Free RPG Day 2019: Land of Myth: Age of Palaces

Now in its twelfth year, Saturday, June 15th is Free RPG Day and with it comes an array of new and interesting little releases. Invariably they are 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. Land of Myth: Age of Palaces  –  A Fantasy Setting in Mythical Greece provides an introduction to a new setting based on Greek Myth and history and a scenario for four to six players. Published by Seven Thebes, Land of Myth: Age of Palaces is a Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition-compatible roleplaying game set two decades after the Trojan War in an Age of Heroes and in an Age of Palaces, the latter being the centres of power in Mycenaean Greece. 

Land of Myth: Age of Palaces is designed as the roleplaying game’s PLAYTEST MODULE Vol. 1, so from the start sets out to explain what it is and how it differs from Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. That setting is Ancient Greece, in a mythic age when the worshippers of the Olympian pantheon have the opportunity to gain glory and be great heroes, perhaps even achieve Apotheosis and so be granted divine status by the gods. It takes place in a world watched over by the gods of the Olympian pantheon, a world not made for man—forcing him to struggle to survive and make a home for himself, and a world full of the supernatural, peril, and the unknown for those who step beyond the walls of the settlements and enclosures where it is safe. Beyond that lies the Wilderness, an enchanted and supernatural land of thick forests and remote mountains which leads into the Shadow Meadows, which lie on the edge of the Underworld and are Hades’ attempt to expand his influence into the world of the Olympians. Those do step forth beyond the walls, in the name of the kings in their palaces and the gods on Mount Olympus and for glory, are of course, the player characters.

In terms of mechanics, it highlights the differences between the System Reference Document for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition and Land of Myth: Age of Palaces. It supports its humanocentric setting with several new Classes drawn from both historical and mythological Greece. The six on show in Land of Myth: Age of Palaces include the Hoplite, a skilled heavy infantryman capable of wearing bronze plate and wielding a heavy shield; the Black Hunter, trackers, scouts, and hunters who revel in the worship of Dionysus; the Trickster, a skinchanger and spy who can alter reality, life, and death; the Myrmidon, skilled fighters able to challenge and focus on individual targets; the Hieria, itinerant priests who serve as intermediaries between man and the gods and are granted theurgist magic in return; and the Theban Magus, whose Phoenician origins enable him to cast the sorcery forbidden in Athens. Land of Myth: Age of Palaces also downplays the use of the Proficiency bonus in favour of Skills, adding in a ‘By More Than 5’ rule, which allows for a better or worse result on a skill if a player rolls five more or five less than the Difficulty Check, but as good as if a player rolled a ‘20’ or a ‘1’. Group skills are handled by each player rolling against a Difficulty Check and then each successful result adding towards the value of a Group Difficulty Check. So each individual Difficulty Check might be a ‘12’, but the Group Difficulty Check might be ‘60’, so every roll above ‘12’ goes towards the total.

Although Land of Myth: Age of Palaces is Class and Level setting, it places less of an emphasis on each character’s Level and Experience Points. Characters are not actually considered to be professionals until they are Third Level. Glory is actually more important for characters in Land of Myth: Age of Palaces and reflects their standing and fame. Characters also have Divine Favour, given as gifts by the gods and used to ensure automatic success on Attack, Saving Throw, Death Save, and Ability check rolls. These are earned during the Winter Phase when the player characters will typically spend in and around the Palaces, perhaps having urban rather than Wilderness adventures. There is the possibility to use Define Favour as a roleplaying tool, but that is only mentioned in passing in Land of Myth: Age of Palaces  –  A Fantasy Setting in Mythical Greece.

Combat in Land of Myth: Age of Palaces makes radical changes to initiative. Instead of rolling a twenty-sided die, each player rolls one or more six-sided dice depending upon the actions his character wants to undertake. So using a light weapon or casting a Zero Level spell only requires one six-sided die to be rolled, two six-sided dice for medium weapons and spells of First through Third Level, and so on. Movement adds further dice. The aim is to roll as low as possible and then count up from one. Further rules cover simple chases, whilst others allow for the Morale of NPCs to be broken, especially if the player characters possess Glory. Lastly, Magi in Land of Myth: Age of Palaces do not have spell slots, but Sorcery Points. In a somewhat complex set of rules, Sorcery Points are divided into different pools for a Magus’ Apprentice spells, Adept spells, Master spells, and so on. Sorcery Points are used to fuel and improve the power of a spell, as well as Metatropic effects like subtle casting and extra damage, but use too many Sorcery Points and a Magus will suffer from fatigue and exhaust himself. The complexity here provides the player of any Magus with choice of how his character casts spells, but it is not straightforward especially after coming from ordinary Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition.

The second part of Land of Myth: Age of Palaces  –  A Fantasy Setting in Mythical Greece presents ‘The Palladium of Troy’, a six-chapter scenario. Designed for between four and six players, it takes place not after the Trojan War, but during it. The six included with Land of Myth: Age of Palaces  –  A Fantasy Setting in Mythical Greece for use with the scenario are all Seventh Level and are all serving with the Achaean army which has been laying to Troy for many years. Now there is an opportunity for the Achaeans to bring the war to an end and defeat the Trojans as foretold in the prophecies. Acting on information provided by the spymaster Odysseus, the player characters are tasked with making their way beyond Troy to capture a prince who has gone into exile and then later make their into Troy itself. Drawing from Homer’s Iliad and later stories, ‘The Palladium of Troy’ is a mix of wilderness and urban adventures, the latter involving a delve into the city’s plumbing. It is solidly good adventure, a decent mix of roleplaying, exploration, and combat, the exploration in particular, taking place in a really well drawn dungeon. Rounding out PLAYTEST MODULE Vol. 1 are the six pre-generated heroes, all Seventh Level and clearly detailed.

Physically, Land of Myth: Age of Palaces  –  A Fantasy Setting in Mythical Greece is handily presented. It is all neat and tidy and easy to read, with good use of spot colour to highlight parts of the text as necessary. It is  not illustrated, but the cartography is really nicely done in both two and three dimensions.

Being based on the System Reference Document for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition means that the PLAYTEST MODULE Vol. 1 for Land of Myth: Age of Palaces has an accessible starting point, since its base game play barely differs from Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. Nevertheless, it is different and Land of Myth: Age of Palaces  –  A Fantasy Setting in Mythical Greece takes it time to patiently highlight and explain those differences before showcasing in ‘The Palladium of Troy’. The only issue is perhaps the complexity of having to play characters of Seventh Level and thus deal with all of their abilities, especially if playing a Magus. Nevertheless, Land of Myth: Age of Palaces  –  A Fantasy Setting in Mythical Greece is a good introduction to the setting, highlighting and showcasing differences between it and other fantasy roleplaying games.

Free RPG Day 2019: Outbreak: Undead 2nd Ed - Intro Manual

Now in its twelfth year, Saturday, June 15th is Free RPG Day and with it comes an array of new and interesting little releases. Invariably they are 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. Outbreak: Undead 2nd Ed - Intro Manual is, as the title suggests, an introduction to the Zombie Survival Simulation roleplaying game published by Renegade Game Studios. The roleplaying game is designed as a toolkit to create a horror setting themed around zombies and have the player characters suffer psychological terror when confronted with the undead. Outbreak: Undead 2nd Ed - Intro Manual introduces the roleplaying game’s mechanics, including combat, morale, damage, and healing, plus equipment, pre-generated Player Characters, and an introductory scenario.

