel and adventure, published by Yaquinto Publications in 1983. It was quickly followed in 1984 by two further time travel-themed roleplaying games. One was the surprisingly historical Time & Time Again, published by Timeline Ltd., the other was the classic, pulp action Science Fiction Time Master: Adventures in the 4th Dimension from Pacesetter Ltd. It was one of three roleplaying games that the publisher, set up by a number of ex-TSR, Inc. employees, including Mark Acres, Troy Denning, and Stephen Sullivan, would release in 1984. The company’s first, and best known, was the classic horror game, CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown, and it would be followed by Time Master and Star Ace: Adventures in Space, a classic pulp Sci-Fi roleplaying game. All three used the same mechanics and all three were extensively supported with supplements and scenarios. All three also remain in print, having become cult classics since their original publication.

As with CHILL: Adventurs into the Unknown before it, Time Master was published as a boxed set. Behind its exciting cover of a man escaping on a flyer of some kind away from marching soldiers, battleships, and dinosaurs, the box contains three books, a map, a sheet of counters, and three ten-sided dice. The three books are the sixty-four-page ‘Travelers’ Manual’, the main rulebook, the thirty-two-page ‘Guide to the Continuum’, the setting book, and the sixteen-page ‘Red Ace High’, a starter scenario. The map is double-sided. One side depicts an area of wilderness in colour, whilst on the other is a depiction of facilities on an airfield. The one-hundred-and-forty counters are a mix of black and white and colour and show Time Agents, Demoreans, and a lot of military units, including vehicles across various eras, such as chariots, jeeps, artillery pieces, and futuristic flying craft.

In Time Master: Adventures in the 4th Dimension, the Player Characters are members of the Time Corps, established in the seventy-second century to police, protect, and restore the timeline. Mankind constructed the first time travel devices in 7051. Although crude, their rapid adoption and use by world governments to erase and rewrite triggered the Time Wars which would last a century and only end with the signing of the Temporal Treaty in 7054. The major powers also agreed to set up an organisation which would protect the timeline, repair where necessary, and prevent tampering by outsiders, renegades, and rogue states. It was granted autonomy and it was planned that it would be disbanded when its work was done. Then the Demoreans appeared. The discovery of a shape-changing alien species from a Parallel world prepared to inflict untold damage to our timeline on Parallel T-0 in order to make it like theirs proved to be a shock and forced the Time Corps to continue its remit. The Agency recruits agents from 3,500 BCE to 7171 CE, but focuses on six ‘Event Windows’. These are Fifth Century BCE Athens, Rome from 61 BCE to 37 AD, Angevin England from 1154 to 1216, Tudor England between 1509 and 1603, Napoleonic France from 1804 to 1815, and France from 1940 to 1944.

The ‘Travelers’ Manual’ explains both the rules and the history of Time Corps and its procedures. Its Time Agents operate in the past and on other parallels according to certain laws. The Law of Identity states that nothing can exist twice at the same time, which means that a Time Agent cannot go on a mission in a period when he has already lived. The danger is that if he did, he would be caught in a ‘Loop Trap’ forced to relive his first visit to the period. The Law of Preservation states that timelines repair themselves, which negates the infamous ‘Grandfather Paradox’. The Law of the Time Barrier prevents time travellers travelling into the future, whilst the Law of Death states that if a time traveller dies, it is permanent. In addition, the Time Corps has its own regulations. These include not recklessly taking a Human or alien life; preventing the activities of Demoreans and renegades in the past, ideally killing the former and returning the latter to Time Corps Headquarters; not engaging in time travel without permission; not leaving any advanced technology or weapons in the past; not revealing the existence of the Time Corps; not investigating the origins or ancestry of another Time Agent; destroy Renegade equipment; and never to return to Time Corps Headquarters from a mission unless it has been successfully completed or the Time Agents are forced to abort it. It is notable that the Time Corps adheres to a code of ethics and does not recruit criminals of any kind.

Time Corps Agents have a Rank and Grade. The Ranks start at Trainee and finish at Timemaster, and there are ten Grades within each Rank. Each time a Time Agent successfully completes a mission, he is promoted one Grade. Once an Agent reaches the Rank and Grade of Time Master, Grade Ten, he retires from the field. A Rank Six or ‘Lifer’ Agent is granted access to ‘Fountain of Youth’ technology which prevents from aging when he is in the past.

Mechanically, Time Agent advancement is tracked at the end of a successful mission by rolling against its Significance Rating. Every mission or adventure has a Significance Rating indicating how important a person or a place or an object is in terms of the flow of history. For example, Pericles from Fifth Century BCE Athens has a Significance Rating of 350 and Charles DeGaulle from France from 1940 to 1944 a Significance Rating of 150. The Continuum Master—as the Game Master is known in Time Master—assigns a mission a total Significance Rating based on individual ratings and then tracks the Time Agents’ action over the course of the mission in comparison to this total. If the Time Agents kill NPCs or some how change history to how it should be, these Significance errors the total Significance Rating and the number of Success Points the Time Agents are awarded collectively with which the players can improve them.

In addition, the amount by which the total Significance Rating was reduced is the value against which the Continuum Master makes a Significance Check. This is rolled on ‘d1000’ and if the result is under the combined value of the Significance errors committed by the Time Agents, then they have changed time. These changes will vary from mission to mission, from scenario to scenario, and each scenario includes a Historical Changes Chart that lists the changes and their effects. For example, in the ‘Red Ace High’ scenario included in the boxed set, the Historical Changes Chart gives changes ranging from the early adoption of aerial and rocket power and World War II beginning in 1935 and ending in a devastating defeat for the Allies to the death of an ancestor of a Time Agent, causing a number of missions needing to be redone. These changes will not become apparent until the Time Agents return to Time Corps Headquarters, where they may be informed by their Time Corps Sentinel, who briefs them, or through the use of ‘Paranormal Memory’.

