Reviews from R’lyeh Post-Christmas Dozen 2025

Since 2001, Reviews from R’lyeh have contributed to a series of Christmas lists at Ogrecave.com—and at RPGaction.com before that, suggesting not necessarily the best board and roleplaying games of the preceding year, but the titles from the last twelve months that you might like to receive and give. Continuing the break with tradition—in that the following is just the one list and in that for reasons beyond its control, OgreCave.com is not running its own lists—Reviews from R’lyeh would once again like present its own list. Further, as is also traditional, Reviews from R’lyeh has not devolved into the need to cast about ‘Baleful Blandishments’ to all concerned or otherwise based upon the arbitrary organisation of days. So as Reviews from R’lyeh presents its annual (Post-)Christmas Dozen, I can only hope that the following list includes one of your favourites, or even better still, includes a game that you did not have and someone was happy to hide in gaudy paper and place under that dead tree for you. If not, then this is a list of what would have been good under that tree and what you should purchase yourself to read and play in the months to come.

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Daggerheart

Darrington Press ($59.99/£59.99)

2025 was the year of the fantasy heartbreaker seeing the release of several roleplaying games written in wake of the Wizards of the Coast’s proposed re-writing of the Open Game Licence that underpinned so many of the industry’s titles. Designed to appeal to players of Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, there can be no doubt that Daggerheart was the most prominent of these. It offers similar heroic fantasy roleplaying, but with an emphasis on the narrative as much as the action with its Hope die and Fear die mechanics. Both are rolled together, and when the Hope die is higher, it generates Hope that can be used to activate various character abilities, whilst when the Fear die is higher, it generates Fear for the Game Master who can use it to power up her NPCs and make things more challenging for the Player Characters. Actual Player Character creation is made easy by the roleplaying game’s cards that detail its Ancestry and Community cards that define background and culture, and Domain cards that define abilities and spells. These come with the core rulebook in their own box and enable easy reference in play as well. Daggerheart makes heroic fantasy roleplaying easy and fun once again.

Tales of the Old West
Effekt Publishing ($60/£48)
Tales of the Old West brings capital and community—as well as faith—to the American frontier of 1873, in a treatment of classic Cowboys & Indians that is more history than Hollywood. It uses the Year Zero engine and a simple lifepath system to create interesting and fully rounded Player Characters who can do all of the things that you expect of a Wild West roleplaying game. Duels, gambling, chases, cattle rustling, bank robberies, and more. However, where it really begins to shine is in its support and capacity for long term play, because it wants the Player Characters to generate Capital and then invest it in their community. The players get to choose the type of community, where their character invest, and how it grows. The community becomes the Player Characters’ home, somewhere to protect, and somewhere for the Game Master to build stories and hooks around, whether in the community or from outside it. Tales of the Old West can do one-shot scenarios, but is really designed for long term play where the Player Characters can live and die on the American frontier, so can their communities.

The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship
Z-Man Games ($79.99/£69-99)

Since it was first published in 2008, there have been numerous themes and threats applied to the classic co-operative mechanics against the game itself of Pandemic. In 2025, it has to face the biggest theme and biggest threat of them all—J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. In previous board games set in Middle-earth, one player has to control Sauron and the forces of Mordor’s shadow. In The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship, the forces of Sauron, the nine Nazgûl and the seemingly endless armies of Orcs, as well as his baleful, lidless eye, are controlled by the game itself. Just as in the trilogy, Frodo and Sam must set for Mount Doom and there, drop the One Ring into the volcano, returning to where it was forged, but the others of the Fellowship must set out hither and thither, essentially to run interference on Sauron’s efforts to find Frodo and Sam and invade Middle-earth. While someone always has to play Frodo and Sam, the other members of the Fellowship are not set in stone and further, every player controls two members of the Fellowship, giving everyone more options and greater ability to cover the threats posed by Sauron. As with other Pandemic titles, the same threats will keep appearing again and again over the course of play, but a mix of careful play and luck on the dice rolls—yes, this is a Pandemic game that involves dice rolls—careful play can thwart them. The best bit about the dice rolls is that you get to use the dice tower shaped like Barad-dûr that looms over the board, to roll the dice. There is a lot of depth and detail to this co-operative version of Middle-earth, along with the replay value of new attempts by Sauron and playing different versions of The Fellowship of the Ring.