From the outset it is clear that Outbreak: Undead and Outbreak: Undead 2nd Ed - Intro Manual needs a lot to support it. Not just the percentile dice required for core mechanic, but six-sided dice in four colours—blue Speed dice, white Depletion dice, red Damage dice, and black Difficulty dice—as well as tokens of two different colours to represent Degrees of Success and Degrees of Failure. The Outbreak: Undead 2nd Ed - Intro Manual does not waste any time in explaining how the mechanics work. Basically, Outbreak: Undead uses a percentile system, but modifies the roll of the six-sided dice. Thus blue Speed dice are rolled and added to a player’s initiative roll if their character is undertaking a complex action; the white Depletion dice are rolled to see if a piece of equipment with finite uses is exhausted—the battery for a torch or ammunition for a gun, for example; the red Damage dice inflict injury upon an opponent; and the black Difficulty dice are rolled to increase the character is undertaking a complex action. The blue Speed dice, white Depletion dice, red Damage dice, and black Difficulty dice all have a Wild Face where the ‘6’ would be, which when rolled have a unique effect which the Game Master narrates or the die simply explodes and can be rolled again.

Now in general what a player is trying to do with any roll of the percentile dice is not just succeed or fail, but generate Degrees of Success and Degrees of Failure. For each full ten points rolled under a skill check, a Degree of Success is generated, and for each full ten points rolled over the skill check, a Degree of Failure is generated. A Degree of Success can be interpreted for a narrative effect, used to trigger an effect, such as the Slashing effect of a knife or Healing effect of a first aid kit, and so on. Degrees of Success and Degrees of Failure do not cancel each other out, but Degrees of Success cancels out an opponent’s Degrees of Success and Degrees of Failure cancels out an opponent’s Degrees of Failure. Generating Degrees of Failure does not necessarily mean that an action fails. It might mean that it succeeds, but takes longer, is not as good, or has consequences. Upon initial examination, whilst it appears that player characters have relatively low skill and attribute values—typically between twenty and fifty—these represent the chances of a complete success, rather than a success with consequences. 

Unfortunately, as simple as that sounds, Outbreak: Undead 2nd Ed - Intro Manual adds degrees of complexity to game play and combat. With multiple dice being rolled in a situation and being rolled by each player, it takes time for each player’s dice roll to be interpreted. The Degrees of Success and Degrees of Failure are perhaps the easiest to interpret, but all of the blue Speed dice, white Depletion dice, red Damage dice, and black Difficulty dice have to be understood and applied too. Then, once combat has been resolved, damage is worked out, and then applied. It is not immediately obvious how this works and the Game Master really needs to pay close attention to the page of rules dedicated to healing in Outbreak: Undead 2nd Ed - Intro Manual, let alone the mechanics of the rest of the roleplaying game.

Just eight pages of the forty of Outbreak: Undead 2nd Ed - Intro Manual are dedicated to the mechanics. The remainder is comprised of the scenario, ‘The Tri County Precinct’ and the seven pre-generated player characters , each of which is given a two-page spread. The scenario does not even get started before it introduces another complex mechanic, this time, for ‘Encounters’. Then it gets into the scenario itself, set in and around the police precinct of a small American college town following the student body’s traditional Halloween Parade which degenerated into a riot and finds the police precinct under siege by the undead. It begins on Day Two—each character has a number of flashbacks to choose from which can be assumed to have happened or roleplayed out—with the trapped characters attempting to find a way out of their situation.

‘The Tri County Precinct’ is a decent scenario, setting up some nice situations as the player characters attempt to find a way, recover some resources, and so on, all without attracting the attention of the undead outside. There are some optional scenes and the Game Master could expand upon the vignettes given for each of the characters for Day One. Based on simple game play, ‘The Tri County Precinct’ probably offers two or three sessions’ worth of play, but the complexity of the Outbreak mechanics is likely to add to that. A map of the police precinct would have been a useful inclusion.

To support ‘The Tri County Precinct’, Outbreak: Undead 2nd Ed - Intro Manual includes seven pre-generated characters, all of whom begin play trapped in the police precinct. They include a Rookie Cop with a discipline issue, a Trucker in the tank after a drunken brawl, an easy-going Correctional Officer transporting an inmate, the Inmate who has so far refused to give his identity, a Veteran Police Officer kept off the streets by the loss of his leg, a Nurse attending to the brawlers in the tank from the night before, and a Retiree. All seven are fully detailed with a biography, personal equipment, a list of potential events which can take place on the scenario’s first day, and full S.P.E.W.—Strength, Perception, Empathy, and Willpower—attributes, skills (basic, trained, and expert), and training value bonuses.

Physically, Outbreak: Undead 2nd Ed - Intro Manual is a well presented, attractive booklet. The artwork is good too, but its layout as a notebook is cluttered and littered with icons. Icons for each of the dice types, for Degrees of Success and Degrees of Failure, for weapons, for Time and Survival, and so on. Gear adds even more icons and a full list of all of the symbols and their explanations would have been useful.

Outbreak: Undead 2nd Ed - Intro Manual is not a quick-start. Its set-up and base concepts are simple enough—the undead arise in a zombie apocalypse—and so the elevator pitch for it is likewise simple enough. Even the core mechanics of a percentile system combined Degrees of Success and Degrees of Failure are easy to grasp. Nothing else is in Outbreak: Undead 2nd Ed - Intro Manual though… It feels as if it has too many dice types to roll and too many icons to interpret, making it a challenge for the Game Master to learn, and doubling or tripling that challenge when it comes to trying to teach the mechanics and what the icons all mean to the players. 

There is a possibility of a good game in Outbreak: Undead 2nd Ed - Intro Manual, but the Degrees of Complexity it adds to the simplicity of its core rules make both learning to play and actually playing challenging. It takes dedication to run and play Outbreak: Undead 2nd Ed - Intro Manual, probably too much dedication.

Free RPG Day 2019: Starfinder Skitter Crash

Now in its twelfth year, Saturday, June 15th is Free RPG Day and with it comes an array of new and interesting little releases. Invariably they are 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. Starfinder Skitter Crash is a scenario for Paizo Inc.’s Science Fantasy Roleplaying Game, Starfinder. It is a scenario for four players and comes with four pre-generated characters, and further, it is a sequel to the publisher’s release for Free RPG last year, Skitter Shot.  At just sixteen pages, Starfinder Skitter Crash, like Starfinder Skitter Shot is a short adventure, playable in a good session, specifically designed for use with Starfinder Alien Archive, the supplement which details some eighty life-forms, twenty Player Character races, alien technology aplenty, and more.

Starfinder Skitter Shot introduced everyone to the cheerfully manic, gleefully helpful, vibrantly coloured, six-armed and furry creatures known as Skittermanders. It came with pre-generated Skittermanders—Dakoyo, Gazigaz, Nako, and Quonx—who then served as the crew of the Clutch, a salvage ship captained by their Vest boss, Nakonechkin Ginnady. Out in the Vast beyond the Pact Worlds, the crew of the Clutch, searching for ancient battleships and space stations to salvage, came across a derelict ship, large, ornate, and with brass accents, looking to be very much out of place... The adventure had them go in search of Captain Nakonechkin Ginnady and attempt to effect a rescue. The adventure left them in command of the spaceship they now named The Helping Hand and in search of further missions and excitement.