All Agents of the Time Corps possess ‘Paranormal Memory’, the psychic ability to remember what should have happened in history, in fragments rather than being crystal clear. It is not the only Paranormal Talent that an Agent might have. Others include ‘Memory Restoration’ which is used to repair and restore the memories to what they should be in the timeline, ‘Significance Sensing’ to determine how important an NPC is in history, and ‘Time Shift’, which enables an Agent to move time back, but in game terms, only as far back as the start of the previous round! The Demoreans possess different psychic talents, including ‘Dimensional Travel’ and ‘Shape Shift’. Paranormal Talents are powered by Willpower and are relatively costly to use, so players will need to pick and chose when their Agents deploy them.

An Agent in Time Master is defined by Abilities and Skills. He has eight Basic Abilities. These are Strength, Dexterity, Agility, Willpower, Personality, Perception, Stamina, and Luck. These range in value between twenty-six and eighty. The Basic Abilities have various uses, such as the basic chance to hit a target using a firearm for Dexterity, Willpower as the chance to overcome the fear of seeing a monster, Personality to persuade an NPC, Perception to notice things, and so on. Luck has more uses. First off, only Player Characters have Luck as a Basic Ability—NPCs and other threats do not. It is rolled to avoid certain death, spent permanently to avoid being shot, and of course, how fortunate or not, the Player Character according to the whims of the dice. Several other abilities are derived from the Basic Abilities. These include Unskilled Melee, Health, and more. The Basic Abilities can also grant bonuses to an Agent’s skills.

Skills range in value between forty-one and one-hundred-and-thirty-five, and have a base value derived from a Basic Ability, such as Dexterity for combat skills and Stamina for Swimming, or a number of Basic Abilities which are then averaged. A skill is ranked at either Specialist, Expert, or Master, and each provides a flat bonus to the basic skill value. This is either ‘+15’, ‘+20’, and ‘+25’ respectively. There is an emphasis on combat skills, both on foot and mounted, but the majority of the non-combat skills will cover most situations. Unlike Chill, this roleplaying game does include the Computer skill, but the skills are not organised in an always logical fashion, so that the Pilot skill is included under Heavy Weapons skills rather than the non-combat skills.* The skills are quite detailed in their use, especially the combat skills. So, although an Agent starts off with relatively few skills compared to Player Characters in other roleplaying games, this is offset by a player and the Continuum Master needing to know how they work.

* Thanks to Big Jack Brass for pointing that out.

To create an Agent, a player rolls three ten-sided dice, totals and doubles the result, and adds twenty to get the total for each Basic Ability. After working out the derived abilities, the player chooses a Historical Speciality for his Agent, typically that when he was born, and selects two more skills to reflect what he did before he was recruited by the Time Corps. He also selects a second Paranormal Talent.

Mathilde Berwick was a swordswoman and performer on the stage at the end of the nineteenth century. Her ability with both sword and as an actress have stood her in good stead as a Time Agent.

Mathilde Berwick

BACKGROUND
Date of Birth: September 14th, 1874 Place of Birth: Terra Haute, Indiana
Age at Recruitment: 37 Current Age: 40
Original Profession: Swordswoman & Performer Nationality: American
Education: High School Sex: Female
Height: 5’ 6” Colour Eyes: Brown
Weight: 135 lbs. Colour Hair: Brown

Strength 60 Dexterity 68 Agility 72 Willpower 66
Personality 72 Perception 62 Stamina 50 Luck 64

Unskilled Melee Skill: 66
Current Stamina: 50 Wounds: 13
Current Willpower: 66

SKILLS
Historical Speciality Level – Specialist Score – 79
Time Corps Stunner Level – Specialist – 83
Sword Level – Specialist – 81
Disguise Level – Specialist – 85

PARANORMAL TALENTS
Memory Restoration Level – Specialist Score – 48
Adaptation Speciality Level – Specialist Score – 48

Mechanically, Time Master: Adventures in the 4th Dimension is a percentile system that really uses two types of roll. A General Ability Check is a simple roll against a Basic Ability to determine whether or not an action succeeded or not. A General Skill Check works the same, but for skill use. A Specific Ability or Specific Skill Check is used whenever a more nuanced result is required and the Continuum Master needs to know how many degrees of success were achieved. To do this, the player has to make a successful roll and the Continuum Master consults the TIME MASTER Action Table. She subtracts the value of Basic Ability or the Skill being used from the value of the roll and cross references it in the appropriate column on the TIME MASTER Action Table. This will give an outcome that is either a Limited, Moderate, High, or Complete Success. The specific outcome will vary from one skill to the next.

Combat in Time Master also uses the TIME MASTER Action Table. Initiative is handled with a roll of a single die and the winning side then uses the Art, fires missile weapons, moves, and then engages in melee attacks. The defending side has the chance to return missile fire. Once done, the defending does exactly the same. Unsurprisingly, this feels like a wargame rather than a roleplaying game. Attacks can be Specific Ability Check or a Specific Skill Check, depending upon whether or not the Agent has any skill ranks in the weapon he is wielding. What this means is that making a Specific Ability Check for an attack will give the Agent a lower chance to succeed and a lower chance to get a better roll, whilst someone with the skill will have a better chance of both. As opposed to Specific Ability and Specific Skill Checks, there is more nuance to possible outcomes. The attacker is rolling to determine the Attack Margin which will cross referenced on the Defence Column. The Defence Column is determined randomly for missile attacks, modified by the defender expending points of Luck or by the defender’s skill for a melee attacks. Unarmed combat results can be Scant Damage, Medium Damage, Harsh Damage, Crushing Damage, or Knockdown, and most of these inflict a loss of Stamina points, but some of these can also inflict a Scratch Wound and a Light Wound. Armed combat results include Scratch Wound, Light Wound, and Medium Wound, all the way up to Critical Wound. These inflict greater Stamina loss and possibly continued Stamina loss, depending on the severity.

