Fifth Edition Filleted

How would you react if someone offered to run a horror scenario for you using Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition? Turn the offer down flat? Run a mile? Ask why would anyone would want to run a horror game using Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition when there are a hundred-and-one alternatives readily available, many of which are specifically designed to handle the genre? After all, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition is best suited to running heroic (some would even go as far as superheroic) high fantasy, even in its own horror setting of Ravenloft, with highly capable Player Characters who possess abilities and powers that are effectively miraculous, and probably likely, an array of magical items that make them even more capable, let alone being swaddled in Hit Points and the Frightened Condition not actually having that much of an effect in game. Before you run away or yell at whomever made you that offer or throw another roleplaying game at said person, what if someone else told you that there is a horror roleplaying game based on Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition which casts the ‘heroes’ as ordinary men and women who can get scared, act out of desperation, pay for their mistakes, and are forced to suffer unfair odds in the face of terrifying situations, horrifying monsters, and malign evil? All that and it is uncomplicated and easy to learn, plays and runs fast, and is supported by numerous scenarios straight out of the book, one of which you could be playing within an hour of the Game Master opening the book? You might not believe me, but such roleplaying game really does exist and upfront it makes a claim on the front cover so bold that you might wonder at the designer’s audacity.

FiveEvil: A Game of Unnerving Terror, Subverting the Expectations of the World’s Greatest RPG is that roleplaying game. Published following a successful Kickstarter campaign by Handiwork Games, best known for BEOWULF: Age of Heroes and the second editions of both Cold City and Hot War, it is a roleplaying game of modern horror, intended to cover everything from the style of Stephen King, The Walking Dead, and Twin Peaks to Halloween, The Thing, and The Ring. It makes multiple changes to standard Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. These start with it not being a Class and Level roleplaying game and it not having either abilities, powers, or Feats. Also gone is Inspiration, although Advantage and Disadvantage remain, and yet even more radically, there is no combat system and no attack rolls, and in keeping with the genre, but not necessarily Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, the Horror that the Player Characters are forced to confront is out to get them—and it does not play fair. This is a roleplaying game in which the Player Characters do not seek out the Horror or choose to confront it, but one in which the Horror seeks them out and confronts them. With all of that gone, what does FiveEvil give in its stead?

The Player Character looks very different in FiveEvil. He has the traditional abilities of Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma, and they are rated between three and eighteen. He has skills, but these are limited to twelve, two per ability, and he has Hit Points, typically ten for an average Player Character. After that, the changes really start. He has two Descriptors, which can be a job, hobby, or archetype, such as accountant, fly fishing, or surly teenager. Each Descriptor has a bonus, typically +4 for the job or stereotype and +2 for the hobby. These are applied to the skills that the Player Character is proficient in, two for primary Descriptor and one for the secondary Descriptor, as well to a Save Bonus for each Descriptor. He has four Personality Aspects—Habit, Belief, Flaw, and Relationship—that help define how the Player Character should be roleplayed. They can be invoked to ignore the Intensity of a situation and thus make a needed roll easier to achieve or to shake off a point of Desperation. A Player Character starts with no points of Desperation, but will acquire them as he is forced to struggle to survive the odds in the face the Horror. The more points of Desperation a Player Character has, the greater the likelihood that he will make mistakes and fall victim to whatever plans the Horror has for him.

Creating a Player Character in FiveEvil is a matter of choosing Descriptors and their associated skills and saves, defining the four Personality Aspects, and rolling for the abilities. This is done on three six-sided dice, though other methods are suggested. The process is quick and easy.

Mathias Pouke
Descriptor #1: Attentive Editor (+4)
Descriptor #2: Roleplaying Fanatic (+2)
Habit: Makes too many puns
Belief: Expect the worst and you will never be disappointed
Flaw: Fear of missing out
Relationship: How any cats can one man have?

Strength 10 (+0); Athletics [o], Intimidation [o]
Dexterity 12 (+0); Agility [o], Stealth [o]
Constitution 13 (+1); Grit [o], Survival [o]
Intelligence 14 (+2); Investigation [×], Knowledge/Recall [×]; Save [×]
Wisdom 10 (+0); Insight [o], Perception [o]
Charisma 13 (+1); Deception [o], Persuasion [×]; Save [×]

Hit Points: 12
Desperation: 0

Mechanically, in Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, when a player wants his character to act, he rolls a twenty-sided die and if the result after applying any bonuses, is equal to or greater than the Difficulty Class of the action, then the character succeeds. This is exactly the same in FiveEvil, except the Difficulty Class does not depend on the action being attempted or necessarily how challenging it is. Instead, it is based on the Intensity of the situation that the Player Characters are in. The Intensity value runs from zero to six, going from just another day at zero through the situation being pressed at two and disrupted at three to murderous at six. So, the more tense and dangerous the situation (accompanying music is, if this was a horror film), the higher the Intensity. When the Intensity value is zero, the Difficulty Class is always ten, but the Difficulty Class increases as the Intensity increases, raising up to sixteen. The players always know what the Intensity value is as the Game Master has to display it on the table. In this way, it lets the players know how tense the situation is and thus the degree of horror that they need to lean into, as well as its mechanical difficulty. Whatever the Intensity Difficulty Class, it is the current Difficulty Class for all actions, whether a Player Character wants to leap from one rooftop to another, decapitate a zombie with an axe, or search the library for the correct eldritch tome. This includes Saves as well, but most rolls will be ability checks as there are no skill checks.

If the result is equal to, or higher than, the Intensity Difficulty Class, the Player Character succeeds, but if not, he fails, and the situation is likely to go badly against him. If the result is a natural one, or is less than the Player Character’s Desperation, he has made a Mistake. The Game Master chooses the result which fits the situation, which might be that the Player Character stumbles, hurts himself, takes extra time, suffers Disadvantage, or drops, breaks, or forgets something, and so on. Conversely, if the result is a natural twenty or simply twenty or more, the Player Character catches a Break. In this case, the Game Master choses a benefit for the Player Character, which might be that he is impressive, finds something useful, gains Advantage, discovers a vulnerability of the Horror being faced, and so on.

In addition, the Game Master may need to roll a Doom check. This is rolled against the current Intensity Difficulty Class without modifiers and is used as an oracle to determine if the situation or an aspect of it favours the Player Characters or not.

The horror genre drives those subject to its terrifying events and encounters to act out of desperation to survive, let alone escape. No less in FiveEvil, but when a Player Character acts out of desperation, he gains points of Desperation. In return, a roll can be made with Advantage, a flat +2 bonus can be applied to ability checks or saves after their roll has been made, to temporarily ignore the effects of being Wounded, or to increase the damage inflicted in an attack by the current Intensity value. A Player Character can have a maximum of ten points of Desperation, before he can no longer act out of desperation. However, the acting out of, and gaining points of, Desperation, has its consequences. Any ability check or save roll whose result is under the Player Character’s current Desperation total, the Player Character makes a Mistake, and if the Player Character still has points of Desperation when in a rest, they have to be processed. This means that the Player Character comes to terms with what he has just encountered, survived, or witnessed. When this happens, there is a chance that one or more of the Player Character’s Personality Aspects is alienated. Mechanically, an alienated Personality Aspect cannot be invoked, but narratively, an alienated Personality Aspect indicates that the Player Character’s personality has suffered and he has lost something of himself. If all four Personality Aspects are alienated, the Player Character has lost the will to carry on, cannot act out of Desperation, and is effectively out of the scenario.

Alienated Personality Aspects are the equivalent of sanity in other horror roleplaying games, but in FiveEvil, instead of the loss of raw numbers indicating a Player Character’s state, it is who the Player Character is and how he acts that are affected. He suffers loss rather than has an effect imposed upon him, but this only comes about because the player has decided that he wants to put his character at greater risk and accumulate Desperation. Instead, where the effect of the Horror or the situation is imposed is on the Intensity value and whilst it is imposed collectively, it is till up to the player to decide how his character acts and whether or not that is through Desperation. Ultimately, it is up to player agency, but since FiveEvil is a horror roleplaying game, that choice is often a case of choosing the least bad option rather than the best option.