As Starfinder Skitter Crash begins, the crew of The Helping Hand have made a successful salvaging mission, but as they are celebrating, calamity strikes! They are hailed and then boarded by angry space pirates bound on revenge—who could have foreseen that after the events of Starfinder Skitter Shot? Then calamity strikes again! Something causes both ships to collide with each other in a really weird fashion and it becomes a race to abandon ship before it crashes into the planet below. Coming to on the strange new world, they find themselves amidst boggy surrounds, unsure of where they are, if any pirates survived their crash, where their ship is, and of course, if it managed to come down in one piece. So what the player characters will need to do is find their ship, effect repairs, avoid any piratical entanglements, and blast off back into space! Of course, it is not as easy as that. A couple of clues point to nearby encounters, one with a strange energy signature and another at a monitoring platform, the latter indicating that the planet is home to, or at least visited by, intelligent life. Of course contact will be made with said intelligent life, and the outcome of both this encounter and the previous two encounters nicely influence the outcome of the next, a juicy bit of roleplaying where Skittermanders have to be persuasive rather than just their rambunctious selves. If they can get help, then the Skittermanders should be able to get back into space and doing what they do best…

Starfinder Skitter Crash is different to Starfinder Skitter Shot in that it is not quite as linear, although still fairly linear given that it is designed to be played in a four-hour or so time slot. It is also a bit more complex in the story it is telling and there is more roleplaying involved than in Starfinder Skitter Shot. One issue with that is the rambunctious nature of the Skittermanders may play against the roleplaying required here, but the players should work all the more harder to achieve to overcome that. Other than that, there is plenty for the player characters to do, whether that is investigating or fighting, and although the scenario ends in a big confrontation, fighting it out is not the only solution covered. 

The adventure is challenging, but certainly rewarding if the players go at the adventure with the energy of the Skittermander pre-generated characters. There are four of these provided for use with Starfinder Skitter Shot. They include a Priest Mystic, a Xenoseeker Mystic, a Spacefarer Soldier, and a Scholar Mechanic, all Third Level (up one Level from Starfinder Skitter Shot). Each is detailed on a full page, complete with background and a really nice illustration, as well as the stats. Players will need to refer to the Starfinder Alien Archive for full details of the Skittermanders, but really, they should be played as they appear—bumptious, gleeful, up for a challenge, and manic!

Physically, Starfinder Skitter Shot is very nicely laid out and presented. The artwork is excellent, the writing clear, and the maps easy to use.

Starfinder Skitter Crash is a fun adventure. It throws the Skittermanders into a situation they are unprepared for, but gives them the means to get out of it and make a few friends along the way. Although Starfinder Skitter Crash can be run as a one-shot, it really works best as a sequel as some of its set-up will not quite have the same impact if the players have not played Starfinder Skitter Shot first. With a little effort, the Game Master could easily expand this adventure, but as written, Starfinder Skitter Crash is easy to run and grasp, which once again provides a few hours of play with some bouncy, energetic, and lovable player characters.

[Free RPG Day 2019] The Witcher: Easy Mode

Now in its twelfth year, Saturday, June 15th is Free RPG Day and with it comes an array of new and interesting little releases. Invariably they are 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. The Witcher: Easy Mode – An Introductory Booklet to the Witcher TRPG is a quick-start for The Witcher, the pen and paper roleplaying game based on The Witcher series of novels by Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski. Published by R. Talsorian Games, Inc., it set on ‘the Continent’, a region which was long ago beset by the Conjunction of the Spheres, a collision of the realms which opened rifts which let chaos and magic and monsters into the world. Witchers were created and trained to combat these monsters and break curses, but their strangeness and powers led them to be distrusted and even hated. Along with a great many of the non-human races, such as Elves and Dwarves. This is compounded by the Nilfgaardian Wars, as the nation of Nilfgaard expanded north and captured country after country and founded the Empire. As the scenario—‘Still Waters’—in The Witcher: Easy Mode – An Introductory Booklet to the Witcher TRPG opens, the Third Nilfgaardian War has begun, the Empire’s troops are marching north, and refugees, including the player characters, are fleeing before their advance…

The Witcher: Easy Mode opens with a succinct explanation of this background, which nicely sets up the situation at the beginning of the scenario and gives enough information for both Game Master and her players to start running and playing the quick-start. Then it is straight onto the rules. The Witcher is written to use the Fuzion system, the generic mechanics that are a melding of R. Talsorian Games, Inc.’s Interlock System—as seen in the classic Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0. roleplaying game—and Hero Games’ HERO system—as seen in Champions, the classic superhero roleplaying game, and the first twenty-one pages of The Witcher: Easy Mode's thirty-two pages are devoted to. This begins with a complete guide to a character sheet in The Witcher. So Race—including Witcher, since Witchers are mutants, Profession, Statistics (base and derived), Health and Stamina, Skill Bases, Armour and Armour Values, Weapons, Abilities, and Possessions and Magic are clearly marked and given a quick explanation before The Witcher: Easy Mode delves deeper into the rules.

Characters in The Witcher and The Witcher: Easy Mode are first defined by their Race and Profession. The Races in the quick-start are Witcher, Human, Dwarf, and Elf, whilst the Professions are Witcher, Mage, Criminal, Men At Arms, and Bard. The full The Witcher roleplaying game adds Craftsmen, Doctors, Merchants, and Priests. A character also has nine statistics—Intelligence, Reflexes, Dexterity, Body, Speed, Empathy, Craft, Will, and Luck—each rated roughly between one and ten, although some of the pre-generated characters do have higher statistics. Skills, ranging from Alchemy, Archery, and Athletics to Swordsmanship, Tactics, and Wilderness Survival, are accorded a similar scale. Each character has a number of abilities, for example, the sample pre-generated Witcher has Enhanced Senses, Resilient Mutations, Dulled Emotions, and Lightning Reflexes, as well as Witcher Training. So Enhanced Senses enables the character to see in dim light, gives him an improved Awareness skill base, and enables him to track by smell alone, whilst the Witcher training lessens he suffers whilst in hostile environment or difficult terrain and substitutes as his Monster Lore skill. A character wears armour on his head, upper body, and lower body, for example, Double Woven Gambeson provides eight points of Armour Value, and carries a number of weapons, each possessing a Weapon Accuracy (typically applied to missile weapons), damage rating (measured in handfuls of six-sided dice, from one for a dagger to four for a steel two-handed sword), and an effect (such as non-lethal for a punch or armour piercing for the steel two-handed sword). All five pre-generated characters in The Witcher: Easy Mode—the Witcher, Human Mage, Dwarf Criminal, Human Man At Arms, and Elf Bard—are very clearly laid out and easy to read. Included with the sample player characters is an excerpt from the core game’s Lifepath, the means of creating a complete backstory for each and every player character, but here each player can with five rolls determine their social origins and family and parental status. 