Mythic Bastionland – Before Into the Odd
Bastionland Press ($69.99/£49.99)
Mythic Bastionland combines brutality and folklore in an Arthurian Age when knights, each knighted by a different seer, seek Glory, explore the Realm, and confront Myths. In a world of brutal and bloody medievalism, they must prove themselves worthy of their status, but that can only be done by resolving Myths, public duelling or jousting, entering tournaments, and fighting battles that history will remember. By proving themselves worthy of their rank, they be ready to prove themselves ready for greater duties, of taking a seat in Council or at Court, ruling a Holding, and even a Seat of Power. First, they will search their realm for its greatest myths and resolve them, perhaps at the point of a sword, by negotiating, or simply doing nothing, facing other situations and perhaps, brutal, bloody combat along the way. Mythic Bastionland details some seventy-two knights, including The True Knight, The Trail Knight, The Story Knight, The Rune Knight, The Mask Knight, and The Silk Knight, and every single one of them is different and interesting and will present a different way of playing a Knight. Mythic Bastionland details seventy-two Myths for the Game Master to populate the Realm with, including The Wurm, The Tower, The Spider, The Toad, The Hole, and The Rock, and every single one of them will present the players and their Knights with a different challenge. Each includes a simple description, a set of omens that trigger as the Knights discover more signs of the Myth, a set of NPCs, and a table of random details that the Referee can use to detail parts of the Myth. This gives Mythic Bastionland plenty of replay value in an age of glorious myth and brutality.

Dungeon Crawler Carl

Ace/Michael Joseph ($30/£22)

The LitRPG—or ‘Literary Role Playing Game’—comes of age in this first of this eight book series that asks the question, “What would you do if aliens had flattened everything on Earth and turned the inside of the planet into an eighteen-level dungeon, and the only way to save the planet is to fight your way all the way the down?” Fortunately, Carl the protagonist is not totally un-nerdy, so has played a few roleplaying games—both tabletop and computer—and so knows his way around the format. Unfortunately, it is not as simple as it sounds, because the dungeon-that-was-once-Earth is also a reality television series watched across the galaxy and so Carl has to play the fame game as well literally kicking dungeon denizen butt. However, although Carl is the main protagonist of the book, for the watchers of the reality television series, the real hero is Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk, the prize-winning show cat belonging to Beatrice, Carl’s late girlfriend, who has been magically uplifted from a pet into a Dungeon Crawler and an ace wizard! This is definitely a novel for the roleplayer and player of Dungeons & Dragons, who will get the most out of this knowing poke at traditional roleplaying.

Land of Eem

Exalted Funeral ($150/£110)

To be blunt, Land of Eem had the best elevator pitch of 2025—“The Lord of the Rings meets The Muppets”—and if that does not get your roleplaying juices going, then the question is, what will? This is a game of light-hearted fantasy based on the graphic novel series Rickety Stitch and the Gelatinous Goo, and the book series Dungeoneer Adventures, that is both family friendly and fun enough for the experienced roleplayer to play too. It offers the brave adventurers the opportunity to explore the Mucklands, a region once under the heel of the Gloom King, but barely had time to recover before the corporations moved in and began exploiting it and so giving the name it has today. There are opportunities to delve into dungeons and strike it rich, even find Magnificent magical items of yesteryore and become filthy rich. Alternatively, being heroes, the Player Characters could keep such items safe from those that would exploit them, or indeed, put them to good use and help the people of the Mucklands from being oppressed by the tycoons and perhaps save them if the rumours are true about the return of the Gloom King. Land of Eem is illustrated with delightfully whimsical artwork, has simple mechanics, fun character types, and a richly detailed hexcrawl to explore.