Instead of combat encounters, FiveEvil has Terror Encounters. These are the roleplaying game’s set pieces in which the Horror confronts the Player Characters. From the off, the Player Characters are on the back foot. Once the Game Master sets the stage, the Player Characters must make a Terror Save which determines if they freeze in terror, run away, or can act. However, the Player Characters do not so much act in Terror Encounters, but react. This is because the Horror always goes first in a Terror Round and as a Terror Reaction, a Player Character can do just one thing. This is either to fight and attempt to inflict harm on the horror, flight and runaway, or finish whatever other task the Player Character wants to do. To do so, a player Character must face the Horror and make a Doom check. In the unlikelihood of a ‘reprieve’, the Player Character gains a second Terror Reaction, whilst on a Success, he avoids any Evils, is subject to an Evil on a failure, and suffers an extra Evil on a Doom result. An Evil is an effect inflicted on the Player Character by the Game Master, either selected appropriately to the situation or rolled randomly, and they can be either minor or serious in terms of severity. Minor Evils are suffered on rounds one and two of a Terror Encounter, whilst Serious Evils come into effect from the third round onwards.

Terror Rounds are patently unfair and favours the Horrors rather the Player Characters and is entirely intentional. The Player Characters are ordinary folk and the Horror not, and survival is never guaranteed. The explanation of how Terror Rounds work is supported by a lengthy example of play which very nicely showcases how all of FiveEvil works.

All of the play rules in FiveEvil are covered in the book’s first forty pages, including base advice, the elements of both Player Characters and Horrors, and running the roleplaying game. The advice for both player and Game Master is upfront and is to play hard, earn and give trust, take the hits, feel the fear, and play safe both in establishing the tone of the game and how it then plays out. Taking all of this in hand, the Game Master and her players are ready to play the first of five scenarios in FiveEvil. This is ‘Wakefield House’ in which a group of high school teenagers are confronted by Kyle, a friend of theirs who disappeared the year before, a victim of his tragic circumstances. In the first part, the Player Characters are confronted by Kyle and run away, but are haunted by his presence as they try and work out what has happened to him and how they can stop him or rescue him. There is a emotional strand to the scenario in that each Player Character is not as good a friend to Kyle as he or she should have been and rescuing him is their path to redemption as much as his.

‘Wakefield House’ is a short affair, playable in a single session or two. It is also easy to prepare and comes with six pre-generated Player Characters, such that a Game Master really could read through the first forty pages of FiveEvil and the twenty-page ‘Wakefield House’ and have it ready to run in surprisingly short amount of time.

The rules for Player Character generation follow this and it comes with plenty of advice and suggestions in terms of Descriptors and Personality Aspects for different settings. All of this is done by page eighty or so, with the remainder of book dedicated to the Game Master and running and creating for FiveEvil. The advice throughout is thorough and helpful, but at its core is the idea that whilst FiveEvil likely draws heavily from films and books in terms of inspiration, and might look like a story from a film or a book, what it really is, is a trap for the Player Characters. They are trapped by the situation they are in and they are trapped by whatever plans that the Horror has for them, but they are also trapped by their Personality Aspects as they are what will motivate them. That is, when they are not running away! The advice also examines the different modes of play, going from Quiet Mode to Suspense Mode, and finally Terror Mode with Terror Encounters. There is advice too on running investigations, but particularly good is the section on ‘Horror Stagecraft’ which examines different techniques that the Game Master can use to maintain a rhythm of tension rising and falling. Being explicit about the odds, but preserve hidden truths until they need to be revealed (always at the worst moment in the story); getting under the skin of the players not to scare them, but help them scare themselves by leaving gaps in what their characters know and listening to them; keeping the suspense unbearable by setting up the threat and dialling up the Intensity, but allowing to slow down too; throwing in jump scares (with a nice Lewton bus reference thrown in); maintaining the tension in the moment; and more. The advice is excellent and it could have been published in standalone book of its own and it still would be good, not just in the FiveEvil rules.

The advice continues with a guide to creating scenarios, including deciding on a setting, choosing a Horror, selecting the right type of trap that the Player Characters will fall into, and pitching a scenario to the players. Settings break some archetypical locations for a horror, asking questions about each, giving suggestions as possible Player Characters and their group dynamics, adding setting details, and backing it up with advice on using the settings. Examples include an isolated research station, touring band, wilderness adventure, busy hospital, boarding school, grimy spaceship, charming suburb, and dead end town, each one a toolkit to help the Game Master set the stage for a scenario. The example Horrors include alien insects, vampires, ravenous carnivores, infections and zombies, cultists and the things they serve, and unstoppable maniacs. It feels like a short list, but they are constructed more like archetypes and it is easy to see how they can be fleshed out to be something more specific in detail and flavour for a scenario.

So far, FiveEvil has been primarily aimed at single scenarios. For campaign play it offers various different types of encounters and other options that extend play. These include hunt encounters when the Player Characters are being hunted and specific challenge encounters for difficult situations; expanding character options with particular areas of knowledge called ‘Know-Hows’ and developing a Player Character in the long term; and handling mysteries. There is a good toolkit help the Game Master create mysteries and again, just like the advice on horror stagecraft, it is worth reading by any Game Master who wants to run horror, not just FiveEvil. Then, this backed up by examples, including revisiting ‘Wakefield House’ to run it as a mystery.

Lastly, FiveEvil includes four, ready-to-play scenarios. ‘Last Fun Weekend’ sees a high school reunion go wrong at a lonely house in the hills where the Player Characters grew up; in ‘Everyone Got Something Going On’ the Player Characters get locked in downtown and hunted by a brutal killer when they attend a mandatory counselling appointment; in ‘Out of the Circle’ they are members of a religious cult who go in search of a missing member only to discover some horrible truths about her; and in ‘Big Screamin’ Demons’ a band whose members hate each other get back together for final time on a private island because the billionaire’s pay is good. The scenarios vary in length, none more than two or three sessions long. ‘Big Screamin’ Demons’ does disrupt the tone a little, being an over the top comic rock opera of a horror scenario. All four scenarios are good though and showcase the possibilities of FiveEvil very well.

Curiously, what FiveEvil is reminiscent of is 13th Age from Pelgrane Press. 13th Age presents a radical blending of Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition and Dungeons & Dragons, Fourth Edition combined with genre enforcing storytelling mechanics. Putting aside the Class elements of 13th Age—Features, Talents, and Power—what feels specifically reminiscent of the epic fantasy roleplaying game in FiveEvil are Descriptors and Intensity. Descriptors feel like Backgrounds, the equivalent of skills in 13th Age, being very broad in their description and application, whilst Intensity feels like the Escalation Die in 13th Age. Both possess the same scale, running from one to six, and both values are player-facing, so that the players always know what they are. The Escalation Die literally sits on the table in front of the players and a six-sided die could do the same when playing FiveEvil. The Escalation Die is a bonus combat, designed to speed up combat in 13th Age, triggering various bonus effects, and making it more exciting. Intensity does not make the situation more exciting, but more tense, more horrific, and more challenging, the inverse of the Escalation Die. Both though, enforce their respective genres.

Physically, FiveEvil is very well presented. Both artwork and cartography are good. The writing though is excellent.

Whilst it is true that the underlying architecture of Dungeons & Dragons remains in FiveEvil, making it accessible to players of the world’s most popular roleplaying game, the changes to FiveEvil are more than enough for players who have eschewed either Dungeons & Dragons or Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition to look at it and see a very different roleplaying game. These changes are not other elements drawn from Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition or other similar fantasy roleplaying games, but with techniques and mechanisms more familiar to storytelling design. These enforce the genre again and again, making play tense, placing Player Characters in horrifying situations, and confronting them with terrible choices as they are confronted by real monsters and Horrors. FiveEvil: A Game of Unnerving Terror, Subverting the Expectations of the World’s Greatest RPG is an incredibly accomplished redesign of the hobby’s number one roleplaying game that both fulfils the claims of its subtitle and fails to fulfil the claims of the subtitle. It fails in part because the architecture of Dungeons & Dragons underlying the roleplaying game still remains and in part because so many changes are made to get what FiveEvil to do what it does, but succeeds because the end result really does what you expect Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition not to do. That said, FiveEvil: A Game of Unnerving Terror, Subverting the Expectations of the World’s Greatest RPG does not change Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition so much, as slice it open and gut its insides, filleting it right down to the barest of bones before building it back up again to make it a mean, lean scaring machine.

The Best Witches’ Besties

It is an undeniable truth that the Witch gets a lot of bad press. Not necessarily within the roleplaying hobby, but from without, for the Witch is seen as a figure of evil, often—though not necessarily—a female figure of evil, and a figure to be feared and persecuted. Much of this stems from the historical witch-hunts of the fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeen, and eighteenth centuries, along with the associated imagery, that is, the crone with the broom, pointy hat, black cat, cauldron, and more. When a Witch does appear in roleplaying, whether it is a historical or a fantasy setting, it is typically as the villain, as the perpetrator of some vile crime or mystery for the player characters to solve and stop. Publisher The Other Side has published a number of supplements written not only as a counter to the clichés of the witch figure, but to bring the Witch as a character Class to roleplaying after being disappointed at the lack of the Witch in the Player’s Handbook for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition. However, there is a tradition of telling stories about witches, often aimed at younger readers, such as in the Harry Potter stories or The Worst Witch series by Jill Murphy, and if your players are fans so either, a book like The Children of the Gods: The Classical Witch for Basic Era Games is probably not going to the most appropriate option. In which case, Tales of the Village from Arion Games might.

