Gnashers & Nazis

Punching Nazis. Shooting Nazis. Blowing up Nazis. Setting Nazis on Fire. Scaring Nazis. Biting Nazis. Then feeding on their blood. It is 1943 and as Hitler brings about his dire plan to create Werewolf soldiers, the British government decides to strike. Not with its brightest and its best, but its darkest and its worst. Under the command of F.A.N.G., a single RAF bomber will drop six crack commandos onto Paris in their drop-coffins. Each drop-coffin contains a vampire. Their mission? Cut a bloody swathe across the City of Light, kill Nazis and feed on their blood. Once enriched, they are to storm the Eifel Tower and climb to its top where Hitler has his personal Zeppelin moored. Once aboard, they are to kill Hitler, drink his blood, and stop his Nazi werewolf programme. This is Inglorious Basterds meets The Suicide Squad in a sanguinary splatterfest in an alternate World War 2 and the setting for Eat the Reich. This is a pulp-action horror one-shot storytelling roleplaying game or a scenario with some roleplaying rules attached, published by Rowan, Rook, and Decard, best known for Spire: The City Must Fall and Heart: The City Beneath. Intended as a fun and cathartic punch-up of a game of evil action delivered on an even greater evil, Eat the Reich does not so much wear its heart on its sleeve as bare its fangs and tell you to hold still whilst it bites you.

To be fair, the elevator pitch for Eat the Reich, as hard as it punches, it is not the first thing that grabs the reader. What grabs the reader is the crazed eyes staring out of the cut-out in the front cover. After that, it is the colours used—vibrant swathes of neon pink, yellow, and blue that continue right through the length of Eat the Reich. This is technicolour in all of its comic book exuberance and brio, that in case of the front cover hides a frightened looking monster. And it is monsters that Eat the Reich makes a case for playing, noting that it is monsters preying on monsters that are even more monstrous. It includes the by now traditional advice on safety at the table, covering the X-Card and Lines and Veils, but goes beyond that to ask the Game Master and her players what is acceptable in their game. Anti-hero vampires invading occupied France, feeding on blood for the power it gives, killing and feeding fascist, are all fine. Murdering innocent civilians and acts of fascism are definitely reserved for the villains of the piece. Although there are boundaries that it definitely sets—primarily sexual violence and violence against children—Eat the Reich examines others to help guide a playing group what is and is not acceptable at its table taking into account religious sensibilities as well. It backs this up with an ‘Evil Calibration Checklist’ that a group can work through before play.

Unfortunately, the response of some to this advice—which goes further than most roleplaying game—is to see it as unnecessary moralising, especially in a roleplaying game that only runs to seventy or so pages. Perhaps in a longer roleplaying game it might not have been so prominent. On the other hand, it is not bad advice and in the context of the game, it is really only going to ask everyone to think about their limits and their expectations. And ultimately, like any advice, the Game Master and her players are free to accept it or reject it as is their wont.

Although there is advice on creating Player Characters or rather adapting the pre-generated ones, Eat the Reich really is about playing its six pre-generated Vampire Commandos. They consist of Iryna, a noble woman who is a crack shot and wields a mesmerising dark glamour; Nicole, resistance fighter and saboteur who likes blowing things up; Cosgrave, Cockney spiv and necromancer on the run from East London’s undead mafia; Chuck, a fan of cowboy films pulled out of prison to go on the mission; Astrid, ex-fighter pilot with a parasitical soul wrapped round her heart who can command spirits and hunts with a greatspear; and Flint, a half-human, half-bat who can fly and rarely speaks.

Each Vampire has seven stats—Brawl, Con, Fix, Search, Shoot, Sneak, and Terrify—rated between one and four. He will also have some equipment each marked with a number of use boxes; four Abilities, some of which require the expenditure of Blood, some of which require a player to roll dice and assign a Special result to them; Advances when he learns from the campaign against the Nazis; and Injury boxes. For example, Iryna has an ‘Exquisite Hunting Rifle’ which grants an extra die when she is elevated; a ‘Magic Cavalry Sabre’ which grants a bonus when she charges with it; ‘Explosive Runes’ that wok better if concealed; and ‘Cigarettes taken from the pockets of a hanged man’ to smoke and regain two Blood. Her Abilities include ‘Dark Glamour’ to mesmerise those nearby with her unearthly appearance; summoning a swarm of bats under her control with ‘Night’s Willing Servants’; and reducing a Threat’s Attack rating by one with ‘Deadeye Shot’. Her Advances include ‘Hell’s Ravenous Fire’, ‘Enervation of the Soul’, and ‘Mantle of the Fell Beast’, whilst her Injuries are randomly determined, which might be ‘Suit Torn’ or ‘Abdominal Puncture’, ‘Shoulder Injury’ or ‘Arm Removed’, and so on. Each Vampire’s character sheet is easy to read and comes with a great illustration.