TACTA

The Op Games ($14.99/£14.99)

TACTA is a simple card game that simply looks great. Strong neon colours in dots, rectangles, squares, and triangles on jet black divided into six decks. It can be played on any flat surface and all a player has to do is place a card on the table so that one of its features, whether a triangle, square, or rectangle, covers up a feature on a card belonging to another player. Ideally this should with the dots showing and if it covers up another player’s feature with dots, then all the better, but a blank feature will still cover another player’s feature with dots and prevent them from being adding to that player’s final score. A player will also be thinking about how he can protect the features with dots on his cards from being covered over by the other players, so that there is defensive element to placement as well. There are few limits on card placement, the primary being that a card cannot cover another card when played and cannot connect to features that do not perfectly match. And that it is it to TACTA. Short, simple, and elegant, it is easy to teach and suitable for all ages.

Dolmenwood: Adventure and Peril in Fairytale Woods

Necrotic Gnome

Dolmenwood—consisting of the Dolmenwood Player’s Book, Dolmenwood Monster Book, and Dolmenwood Campaign Book—is another consequence of Wizards of the Coast’s proposed re-writing of the Open Game Licence that underpinned so many of the industry’s titles. Previously seen in the Wormskin fanzine and scenarios from the publisher, brings the setting together and presents it as a weird fairy tale adventure game, conjuring the wonder, horror, whimsy, and strangeness of British folklore in a land of standing stones, ley lines, lost shrines, fairy roads, Wood Gods, fairy nobles, and ancient history. All of this is brought together in a three volume set that presents this expansive woodlands in a style that William Morris, Aubrey Beardsley, and the ‘Arts & Crafts’ movement of the Victorian era with a shot of Lord Dunsay.

Dungeons & Kittens: Starter Set

Edge Studio ($39.99/£29.99)

Dungeons & Kittens: Starter Set is yet one more great starter set from 2025, this time perfect for introducing younger players to the hobby. Some time in the future, humans have disappeared following an apocalypse that has let nature grow back in its wake. In time, animals have evolved, including cats, rats, and dogs, who are beginning to explore the world, scavenge the technology left behind by humanity, and for the cats, command meowgic! The Player Characters are kittens exiled from the Kingdom of Cats who have set out to find their way and explore the world. The starter set includes lots of maps and dice and game accessories, as well as a total of five adventures. Three of these are learning adventures, each designed to be played in a single session or less, whilst the other two are full length adventures. The result is a light-hearted, even whimsical roleplaying game that can be run for the family or younger players, but also enjoyed by veteran players too. Plus it even came with its own colouring book!

Doomsong

Caesar Ink. ($65/£50)

The world of Painmye cries out in pain and screams for absolution as the Last Day draws near. Death has already closed the First Gate to Heall and turned the dead away, leaving the unquiet dead to wander… A crusade has been declared against the Traitor Gods and the Templars have already killed their first Traitor God. Day by day, more and more heretics give themselves up to or are thrown on the Pyre, but even those who have been given a chance for absolution for their heresies upon joining a guild by the Church of the Divine Corpse are being tempted once again by the gifts that Traitor Gods promise. Just as those who seek absolution join guilds for the safety in numbers they offer, so too do those who accept such gifts join cults for the protection they offer. This is Doomsong, an eschatological, pre-apocalyptic ‘Roleplay Macabre’ of heretical temptation and divine punishment and survival horror. It is a great looking book and like the best looking books makes the reader want to play on the art alone. The random character generation creates interesting, if desperate Player Characters that you want to find what happens to them. Doomsong does lack a scenario, so the Lord Have Mercy Upon Us campaign is a must.

DeadFellas
Chaosium, Inc. ($4.69/£3.48)
New York, winter, 1982. A black Cadillac, northbound. Four mafiosi inside. A body in the trunk. Their job? Get rid of the body and be home in time for Christmas. One wants to survive. One wants out. One wants to kill. One wants to avoid doing any crimes. One wants a victim. All have secrets. Highly atmospheric four-hander that plays out mostly within the confines of a car as something prods and pulls at the minds of the occupants and secrets and motivations are revealed and their consequences play out. A cracking one-shot scenario for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, this is best run in LARP fashion, with players sat in chairs placed in the same positions as their mafiosi are in the car to impart the claustrophobia and physical space in which they can act as the Keeper moderates the interplay and moves between them, whispering secrets and memories into their ears. Tense and unnerving, and perfect for a single evening’s worth of play, this scenario that showcases the creativity of the Miskatonic Repository community content programme.

