[Free RPG Day 2026] Creature Curation Presents #1

Now in its nineteenth year, Free RPG Day for 2026 took place on Saturday, June 27th. 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. Unfortunately, due to vagaries of International Customs, Free RPG Day in the UK did not take place until Saturday, 22nd August.

This review is possible due to the generosity of Waylands Forge in Birmingham.

—oOo—

Creature Curation Presents #1 is a slightly different product for Free RPG Day because it is an anthology of three adventures for three different roleplaying games, all three of them compatible with Mörk Borg, the Swedish pre-apocalypse Old School Renaissance retroclone designed by Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell and published by Free League Publishing. One of the three roleplaying games will be familiar, it previously having appeared as support for Free RPG Day with Into the Würmhole back in 2021, whilst the others will be less so. One thing to bear in mind with Creature Curation Presents #1 is that whilst it states that the quick-start rules are included, this is not actually the case. Instead QR codes are provided for each of the three roleplaying games as well as either a QR code to a character generator for the roleplaying game or a set of pre-generated Player Characters. This makes preparation a little slower than it ordinarily might have been if they had been included, but not overly so.

The first scenario, ‘Impaled Obelisk’, is for Vast Grimm, the pre-apocalypse Science Fiction roleplaying game set in a very future in which cultists have unleashed the infection of THEY, whose infection of Würms and the Grimm have hollowed out and shattered worlds, including the Earth. Humanity’s last hope is the Gate of Infinite Stars, through which the uninfected survivors can escape and find a universe where they will be free of the Würms and the gnawing… In the meantime, pirates and cultists prey on the survivors as desperate men and women gather together in Legions and explore what remains of the universe, perhaps hoping to find something that will towards humanity’s continued survival and the construction of the Gate of Infinite Stars

In ‘Impaled Obelisk’, the Legion answer the distress call of the Gallant Obelisk, a starship that went missing nine decades ago and is found to have crashed nose first into the surface of the planetoid, Caladron 7. It is unlikely that any of the original crew are still alive, but there may still be much to scavenge, some of which will be valuable, some of which might help mankind. Caladron 7’s low gravity means that the Player Characters can easily propel themselves up its length, exploring its corridors, research facilities, scientific laboratories, crew quarters, engineering spaces, and more. Everything seems to be covered in a Web Goo and none of the bodies of the crew can be found. ‘Impaled Obelisk’ is a classic ‘wrecked spaceship as dungeon’ scenario, not a little like Alien, but ‘Grimm’ in its own way. It is easy to run as a one-shot or add to a Game Master’s campaign.

The second scenario is for Raptor Ruckus. This is inspired by 1993’s Jurassic Park and is a survival horror roleplaying game in which the Player Characters are staff at the world’s new and greatest theme park about to excite the world about dinosaurs once again! Of course, things can go wrong. There can be storms or breakdowns or worse, agents of Basilisk, the anti-human doomsday cult, working to sabotage and undermine the whole project!

In ‘Airborne’, the Player Characters are returning to the island park after showing off one of the dinosaurs to investors on the mainland. They are travelling aboard a Lockheed C-130 transport along with a kentosaurus, sedated and caged. Suddenly, there is a bang and the aeroplane pitches nose down—is it about to crash? Just as bad is that one of the creature handlers draws a gun and points it at the Player Characters! Thus, the adventure starts with a bang and carries on from there as they are faced by one dangerously dinosaurous situation after another. They have to get out of the aeroplane, are attacked by Pteranodons on the way down, and find themselves on the wrong side of the fence back in the dinosaur park! And even when they get to the other side, it looks like saboteurs have been hard at work whilst the Player Characters have been away on the mainland. The scenario includes the stats for some dinosaurs, a pair of fanatical cultists, and an entertaining NPC to portray. Pleasingly, it does include a dinosaur chase, exactly as you would want, and overall, this is an excitingly tense chase scenario from start to finish that can lead into Fragmentation, the first campaign for Raptor Ruckus.

The third scenario is for Neon Bastardz. This is a near future roleplaying game inspired by Neon Lords of the Toxic Wasteland and all of the bad ‘B’ and straight to video trashy Sci-Fi movies of the eighties and noughties. The Player Characters are Skumdogs, lowlife-not-quite-scum pushed to take the dirty jobs no one wants to do, from cleaning the sewers of CHUDs to finding radical treasures in the wastelands for the Detroit-Prime Hyper-Lux.

In ‘Killing Detroit Prime Style’, the Player Characters are gangers, members of a war party perhaps hired to do a job for BioRent Worldwide, Detroit-Prime’s leading biotech manufacturer. The offices of BioRent Worldwide on floor #207 of the city’s megablock have been taken over by Ninja. It is up to the gangers to break into the building, ascend to floor #207, find the Ninja and beat their ass before sending them back to their dojo in body bags. Floor #207 is large with separate areas that might take up whole floors in lesser blocks, but whether the cubicle maze, client consultation room, organ storage, executive offices, and so on, the gangers will find Ninja. The gangers can earn ‘Friendship Points’ by saving civilians who are at risk, sparing an enemy who surrenders, giving an emotional speech, fighting back-to-back with an ally, and so on. They can be spent to re-roll any die, heal a downed ally, add a bonus to an ally’s attack, and so on. All very eighties buddy movie and cinematic. ‘Killing Detroit Prime Style’ is a beat ’em up scenario, very much more style than substance and easily the easiest of the three scenarios in the anthology to prepare.

Physically, Creature Curation Presents #1 is a blast of bright neon colour. Of the three, ‘Airborne’ for Raptor Ruckus is underwritten in places, but otherwise, all three are easy to grasp. The artwork is decent throughout, but the cartography is plain if serviceable.

Creature Curation Presents #1 packs in three easy-to-run scenarios that a Game Master can each run in a single session. ‘Impaled Obelisk’ for Vast Grimm and ‘Airborne’ for Raptor Ruckus are the best of the three, as ‘Killing Detroit Prime Style’ is Neon Bastardz is simplistic, but all three are solid introductions to their respective roleplaying games.