Familiars of the Village is a supplement for Tales of the Village which helps to bring to life an aspect of witch life which give every witch a permanent companion who can act as guide, sage, conscience (for good or ill), and friend. A familiar is first defined by its animal type, which can be anything from rabbit, bat, and mouse to guinea pig, tortoise, and hedgehog, but surprisingly does not include owl. Second, it is defined by its Background, which is broken down into Origin, Age, Skill, Trait, and Drawback. Thus, for example, a Familiar’s Origin can be ‘Wild’, meaning that it was raised in the wilderness or ‘Lineage’, meaning that it comes from a long line of Familiars; Age runs from young to old; Skill can be ‘Curiosity’, ‘Talkative’, or ‘Teeth & Claws (Beak& Claws)’; Trait can be ‘Eager’, ‘Healer’, or ‘Wise’; and Drawback can be ‘Apprentice’, ‘Excitable’, or ‘Slow’. Third, a Familiar has five Abilities which are Strength, Speed, Communication, Hiding, and Knowledge. These are either Untrained, Trained, or Master.

Creating a Familiar is a simple matter of choosing an animal type and the different elements of its Background. The player then divides two points amongst the familiar’s Abilities. This can either be to have two that the Familiar is Trained in or one that it is a Master in. If Untrained, a player must roll five or more to generate a Success; if Trained, four or more; and if a Master, three or more. Lastly, the player can give his Familiar a name and as little or as much backstory as is needed. The process is easy enough, but four examples are included.

Where Familiars of the Village gets interesting is in its suggestion as to who might roleplay the Familiars in a game of Tales of the Village. This is the parents of the players, but it could be other responsible adults too. The role of the Familiar is guide and mentor the Witch it is companion to, so not that dissimilar to the role of a parent. The aim is to give advice and make suggestions, but not take the lead, so the young player has room to roleplay and explore without being led or told what to do by a parent. This works better in smaller groups so there is a balance between parents and children, Witches and Familiars.

Unfortunately, there is no real advice on how to run such a situation and no doubt that such advice would have been useful for both veteran roleplayers and those new to the hobby. Similarly, there are no scenario ideas or writing advice for scenarios involving Witches and their Familiars. Given that the Familiar Character Sheet is printed twice, this is a major omission.

Physically, Familiars of the Village is neatly and tidily presented. It is lightly illustrated, but the artwork is cute.

Just as Tales of the Village is not an introductory roleplaying game, the ideas suggested by Familiars of the Village are not introductory either. They can be worked through by an experienced Game Master, but anyone else is left to their devices when it comes to implementing them in play. The means for creating Familiars for Tales of the Village are fine, but everything else could have done with a page or two of advice and scenario ideas, leaving Familiars of the Village underdeveloped.

Your Advanced Player’s Handbook

Depending upon your point of view, when it comes to roleplaying games, we live in an age blessed or cursed by choice. There are too many to choose from, too many genres, and of course, not enough time to them all. This situation is not really different when it comes to playing the big roleplaying games of the hobby’s first and premier genre to this day—fantasy. For some, roleplaying is synonymous with Dungeons & Dragons and thus synonymous with fantasy. That was true in the early days of the hobby with Dungeon & Dragons in 1974 and it remains true today with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. Yet not everyone is happy with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition and this has led to an ever expanding array of options in terms of Dungeons & Dragons fantasy. Many of the alternatives, from Old School Essentials to Labyrinth Lord, from OSRIC and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplaying, draw from previous iterations of Dungeons & Dragons. However, there are also modern variations of Dungeons & Dragons that offer choices in terms of options and complexity, most notably the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and Tales of the Valiant. Then there is Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition.

Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition is a Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition compatible roleplaying game that offers Dungeons & Dragons-style play with more options and with it greater complexity. Not necessarily a huge amount of complexity, but enough that switching from another Dungeons & Dragons-style roleplaying game to Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition requires some adjustment. As with Dungeons & Dragons, there are three core rulebooks. These are Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition – Adventurer’s Guide, Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition – Monstrous Menagerie, and Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition – Trials & Treasures. Of these, the player will only need access to the first, whilst the second two are definitely for the Narrator, who will of course need all three books.

The Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition – Adventurer’s Guide is the book for player. It covers Player Character creation and details what a player can roleplay; combat and adventuring; numerous spells, combat manoeuvres, and exploration knacks; and lots of adventuring equipment, weapons, armour, vehicles, and strongholds. It comes as a fat slab of a book, but fortunately, a player does not to read everything in it. He needs to know how to create a character and what his character can do, how both adventuring and combat works, and what the expectations of play are. So, he can pick the parts that he needs to play right now and if he changes a character, he simply needs to read the description of the things that the new character can do. What it means is that the player just needs to read the bits that are pertinent and read the other bits latter.

Starting with the Player Character, he will have Hit Points, Abilities and Ability Modifiers, and a Proficiency Bonus in Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition just as he does in Dungeon & Dragons, Fifth Edition. Otherwise, a Player Character is defined by his Heritage, Culture, Background, Destiny, and Class. Heritage represents a Player Character’s parentage, what might be called ‘Species’ or ‘Race’ in other fantasy roleplaying games; ‘Culture’ is the environment in which the Player Grew up in; ‘Background’ his occupation; ‘Destiny’ his story, both what has happened in the past and then could happen in the future; and ‘Class’ what his abilities are. The Heritage, whether it is Dragonborn, Dwarf, Elf, Gnome, Halfling, Human, Orc, Planetouched (either Aasimar or Tielfling), or Mixed Heritage sets age, size, and speed for the Player Character, but also grants certain gifts and a paragon gift at Tenth level. For example, an Elf has ‘Darkvision’, ‘Fey Ancestry’, and ‘Trance’, but can have the gift of either ‘Mystic Rapport’, ‘Prescient Vision’, or ‘Preternatural Awareness’, and when the Player Character reaches Tenth Level, can have ‘Elfsight’, ‘Inexorable Insight’, or ‘Spiritual Awareness’. The traditional Half-Elf or Half-Orc found in other similar fantasy roleplaying games can be represented by using the Mixed Heritage option.

Humans in Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition have the traits of ‘Fast Learner’ and ‘Intrepid’. The first means that a Human Player Character gains knowledge or skill faster, but not necessarily the wisdom to use it, reflected by an extra skill Proficiency and requiring less time to train in armour, tools, armour. The second means that in a pinch, a Human player Character can make an ability check, attack roll, or saving throw with Expertise, and then again after a short or long rest. The Human Player Character also has the choice of the Gifts of ‘Diehard Survivor’, ‘Ingenious Focus’, and ‘Spirited Traveller’, with the Paragon Gifts of ‘Determined’, ‘Wind at Your Back’, and ‘Voracious Learner’. Altogether, this covers some of the character of humanity and makes a Human Player Character that little bit more dynamic.

A Player Character’s ‘Culture’ can be Caravanner, Circusfolk, Collegiate, Cosmopolitan, Dragonbound, Dragoncult, Forsaken, Godbound, Imperial, Itinerant, Lone Wanderer, Nomad, Settler, Steamforged, Stoneworthy, Tyrannised, Villager, Warhordling, Wildling, Deep Dwarf, Deep Gnome, Eladrin, Forest Gnome, Forgotten Folx, High Elf, Hill Dwarf, Kithbáin Halfling, Mountain Dwarf, Mustbairn Halfling, Shadow Elf, Stoic Orc, Stout Halfling, Tinker Gnome, Tunnel Halfling, or Wood Elf. What each provides a range of different traits, skill proficiencies, languages, and more. For example, Cosmopolitan means that the Player Character knows how to be ‘Discretely Armed’, has ‘Fashion Sense’ and can thus read others through their bearing and what they wear, ‘Skill Versatility’ grants Proficiency in Culture and another skill, ‘Urban Denizen’ means he knows his way around a city, is ‘Well-Connected’ and knows someone from another culture or heritage, and is literate in Common and two other languages.