For a character to undertake an action, his player typically adds a statistic and a skill together, such as the Craft statistic and the Crafting skill or the Will statistic and Spellcasting skill, then adds the result of a ten-sided die to beat a Difficulty Check, with 14 being Average and 30 being Nearly Impossible. Rolls of ‘1’ and ‘10’ explode. Rolls of ‘1’ require further rolls which actually detract from the skill check, whilst rolls of ‘10’ require further rolls which add to the skill check. Combat is fairly complex, allowing for a range of tactical options, such as taking an extra action at the cost of a character’s Stamina (a measure of a character’s fatigue), taking a fast (or two) or a strong (single attack for double damage) attack, both melee or ranged attack, and so on. Damage can be blocked, dodged, or avoided by repositioning, but if successful, damage is modified by hit location, and if an attacking player rolls higher than the defending player by a factor of ten, then a critical strike is made. This inflicts both an extra five points of damage which ignores armour and an effect, associated with either the weapon used or the spell cast. For example, a poniard inflicts 2d6+2 damage and has the Bleeding Effect (25%), which means that is the chance it has of inflicting a bleeding wound on a successful attack, but if a critical strike is inflicted, the chance of the wound continuing to bleed is automatic. 

Overall, the combat rules in The Witcher: Easy Mode are quite straightforward and do give a handful of tactical options, though of course, the full roleplaying game has more. One issue is that whilst the means of making attack rolls is clearly labelled, the means of making defence rolls is not and any Game Master looking to what a player needs to roll does need to pay a bit more attention than is fully necessary. Where combat gets a whole six pages, magic just gets the two. Casting magic is a matter of knowing the spell, making the casting roll, and expending Stamina to fuel the spell. There is a limit to how much magic a Mage or other spellcasting character can cast, cast beyond their Vigour Threshold and they will suffer Hit Points. It is possible for spells to inflict critical wounds, and there a greater range of effects for spells, each depending on the spell of course. For example, Cadfan’s Grasp is a fire spell and so there is a chance that it will set a target alight. Rolls of ‘1’ on a spellcasting roll mean that the spell is fumbled, which can lead to the casting character suffering simple damage, suffering elemental damage, or even causing an explosion of energy which inflicts damage on everyone nearby. Most direct and area effect spells can be defended against just as attacks in combat can.

Lastly, in terms of mechanics, The Witcher: Easy Mode includes short rules for crafting. This is an important part of the setting for The Witcher roleplaying game (and the computer game of the same name), but much like the rest of rules in this quick-start, the version of the crafting rules here are much simplified. Here it is a mix of healing powders and ammunition for missile weapons. The single page of GM Advice emphasises the toughness of the setting and the possibility of characters suffering from serious wounds, the morally grey nature of ‘the Continent’, and that the power struggles and rivalries of the region can give rise to evil as much it is home to ‘evil’ monsters.

Rounding out The Witcher: Easy Mode is the adventure ‘Still Waters’. The player characters are refugees from the nation of Temeria, fleeing an invasion by the Empire. They have reached the swampy banks of the Pontar River, which if they can cross, then they might find sanctuary in Redania. In searching for a way across, the player characters encounter Scoia’tael archers, Elven warriors who hate humans. This may result in a fight, but the player characters can parly and either way, the Scoia’tael will lead them back to their base in a fortified village which sits on a ferry crossing. With some persuasion—and good roleplaying—or offer of some help, the Scoia’tael commander will allow the player characters to cross the river. Alternatively, the player characters could just force their way into the village, drive everyone out, and then move on…

‘Still Waters’ is not a bad adventure, but it is not really an adventure at all. At best it is half an adventure, consisting of just two encounters. The player characters face very little in the way of peril or challenge, and it is possible that the player characters could introduce themselves, encounter Scoia’tael archers and persuade them to take them back to the village where they persuade the Scoia’tael commander to let them cross the river. That could take as little as half an hour, but no more than an hour. That is just not enough of an introduction to the world of The Witcher and The Witcher roleplaying game—and as a quick-start, it is woefully inadequate.

Physically, The Witcher: Easy Mode is very nicely presented in full colour. The few pieces of art are excellent and the one map is lovely. The book is well organised and for the most part, the contents are easy to read. One oddity is that the NPCs for the adventure are given backgrounds, but the pre-generated adventurers are not.

Unsurprisingly for a quick-start entitled The Witcher: Easy Mode, and whilst they are of course, not the full rules, the rules in The Witcher: Easy Mode are easy to grasp and understand. An experienced roleplayer will read through this and be able to choose a character ready to play very quickly. A roleplayer with less experience will find it slightly more daunting to read, but a careful readthrough will solve that issue. Unfortunately, experienced and less experienced players alike, let alone the Game Master, will find the adventure a disappointment. ‘Still Waters’ needs more pages, more content, more challenges, because as written, it leaves the The Witcher: Easy Mode – An Introductory Booklet to the Witcher TRPG simply quick and devoid of adventure.

[Free RPG Day 2019] Kids on Bikes presents… Strange Adventures! The House on Poplar Court

Now in its twelfth year, Saturday, June 15th is Free RPG Day and with it comes an array of new and interesting little releases. Invariably they are 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. Kids on Bikes presents… Strange Adventures! The House on Poplar Court is a bit of both. For starters, it is a scenario for use with theKids on Bikes RPG - Strange Adventures in Small Towns roleplaying game published by Renegade Game Studios, but it also feeds into the publisher’s forthcoming roleplaying game, Teens in Space.

Kids on Bikes RPG - Strange Adventures in Small Towns is a roleplaying game of small town life before there were smartphones in everyone’s pocket—so no access to cameras, the internet, and GPS which would make investigations into the mysterious and the unknown all the easier. Although the mysterious and the unknown may found around any corner and behind any door, it is the kids who are ready to believe and ready to investigate. The only way for them to investigate and confront such mysteries and unknowns is to work together, know their strengths, and be prepared to ride like hell when the mysteries and unknowns turn on them and their meddling!

Kids on Bikes presents… Strange Adventures! The House on Poplar Court provides a town, a set of five pre-generated investigators, and a mystery to explore. The town is Hebron, Indiana, a quiet place with a combined school for all of the town’s children, a grocer’s, a gas station, and a bowling alley for socialising and entertainment. There is not a great for Kids to do in the town, though the school organises numerous after-school activities and clubs. One of the after-school clubs is the Investigation Club, set up by several of the students, but not really endorsed by the school, to investigate mysteries in the town as well as research monsters and how to deal with them. The Investigation Club definitely does not have the support of School Principal Davis, but there are other members of the faculty who can be persuaded by the club’s members to look the other way when access to the right research material or resources is needed. The other issue, of course, for the members of the Investigation Club is Zane Madison, the school bully, and his cohorts. 

Five pre-generated Kids (or investigators) are given. They include an eager Boy Scout, a Popular Kid and athlete, an insightful Conspiracy Theorist, an ambitious, but Stoic Professional, and a wealthy, but Reclusive Eccentric who likes to invent things. All five come with a short background and a couple advantages and disadvantages, so are easy to read and use.

The mystery in Kids on Bikes presents… Strange Adventures! The House on Poplar Court takes place during the summer vacation of 1985. There have been rumours of monsters in the nearby woods and things been moving outside windows, but this weekend the head of the Investigation Club has decided that the club’s members are going to investigate a strange, abandoned house at the end of Poplar Court on the edge of the town. The adventure plays out in three acts, the first act being essentially a haunted house mystery which sets up the second act—a monster hunt! Under the direction of an NPC, the Kids are encouraged to hunt down a quartet of monsters which have got loose in the town. The creatures are not evil per se, but all are designed around the Universal Classic Monsters though the Kids will not necessarily know this (the players on the other hand…). As part of the Monster Hunt, the Kids will need to research each of the monsters, track them down, and then capture them before returning them to the house. Tracking down each one is an adventure in itself, played out across the sandbox that is the town of Hebron. The third act is a whole other matter…

The sandbox structure of the second act enables the Game Master to bring in the various NPCs and places into play, depending upon what the players decide their Kids to do. To that end, both NPCs and locations are neatly summarised and each of the monster quarries is given a list of clues for the Kids to discover as well stats and some staging notes for the Game Master.

