Rolling for Ravenloft

Dice. Dice are so integral to the roleplaying game hobby that everyone has their own set. Probably more than one set. Whether they are the very first set that the roleplayer had when he started playing, the set that he pulls out from the many in his dice bag or his All Rolled Up, or a set that is specific to the roleplaying game he is currently playing—either because the roleplaying game in question requires its own special dice set or the dice are aesthetically designed to match the game—dice are a fundamental part of a roleplayer’s kit. Some roleplayers have traditions about their dice. They pick a dice set for each game, they do not like other players touching or rolling their dice, they will punish dice that roll badly by placing them in a ‘dice gaol’, they dump a set entirely because of the bad rolls, and they collect dice. They will peruse dice sellers looking for the perfect set or the most pleasing set, but that is not the only way in which roleplayers collect dice sets. They buy dice in blind packs, each containing a complete dice set, but which the roleplayer has no idea what the set will look like. This is much like a traditional trading card game with its booster packs. The difference is that instead of opening booster packs in search of better cards to enhance and improve the game play of the trading card game, dice blind packs are opened in search of finding prettier, rarer dice sets and in the hope that all of the sets can be collected. This is how the Castle Ravenloft Treasure Dice Packs work.

Castle Ravenloft Treasure Dice Packs are official, licensed Dungeons & Dragons dice, manufactured by Sirius Dice, and themed around the Ravenloft campaign setting inspired by Gothic horror and its supernatural monsters—vampires, werewolves, mummies, and more, but most obviously by Count von Zarovich, the Darklord of Barovia, who originally appeared in I6 Ravenloft. So, what do you get in a Castle Ravenloft Treasure Dice Pack? Rip open the pack and inside you will find an embroidered dice bag containing a full polyhedral dice set and a collectible metal ability coin. The complete set consists of fifty-five unique dice sets, thirty-one ability coins, and seven dice bags. The latter come in seven, different designs that in turn depict the famous Dungeons & Dragons ampersand, a raven on a skull, the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind (sacred to the Good-aligned Barovians), bats flying against the backdrop of the Moon, and more. Each is roughly four-by-three-and-a-half inches and done in soft material, with a strong draw tie that has Dungeons & Dragons embroidered on it and enough room to comfortably hold the ability coin and the dice set. The dice bags are not big, but will hold two dice sets. The ability coins are double-sided and depict a variety of images. They can also be round, square, or octagonal; bronze, gold, or silver. So, one might depict a ‘Werewolf’ on one side and the werewolf undergoing the ‘Shapeshift’ on the other side; a young or an aged Rudolph Von Richten on one side and ‘Monster Hunter’ with a stake on the other; ‘Dragon Flight’ and a Dragonborn on one side and the Dungeons & Dragons ampersand on the other; and others. The rarest is a replica of the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind and a colour coin depicting Count von Zarovich himself. The coins themselves grant no in game bonus, but they can be used to indicate whether a Player Character has Inspiration, is suffering a particular condition, has activated an ability, and so on.

The dice vary in look and feel, but are all standard polyhedral dice with an extra ten-sided die to use as the ‘tens’ die for percentile rolls. Some of the sets are standard sets in solid colours or clear gem style, whilst others moulded as if made from stone or brickwork. The latter style is not inked, so although they have a different tactile feel to them, they are not as easy to read. The rarity of the dice runs from common and uncommon through rare to super rare and legendary. The rarer dice have their top values marked with a symbol and there is also the legendary Ravenloft metal dice set. The Castle Ravenloft Treasure Dice Packs do not include any indication as to the rarity of the contents and complete range.

The Castle Ravenloft Treasure Dice Packs are nice. The embroidered dice bags are fetching and well made, the ability coins solid as you would expect, and the dice ranging from good to decent. Not all of the dice are as easy to read as they could be, but they all roll well, and it will come down to whether or not the look and feel of the dice is something that you find attractive. Ultimately, it is a matter of taste.

It is also a matter of age. Whilst many gamers and roleplayers of a certain age will be familiar with the pulling of cards from booster packs for trading card games like Magic: The Gathering, they will be less familiar with blind dice packs. They are more used to buying their dice—when they need to—off the shelf. In fact, the idea of blind dice packs, feels weird. Yet not to younger players, so there is a market for the blind dice pack, such as the Castle Ravenloft Treasure Dice Packs. As an older gamer, it is easy to dismiss these as for the youth, but given that as a roleplayer you are always imagining yourself being someone else, it is not difficult to imagine the roles reversed. As seeing the dice packs as perfectly normal and the attitude of older gamers being small-minded. Further, it feels appropriate for a dice and accessory range inspired by a Gothic horror setting for Dungeons & Dragons to have a sense of mystery and the unknown like the one imparted by the blind nature of these dice packs. Opening Castle Ravenloft Treasure Dice Packs is actually more fun than you might think and you might get lucky.