What is interesting about some of these Cultures is that ordinarily, they would actually be represented by the equivalent of Heritage in other roleplaying games. So, for example, the Elf Heritage represents a base line, but if a player wants an Elf from the Dreaming or Fey Wild, he chooses the ‘Eladrin’ Culture, and then more traditional Elf types are represented by the ‘High Elf’ or ‘Wood Elf’ Cultures, whilst the ‘Shadow Elf’ Culture does the ‘Dark’ Elf or ‘Drow’ of other fantasy roleplaying games. Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition does this in turn for the Dwarf, Gnome, and Halfling Heritages and is much easier way of handling the differentiation.

‘Background’ is what a Player Character did before he became an adventurer. This can be Acolyte, Artisan, Charlatan, Criminal, Cultist, Entertainer, Exile, Farmer, Folk Hero, Gambler, Guard, Guildmember, Hermit, Marauder, Noble, Outlander, Sage, Sailor, Soldier, Trader, or Urchin. This grants the first of the Player Character’s two Ability bonuses, Proficiency in two skills as well as tools and languages, a connection, a memento, and feature which shows how the Player Character interacts with the world. For example, The Cultist Background grants +1 to Intelligence and another ability; Proficiencies in Religion and either Arcana or Deception; a language; a holy symbol, common clothes, and five torches; and the ‘Forbidden Lore’ Feature which allows the Player Character to research a topic and knows in what book if he fails an Arcana or Religion check. Of course, members of the cult that the former cultist belonged to, might be looking for him.

‘Destiny’ gives a Player Character with Motivation and Inspiration and a means of fulfilling this Destiny. The given Destinies are Chaos, Coming of Age, Devotion, Dominion, Excellence, Knowledge, Metamorphosis, Revenge, Underdog, and Wealth. For example, the Motivation for ‘Knowledge’ might be ‘Meaning, ‘Superiority, or ‘A Cure’; the Source of inspiration is ‘Learning’, which grants a Player Character Inspiration after studying for eight hours or more or making a discovery; the Inspiration Feature is ‘Critical Evaluation’ which enables the Player Character to use that Inspiration to assess a creature or item and learn one thing about it; and the Fulfilment Feature is ‘Converging Theories’ which happens when the Player Character brings together scientific and spiritual theories in a single hypothesis. It grants bonuses to the Player Character’s Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma, as well as increasing their maximums. Essentially, a Player Character’s Destiny is a roleplaying incentive. In other words, roleplay the Motivation and desire behind the Destiny and the Player Character will be rewarded with a mechanical benefit in the form of Inspiration. It is also an indication from the player to the Narrator what sort of story arc he wants his character to have in addition whatever stories and plots the Narrator has planned.

The Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition – Adventurer’s Guide details thirteen Classes. These are Adept, Bard, Berserker, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Herald, Marshal, Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer, Warlock, and Wizard. Of these, the Adept is the equivalent of the Monk in Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, the Berserker of the Barbarian, and the Herald of the Paladin. The Marshal is a new Class, war leaders and motivators, providing support on and off the battlefield. Every Class opens up three or more Archetypes at Third Level, which grants more specialised abilities over the course of a Player Character’s progress. For the Cleric, this includes ‘Healer’, ‘Oracle’, ‘Sun Priest’, and ‘War Priest’, whilst for the Marshall, this is ‘Gambling General’, ‘Swift Strategist’, and ‘Talented Tactician’. For the most part, there will be a lot that is familiar with these Classes in comparison to similar fantasy roleplaying games, but there are a lot of changes too, for example, allowing the Warlock to have Intelligence and Wisdom as a primary ability, rather than just Charisma.

One of the biggest changes is to the Fighter Class. It still gets Fighting Styles, such as ‘Duelling’, ‘Protection’, and ‘Two-Weapon Fighting’, and then adheres to a Fighter Archetype such as ‘Brute’, ‘Duellist’, ‘Gladiator’, ‘Knight’, and ‘Sharpshooter’. The Fighter, as well as the other martial Classes—the Berserker, the Herald, the Marshal, and the Ranger—also has access to Combat Manoeuvres. To use a Combat Manoeuvre, the Player Character expends Exertion, the cost varying from Combat Manoeuvre to Combat Manoeuvre. A basic Combat Manoeuvre, like ‘Disarm’ or ‘Knockdown’, does not cost anything and inflicts basic damage, whereas, ‘Missile Volley’ costs two Exertion and enables the Player Character to attack a number of opponents equal to his Proficiency value and ‘Iron Will’ costs a single point, but grants Advantage on a Saving Throw to resist being charmed or frightened. There are roughly one-hundred-and-fifty Combat Manoeuvres, and what they enable a player to do is really design a Martial character and have him fight how he wants and how he wants him to be cool.

All of the character and Class information is followed by the equipment chapter. This covers everything you would expect—arms, armour, adventuring gear, mounts, and more. The more includes rare weapons, different materials, and spellcasting foci, but also services, hospitable donations, and even building strongholds. The latter includes numerous example buildings. Then there is a chapter on multi-classing and Feats which a player can choose instead of improving an Ability when prompted when the character gains a new Level. Another addition to the range of Feats is Synergy Feats, which enable a Player Character to enhance a Feat he already has. In addition, some Synergy Feats require multi-classing as well. For example, ‘Bladechanter’ enables the Player Character to treat dual-wielded weapons as a combination of spell components and focus, grants him an Armour Class bonus equal to his Intelligence if he is not wearing armour, and the capacity to cast a spell through a weapon that has been used to strike an opponent. This requires the Player Character to be at least a Third Level Fighter, a Third Level Wizard, and posses the Two-Weapon Fighting style. Later on, the Player Character can then take the ‘Whirling Incantor’ and ‘Eldritch Whirlwind Master’ Feats at later Levels.

To create a character, a player first rolls his Ability values. This is done on four six-sided dice and the lowest value discarded. (Other methods are also provided.) He then chooses his character’s Heritage, Culture, Background, Destiny, and Class, followed by equipment. Every Class description includes lists of possible starting equipment and the equipment section includes equipment per Class past First Level. This does include some magical items. The creation process is not challenging, but it does involve multiple choices and it takes a while. Of course, with multiple players, it means that the set-up time for a campaign is a little more involved and replacing a Player Character mid-play is not quick either.

Mechanically, Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition, as with other modern iterations of Dungeons & Dragons is a d20 System roleplaying game. Like Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, whenever a player wants his character to undertake an action, he rolls a twenty-sided die and attempts to equal to, or greater than, a difficulty value. This can be the Armour Class of an opponent, the Difficulty Class of an Ability or Skill check, a Saving Throw, and so on. A natural roll of twenty will always succeed and is counted as a Critical Success, whilst a roll of a natural one is counted as a Critical Failure. In either case, there will be extra effects. It uses the rules for Advantage and Disadvantage introduced with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition and now prevalent in a great many other roleplaying games. Lastly, it includes Expertise. This represents greater knowledge or skill about a situation and whether from a Class feature or trait, grants a Player Character an extra die to roll when attempting an action. This is a four-sided die, but if Player Character is granted more than one Expertise die, the size of the die to be rolled is increased rather than multiple dice being rolled. The Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition – Adventurer’s Guide goes into some detail about how and when Ability and Skill rolls might be made, the Difficulty Classes, the outcomes situation by situation, including both Critical Success and Critical Failure, and so on, and all of which is illustratively helpful. It adds two new skills, Culture and Engineering, and a host of Specialities that grant a Player Character Expertise. All Player Characters have Specialities at First Level and gain more as their Proficiency Bonus increases.

Adventuring covers everything from time, movement, and travelling to what a Player Character does during downtime, when he is not adventuring, and then also his Prestige, his reputation, and optionally, calling in favours, based on Prestige. The rules for both adventuring and combat work as you would expect. Three additions in combat include the actions ‘Press the Attack’, ‘Fall Back’, and ‘Sprint’. ‘Press the Attack’ enables a Player Character to focus on an opponent and attack with Expertise, but the defender can ‘Fall Back’ as Reaction to move back and negate the attacker’s use of Expertise. ‘Sprint’ is when a Player Character does nothing but run and this will quadruple or triple the Player Character’s Speed depending upon armour worn. Two other additions are ‘World Actions’ and ‘Countdowns’. ‘World Actions’ make environments dynamic and potentially dangerous. For example, ‘Frigid’ gives an environment that can have ‘Frostbitten Surface’, ‘Icy Patch’, and ‘Snow’, meaning that the touching cold surfaces can inflict cold damage, changing direction when moving can be difficult, and the area is obscured. The ‘World Action’ is ‘Cold Chill’ which forces the Player Character to make a Saving Throw versus Constitution or suffer cold damage. ‘Countdowns’ covers situations when a Player Character is racing against time, for example, can a cliff be scaled before it crumbles or will a thief pick a lock before the guards complete their rounds? This is handled by pool of six sided-dice rolled at the beginning of every round. Each roll of six means that a die is removed from the pool and when there are no more dice to roll, the potential danger is triggered. It adds lots of randomness to situations such as this.

