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.

Miskatonic Monday #254: A Midsummer Night’s Darkness

Between October 2003 and October 2013, Chaosium, Inc. published a series of books for Call of Cthulhu under the Miskatonic University Library Association brand. Whether a sourcebook, scenario, anthology, or campaign, each was a showcase for their authors—amateur rather than professional, but fans of Call of Cthulhu nonetheless—to put forward their ideas and share with others. The programme was notable for having launched the writing careers of several authors, but for every Cthulhu Invictus, The Pastores, Primal State, Ripples from Carcosa, and Halloween Horror, there was Five Go Mad in Egypt, Return of the Ripper, Rise of the Dead, Rise of the Dead II: The Raid, and more...

The Miskatonic University Library Association brand is no more, alas, but what we have in its stead is the Miskatonic Repository, based on the same format as the DM’s Guild for Dungeons & Dragons. It is thus, “...a new way for creators to publish and distribute their own original Call of Cthulhu content including scenarios, settings, spells and more…” To support the endeavours of their creators, Chaosium has provided templates and art packs, both free to use, so that the resulting releases can look and feel as professional as possible. To support the efforts of these contributors, Miskatonic Monday is an occasional series of reviews which will in turn examine an item drawn from the depths of the Miskatonic Repository.

—oOo—

Name: A Midsummer Night’s Darkness

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Jane Routley

Setting: 1900s England

Product: One-shot
What You Get: Twenty-seven page, 16.27 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Suffragists, they are not for sacrificing
Plot Hook: Suffragists confront the misogynies of the Mythos!

Plot Support: Staging advice, six pre-generated Investigators, seven NPCs, and one Mythos monster.

Production Values: Decent and in the proper colours too!

Pros
# Excellent social horror

# Enjoyable period piece

# Nicely done pre-generated Investigators

# Engaging plot in which men really are beastly
# Great convention scenario

# Set-up for an Investigator organisation (and sequels?)

# Suffrajitsu!

# Dendrophobia

# Xylophobia

# Androphobia

Cons

# Needs a slight edit

# No floorplans

Conclusion

# Mild militancy takes on the Mythos!

# Fantastic period piece which shows another way to confront the Mythos

1959: Diplomacy

1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles—and so on, as the anniversaries come up. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.

—oOo—

1959 marks the publication of two classic wargames. One is Diplomacy: A Game of International Intrigue, Trust, and Treachery, the other is Risk: The Continental Game. Although they are both set in past times, one Napoleonic, one Edwardian, they could not be more different. One is card and dice driven and has been hugely successful, probably the most successful mass market wargame ever published, but the other is entirely trust and decision driven. The former is Risk, the latter Diplomacy. Both are sixty years old in 2019.

Published in 1959 by Games Research Inc. and later Avalon Hill, but now Wizards of the Coast under the Avalon Hill brand, Diplomacy is the grandfather of grand strategy games, an exploration of European national and political tensions prior to the Great War. A game of trust and negotiation, it appeals to the historian and the diplomat, whether that is the armchair historian or diplomat—like you and I, or the actual historian or diplomat—famously John F. Kennedy and Henry Kissinger. It is a game of decision and trust and negotiation, there being no dice or luck involved whatsoever. Designed for two to seven players aged twelve and over, in Diplomacy each player will control one of the great European powers—Austria-Hungary, England, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, and Turkey—and will have under his command a number of armies and fleets. He will also hold his traditional or home provinces that his country held in Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century. Between them are several neutral provinces, such as Norway, Tunisia, Portugal, Bulgaria, and so on. Switzerland is also neutral, but cannot be entered by any army. Some of these provinces, both home and neutral, are supply centres. Possession of these enable a power to build another army or fleet, likewise loss of these will force a power to disband an army or fleet. There are a total of thirty four such supply centres on Diplomacy’s map of Europe. If one player or power controls eighteen of these, then he wins the game. Winning though, is far from easy, and can take anywhere from between four and twelve hours—Diplomacy is a long game and it takes dedication to play.