Kids on Bikes presents… Strange Adventures! The House on Poplar Court is neatly, tidily presented. Although both the front and back cover are nice colour pieces, the inside is simple black and white with not a single illustration in sight.

As an adventure, Kids on Bikes presents… Strange Adventures! The House on Poplar Court offers a bit more play than just the single session that a quick-start typically provides. If there is an issue with ‘The House on Poplar Court’ scenario it is perhaps the ending, which goes off in an unexpected direction. It is designed as a lead in to Teens in Space, but it would have been nice if an alternate ending had been provided for the Game Master who does not want her campaign to go in that direction. That it can work with the Kids on Bikes Free RPG Day Edition is a nice bonus, but Kids on Bikes presents… Strange Adventures! The House on Poplar Court is a decent little adventure, one which provides some fun with some classic monsters for Kids on Bikes RPG - Strange Adventures in Small Towns.

[Free RPG Day 2019] Mythic D6 Quick Start

Now in its twelfth year, Saturday, June 15th is Free RPG Day and with it comes an array of new and interesting little releases. Invariably they are 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. The Mythic D6 Quick Start published by Khepera Publishing is an example of the latter, designed to provide an introduction to the Mythic D6 mechanics and a scenario for a total of four players plus the Game Master. It comes as a small, sixteen-page booklet, which includes the rules to play, a two-act scenario, and four pre-generated characters. Now it does not say any of this on the back cover blurb—and to be honest, it really should have done, because the Mythic D6 Quick Start does not sell itself on appearance alone.

With so little space, the Mythic D6 Quick Start does not waste any time in getting to the rules. Mythic D6 uses a dice pool mechanic, with the Game Master or player rolling—as the title suggests—handfuls of six-sided dice to succeed. A dice pool is typically equal to a character’s attribute plus a skill, for example, Reflexes plus Fighting in melee combat, the aim being to roll as many successes as possible. A roll of one, two, or three on a die is a failure, whereas a roll of four, five, or six counts as a success. One of the dice in a pool is always a different colour and that die is the Wild Die. When a one is rolled on the Wild Die, it counts as a critical failure, whilst two or three count as standard failures. Similarly, rolls of a four or five on the Wild Die count as standard successes, whilst a roll of a six on the Wild Die is a critical success. A critical failure cancels out another success, but a critical success allows a player to reroll the Wild Die. As long as a player keeps rolling a six on the Wild Die, he can keep on rolling.

In addition, some attributes and skills have modifiers—negative or positive, ranging from -2 to +2. This number is always applied to a single die to make it succeed or fail, although it cannot make the Wild Die into a critical success. The number of successes required for an action, ranges from Very Easy (one) and Easy (two) up to Super-Heroic (nine) and Legendary (ten), with Moderate being three and Difficult requiring four successes. The core mechanics are clearly explained in three pages before the scenario is presented.

‘Mannequins for Dummies’ is set in small town America. The player characters are members of a secret organisation called ‘the Institute’ which helps them use their superpowers to track down and destroy monsters. Tonight though, they have taken time off from monster hunting to get a little R&R at the County Fair held in Bandersnatch, Illinois, adjacent to the local high school. Suddenly, all hell breaks loose as shop mannequins attack the local event. Of course, it is up to player characters to intervene to help the quickly overwhelmed security for the County Fair. Clues—if you count the mannequins individually—point to the abandoned town mall, which is where the scenario’s second act takes place.

The adventure is okay. It is mostly all action, with some nice notes on the fight at the County Fair, though none are really given for the second act. As written, it could have done with a roleplaying opportunity or two and it could have done with some variation on what the player characters needed to do to succeed. That said, there is scope for the Game Master to develop the scenario as is her wont.

The Dramatis Personae or NPCs are reasonably well explained with values given both for how many dice an NPC rolls to act and the average number of successes this generates should the Game Master not want to roll the dice. Unfortunately, there are a couple of things that the section does not explain. First, what ‘PL’ is short for, but presumably ‘Power Level’, and second, what Hero Points are used for. Even the example of their use given is unhelpful.

Yet worse, this lack of explanation only escalates when it comes to the four pre-generated player characters. The four include an Adventurer with cyberlimbs which can stretch, a Bravo with a skills focus, an Icon capable of flight and electricity manipulation, and a Protector who is a trained (and lucky) pistoleer. The problem is that whilst it is generally obvious what a character’s attributes are, definitely obvious what his skills are, and definitely obvious what his powers are, it is not at all obvious how the powers work, how the advantages work, and indeed, how the disadvantages work. Of course, the Game Master could just make it up, but that is not the point of a quick-start or indeed, the Mythic D6 Quick Start. The problem is that the information is just not there.

Physically, the Mythic D6 Quick Start is short and small, just sixteen pages in length. It is done in greyscale throughout with some decent artwork.

The aim of any quick-start is simple. Explain the rules, provide a scenario that can be played using said explanation, and some characters ready to play that scenario. Now the Mythic D6 Quick Start does some of that—it does explain the core mechanics and it gives a scenario, but where it fails is in explaining the characters it does provide. As it stands, all it needed was an increase of say four pages to give each player character a fuller explanation of its abilities, advantages, and disadvantages, but right now, any Game Master coming to the Mythic D6 Quick Start will find that she needs to refer to the Mythic D6 full rules for the explanation needed—and that defeats the point of the quick-start.

[Free RPG Day 2019] Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game Quick Start Rules & Intro Adventure

Now in its twelfth year, Saturday, June 15th is Free RPG Day and with it comes an array of new and interesting little releases. Invariably they are 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. Like the support for Free RPG Day in 2017 and 2018, Goodman Games has released the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game Quick Start Rules & Intro Adventure, which provides an introduction to the publisher’s Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. It takes its cue from the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game Adventure Starter published in 2011, but has been expanded enough for the rules to cover characters from Zero Level to Second Level, provide two adventures, and introduce the key concepts of the roleplaying game. In the process, it has grown from sixteen to forty-eight pages. As with the previous versions from 2017 and 2018, the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game Quick Start Rules & Intro Adventure can be divided into three parts. The longest are rules, followed by a short introductory adventure and then by flipping the booklet over, a longer adventure.

Derived from the d20 System, the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game sits somewhere between Basic Dungeons & Dragons and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons in terms of its complexity. The most radical step in the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game is the starting point. Players begin by playing not one, but several Zero Level characters, each a serf or peasant looking beyond a life tied to the fields and the seasons or the forge and the hammer to prove themselves and perhaps progress enough to become a skilled adventurer and eventually make a name for themselves. In other words, to advance from Zero Level to First Level. Unfortunately, delving into tombs and the lairs of both men and beasts is a risky venture and death is all but a certainty for the lone delver… In numbers, there is the chance that one or more will survive long enough to go onto greater things! This is what the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game terms a ‘Character Creation Funnel’.

Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game Quick Start Rules & Intro Adventure provides rules for the creation process, a player rolling for six Abilities—Strength, Agility, Stamina, Personality, Intelligence, and Luck—in strict order on three six-sided dice, plus Hit Points on a four-sided die and an occupation. The latter will determine the character’s Race—Race is a Class in the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game just as it was in Basic Dungeons & Dragons, a weapon, and a possession related to his occupation.