One fifth of the Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition – Adventurer’s Guide is dedicated to spells and spellcasting, most of which lists all of the spells for the various spellcasting Classes. There are lots of tweaks throughout the spell list, so anyone coming to Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition from a similar roleplaying game will need to give each spell description a closer examination than they might otherwise think. Some spells are absent, such as Arcane Gate and Aura of Life, but there are new additions such as Soulwrought Fists and Searing Equation. Perhaps the biggest addition are rare versions of spells. There are lots of spells named for famous wizards in Dungeons & Dragons, such as Bigby’s Arcane Hand, Mordenkainen’s Faithful Hound, and Tenser’s Floating Disk. In fact, many of the changes to the spells in the Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition – Adventurer’s Guide have been made so that they no longer contain such names for obvious reasons. In Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition, rare spells are variants of existing spells that spellcasters have reworked and made their own. For example, Magic Missile is a ubiquitous spell, which launches a trio of glowing bolts at one or more targets, but Kreven’s Ruinous Magic Missile is a version which causes targets hit by this spell’s missiles to suffer the Rattled condition unless they make a Saving Throw versus Strength.

Lastly, the appendices in the Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition – Adventurer’s Guide covers conditions, including tracked conditions such as fatigue and strife, and mental stress effects; gods, faith, and beliefs, including Domains for the Cleric Class; a small selection of beasts and creatures; and notes on compatibility. The latter is not an extensive list, more a starting point. However, it still means that a lot of the content for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition can be imported into Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition.

Physically, the Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition – Adventurer’s Guide is very well presented. The book is well written and the artwork is decent throughout.

Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition and thus the Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition – Adventurer’s Guide is a choice and all about choice. It is an alternative to Dungeon & Dragons, Fifth Edition, one that the Narrator and her players are likely to choose because they want more choice and detail in their fantasy roleplaying. There can be no doubt that the Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition – Adventurer’s Guide delivers that, whether that is the options for Heritage, Culture, and Background in particular, follow by Destiny and Class, or the addition of Combat Manoeuvres which empower the martial Classes and make their combat options more exciting and dynamic. There are lots of useful details which help player and Narrator alike, such as the detailed examples of skill and Ability checks and Critical Successes and Failures which give an idea of how and when they work (or not). Of course, with all these extra elements and the greater choice and detail comes greater complexity and more involved play mechanically. This will suit some players and not others, but there plenty of other, similar roleplaying games offering a similar style of play if Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition is too much. That is one of the benefits of having so much choice.

One issue with Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition and in particular, the Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition – Adventurer’s Guide is its accessibility. A player or Narrator coming to Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition from Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition will have less of a problem making the switch than someone new to the hobby picking up the Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition – Adventurer’s Guide for the first time. For either, but especially the player new to the hobby, the Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition – Adventurer’s Guide really could have been improved with some examples of character creation and play and combat, to see the rules in action. That would have made it choices easier to grasp and better displayed the designers’ intent, more so given just how daunting the Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition – Adventurer’s Guide is as a book.

As an alternative to Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, what Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition offers is more choice and more detail, and with it, more complexity. That is what some players and some Narrators want and the Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition – Adventurer’s Guide delivers that and for the most part, delivers and explains that very well.

Solitaire: All Night Breakfast at the Midnight Owl

There are secrets to discovered and mysteries to be resolved in the Pacific Northwest under the Douglas firs. They are what brought you to this town, a hotbed of the peculiar and the unexplained, with a windfall to tide you over and time to investigate, staying in a small, rented trailer, and setting up office in a booth at the back of the town’s diner, the Midnight Owl. From there, you plan to scour the town’s surrounds for answers amongst its worn out factories, fading trailer parks, and abandoned railway yard, and beyond under the deep pine forest that runs over hilly and valley as far as you can see between the sky and mist. What you will find you do not know, but whatever it is, you plan to make a podcast from it, and so reveal the secrets and mysteries to the wider world. Every day you will go out and investigate and interact and interview and every night you will return for ‘All Night Breakfast at the Midnight Owl’, perhaps for a damned fine cup of coffee and a slice of cherry pie that could you kill you, but also to collate your notes and write the script for your podcast!

This is the set-up for All Night Breakfast at the Midnight Owl: A solo investigative podcast RPG inspired by television series including Twin Peaks, The X-Files, and True Detective. Published by Critical Kit, Ltd, a publisher best known for Be Like a Crow: A Solo RPG. To play, a player needs a set of polyhedral dice and a deck of ordinary playing cards with the Jokers as well as a journal in which record his investigation. The roleplaying game suggests additional items, including the means to add photographs to the players’ journal, a smartphone or audio equipment on which to record the player’s podcast, and an atmospheric soundtrack, but these are optional and the player is under no duress to produce podcast. (Indeed, the author admits to not being an on podcasting and suggests writing a script in bullet points instead if the player does not want to proceed as far as making a podcast.)

A Player Character in All Night Breakfast at the Midnight Owl is simply defined. He has three Skill Ratings—Investigation, Physical, and Social—and a source of his current income. To create a character, the player assigns a ‘d8’, ‘d10’, and ‘d12’ to the three Skill Ratings and draws a card from the deck to determine his source of income. The player also gets to name his character and give him as much or as little background as he wants.

Madison Morton

Investigation d12 Physical d8 Social d10

Where Your Money Came From

Wire Fraud: You skimmed a bit of money off your former employer’s transactions without getting noticed. No one knows… right? And, even if they did, how would they ever find you?

Mechanically, when a player wants his character to act or as prompted, he rolls the die for the Skill Rating appropriate to the situation. A result of one is a failure with consequences; two to five, a failure without consequences; six to nine a success; and ten or more, an outstanding success. There is also a table for resolving other certainties, whilst the style of game suggests that the Player Character avoid combat. However, if it does arise, the Physical Skill Rating is checked as normal. Unfortunately, if the result is a failure the Player Character is injured and left for dead, and has to go to hospital. This means that they lose a turn also. If this happens a third time, then the Player Character is dead!

All Night Breakfast at the Midnight Owl is played in three acts— ‘Act One: The Lead’, ‘Act Two: The Investigation’, and ‘Act Three; The Podcast’. In ‘Act One: The Lead’, the player draws cards to determine the source of the lead and its information. For example, ‘A local detective whose leads have gone cold’ or ‘An anonymous e-mail has landed in your inbox’ and ‘1d4 hiker(s) went to missing two weeks ago. The FBI are poking around and angry families are looking for answers’ or ‘A human-sized winged creature has been reported flying over the outskirts of the town.’

In ‘Act Two: The Investigation’, the Player Character takes it in turn to visit different locations in and around the town, between six and twelve depending on how long the player wants the game to be. These are generated by drawing cards and there is a chance of an event happening at the location as well. If a successful Investigation Skill Rating check is made, then the player can draw a card to determine a clue which if related to the investigation.

For example, Madison Morton is in Eden Junction investigating incidences of townsfolk falling sick and being hospitalised, but after miraculously recovering, are no longer communicative, which she learns about from listening a caller to a talk radio show. On her first day, she goes into a grocery store in the town to talk to people. She talks to Seth Wilson, an impatient, if jovial Paramedic about the situation. Madison’s player rolls her Investigation Skill Rating and gets a ten. This is an outstanding success, and instead of giving her brush off because he is in a hurry, Seth promises to meet her later, perhaps at the Midnight Owl or a nearby bar, when he will have an actual medical report that she can look at! Madison’s player counts this as clue pertinent to her investigation and increases the Clue Count by one.

‘Act Three; The Podcast’ begins once the player has played through the number of turns he set for himself at the start. He scripts the podcast (or notes everything down in his journal) and rolls not necessarily to determine if he has solved a mystery, but to what degree the podcast finds engagement and builds an audience. The outcome is rolled on the ‘Engagement Die’, the size of which is determined by the number pertinent clues gathered. The better the roll, the more followers the Player Character gains who will continue listening should he decide to return to the town and investigate another strange case. There is certainly scope for this with a total of twenty-six leads given in the book.