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A video of opening Castle Ravenloft Treasure Dice Packs can be found here.

[Free RPG Day 2025] Deck of Worlds Sampler Pack

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

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If there was an award for the most generically useful item released for Free RPG Day 2025, it would go to the Deck of Worlds Sampler Pack. Published by The Story Engine, this is an introduction to The Story Engine: Deck of World, a deck of cards designed to help users create worlds complete with cultures, geographies, histories, flora, and fauna, simply by drawing and combining cards. The Deck of Worlds Sampler Pack contains just thirty-five cards, little more than a tenth of the two-hundred-and-forty cards to be found in The Story Engine: Deck of World, all packed into a seven-by-seven centimetre box. Unlike previous offerings from The Story Engine, the Deck of Worlds Sampler Pack opens easily and then opens up fully and easily. When closed, the box holds the cards firmly in place, but when opened up, forms the instruction sheet, which takes the user through the process step-by-step.

The Deck of Worlds Sampler Pack contains six card types. These are Region, Landmark, Namesake, Origin, Attribute, and Advent. A Region card has one element which gives the setting a basic environment, like ‘Desert’ or ‘Swamp’. The Landmark expands the basic environment and provides a point of interest, such as ‘Tree’ or ‘Workshop’, ‘Peak’ or ‘Town’, and ‘Point’ or ‘Temple’. The Namesake card gives the Region a sobriquet, providing four like ‘Roaming’, ‘Of Fools’, ‘Of Glass’, and ‘That Knows’. The Origin card also has four elements such as ‘Home of a vanished People’, ‘Founded by Outcasts’, ‘Last Known Location of An Ancient Artifact’, and ‘Said To Have Been The Home Of God(s)’, which provides a lore-based background. Similarly, the Attribute card also has four elements and provides a present day feature about the Region, for example, ‘Polluted’, ‘Unusual Election Process’, ‘Hunting Ground’, and ‘Known For Fossil(s)’. Lastly, the Advent card only has two elements, such as ‘They Are Under Siege By A Foreign Power: An Army, Bombardment, or Propaganda War’ and ‘Wildlife Is Behaving Peculiarly: Aggression, Disorientation, Or Hyperactivity’. The six card types are each a different colour, front and back, and so easy to identify.

To create a micro setting, the user draws a card of each type, one-by-one. The core is the Region card, whilst the others are slipped underneath the Region card so that only one of their elements shows. For example, the ‘Island(s)’ Region card is drawn followed by the Landmark card, which presents a choice of ‘Library’ or ‘Cave’. The former is chosen, then for the Namesake card there is a choice of ‘Shattered’, ‘Of Flags’, ‘Of Strays’, and ‘That Sleeps’. Of these ‘Of Strays’ is added the micro setting. The four choices for the Origin are ‘Was Once Encased In Ice’, ‘Origin of A Popular Game Or Sport’, ‘Founded As A Claim Of Independence’, and ‘Linked To Apocalyptic Lore’. The latter is added. The Attribute card suggests ‘Religiously Diverse’, ‘Known For Street Food’, ‘Seasonal Flooding’, and ‘Carnivorous Plants’, of which ‘Religiously Diverse’ is suitable. Lastly, the Advent card suggests either ‘A Leader’s Sudden Death Is Creating A Power Vacuum: To Be Filled By Heirs, Council Members, Or A Vote’ or ‘Earthquakes Are Uncovering Something Long Buried: A Hive, Sinkhole, Or Tomb’, with the former being chosen.

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The Island of Strays (‘Islands’ and ‘Of Strays’) sits at the far end of the world, awaiting the end of the world. Literally, for it is home to the Athenaeum Apocalyptica, its scholars and monks and prophets dedicated to the study of the end of the world (‘Linked To Apocalyptic Lore’). Over the centuries, it has built up the most complete collection of lore—scrolls, books, carvings, songs, and stories—about the end of the world and even has a whole school, Wisdom Pursuant Apocalyptica dedicated to determining when the end is coming. Although its members include adherents of militant millenarianism and devotees of extreme eschatology, as well as mathematical prophets and augural ascetics (‘Religiously Diverse’), only verbal conflict and debate is allowed on the island. However, the death of the Head Haruspex, Marius IX, Envoy of the Epoch, has left the Athenaeum Apocalyptica without a prime prophet. Accession would not be a matter of great consequence, but the Athenaeum Apocalyptica is approaching the turning point between millennial years and the apocalyptic belief of the Herald of Honesty will determine the belief and the funding distribution for the prophetic phrontisteries for centuries to come (‘A Leader’s Sudden Death Is Creating A Power Vacuum: To Be Filled By Heirs, Council Members, Or A Vote’).