Peasant Grizzel
Zero Level Human Mendicant
STR 17 (+2) AGL 11 (+0) STM 10 (+0)
PER 12 (+0) INT 17 (+2) LCK 10 (+0)
Hit Points: 4
Saving Throws
Fortitude +0 Reflex +0 Willpower +2
Alignment: Lawful
Birth Augur: Pack Hunter
Luck Benefit: Attack & Damage Rolls with Zero Level Weapon
Weapon: Club (1d4)
Equipment: Cheese Dip
13cp

Of the stats, only Luck requires any explanation. It can be used for various skill checks and rolls, but its primary use is for each character’s single Luck Benefit—in Peasant Grizzel’s case, when rolling  her attack and damage rolls with her Zero Level weapon. It is burned when used in this fashion and can only be regained by a player roleplaying his character to his Alignment. The Luck bonus also applies to critical hit, fumble, and corruption rolls as well as various Class-based rolls. For example, the Elf receives it as a bonus to rolls for one single spell and a Warrior to rolls for a single weapon such as a longsword or a war hammer. Further, both the Thief and the Halfling Classes are exceptionally lucky. Not only are their Luck bonuses doubled when they burn Luck, they actually regain Luck each day equal to their Level. In addition, if a party has a Halfling amongst its numbers that Halfling can pass his expended Luck to other members of the party!

Mechanically, for a character to do anything, whether Sneak Silently, cast a spell, or make an attack, a player rolls a twenty-sided die and after adding any bonuses hopes to beat a Difficulty Class or an Armor Class. Rolls of one are a fumble and rolls of a twenty are a critical. The Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game Quick Start Rules & Intro Adventure includes a Fumble Table as well Critical Hit Tables for each of the Classes. Famously, the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game also uses a multitude of dice, including three, five, seven, fourteen, sixteen, twenty-four, and thirty-sided dice as well as the standard polyhedral dice. Although penalties and bonuses can be applied to dice rolls, the dice themselves can get better or worse, stepping up or stepping down a size depending upon the situation. For example, a Warrior can attack twice in a Round instead of attacking and moving, but makes the first attack using a twenty-sided die and the second attack using a sixteen-sided die. Fortunately, neither of the scenarios in the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game Quick Start Rules & Intro Adventure make much use of this full polyhedral panoply, but if necessary, dice rolling apps can be found which will handle such dice rolls.

Magic works differently to the Vancian arrangement typically seen in Dungeons & Dragons. Magic is mercurial. What this means is that from one casting of a spell to the next, a spell can have different results. For example, the classic standby of First Level Wizards everywhere, Magic Missile, might manifest as a meteor, a screaming, clawing eagle, a ray of frost, a force axe, or so on. When cast, a Wizard might throw a single Magic Missile that only does a single point of damage; one that might do normal damage; unleash multiple missiles or a single powerful one; and so on. Alternatively, the Wizard’s casting might result in a Misfire, which for Magic Missile might cause the caster’s allies or himself to be hit by multiple Magic Missiles, or to blow a hole under the caster’s feet! Worse, the casting of the spell might have a Corrupting influence upon the caster, which for Magic Missile might cause the skin of the caster’s hands and forearms to change colour to acid green or become translucent or to become invisible every time he casts Magic Missile! This is in addition to the chances of the Wizard suffering from Major or even Greater Corruption… Some ten spells are detailed Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game Quick Start Rules & Intro Adventure, taking up roughly, a quarter of the booklet.

One notable difference between the 2018 version of the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game Quick Start Rules & Intro Adventure and previous versions is the inclusion of different spells. So no Magic Missile, but Choking Cloud and Colour Spray for the Wizard, for example. Certainly, the lack of any healing spells would have changed the players’ approach to either adventure in the 2018 version of Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game Quick Start Rules & Intro Adventure. The 2019 version adheres to that lack of healing spells, but does restore Magic Missile for the Wizard.

Once past the funnel, the characters can move up to First Level and acquire a proper Class—either Cleric, Thief, Warrior, or Wizard, or one of the Races, Dwarf, Elf, or Halfling. Further information is provided so that a character can progress to Second Level. The adventures in Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game Quick Start Rules & Intro Adventure should be enough for a character to reach First Level. Getting to Second Level and the second adventure is another issue, at least with this version of the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game Quick Start Rules & Intro Adventure.

Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game Quick Start Rules & Intro Adventure includes two adventures. The first, which immediately follows the rules is ‘The Portal Under The Stairs’, which appeared in the original Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game Adventure Starter back in 2011. This has the would-be adventurers venturing into an ancient war-wizard’s tomb after its entryway becomes open when the stars come right. Designed for Zero Level and First Level characters this is a short, just ten location dungeon primarily consisting of traps and puzzles with some deadly combat encounters thrown in. Its three pages are short enough that a group could roll up their characters and funnel them through the adventure to see who survives in a single session. The second scenario, located on the opposite side of Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game Quick Start Rules & Intro Adventure is ‘Geas of the Star-chons’.

Now in the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game Quick Start Rules & Intro Adventuree from 2017, the scenario included was ‘Gnole House’. Inspired by the writings of Lord Dunsany, this presented a bucolic, genteel demesne, a lonely house full of detail and hidden horrors. Designed for characters of First Level, it provided a good mix of exploration and examination with some combat and a little roleplaying which could easily be run after the players have funnelled their characters through ‘The Portal Under The Stairs’ with some of them hopefully have survived to First Level. ‘Man-Bait for the Soul Stealer’, the scenario in the 2018 version of Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game Quick Start Rules & Intro Adventure was a little different.

‘Man-Bait for the Soul Stealer’ was a classic dungeon rather than the ‘house of horror’ that is ‘Gnole House’. It was also designed for characters of Second Level, so getting the characters who survived ‘The Portal Under The Stairs’ and thus went from Zero Level to First Level needed to be further adjusted upwards without playing through their First Level in order to be Second Level and thus suitable for ‘Man-Bait for the Soul Stealer’. Fortunately, the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game Quick Start Rules & Intro Adventure for 2019 does not repeat that error.

‘Geas of the Star-chons’ is an adventure for First Level player characters, one which could be literally straight after the events of ‘The Portal Under The Stairs’. It opens with the player characters being selected—or rather being placed under a geas—by the Star-chons, guardians of fate from beyond time and space, to stop Yndrkalla, an ambitious wizard from escaping the fate which has been written for her. This selection process takes place in a tavern, so it could take place the same day that the player characters are celebrating making First Level. The Game Master can add any adventure that she wants between the tavern and Yndrkalla cliffside lair, or indeed none at all, and just transport the player characters to the base of the cliff.

Getting into Yndrkalla’s lair is a challenge in itself, but inside what they find is a relatively straightforward, all but linear complex consisting of just twelve locations. For the most part, Yndrkalla’s minions are a distraction and the complexity of the adventure comes in dealing with the high magic that she is casting, as well as its consequences. The final confrontation is an over the top confrontation with a wizard who is about to unleash powers that the player characters definitely do not understand—though there is definitely an opportunity for them to do so, especially Elves, Thieves, and Wizards. This scene requires careful preparation upon the part of the Game Master, but it is clearly written and it does a nice job of illustrating the dangers of meddling with powers beyond the ken of mortals. Although not necessarily as gonzo in its fantasy as other adventures for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, there is definitely a strong element of ‘damned if you don’t, damned if you do’, so survival is not guaranteed. Then again, that just carries on the ethos of ‘The Portal Under The Stairs’ into First Level.