Since it used the same mechanics, CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown also felt rather like a wargame. However, Time Master: Adventures in the 4th Dimension does not just feel like a wargame, it can be played like a wargame. The combat rules quickly go from brawls and swordfights to using tanks, artillery, and heavy weaponry on the ground and using aeroplanes and space-fighters in dogfights to account for the wide swathe of history that Time Master encompasses. It does not, though, confine them to the personal use and deployment by the players and their Agents, but includes rules for handling skirmishes and tactical scale battles, with the Agents expected to get involved. There is scope for roleplaying in these battles too, but they are designed to be fought out the hex map and counters provided in the box. Although a couple of pages long, the rules cover cavalry and chariot charges, the role of leaders, and more.

The ‘Travelers’ Manual’ is rounded out with details on the Paranormal Talents wielded by both the Time Corps and the Demoreans, the equipment used by Time Corps Agents like the Chronoscooter and the Time Corps Stunner, and rules for the Agents interacting with NPCs. ‘Guide to the Continuum’ is the setting book for Time Master. Shorter, it gives some details on military formations, what the Earth of 7192 is like, and what the Demoreans are like. This includes how to spot them, what their schemes are, and dealing with Demorean defectors. The roleplaying game’s six ‘Event Windows’ are also described here, given a two-page description each, a summary of the military of the period, a short political summary, and stats for major figures of the period. These are broad treatments, but enough to get started, and each was further supported by a decent bibliography for 1984. Lastly, there is some advice for the Continuum Master on how to run the game, including how to switch to parallels rather than the base setting of Earth and its history as we know it. There is no discussion of bringing in elements of fiction as would be done in later releases. It should be noted that much of the contents of the ‘Guide to the Continuum’ can also be read by the players as well as the Continuum Master.

The third and final book in Time Master: Adventures in the 4th Dimension is the scenario, ‘Red Ace High’. This is a starter scenario set during the Great War, at the Battle of Cambrais in 1917. The Time Corp has detected a Demorean penetration into the period and sends the Agents back to investigate. Female characters will outfitted to look like men. The Agents arrive just int time to rescue an English officer under assault by some Germans before soldiers under the command of Lieutenant Colonel George S. Patton come to their aid. He enlists them in a plan to reconnoitre a German airfield on the other side of the trenches and it is here that the Agents discover the Demorean plan. The underhanded aliens have armed Manfred von Richthofen, the infamous Red Baron, with air-to-surface missiles, and plans to have him use them in the forthcoming battle to destroy the Allied attacks. It is a fun play around with history and definitely action-orientated, including participating and running part of the battle itself. However, it is linear and more experienced players are likely to want to look for means to defeat the Demorean plans than that is suggested.

In terms of design, Time Master aims for a universal mechanic with its TIME MASTER Action Table, and almost succeeds. The problem is that the results are not themselves universal, varying depending upon if the player is rolling a Specific Ability or Skill Check, an armed or unarmed attack, and so on. Plus, every skill has its own set of results, so that mechanically, Time Master, like CHILL feels overwritten and fussy. However, the TIME MASTER Action Table is printed on the back of both the ‘Travelers’ Manual’ and the ‘Guide to the Continuum’ books, so the Continuum Master can refer to the table on the back of the latter, whilst the results of various Specific Skill Checks can be consulted in the former.

Physically, Time Master: Adventures in the 4th Dimension is very nicely presented boxed set. The cover to the box is eye-catching, being both exciting and intriguing. The artwork is not good or at least not as singularly noticeable as that of CHILL, most of it being publicly sourced rather than commissioned. The writing, and consequently, the rules, suffer in places from being overwritten unfortunately. The work problem is the organisation as certain chapters do feel as if they should be adjacent to each other.

—oOo—

Steve Norledge reviewed Time Master: Adventures in the 4th Dimension in ‘Open Box’ in White Dwarf Issue 61 (January 1985). Initially, he had doubts that a roleplaying game could successfully handle the difficulties of the genre, including needing to have an understanding of the theory of time, the freedom of the players wander through wreaking havoc on history, and the unlimited scope offered by the genre. However, he was impressed, saying that, “Overall, I quite liked Timemaster – it is an unpretentious little game, simple and yet provides the best yet framework for time travel rolegaming. It is eminently suited to the ‘one-off’ style of play, and, yet, with effort, would also be a good campaign game (though it would have a very episodic feel to it).” before awarding it a score of seven out of ten.

It was reviewed in ‘Game Reviews’ in Imagine No. 25 (April 1985) by Jim Bambra. Although highly critical of ‘Red Ace High’, which found rushed and flawed, he concluded that, “With its infinite variety of settings Timemaster has a lot of potential. Players can experience many different situations and save the world numerous times over.”

Russell Grant Collins reviewed Time Master in Different Worlds Issue 39 (May/June, 1985) in ‘Game Reviews’. He opened with, “In my opinion, TimeMaster has one of the most workable backgrounds of all the recent time travel games. It deals with a time patrol in the far future which is defending its past from aliens bent on destroying it and freelance time travelers who aren’t careful enough about what their actions are doing to the fabric of time.” before awarding the roleplaying game three out of four stars and finishing with, “The bottom line on this game is that once we got used to the system, my friends and I enjoyed it and plan to play it in the future. It is by no means perfect, but still enjoyable. For those who are interested in that sort of thing, TimeMaster is supposed to be totally compatible with Pacesetter’s other adventure games, Chill and Star Ace.”

Warren Spector reviewed the roleplaying game for Space Gamer Number 75 (July/August 1985), as part of the Featured Review, ‘The Pacesetter Line’. In general, he had issues with the finicky nature of the rules, especially those for combat, but of Time Master in general, he said, “Time travel RPGs seem to be in a mini-renaissance these days. If you’re into this sort of game (and I confess, I’m not), Timemaster may be a good choice. It’s got a fairly interesting unifying theme; the game does an excellent job of making time travel seem plausible, and the “Guide to the Continuum” is a gem. In this most open-ended form of roleplaying, providing players direction is no simple task. Timemaster does a fine job.”