Diplomacy is played out year by year, with two turns—Spring and Fall (Autumn)—per year beginning in 1901. On his turn, a player writes orders to each of his fleets and armies. These are to Hold (stay in position), Move (to an adjacent province), Support (support another army or fleet in moving into a province), or Convoy (a fleet transports an army across a sea province to another land province). Once written down, the orders from all powers are resolved simultaneously and this sets up the primary difficulty in taking provinces. All units are of equal strength or value—there is no rolling of dice or means to determine the strength of an attack or unit—and so when two opposing units attempt to capture the same province or one attempts to force another from a province, nothing happens. To successfully attack and hold a province, a player needs to support the attacking unit with another unit in another province. This can be a unit belonging to the attacking player or that of an ally. If successful, the defending unit can be forced to retreat, the attacking unit taking the province.

These orders are issued twice a year, but after the Fall turn, if a player has captured a Supply Centre, he can build a new army or fleet in one of his home provinces. If a player has lost a Supply Centre, he loses a unit. Play proceeds like this, from year to year until one player or power captures the eighteen supply centres necessary to win the game.

Now mechanically, this sounds simple enough, and it is. Within a turn or two though, as the powers send their armies and fleets out to capture first the supply centres in neutral territories they will clash with rival powers. Then, once the neutral supply centres have been captured, the powers will be brought into direct confrontation, and at this point, a stalemate is likely to ensue… In order to break such a stalemate, the powers and thus the players will have to co-operate and form alliances, much like the Entente Cordiale between France and Great Britain and the Triple Alliance formed between Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy. This is where Diplomacy begins to get interesting, challenging, and duplicitous.

Writing the orders for each turn—Spring and Fall (Autumn)—per year takes a few minutes, but a fifteen minute phase is allowed before this for negotiation between players. During this time, they can negotiate what they will write as their respective orders, reach agreements, form alliances, and so on. This might be to support an allied player’s move into a particular province, hold against an enemy, allow a convoy move for an ally, and so on. Forming alliances makes their member players very powerful, but the question is, how far can they trust each other? For not only is it within the rules of Diplomacy to reach agreements and make alliances, it is within the rules to break them as well. A betrayal and a breaking of an alliance at the right time can break a stalemate and hopefully give the betrayer the advantage to defeat his former ally, who is unlikely to make the same mistake of trusting the betrayer twice...

It is this capacity to break alliances, typically to the detriment of one member over another, to betray the trust between allies, which gives Diplomacy its primary reputation, that of being a game which breaks friendships. That though, is really down to the friendship rather than the game itself, because the game can be played by more mature players who will not necessarily put their friendships to the test by playing Diplomacy. By modern standards, if you can play The Resistance or Battlestar Galactica, both with built traitor mechanics, then Diplomacy should not be so of a test of friendships. But arguably, those games have traitors built into them by design and from the start, so the players know what to expect and can blame the game’s mechanics as much as the player betraying them. In Diplomacy is there no inbuilt mechanic for there being a traitor and it comes about through play and duplicity rather than anything else. Further, because of the trust placed in fellow allies, the betrayal of trust is likely to be all that more painful…

Nevertheless, forging the trust between players and building alliances is very much part of the play and the skill in Diplomacy. For it is a game built around negotiation and interaction as much as it is ordering fleets and armies across Europe—and in fact the need to make those order calls for that negotiation and interaction. 

In the sixty years since it was first published, there have been many editions of Diplomacy, published by many different publishers. The current version is the fiftieth anniversary edition published by Wizards of the Coast as part of its Avalon Hill imprint. It comes with eighty-four army counters and eighty-four fleet counts for the seven great power; one-hundred-and-forty-seven control markers to indicate who has control of the various supply centres; a large game board depicting Europe marked with the provinces held by the great powers at game’s start and the neutral provinces; a pad of maps for marking up orders; and the rulebook.