Archeterica: The Invitation 

The Imago Cult ($45/£33)

Another late trend in 2025 was the release of starter sets, the biggest and most of which were the Dungeons & Dragons Heroes of The Borderlands Starter Set and the Stranger Things: Welcome to The Hellfire Club set, both from Wizards of the Coast, whilst elsewhere the Dungeons & Kittens Starter Set from EDGE looked the most fun and Free League Publishing’s Vaesen – Starter Set provided utility in the long term as well as a solid introduction. The starter set that outdid them all in 2025 was Archeterica: The Invitation from Ukrainian publisher, The Imago Cult. Described as The X-Files in an alternate Napoleonic era of magic and conspiracies and revolution, it comes with the means to create Player Characters, an introduction to the setting, and three scenarios, what really sets it apart are its production values. Archeterica: The Invitation is simply beautiful, an alabaster artefact that you are going to want to own for its looks alone, let alone the intriguing setting.

Fear in the Fairelands

The year is 1907. The Last Great War, fought between Hale and Otherwhere after the extreme cold weather of The Shiver gripped the northern nations, was ended when Halen deployed a secret experimental weapon that leashed a ferocious electrical storm in what became known as the ‘Electrical Event’. In the years since, Hale has embraced electrification and steam power and railways, steam powered vehicles, and dirigibles are commonplace, including in the fertile valley of the Fairelands and its capital, Newfaire. Newfaire stands on the ruins of its ancient, alchemical predecessor Oldfaire. With an influx of immigrants following the Last Great War and the increasing mechanisation, Newfaire is rich and prosperous city, its citizens adhering to strict, moralistic values under the governance of the Triumvirate. The Triumvirate consists of the Primacy, the Ascendancy, and the Periphery. The Ascendancy is the official faith of Hale, the Primacy is the regional government whose Premier also serves on the Halen Assembly, the legislative body for the whole country, and the Periphery is its police force, which has adopted the military technology used in the Last Great War and gained a much-deserved reputation for being overly zealous, violent, and militarized.

Yet as the world seems to advance, it has not totally left magick behind. Between this realm and the Beyond stands a barrier, the Flare, and where the Flare is weak, there are ‘thinnings’ through which magick seeps. To the average citizen of the Fairelands, the myths, legends, and folktales of old explain what real magickal phenomena they might have seen. If a thinning is opened wide enough, creatures from the Beyond steal into our realm, whilst powerful magick can result in corruptive Bleed that can twist and kill. Whilst The Office of Unexplained Phenomena of the Periphery will go to any lengths to keep knowledge of magickal occurrences from the public, the Exoteric Order Of New Sciences would seek to harness it as new technology, and the Pyre of the Ascendancy put all knowledge and occurrences of it to the flame, the Candela Obscura investigates such supernatural happenings, studying them, and seeks to protect the world from them. It even has a facility within the Flare itself, the Fourth Pharos, where it stores the most terrible tomes, awful artefacts, and other powerful phenomena, away from prying and greedy eyes. It is organised in circles, each of which has a Lightkeeper, a veteran Candela Obscura investigator who has retired from active investigation and is appointed to advise those who can conduct investigations in the field. The latter, of course, are the Player Characters.

This is the set-up for Candela Obscura, the roleplaying game of paranormal investigative horror published by Darrington Press, part of and showcased by Critical Role. It is an alternate Edwardian era, intentionally so because it avoids the institutionalized racism, homophobia, transphobia, or other forms of prejudice rife in the period of our own history. Players take the roles of members of the Candela Obscura, investigating magical phenomena and horrors, containing them, and keeping the greater world around them safe from their corruptive influence.

