The Best Witches

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 might be.

Tales of the Village is an introductory roleplaying game published by Arion Games, best known for reprinting the Elizabethan-era Maelstrom and its other iterations, such as Maelstrom Domesday. The roleplaying game is intended to be played by younger players, aged between seven and twelve, but run by an experienced Game Master. Each Player Character is a young witch, living in a small, rural village, helping out with day-to-day tasks, but also helping the sick, finding lost animals, and dealing with such threats as greedy bandits, mischievous faeries, and scary ghosts! Or at least they aspire to do so, because being young, they show plenty of promise, but have only recently graduated as fully fledged witches.

To create Witch, a player rolls first for her Background, which explains what her parents do and grants her an appropriate skill. For example, the daughter of weavers learns Clothworking, whilst if the parents are castle guards, the Witch knows Brawling as a skill. A second roll determines how she became a Witch, such as a local witch shouting and pointing at the aura around the young Witch or because the Witch’s memory proved to be so good that a witch took her on immediately. Whatever way in which the Witch became a Witch, she is granted a random ability, and then two more, one from the training she receives from her Witch teacher and another from a life-changing event towards the end of her training.

Name: Ottilie

Class: Witch

Background: Minstrels

Skill: Entertainment

How Did You Start: Drove a mischievous faerie away

Teacher: conventional Witch

Event: Lifted a cure of locusts

Gift: Broomstick

Abilities: Naturebond, Potion Making, Shapechange

All of the backgrounds and events as well as the skills and abilities are nicely expanded upon and clearly explained. In the case of the abilities, there are some examples of their is too and the Witch creation process is supported with an example too.

Mechanically, Tales of the Village is simple. To have her Witch undertake an action, her player rolls three six-sided dice. Each result of five or six is counted as a Success. One Success is required if the task is Awkward, such as catching a pig; two Successes are required if the task is Difficult, like catching a sheep; and three Successes are required if the task is Very Difficult, such as catching a goat or wild hill sheep. This represents a Witch who is untrained, but if a Witch is trained in a skill, her player only has to roll four, five, or six to succeed, and if the skill or ability is mastered, her player only has to roll three, four, five, or six to succeed. The advice for failure suggests that it need not be absolute, and that if a player rolls Successes, but not enough to succeed, her Witch might get half way there or do most of a task, and so on. The consequences for failure comes into play in when the Witch loses in a mental, physical, or social contest. In which case, the player ticks a box on either the mental, physical, or social track. On each track, the Witch starts at Fine, but will go from Fine to Shaken to Beaten to Defeated. It is up to the player to roleplay most of these conditions, but if ever one of the tracks is reduced to Defeated, the Witch has failed at the adventure!

The advice for the Storyteller Guide  is simple and straightforward. This is to set up minor challenges, a mix of challenges related or unrelated to bigger challenges, and even the main challenge. Overcoming such challenges should not wholly rely upon the Witches’ skills and abilities, but allow for player ingenuity and roleplay. The more minor challenges that the Witches overcome or deal with, the easier it should be to confront and deal with the main challenges. Unfortunately, there is no advice on running Tales of the Village for the specific age range it is intended for, and what this means is that the roleplaying game relies upon the experience of the Storyteller Guide more than anything else.

In terms of support, the Storyteller Guide is provided with a scenario, ‘Goblin Rings’. It is set in a happy, fairly ordinary village except that it is home to the Witches and there are unseen threats roundabout. The scenario consists of a series of small events, such as a child being sick or sheep going missing, the child being a sickly green in colour and there being no trace of the sheep. As the Witches solve each problem, they earn Success Points, and these can be used to ease the final confrontation against the villain responsible for the situation. None of the problems are overly challenging, should not take too long to play through before the final encounter, and is thus suitable for play by its intended audience. ‘Goblin Rings’ is a charming scenario with a fairy-tale feel that its audience will enjoy.

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

In the strictest of senses, Tales of the Village is not an introductory roleplaying game, one that anyone new to the hobby can pick up and start playing. It is, as intended, best suited to be run by someone who has some roleplaying experience and can therefore run the game for the intended audience—younger players who like witches and fairy tales. Yet as playable and runnable as it is, it is underwritten in places and the lack of advice on running roleplaying games with a younger audience is disappointing. And, of course, once the scenario is played through, the Storyteller Guide will need to write some more, and again, the advice to that end is underwhelming. Overall, Tales of the Village is a serviceable roleplaying game that does what it sets out to do and does it with a little charm, but it feels like it could have done a little more.

Blackmail & Betrayal

If you are one of the few wealthy Drow in the Spire, then the Silver Quarter is where you come to see and be seen. If you are one of the Aelfir in the Spire, then you need deign to descend to such lows as the Silver Quarter, unless you want to rebel and have fun and perhaps even cause a scandal. Famous—or is that notorious?—for its casinos, gambling houses and members-only clubs, the quarter is a renowned hotbed of dubious, if not outright illegal activity that its bosses can pay off the local bosses and local detachment of the city guard to look the other way. At the heart of it all, is Mesye So, a powerful and influential Drow, who controls the Silver Quarter from behind layer after layer of the best security that his money can buy and the best ignorance of his involvement that his bribes can engineer. Still, he hungers for greater power and influence, and perhaps his ambition and his hubris will be his undoing. It is certainly an affront to ‘The Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress’. A council of elders of these freedom fighters—or terrorists—has decided that enough is enough and that a figure such as Mesye So, of their own, should be bent to their cause. They have purchased a base of operations from which a teams of Ministers can operate in the Silver Quarter, a rundown, not quite seedy gambling den called the Manticore. Armed with what they know about Mesye So and other leading figures seen in the Silver Quarter—represented by a handful of newspaper clippings—the Ministers are to gather further intelligence and use to extort and blackmail Mesye So and others in support of ‘The Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress’ and its aims. This is the set-up for The Kings of Silver: A Campaign Frame for Spire RPG.

It is a mini-campaign for Spire: The City Must Fall, the roleplaying game of secrets and lies, trust and betrayal, violence and subversion, conspiracy and consequences, and of committing black deeds for a good cause. It is set in a mile-high tower city, known as the ‘Spire’, in the land of the Destra, the Drow, which two centuries ago the Aelfir—or ‘High Elves’—invaded and subjugated the Dark Elves. The Drow have long since been forced to serve the High Elves from their homes in the city’s lower levels and allowed only to worship one facet of Damnou, the moon goddess, instead of the three they once did. However, not all of the Drow have resigned themselves to their reduced and subjugated status and joined ‘The Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress’, or simply, the Ministry. Its members—or Ministers—venerate the dark side of the moon, the goddess of poisons and lies, shadows and secrets, her worship outlawed on pain of death, and they are sworn to destroy and subvert the dominion of the Aelfir over the Drow and the Spire. Published by Rowan, Rook, and Decard Ltd., Spire: The City Must Fall inverts traditional fantasy, making the traditional enemy in fantasy—the Drow—into the victim, and certainly the protagonist, but not necessarily the hero.

The Kings of Silver: A Campaign Frame for Spire RPG is not a traditional roleplaying scenario. It foregoes the traditional construction with prewritten encounters that the Player Characters play through one after another. Nor does it not suggest any plot or story threads, something that other campaign frameworks for Spire: The City Must Fall, such as Eidolon Sky: A Campaign Frame for Spire RPG do. Instead, it sets up a situation, that is, a chief villain (and others) who are going to be the targets of the Player Characters’ actions, and a base of operations from where the Player Characters will operation. Instead of briefing given by the council of elders, the Player Characters are furnished with a set of newspaper clippings. These include titles such as ‘New Captain of the Watch Appointed in Silver Quarter’, ‘Temple Brawl Kills Five’, ‘Mr Silver Quarter: Looking for Love?’, ‘Midwife Murderer Walks Free’, and ‘Walks-On-Light Drinks Docks Dry!’, from which the players and their characters are going to extract clues about their targets and begin to formulate a plan or two. There is a total of fourteen such clippings and they are all presented as handouts for the players. They tell the players and their characters about the doings of not just Mesye So, but also the extremely wealthy Lay-Deacon Stride-Out-Harmonious; Hestra Wander-The-Lost, famous for being famous who wants to even more famous; and Loq Walks-On-Light, a rebellious Aelfir, who might just turn on his own. Each of these and other NPCs is nicely detailed as why they are so important to the cause of ‘The Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress’, how they differ from other Aelfir, what they desire and what they despise, and what could the Player Characters get from them. Each is also accompanied by some suggested where they might be encountered, but in some cases such as Lay-Deacon Stride-Out-Harmonious and Hestra Wander-The-Lost, what they do not come with is stats. This is deliberate, since they are combatants and if they are being fought, then the probability is that the Player Characters’ blackmail and/or exhortation attempts are going poorly.