All of the components are solid, although it would have been nice if the armies and fleets had been wooden rather than the sturdy cardboard they are. The map is very clear and easy to read. As is the rulebook, although it would have been nice if some colour had been included in the maps used to show the examples of play. Although the rules are simple, time is taken to go through them with plenty of examples and explanations. There is also advice on how to play with fewer players and an example play through of the first seven turns of the game. This is a typical race for the supply centres in neutral territory. It is a pity that there are no illustrations for these moves, but it encourages the player to act them in order to see how the game plays.

Diplomacy is a game which demands the full seven players—it is not as fun with fewer—and the time in which to play it to its final outcome. Of course, few of us have that opportunity as often as we would like and almost from almost the very start, the play of Diplomacy was conducted via the post and in fanzines, then later online, so that games can be conducted at a more leisurely pace with greater scope for negotiation (and betrayal). Its age, its theme, and its set-up means that there has probably been more written about Diplomacy and how it can be played than any other game, except Chess (which of course, is centuries older). By modern standards, at the height of the Eurogame, Diplomacy is too confrontational, too much the wargame. It could be argued that from the start, though not necessarily later on in the game, its situation places the players and their powers finely balanced against each other. Breaking that is part of winning the game and even though Diplomacy is not strictly a wargame, it is not a Eurogame either. 

The lightness of the mechanics and the historical set-up, means that Diplomacy has the capacity to be something more. As a game of confrontation and negotiation between the European powers prior to the Great War, it has the capacity to work as an exploration of the nationalism, the politics, aims, and international relations between the powers. There is scope here for roleplaying too, as the players take on the roles of the Kings, Emperors, Sultans, Czars, and Presidents leading the great powers , and by increasing the number of players, perhaps their various ministers and generals. Such scope lies outside of Diplomacy as it comes in the box and arguably it would also require at least one Game Master.

Again by modern standards, Diplomacy is a game design with flaws. Its play is too long and by its very nature, will lead to player elimination who will have nothing to do whilst the surviving powers jockey for position and then confront each other. These are likely to be contributing factors to the game not being as popular as it once was. Another factor may well be the theme to Diplomacy, that of the great powers of Europe prior to the Great War, no longer having the significance that it once had, as those events were within living memory when the game was first published. And yet, Diplomacy: A Game of International Intrigue, Trust, and Treachery remains a classic because it emphasises the negotiation and interaction aspects of playing it as being key to the wargame aspect and mastering that is the path to victory—eventually. 

Prometheus Bound

What if Victor von Frankenstein’s scientific endeavours came to fruition? What if he really could revive the dead, and how would he develop and use his new found knowledge? What if both he and his “creation” escaped their fates in the frigid wastes of the far North to return to Europe and alter the fate of a continent? These questions are answered in Dark Harvest: The Legacy of Frankenstein, a new setting from Cubicle Seven Entertainment that presents an alternate history of science perverted to the darkest of ends.

One thing that’s needs to be made clear is that whilst it says that Dark Harvest is “Compatible with Victoriana Core Rulebook” on the front cover, this is not a supplement for the RPG of magic, clockwork, and horror, Victoriana. Rather, it is an RPG all of its very own, one that uses a streamlined version of the Heresy mechanics first seen in Victoriana. Other differences – a shift from the 1860s of Victoriana to the 1910 of Dark Harvest and involving science more than fantasy – also mark it as a standalone RPG. Dark Harvest is not just an RPG, but also a sourcebook and an anthology of fiction for its setting – Promethea.

Having freed itself from the shackles of the Ottoman Empire in the mid-eighteenth century, the newly independent country of Romania forged ahead, flexing its muscles to assert her borders and territorial claims and sponsoring scientific and engineering learning even as the nobility balked at political and social reform. Amidst growing political tensions at home and abroad, ruler of Romania declared martial law, revealed himself to be none other than Victor Frankenstein, and renamed the country, Promethea. In the opening years of the nineteenth century, the new nation would transform itself into a scientific utopia and militarised state that would become both the wonder and the mystery of the age, its borders closed to prying eyes that speculated at the advances made by the new nation.