The roleplaying game was reviewed in ‘Gaming’ in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine No. 86 (Mid-December 1984) by Dana Lombardy, whose conclusion was, “Time Master is a well-presented game. Whether you’re just looking for new ideas to incorporate into your current role-games, or want to try a fresh system. Pacesetter’s new game is worth getting.”

It was reviewed by Bruce Probst in ‘Snapshot’ in Breakout: The Australian Gamers’ Quarterly No. 21 (March-May 1986). He was highly critical of the roleplaying game, especially its combat system, highlighting the fact that weapons offer very little variation in terms of damage, the need to refer to the rulebook for every skill use despite the inclusion of the TIME MASTER Action Table, the nature of the background which limited the actions of the Time Agents, and so on. He concluded that, “In summary, I cannot recommend Timemaster unless you are willing to devote a lot of effort to make it work. On the other hand, if you simply enjoy playing a game, without regard to illogical backgrounds and terrible rules, then I can envision Timemaster, as being quite fun. It has a lot of promise; given more thought, it could have been a really great game.”

—oOo—

With its “Join the Time Corps and you can become the Master of Time” tag line and set-up, there is a bracingly simple quality to Time Master: Adventures in the 4th Dimension that appeals straight out of Science Fiction or television. Yet whilst the roleplaying game does set up and have the Player Characters as Time Agents, it hampers the play of Time Master with poor organisation and often fiddley rules requiring the players and the Continuum Master to refer the rulebook despite the fact that everything is rolled on a universal table. Where Time Master does help the players and the Continuum Master is providing clear, simple Laws of Time and Time Corps protocols, that help guide both in playing and running the game without it tipping over into chaos and causality. Ultimately, Time Master: Adventures in the 4th Dimension had and has the capacity to be a lot of fun, and make time travel roleplaying accessible, but it does not quite help itself achieve its aims. In the hands of a good Continuum Master, it would be a very different matter.

1984: CHILL

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, and the new edition of that, Dungeons & Dragons, 2024, in the year of the game’s fiftieth 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—

It is surprising to think, that even two years after its publication, Call of Cthulhu, was the only horror roleplaying game in the industry. Of course, it had its own particular brand of horror, the Cthulhu Mythos, cosmic horror rather than traditional horror. Even though it was not specifically designed to do more traditional types of horror, stats were included for monsters such as vampires, werewolves, and zombies. Soon though, it was followed by roleplaying games that did do the more traditional type of horror. First, Stalking the Night Fantastic, published by Tri-Tac Inc. in 1983, and then by CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown. It was published in 1984 by Pacesetter Ltd., a company set-up by a number of ex-TSR, Inc. employees, including Mark Acres, Troy Denning, and Stephen Sullivan. CHILL was the company’s first roleplaying game and it was designed to evoke the feel and tone of films from the Hammer and AIP and Universal studios and of television series like Kolchak; The Night Stalker. Together with fairly simple mechanics, this made it both accessible and familiar, and then the roleplaying game itself, published as a boxed set, made it even more accessible by presenting the adventure in the box, ‘Terror in Warwick House’, as being playable after only reading the ‘CHILL Introductory Folder’.

In CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown, the Player Characters are members or ‘Envoys’ of S.A.V.E., ‘Societas Argenti Viae Eternitata’ or ‘The Eternal Society of the Silver Way’. Founded in Dublin, Ireland in 1844, this organisation discovered the existence of a highly disciplined source of evil that was not recognised or perceived by the scientific community and set out to establish proof of its existence. S.A.V.E. launched expeditions to locate and study creatures around the world, including dragons, basilisks, ghosts, ghouls, and more. Many such expeditions were failures, adding weight to S.A.V.E.’s fears about it came to call the Unknown. S.A.V.E. changed to become a secret organisation dedicated to investigating, cataloguing, and ending the threat of the Unknown where necessary. Today, its primary goals remain the same, and it helps its Envoys with information, equipment, financial aid, and where necessary, legal aid. In return, the Envoys report what they find back to the organisation’s headquarters outside Dublin and keep what they report, what they find, and what they do secret from everyone else.

All Envoys of S.A.V.E. are able to perceive the Unknown World to one degree or another. Those that can to greater degree are also aware of the Art, the ability to drawn energy from the Unknown and communicate with it. The founders of S.A.V.E. realised the existence of the Art and their successors have codified it into four forms—Communication, Restoration, Protection, and the Evil Way. All Envoys can detect when the Art is used, the traces left behind by creatures and monsters of the Unknown, and when the Evil Way is used. Some Envoys can do more than this, harnessing the disciplines of the Communication, Restoration, and Protection forms to combat the users of the Evil Way and the monsters of the Unknown.

Open the box for CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown and what you will find is the eight-page ‘CHILL Introductory Folder’ marked ‘READ ME FIRST!’, the sixteen-page ‘Terror in Warwick House’ scenario, the sixty-four page ‘CHILL Campaign Book’, and the thirty-two page ‘CHILL: Horrors from the Unknown’ book. Below this is the double-sided ‘The World of CHILL’ map, a sheet of counters, and a Range Finder. Both map and counters are double-sided. One side of the half-inch square counters depict a range of Player Characters, creatures, and monsters, all in colour, whilst on there are doors, windows, stairs, beds, tables, and other pieces of furniture. On one side of the ‘The World of CHILL’ map is a map of the world marked with various sites of interest like Stonehenge and Tunguska, whilst on the other is a plain squared battle board for handling combat and the floor plans for Warwick House in the introductory scenario. There are also three ten-sided dice in the box.

CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown begins with the ‘CHILL Introductory Folder’. Subtitled ‘Stepping into the Unknown’, this introduces the reader to roleplaying, explains what is in the box, tells him how to use the dice and play CHILL. It includes eight, ready-to-play character cards, and an explanation of the core mechanic. There is a short example of play as well, so that within a few pages, the prospective player is also ready to play, whilst the prospective CHILL Master—as the Game Master is known—is prepared to dive into ‘Terror in Warwick House’ and reader herself to run that. The eight, ready-to-play character cards cover a then diverse range of ages, genders, and races. They consist of a male Caucasian martial arts instructor, a female Asian drama teacher, a Mexican-American college quarterback (infamously with the ‘Throw: Javelin’ skill), a female Caucasian model, a male Caucasian professor of anthropology and archaeology (complete with pipe and safari suit, including pith helmet), a female Caucasian investigative reporter (in the Kolchak: The Nightstalker mode), a male African-American surgeon, and a female Caucasian biology student. One issue here is the terminology, such as using ‘Oriental’ to describe the female Asian drama teacher, which would have been fine in 1984, but is not acceptable as a term now. So, some of the language in CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown has dated, though of course, this is easily addressed in play and it should be made clear that the mix of pre-generated characters was and is well intentioned by the standards of the day.

‘Terror in Warwick House’ is an introductory scenario and the second thing that the CHILL Master needs to look at. The Envoys are all members of S.A.V.E., many of them with links to Severn College. Recently, the college decided that it wanted to knock down a colonial era mansion that has been shut up due to its poor reputation, in order to expand the car park. Unfortunately, two workmen have been killed before the clearance began, and S.A.V.E. suspects that the Unknown is involved. It contacts the nearest Envoys, that is, the Player Characters, and asks them to investigate. The scenario is effectively a nasty haunted house, deadly in places, one which is played like solo adventure, but with the whole group deciding to move between locations or take actions together—and not splitting apart—rather than individually. Throughout, the Envoys will be taunted and haunted, and there are some creepy moments, like the wooden stairs animating as hands and grabbing the ankles of anyone on the stairs, with the players being shown how to roll dice, have their Envoys engage in combat, and detect the Unknown. It is linear and basic, playable in a single session. Which is fine up to a point, as CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown is designed for players aged twelve and up, but there is no other scenario in the box. So, nothing more sophisticated for the CHILL Master to run properly for her players after running ‘Terror in Warwick House’ or simply a proper scenario that an experienced Game Master would want to run.

An Envoy in CHILL is defined by Abilities and Skills. He has eight Basic Abilities. These are Strength, Dexterity, Agility, Willpower, Personality, Perception, Stamina, and Luck. These range in value between twenty-six and eighty. The Basic Abilities have various uses, such as the basic chance to hit a target using a firearm for Dexterity, Willpower as the chance to overcome the fear of seeing a monster, Personality to persuade an NPC, Perception to notice things, and so on. Luck has more uses. First off, only Player Characters have Luck as a Basic Ability—NPCs and monsters do not. It is rolled to avoid certain death, spent permanently to avoid being shot, and of course, how fortunate or not, the Player Character according to the whims of the dice. Several other abilities are derived from the Basic Abilities. These include Unskilled Melee, Health, and more. The Basic Abilities can also grant bonuses to an Envoy’s skills.

Skills range in value between forty-one and one-hundred-and-thirty-five, and have a base value derived from a Basic Ability, such as Dexterity for combat skills and Stamina for Swimming, or a number of Basic Abilities which are then averaged. A skill is ranked at either Student, Teacher, or Master, and each provides a flat bonus to the basic skill value. This is either ‘+15’, ‘+20’, and ‘+25’ respectively (the ‘CHILL Campaign Book’ lists this as ‘+15’ for both the Student and the Teacher Rank, which is clearly an error). Some skills as Martial Arts cost double the skill points to acquire. The majority of the skills listed are appropriate for the eighties when CHILL is set and in terms of combat skills, all the way back to the medieval era. However, the only real technical skill available is Mechanics, and there are no skills for electronics or computers, which would feel odd in 1984, let alone today.

To create an Envoy, a player rolls three ten-sided dice, totals and doubles the result, and adds twenty to get the total for each Basic Ability. After working out the derived abilities, the player rolls a single die to determine the number of skill points the Envoy has, between one and five. If the Envoy has a Perception and a Willpower that are both high enough, then he will have a single Discipline in one of the Art. There are a lot of combat skills—including Boomerang slightly fewer professional skills, and very few common skills. The oddest skill is ‘Modelling’, is not making models or modelling a theoretical situation, but more social etiquette combined with the ability to walk poised fashion down a fashion runway… The skills are quite detailed in their use, especially the combat skills. So, although an Envoy starts off with relatively few skills compared to Player Characters in other roleplaying games, this is offset by a player and the CHILL Master needing to know how they work.

Veronica Puckett
Strength 42 Dexterity 66 Agility 60 Willpower 62
Personality 66 Perception 70 Stamina 58 Luck 64
Unskilled Melee Skill: 51
Current Stamina: 58

Skills
History (Student) 66 (81)
Language, Ancient (Student) 66 (81)

ART
Clairvoyant/Prescient Dream 68

Mechanically, CHILL is a percentile system that really uses two types of roll. A General Ability Check is a simple roll against a Basic Ability to determine whether or not an action succeeded or not. A General Skill Check works the same, but for skill use. A Specific Ability or Specific Skill Check is used whenever a more nuanced result is required and the CHILL Master needs to know how many degrees of success were achieved. To do this, the player has to make a successful roll and the Chill Master consults the CHILL Action Table. She subtracts the value of Basic Ability or the Skill being used from the value of the roll and cross references it in the appropriate column on the CHILL Action Table. This will give an outcome that is either a Limited, Moderate, High, or Complete Success. The specific outcome will vary from one skill to the next.