Physically, All Night Breakfast at the Midnight Owl is nicely put together. It is well written, but what grabs the attention is the artwork, particularly the cover. It is all done by Simon J. Curd and captures the type of Pacific Northwest mystery stories that the solo roleplaying game is asking the player to explore, even right down to depicting the damned fine cup of coffee and slice of cherry pie. If there is an issue, it is that there is not enough of it to enjoy.

All Night Breakfast at the Midnight Owl: A solo investigative podcast RPG is about solving a mystery with a definitive answer as it is telling the story of that investigation and making it compelling enough for people to want to listen to it and engage with it, and ultimately to make them want to come part for the next season. There are plenty of extra leads to make that possible. The investigative process is gentle in style, but does have some sharp edges as the Player Character closes in on a solution. All Night Breakfast at the Midnight Owl: A solo investigative podcast RPG is engaging and atmospheric, underplayed in comparison to other solo journalling roleplaying games, under the trees where most never see.

Above & Below

Underground, Overground: The Case File Collection is an anthology of scenarios—and more, for the roleplaying game based on the Rivers of London novels by Ben Aaronovitch. In this roleplaying game, as magic returns to the world, there is the need to deal with the mysteries, oddness, and secrets of the ‘demi-monde’, as well as investigate crimes committed by those within it and those associated with it. In this urban fantasy game, this need is fulfilled by the London Metropolitan Police Service’s special magic branch, also known as ‘the Folly’, and the Player Characters are its newly recruited members. Magic plays a big role in Rivers of London: the Roleplaying Game and some of the Player Characters are practitioners—Apprentice Newtonian Wizards—who will need their magic to best solve the mysteries that lie at the heart of the mysteries of these four scenarios as well as general investigative abilities, some taught at Police College and some learned on the street. Together, the quartet will do things. First, they will take the Player Characters across London as well as below the city and along the banks of the River Thames, second, they will take the Player Characters through a series of increasingly challenging and more involved cases. In terms of timeframe, the scenarios in the anthology are still set in 2016, but the content does take into account of the events of the novella, What Abigail Did That Summer.

It should be noted that four of the the three scenarios in Underground, Overground: The Case File Collection are not new, having previously been available as PDFs, whilst the first two scenarios are suitable as introductory scenarios as well as convention scenarios. The first of the four scenarios is ‘Going Underground’, a short mystery which takes place in an ‘ghost’ or unused station on the London underground, this being the British Museum station closed in the thirties. The British Museum station is now a ‘ghost station’—and it is this conflation of ‘ghost’ and ‘station’ which the author takes advantage of and should arouse the interest of the players and their characters. The Player Characters are awoken by a telephone call in the night from Sergeant Jaget Kumar, the Falcon Liaison Officer for the British Transport Police, who reports that ghost has been sighted on the station. The Player Characters are able to conduct a little research before making their way to the station entrance (it is quite close to the Folly) before descending to the remanets of the station where most of the action will take place. This is a constrained investigation, focusing upon making contact with the ghost there and finding out about what happened to them. However, this hides a deeper mystery connected to the British Museum next door, which is reputed to have been haunted by its very own ‘Unlucky Mummy’.

If there is an issue with ‘Going Underground’, it is that there is not a lot of action to the scenario, so some players may be disappointed. However, it is written as an investigative and social scenario and it has a gentle, almost cosy feel to it. This is a genuinely lovely scenario very nicely supported with some well-researched background.

The second scenario, ‘Font of Evil’, is much more of traditional investigation—and fact, a murder mystery—and does include an actual threat. Potentially problematically, the scenario is that it is set on a specific date—Thursday, 19th May, 2016—as it is tied into the ebb and flow of the Thames tidal estuary. There is advice on moving the date, so it is flexible. The scenario concerns the strange death of Edgar Marsh, a young man whose main activity is ‘mudlarking’, that is the practice of searching the exposed riverbeds of the Thames at low tide for historical artifacts and lost objects. It quickly becomes apparent that he is not the only one obsessed with the activity and some of the things Edgar Marsh found. This will give the Player Characters a prime suspect and the second half of the scenario revolves around confirming his connection to the Edgar Marsh, and then tracking him down and confronting him. Another issue with the scenario is there is information that the Player Characters will probably want to know right at the start of the scenario, but saves it until later in the scenario. So, the scenario needs more attention paid to it during the Game Master’s preparation. The scenario will definitely end in a confrontation with the villain of the piece and what he is trying to bring about, so has a much more physical feel to it.

‘Font of Evil’ is very much a London-inspired scenario and much darker in tone than the previous ‘Going Underground’. Whilst the scenario does explore the consequences of Player Characters’ actions, it does not address what happens if they fail, so the Game Master will have to improvise. Otherwise, ‘Font of Evil’ is a dark and nasty affair.

‘The Goat-Man is Coming!’ is the third scenario in the anthology and is the only not have been published before. When the Folly is alerted by the local police liaison officer about an assault by a supposed ‘Goat-Man’ on the Parkland Walk, a linear green pedestrian and cycle route in north London, Inspector Nightingale asks the Player Characters to investigate as the ‘Goat-Man’ is a figure of local myth and has not been seen since the seventies. Much of the action of the scenario is along the few kilometres of the Parkland Walk as the Player Characters investigate the assault and check the veracity of the ‘Goat-Man’ myth. This is very much a step up in terms of the investigation’s sophistication with numerous NPCs to interact with—some of whom are quite challenging to interview—and multiple leads. The players will definitely need to make notes to keep up with the amount of information their characters can discover and learn. The scenario also presents an opportunity for the Player Characters to interact with members of the demi-monde, including a Len Deighton-inspired fox whom the Game Master will have a lot of fun portraying.

However, this scenario is tinged with sadness and it does involve children around whom the Player Characters will need to work with care and sensitivity. There are dire consequences for the Player Characters if this aspect of the investigation is handled poorly, both within the demi-monde and without. Otherwise, this is an entertaining scenario that should take two or three sessions to complete. If there is a downside, it ignores the question that a player and his character might ask, “What if the ‘Goat-Man’ is a faun or satyr?”

The fourth and final scenario in the anthology is ‘Jimmy’s Last Dance’. Like ‘The Goat-Man is Coming!’ before it, this scenario starts with an assault. However, not by a supposed ‘Goat-Man’, but by a pirate in the borough of Putney south London and when the Player Characters investigate, it is clear that magic was used. What follows is a detailed investigation which involves a lot of standard Police procedure—interviews, surveillance, and so on—mainly confined to Putney, bar the occasional return to the Folly to conduct research. Over the course of the investigation, the Player Characters will be conducting multiple interviews, all of which nicely presented to help the Game Master answer their questions and portray the various NPCs. Beyond the fact that a pirate attacked the operators of a cannabis farm in south London, the investigation will lead the Player Characters to a criminal gang, a solicitor with less than ethical standards, a rotten son-in-law and a barely suspecting daughter, and an old lady with interesting secrets of her own. Their efforts will seem to weave in and out of the movements of the pirate, but eventually they will be able to find him and discover who he is and what he wants.

As with the other scenarios in Underground, Overground, the issue with ‘Jimmy’s Last Dance’ is when it is set, but add to that is its political dimension. It is set in 2016 and it involves a political scandal that was at its height at the time. This is The Windrush Scandal. Of course, the authors advise the Game Master to handle the issue with care and it is certainly not a problem that The Windrush Scandal is part of the scenario—in fact, it is actually woven into the plot of the case file—but rather that the timeframe is quite specific and thus difficult to shift the case file to another year. Elsewhere, there is advice on how to portray a pirate without sounding like Robert Newton. Overall, a very nicely detailed investigation that combines parochially British charm and menace, but like a modern Ealing comedy, can have a cosy ending.

All four scenarios are ably supported by advice and suggestions for the Game Master, whether that is written in the author’s voice or that of Peter Grant or even Ben Aaronovitch. There is advice on what character types that each scenario needs, referring to the pre-generated Player Characters in the core rulebook and, also how to run each scenario using Player Characters who are not affiliated with the Folly. Most of the scenarios have relationship maps and a plot progression charts too, to help the Game Master keep track of their particular investigations. Perhaps the oddest advice is on various pieces of British vernacular, such as the meaning of the term ‘old bag’ when used as a pejorative to describe a woman, old or not. Whilst a British audience will find this amusing, for a non-British Game Master, it explains the vernacular and gives alternatives where necessary. This gives her the choice of enforcing the verisimilitude with the given terms or using less pejorative ones.