The Player Characters also receive The Manticore, the gambling club from which they will be operating. This is nicely detailed in a couple of pages, with a particular emphasis placed upon the staff. They are only given the simplest of descriptions each, but that leaves room aplenty for the Game Master to develop them according to the needs of the campaign. The players and their characters are free to leave the day to day operation of The Manticore to the staff, but they can also have their characters get involved with both of its operation and the staff and their lives, which could open up a lot of roleplaying possibilities.

The Game Master is supported with advice on running The Kings of Silver and given several tables to roll on as a source of prompts and ideas, including ‘Which House Is This Drow Noble Claiming To Come From?’ and ‘What’s The Name Of This Gambling House/Club, And What’s Interesting About It?’. There is a list too of the primary places in the Silver Quarter. Although what might happen in between is not discussed, there is an examination of the possible endings to the campaign as well as its set-up. These look at the ultimate possible consequences of the Player Characters’ actions, not all of them good.

Lastly, The Kings of Silver presents six pre-generated Player Characters. They include a Bound, one of the vigilantes who bind small gods into their weapons, who can infiltrate locations with ease; a night-club singer who is secretly a Blood-Witch with a long history of terrifying others; a Knight of the North Docks with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the city’s public houses who has brought his daughter with him as his squire; an ex-masked servant able to move amongst high society; an ex-embezzler good at cutting deals; and an ex-priest turned confidence trickster. They all come with their own character sheets.

Physically, The Kings of Silver: A Campaign Frame for Spire RPG is well presented and its contents are neatly organised and easy to reference, done in an easy-to-grasp style from start to finish. The news clippings each have a page of their own enabling the Game Master to print or copy them and once in play, the players can consult them again and again.

Although it is of scenario length, The Kings of Silver: A Campaign Frame for Spire RPG is very much a campaign framework, with a beginning and an ending (or endings). It is a juicy set-up, with lots for the players and their characters to think about, whilst giving them complete agency as how they act upon the set-up and the information that it gives them. After that, the campaign is primarily player driven as they decide how their characters will act against the NPCs they are targeting, with the Game Master supporting and reacting to those decisions. There is no set length to the campaign either, the length likely depending upon the players’ decisions and how many of the NPCs their characters will move against. The Kings of Silver: A Campaign Frame for Spire RPG lays out the basis for an entertaining campaign, but where it goes is entirely up to the players.

Decay & Destruction

The city of Spire is in a constant state of wrack and ruin. As its overlords, the Aelfir, live a life of indolence and intrigue, the walls crack and parts of the structure shear and fall the many storeys to smash crumble on the ground below. The rot though, does not come from without, the cold and the wet finding cracks in the walls, working them and snapping them open, but from within. Deep below the city of Spire is the Heart, a ruinous tear in the fabric of the world that bleeds upwards, spreading disorder and chaos and blighting souls with rot. Unseen, its consequences have found a home in the harsh and uncaring undercity of Red Row, making the lives of its Destra inhabitants ever more dangerous, ever more dreadful. Gangs engage in open warfare, the sound of their gunfire marked by palls of spireblack gunsmoke, unable to agree on any one cause or able to resume the wary respect that kept their weapons holstered and a peace between them. Families bicker and divide, casting children aside. The Crimson Vigil, a group of violent anti-aelfir reactionaries, is openly recruiting soldiers for their forbidden cult, and with its numbers growing, how long before its actions bring the attention of the authorities down upon the whole neighbourhood? And yet despite the violence and despite the dissension that seems rife in every home and on every street, what the people of Red Row are talking about is The Weeping Maiden, a new play currently on tour! Society seems to be tearing itself apart at the seams and everything is going to wrack and ruin. This cannot be natural. There has to be someone or something behind it. Surely? This is the set-up for Blood and Dust: A Campaign Frame for Spire RPG.

It is a mini-campaign for Spire: The City Must Fall, the roleplaying game of secrets and lies, trust and betrayal, violence and subversion, conspiracy and consequences, and of committing black deeds for a good cause. It is set in a mile-high tower city, known as the ‘Spire’, in the land of the Destra, the Drow, which two centuries ago the Aelfir—or ‘High Elves’—invaded and subjugated the Dark Elves. The Drow have long since been forced to serve the High Elves from their homes in the city’s lower levels and allowed only to worship one facet of Damnou, the moon goddess, instead of the three they once did. However, not all of the Drow have resigned themselves to their reduced and subjugated status and joined ‘The Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress’, or simply, the Ministry. Its members—or Ministers—venerate the dark side of the moon, the goddess of poisons and lies, shadows and secrets, her worship outlawed on pain of death, and they are sworn to destroy and subvert the dominion of the Aelfir over the Drow and the Spire. Published by Rowan, Rook, and Decard Ltd., Spire: The City Must Fall inverts traditional fantasy, making the traditional enemy in fantasy—the Drow—into the victim, and certainly the protagonist, but not necessarily the hero.

Blood and Dust: A Campaign Frame for Spire RPG is not a traditional roleplaying scenario. It foregoes the traditional construction with prewritten encounters that the Player Characters play through one after another. Nor does it not suggest any plot or story threads, something that other campaign frameworks for Spire: The City Must Fall, such as Eidolon Sky: A Campaign Frame for Spire RPG do. Instead, it outlines an intrigue and a greater plot of sorts whose chaotic effects are playing out on Red Row and which the Player Characters are driven to investigate, and beyond the initial set-up of getting the Player Characters together, it focuses on the six factions involved. These consist of the Retroengineers employed to operate the devices that are destabilising the neighbourhood and helping to sow the chaos; the Sunlight Collective, a theatre group of radical artists and occultists fascinated to see the effect that its latest play is having on Red Row; the Knights of the North Docks, the strutting bully boys whose factionalism has turned them into extortionists; members of the City Guard, overworked with all of the unrest they have had to deal with; the Church of Absolution, a burned-out magicians and sages, destitute oracles and defrocked priests, that worships decay and wants revenge on those that stole its ideas; and the Crimson Vigil, anti-Aelfir zealots ready and happy to stir up more chaos. Some are more detailed than others—the Game Master will need to refer to the Spire: The City Must Fall for more details—but all are given motivations and suggestions as to what they might do as well as some notable NPCs.

The most detailed advice for the Game Master is on how to set the scenario up and involve the Player Characters, whether they are the pre-generated Player Characters or not. This is because there are no staged encounters or scenes, so there is no advice on how to handle them. What happens instead is the Game Master will reacting to the directions in which the players want to push their characters, which character hook and motivation and thus which faction that the want to investigate. Having set this up, the authors leave it to the Game Master at the table to respond to her players and their characters to determine what happens. There are some notes on how to end the story, primarily concerning what the remaining factions that the Player Characters do not investigate might do.

In addition, Blood and Dust: A Campaign Frame for Spire RPG includes five pre-generated Player Characters, all members of ‘The Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress’. They consist of an ex-military revolutionary and firebrand; a beautiful artistic and revolutionary idol; a Knight of the North Docks (effectively a gangster in plate armour); a Lajhan, a priest of Our Glorious Lady, the light side of the moon, the one aspect of the Drow goddess that is legal to worship, whose temple has been despoiled; and a Vermissian Sage, who hides knowledge in the Vermissian , the broken mass-transit system that runs up and down Spire. All five have their own character sheets and reasons to get involved in the investigation and adventure, such as the Lajhan’s temple having been bespoiled and the Vermissian Sage having recently been denied access to the Vermissian.