A Player Character in Candela Obscura is first defined by a Role and then by nine Actions. The nine Actions are divided into three thematic Drives. Nerve includes the Move, Strike, and Control Actions; Cunning the Sway, Read, and Hide Action; and Intuition the Survey, Focus, and Sense Actions. Each Action is rated between one and three, indicating how many dice a player will roll to have his character an action. Each Drive has its pool of points which can be expended to add more dice to roll for Action under its theme. Then for every three points of Drive, a Player Character has a Resistance, which can be spent in order to gain rerolls on a task. He carries with him three pieces of Gear, although these do not have to be declared until in play. An item of Gear might increase the effectiveness of a task or allow a Player Character to actually attempt a task.

There are five different roles—Face, Muscle, Scholar, Slink, and Weird—each of has two Specialties. The Specialties for the Face Role are Journalist and Magician (as in stage magician); for Muscle, Explorer and Soldier; for Scholar, Doctor and Professor; for Slink, Criminal and Detective; and for Weird, Medium and Occultist. Each Speciality and Role provides the base Action values for a Player Character, whilst each Speciality gives three abilities to choose from and each Role a choice of six to choose from. Abilities give out bonus dice or enable a particular action. For example, the Face Ability of ‘I Know a Guy’ enables a player to ask the Game Master once per assignment if there is someone nearby who can help his character, whilst the Sharpshooter Role Ability for the Soldier grants the Player Character two bonus dice if the player expends a point of his Nerve Drive.

To create a character, a player selects a Role and a Speciality, and then assigns the base Action values. He raises another from zero to one and then another three points to anyway he would like, and then he does the same for his character’s Drives. Penultimately, he selects an Ability for his character’s Role and Speciality. Lastly, he has a set of prompts to answer to help flesh out his character and form relationships with the fellow members of his Circle in the Candela Obscura.

Name: Tabitha Blythe
Role: Weird
Speciality: Medium
Role Ability: Let Them In
Speciality Ability: Cold Read
Nerve: Drive 2 Resistance 0
– Move 1 Strike 0 Control 0
Cunning: Drive 3 Resistance 1
– Sway 1 Read 2 Hide 0
Intuition: Drive 4 Resistance 1
– Survey 1 Focus 1 Sense 2 (Gilded)

In addition, the players, as a group, create their characters’ Circle in the Candela Obscura. There are a series of questions that they need to answer about their Circle, name it, decide on the location of its chapter house, choose a Circle Ability, and assign Resource Points. For example, ‘Stamina Training’ provides three bonus dice during an assignment and ‘Nobody Left Behind’ grants a bonus die on any attempt to help another Player Character who has too many Marks (or damage). There are only six Circle Abilities to choose from, and they include ‘One Last Run’, indicating that the next assignment is the Player Character’s last and they will retire afterwards. This grants the other Player Characters advantages when they next advance, whilst also suggesting that the play of Candela Obscura is intended to be long term. The Resource Points are Stitch, used to reduce the Marks a Player Character has suffered; Refresh, used to regain Drives and Resistances for a Player Character; and Train, used to grant bonus dice.

Mechanically, Candela Obscura uses what it calls the Illuminated Worlds system, a stripped-down version of the mechanics from the Blades in the Dark roleplaying game. When a player wants his character to attempt a task, he rolls a number of six-sided equal to the Action being used. Drive can be expended to add more dice, though loss of Drive is permanent, and the maximum number of dice that can be rolled is six. The highest die is counted. Any result of a six indicates a complete success, whereas a result of four or five is a partial success, and three or under is a failure—essentially, a ‘yes’, ‘yes, but’, or ‘no’ result. If more than a single six is rolled, the result is a critical success. In addition, some Actions may be ‘Gilded’. This means that one of the dice rolled for an Action must be of a different colour. If a player rolls a Gilded die as part of a task, then he can choose between the highest result or the result of the Gilded die. If a player chooses the result of the Gilded die, he gains the benefit of the number rolled and an extra benefit. This is to recover a point of Drive. So, in effect, what a player might do is ignore the complete success he rolled in favour of the four or five he rolled, a partial success, in order to recover a point of Drive. Lastly, Resistance can be expended to gain a reroll.