Combat in CHILL also uses the CHILL Action Table. Initiative is handled with a roll of a single die and the winning side then uses the Art, fires missile weapons, moves, and then engages in melee attacks. The defending side has the chance to return missile fire. Once done, the defending does exactly the same. Unsurprisingly, this feels like a wargame rather than a roleplaying game. Attacks can be Specific Ability Check or a Specific Skill Check, depending upon whether or not the Envoy has any skill ranks in the weapon he is wielding. What this means is that making a Specific Ability Check for an attack will give the Envoy a lower chance to succeed and a lower chance to get a better roll, whilst someone with the skill will have a better chance of both. As opposed to Specific Ability and Specific Skill Checks, there is more nuance to possible outcomes. The attacker is rolling to determine the Attack Margin which will cross referenced on the Defence Column. The Defence Column is determined randomly for missile attacks, modified by the defender expending points of Luck or by the defender’s skill for a melee attacks. Unarmed combat results can be Scant Damage, Medium Damage, Harsh Damage, Crushing Damage, or Knockdown, and most of these inflict a loss of Stamina points, but some of these can also inflict a Scratch Wound and a Light Wound. Armed combat results include Scratch Wound, Light Wound, and Medium Wound, all the way up to Critical Wound. These inflict greater Stamina loss and possibly continued Stamina loss, depending on the severity.

For example, Veronica Puckett, investigating a mausoleum in the town graveyard is confronted by a zombie. Veronica, as a member of S.A.V.E., has read about zombies and knows that they are slow and relentless, and that they can be destroyed by a bullet to the brain or having their mouths filled with salt and the mouth shut. In some cases, when chopped apart, she has read that a zombie’s limbs continue to attack. Unfortunately, Veronica does not have a gun, so she will have to improvise. Fortunately, the CHILL Master tells her player that there is a shovel left nearby by one of the graveyard workers, and that because the zombie goes last in the Initiative, she can snatch it up and attack. However, first Veronica has to overcome her fear and her player make a Fear Check.

The Zombie has a FEAR statistic of five. The CHILL Master consults the fifth Defence Column on the CHILL Action Table and Veronica’s player rolls the dice. He rolls ‘10’, which gives a result of ‘M’. Veronica is ‘Mildly Frightened’. She loses five points of Willpower, but can still act. Veronica is going to thack the zombie with her shovel. Unfortunately, Veronica has no combat skills, so is relying on her Unskilled Melee Skill, which is 51. She swings wildly! Very wildly as she rolls ‘02’! This is not the best result that she can get, but it is very close. The CHILL Master deducts the result of the roll from her Unskilled Melee Skill to give an Attack Margin of ‘49’, or ‘H’. This indicates a Heavy Wound, which means that the defender would lose Stamina from the blow and continue to lose Stamina from the wound. Unfortunately, zombies cannot suffer worlds, so just loses 42 points of Stamina—more than half of its total. Fortunately for Veronica, the zombie misses its attack and she decides that it would be good idea to find another way to deal with the undead creature. For that she needs a gun or some friends help her. Before the zombie can attack again, Veronica flees the graveyard.

As well as the individual outcomes and rules for the skills, CHILL includes rules for travel, weather, vehicle movement, poisons, diseases, and more. As a horror roleplaying, it handles scares and their possible outcome through a Fear Check. These are made against an Envoy’s current Willpower and compared to the column on the CHILL Action Table that corresponds to the Fear statistic for the creature or monster. A Failure on the check results in the loss of Willpower and the Envoy fleeing in panic, as do most results to lesser degrees. On an ‘H’ or ‘C’ result, the Envoy is Courageous and overcomes his fear. The rules for animals cover their reaction to fearful situations, especially in reaction to the Evil Way, and also for creating minor and major NPCs, and their possible reactions. This scales up to larger organisations too, in particular, their relation to S.A.V.E. including the civil authorities, the clergy, the press, and more.

The ‘CHILL Campaign Book’ details the Art, the secret weapon has in its arsenal to use against the Unknown and the practitioners of the Evil Way. There are three Forms—Communication, Restoration, and Protection—that members of S.A.V.E. employ, and then there is the Evil Way. Each Form has its own skill, and costs between two and twenty points to use. In addition, a player can also spend points of his Envoy’s Willpower to improve the chances of a Discipline working one a one-for-one basis. The process can be interrupted in combat, and when that happens, the Envoy will also lose any Willpower spent. The amount that can be spent also depends on the Envoy’s current Stamina. Each Form has three Disciplines and each one needs to be learned individually. Although all nine Disciplines are useful, with some like Mental Shield and Sphere of Protection from the Protection Discipline, providing defence against attacks and other dangers, none of the Disciplines are offensive in nature. What this means is the Envoys will need to find another way to defeat the Unknown rather than simply relying upon the Art. In nature, the Art is more psionics than magic.

Penultimately, the ‘CHILL Campaign Book’ provides both a history of S.A.V.E. and a timeline along with an overview of how it operates and how it helps the Envoys. It gives enough details without being overly specific. Lastly, there is advice for the CHILL Master on running the roleplaying games. The advice is decent, covering what the CHILL Master does and what her responsibilities are, plus writing scenarios, maintaining game balance, and using elements of horror. It also suggests using the locations marked on ‘The World of CHILL’ map as potential starting points as they are all sites that S.A.V.E. has sent expeditions to and they failed to return.

The final book in CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown is ‘CHILL: Horrors from the Unknown’. It describes the Evil Way, the dark counterpart to the Art, as detailed in S.A.V.E.’s own Manual 2B: Devices of the Enemy. Over forty disciplines of the Evil Way are given, from Animation of the Dead, Appear Dead (Self and Other), and Blind to White Heat, Wound, and Write. Categorised into two groupings, Distortion and Subjection, they are forceful and dangerous, and in comparison, to the Art, give creatures, monsters, and practitioners of the Evil Way the edge. Like the disciplines of the Art, those of the Evil Way cost the user Willpower to use, but where an Envoy will have a skill value in individual disciplines of the Art, the user of the Evil Way will have a simple ‘Evil Way Score’.