Physically, the 2019 version of Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game Quick Start Rules & Intro Adventure is well presented, the writing is clear, and artwork is in general excellent throughout, echoing the style and ethos of the three core rulebooks for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.

As in past years, the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game Quick Start Rules & Intro Adventure is a good package. The rules are nicely explained, the style of game is nicely explained, the artwork is good, the two adventures are good, if disconnected. Any player or Game Master with any experience of Dungeons & Dragons will pick this up with ease and be able to bring it to the table with relatively little experience—and once the first adventure is complete, quickly graduate onto running the second. Overall, ‘The Portal Under The Stairs’ might be getting somewhat long in the tooth, but ‘Geas of the Star-chons’ is a fun one session adventure of high magickal weirdness, together serving to make The Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game Quick Start Rules & Intro Adventure simply a good introduction to the game and a bit more.

Free RPG Day 2019: We Be Heroes?

Now in its twelfth year, Saturday, June 15th was Free RPG Day and with it came an array of new and interesting little releases. Invariably they are 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. Over the years, Paizo Inc. has supported Free RPG Day with numerous modules, the most notable of which—We Be Goblins!, We Be Goblins Too!, We Be Goblins Free!, We B4 Goblins!, and We Be 5uper Goblins!—all feature the publisher’s signature race, Goblins, for its highly popular Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. Free RPG Day 2019 is no different in that Paizo Inc. is supporting it with a scenario for First Level player characters, a scenario which involves Goblins, and a scenario designed to be played by four players, plus the Game Master. It is though, a very different module to those previous five scenarios.

First and foremost, We Be Heroes? is ‘A Pathfinder Playtest Adventure for Level 1’ and so is designed to showcase the new rules in Pathfinder Playtest, the version of the rules being tested in preparation for the forthcoming Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, Second Edition, to be released at GenCon 2019 and which are designed to be easier to learn and faster to play. To play We Be Heroes?, the Game Master will access to both the Pathfinder Playtest and the Pathfinder Playtest Bestiary, the latter as the creatures encountered in the module are all drawn from that book.

Second, the pre-generated player characters are not the Goblins of the previous five modules for Free RPG Day. Goblins in Pathfinder Roleplaying Game are raucous, rambunctious, and rapacious, green bundles of teeth and anarchy. No so in We Be Heroes? As the title suggests, the module makes its Goblins would-be heroes and thus very different in that whilst the player characters are Goblins, they are community minded, they think of others rather than just themselves, and some of them have begun to read!

Set in the Southern Fangwood forest in Nirmathas, recent events have seen the Whispering Tyrant unleash an undead army on the region, forcing both the local inhabitants and the local animals to flee in terror. This includes the goblins of the Crookedtoes tribe, survivors of the Goblinblood Wars who have retreated as far from other Goblins as possible and under the radical leadership of Velkik, they have taken up hunting rather than raiding, let their young loose instead of caging them, let their tribe members actually learn to read and write, and taken up worship of the Sun! With the local animals having fled in terror, the tribe’s members suddenly find their bellies rumbling with hunger and worse, the tribe’s best scout has gone missing. So Chief Velkik has tasked the Crookedtoes’ four brightest members to go out and search for him.

This mission is quickly fulfilled with an encounter designed to test the Pathfinder Playtest’s combat mechanics, the player characters returning after to inform Chief Velkik of both the scout’s death and the proximity of the undead army. He has another task for them, one for which any other group of Goblins would be all but impossible, but for members of the reformed Crookedtoes might just be possible. This is to locate “... [A] group of longshanks in shiny armour trapped in the valley on the other side of this hill.” By ‘longshanks, the Chief Velkik means Humans and by shiny armour, he means knights and he thinks that by working together, both the shiny armoured longshanks and the Goblins of the Crookedtoes tribe might just survive. Unfortunately, the only way to get to the valley is via set of tunnels through the hill which has not been used in years.

The main part of the adventure is thus a short dungeon crawl. Consisting of just eight locations, the encounters here are designed to be challenging rather than deadly, a mix of small combat encounters, unstable environments, and opportunities to roleplay. The tunnel complex actually packs in a lot of game play for just eight locations, and with good gameplay, the Goblins should come away with a little treasure and possibly even an ally.

We Be Heroes? saves its best encounter for last and it is a roleplaying encounter! By now the player characters will have made their way through the tunnel and into the adjacent valley where the shiny armoured longshanks are camped out. Not only do the Goblins have to work out how to get into the shiny armoured longshanks’ camp, they also have to persuade them that although they are Goblins, they are not the nasty, evil destructive Goblins that everyone knows of and hates, but good Goblins, trying to do better—trying to be heroes! This is a really fun challenge, one that any roleplayer would be keen to get his teeth into, and the module includes plenty of advice as to handle this situation and the shiny armoured longshanks’ response to the weirdly mannered Goblins.

As befitting the heroic nature of the scenario, the four pre-generated player characters are all of heroic intent, but of a Goblin nature. To anyone but a member of the Crookedtoes tribe—and even then—they are a weird lot. They include a Ranger with a heavy crossbow and penchant for tinkering, a Barbarian in a rabbit fur costume, a tuxedo-wearing Bard hated for his exceptionally fine, but non-Goblin voice, but loved for his penny-whistle, and a Druid whose animal companion is a classic French poodle, complete with ribbons! All four come with a great illustration and their own song, each of which sums up each Goblin rather smartly.

Physically, We Be Heroes? is a Paizo Inc. book. So the production values are high, the sixteen pages of the booklet being done in full colour with high quality illustrations. The writing is also good and covers most eventualities.

We Be Heroes? is a short adventure, suitable for a single four hour session. Alongside all of the action, there is plenty of opportunity for solid roleplaying within its sixteen pages and the opportunity to play Goblins is always fun. Especially if they are reformed Goblins looking to prove themselves heroes. Hopefully we will get to see the further adventures of Crimsi, Girenek, Pizaazz, and Siathorn—with her pet ‘wolf’, Mitzi—in future releases for Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, Second Edition.

—oOo—

We Be Heroes? will be available to download from the Paizo Inc. website from Monday, July 1st, 2019.

Free RPG Day 2019: Modern AGE Quickstart: Threefold

Now in its twelfth year, Saturday, June 15th was Free RPG Day and with it came an array of new and interesting little releases. Invariably they are 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. The release for Free RPG Day 2019 from Green Ronin Publishing is Modern AGE Quickstart: Threefold. As its title suggests, this is a quick-start for Modern AGE, a roleplaying game which updates the AGE System first seen in Dragon Age – Dark Fantasy Roleplaying Set 1: For Characters Level 1 to 5 to do gritty action, high adventure, urban fantasy, or dystopian future. Modern AGE Quickstart: Threefold presents a slightly simplified version of the Modern AGE rules, a lengthy three part scenario which introduces a new setting for the Modern AGE rules, and five pre-generated characters, all of which comes in a forty page, full-colour booklet.