Mechanically, Eat the Reich uses the HAVOC Engine. To have his Vampire undertake an action, a player rolls a number of six-sided dice equal to an appropriate stat plus any bonus dice from an item of equipment used or an Ability. The Game Master rolls a number of dice equal to the current Threat or Attack rating. Results of four and five count as a Success each, whilst a six counts as a Critical. There are multiple ways in which a player can now spend his Vampire’s Successes and Criticals. If the situation has an Objective, they can be spent to advance it; to counter a Threat and reduce it; to active a Special; to feed on a Nazi; and to defend against an attack. When defending, a Success counters a Success rolled by the Game Master, whilst a Critical counters a Critical. A Critical can also be used as a Special to activate various Abilities. Any Success or Critical not defended against like this means that the Vampire suffers an Injury, and if he suffers too many Injuries and dies, he can at least go out in a ‘Blaze of Glory’ with one last roll of a bigger dice pool. Blood can also be spent to heal a Vampire. Lastly, feeding on Nazi blood fills up a Vampire’s Blood which he can subsequently spend to active various Abilities.

In addition to rolling the dice and assigning the dice, what a player is expected to do with each Success or Critical is narrate the outcome and describe the actions of his vampire. Once per session, if a player rolls two Successes or fewer, he can instead narrate a flashback scene of a prior mission which somehow helps this one and reroll all of the dice again.

There is a definite loop to the play of Eat the Reich. A Vampire needs Blood and thus needs to feed on Nazis, in order to have Blood to activate Abilities or heal himself. So, he needs to keep a flow of Blood going from scene to scene, action to action, but this has to be balanced against the needs of an individual scene, whether that is reducing a Threat and thus its capacity to Attack the Vampires or work towards an Objective. Plus, he also has to counter the Attack rolls made by the Threats to prevent himself from being Injured. However, when a Vampire lands in his Drop Coffin, he has no Blood, as it has been used to heal him from the drop, which means that his player has to make Successful rolls in order to get Blood to get the play loop running. It does make for a slow start to the action.

The play of Eat the Reich is one big mission. Essentially, rampaging across Paris until the Vampires get to the Eifel Tower and ascending to the final confrontation against Hitler. After the briefing and the coffin drop, this takes place across three sectors of Paris. This is a comic book version of Paris rather than an historical recreation, but then having already thrown the Vampires into the mix, it not being historically accurate is hardly going to break immersion. Working their way across three sectors, the Vampires will start off in somewhere like the Place de la Sirène where there are families and bistros and the only threat they will face are police patrols, their Objective being to get out of the open and into cover. In Sector 2, they might have to get through ‘The German Technology Pavilion’ and get out the other side. They will face Stahlsoldat, half-men, half-machine warriors, but will also have the opportunity to find loot such as a ‘Prototype Beam Emitter’ and achieve secondary Objectives such as powering up a weapons platform. As the Vampires move from sector to sector, the locations become more interesting and complex, including a chance for the Vampires to team up with the Resistance at the ‘Le Cochon Noir’ and battle magically-animated suits of armour and use medieval weaponry in the ‘Museum of European Warfare’! Eventually, the Vampires will make it to the Eifel Tower and hopefully defeat his minions and kill Hitler.

Physically, Eat the Reich is a riot of colour. This is used in such a way that it does not impede the legibility of the text, which is clear and well written.

Eat the Reich is a one-shot. Two or three session’s worth of play and the playthrough is done. Whilst there are suggestions for sequels, including going up against Churchill—for unfortunate historical reasons—and perhaps they might want to play it again, but switching vampires, a group is unlikely to play through it again. Of course, the Game Master could run it for another group. It is simple to play and as a storytelling game gives plenty of room for every player to narrate how vicious and nasty and frightening his vampire is, in a very violent comic book caper. Nevertheless, however a group decides to play, whatever boundaries they set for themselves, Eat the Reich is a blast to play, a blaze of blood and brutalising Nazis, of monsters masticating on monsters, and ripping the heart out of the Reich.