Behind Promethea’s fortified and patrolled frontier, King Victor hides a dark, dark secret. The country’s elite consent to his rule in return for incredible benefits that come with the Harvest, whilst the peasantry is kept downtrodden by the effects of this Harvest. This Harvest is not of crops in the traditional sense, but of the very body parts of the member of the lower castes of Promethean society. Organs, limbs, and facial features are “donated” by the peasantry, not just to enhance the physical capabilities of the Promethean Military Forces’ soldiery through Augmentation, also known as Frankenstein’s Gift, but also to enhance the beauty, the longevity, and the vitality of elite such that the rich need never grow old or die, but remain young and beautiful forever.

The lower castes have not wholly acquiesced to this state of affairs. It is not unknown for mothers to deliberately scar their children to prevent their being taken in the Harvest, and then there is the Resistance. Lead by the Creature itself, the original creation of Victor Frankenstein, who wishes not only to overthrow his creator and end the practice of the Harvest, but also to prevent his creator’s dark sciences falling into the hands of rival nations. Were they to come to master the knowledge of Augmentation, he fears that they would be barely as scrupulous as Promethea in the implementation of the new biology. Under the watchful eyes of the Promethan Military Forces (PMF) and the Domestic Security Forces (DSF), perhaps the greatest fear of any who defy the absolute monarchy of Promethea is not that their bodies be Harvested for the Augmentation of others, but that they be subject to Evisceration, a terrible punishment that sees their flesh and bone worked out into artistic tableaus hung on wire racks and kept alive by Promethean science despite their impossible agonies. It takes a great artistry and skill to pose each Evisceration for all to see…

In addition to being a more horrifying, less fantastical setting, Dark Harvest is also a humanocentric one. The only player option is that of human characters, but the setting and range of Augmentations available suggest numerous character concepts such as Augmented PMF soldier on the run, spy for a foreign power, huntsman augmented to sniff out his quarry, itinerant peddler who acts as a courier for the Resistance, or a wealthy socialite appalled by the nature of the Harvest who is caught between wanting to aid the Resistance and needing the latest fashionable facial sculpt in order to keep an ear on the comings and doings of the upper classes… (This is the sample character below).

Character creation is a mix of player choice, assigning points, and spending points. A player chooses his character’s social class, and then assigns a handful of points to his characteristics. These can be negative as well as positive, but player characters all start with a score of one in each characteristic. A larger pool of points is available to spend on Skills (divided between ordinary skills and speciality skills), Traits (or advantages), Privileges (social advantages), Augmentations, and Assets, while a few more points are available if a player decides to take some complications.

Name: Monica Flurinescu
Social Class: Upper
Age/Gender: 24/Female Vocation: Socialite
Build: Slim Hair/Eyes: Black/Green

Attributes
Strength -2 Dexterity 1 Fortitude 1
Presence 3 Wits 2 Resolve 1

Derived Attributes
Initiative 5 Health 3

Common Skills
Act 2, Charm 4, Dance 3, Dodge 1, Empathy 4, Etiquette 3, Firearms 1, General Knowledge 2, Intimidate 2, Perception 2, Streetwise 1

Specialities
Conversation 2, Cryptography 1, Fashion 2, High Society 2, Interrogation 1, Language (French) 1, Politics 1

Complications: Annoying House Mate, Glassjaw, Proper Sensibilities
Traits: Beautiful/1, Deduction/1, Drink Like a Fish, Natural Charisma/1
Privileges: Society Friends, Theatrical Patron
Assets: Wardrobe
Augmentations: Augmented Beauty/2

Some of the Augmentations available in the setting replicate Traits already, such as (Augmented) Beauty/Handsome and Mere Flesh Wounds, and so are slightly cheaper to purchase during character generation, whilst others are more outré, like All-Round Vision (eyes in the back of the head), Elongated Neck (works great for looking around corners or with the Bite Augmentation), and Webbed Digits. When a character has Augmentations installed, even during character generation, the GM has to roll a Surgery Test for each Augmentation, the skill of the surgeon being determined by the character’s social class. If this Test is failed, it can lead to medical complications, such the patient suffering from Tremors or Crossed Signals, the latter meaning that the Augmentation works, but its use triggers another involuntary action. If made successfully, it can mean that the result is Flawless – ordinarily no Augmentation can be grafted onto a patient without scars.