Physically, Blood and Dust: A Campaign Frame for Spire RPG is well presented and its contents are neatly organised and easy to reference, done in an easy-to-grasp style from start to finish.

Blood and Dust: A Campaign Frame for Spire RPG is not a ‘campaign frame’ as its subtitle suggests. Its emphasis and thus is structure is all on the set-up. It is described on the back cover as “…[A] series of prompts, suggestions, factions, pre-generated characters and personalities…” and it is very much that rather than a frame or framework that provides anything akin to structured campaign or plot line. Nor is it necessarily a campaign, since it is intended to be run in a few sessions. Yet as a set-up, it does work, giving the elements that a Game Master would need to run it. However, the lack of the frame and the fact that the Game master will be improvising the responses to the Player Characters’ actions does not make Blood and Dust: A Campaign Frame for Spire RPG either easy to use or necessarily suitable for the inexperienced Game Master. For the experienced Game Master, Blood and Dust: A Campaign Frame for Spire RPG provides a good set-up and content suitable for several sessions’ worth of player-driven play.

The Demon Drug

The sacred streets, back alleyways, and secret sanctuaries of New Heaven and Perch are rife with rumours and fear. A new drug has hit the streets and hit the streets hard. Dreck is making in-roads everywhere with its surefire hit, but making its addicts hyper-violent. Someone is snatching Drow off the street, but that appears to have nothing to do with a serial killer called ‘The Swan’, who kills his victims by excising their hearts and leaves them pinned up with swan wings in glass piercing their limbs, along with cryptic notes that taunt the authorities to catch him before he kills again. Then there is rumour of a demonic incursion which tore apart a tower of silence, killing everyone inside and driving everyone nearby mad. This is the set-up for Eidolon Sky: A Campaign Frame for Spire RPG.

It is a mini-campaign for Spire: The City Must Fall, the roleplaying game of secrets and lies, trust and betrayal, violence and subversion, conspiracy and consequences, and of committing black deeds for a good cause. It is set in a mile-high tower city, known as the ‘Spire’, in the land of the Destra, the Drow, which two centuries ago the Aelfir—or ‘High Elves’—invaded and subjugated the Dark Elves. The Drow have long since been forced to serve the High Elves from their homes in the city’s lower levels and allowed only to worship one facet of Damnou, the moon goddess, instead of the three they once did. However, not all of the Drow have resigned themselves to their reduced and subjugated status and joined ‘The Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress’, or simply, the Ministry. Its members—or Ministers—venerate the dark side of the moon, the goddess of poisons and lies, shadows and secrets, her worship outlawed on pain of death, and they are sworn to destroy and subvert the dominion of the Aelfir over the Drow and the Spire. Published by Rowan, Rook, and Decard Ltd., Spire: The City Must Fall inverts traditional fantasy, making the traditional enemy in fantasy—the Drow—into the victim, and certainly the protagonist, but not necessarily the hero.

Eidolon Sky: A Campaign Frame for Spire RPG is not a traditional roleplaying scenario. It foregoes the traditional construction with prewritten encounters that the Player Characters play through one after another. Instead, it presents three plot threads that they can investigate—the drug ‘Dreck’, the serial killer ‘Swan’, and the demonic incursions. Each thread includes an opening or ‘Trigger’ scene, these being the closest to prewritten encounters in Eidolon Sky. Each of them begins their plot thread with a bang and is followed by the details that the Player Characters can discover as they investigate each thread. Stats and details of the antagonists involved in each thread are listed at their ends, but these feel underwritten in comparison to the various NPC write-ups that follow. This is because they are accompanied by a list of suggested scenes that where the Player Characters might encounter them. Essentially, what Eidolon Sky gives the Game Master is a set of plot threads and NPCs that she can set up and have her Player Characters engage with them. The Game Master is free to bring these into play as necessary, but in the main, what she will be doing is responding to the decisions of the players and the actions of their characters as Eidolon Sky is very much a player-led investigation.

The most detailed advice for the Game Master is on how to end the campaign frame. As they investigate the three threads, the Player Characters will come to realise that they are connected and following those connections will lead to the villain of the piece. Eidolon Sky both explains what will happen if the Player Characters fail and what will result depending upon their actions. This includes discussions of what leverage the Player Characters might gain over the villain, how they might seek help from other factions, and so on. Representatives of these other factions are included in the NPC descriptions given earlier.

Eidolon Sky: A Campaign Frame for Spire RPG ends with a set of five pre-generated Player Characters. They include a trader-priest, one of the Bound vigilantes, a Carrion-Priest, a Midwife, and a Vermissian Sage. All five are fully detailed and not only do they include a character sheet, they come with short backgrounds each of which has some details designed to hook them into the campaign frame’s three plot threads.

Physically, Eidolon Sky: A Campaign Frame for Spire RPG is well presented and its contents are neatly organised and easy to reference, done in an easy-to-grasp style from start to finish.

Eidolon Sky: A Campaign Frame for Spire RPG is a solid investigation for Spire: The City Must Fall, a good mix of investigation and violence in three flavours—criminal, occult, and horror. However, it also a straightforward investigation meaning that it lacks some of the moral ambiguity at the core of Spire: The City Must Fall which casts the Player Characters as much terrorists as they freedom fighters, dedicated to the cause that leads them to make difficult and questionable choices. Where the Player Characters will be making moral choices in Eidolon Sky is in deciding which faction to side with and perhaps what to do with the villain of the piece, but these are not hard choices and their consequences are lacklustre. The Game Master may want to find scenes and points in the campaign frame where she can inject some of that moral ambiguity, although she could run it as written as change of tone and style. Eidolon Sky: A Campaign Frame for Spire RPG is an entertaining and straightforward, but not typical campaign frame for Spire: The City Must Fall.

[Free RPG Day 2025] Arzium Quickstart Guide 2

Now in its eighteenth year, Free RPG Day for 2025 took place on Saturday, June 21st. As per usual, Free RPG Day consisted of an array of new and interesting little releases, which are traditionally tasters for forthcoming games to be released at GenCon the following August, but others are support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera or a quick-start. This included dice, miniatures, vouchers, and more. Thanks to the generosity of Waylands Forge in Birmingham, Reviews from R’lyeh was able to get hold of many of the titles released for Free RPG Day.

—oOo—

The Arzium Quickstart Guide 2 is the introduction to the Arzium Roleplaying Game, the second following the release of the Arzium Quickstart Guide for Free RPG Day 2024. It is not, though, an introduction to the World of Arzium. That would be the series of board games designed by Ryan Laudkat and published by Red Raven Games, including Above and Below, Near and Far, and others. It presents a fantasy world filled with mysteries, magic, and forgotten technology, above and below ground. The Arzium Quickstart Guide is a slim affair, providing a very basic overview of the setting, an explanation of the mechanics, a short adventure, and four pre-generated Player Characters. Arzium is described as a world of strange mechanics and strange magics, some of it scavenged from fallen civilisations, some of its developed by the newly arisen city-states, industrialised with devices powered by bottled demons and rare crystals. The world is also a diverse one, being home to Humans, Hogfolk, Fishfolk, Lizardfolk, Birdfolk, and other species, including Robots! In the City-state of Arc, far to the south of Surstrayne Forest, location of the village of Above, and underneath it, the village of Below, the Academy of Gom has been beset by a series of thefts, which are believed to have been committed by a mysterious organisation known as the Shattered Knife! Although the Academy of Gom has tight purse strings, the thefts need to be investigated!

Mechanically, the Arzium Quickstart Guide and thus the Arzium Roleplaying Game, is a dice and resource management game. A Player Character has six attributes—Strength, Reflexes, Knowledge, Cunning, Perception, and Craft. Each ranges in value between zero and ten, and presents a pool of points that a player can spend to modify dice rolls. A standard difficulty is seven, whilst a hard one is ten. The maximum that a player can spend on a challenge is five. To have his character undertake an action, a player rolls a ten-sided die and attempts to equal or exceed the difficulty. Results less than the difficulty have a failure forward outcome in that the story continues despite the negative outcome. The latter might be an actual failure, but it can also be that the action succeeds and the Player Character or an item of equipment suffers damage, or even that the whole situation changes. In addition, if a six is rolled on the die, then a complication is automatically added to the situation. Resting for at least half a day will restore a Player Character’s spent attribute points.