Miskatonic Monday #347: The Demon of the Deep Leads

Much like the Jonstown Compendium for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and The Companions of Arthur for material set in Greg Stafford’s masterpiece of Arthurian legend and romance, Pendragon, the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition is a curated platform for user-made content. It is thus, “...a new way for creators to publish and distribute their own original Call of Cthulhu content including scenarios, settings, spells and more…” To support the endeavours of their creators, Chaosium has provided templates and art packs, both free to use, so that the resulting releases can look and feel as professional as possible. To support the efforts of these contributors, Miskatonic Monday is an occasional series of reviews which will in turn examine an item drawn from the depths of the Miskatonic Repository.

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Name: The Demon of the Deep Leads

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author David Waldron

Setting: Ballarat, 1854

Product: One-shot
What You Get: Forty-three page, 21.49 MB PDF

Elevator Pitch: The Blue Mountains panther hunts by night

Plot Hook: Hunt for a missing man in time of chaos
Plot Support: Staging advice, five pre-generated Investigators, three handouts, two maps, four NPCs, one non-Mythos monster, and one Mythos monster.

Production Values: Reasonable.

Pros

# Combines Cthulhu by Gaslight and Call of Cthulhu: Darker Trails, but in Australia!

# Engaging historically based scenario

# Solid interaction investigation

# Straightforward, uncomplicated

# Can be run as a non-Mythos horror scenario

# Ailurophobia

# Teratophobia

# Amychophobia

Cons

# Needs an edit

# No pre-generated Investigator backgrounds

# Underwritten introduction

Conclusion

# Uncomplicated scenario against a chaotic background

# Engaging sense of history combined with an urban legend

Friday Fantasy: The Horrendous Hounds of Hendenburgh

The poor village of Hendenburgh stands in the middle of the Kryptwood, an ancient forest steeped in legend and history. For years, the Kryptwood has encroached upon the village, covering the walls of its whitewashed cottages with ivy, but pulling the tendrils of the evergreen climber from the walls of their homes is something that the villagers can easily handle, whereas the most problem thing to beset Hendenburgh is one that they are ill-equipped to deal with. Murderous demon hounds haunt the Kryptwood, ripping apart anyone who dares enter its reaches and even snatching lone villagers from the streets of the small settlement. An attempt to drive the spectral hounds from the Kryptwood, led by Ulvar the Poacher, resulted in failure and the death of several villagers. The demon hounds and what they are, are just one of the dangers and secrets to be found in and around the village of Hendenburgh. Highwaymen lurk in the forest, ready to pounce on Hendenburgh’s misfortune; a coven of witches wants everything to be returned to normal; the old silver mine stands abandoned, infested with monsters that drove out the miners and sowed the seeds of Hendenburgh’s poverty; a Bridge Troll has gone on strike after a drunken pixie failed to pay the toll; and at its heart, the Tomb of the Tyrant, the last resting place of the Kryptwood Tyrant, a despot who ruled the region a thousand years ago.

This is the situation in The Horrendous Hounds of Hendenburgh, a scenario published by The Merry Mushmen, best known for Black Sword Hack: Ultimate Chaos Edition and A Folklore Bestiary, as well as the fanzine, Knock! An Adventure Gaming Bric-à-Brac. Funded via a Kickstarter campaign along with Raiding the Obsidian Keep, it is designed for Player Characters of Second to Fourth Level, it is adaptation and expansion for use with Old School Essentials of an earlier scenario, Hounds of Hendenburgh, written for use with the microclone, Cairn. It is essentially, a hexcrawl with multiple locations—some twenty-four of them, occupying half of the hexcrawl’s forty-eight hexes—and multiple, often interlinked plots. These plots will pull and push the Player Characters across the Kryptwood, ultimately to the scenario’s three big locations. These are the ‘The Infested Silver Mine’, ‘The Ancient Villa’, and ‘The Tyrant’s Tomb’. As written, it is also linked to Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow, the first adventure module published by The Merry Mushmen. Thus, it can be run, if not as a direct sequel, then as the next scenario in the Player Characters’ adventures. Alternatively, it can simply be dropped into a Game Master’s own setting and used without any links to Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow.

As with Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow, this is another digest-sized scenario which comes as a thick seventy or so page booklet in a wraparound card cover. The trade dress echoes that of classic TSR, though the artwork is more cartoonish. The cover has been purposely distressed and inside are maps of the three main adventuring locations in the Kryptwood, all done in a white on blue style that again echoes classic modules for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition. The cartoonish style of artwork continues throughout in a duotone of blue and grey, depicting the sense of gloom and horror that pervades the region—and the adventure.