[Fanzine Focus XLIII] The Valley Out of Time: Gods Walk the Valley

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 and the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game from Goodman Games. Some of these fanzines provide fantasy support for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, but others explore other genres for use with Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. One such fanzine is The Valley Out of Time.

The Valley Out of Time is a six-part series published by Skeeter Green Productions. It is written for use with both the Dungeon Crawl Classics RolePlaying Game and Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic, ‘The Valley Out of Time’ is a ‘Lost Worlds’ style setting a la X1 The Isle of Dread, and films such as The Land that Time Forgot, The Lost World, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, One Million years, B.C., and others, plus the artwork of Frank Frazetta. Combining dinosaurs, Neanderthals, and a closed environment, it is intended to be dropped into a campaign with relative ease and would work in both a fantasy campaign or a post-apocalyptic campaign. It could even work as a bridge between the two, with two different possible entries into ‘The Valley Out of Time’, one from a fantasy campaign and one from a post-apocalyptic campaign.

The Valley Out of Time: Gods Walk the Valley is the sixth and final entry in the series. Unfortunately, it marks a return to form for the series. Unlike the fourth and fifth issues in the series before it, The Valley Out of Time: Tribes and Factions and The Valley Out of Time: Rotten at the Core it does not do anything more than just give the Judge one more dinosaur or megafauna or one more fight with one more dinosaur or megafauna. For the Judge that wants fights and monsters, the first three issues of The Valley Out of Time were perfect, and the good news is that in the case of The Valley Out of Time: Gods Walk the Valley, that Judge will find the issue equally as good. However, for the Judge wanting more, this sixth issue as well as the first three issues, will be a disappointment. What the series promises is set out on the back cover: “The Valley Out of Time is a series of ’zine-sized adventures from SGP. This valley can be placed in any ongoing campaign, and is set in the “Neanderthal Period” of development. Huge monsters – both dinosaurs and otherwise – and devolved humanoids plague the area, and only the hardiest of adventurers will prevail!” The problem is that the series failed to deliver on anything more than just dinosaurs and at best, very minor encounters, all of which emphasised combat rather than interaction or exploration. Certainly, until The Valley Out of Time: Tribes and Factions and The Valley Out of Time: Rotten at the Core, the series failed to provide what might be called an adventure as promised on the back cover.

One of the things that The Valley Out of Time: Gods Walk the Valley does do is address the issue of Player Character motivations. Unfortunately, in previous issues, the series has steadfastly refused to make any suggestions as to what they might be and leave the Judge to decide what they are—which in all fairness is the series’ signature design feature. Here though, they are included and they suggest that the Player Characters might have been cast through some random portal and ended up in the valley, found the valley deep into a mountain range they were exploring, or have found their way into a jungle enclave shut off from the rest of the world by some powerful entities who wanted to see how it developed free of outside influence, to protect the location of an artefact, to imprison dangerous creatures, or a mix of all four. Putting aside that it is strange to suggest these ideas so late in the series, it should be no surprise that having suggested them, the fanzine leaves it up to the Judge to develop which of them to choose and then develop.

The mainstay of this sixth and final issue of the fanzine is four, highly detailed encounters monstrous beings, the almost god-like things alluded to by the issue title. In ‘The Living Jungle’ the Player Characters are cutting their way through the jungle when it comes to life and attacks them. They must defend themselves against a Topiary-Thing and Animated Palm Trees (a variant of the Treant) lead by a Dryad whom the Player Characters have unwittingly angered in slashing their way through the jungle. Unfortunately, there is no way of resolving the situation other than with a fight. So no doing a service or task for the Dryad as restitution and therefore no opportunities for interaction or roleplaying. Worse, this is not the only encounter like this in this or previous issues of the fanzine. So, whilst the creatures might well designed and detailed, the encounter itself strikes a disappointingly singular note.

The second encounter, ‘The Summoning’ has more depth and detail, but that is because it is a bigger encounter. The Player Characters crest a hill to look down upon an enormous ziggurat at the base of which a ceremony is being enacted at the end of which it is clear that a sacrifice will be performed. This is to summon a prime ooze from beyond time and space (for Dungeon Crawl Classics) or activate a War-bot (for Mutant Crawl Classics) and with five hundred feet between them and the ziggurat, the Player Characters have time to act. The combat is broken down into a timeline that last several rounds which track what the enemy is doing. At the end of it, the Player Characters might find a great artefact, an Orb of Power (for Dungeon Crawl Classics) or Dimensional Orb (for Mutant Crawl Classics). The Orb of Power gives a statistic and spellcasting bonus, whilst the Dimensional Orb gives a bonus to the program checks and access to a patron AI. However, the possessor cannot let the artefact out of his sight, but beyond that, either artefact feels underwhelming.

In ‘Ancient Hero’ the Player Characters find a great stone slab on the side of a hill. If they can shift the slab, they find inside a tomb for a Skeletal Champion (for Dungeon Crawl Classics) or Scream Champion (for Mutant Crawl Classics). If the Player Characters can defeat this mighty monster and its companions, there is an equally mighty treasure to gained. This is The Bloody Hand, a cursed and Chaotic two-handed sword that causes those of opposed Alignment to bleed when wounded with it. However, the sword must take a life every twenty-four lest the wielder suffer actual damage or a statistic loss (the weapon is highly reminiscent of certain soul-sucking sword…). Following a rumour—which makes a nice change from just wandering into an encounter—about a flame that fell out of the sky, the Player Characters investigate which might be its crash site, the Isle of Golenmot, deep in the jungle. It turns out that the crater where it landed, now full of muck and water is actually home to a giant snapping turtle—and it is hungry. If they defeat it, the Player Characters may find the meteorite at the bottom of the lake, but other than that, the encounter is over and done with.

Beyond that, The Valley Out of Time: Gods Walk the Valley presents write-ups for all of the monsters that the Player Characters will have faced in the previous four encounters in Appendix A. Then in Appendix B, ‘Resources of the Valley’ reprints details of materials used in the valley rather than metal—bone, wood, and diamond. Between them, Appendix A and Appendix B, along with the article on materials, and the empty three pages of ‘GM Notes’, make up half of the issue, and add nothing to the fanzine. The unnecessary repetition of material here could have been put to so much better use, but instead, half of the fanzine is a waste of space.