Conversely, failure can narrative, such as adding a complication or losing an opportunity, but at its worst, it can mean damage. The latter is suffered in the form of Marks to either Body, Brain, or Bleed, representing physical harm, mental strain, or magickal corruption, respectively. A Player Character cannot suffer more than three Marks in any one of the three categories, lest he drops to the ground incapacitated and suffering from a Scar. A Scar both indicates permanent damage suffered by the Player Character and changes how he approaches the world. The latter is reflected mechanically, by the player having shift a point in one Action to another. There is a lot of advice here on how to handle this, especially how to handle Brain and Bleed Scars, Candela Obscura wanting to avoid harmful mental health representation in the horror genre.

In all of this, it is the Game Master who sets the stakes and expectations, explaining what a Player Character has to gain from attempting the task or lose from attempting the task. The Game Master also sets the Action to be rolled for the task that a player wants his character to attempt. This comes back to the ‘fiction first’ ethos of Candela Obscura, that is, the Game Master fitting the right Action to what the player describes his character doing. However, the play of Candela Obscura is still a conversation and the player is always given a chance to adjust, decide on using Drive, and so on.

Candela Obscura provides some details of the supernatural world and of the organisation itself, as well as its enemies. This is where Candela Obscura begins to underwhelm as a horror game. There is more of a focus on the Candela Obscura organisation and its enemies, and an overall description of Newfaire and the Fairelands. The latter is particularly rich and detailed, and accompanied by scenario hooks. Similarly, there is excellent advice for the Game Master on running Candela Obscura, beginning with some core principles, such as ‘Paint the world in darkness and in light. Show the humanity in the horror and the horror in humanity.’, ‘Make the world grounded, dangerous, and terrifying’, and ‘Say “yes,” unless you must say “no.”’. There is also a good guide to how an assignment is constructed, from hook, arrival, and exploration to escalation, climax, and epilogue. Even better is the fact that each of the four example assignments in Candela Obscura, all four of them very good, is accompanied by an example session of what each might look like when played. This is a fantastic extra, really helping the Game Master who is less experienced, whether in running a roleplaying game in general or investigative horror scenarios in particular, to visual the play of an assignment. It also nicely complements the lengthy example of play given earlier in the book.

Physically, Candela Obscura is a lovely looking book. The artwork is suitably art nouveau in style and that very much fits the period setting of the roleplaying game. Plus, the rulebook is lavishly illustrated with documents, letters, diagrams, and the like. It really is a nice-looking book.

Unfortunately, where Candela Obscura underwhelms is in the treatment of its genre—horror. Where there is plenty of support in terms of setting and factions ordinary, there is just not enough of the outré in Candela Obscura, whether that is details of the threats and monsters that the Agents might meet or advice for the Game Master on running a horror game. Consequently, it is nowhere near as easy as it should be for Game Master to create her own threats and in fact, it feels as if there is more advice on avoiding the dangers of running a horror game than there is on actually running one. Thus, whilst that advice is far from unwelcome and certainly pertinent, the overall result is that the horror aspect of Candela Obscura is actually its weakest.

Ultimately, even if Candela Obscura does keep its horror a little too veiled, there is still a good roleplaying game here. The setting of the Fairelands and Newfaire and the factions present are nicely detailed, the mechanics are geared towards storytelling and the narrative consequences of confronting magick and the supernatural, and there are four good Assignments for a game to get started. Candela Obscura is a very modern horror roleplaying game, despite being set in an alternative Edwardian period, one that the Game Master will need to work a little harder with to bring the horror into play.