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Physically, the Deck of Worlds Sampler Pack is a delightfully simple package. The artwork is engaging and the instructions on the inside of the clever packaging are very well done.

The Deck of Worlds Sampler Pack is only a taster of the full The Story Engine: Deck of World—a quick-start if you will… Yet it offers a surprising degree of versatility, even with just six Region types and twelve Landmarks, on top of which the Namesake, Origin, and Attribute cards add twenty-four options of their own, that can all be combined to create micro settings that a writer or a storyteller or a Game Master can start her world from and then add to it with further micro settings, developing it micro setting by micro setting, or even just focus on the one micro setting. The Deck of Worlds Sampler Pack is a great introduction to The Story Engine: Deck of World and offers prompts aplenty for what is a release for Free RPG Day.

Mystery. Accessory. Game. Accessory. Mystery.

All Rolled Up is best known for the eponymous gaming accessory, a cloth dice bag with a wrap containing pockets for pens, pencils, notes and notepads, and other gaming accessories, which can be rolled around the dice bag and tied close. The innovative design has become known for two things. First, its ubiquity. Attend a gaming convention in the United Kingdom and when you sit down to roleplay, at least one of your fellow gamers will pull one from his bag and unwrap it to get out his dice. Second, its sturdiness. I have an unofficial Doctor Who-themed one that I have had for a decade and it has travelled to gaming session after gaming session, convention after convention, and even to Gen Con (twice). It remains in almost perfect condition, a little grubby around the edges, and although I have several other All Rolled Ups via Kickstarter campaigns, it is not the fact that they are too nice to use—which they are—that explains why I have not switched to another All Rolled Up. (Were All Rolled Up to do a good duck-themed All Rolled Up, I might change my mind. Seriously. I have two sets of duck-themed dice that need an All Rolled Up home.) However, in addition to high quality, award-winning All Rolled Up, the company also produces a wide range of equally high-quality gaming accessories—dice trays, write-on/wipe-off counters and cards, tokens, and more. These are all available separately, but many have found their way into All Rolled Up’s All Rolled Up Mystery Roleplaying Starter Set.

Each All Rolled Up Mystery Roleplaying Starter Set rattles with goodies and promise. Each contains fourteen items, which always includes dice and a dice tray—another of the innovative products from All Rolled Up, along with the other twelve items. One of which will be a standalone mini-game. What exactly will be found in one All Rolled Up Mystery Roleplaying Starter Set to the next, varies, and because every box comes sealed, is of course, a mystery. The standalone mini-games also vary. Three consist of mini-roleplaying games, the fourth another game. Open up your All Rolled Up Mystery Roleplaying Starter Set and this is what you might find. A cloth bag containing a set of polyhedral dice, including a percentile die as well as the standard ten-sided die. This marked with the price of £10, which alone is two-thirds the price of the All Rolled Up Mystery Roleplaying Starter Set itself. Two extra six-sided dice. A ‘Pad of Geomorphic Intent’ or a mini-notepad of squared paper from Square Hex. A slim plastic box. Not one, but two sets of Stone Skull Counters, one in bone colour, the other in blood red. A set of five tentacle-themed Dry Wipe Counters to use as markers on the table. (Note: The slim plastic box will hold both sets of Stone Skull Counters, but not the Dry Wipe Counters as well.) A Drywipe pen. A compact Neoprene Folding Dice Tray. A large notepad. A pencil. Plus, the roleplaying game. This is a lot of goodies.