So The Valley Out of Time: Gods Walk the Valley is essentially is four combat encounters. Four, big, bruising combat encounters, but nothing more, nothing less. And not one of them adds to The Valley Out of Time as a setting and not one of them an adventure as promised.

Physically, The Valley Out of Time: Gods Walk the Valley is well presented and well written. The artwork is of a reasonable quality.

As a series, The Valley Out of Time has continued to astound and astonish in the author’s steadfast refusal to explore the concept of a lost valley and the sense of a lost valley as a place, instead, presenting again and again, one combat encounter with a dinosaur or megafauna after another with nary an opportunity for roleplaying. It is as if the author found the concept of a lost valley, pointed the Judge towards it, and then lost the concept entirely, leaving the Judge to do all of the work to make it a gameable space. And that is not what a good fanzine should be doing.

In the meantime, there scope for someone to step up and write a lost valley setting for Dungeon Crawl Classics and/or Mutant Crawl Classics which has setting details, plots, motivations, NPCs, hooks, secrets, and more that the Judge can run for her players without having to do all of the heavy lifting, because The Valley Out of Time does none of that.

[Fanzine Focus XXXIX] The Valley Out of Time: Rotten at the Core

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 and the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game from Goodman Games. Some of these fanzines provide fantasy support for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, but others explore other genres for use with Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. One such fanzine is The Valley Out of Time.

The Valley Out of Time is a six-part series published by Skeeter Green Productions. It is written for use with both the Dungeon Crawl Classics RolePlaying Game and Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic, ‘The Valley Out of Time’ is a ‘Lost Worlds’ style setting a la X1 The Isle of Dread, and films such as The Land that Time Forgot, The Lost World, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, One Million years, B.C., and others, plus the artwork of Frank Frazetta. Combining dinosaurs, Neanderthals, and a closed environment, it is intended to be dropped into a campaign with relative ease and would work in both a fantasy campaign or a post-apocalyptic campaign. It could even work as a bridge between the two, with two different possible entries into ‘The Valley Out of Time’, one from a fantasy campaign and one from a post-apocalyptic campaign.

The Valley Out of Time: Rotten at the Core is the fifth issue in the series and like the fourth issue, The Valley Out of Time: Tribes and Factions, before it, it does something more than just give the Judge one more dinosaur or megafauna or one more fight with one more dinosaur or megafauna. For the Judge that wants fights and monsters, the first three issues of The Valley Out of Time were perfect, but for the Judge wanting more, they were a disappointment. What the series promises is set out on the back cover: “The Valley Out of Time is a series of ’zine-sized adventures from SGP. This valley can be placed in any ongoing campaign, and is set in the “Neanderthal Period” of development. Huge monsters – both dinosaurs and otherwise – and devolved humanoids plague the area, and only the hardiest of adventurers will prevail!” The problem is that the series failed to deliver on anything more than just dinosaurs and at best, very minor encounters, all of which emphasised combat rather than interaction or exploration. Certainly, until The Valley Out of Time: Tribes and Factions, the series failed to provide what might be called an adventure as promised on the back cover. In addition, it also failed to provide anything in the way of an overview of the Lost Valley and its history and it also failed to address anything in the way of Player Character motivation as to what did once they were in the Lost Valley.

In fact, The Valley Out of Time did not so much fail to address Player Character motivations as actually refuse to address them. So, it is actually odd to see the author write, “In the Valley Out of Time series, much of the background motivations have been left out, specifically to allow freedom and flexibility of design for the judge. However, in this penultimate Part 5 of the series, let’s look at some specific motivations for the adventurers to ease the burden on the poor judge.” The question is, if the lack of motivations for the adventurers was such a burden for the Judge, why did the author place that burden on the Judge? Not for one issue, but four issues? Why did the author ignore for so long the two fundamental questions that any player is going to ask upon finding his character in the Lost Valley—“How did I get here?” and “What do I do now?”. Obviously, such questions are not going to be answered in the fanzine, but what they highlight is a conceptual design flaw upon the part of the author. Instead of providing options in terms of how and why the Player Characters are in the Lost Valley and what they might do next that the Judge could take, use, adapt, or ignore, he gave the Judge no choice but to create her own. The author asked the Judge to create content and do work that he should have done himself. That is the burden he placed upon the Judge and it shows a fundamental misunderstanding as to why the Judge would have bought The Valley Out of Time series in the first place.

There is also some sense of what the Lost Valley is with this issue. Previously, it has never gone beyond being an isolated range “…(i)nhabited by ‘unevolved’ humanoid tribes, mega-fauna, giant insectoid life, and other unusual hazards.” However, with this issue, the author tells us that it was “Originally created as a pristine and unspoiled oasis outside of others, the Timeless Valley as nature intended – with a balance of benefits as well as misery.” The description raises another question—‘Who created the Lost Valley?’ Sadly, it is another question that the fanzine ignores.

The majority of The Valley Out of Time: Rotten at the Core is devoted to ‘Rotten at the Core’, a scenario for between four and six Player Characters of Sixth to Eighth Level. This is also the first time that the series has suggested what Levels the Player Characters should be. Anyway, the scenario assumes the players and their characters will have played through one or more of the encounters in previous issues and later on in the scenario, that might have played through ‘Why Did It Have To Be Snakes?’, the scenario involving the Ophidian Beastmen, in the previous issue. Either way, by the beginning of the scenario, the Player Characters should have had some interaction with the Urman tribes and even befriended some of them. The Cict Urman tribes asks for the Player Characters’ help. Their leader, Barbreitte the Rose, was kidnapped by Ophidian Beastmen and taken to an underground complex reasons they do not understand. Of if the Player Characters have played through ‘Why Did It Have To Be Snakes?’, they will. The Cict Urman scouts have checked the area where she disappeared and suggest that her abductors might have taken her into the caves and sinkholes in the nearby hills known to be home to hideous monstrosities. The tribe also thinks that a hidden tribe which lives underground nearby might have some information.