Friday Filler: For the Queen

The kingdom has suffered trouble and strife for as long as many of its citizens can remember. Yet there is hope on the horizon. The Queen has decided to entreat with a distant power and hopes to enter an alliance that will ensure peace for the nation. She has assembled the retinue that will accompany her on what will prove to be a long and arduous journey, testing the loyalties of members of the retinue, and ultimately forcing each of them to decide whether their love of the Queen is enough to guarantee their support in the face of an attack! This is the set-up for For the Queen, a collaborative storytelling game published by Darrington Press. Designed to be played by between two and six players, aged thirteen and up, it has a playing time of between thirty minutes and two hours. It is easy to set up and play, requires no preparation, no Game Master, and in asking a lot of questions of the players, creates characters, relationships, a world, and ultimately a story.

The place to start with For the Queen is not with how the game is played, but with its physicality. For the Queen comes in a very sturdy little box—designed to look like a pocketbook—which slips easily into a bag and makes a very handy addition to any game night or convention. The artwork on the box is eye-catching, but it is only a hint of things to come. Inside the box there are ninety-one cards. These consist of sixty Question Cards, seventeen Rules Cards, an X-Card, and thirteen Queen Cards. The Rules Cards contain one rule or aspect of the game each and they are read out in order, one player after another, and in the process, set the game up. There are barely eleven rules in the game and they are very easy to grasp. The sixty Question Cards consist of one or two questions which will serve as prompts to the players’ imaginations. For example, “Why are some others at the royal court jealous of your relationship with the Queen?” or “What question do you wish you could ask the Queen? What keeps you from asking it?” One Question Card has the statement and question, “The Queen is under attack. Do you defend her?” When this Question Card is drawn, it indicates the final round of the game and unlike the other Question Cards, it is one that everyone answers.

However, the most eye-catching cards are the Queen Cards. There are thirteen of these, each doubled-sided, with an illustration on each side, except for the last card which lists all of the Queens. Each illustration depicts a queen, but a different queen each time. A Birthday Queen. A Pirate Queen. A Drag Queen. A Queen Mother. A Cyberpunk Queen. A Shadow Queen. And so on, with the players picking just one of these as their Queen for their journey and their play through of For the Queen. The choice of Queen will heavily influence the story told. A journey made with the Pirate Queen will lend itself to a very different journey and story compared to one made with a CEO Queen. This is the main variable in the game—a different Queen Card means a different genre and a different story. Essentially, the Queen Card serves as the initial prompt for the players and is something that they will return to again and again over the course of a game.

The last thing done as part of set-up is to shuffle the sixty Question Cards and then the “The Queen is under attack. Do you defend her?” Question Card is placed into the deck. The closer it is placed to the bottom of the deck, the longer the game will last. Then the game begins. The players take it in turn to draw a Question Card and answer it. The Question Cards really do one thing—they push each player to examine his relationship with the Queen. In doing so, the player will also create a character for himself and establish that relationship, which depending on the Question Cards drawn and answered, will probably be a negative one, or at least a nuanced and conflicted one. As a player draws and answers more and more Question Cards, it will ultimately influence his answer to the last Question Card, “The Queen is under attack. Do you defend her?”.

When a player draws a Question Card, he is not duty bound to answer it. If he does not want to answer it because its question makes him uncomfortable, he can simply tap the X-Card included in the game and move on. Similarly, if the game is straying into a subject matter that makes a player uncomfortable, that player can simply tap the X-Card included in the game and the subject matter can be excised from the game. The other option if a player does not want to answer a Question Card is for him to pass it to the next player, which can sometimes reveal something big about that player and his character. When a player is answering a Question Card, the other players are free to ask questions of him and to get him to elaborate and reveal more about his character’s relationship to the Queen. This, though, does not mean that For the Queen becomes a game of interrogation, but one of gentle inquiry, and if it does become of interrogation, there is always the X-Card.

Physically, For the Queen is beautiful. The writing is simple, clear, and direct.

For the Queen is about discovering who you are in relationship to a central figure, the Queen, and what the nature of the relationship is. The longer the player, the more Question Cards are drawn and answered, and the deeper and more nuanced the relationship becomes, and thus the more difficult answering the last Question Card, “The Queen is under attack. Do you defend her?”, becomes. It constantly asks direct questions of the players, pushing them to improvise answers that build both the relationships between the Queen and her retinue and the world through which they must journey. The result is a tensely enthralling experience as each Question Card is drawn and more secrets are revealed about the relationships between the players and their Queen, that you immediately want to play it again.