In combat, the Player Characters typically act first and then the enemy. When a Player Character acts, he moves first and then takes an action. All attacks succeed in hitting and inflict damage as per the die type for the weapon or type of attack. The damage inflicted can be increased by spending points from the associated attribute. Armour reduces the amount of damage suffered. Attacks, abilities, and spells can also temporarily affect Power, a measure of NPC and monster ability to inflict more damage. Each monster and NPC gains one Power at the start of each turn, but because the Player Characters act first, they directly affect the monster and NPC capacity to inflict more damage. The rules also allow for gambits, inventive actions which can change the environment or affect monsters and NPCs, but without inflicting damage.

Casting spells requires the expenditure of Attribute points, but not a dice roll. However, a dice roll is required to take account of magic being whimsical and occasionally dangerous. When a spell is cast, the Game Master rolls a ten-sided die and if a one or two is rolled, she also rolls on the ‘Whimsical Magic’ table. This might result in the caster smelling like rotting garbage for a day or temporarily grants a nearby object life as it grows limbs and runs around in a chaotic manner.

Other rules for the Arzium Quickstart Guide 2 and the Arzium Roleplaying Game can be found on the character sheet. For example, it uses an inventory system of boxes for gear and offers Memory Knots as a means to maximise a die roll. This requires the player to explain why a particular memory will help his character in the current situation. The Arzium Quickstart Guide 2 includes four pre-generated Player Characters. They include a Human Treasure Hunter good at exploring caves and old facilities, a Toadfolk Investigator with a grasping tongue, and a Hogfolk Curstic Mystic with a knowledge of curse-related spells.

The scenario in the Arzium Quickstart Guide 2 is ‘Flight into Madness’. The Player Characters are hired by the Academy of Gom in the City-state of Arc following a series of thefts by the secret organisation known as the Shattered Knife and following an attempt by the Academy of Gom’s best and brightest to investigate the thefts thwarted by sabotage upon the part of the Shattered Knife. Boarding a ramshackle airship, the Player Characters are only armed with a couple of leads that their employer, Professor Argof, gave them. Following both will lead them over the seas to a large island and eventually to the secret base where the Shattered Knife has its headquarters. There they will meet, Zaradin, the head of the organisation, who will give them to opportunity to join him. The Player Characters are fee to do, fight, or run away. Fighting is a difficult option as there are so many members of the Shattered Knife that can call upon Zaradin. However, no stats are given for Zaradin.

‘Flight into Madness’ is short. Playable in an hour—or two at the most. Yet, the whole of the Arzium Quickstart Guide 2 is short. Consequently, it feels underwritten and slightly underexplained, particularly when it comes to NPCs and combat, but the mechanics are simple enough that they can be understood. The scenario though is underwhelming and does not give the players and characters much to do beyond face a series of combat challenges.

Physically, the Arzium Quickstart Guide 2 is decently put together. The cartography and artwork are good, and it is all clean and tidy. Yet as nice as it looks, the Arzium Quickstart Guide 2 does not successfully bring the world of Arzium to life and make it a setting that you want to visit in play. There is not enough of the setting and the scenario is cursory and short and not enough to really sell the reader on the Arzium Quickstart Guide 2, let alone on the Arzium Roleplaying Game. Ultimately, the Arzium Quickstart Guide 2 showcases everything that the Arzium Quickstart Guide got wrong for Free RPG 2024 by repeating them exactly. As an introduction to the setting of Arzium,the Arzium Quickstart Guide 2 just about works. As as a quick-start the Arzium Quickstart Guide 2 comes up woefully short at barely four pages long of actual adventure...

The Beasts Between Light and Dark

Darklands – A Dark Sourcebook For: Soulmist expands the divided world of Fyera. ‘The Ruination’ divided it into three when it ceased to spin on its access. The ‘Lands of the Old Days’ faced the sun, waters and rivers boiled away to leave only sand and heat. ‘The Darklands’ will never face the sun, frozen and withered, now home to beasts and beings of the darkness unknown before The Ruination. Between them runs a narrow band around the world, the ‘Penumbra’, where the survivors have to live with no diurnal cycle, no night and day, always at the mercy of attacks from deep within The Darklands. From the Penumbra, the peoples of Freya launched expeditions into The Darklands and once there, constructed Cressets of Vigil, towering portable beacons of light that revealed once again the lands and secrets lost to the darkness and advanced warnings of attacks upon Penumbra. These attacks bare cease, as if the very darkness would reach out and swallow the last of the light. Many of the survivors of The Ruination would find themselves changed, granted ‘The Gifts of Fyera’ that enabled them to hold back the Darkness, yet facing the ever-present danger of falling into the Darkness as a result of committing or witnessing sins done in the name of the Light, of their souls being scarred by both the Light and the Dark. Darklands – A Dark Sourcebook For: Soulmist is the first supplement for Soulmist: A Journey from Darkness to Light, a dark fantasy setting compatible with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. Published by Black Lantern following a successful Kickstarter campaign, this is the first roleplaying game and setting to be published by a Greek publisher and reach the English-speaking market.

Darklands – A Dark Sourcebook For: Soulmist leaps straight into the world of Fyera with introductions by the authors of the ‘Tenebris Cordis’—the ‘dark heart’—a treatise that presents some of the threats emerging from The Darklands. These are scholars and participants in reclamation expeditions into the Darklands whose voices give an engaging verisimilitude to the supplement, one that continues throughout the supplement with marginalia that annotates and adds commentary to its content. Yet it does leave the reader slightly adrift to quite wonder what the supplement is and what its content consists since there is no introduction from its designer. Once past the introductions—which actually could be used as handouts for the players—and the Game Master will discover that Darklands – A Dark Sourcebook For: Soulmist is a grimoire of monsters and demons supported by new rules and advice for creating memorable antagonists and stories suited to the pitch-black half of Soulmist’s world and the shadows that the Player Characters’ light can cast upon it.

The Dark Saints are the natural and spiritual leaders of the forces of The Darkness, some ancient, some new, some native to the world, some foreign. Some were martyrs of the Light who fell to Darkness, others struck down previous Dark Saints, but they all wear the legendary ‘Black Halos’, the ‘Dark Crowns’ that are the symbols of their authority and power. Fortunately, only ten Dark Saints are known, each embodying a different aspect of the Darkness and each perusing their own agenda. Each of the ten is accorded a description that includes a lengthy history, details of its lair, the Dark Endowments—major and minor—that it can bestow on its followers, and the lair actions it can take within its domain. Full stats are also given. These include not just its standard actions, but also bonus actions, legendary actions, and abilities. The least of the Dark Saints is Sixteenth Level, the highest Nineteenth Level, whilst one is listed as its Level being unknown.

For example, Nycta, the Dark Saint of Voracity was once an inquisitive young noble woman who paid to be taken on an expedition into The Darklands. Unfortunately, her naivety and poor choice of expedition led to everyone being captured by a dark raid and imprisoned. Refusing to be left to starve, she horrified the other survivors by consuming the flesh of one of their number who had died. This attracted the attention of the demon lord, who, enraptured by her beauty took her as his wife and on their wedding night, literally offered his bride his heart of magma. In seducing and taking him to the heights of ecstasy, she took his power and his ‘Black Halo’. Since then, despite many suitors and many rivals, she has seduced and consumed them in order to protect her position and make herself more powerful. There remains though, a void in her that she cannot fill, even as she continues to slake her desires. Although scholars have identified who the young noble woman who became Nycta was, an injunction has been placed by the Judiciary Order on the Legislative Order to prevent it from becoming public knowledge.