Although quite detailed, there is actually very little to the scenario in terms of plot. The Player Characters can approach the Ophidian Beastmen cave complex and sneak in and attempt to find the Barbreitte the Rose, or alternatively make the trek to the Nua Urman tribe’s underground home and attempt to get information from them before finding the Ophidian Beastmen cave complex. Both locations are described in some detail and everything is given full stats, even the Nua Urman tribe and its caves, just in case that the Player Characters want to assault it. The journey to the Nua Urman is described as an interlude, but it is a very long interlude given that it makes up a third of the scenario in length. Consequently, so much of the Nua Urman description feels unnecessary to the play of the scenario unless the Player Characters simply want to slaughter them. That said, the Nua Urman are slightly more interesting in that they do use some interesting weapons, including diamond war axes and a last-ditch cannon that uses Blackstone powder. Whereas in Ophidian Beastmen cave complex will reveal greater threats and darker secrets that will probably lead to further adventures. The final encounter will be with very tough beastman, or Rakshasa.

What the Player Characters may learn is that there is a greater evil in the Lost Valley, a corruption that was accidentally overlooked when the valley was originally created—again, by whom?—and has since grown into a festering blackness that threatens the whole valley. This is ‘Yaath, Mother under the Hills’, a giant, amorphous, black globule of bile and evil. Effectively, an almost unkillable Great Old One that carries on the Lovecraftian feel to the Lost Valley begun with the Ophidian Beastmen. It is an end of campaign level confrontation, though the Judge will need to develop how the threat of Yaath manifests in the Lost Valley in order to lead the Player Characters to its lair…

What is notable about all of the encounters in ‘Rotten at the Core’ is that they presented for both Dungeon Crawl Classics and Mutant Crawl Classics, including both the stats for the monsters and the treasure that the Player Characters might find. So, for example, a rumpled sheet turns out to be a Flying Carpet for Dungeon Crawl Classics, but a Holo-Cloak for Mutant Crawl Classics. It good to see the distinction made clear and implemented throughout.

The Valley Out of Time: Rotten at the Core is rounded out with an appendix of new monsters, essentially replicating the monsters and creatures given in the scenario, and the replication of the information on ‘Resources of the Valley’ with added detail of diamond. Lastly, there is joyous emptiness of the ‘GM Notes’ pages where the Judge is expected to write down all of the details that the author resolutely refuses to provide her with.

Physically, The Valley Out of Time: Rotten at the Core is well presented and well written. The artwork is of a reasonable quality.

With The Valley Out of Time: Rotten at the Core, the series presents its first big scenario. It is a decent enough combat and exploration-focused scenario, although its interlude is too long and does not add very much to the scenario whether the Player Characters decide to engage with it or ignore it. Given that it is written for Player Characters of Sixth to Eighth Level coming to the end of a ‘campaign’ in the Lost Valley, it feels right it should be in the penultimate issue, almost as if a campaign is coming to head and the Player Characters will face a major villain in the final part. Yet The Lost Valley series has not supported the Player Characters getting to this point in their exploration of the Lost Valley. It has never presented the Lost Valley as a setting, let alone a ‘campaign’. There have been only minor encounters in the first three issues, all of them of the same tone and set-up, and only proper scenarios in the fourth issue.

Ultimately, The Valley Out of Time: Rotten at the Core begs yet more questions. “Why is the author giving us a full-length scenario now after ignoring them for so long?” and more importantly, “Why is the author so concerned with motivation all of a sudden after resolutely refusing to address it previously?” Addressing it so late in the fanzine’s run gives The Lost Valley a weird split identity as if the author wants it to be a proper campaign setting, but did not realise it until now. The Valley Out of Time: Rotten at the Core shows how poorly the series was conceptualised and realised. Undoubtedly, there is good content in The Lost Valley, but the author has defiantly left the development of that content into something playable in the hands of the Judge.

[Fanzine Focus XXXVIII] The Valley Out of Time: Tribes and Factions

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 and the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game from Goodman Games. Some of these fanzines provide fantasy support for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, but others explore other genres for use with Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. One such fanzine is The Valley Out of Time.

The Valley Out of Time is a six-part series published by Skeeter Green Productions. It is written for use with both the Dungeon Crawl Classics RolePlaying Game and Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic, ‘The Valley Out of Time’ is a ‘Lost Worlds’ style setting a la X1 The Isle of Dread, and films such as The Land that Time Forgot, The Lost World, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, One Million years, B.C., and others, plus the artwork of Frank Frazetta. Combining dinosaurs, Neanderthals, and a closed environment, it is intended to be dropped into a campaign with relative ease and would work in both a fantasy campaign or a post-apocalyptic campaign. It could even work as a bridge between the two, with two different possible entries into ‘The Valley Out of Time’, one from a fantasy campaign and one from a post-apocalyptic campaign.

The Valley Out of Time: Tribes and Factions is the fourth issue in the series and finally—finally—the series does something more than just give the Judge one more dinosaur or megafauna or one more fight with one more dinosaur or megafauna. For the Judge that wants fights and monsters, the first three issues of The Valley Out of Time were perfect, but for the Judge wanting more, they were a disappointment. What the series promises is set out on the back cover: “The Valley Out of Time is a series of ’zine-sized adventures from SGP. This valley can be placed in any ongoing campaign, and is set in the “Neanderthal Period” of development. Huge monsters – both dinosaurs and otherwise – and devolved humanoids plague the area, and only the hardiest of adventurers will prevail!” The key word here is ‘adventure’. There is not a single adventure, with plot and interaction and motivation and other elements that the players and their characters can grasp and engage with, in the first three issues of fanzine. Thankfully—thankfully—with The Valley Out of Time: Tribes and Factions actually begins to deliver on its promise.