Underground, Overground: The Case File Collection comes to a close with a trio of appendices. The first presents ‘New Spells’ from Bortnik, an old Russian peasant spell designed to drive bees away temporarily so that a hive’s honey can be harvested and Trip Trap that ties shoelaces together to Indagare Aliquem which creates a pair of linked metal items each of which knows where the others are (one the examples of its use is by New York Librarians with paired paperclips to track where certain books and items are) and Snow Stove which compacts a mass of snow into a compact cylinder that releases heat for several hours. There is a wide variety of spells here drawn from the novels with some of them amusingly commented upon by Ben Aaronovitch as to what Abigail, Peter Grant’s niece might do with them if she could. The third is a useful ‘Bibliography & Resources’.

However, topping and tailing Underground, Overground—or is that ‘snouting and tailing’?—is a look at Foxes in the Rivers of London setting and Rivers of London: the Roleplaying Game. The anthology opens with ‘The Absolutely True and Accurate Account of How the Foxes Got Their Voices Back’, a new short story by Ben Aaronovitch, which gives the vulpine explanation as to how and why they learned speak. Speaking foxes, larger, longer lived, and more intelligent than their silent brethren, first seen in What Abigail Did That Summer, are going to be a big draw for some players to Underground, Overground as it comes to a close with a complete guide to creating and playing talking Foxes. This adds a new option to playing a member of the demi-monde, but in many ways a much more challenging one, since these are not anthropomorphised Foxes. They can speak, read, but cannot write and do many things because they lack opposable thumbs (not a problem for Talking Raccoons, the option suggested for play in the USA with Rivers of London: In Liberty’s Shadow: A Guide to Case Files in the USA). It is suggested that two Occupations are suitable for a Fox Player Character. One is the ‘Boffin’, the equivalent of a Lecturer, who has to teach the young fox kits, but the other preferred option is the ‘Spy’. Now this can be used to create Human spies, but Fox spies specialise in surveillance, especially in urban environments. Fox spies also think and talk like spies, especially fictional spies, so the roleplaying potential is rife with entertaining clichés and can be huge fun if a player knows his spy lingo. Fortunately, there is plenty of detail to help the Game Master and the player portray a talking Fox as well as creating one with the right skills and advantages. (Of course, it sets up the challenge of writing an all-talking Fox scenario!)

Physically, Underground, Overground: The Case File Collection is very nicely produced. It is well written, the illustrations are excellent, the cartography good, and the handouts decent.

Ultimately, the only issue with Underground, Overground: The Case File Collection is the time frame in which its scenarios are set, often quite tightly bound to 2016. This is not an insurmountable problem, and the individual scenarios do each give advice how to handle this if the Game Master wants to set them else when. This aside, all four scenarios are thoroughly entertaining, whatever their degree of detail and investigation, exploring different parts and aspects of London, as well introducing further elements of the demi-monde. Players will love it for the means to create and roleplaying talking Foxes, but that is just extra to the collection of intriguing investigations and mysteries in Underground, Overground: The Case File Collection that provide great support for the Rivers of London: the Roleplaying Game.

The Other OSR: Wraithborn

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ours is the Anarchy

It is the Year of our Lord 1376. England is a land of unrest. The Great Mortality—the Black Death—has swept the country twice in the last three decades and now half of her people are dead. With half of the labourers and serfs who worked the land also dead, labour is much in demand and wages have risen, enriching the working man and so giving him the possibility of improving his life and that of his family. In response, the authorities have passed laws that fix wages at pre-plague rates and made it a crime to refuse work or break a contract, imposing fines and even branding and imprisonment should such laws be broken, in practice applying it to the labourer rather than the labourer and the employer. Sumptuary laws have even been passed to regulate the goods that the increasingly wealthier labourer can consume! In France, King Edward III continues to press his claim to the French throne, but as the French conduct cross-Channel commerce raids, the war is becoming increasingly more expensive maintain, Parliament levying poll taxes upon every adult in the country more than once and sending commissioners from one County to the next in search of those who refuse to pay. In London, the city’s populace resent the presence of foreigners, Flemish weavers in particular, and loath John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, for his support of the religious reformer John Wycliffe, whom they regarded as a heretic, and this will continue upon the death of King Edward III in 1376 and the accession of his grandson, Richard II. The new king is only ten years old and John of Gaunt will go on to serve as his regent for many years. The infamous Peasants’ Revolt led by Wat Tyler is five years away, yet England buckles under the authority of the Crown, the Church, and the Nobility and there are many ready to throw off the shackles of oppression and their desperate despair, to rise up and make England theirs. And when they do, when they drive off their feudal lords and officers of the King, their land is theirs, their land is ‘The Anarchy’.

This is the backdrop to Gallows Corner – A Peasants’ Revolt RPG, published following a successful Kickstarter campaign by Three Sail Studios—whose previous roleplaying game was the joyous Mappa Mundi. Taking its name from the road junction where a set of gallows once stood in the old County of Essex where the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 rose, Gallows Corner – A Peasants’ Revolt RPG is a storytelling game of struggle, hope, and community. Of struggle against the adversity of the environment and the enmity of authority, of hope for better future, and in connecting a community having the strength to survive. The players takes the roles of peasantry, tradespersons, and even the intelligentsia, natives to one of the counties of England, confronting the rich and the powerful, bettering the community, attempting to improve their Influence whilst reducing the Control that the authorities hold over the countries, and in the process acquiring retinues and retainers, and from their humble beginnings in a single hundred in one County, the Player Characters will travel to neighbouring hundreds and work to liberate them in a Point-Crawl keyed to themes based on verbs.

Gallows Corner – A Peasants’ Revolt RPG, an alternative history roleplaying game, but one which does not ignore the grim realities of history. This means that violence against people and animals, arbitrary punishment, torture and execution, conflict at any and all levels of society, slavery and serfdom, refugee displacement, and sexual violence as a weapon are all part of the realities of the period. Whilst they are part of the setting for Gallows Corner, they are not the focus of it. Where they do factor, it should be as actions or the consequences of actions of the authorities, yet further signs—as if needed—of how little the authorities value the ordinary man or woman, let alone the Player Characters. However, Gallows Corner suggests setting boundaries (or Veils) during Session Zero and having any contentious issues happen off camera and make use of a stop sign (or X Card) in play).

A Player Character has three Experiences—Physical, Emotional, and Intellectual, but at the core of a Player Character is a Trade and a Job. Gallows Corner – A Peasants’ Revolt RPG categories its forty-eight Jobs across eight Trades. ‘The Body’ represents those who work their muscles to earn their bread; ‘The Earth’ is made up of those who till the soil, grow the food, and tend to the animals; ‘The Flesh’ consists of those who see the inner workings of bodies and know exactly where to cut, either to kill or to cure; ‘The Hood’ are made up of those who work from the shadows; ‘The Market’ is where deals are made, goods are traded, and coin is earned; ‘The Masque’ is worn by performers and entertainers; ‘The Mind’ involves the learned and the clever; and ‘The Stranger’ is home to outlier, those that survive on the edge of society, often doing the unpleasant jobs that no-one else will. With Jobs such as Servant, Herbalist, Barber-Surgeon, Smuggler, Merchant, Minstrel, Scribe, and Gravedigger there is a distinct hint of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay to the options. Even the Rat-catcher is depicted with a small, vicious dog! However, there is a grimmer tone to Gallows Corner with inclusion of Jobs such as Sex Worker, Marshman, Dung Farmer, and Sin-Eater.

Each Job has four skills. For example, the Rat Catcher has the skills of ‘Cunning’, ‘Good with Traps’, ‘Knows Poisons’, and ‘Terrier Companion’, whilst the Butcher has ‘Anatomy’, ‘Cause of Death’, ‘Precision Cuts’, and ‘Tools of the Trade’. Each represents knowledge or an ability that a Player Character has learned and instinctively understands. Each encompasses only a small area of expertise, but they are open to interpretation and if the Narrator agrees with a suggested interpretation, then that is how they work. In general, they allow a Player Character to undertake a relevant action without the need to roll any dice for a Test, though the Narrator may sometimes state that a Test is required.

To create a character, a player assigns a single eight-sided die to one of his Traits, either Physical, Emotional, or Intellectual. A single six-sided die is assigned to the other two and then also to the character’s Trade and Job. He picks a single skill from the four listed for the Job. The die size for all of a Player Character’s Traits, Trade, and Job can all be increased with experience, but instead of a die increase, a player can pick another Skill. Player Character creation is quick and simple.