Mechanically, Nycta is a Seventeenth Level Undead Demonoid. She has a Charisma of 26 and her standard include include using Heartrender, a whip that inflicts more damage on those she has Charmed; blowing a ‘Kiss of Surrender’, that if the recipient fails the saving throw, forces him to drop his weapons and divest himself of both armour and all combat gear, before going on in subsequent rounds to extoll his allies to do the same; and with ‘Insatiable Hunger’, drain the Hit Points from the willing and the Charmed to keep for herself or her allies. Her ‘Damsel in Distress’ Reaction calls on a Charmed ally to rush to her defence. Her Abilities consist of ‘Thief of Hearts’, which makes it harder for those charmed by her to break that charm and ferociously compete for her attention; as the ‘Foil of Hearts’, appear as an innocent maiden to the pure of heart, making it hard for them to attack her; ‘Destiny Consumed’ turns her followers into zealots who gain attacks of opportunity if anyone attacks her; her ‘Innate Spellcasting means that amongst other spells, she can cast Charm Person at will; and her Crown of Voracity hungers for what desires lie in the hearts of men, forcing those nearby to attempt to fulfil them and even forces those who fight near it to swap their allegiances!

Nycta also has the Legendary Actions of Charm Person (though she can already cast this at will, so…), ‘Foerender’, which enables her to swing her whip, Heartrender, in a thirty foot radius, and ‘Voracious Command’ that gives her allies an extra action or move. As her lair actions, her very presence can drive the residents of the city to her location, drunk on desire and impulsiveness, call ruination black warriors and then an alastor knight to her, and raise a cloud of the ethereal dust that covers the city into the air causing any charmed creature in the cloud to randomly attack someone else! Last she has Dark Endowments. The Major Endowments grant advantage on saving throws against being charmed—except by Nycta, the ability to cast Charm Person three times a day, and the temporary ability to steal the appearance of someone they have charmed. The Minor Endowments make them permanently charmed by Nycta, increase two attribute scores, and grants them a Dark Spark when they complete one of her commands.

All ten of the Dark Saints are given a similar and as powerful a treatment, from Acheron, the Dark Saint of Corruption and Asmodae, the Dark Saint of Void to Sagha, the Dark Saint of Fear, and Varna, the Dark Saint of Madness. These are all major NPCs and thus significant challenges for the Player Characters to overcome and Darklands – A Dark Sourcebook For: Soulmist makes clear that they sit atop a very simple hierarchy in the realm of Darkness—might makes right. And that percolates all the way down to the bottom. The supplement provides several ways in which to populate this hierarchy. One is to add a template like ‘Hollows’ or ‘Umbrus’ to an existing creature, another to use the extra creatures given in the supplement. These range from the ‘Yormoth’, the most common creature, known as ‘flesh hunters’, in the Darklands to the ‘Wandering Qualms’, former ordinary men and creatures whose regrets and shame ate them from within and turned into masses of stings and tentacles bound in iron. They also include the Guardians of the 2nd Legion, a unit so brave and so stubborn, that when they were recognised by the Dark Saint of Vengeance, they had to be resurrected through their armour, so worn were their bodies. With the legs of a carnivorous bird, the body of a wolf, and wings of bats, the Septigore is the major flying predator in the Darklands, flying in packs form buildings and caves big enough to accommodate their flock. They are often fielded as aerial guards or scouts. The Ruinetarians are the natives of the Darklands, the descendants of those who did not flee to the Penumbra in the wake of the Ruination, but survived enslavement and subjugation. They have advantage on Stealth rolls and can see in darkness as if it were daylight, but are sensitive to sunlight. None of the monsters in Darklands – A Dark Sourcebook For: Soulmist is below Tenth Level and all of them are challenging opponents.

Lastly, Darklands – A Dark Sourcebook For: Soulmist discusses a means in which any one of its Dark Saints could be in a campaign. This is as a nemesis for one or more the Player Characters, who can be introduced at the start of a campaign, as part of the ongoing play, through the nemesis itself deciding that the Player Characters are his enemy—either from their actions or their fame, or simply player choice. Once introduced, they can be used to enhance the theme of a campaign and develop drama via the ‘Nemesis System’. The relationship between the Player Characters and a nemesis is measured in Edge and who has it. Effectively, this is the narrative advantage that one side has over the other, gained through scoring victories, learning information, and so on, that will push the story on to the next Challenge or episode in the campaign. Only one side can have the Edge and it can only be used once before the turn of events might mean that the Player Characters overcome a Challenge and regain the Edge over their nemesis, or they fail and the nemesis gains it. In play, it is spent by the players to advance the narrative, for example, finding a map showing all of the entrances to a fortress where the nemesis is holding some of the Player Characters family hostage or a captured prisoner is willing to reveal information in return for help. The players take it in turn to spend their characters’ Edge and the Game Master then incorporates their suggestions, if not necessarily their desired outcome of those suggestions, into the campaign.

What the nemesis can do when it has the Edge is less clearly defined, but what it can do is overcome minor challenges in going after the Player Characters. If the Player Character take too long in using their Edge, they can lose it to their nemesis. Ultimately, both sides are working towards a confrontation with each other, and whilst the campaign can progress to this narratively, it is possible to initiate a confrontation using Edge. The side which has used the most Edge will be at advantage in the ensuing confrontation. The confrontation need not be campaign-ending or result in the final defeat of one side or the other, so that it is possible to go through several cycles of Edge swapping back and forth, a confrontation taking place, and then starting again before the final, final battle. The Nemesis System is slightly lose and woolly, though far from unworkable, adding a narrative element that is not always found in Dungeons & Dragons-style roleplaying games.

Physically, Darklands – A Dark Sourcebook For: Soulmist is a dark, grim-looking book as befits the setting. The artwork is decent, but the book does need another edit.

Soulmist: A Journey from Darkness to Light introduced an interesting setting that really did not detail the nature of the threat at the heart of the game. Darklands – A Dark Sourcebook For: Soulmist does that, showcasing the monsters and other horrors, including their vile leaders, to be found within the Darklands. Any one of the Dark Saints would be a grand threat or nemesis in a Soulmist campaign—or indeed in any other grim dark roleplaying game—and Darklands – A Dark Sourcebook For: Soulmist supports that too with the Nemesis System. Ultimately, Darklands – A Dark Sourcebook For: Soulmist is the bestiary—the horridly dark bestiary—that Soulmist: A Journey from Darkness to Light needed.

—oOo—

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

[Fanzine Focus XXXVII] Black Pudding #8

On the tail of Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed how another Dungeon Master and her group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry.

Black Pudding is a fanzine that is nominally written for use with Labyrinth Lord and as of Black Pudding No. 6, for use with Old School Essentials as well, so is compatible with other Retroclones, but it is not a traditional Dungeons & Dragons-style fanzine. For starters, it is all but drawn rather than written, with artwork that reflects a look that is cartoonish, a tone that is slightly tongue in cheek, and a gonzo feel. Its genre is avowedly Swords & Sorcery, as much Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser as Conan the Barbarian. Drawn from the author’s ‘Doomslakers!’ house rules and published by Random Order via Square Hex, Black Pudding’s fantasy roleplaying content that is anything other than the straight-laced fantasy of Dungeons & Dragons, but something a bit lighter and not a little tongue in cheek, yet still full of adventure and heroism. Issues one, two, and three showcased the author’s ‘Doomslakers!’ house rules with a mix of new character Classes, spells, magic items, monsters, NPCs, and adventures, whilst four also included the author’s ‘OSR Play book’, his reference for running an Old School Renaissance game, essentially showing how he runs his own campaign. Issue five included a similar mix of new Classes, NPCs, and an adventure, but did begin to suggest a campaign setting, which six also continued as well as containing its owning wilderness area for the Player Characters to explore.

Black Pudding #8 continues in the same vein as Black Pudding No. 5, Black Pudding No. 6, and Black Pudding #7, containing a mix of new Character Classes, new monsters, NPCs, and mini-scenarios, although no further details or descriptions of Yria, part of the ‘Doomslakers’ campaign are given. The tongue-in-cheek tone of the fanzine begins inside the front cover with the Wizard spell, Foot in Face, which the wizard can prepare a round in advance and then cast instantly as a rejoinder, stunning the defender for a round, whilst on the facing page, ‘The Barbarian Blade’ which parodies Conan and eschews the use of magical swords which makes the men of the south weak. The wielder of this two-handed blade must do so with strength and without fear, but can strike any foe and inflicts 2d8 damage! It is over the top, but in keeping with the genre.