As the title suggests, The Valley Out of Time: Tribes and Factions details some of the various groups and peoples of the valley as well as providing encounters and ways in which to interact with them. This includes four adventures or extended encounters, backgrounds on some of the tribes, and more. The tribes and adventures are divided into three sections, ‘Beastmen and Other Things’, ‘Urmanoids and Other Less-Developed Tribes’, and ‘The Urman, And Establishment Of Society’, each of which deals with different tribes and factions and gives a scenario or two. In ‘Beastmen and Other Things’, the groupings are Beastmen, the equivalent of Dungeons & Dragons’ non-human tribes, such as Goblins, Kobolds, and Orcs. The first of two entries for this section is ‘Here Comes the Cavalry’, the tribe being with ‘Pig-mees’, actually taken from Fight This Mutant. It begins in typical The Valley Out of Time fashion with the Player Characters encountering the Pig-mees after or during a fight that they are having with several dinosaurs, in this case, some Deinonychi. The Beastmen might aid the Player Characters or they might ambush them, depending upon how well the Player Characters are doing. Afterwards, there is potential for a parley and even some trade as the spoils of the fight are divided up. The encounter will be eased if the Player Characters have access to the Comprehend languages spell.

The second scenario begins in similar fashion, with the Player Characters encountering a dinosaur, having a fight with it, and then someone coming to their rescue. In ‘Why Did It Have To Be Snakes?’, it is Ophidian Beastmen. They will not only aid the Player Characters, but offer to share the treasure—in this case, the eggs of the Giant Iguana Lizard they were fighting—and invite them back to their dwellings to celebrate the victory. Of course, the Ophidian Beastmen, a la the Serpent Men of the Cthulhu Mythos or Robert E. Howard, have their own motives for helping the Player Characters—and they are not good! This scenario does carry a content warning, as it does include a horrifying possible ending in which the Player Characters become incubators for the snake-like humanoids’ eggs. There are notes alongside on the Ophidian Beastmen culture which the Judge can use to develop later encounters with them, though for ‘Why Did It Have To Be Snakes?’, the Judge may want to draw some maps of the Ophidian Beastmen’s underground lair.

‘Urmanoids and Other Less-Developed Tribes’ focuses on Urmanoid troops and families found across the valley. They do not yet have a language, but in comparison to other groupings in the valley, they are peaceful and family-orientated. They also tend to specialise in skills, such as builders or animal tenders, and there is even the possibility that a troop might specialise in communication and learn Common from the Player Characters. They are supported with an actual proper scenario, one that has a beginning, a middle, and an end, a plot, and opportunities to roleplay. Further, in an astonishing development for The Valley Out of Time series, ‘Ranch Hands’ does not actually begin with the Player Characters having an encounter with a dinosaur and having to fight it! Instead, they discover an Urmanoid village and are welcomed to stay, and even encouraged to join in the daily activities of the tribe. Then the tribe’s hogs are attacked by Dire Wolves! This is not the first time and their hosts decide to track the Dire Wolves to their lair and put an end to the menace. They will welcome any help upon the part of the Player Characters. Fighting the Dire Wolves and investigating their lair reveals an even bigger threat—not just the Dire Wolf Pack Alpha—but also a Man-Wolf! There are also hints of a bigger mystery too, one that will hopefully be developed in The Valley Out of Time: Rotten at the Core, the next entry in the series. Overall, this is the most sophisticated adventure that has been presented in The Valley Out of Time series to date.

The entries in The Valley Out of Time: Tribes and Factions have been working up the developmental ladder and reaches the most advanced group with ‘The Urman, And Establishment Of Society’. It develops earlier content and makes full use of the Dungeon Crawl Classics dice to determine each tribe’s general appearance, organisation, and technological development. The attached scenario is ‘Jungle Saviors’, which begins with the Player Characters stumbling into a clearing consisting of blood-soaked mud and bones surrounding a squat and ugly idol. Then out of the surrounding jungle, a band of small, but also ugly Urman attack! The Player Characters have trespassed on their sacred site, but fortunately—or unfortunately, they are not interested in killing the Player Characters. They have other plans for them, plans that warrant another content warning for this issue of the fanzine. The encounter does not quite get that far as an even more scary-looking group of Urmen, looking like jungle ghosts, attacks the Player Characters and the other Urmen alike, turning the encounter into a three-way fight! Again, this is more of an extended encounter, one that sets up an interesting situation, but never quite fully develops the aftermath as it could have done.

The Valley Out of Time: Tribes and Factions also includes discussions of barter, trade, and the economy of the valley and religion in the valley. ‘Barter, Trade, And The Economy Of Valley’ looks at what the tribes’ value and what they might trade for it—based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs—as well as what the Player Characters might be able to barter for with the items that they bring into the valley with them. It also looks at unique items to be found in the valley and how they might be worked into a campaign. ‘Religion In The Valley (And Other Fey Tales)’ looks at worship in the valley, emphasising how it is often more immediate in nature, helping the valley’s inhabitants get through the day. It also examines other motivations such as expanding the tribe (as in a couple of cases in the issue’s encounters) or conquest, but suggests that primarily, what the inhabitants worship are primarily related to nature. It also notes that the inhabitants’ pragmatic attitude towards death means that undead are rare in the valley beyond ghosts and apparitions. The importance of omens is highlighted and the essay notes that these can play a significant role in interacting with the valley dwellers. These are frustratingly good overviews of both subject matters as they pertain to the valley. Frustrating in that it has taken four issues of the fanzine to get to this point to really look at life in the valley rather than list dinosaur after dinosaur.

The issue comes to a close with appendices that start with entries for the new monsters in the issue (despite them being given in the actual adventures), including stats for the Urman. ‘Resources Of The Valley’ is a nice accompaniment to the earlier essay on trade and barter, whilst the third appendix gives a little flavour text that adds another legend to the valley.

Physically, The Valley Out of Time: Tribes and Factions is well presented and well written. The artwork is of a reasonable quality.

With The Valley Out of Time: Tribes and Factions, The Valley Out of Time series begins to deliver on some of the promises made by the author at the beginning of every issue. It starts to look at the valley as a whole, its inhabitants and their lives, and supports that with better scenarios rather than just dinosaur, dinosaur, dinosaur, dinosaur, dinosaur, dinosaur. There really should have been more content like this from the start and it is a shame that it has taken the author so long to get to an actual proper overview of just some of the elements to the setting that would enable the Judge to run it properly.

[Fanzine Focus XXXVII] The Valley Out of Time: Danger Valley

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 and the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game from Goodman Games. Some of these fanzines provide fantasy support for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, but others explore other genres for use with Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. One such fanzine is The Valley Out of Time.