Name: Hugo Brackenridge
Trade: Mind d6
Job: Lawyer d6

EXPERIENCES
Physical d6 Emotional d6 Intellectual d8

SKILLS
Good in an Argument

Mechanically, Gallows Corner – A Peasants’ Revolt RPG uses a dice pool system. When a player wants his character to act and pass a Test, he forms a dice pool starting with one or more of his character’s Experiences and then adding dice for his Trade and his Job, if appropriate. A result of five or more is counted as a success, four or less a failure, and only a single success is required for the Player Character to succeed. Another Player Character can help. This can be to increase the size of the Experience die that the player making the Test is going to be rolling or if appropriate, add a Trade or Job die to his dice pool. Gallows Corner advises the player to advocate for as many dice as he can to form the pool, but since the roleplaying game is narrative-led, a player and his character should ideally rely upon roleplaying and Skills rather than attempting Tests.

The size of a die can also go down as well as up. This may be due to injury or illness and if it falls to a four-sided die, it means that the Player Character cannot succeed with that die and its associated Experience, Trade, or Job, because the minimum needed for a success is five. If the Player Character is solely relying upon that die for a Test, then he is in trouble. In such cases, the player should definitely be trying to increase the size of the dice pool, whether that is trying to use his character’s other Experiences and Trade and Job, along with help from his character’s Retinue and other Player Characters.

The players as a group can also spend ‘Opportunities’ to alter the world around or give an order to members of their Retinue. This might be to send a member of their retinue to scout out a village, to wait in ambush ready to strike at an enemy, or to gather resources or craftsmen to reinforce their camp or improve their community, but they can also be spent to allow a player to bring their character’s Job into play once again.

Combat is quick and deadly. It is played out as a series of opposed Physical Experience rolls, each combatant attempting to reduce his opponent’s condition from ‘Standing’ to ‘Knocked Back’ to ‘Down’, and then ‘Retreating’. This also applies an increasing penalty to the roll. The victor always chooses the outcome, but can also improve his own condition, aid an ally, kill or capture an enemy, and so on.

Gallows Corner – A Peasants’ Revolt RPG also advises that a player rely upon his own abilities as much as those of his character, since he will be more aware of the world rather than the character, that collaboration is the key to success, death is likely and combat to be avoided—most of the time, and that they should embrace failure.

Chronologically, Gallows Corner – A Peasants’ Revolt RPG is played out over a series of Seasons and Scenes with Clocks being used to track something that the Player Characters are struggling against, such as being hunted by a local Sheriff's soldiery, attempting to erect fortifications in a hurry, and so on. By undertaking acts of liberation and challenging the power of the state such as writing and spreading mocking songs, disrupting the activities of tax collectors, and even burning the manors of the landed classes, each Player Character garners ‘Influence’, a combination of their fame and notoriety that enables them to do greater and bigger things as it grows. As it rises from zero and ‘Unknown’, all the way up through ‘Spoken Of’, ‘Recognisable’, ‘Well Known’, and ‘Notorious’ to ‘Famous’ and one hundred, a Player Character gains Benefits that can be used once per season, whilst the Narrator gains Detriments or negative events that she can bring into play once per season. For example, a Player Character who has an Influence of ten or more is ‘Spoken Of’ and gains the Benefit that because rumours of his good name are beginning to spread and people are willing to help him, he can turn a failed Test to influence an NPC into a success instead. However, the Narrator can select an NPC known to the Player Character who rejects his radical ideas out of fear for his safety. A Player Character’s Influence can also fall due to failure or defeat.

In addition, the Benefit gained at each rank of Influence, a Player Character can recruit a Retainer to his Retinue, up to a total of five. Each Retainer is an NPC in his own right and created just like a Player Character. Once a Retainer is part of a Retinue, a player and his character gains access to his Experiences, Trade, and Job as well as his skills and in combat, a Retainer contributes his Physical die to the Player Character. Retainers can also be sent off on missions, though this costs ‘Opportunities’ to do so, with the outcome determined by a Test after two or more scenes. There is some scope for troupe-style play here and a player is free to roleplay a Retainer as necessary. However, a Retainer is always a secondary character to a player’s main or perspective character. Should a Player Character die, he can be replaced by a Retainer. Thus, a Player Character’s Retinue is not just a source of replacement characters, but also an extension of his physical capabilities and knowledge.

Whilst each Player Character has his own Influence, they are combined together as the party’s Collective Influence. It is this value that is measured against ‘Control’, which represents the power and domination that the state—the crown, the nobility, and the church—holds over the immediate County or Region and ultimately, over all of England. If the Player Characters’ ‘Collective Influence’ is increased above the ‘Control’ for a County or Region, a Showdown can be staged. This is a significant and ideally cinematic confrontation with the leading antagonist for the County or Region. Now the text suggests that ‘Control’ might be reduced by a single point for writing and spreading mocking songs about the local sheriff, two points for skirmishing soldiers, and four points for attacking and burning manorial holdings, but there is not a useful list that the Narrator can easily reference. Whilst this does allow a Narrator a lot of flexibility, arguably it is too much and some guidance could and should have been included.

Chronologically, Gallows Corner – A Peasants’ Revolt RPG is played out as a ‘Point Crawl’ that scales up from the Hundreds and Liberties which make up each County, and then the Counties that make up a Region, and the Regions which make up England. Each Hundred, Liberty, County, and Region is a Point, a location where there is a problem or situation to resolve and several scenes will play out as the Player Characters attempt to resolve it. The ‘Point Crawl’ is set up by the Narrator. The Narrator selects a County and determines its degree of ‘Control’, based on the number of Hundreds and Liberties plus a die roll for NPC antagonist in charge, and then assigns a single ‘Verb’ to each of the County’s Hundreds. For example, ‘Destroy’, ‘Entertain’, ‘Fight’, ‘Grow’, ‘Organise’, ‘Play’, ‘Sin’, and ‘Steal’. These are prompts around which the Narrator can set up a situation or storyline and they can come from the players—indicating what type of stories they want to tell in playing Gallows Corner, chosen by the Narrator, or selected from the suggestions given and developed in the rulebook as potential related scenes. A Clock is also set up which tracks the reactions of the authorities to the Player Characters’ rebellious activities.

Gallows Corner – A Peasants’ Revolt RPG includes descriptions of London and of the thirty-nine counties of England in the late fourteenth century. London and its districts are given more detail, whereas the counties receive a page each. This gives a broad overview and feel for the county along with an encounter that the Narrator can develop into something more and one or more reasons why the peoples of that county might want to revolt. Each region is also given a scenario for a total of eight. There is an NPC generator which can also be used to create potential Retainers as well as antagonists.

The Narrator will need to download the forms for the different Region and Counties she plans to use. These are not in the core rulebook itself, but it would have been nice if the boxed set for Gallows Corner – A Peasants’ Revolt RPG had included them, perhaps in a forms booklet that would also be available separately.

Gallows Corner – A Peasants’ Revolt RPG makes clear that the Player Characters are both custodians and victims of England and working towards becoming more of the former and away from the latter. That ‘Point Crawl’ is a way to explore England starting from the very small and local and scaling up, with the surrounding villages, towns, and counties reacting in response to the actions of the Player Characters, but also having their own stories going on. The advice suggests that the Narrator should not get too bogged down in the historical details of the period, since the roleplaying game is intended to be an alternate history. There is some detail in the London and County descriptions and there is a section describing the English which includes details of various NPC types by class, but nevertheless, Gallows Corner is a roleplaying game that will benefit from some historical research if just to add a degree of verisimilitude.

Physically, Gallows Corner – A Peasants’ Revolt RPG is a stunning looking book. It is easy to read, and as good as the production values are, what shines is its artwork. It is brutally bright and beautiful in its depiction of the hope and hardship of the setting.

Unfortunately, Gallows Corner – A Peasants’ Revolt RPG does not feel quite complete as a roleplaying game. There could have been clearer and fuller examples of set-up and play and the guidance on handling certain aspects of the roleplaying game, such as the reductions in ‘Control’ for certain actions by the Player Characters, that would have made the roleplaying game easier to grasp and easier to run, could have been given. Gallows Corner – A Peasants’ Revolt RPG is not a complex roleplaying game by any means and anyone with any storytelling game experience will have no problems either running it or playing it. Anyone with less experience, perhaps attracted by the high production values of the roleplaying game, may have more of a problem. Overall, Gallows Corner – A Peasants’ Revolt RPG is just underwritten enough in places to make it not quite as accessible as it should be.

Gallows Corner – A Peasants’ Revolt RPG is magnificently ambitious in its scope and parochially English in its setting and tone. This is a gloriously brutal, beautiful roleplaying game that with the right Narrator and players is going to tell a great campaign of hardship and hope.