The roleplaying game in my All Rolled Up Mystery Roleplaying Starter Set is Electric Schemes: Feedback Loop Edition. Printed on both sides of a single sheet of A4 paper, which has then been folded down into a small pamphlet. The roleplaying game does not have an introduction, but it is quickly obvious that the players are taking the roles of school age teenagers in a modern industrial society, which might be now or it might be in the latter half of the twentieth century. One is the Leader, not necessarily the boss, but the focus for a group, and the others could be ‘The Brat’ or ‘The Neighbour’ or ‘The New Kid’. Mechanically, the roleplaying game uses the minimald6 rules. These are simple, a player or Game Master never rolling more than three six-sided dice or less than one, the aim being to roll fives or sixes to succeed. (As an aside, it is clear that the contents of an All Rolled Up Mystery Roleplaying Starter Set are not always random. Only the one six-sided die has been included in the full polyhedral set, but the two extra six-sided dice have been included to specifically use with Electric Schemes: Feedback Loop Edition.) The combat rules are kept brief, a Player Character never suffering more than a ‘Bang’ or an ‘Owie’, with the player being expected to narrate the outcome, whether his character wins or loses the fight. In terms of what you play, Electric Schemes: Feedback Loop Edition starts with two tables, ‘Stuff Challenged’ and ‘…By Things’. So, the Game Master might roll ‘Existence’ on the ‘Stuff Challenged’ table and ‘Opportunity, Wrong Decision’ on the ‘…By Things’ table. Further tables can add a hook, organisation, location, motivation, visions of tomorrow, and more. There are notes too for the Game Master on the design and handling of NPCs, including Bystanders and Monsters.

Electric Schemes: Feedback Loop Edition is a barebones affair. After all, it fits onto both sides of an A4 sheet of paper. The Game Master will need to improvise the plot once its basic details have been rolled for, but once done, the genre is easy to grasp—kids have adventures, perhaps on bikes, perhaps not, and the lightness of the mechanics means that there is plenty of room for player input, narration, and improvisation. It does draw parallels with Tales from the Loop – Roleplaying in the '80s That Never Was from Free League Publishing, but the tone is more Children’s Film Foundation.

However, Electric Schemes: Feedback Loop Edition is not an introductory roleplaying game. It barely even has an introduction and there is no explanation of what roleplaying is and how it is done. It calls for an experienced Game Master who can whip up a plot, ready-to-play, from the few rolls on the roleplaying game’s table, and then engage with her players. Indeed, an experienced Game Master, could purchase an All Rolled Up Mystery Roleplaying Starter Set, peruse its contents, read through Electric Schemes: Feedback Loop Edition, and have an adventure ready to play in minutes. What this does highlight though, is the fact that whilst the All Rolled Up Mystery Roleplaying Starter Set has the word ‘starter’ in its title, it is not designed introduce the prospective player to the hobby. If not that, what is it designed for? Essentially, it is designed to outfit the player who is new to the hobby, has a little bit of roleplaying experience under his belt, wants some dice and ready to use gaming accessories—and that it does very well. Of course, if an experienced player turned up at a convention and had forgotten all of his dice and other gaming paraphernalia, if All Rolled Up happened to have a stand at the convention, he could definitely outfit himself with some dice and a dice tray, let alone all of the other surprises, just by purchasing an All Rolled Up Mystery Roleplaying Starter Set. Lastly, if gamer really wanted to, he could actually purchase more than one in the hope of collecting all four games across the various boxes.

Physically, the quality of the All Rolled Up Mystery Roleplaying Starter Set is excellent. The poorest quality item in the All Rolled Up Mystery Roleplaying Starter Set is the game itself, but then that is only a single sheet of A4 paper.

An All Rolled Up Mystery Roleplaying Starter Set will equip a gamer with all of the gaming accessories he is going to need—dice, dice tray, counters, and a whole lot more. Plus, a mini-game as a bonus. You may not know what you are going to get in your All Rolled Up Mystery Roleplaying Starter Set, but what you are guaranteed is useful, of high quality, and good value for money.

Friday Fantasy: Dungeon Master’s Little Black Book

SquareHex is best known as the publisher of The Black Hack and the fanzine, Black Pudding, but the publisher also does a wide range of gaming accessories and square and hex pads, the latter for drawing floorplans and area maps, all of which are aimed at the Old School Renaissance and Dungeons & Dragons-style retroclones. The very latest in this line is the Dungeon Master’s Little Black Book. Funded via the Dungeon Master’s Little Black Book 2021 Kickstarter campaign, it comes part of a combo package that provides both content and blank space to be filled in with content, or alternatively, each of the parts is available separately.