The Valley Out of Time is a six-part series published by Skeeter Green Productions. It is written for use with both the Dungeon Crawl Classics RolePlaying Game and Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic, ‘The Valley Out of Time’ is a ‘Lost Worlds’ style setting a la X1 The Isle of Dread, and films such as The Land that Time Forgot, The Lost World, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, One Million years, B.C., and others, plus the artwork of Frank Frazetta. Combining dinosaurs, Neanderthals, and a closed environment, it is intended to be dropped into a campaign with relative ease and would work in both a fantasy campaign or a post-apocalyptic campaign. It could even work as a bridge between the two, with two different possible entries into ‘The Valley Out of Time’, one from a fantasy campaign and one from a post-apocalyptic campaign.

The Valley Out of Time: Danger Valley is the third issue in the series and it is difficult to describe just how disappointing this issue actually is. Then again, the second issue, The Valley Out of Time: Exploring the Valley, was almost as disappointing. What the series promises is set out on the back cover: “The Valley Out of Time is a series of ’zine-sized adventures from SGP. This valley can be placed in any ongoing campaign, and is set in the “Neanderthal Period” of development. Huge monsters – both dinosaurs and otherwise – and devolved humanoids plague the area, and only the hardiest of adventurers will prevail!” The key word here is ‘adventure’. There is not a single adventure in the issue of the fanzine. An adventure has a plot and interaction and motivation and other elements that the players and their characters can grasp and engage with. The Valley Out of Time: Danger Valley does not offer any that. What it does give is a series of fights with some prehistoric monsters, which vary between the Player Characters noticing something over a hill which turns out to be a monster that will attack them and coming upon a fight between two monsters in which they can decide to help one side or the other or run away. All start with the Player Characters wandering through this lost valley and coming across what they are—encounters. They are not adventures and the author even confirms this by describing several of them as an ‘encounter’. The question is, why does the author promise the reader adventures, only to deliver one combat encounter after another, and then to compound them all, make them boring?

Worse, having provided full stats for the monsters in the encounters, the author gives the monsters full write-ups in the first of the issue’s appendices. Why? Why repeat material when there is such a limited page count?

The problems continue with the framing of what the fanzine is. Under ‘Hooks/Motivations’, the author writes. “These ’zines offer a “mini-setting” with some quick and dirty encounters, locations, and obstacles to help fill in a night (or two) of gaming when other plans go astray.” To be fair, this issue offers some encounters—a fight with some Xoth-man raiders, a fight with a cave giant, a fight with some axe beaks, and so on. All nine of them. But not locations or obstacles, and definitely, definitely not a setting, ‘mini’ or otherwise. There is no map, there is no sense of place, in fact, there are no places, and there is barely anyone to interact with—and when there is, the motivations of the NPCs are scarcely touched upon. The author does tell the reader that the NPCs’ village is a good source of rumours and campaign hooks, but not what those might be.

Penultimately, there is some flavour text in the second appendix. ‘The Timeless Valley’ is a short creation myth told to some of the peoples within a lost valley. It may or may not be a foundation myth of the ‘Valley Out of Time’ of the fanzine’s title, but it is engaging and it is interesting and used in conjunction with the some of the people of the valley, it would add to their background. So, the next question is, why is the author not using this to create a setting and to bring the ‘Valley Out of Time’ of the fanzine’s title to life instead of shovelling out one prosaic monster fight after another?

Lastly, The Valley Out of Time: Danger Valley includes three pages left blank for ‘GM Notes’. Three whole pages where the author could have been providing the mini-setting that the issue promised or even an actual encounter that had scope for roleplaying and interaction rather than just another boring fight. Or alternatively, this could be seen as the author being kind enough to leave a space in fanzine for the Judge to write down some details of an actual setting or even an adventure that he steadfastly refuses to provide as promised.

Physically, The Valley Out of Time: Danger Valley is well presented and well written. The artwork is of a reasonable quality.

If the Judge is looking for a collection of fights with prehistoric monsters to pitch at her players, then The Valley Out of Time: Danger Valley is perfect. However, if the Judge wants more than fights and monsters, wants adventures and setting, wants content around which she can build her own campaign, then The Valley Out of Time: Danger Valley is a frustrating failure. Which sadly, is due to the author’s broken promises.

[Fanzine Focus XXXVI] The Valley Out of Time: Exploring the Valley

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 showcased how another DM and 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 and the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game from Goodman Games. Some of these fanzines provide fantasy support for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, but others explore other genres for use with Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. One such fanzine is The Valley Out of Time.

The first volume in the six-part series, The Valley Out of Time: Welcome to the Valley takes you into ‘The Valley Out of Time’. Published by Skeeter Green Productions, it is written for use with both the Dungeon Crawl Classics RolePlaying Game and Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic, ‘The Valley Out of Time’ is a ‘Lost Worlds’ style setting a la X1 The Isle of Dread, and films such as The Land that Time Forgot, The Lost World, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, One Million years, B.C., and others, plus the artwork of Frank Frazetta. Combining dinosaurs, Neanderthals, and a closed environment, it is intended to be dropped into a campaign with relative ease and would work in both a fantasy campaign or a post-apocalyptic campaign. It could even work as a bridge between the two, with two different possible entries into ‘The Valley Out of Time’, one from a fantasy campaign and one from a post-apocalyptic campaign.

The Valley Out of Time: Exploring the Valley is the second entry in the series. Published following a Kickstarter campaign, like the first issue, it opens with a list of hooks and motivations to get the Player Characters into the Timeless Valley, whether that is to search for a rare item or McGuffin, ending up in the valley via random gate or teleport, simple discovery of the vale between two mountain chains, or a previously closed off valley suddenly being opened by gods or the like, for reasons which will become clear. The eponymous scenario, ‘Exploring to the Valley’ begins with the Player Characters travelling across the valley. Having encountered a tribe of Urmanoids, the Neanderthal-like species native to the valley, and helped fend off two attacks upon their camp, first by a giant lizard and then by a pack of Dinychus attracted by the first attack, in the scenario in The Valley Out of Time: Welcome to the Valley, the Player Characters continue their travels in ‘Exploring to the Valley’. They spot a Raquel Welch-like figure in the distance, obviously more technologically capable. If they follow her, they will discover that she is a scout for a group of hunters from a tribe of Urman proto-humans. The Player Characters have the option to watch or participate in the hunt and then interact with the Urman, or even attack them.