At the core of each character in Modern AGE are eight abilities—Accuracy, Communication, Constitution, Dexterity, Fighting, Intelligence, Perception, Strength, and Willpower. Each attribute is rated between -2 and 4, with 1 being the average. They will have ability focuses, areas of expertise such as Accuracy (Assault Rifles), Communication (Gambling), Intelligence (Occultism), Perception (Searching), and so on that add a +2 bonus to appropriate rolls. Characters can also know Weapon Groups, Talents, and Specialisations and these are worked into and explained in the five pre-generated characters, although they are not explained in Modern AGE Quickstart: Threefold. This is intentional, since it is not designed to cover character creation, but rather showcase the mechanics and the new setting in play.

Mechanically, Modern AGE Quickstart: Threefold uses the same basic mechanics as Modern AGE and Fantasy AGE as well as Dragon Age – Dark Fantasy Roleplaying before it. Known as the AGE System or Adventure Gaming Engine (AGE) System, this requires the use of just six-sided dice, both to handle actions as well as effect—such as damage, time taken, or to generate Stunt Points. To undertake an action, a player rolls three six-sided dice to beat a target, the average being eleven. To the roll a player also adds the appropriate Ability and if one applies, a +2 bonus for any Focus. For example, Trace needs to find the location of a gate to their next destination and believes that it can be found in the library of Cardinal House, home to the Sodality’s governing body on the Otherworld of Akavastu. The Game Master sets the target to eleven. Trace has an Intelligence of 3 and a Focus of Research, which gives him a bonus of +2, thus enabling to add five to the roll. Trace’s player rolls the dice and gets a result of 4, 4, and 2, for a total of 10—just not quite enough for Trace to succeed and find details of the location he is sure is noted in the records. Fortunately, with the addition of the appropriate Ability and Focus—Intelligence and Intelligence (Research)—the total is actually 14 and so Trace finds the information he needs.

Now of the three six-sided dice, one is a different colour to the other two. This is called the Stunt Die. Typically, it acts as an effect die, measuring how well a character does or how quickly an action takes, but in the basic rules, particularly in combat, the Stunt Die does much, much more. Whenever a player rolls doubles on two of the three six-sided dice and succeeds, he gets a number of points equal to the result of the Stunt Die to spend on Stunts, which come in four types—Combat, Exploration, Social, and Power. Thus, Knock Prone or Vicious Blow are Combat Stunts for use in melee or missile combat, Powerful Manifestation or Fast Use are Power Stunts when casting magic, Speed Demon or With a Flourish are Exploration Stunts for general actions, and Impress or Class Clown! are Social Stunts.

To continue the example, Trace’s player rolled 4, 4, and 2 on the successful research attempt. Since he rolled doubles, the Stunt Die is activated and as this was 2 result, Trace’s player has just two Stunt Points to spend. Looking at the Exploration Stunts, the most obvious option is ‘Speed Demon’ which cuts the time it takes to complete the test in half. The Game Master decides that as a consequence, Trace and his fellow team members will get to the gate before the main enemy operations team does, though they may be chased by a small band of scouts.

Overall, whatever the iteration of the AGE System, the mechanics are easy to grasp and easy to play, providing an enjoyably cinematic play experience via the rich choice of Stunts and Talents. Modern AGE Quickstart: Threefold explains the mechanics in just ten pages, including the use of magic, serving either as a quick refresher for anyone familiar with the AGE System or as a solid introduction to the basics of the mechanics.

In addition, Modern AGE Quickstart: Threefold also introduces a new setting for Modern AGE—The Metacosm of Threefold. The Earth is but one world in the Metacosm, all connected by a series of gates. The Earth is a tech-world, although its highest technology—experiments into time travel and the manipulation of parallel worlds—are controlled by a conspiracy of inhuman intelligences known as the Peridixion. Otherworlds vary widely, from worlds where islands float on endless seas to worlds ruled by Optimates, the demigod children of gods. Collectively they rule a Divine Empire, whilst another power, the Vitane, promotes peace and the dissemination of knowledge. The Sodality is an independent organisation of explorers, diplomats, and warriors. Beyond this, there is a third power, the Netherworlds, places of nightmares ruled by archdemons whose subjects are damned souls. Earth is the first layer in the Metacosm, the Otherworlds are the second, the Netherworlds the third, whilst the Divine Empire, the Vitane, and the Netherworlds are first, second, and third powers. Thus three layers, three powers, and a tripartite secret behind it all—hence Threefold.

Thus what you have in Threefold is a cross-parallel, planet-hopping setting which mixes genres. So technology and magic mix to varying degrees from parallel to parallel as do the genres, including fantasy, science fiction, conspiracy, cyberpunk, and more. Modern AGE Quickstart: Threefold primarily showcases elements of these in the five pre-generated characters. So the five includes a bruiser with the ability to locate gates between worlds, an ex-combat medic, a broker and dealer also with the ability to locate gates between worlds, an investigator able to identify things not of the Earth who has been augmented with cybernetics for different skill foci, and an Arcanist who cast magic to access electronic devices, track people and objects, and if necessary blast them! All of them are decently done, though the ex-combat medic may feel somewhat mundane in comparison to the others. All though, begin the scenario with knowledge of the Macrocosm and the fact that there are more worlds than just the Earth. None of the characters have their age, appearance, or agenda predetermined and theirs are free to set these as they want.

The scenario in Modern AGE Quickstart: Threefold is ‘Burning Brighter’. The player characters begin in New York City at the Blake Clinic, a free medical clinic that is also a front for Aethon, the Peridexion’s paramilitary and espionage arm. When a man suffering from strange symptoms is brought into reception and the clinic is attacked by offworld, hi-tech agents, then the player characters know that something is amiss. This is confirmed when they are recruited into a joint Peridexion-Vitane task force and informed that an agent has gone rogue and may well be spreading the disease that the man was suffering from. The player characters are tasked with tracking down and dealing with the damage that this agent has done—someone else will go after the agent.

Divided into three acts—plus prologue—‘Burning Brighter’ will take the player characters across multiple Otherworlds and along the way will encounter a mythical beast, an Optimate with a mythic backstory and a van, members of a warrior band, the Nighthost, invaders from the Netherworlds, and more, showcasing various parts of the setting, how its factions interact with each other, and how some technology might not work on every world. Along the way, the players  should get a chance to show off their characters’ talents and abilities, get used to the Modern AGE mechanics, and perhaps uncover a secret or two. The scenario does end with almost everything resolved, but there is room for the Game Master to develop further adventures once she has a copy of Modern AGE and the Threefold setting supplement.

Physically, Modern AGE Quickstart: Threefold is very nicely presented with a bright, clean layout, full-colour painted artwork throughout, and decent writing. If there is an issue with physicality the quick-start it is that the cover is underwhelming and if there is an issue with Modern AGE Quickstart: Threefold as a whole, it is that hilst the rules are easy to learn and impart, the same cannot be said of the background which conversely is potentially overwhelming for the players  should the Game Master attempt to impart it to them, Especially for a one-shot. That said, it might be helpful for the Game Master to put together a cheat-sheet for the background as well as the mechanics when preparing to run ‘Burning Brighter’.

Modern AGE Quickstart: Threefold is easy to read, the rules are easy to learn, and the scenario, ‘Burning Brighter’—which feels like a  more fantastical version of the television series, Sliders—should provide two session’s worth of decent play. Overall, Modern AGE Quickstart: Threefold is solid introduction to both Modern AGE and the Threefold setting.

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Modern AGE Quickstart: Threefold will be available to download from the Green Ronin Publishing website from Monday, July 1st, 2019.