The Dungeon Master’s Little Black Book comes in not one, but two versions. Both are a ten-and-a-half by fourteen-and-a-half-centimetre notebook, black and white, share the same format, run to sixteen pages in length, and are filled with tables. Each page a single table, the number of entries ranging in number from eight to thirty. There is even a table with fourteen entries which is drawn on using an ordinary deck of cards, but fans of Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game will have their own dice to roll on this table, and the likelihood is that they will have a thirty-sided die too. In the Dungeon Master’s Little Black Book 2021, there are table for ‘What’s on the End of the Stick?’, ‘Coins on a Corpse’, ‘Coins in a Coffer’, ‘The Kobolds are Selling’, ‘Potions Side Effects’, ‘The Door Opens But’, ‘The Door's Stuck Because It's’, ‘Hirelings & Henchfolk’, ‘The Magic Mouth Says’, ‘What's in the Pit?’, and more. The including ‘Wrath of the Gods’, ‘What Angered the Gods?’, ‘Deck of Minor Magics’, ‘Wild Animal Reactions’, and ‘The Wheel of Fortune’. Some of the entries are fairly humourous, if not silly, such as ‘A bag of Troll excrement – on fire!’ from the ‘What’s on the End of the Stick?’ or ‘Turkish Delight cut from a Gelatinous Cube’ from the ‘The Kobolds are Selling’ table. Other tables are far more utilitarian, ‘Coins on a Corpse’ for example, listing different amounts of coins, whilst the ‘Hirelings & Henchfolk’ is a list of stats and names—actually starting with ‘Tom, Dick, and Harry’, of most Zero and First Level NPCs.

Two of the tables are different. One is the ‘Deck of Minor Magics’, and the other is ‘The Wheel of Fortune’. The ‘Deck of Minor Magics’ grants minor, but interesting magic, much in the style of the fabled Deck of Many Things, but very much toned down, and requires the player to draw from an ordinary deck of cards. That adds a pleasing physicality to the use of Dungeon Master’s Little Black Book 2021. ‘The Wheel of Fortune’ uses symbols rather than numbers and gives random effects which change a Player Character, his situation, or even hurt him. In fact this feels more random, and definitely more arbitrary than the ‘Deck of Minor Magics’. The result is determined by spinning the actual Wheel of Fortune which accompanies the Dungeon Master’s Little Black Book 2021 and requires some craftwork upon the part of the Dungeon Master to cut out and mount. The use of symbols instead of numbers adds an element of mystery to the Wheel of Fortune and its accompanying table, and obscures the results a little so that the players cannot as easily attempt to spin the wheel to their characters’ benefit.

The other version of the Dungeon Master’s Little Black Book also contains tables. However, all of them are blanks. There are spaces for tables which require the roll of an eight-sided die, a twelve-sided die, a thirty-sided die, and more, but not a single one of the tables in Dungeon Master’s Little Black Book contains any results. The point of this version of the Dungeon Master’s Little Black Book is that it is ready for the Dungeon Master to fill in and design tables of her own.

The largest of the items is the Adventure Design Booklet. This is digest-sized and is again sixteen pages. Like the Dungeon Master’s Little Black Book, it is also blank—or rather it does not have any content. The majority of its pages are lined and double-columned, there is a single page of hexes, and three of squares. The front page though, has a big space for a front cover illustration and a title above, much like the classic Dungeons & Dragons scenarios of years past. So much like the point of the Dungeon Master’s Little Black Book is for the Dungeon Master to fill in and design tables of her own, the point of the Adventure Design Booklet is the Dungeon Master to fill in and design an adventure of her own. For a book that is all but blank, there is something delightfully nostalgic about the Adventure Design Booklet, all just waiting for the Dungeon Master to be inspired and put pen to paper, and in the process create an adventure that is particularly personal to her.

Physically, the Dungeon Master’s Little Black Book 2021 and the Dungeon Master’s Little Black Book are both black and white booklets with sturdy covers. Where the Dungeon Master’s Little Black Book 2021 is done on a glossy paper stock, the Dungeon Master’s Little Black Book and the Adventure Design Booklet not. They are done on a rougher paper stock, which makes for a better writing surface. The Adventure Design Booklet is also done in light grey—guidelines just waiting for firm input from the Game Master.

On one level, the Dungeon Master’s Little Black Book 2021, the Dungeon Master’s Little Black Book, the Adventure Design Booklet, and the Wheel of Fortune are ephemera, even fripperies, not necessary to play whatsoever. Yet they all have their uses and their charm. The Dungeon Master’s Little Black Book 2021 can add a little randomness and colour to play or serve as inspiration for the Dungeon Master, whilst the Dungeon Master’s Little Black Book and the Adventure Design Booklet are blank slates awaiting the Dungeon Master’s inspiration and creative input.

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SquareHex will be at UK Games Expo which will take place between July 30th and August 2nd, 2021 at Birmingham NEC. This is the world’s fourth largest gaming convention and the biggest in the United Kingdom.