Unfortunately, ‘Exploring to the Valley’ is not a scenario, but rather an extended encounter—and a frustrating one at that. The problem is that it focuses too much on the combat and not enough on the interaction, and although it introduces the female scout, she is only used as a lure to get the Player Characters to the encounter. As a whole, this is fiercely underdeveloped in terms of interaction and thus of opportunities for the Player Characters to learn anything about the surroundings and the Timeless Valley. As a consequence, there is no real pull or push for the Player Characters to do anything but wander around, and hope that something happens to them. This lack of development is compounded with the inclusion of not one, but two further encounters, neither of them designed to be run in conjunction with ‘Exploring to the Valley’. ‘A Cat-astrophe in the Grasslands’ is an encounter with a Pakthara, or giant sabre-tooth cat, whilst ‘Conventional Wisdom says RUN!’ is an encounter with a Strigoso, or giant owlbear. Both are for parties of high-Level Player Characters and thus highly unsuitable to be run with ‘Exploring to the Valley’, which is intended to be run with Player Characters of Second to Fourth Level.

As with The Valley Out of Time: Welcome to the Valley, the remainder of The Valley Out of Time: Exploring the Valley is dedicated to three appendices. The first, ‘Appendix A: New Monsters’ gives full write-ups for the various monsters and creatures which appear in the adventure, including the Drumahen, or giant bison, that the Urmans are hunting, as well as the Urman themselves. They are joined by the Gorge, or giant stirge, the Naga, Royal Cap giant fungus, and the Strigoso. These are all nicely detailed. The second, ‘Appendix B: Random Encounter Tables’ gives random encounter tables for the jungle, grasslands, and hills of the Timeless Valley. This followed by the stats for the encounters themselves, some sixty or more entries. This takes up half of the issue, and if the ‘Appendix A: New Monsters’ is added to that, almost two thirds of The Valley Out of Time: Exploring the Valley is devoted to just monsters.

The third and penultimate entry is ‘Appendix C: The Timeless Valley’. Where the previous article in the series in The Valley Out of Time: Welcome to the Valley suggested ways in which the Player Characters could be brought to the Timeless Valley, in this issue, it actually look at the Timeless Valley as a setting, but not in a way that is actually useful. It opens with “What is the Timeless Valley? Where is the Valley? WHO is the valley? Why is the Valley? All good – if somewhat silly – questions.” These are anything other than silly questions. They are very good questions, they are very pertinent questions, because in answering them, they provide the fundamentals of the setting and from those fundamentals can be created stories and plots and motivations. It then continues with, “The Judge needs to integrate as much or as little background as necessary to keep the players interested in the area. Here at SGP, we think that the valley is ripe for exploration, conquest, just plain killin’ new critters. Whatever motivates the players and keeps the campaign going is why it’s here.” Which begs a number of questions. First of which is, if that is what Skeeter Green Productions thinks, why is it avoiding every single opportunity to support it? Why does The Valley Out of Time not have a background or setting? Why does The Valley Out of Time not include anything that would support Player Character motivations? And why does Skeeter Green Productions think that fundamental basic questions about a setting that it wants its customers to buy and play are silly?

That said, ‘Appendix C: The Timeless Valley’ does actually provide some background. It provides the history and the legend of the Timeless Valley and explains how it came to be populated with dinosaurs and other great beasts, and has its technological development slowed. It is a good introduction to the setting and well written, but it comes with one big caveat. This is that it is a possibility of a background. So not the actual background to the Timeless Valley? What then is the point of it except as piece of fiction, because there is no reference to it elsewhere in the fanzine and certainly no ideas are given as how such a possible background relates to the current state or geography of the Timeless Valley expect for the dinosaurs and the lack of technological development.

Physically, The Valley Out of Time: Exploring the Valley is well presented, although the artwork does vary in quality. As with The Valley Out of Time: Welcome to the Valley, this issue continues its ‘Partwork’-like structure.

The Valley Out of Time: Exploring the Valley is ultimately, an exercise in frustration. Its content is for the most part undeniably good, and that is because the various monsters and beasts are all given good write-ups and the stats in the encounter tables are useful. The rest leaves the Judge to ask the question, “Yes, and?” because what the issue fails to do is develop the Timeless Valley as a setting and present suggestions as what the Player Characters might do or go. The lack of an overview of the Timeless Valley as a setting, let alone a map, leaves the Judge with the parts of setting, but not the actual setting itself. This is compounded by the lack of a proper scenario, one with an actual plot and something that the players and their characters can learn or gain from in playing. All of which is exacerbated by the last thing in the issue. Two pages which are left blank as ‘GM Notes’. Literally, blank pages instead of actually addressing the fundamental problems of The Valley Out of Time and The Valley Out of Time: Exploring the Valley as a playable setting. As a consequence, The Valley Out of Time: Exploring the Valley completely fails to live up to its title. It is all about the monsters and nothing about exploring the valley.

Whether The Valley Out of Time is an actual setting or the parts of a setting that the Judge has to design and assemble herself remains to be seen.

Friday Filler: Jurassic Park: Danger! Adventure Strategy Game

Jurassic Park is thirty years old in 2023. It was a big hit in 1993, and although it has developed into a franchise, the original is the one that is best remembered. After all, with what was then grounding breaking CGI, the dinosaurs were brought to life like never before, and the combination of a rousing score from John Williams and a new sound system in cinemas meant the impact of seeing the film in the cinema, it is still recalled today. Sadly, Jurassic Park does not have any roleplaying games based on it, but it does have a board game or two. Published in 2018—on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the film—by Ravensburger, the Jurassic Park: Danger! Adventure Strategy Game is a light, semi co-operative game for two to five, aged ten and up. In the game, the human players must work together to achieve their goals and escape the island whilst avoid being eaten by the dinosaurs, whilst the dinosaur player must eat as many humans as he can! (well, not literally, three is enough.)