The new monsters are twists on standard types. Thus, the ‘Fee Foe’ is a giant that enjoys the blood of adventurers, lairs on roads and under bridges where it charges a toll. It is also good at throwing rocks and can block passages as if Hold Portal was cast. Hopefully, the players will get the pun in the name. The ‘Troglozyte’ is a version of the Troglodyte, but bigger and nastier with a fast regeneration ability and the possibility that when bitten by a Troglozyte, an adventurer might be transformed into one! The ‘Reeking Rotter’ is an undead thing whose attacks inflict ‘Rot Spatter’ which causes sufferers to retch temporarily and whose bite infests victims with rot worms that reduce their Constitution. The rot worms not only stink, but emit tiny screams! Lastly, the ‘Octonods’ are creepy scientists from another dimension that come looking for wizards’ spells and scrolls that they turn into a noxious gas to incubate their young! They are utterly lacking in joy and can sting with their tentacles, or their gaze attack can inflict damage, cast Charm Person/Monster, cast Telekinesis, or simply teleport a target away. They have the feel of big threat, perhaps an ongoing one.

The first of the issue’s several new Classes is the ‘Alien’. Its strangeness means it suffers a bonus to Reaction rolls, whilst its Weird Food requirements cost more, and Weird Brain makes it immune to Sleep, Charm, and Geases. It adds a degree a complexity with ‘Strange Powers’, which enable it to project powers from its head. These powers are all potion-based, so a player will be looking at the treasure section of the rules—whether ‘Basic’ or ‘Expert’—rather than the spell lists. Whilst the ‘Alien’ is less likely to appear in many a campaign, the ‘Death Witch’ is more obviously useful. She cannot be of Good Alignment and is capable of casting both Cleric and Magic-User spells, can speak to the dead and turn undead as a Cleric, and as a ‘Skull Lover’ turns any weapon decorated with a skull into a magical weapon. In addition, she can make and place a Hex Bag on a target to trigger later for more damage. Should a Death Witch die, she will rise again in three days with a loss of Charisma and indebted to evil…

The ‘Fighting Wombat’ Class is a silly addition, a Fighter type, but with the ability to dig tunnels, store items in its back pouch, and when unarmoured, can hide in natural surroundings like a Halfling. The ‘Goon Royal’, by Jayne X Praxis, is a rare contribution to Black Pudding from an author other than James V. West. Apart from a bite attack which continues to inflict damage until the target makes a successful saving throw versus paralysis and the ability to climb like the Thief Class, there is little to make the Class stand out.

The penultimate Class in Black Pudding #8 is the ‘Feral Knight’. This is a fallen warrior, cursed to wander the wilds until he commits deeds of honour that will restore his lost glory. This is a Fighter Class, but with limited access to arms and armour. Initially only a dagger and a shield, but other weapons and armour become available as the Player Character gains Levels, whilst magical arms and armour can be used at Ninth Level. The ‘Feral Knight’ is ‘Heroic’ and has an attack bonus versus Evil enemies, immune to fear, and his ‘Courage’ gives a bonus versus mind-effecting magic. He also gains Knightly powers as he acquires Levels and does great deeds, including being able to know alignments, casting Cure Light Wounds three times per day, and eventually cast First Level Cleric spells daily. There is a table to determine what caused the fall of the ‘Feral Knight’. There is a lot of detail to the Class, but with it plenty of roleplaying potential.

The last Class is the ‘Norg’, a Giant Kin Class. This is another Fighter Class, but one who fights with a penalty with one-handed weapons, finding armour is difficult because the each member of the Class is at least eight feet tall, is immune to cold magic effects, and has the special abilities of the Polar bear, including knowing their language. The ‘Norg’ can also speak to giants, but they will not trust the ‘Norg’. This is a simple and serviceable Class, easy to add to a campaign and roleplay. Of the six Classes in the issue, the ‘Feral Knight’ is the most interesting and the one with most gaming scope built in.

‘Ghiki’s Hole’ is the first of two scenarios in Black Pudding #8. It is an adventure location, a grated hole in the ground in the wilderness, which opens onto a sheer shaft, two hundred feet deep. The caves at the bottom of the shaft are home to the titular Ghiki, a ‘Cyclops Serpent’, curled up on a pile of bones and treasure. The adventure is short and challenging, but has a pleasingly physicality with the deep shaft, some caves in the walls, and webs near bottom, but above the lair. The lair of Ghiki, quite a tough monster, is shown with the creature winding around the treasure adding further to the sense of place. The second scenario is ‘General Skull Falcon’s Hall’ (possibly, but it is not clear), in which the Player Characters ascend a snowy mountain to consult General Skull Falcon who will respect their bravery in climbing the mountain and reward them with several true facts they did not know and one false fact. This location has a hook built in, but is short enough and compact enough to drop into a campaign when that hook, the Player Character’s need for knowledge they cannot get elsewhere comes up as part of a campaign. So, a good addition in that eventuality.

One of the best features in Black Pudding is ‘Meatshields of the Bleeding Ox’, a collection of NPCs ready for hire by the Player Characters. There is a decent range of NPCs given here, such as ‘Elotar Flatulus’, a Third Level Thief with a love of tea and dislike of loud music, who has seen and done it all, but might just be getting a bit long in the tooth, and ‘Nart Flindasterd’, a Fourth Level Thief who likes precious metals, but hates guards and wizards because as a genius toddler, the son of wealthy wizard, he was dropped on his head, and ever since, he not been a genius and it really irks him. There are eight ready-to-use NPCs and each one will add a little in their own way to a Game Master’s campaign.

The big feature in Black Pudding #8 is ‘Zasto Fillstian, War Wizard, Hellrider, Outcast of Seapath’, a major NPC who is a Seventeenth Level Magic-user and Seventh Level Star Wizard (as detailed in Black Pudding #3) who hunger for power and consequent actions drove him out of the city of Seapath and into a secret sanctuary in the Dweomerdrake Mountains from where he raids hidden and dangerous worlds whilst viciously protecting and hoarding what he finds. This includes, but is not limited to, a Sherman tank, adapted to run on wine or beer, given the lack of diesel. His write-up includes descriptions of his favourite treasures; his trusted agents—an alien as per the Class earlier in the book and a cold-hearted Elf; his Book of Eternal Life, which he won from Hell and from which he cast the spell of the same name; and Golgor, the star from which he gains some of his powers. Together with a map of his lair, this is the real big threat in the issue and would be a major presence in any campaign.

‘Iron Devils II’ describes ten magical swords. For example, Hawkhead is a +1 sword that lets the wielder see through the eyes of a passing bird for a turn or Whiplash, a +1 sword whose curved blade negates bonuses for shields or cover, and can be thrown and will come back if the attack misses, whilst the mirror blade reflects invisible things and lets the user see through a door or over a wall once a day. All ten blades are illustrated and nicely detailed, each one adding a little different flavour.

Physically, Black Pudding #8 adheres to the same standards set by the previous issues. So plenty of good, if cartoonish artwork to give it a singular, consistent look, accompanied by similar cartography. As with previous issues of the fanzine, the potential and obvious problem with Black Pudding #8 is that its tone may not be compatible with the style of Dungeons & Dragons that a Labyrinth Lord or Game Master is running. The tone of Black Pudding is lighter, weirder, and in places just sillier than the baseline Dungeons & Dragons game, so the Game Master should take this into account when using the content of the fanzine.

A new issue of Black Pudding is always welcome, offering as it does a lighter, sometimes sillier approach to Dungeons & Dragons-style fantasy. This gives the fanzine a genuinely unique identity and Black Pudding #8 is no different, offering a mix of content that veers from the instantly useable to the so weird that the Game Master is going to find it harder to add to her campaign. Yet there was the hope that the next issue of the fanzine would further develop the author’s ‘Doomslakers!’ house rules as well his setting of Yria, but Black Pudding #8 does not do that and it is disappointing. Make no mistake, there is good content in Black Pudding #8 and it is a finely produced fanzine, but there is scope to do more than do the same mix again.