Nearly two thirds of ‘CHILL: Horrors from the Unknown’ is dedicated to the Evil Way and descriptions of its disciplines. The remaining presents it monsters, beginning with simple animals, before going on to describe some ten corporeal, incorporeal, and special creatures. They include the Ghoul, the Mummy, Werewolf, and the Zombie for the corporeal, and the Banshee, the Fetch, the Ghost, and the Hate for the incorporeal. The two special creatures are the Changeling and the Vampire. The latter is a simple Carpathian Vampire, the weakest of its kind. Nevertheless, it is still a tough opponent—and indeed, all of the entries in ‘CHILL: Horrors from the Unknown’ are hardy monsters, drawn from classic horror stories and films, which will be challenging opponents to the Envoys. There can be no doubt that ‘CHILL: Horrors from the Unknown’ is the highlight of CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown. It is easier to read and use than the ‘CHILL Campaign Book’. Both monsters and the Evil Way are nicely detailed and fantastically illustrated and ready to be used to scare the Envoys, if not their players. If there is anything missing from this list it is the Frankenstein’s Monster type creature and the Witch or Wizard, although it would not be that difficult for the CHILL Master to create them.

CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown is something of a misnomer because nothing in its pages and its horror is really ‘unknown’. All of its monsters are known and that is because they are all drawn from common folklore and from their depiction on screen. This gives them a familiarity that potentially makes them less scary and to certain extent breeds the disdain which CHILL would be held at the time as evidenced by the reviews. Of course, Call of Cthulhu was the ‘superior’ horror game. Its Mythos was then unfamiliar, nihilistic, and the protagonists, the Investigators, were fragile amateurs lacking the backing of a worldwide, secret organisation. Yet, what CHILL offered was a broader, though not deeper, choice in terms of its horror. It could do the Gothic horror of classic Americana and Hammer Horror films, it could do ‘monster of the week’, and yes, it could do Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! if you wanted. The familiarity means that in play, the players have to lean into and embrace the genre that much more. They are not necessarily going to be scared by the unfamiliar, but they can roleplay their Envoys being scared by what is otherwise familiar to them as players.

In terms of design, CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown aims for a universal mechanic with its CHILL Action Table, and almost succeeds. The problem is that the results are not themselves universal, varying depending upon if the player is rolling a Specific Ability or Skill Check, an armed or unarmed attack, a Fear check, and so on. Plus, every skill has its own set of results, so that mechanically, CHILL feels overwritten and fussy. However, the CHILL Action Table is printed on the back of both the ‘CHILL Campaign Book’ and the ‘CHILL: Horrors from the Unknown’ books, so the CHILL Master can refer to the table on the back of the latter, whilst the results of various Specific Skill Checks can be consulted in the former.

For a horror roleplaying game, and certainly one written and set in the eighties, there are some odd omissions from CHILL. There is only the one technical skill, Mechanics, and technology is not addressed at all in the roleplaying game. There is neither an equipment list nor even prices given for the weapons it does list. Some of that is due to the fact that S.A.V.E. pays for the Envoys’ expenses whilst they are on an investigation and they each start with standard set of equipment. Nevertheless, from a technological standpoint, CHILL did not and does not feel like a modern-set horror roleplaying game. The advantage to that is that it can easily be shifted from the modern period to earlier periods, and much of the artwork depicts encounters with the Unknown in the Victorian era. Further, CHILL would be just as easy to run in even earlier periods, although that would be outside of the time frame for S.A.V.E.

If ultimately, there is a problem with CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown, it is that it lacks a proper scenario. That is, one that the CHILL Master can run for her players. ‘Terror in Warwick House’ is more like playing a novel—and doing so collectively—than actually playing a proper horror scenario. Without that example scenario to get an idea of what a scenario for CHILL would like, the advice on writing scenarios is consequently underwhelming. That said, the inspirations for the roleplaying game’s designers—the films of Hammer Horror and Universal Monsters—are also inspiration for the CHILL Master and so are a ready source of scenario ideas. This is despite the fact that CHILL does not include a filmography. Instead, its list of suggested reading consists of Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, H. Rider Haggard, Stephen King, Shirley Jackson, Edgar Allen Poe, Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker—and yes, H.P. Lovecraft.

Physically, CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown is very nicely presented boxed set. The cover to the box is eye-catching and the artwork is excellent, imparting feelings of dread and terror for the poor fortune stuck those situations. This is done by Jim Holloway throughout and it gives the roleplaying game a highly consistent look. The writing, and consequently, the rules, suffer in places from being overwritten unfortunately. The ‘CHILL Campaign Book’ could have slightly organised as certain chapters do feel as if they should be adjacent to each other.

—oOo—

CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown was reviewed in ‘Horribly simple to learn: CHILL will leave you shivering for more’ by Jerry Epperson in Dragon #90 (October 1984). Although critical of the economics rules—or lack of them, and for not exploring options outside of being members of S.A.V.E., his main issue with the included scenario. “Experienced role-players will find that “Terror in Warwick House” is much like a guided tour of a national monument. While it portends to be a dangerous place, one gets the feeling that those who fell victim to the sinister occupants before the player characters were called to the scene were either idiots or invalids. The clues required by the characters to dispose of the evil are practically spoon-fed to the players.” Despite these issues, his conclusion was much positive: “At the risk of seeming to contradict all of the above complaints, it must be said that these problems are not major flaws in the game’s design; any CM should be able to alter them with little effort. All things considered, the CHILL game does just what it sets out to do. It doesn’t stall play with unwieldy rules or sub-systems, and it allows the CM to pace the storyline and preserve the intensity of a situation thanks to the game’s elegant simplicity. As an alternative to dungeon delving, superheroing, or chasing after Cthulhu, the CHILL game is something you can really sink your teeth into.”