For the Queen is a brilliantly tense and engaging storytelling game of creative improvisation. Its easy set-up and portability means that it is ready to play in minutes wherever you are. For the Queen is the perfect game to pack for game nights and for conventions to play when there is no game, in between games, and when a player or two cannot make it.

[Free RPG Day 2022] A Familiar Problem

Now in its fifteenth year, Free RPG Day in 2022, was celebrated not once, but twice. First on Saturday, 25th June in the USA, and then on Saturday, 23rd July internationally. This was to prevent problem with past events when certain books did not arrive in time to be shipped internationally and so were not available outside of the USA. 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. Thanks to the generosity of David Salisbury of Fan Boy 3, Reviews from R’lyeh was get hold of many of the titles released for Free RPG Day, both in the USA and elsewhere.

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Without a doubt, the slimmest of offerings for Free RPG Day 2022 is A Familiar Problem. There is good reason for that. It consists of a single sheet of light card, done in black and white on the one side and in full colour on the other. The full colour side consists of adverts for other releases from the publisher, Darrington Press, most notably, Tal’Dorei Campaign Setting Reborn, the supplement for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, based on the Critical Role YouTube campaign setting. Which is a bit strange. Strange because it is the adverts which get the colour and so take attention away from the roleplaying game on the other side. Strange because if Darrington Press had instead released a quick-start or a scenario for Tal’Dorei Campaign Setting Reborn for Free RPG Day 2022, then it might have got a whole lot more attention than A Familiar Problem is likely too. Putting that aside, what you get with A Familiar Problem is either a flyer with a mini-roleplaying game on the back or a mini-roleplaying game with a lot of advertising attached. Take your pick.

A Familiar Problem is a one-page roleplaying game in which the players take the roles of wizards’ familiars. Their masters and mistresses are away on an adventure and left them behind. Having been forgotten about them, they decide to have an adventure of their own and so prove to their owners that are useful and perhaps worth taking along on the next adventure. A Familiar might be a bat, a crab, an owl, a rat, a raven, and others. Each Familiar has four attributes—Clever, Fierce, Sly, and Quick, and a BREAK like Paranoia or Narcissism. The attributes range in value between zero and three, whilst the Break represents atypical behaviour if the Familiar acquires too much Stress. Each Familiar also knows three pieces of Pocket Magic, three spells such as Butterfingers, Door Magic, or Summon Horse. These are single use spells. To create a Familiar, a player rolls or chooses from the table of twelve and then does the same for his Familiar’s spells.

Lizzie the Lizard

Clever +0, Fierce +1, Sly +2, Quick +2

BREAK: Cowardice

Pocket Magic: Limited Invisibility, Soak, Speak with Object

When a Familiar wants to undertake an action in A Familiar Problem, his player rolls a ten-sided die and adds the value of an appropriate Attribute to the result of the die roll. The aim is roll equal to or higher than a Difficulty Number, which ranges from five or Easy to Very Difficult or ten. If the roll is failed, the Familiar gains a point of Stress. Subsequently, each time a player rolls for a task and rolls under his Familiar’s Stress, his Familiar’s Break occurs. Then the player has to roleplay that behaviour until the other Familiars calm his Familiar down and rescue him from the situation which triggered it.

As to what the Familiars do, there is a set of three of tables, one for generating the mission and two the adventure location. For example, ‘Sabotage the villain’s scheme in the Opulent Castle’. And that is it… The rest of it is left up to the Game Master to make up, perhaps with some input from her players, for example, whatever the villain’s scheme might be, and then play out. Which should take no more than a single session—and probably a short session at that.

A Familiar Problem is plain and simple. Whether that is physically, conceptually, or playfully. One of the best features of the simplicity is that it is easy to teach, is suitable for some younger players (depending how far they can cope with the BREAK rules), and requires no preparation. The only thing that it really requires is the ten-sided die and a Game Master happy to make things up and help tell the story.