Orcs: A Warning From Fantasy

Your nation and your homeland is peaceful. You and your fellow citizens have known peace for a thousand years. You have prospered and gained great knowledge, but not in the arts of war. That lacking in the arts of war is both your undoing and that of your homeland. For it is under attack. The conquering armies of Styrovites have invaded Lannia and are now sweeping across its green and pleasant land, putting all to the sword and the flame. What hope have you, if not soldiers to field in battle and to protect the innocent, than to turn to that great knowledge—of science and of magic—and seek a remedy in that? As a member of the Council of Sages you have decided that if you cannot train and field an army in time to save Lannia, then you will create an army. Through ancient sorcery and desperate science, you will create soldiers that will serve Lannia and save Lannia, capable of standing up against the barbaric hordes of the Styrovites. In so doing, you have turned to ancient myths and legends for inspiration and named your creations after a spirit who killed the wicked. That spirit was called Orcus. Thus, your super soldiers will be called Orcs, and although you do not know it, they may well be your nation’s undoing and not the Styrovites!

This is the set-up for Dawn of the Orcs, a collective storytelling game played without a Game Master. Published by Lyme and Plasmophage, it can be played solo or it can be played by as many as eight players. It is designed to be played in about two hours or less and requires a six-sided and a ten-sided die to play. The rise of the orcs, the defeat of the Styrovites, and ultimately, the fall of Lannia is told over the course of eight chapters. In the first chapter, the players, as members of the Council of Sages create the Orcs, then in subsequent chapters, they send the Orcs to war and have a chance to modify the Orcs, either to improve their prowess or curb it if a trait is proving too difficult to handle. Whilst all of the members of the Council of Sages agree on the aims of creating the Orcs and using them to defend Lannia, there is scope for betrayal—at least in terms of what the Orcs are. Lastly, although the roleplaying game does not require a Game Master, the players do take it in turn to narrate the outcome of each chapter and break any ties if disagreements about what the council should do are deadlocked.

Each player in Dawn of the Orcs roleplays a member of the Council of Sages. He does not have any stats, but does have a descriptor, an area of expertise, and a title, as well as a motivation. These can be rolled for or created by the player and provide the basis for his roleplaying. The process is simple and fast.

Title: Assistant General of the West
Motivation: Wreak terrible vengeance for all that I have suffered

The Orcs are different. They have four stats—Numbers, Loyalty, Brute, and Clever. Their creation involves deciding how they are made and how they are bound in loyalty to the Lannia. So, if they are forged from sorcery and raw materials, they gain +1 Numbers, but +1 Loyalty if any Lannian can be turned into an Orc. Similarly, if they are bound in loyalty to one person, they gain +2 Loyalty, or bound in loyalty to nothing, they gain +1 to any other stat. In each, the players decide on the answer to a prompt, such as in the case of the being forged from sorcery and raw materials, what they are made from, and if they are bound in loyalty to one person, who that is.

Orcs
Numbers -1 Loyalty 2 Brute 1 Clever 0
Only children under five can be turned into Orcs
They are loyal to the Holy Mother

In subsequent chapters, the Orcs are sent into battle. For example, the first is ‘The Slaughter of Shrike Forest’ when the Orcs strike at an encampment of Styrovites in the middle of the night. To determine if the Orcs win, the Council of Sages decides on a stratagem. This is a value equal to the combination of any two of the Orcs’ stats, to which the roll of a six-sided die is added. If it beats the target set for the battle, the Orcs are victorious. At the end of the battle, the Orcs Warp and almost bodily learn from the conflict, as if in constant flux through the stress of combat. For example, the Orcs might learn to fly into a battle rage and gain +1 Brute or gain the ability to see at night and +1 Clever. The Orcs gain more of these Warps from victory than from defeat. In the aftermath of the battle, the Council of Sages can Shift the Orcs, each Shift granting a benefit as well as a penalty. For example, the Council of Sages could decide to educate the Orcs which means that they gain +1 Clever and suffer -1 Loyalty. The Council of Sages can choose as many or as few Shifts as it once, but they do balance each other out and they may also be cancelled if a Sage decides to betray the council to change a decision. Each Sage only gets to betray the council once.

The play of the game revolves around selecting the right stratagem—the combination of two stats—to add to the roll to defeat the enemy and win or lose each battle, and decide on what stats to improve afterwards. The catch is that once a combination has been used, whether that is Clever plus Numbers or Loyalty plus Brute, it cannot be used again. So, the players also need to improve as many stats as they can to defeat the invaders rather than focus on the one stat, since it can only be used a limited number of times. At the end of each chapter, the narrator will tell the story of what happened, whether the Orcs were defeated or triumphed.

After five chapters, which will see the Orcs fight the Styrovites again and again, eventually invading the Styrovite heartlands, the Orcs are no longer wanted in Lannia and no longer want to serve Lannia. They mutiny. The members of the Council of Sages can side with Lannia or with the Orcs and the outcome of the mutiny decided on the highest roll of the two factions. There are multiple outcomes for the result, depending upon whether the mutiny was successful and what the highest Orc stat is. For example, if the Orc mutiny is a success and Clever is their highest stat, they overthrow the government of Lannia, but if a failure and their highest stat is Clever, they form nomadic bands which serve as mercenaries. Each of the possible outcomes is accompanied by a narrative prompt.

Although there are eight different outcomes at the end of Dawn of the Orcs, there is limited variation in terms of the battles fought. To that end, Dawn of the Orcs includes four bonus chapters that can randomly replace the middle chapters of the campaign against the Styrovites. This adds further variety and replayability beyond the first few playthroughs of Dawn of the Orcs. The roleplaying game does include forms that the players can use in chapter, but they are not absolutely required to play.

Physically, Dawn of the Orcs is a short, clean and tidy book. It is easy to read and the artwork is decent. The forms for the game are slightly tight in their layout.

Dawn of the Orcs is a dark fantasy roleplaying game that tells the story of the desperate defence of a country and its possible victory and potential fall. The clarity of writing means that it is easy to pick up and play, and in fact, anyone with roleplaying experience will be able to play this from the page. The familiarity of the theme—a country in peril turning to desperate measures and the creation of Orcs as effectively, super soldiers—contributes to that ease of play, that theme almost being a twisted version of Saruman creating his army of Uruk-hai in The Lord of the Rings. To the point that the non-gamers will find it as easy to play as veteran gamers. Lastly, its size and brevity means that Dawn of the Orcs is easy to carry and play almost anywhere. Dawn of the Orcs is a very accessible and very easy to play storytelling game that needs no preparation and has a story that everyone can grasp.

An Ubersreik Quartet

The two great features of the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Starter Set were twofold. First, in ‘A Guide to Ubersreik’, it introduced Ubersreik, the fortress-town in the south of the Reikland, and its surrounding duchy that are in turmoil after an announcement from the emperor that unseated the ruling House Jungfreud. It left the town’s burghers and minor members of the nobility spotting an opportunity to take control themselves and much of this was explored in ‘The Adventure Book’, which provided a five-part mini-campaign and more story hooks. This was the second great thing about the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Starter Set—lots to roleplay. Although Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Starter Set was in part designed to set the Game Master and her players up reader for the majestic The Enemy Within campaign—after all, almost everything is in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Fourth Edition is—what if instead of leaping into that campaign, the Player Characters wanted to stay in and around Ubersreik? Fortunately, and almost immediately, publisher Cubicle Seven Entertainment began publishing scenarios set in and around the Duchy of Ubersreik, so the Player Characters could not only continue their involvement in the political upheaval in the town, but also explore its surroundings.

Ubersreik Adventures III: Perilous Adventures And Grim Escapades In The Grand Duchy Of Ubersreik continues the series begun with Ubersreik Adventures: Six Grim and Perilous Scenarios in the Duchy of Ubersreik and continued with Ubersreik Adventures II: More Grim and Perilous Scenarios in the Duchy of Ubersreik. The four scenarios within its pages take the Player Characters around the edges of the Grand Duchy of Ubersreik, and then back to city itself, all the whilst involving themselves in the doings of the duchy’s nobility and thus skirting some of the machinations playing out in the region. In the process they will be employed to check on the attitudes of the staff at a hunting lodge whose ownership has been changed one from one noble to another, protect a village from marauding Orcs and Goblins as the inhabitants mumble about who gets to rule the village, uncover infection and ambition in a mining still suffering from a lingering sickness, and get caught up in the love affairs of the young nobility of Ubersreik.