As was a common occurrence, CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown was reviewed not once, but twice in the pages of Space Gamer. First by William Barton in the ‘Capsule Reviews’ in Space Gamer Number 71 (November/December 1984). He said, “Chill is an impressive and professional first release for Pacesetter and an excellent addition to the genre.” He criticised the turn sequence in combat and did not think that Player Characters started with enough skills, but praised the roleplaying game for its innovations, including the CHILL Action Table. He finished his review by saying, “Still, Chill is a viable alternative in supernatural gaming for those who desire less gunplay than is typical in Stalking or prefer more conventional creatures than the sanity-blasting horrors of CoC.”

Then, as part of an overview of the complete output from Pacesetter Ltd., Warren Spector reviewed CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown in ‘The Pacesetter Line’ as a ‘Featured Review’ in Space Gamer Number 75 (July/August 1985). He highlighted the inclusion of the adventure, ‘Terror in Warwick House’. “This adventure is worthy of comment. Many roleplaying games come packaged with adventures but, as far as I know, Chill is the first to include an introductory folder advising players to begin playing that adventure before they’ve read the rules of the game! To begin, players have only to read a four-page, READ-ME-FIRST! introduction to the rules, pick up the 16-page adventure booklet, and begin playing! And, sure enough, the cockamamie scheme works! The adventure itself is too straightforward and contrived (with CM instructions like “Don't let the players go upstairs yet!” How do you stop them?). But what the heck? At least you don’t have to wait for days while everyone learns the rules.” Although he felt that the mechanics needed work, Spector finished with, “Though superficially simpler than Call of Cthulhu, the clear leader in the horror field, Chill falls somewhat short of the mark.”

No less than Keith Herber reviewed CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown in ‘Games Reviews’ in Different Worlds Issue 37 (November/December 1984). As with other reviews, he paid particular attention to ‘Terror in Warwick House’, saying that, “For ease of use, this scenario offers a set of pre-generated player-characters that can be used and the adventure itself provides but limited choices for the players the results of these choices being clearly spelled out for the benefit of the novice gamemaster. While this does lead to a more or less predictable conclusion, the purpose of the adventure is to demonstrate the rules of the game and this it does admirably. It also proved to be one of the best introductions to role-playing games I have yet seen. While I might question the saleman’s [sic]claim that a group of beginning gamers can be playing within fifteen minutes of opening the box, it is certain they could enjoy an exciting first time with roleplaying on the same evening that they purchased the game.” Although he was critical of the low number of monsters in the books, especially given that once they have been defeated, the Envoys are no longer subject to Fear effects from them, he was positive about the game overall. “I found Chill to be a well thought-out, well-presented game that simulates the world of horror as represented in (particularly) the movies. The rules are flexible enough and complete enough to allow a gamemaster to set whatever tone or mood he desires his campaign to have and there is a large amount of written and filmed material from which to draw adventure designs.” Lastly, he awarded CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown three stars out of five.

Angus McLellan reviewed CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown in ‘Open Box’ in White Dwarf Issue 61 (January 1985). He too, was critical of ‘Terror in Warwick House’, saying that, “Even for an introductory scenario it's rather slow and distinctly lacking in excitement.” and found the creatures in the ‘CHILL: Horrors from the Unknown’ to be, “…a rather drab bunch of werewolves, vampires, ghouls, etc.” Before award CHILL a surprising score of seven out of ten, he finished with, “To sum up, Chill is ideally suited for beginners, the rules are not crystal clear, but the examples give a good idea of how it all fits together. The horrors are, alas, merely scary, the excitement soon palls, as the players expect more than the trick and tease style terror of Chill. Some hard work from the GM would help but for the money I'd want more than this. With both Call of Cthulhu and Daredevils available at the same sort of price why bother. A few years back this would have shaken the RPG community, now it’s second rate.”

In ‘Game Reviews’ in Imagine No. 23 (February 1985), Paul Mason was similarly critical of ‘Terror in Warwick House’. “Unfortunately, the introductory scenario just doesn’t make the grade. Not is it full of arbitrary manipulation (eg ‘Do not allow the players to go up the stars at this time’), but it has omissions, unnecessary repetition and poor explanations in places. I’m dubious of its merits as a means of introducing newcomers to roleplaying.” Nevertheless, in spite of this and objections to sometimes jokey side of the writing, he the review up with, “Still, if you fancy a game of investigation with gothic horror overtones, and you don't much care for H P Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos, then Chill would be the game to buy.”

—oOo—

CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown is a horror roleplaying game aimed at younger players, in terms of its horror and tone, its choice of monsters and creatures. This makes its horror more accessible and more familiar, which combined with core ease of the rules and CHILL Action Table, make the basics of the game easy to learn and play. CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown emphasises this aspect by having it so that the CHILL Master and her players can open the box, read through the ‘CHILL Introductory Folder’ and then CHILL Master also read through ‘Terror in Warwick House’, and be playing in thirty minutes. However, beyond this, CHILL is not as complete or easy as it should be. The mechanics to the roleplaying game do feel fussy with lots of different skill and action outcomes depending on that the Envoys are doing, which hinders ease of play, and that despite the universal nature of the CHILL Action Table. The existence of S.A.V.E. suggests that CHILL can be played as campaign game, but what that might look like is barely touched upon and worse, the possible foundation for longer term play, a proper, starting scenario is not included.

Ultimately, if CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown feels lighter and tonally different, it is only in comparison to cosmic horror of Call of Cthulhu. It is still a horror roleplaying game, one that deals with the classic monsters of horror, and just as those confronting those can still be enjoyed in prose and on screen, so can confronting those can still be enjoyed in a roleplaying game. As a design, CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown is not quite as good as it could be, in terms of mechanics or content, but all of the elements are there to make it both playable, enjoyable, and incredibly, initially, highly accessible. Although it deals with classic horror, CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown is a very playable horror roleplaying game that falls short of being a classic.