The human players control one character at a time, although the game gives them a choice of ten to choose from. Every character has his or her own deck of cards, character mat, and meeple. Although every character’s deck has Run, Sneak, and Climb cards, each character’s deck also has its special cards. For example, Doctor Alan Grant has ‘Give Me Your Hand’, which lets his move another character on an adjacent tile to move to his tile and Lex Murphy has ‘Piercing Scream’ which gives her a chance to sneak and distract without being attacked. Each character has their own Character Goal which must be achieved before the character can get to the Helicopter Pad and escape. A character who achieves his goal is awarded a Goal Token. For example, Doctor Alan Grant’s goal is to distract the Tyrannosaurus Rex, Doctor Ian Malcom’s is to successfully guess whether a die roll will be odd or even, and John Hammond’s is to not have any character be eliminated whilst he is in play. He actually starts play with his Goal Token and loses it if another character dies. Even if it is Dennis Nedry.

The dinosaur player controls three dinosaurs—a velociraptor, a tyrannosaurus rex, and a dilophosaurus. Although the dinosaur player has the one deck of cards, each card gives two or three actions—Run, Sneak, or Climb—that the dinosaur player must do when drawn. No matter the number of actions on the card, a different dinosaur does each action. In addition, the dinosaurs can do two things. First, each has its own special action. The velociraptor can run two spaces in a straight line, the tyrannosaurus rex can attack twice, and the dilophosaurus can attack a character on an adjacent tile with its venomous spit. A dinosaur special action like this cannot be done on two consecutive turns. Second, a dinosaur can attack. This occurs when they are on the same tile—except for the special action of the dilophosaurus—as a human and neither are sneaking. Attacks always succeed otherwise, and force a player to discard a card from his hand. This is removed from the game and cannot be retrieved. When a character loses all ten cards in his deck, he is eliminated. Lastly, it should be noted that the meeples for the dinosaurs are attractively illustrated, but the meeples for the characters are plain and unillustrated.

What is interesting is that when a character exits the game—either because he has been eaten by a dinosaur or has managed to successfully escape via the helicopter, his player can select another character and continue playing. Either way, this keeps a player involved from start to finish and removes the element of player elimination, if not character elimination.

The game is played on a map of Isla Nublar. This requires some construction prior to play, but the coastal perimeter frame keeps everything in place. The Start Tile—for the humans—goes in the middle, whilst the perimeter and centre tiles are placed randomly. The marked Locations are the Control Centre, Visitors’ Centre, and Maintenance Shed, plus the Helicopter Pad, whilst the dinosaurs also have their own starting tiles. Some tiles have mountains on them and these need to be climbed, as do the electric fences marked on some tiles, when they are turned off. Once activated, the three marked Locations are activated, they become safe spaces for the humans.

On a turn, each player, both human and dinosaur play a card face down on their respective mats. The dinosaur player plays his first as well as any optional actions. Then the human players do the same, plus any optional actions. The Climb and Sneak actions require a successful die roll to complete, as does activation of the three Locations. Cards can be burned or permanently discarded to gain a boost to the roll.

Play in Jurassic Park: Danger! Adventure Strategy Game proceeds one card at a time. The dinosaur player is at an advantage with the choice of special actions and is aiming to prevent access to the three Locations for as long as possible whilst constantly snapping at and attacking the humans. Blocking is possible because a character cannot use his Run or Climb Cards to enter a tile with a dinosaur. Conversely, a human player can use Sneak and Distract cards to get past a blocking dinosaur. A human player can also turn on the electric fences from the Maintenance Shed, which block both human and dinosaur movement. Both human and dinosaur players have limited choice of cards to play from one turn to the next, their hands being limited to just three. Because of positioning—either dinosaur or human—and because of terrain like the electric fences and the mountains that has to be climbed, the choice of card to be played can also be restricted. The humans will often find themselves running even as they get close to their intended destination.

Jurassic Park: Danger! Adventure Strategy Game is won in two ways. For the dinosaur player, all he has to do is eliminate three humans. For the human players, they have to reach all three locations and activate them, fulfil their individual goals, and only then escape from the island. If three humans escape from the island, then the humans win.

Physically, Jurassic Park: Danger! Adventure Strategy Game is well presented, with nice artwork used to illustrate the various characters from the film. The card stock for the mats and the cards feel a little thin and whilst the dinosaurs are eye-catching, the meeples for the humans are, in comparison, bland. The rulebook is well written, easy to read and understand—clearly marking the text for the human players and the dinosaur player is a very nice touch, and includes advice on how to win for both players.

Jurassic Park: Danger! Adventure Strategy Game is okay—and for a family game, especially one that embraces modern design, is also okay. It introduces co-operative play, the humans having to work together, the options are simple, and the film will be familiar to almost everyone. With ten cards to lose humans are more resilient than at first seems, but the dinosaurs are tenacious, have more options and more powerful options as to what they can do, and at best the humans can only corral them with the electric fences or sneak past them. And that, for the human players is not very interesting, because whilst Jurassic Park: Danger! Adventure Strategy Game does have plenty of theme, it feels as if the humans are avoiding the theme as much as they are the dinosaurs. The problem is that the game ignores some of the tensions in the film. For example, Dennis Nedry, the villain, is a playable character, and his special action is that he is always attacked first by the dinosaur if there are more than the one human on a tile. Which seems appropriate, because nobody likes Dennis Nedry, but he does not get to be the villain in the game. He does not betray John Hammond and you wish that he could. Robert Muldoon is not armed and cannot act against the dinosaurs in anyway. In fact, no human can do anything to to affect the dinosaurs bar turning on bar the electric fences, so the interaction between the humans and the dinosaurs is all too often one way—the dinosaurs affecting the humans. The result is a lack of tension between the humans and the dinosaurs because the dinosaurs have a human player and their actions are going to predictable. Perhaps if the game has automated to movement of the dinosaurs, it might have made their actions less predictable and so increased the tension?

Jurassic Park: Danger! Adventure Strategy Game is a serviceable, modern family game that can be enjoyed by casual or younger board gamers. For the more experienced board gamer, Jurassic Park: Danger! Adventure Strategy Game is slightly underwhelming, leaving him wishing that it had a bit more bite.