Beyond the actual surgery involved in their grafting, Augmentations involve other complications. The first is physical, in that they can suffer from Stress through extreme exertion, while the second is social, each class having a different attitude to the type and quality of Augmentations installed. For example, the lower castes despise the more frivolous types favoured by the elite whilst the elite revile the scarring associated with the quality of surgery available to the peasantry. Overall, the Augmentations have grotesqueness to them that comparable Steampunk devices never could.

Dark Harvest uses the same Heresy Game Engine first seen in Victoriana. It is a dice-pool system that uses both black and white dice, the pools usually created from adding an attribute and a skill together. Any roll that comes up a one or a six counts as a success, while any roll of a six can be re-rolled to generate yet more successes. The primary method of setting difficulty is by adding black dice to the pool, three black dice for a difficult task, six for a very difficult task, and so on. Any roll that comes up a one or a six on a black die reduces the total number of successes rolled. Fortunately, rolls of six on a black die do not get rolled again. The other method of setting the difficulty of a task is by modifying the total number of dice in the pool. Anyway, a single success rolled counts as a partial success, two rolled successes as an adequate success, three rolled as a good success, and so on.

The setting itself is supported with a full gazetteer for Promethea, which breaks country down region by region complete with a map for each region. It is a pity that these smaller regional maps could not have been in colour as the full map inside the front and cover. This full map is very nicely done, though I suspect that it is based upon a more contemporary map as Promethea’s neighbours include Yugoslavia, Slovenia, Ukraine, and others. For more flavour the RPG includes an anthology of five short stories that capture the desperation of the setting and some of key moments, horrid as they are. Mechanically, the setting is supported with details of creatures particular to Promethea (after all, how likely was it that her surgeons would place Augmentations in just humans?), plus a plethora of NPCs each accompanied by a story hook and a series of “Untold Tales” or scenario ideas.

Despite possessing a rich and evocative setting, Dark Harvest is not quite the fully rounded RPG that perhaps it should have been. Certainly there are more than enough hooks to overlook the lack of a scenario, but the lack of advice for the GM is more of issue as Dark Harvest is different from the atypical horror RPG, its gothic horror being born of scientific endeavour rather than from superstition and folklore. Some guidance towards that end would have been helpful as would a discussion of campaign ideas beyond the obvious one of having the player characters be members of the Resistance. Just as for the players, some character ideas and perhaps some sample characters might have also been useful.

Another issue not addressed the setting of Promethea is that of technology other than Frankenstein’s Gift. The DSF is given two signature weapons, but other weaponry is kept generic and so uninteresting. Other technologies are not even mentioned, leaving the GM to wonder if the setting is primarily one of early twentieth century biowear rather than the Steampunk so attached to the period – and to a certain extent to Victoriana itself. The option of course would for the GM to check out Victoriana for rules compatible ideas and its excellent supplement, Faulkner’s Millinery and Miscellanea, for possible equipment, but both of course have a fondness for fantasy and magic rather than the purely scientific pursuits to be found in the pages of Dark Harvest. Both of course, are also set in 1867 and not 1910… Indeed money is barely even mentioned in the setting and it seems odd that the prices for the weapons listed are given in sterling.

Physically, Dark Harvest is a nice looking book. The layout is kept clean and simple with some excellent illustrations, especially the pen and ink pieces that you just wish were accompanied by the full stats for each one as an NPC. If I have to quibble about the layout it is that the use of a non-serif fount looks anachronistic in places…

Now the idea of combining the biopunk genre in an altogether more mannered age is not new. Rippers for use with Savage Worlds explored some of the same elements, but to a pulpier, more simplistic end, that of monster hunting. Dark Harvest has its failings, most of which could be fixed with a companion volume, but otherwise, it is more interesting than Rippers, primarily because it draws from a deeper, more profound source. Ultimately, Dark Harvest: The Legacy of Frankenstein presents a grim alternate history, one born of pure scientific ambition perverted by vanity.