In addition, the four scenarios in the anthology are connected and together form a sequence intended to be played in order as presented. The connections are most obviously familial in nature, taking the Player Characters from one noble relation to another and in the process encountering various members of the noble families feuding for control of the Grand Duchy. The other connections are obviously secret and link some of the nobles that the Player Characters will meet, but definitely not all, to the Ruinous Powers, some of which may come to light, some of which may not, and often when it does, the noble families want to kept it a secret lest it spoil their claim to the Grand Duchy of Ubersreik! Each of the four scenario includes advice on how to run under different circumstances, but ideally, they should be run one after another in sequence. However, the scenarios are not where the anthology begins.

Ubersreik Adventures III: Perilous Adventures And Grim Escapades In The Grand Duchy Of Ubersreik opens ‘A Tragic Tale Of Upheaval’. This charts the causes and machinations that have thrown Ubersreik into turmoil, unseated the ruling von Jungfreud family, and left both its future and its future governance up in the air. This collates information from both the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Starter Set and The Enemy Within campaign, so it does include background about both, even spoilers, so the reader be warned. The article covers the years 2509 to 2513 IC and beyond with the default period being the Occupation as detailed in the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Starter Set, in each era—each era lasting a year or two—giving what is publicly known as well as what is going on behind the scenes, suggestions as what sort of adventures can be run, some scenario hooks, and rumours. Included too are lists of adventures from the differing periods and which sourcebooks they come from. There are descriptions of the various claimants to the Grand Duchy of Ubersreik too. All together, this provides a grand overview of the setting to Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Fourth Station, so that the Game Master can create her own content.

The first of the four scenarios in the anthology is ‘An Eye For An Eye’. Lord Aschaffenberg, recently married into the von Bruner family, has come into possession of Grunewald Lodge, which was previously owned by Andreas von Bruner, a young scion who was subject to some unsavoury rumours. He has the Player Characters hired to surreptitiously check on the lodge staff. Once they arrive at the Grunewold Lodge, the Player Characters discover a mixture of surly and disaffected staff, only begrudgingly willing to accept the change in circumstances, and unwilling to discuss whatever happened to Andreas von Bruner. Although they do not know it, the Player Characters are up against a deadline, but the manor house is relatively small and the staff numbers low so the investigation is far from insurmountable. Ideally, they should be able to uncover some, if not all, of what has been going on at the manor house before the climax of the scenario.

Unfortunately, there is an error in the scenario. One of the NPCs gets nervous when the Player Characters lift a carpet in particular room to look for a trapdoor, but the room does not actually have a carpet or a trapdoor, or indeed anything built into the room that connects to the secret activities taking place at the hunting lodge. The Game Master will need to adjust as necessary. Nevertheless, the scenario is an entertaining manor horror mystery, playable in a single session or two. What though is really interesting about ‘An Eye For An Eye’ is that it is an adaptation to Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Fourth Edition from Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Third Edition. In particular, it is an adaption of the scenario that first introduced Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Third Edition in its core boxed set in 2009. Hopefully, this will not be the only such adaptation as there some excellent adventures waiting to be given similar treatment.

‘Mutiny & The Beast’ is intended to be run directly after the events of ‘An Eye For An Eye’. Lord Aschaffenberg asks the Player Characters to travel to Ubersreik to deliver a letter to his wife, Ludmilla, but also stop off at the village of Geissbach where he believes there is a doctor who can attend to the wounded at the hunting lodge. A typical Reikland village, the Player Characters have the chance to alter its fate not once but twice. First, by influencing the politics of village, quietly split between the old ways of tradition and the new ways of supporting the recently built coaching inn and its support of a coach and trade route between Ubersreik and Bögenhafen. Second, by coming to its defence when it is threatened by marauding Orcs and Goblins. Bookended by an initial encounter with such creatures at the start and then rollocking fight up and down what the Greenskins is the ideal version of a Human siege tower at the finish, ‘Mutiny & The Beast’ is a good mix of roleplaying and combat. The effect on the politics in the village is nicely underplayed so that the players and their characters may not necessarily be aware of it.

‘Horror Of Hugeldal’ starts nasty and gets nastier. It is intended to be played after ‘Mutiny & The Beast’ with the Player Characters arriving in Ubersreik and successfully delivering the letter to Ludmilla Aschaffenberg. She asks them to deliver another message, this time to her cousin, Agnetha von Bruner, in the mining town of Hugeldal in the foothills of the Grey Mountains. Baroness von Bruner has recently been ill and Lady Ludmilla wants to send a message of support. The horror starts on the road when the Player Characters encounter the tail end of a very deadly bandit attack on a group of priests of Shallya. Renowned for the healing blessings, what kind of bastard would attack priests of Shallya? When they come to their rescue and aid, the Shallyans will also explain that they have been exiled from Hugeldal. Given how high the regard in which the priests of Shallya are held, who would exile them from any town, let alone Hugeldal?

One issue with ‘Horror Of Hugeldal’ is that Player Characters may already have visited the town in ‘Ash in the Wind’ from Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Starter Set, so ideally the Game Master should have run several scenarios between the two. When she does run it, what the Player Characters will discover in Hugeldal is a depressed mining town which has lost many of its inhabitants to ghoulpox and most of the survivors have been marked buy it. They are all resentful for the failure of the priests of Shallya to treat the disease, but praise Doktor Vorsatz who was able to find a cure. Careful investigation will reveal that there is more going on than anyone other than the Player Characters might suspect, but who or what is behind the ‘Horror Of Hugeldal’ is revealed in a quite gloriously revolting climax.

The anthology comes to a close with ‘Mirror of Desire’, which returns the Player Characters to the city of Ubersreik and embroils them in the courtship of Esmerelda Fenstermacher by three young nobles. Ludmilla Aschaffenberg again asks for their help, this time to let the course of young love run its course, whilst fathers of two of the suitors want help in untangling their sons from the situation. Both are daunting tasks and neither potential patron is going to be happy if the Player Characters favour one over the other. This is Cyrano de Bergerac, but done Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay style, with eminently unsuitable suitors on all sides. The scenario is open ended as to how the Player Characters go about their tasks and similarly, there is scope for the Game Master to add her own content as well. Similarly, the scenario has the potential to be fairly open-ended if the Player Characters allow it to run to its conclusion. This leaves them with at least the one loose end to tidy up, and hopefully, it is one that the authors might return to, though there is nothing to stop the Game Master from writing her own sequel. If there is anything missing from the scenario it is an illustration of young Esmerelda Fenstermacher, so the Game Master may want to supply one herself. Overall, ‘Mirror of Desire’ is little clichéd in places given that it is a love story, but it is a Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay love story after all, and its gets suitably grim and perilous.

Physically, Ubersreik Adventures III: Perilous Adventures And Grim Escapades In The Grand Duchy Of Ubersreik is a great looking book. The artwork is excellent and the maps are more than decent. However, it does need another edit and there are sections of text missing. Since this is a book for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, there numerous of puns such as ‘A Town Called Malaise’, but calling a pair of minor NPCs ‘Herman Vorst’ and ‘Osk Hessel’ is probably in questionable taste.

Ubersreik Adventures III: Perilous Adventures And Grim Escapades In The Grand Duchy Of Ubersreik nicely embroils the Player Characters in the web of connections between the claimants to Grand Duchy, revealing their humanity and occasionally, their inhumanity in the process. These connections give the quartet a neatly underplayed narrative that pushes the Player Characters’ involvement towards the climax of the Ubersreik plot. That though, it is yet to come. In the meantime, Ubersreik Adventures III: Perilous Adventures And Grim Escapades In The Grand Duchy Of Ubersreik is an entertaining quartet of scenarios with a good mix of combat, investigation, and roleplaying.