The Horrendous Hounds of Hendenburgh is a very traditional in terms of its design. It begins with the ‘classic village in peril’ set-up in which Hendenburgh and its inhabitants are endangered by a major threat, that is, the demon hounds. Added to this are a handful of other, lesser threats—a band of highwaymen, the cause of the silver mine being abandoned which has led to the region’s decline, the village pastor having been defrocked for heresy, and so on. Understandably, the villagers are rightly worried about the danger that the demon hounds represent, but these are not their only concerns. There is the winsome and inappropriately young wife of the senile Lord of Hendenburgh, who wants to restore the village’s fortunes, but is also fascinated by the new learning, and regards the attacks by the demon hounds as peasant superstition, blaming them on a particularly vindictive badger. The pastor could be of great help to the Player Characters, but has become a spiteful drunk after being denounced by his flock! The town miller is in deep mourning for his wife, killed by the demon hounds, so no grain is being ground for flour, and thus there is no bread being baked, whereas in fact, his wife has run off with the highwaymen! The blacksmith cannot work out why the Widow Winstaple reviles him so, despite him loving her very much and having dosed her tea with a love potion he acquired from the three witches in the woods. These NPCs—and in fact, all of the NPCs in The Horrendous Hounds of Hendenburgh, because there are also many to be found across Kryptwood Forest as well—are really great. Not only will interacting with them garner the Player Characters knowledge, but it will also create some great roleplaying between the players and the Game Master.

Beyond the limits of Hendenburgh, Kryptwood is rife with yet more encounters and locations. There is the aforementioned coven of witches and their squadron of flying monkeys, a fashionably employed hermit, that troll bridge with the striking troll, the Highwaymen and their louchely charismatic leader, and even ‘The Thirsty Sprite’, a tavern deep in the woods that caters to pixies and other creatures. Then, of course, there are the scenario’s three main adventure sites, ‘The Infested Silver Mine’, ‘The Ancient Villa’, and ‘The Tyrant’s Tomb’. These are not large, but they are highly detailed and they will keep the Player Characters busy for multiple sessions. They are also dangerous, if not outright deadly, and any party rushes into unprepared will find its numbers potentially severely depleted. These three locations, as well as the witches’ coven, are where the horror elements of scenario come to the fore. For make no mistake The Horrendous Hounds of Hendenburgh is a horror scenario. Primarily that horror is folkloric and gothic in nature, but ‘The Infested Silver Mine’ feels like the film Alien as well. There is a touch of whimsy too, such as the drunken Pixies and bored Ogre bartender at ‘The Thirsty Sprite’ or the reluctant, but fashionably employed hermit. The combination is reminiscent of Hammer Horror film with a touch of bawdy grubbiness that will make the Game Master want to cast the scenario’s many NPCs and villains with their favourite character actors.

The Horrendous Hounds of Hendenburgh is also very well supported and organised. It breaks down the various factions in the scenario, gives a handful of hooks to get the Player Characters there, provides tables of encounters for all of the main locations, and at the end lists what will happen to Hendenburgh once the Player Characters have left. This includes if they do nothing as well as the possible consequences if they get involved. Appendices list all of the scenario’s NPCs, new magical items, and potential retainers and/or replacement Player Characters. Again, these are all very good, the magical items in particular being unique and interesting in each and every case, such as a Clockwork Canary that attaches to the belt and sings whenever poisonous or explosive gas is detected or the Agoniser, a dagger that can inflict excruciating pain sufficient to paralyse temporarily the person stabbed!

Physically, The Horrendous Hounds of Hendenburgh is very well presented. The writing is succinct and laid out in an easy to grasp style, whilst the artwork is entertaining throughout. The cartography of the various buildings and caves and dungeons in the scenario feel slightly grubbier than in Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow, but are still not as detailed as they could be. This will not hinder the Game Master running The Horrendous Hounds of Hendenburgh, but none really help their locations come to life either.

The Horrendous Hounds of Hendenburgh is a great horror hexcrawl, brimming with flavoursome detail and plot, populated with a fantastic cast of NPCs that the Game Master is going to enjoy roleplaying, and rife with adventure possibilities. It is a genuine joy to see how well this is designed and put together, but at the table, The Horrendous Hounds of Hendenburgh is going to be so much fun to run, let alone play.

House of Horrors

At the end of the street stands a house behind a crumbling wall. People who pass it, look at it askance, wondering why it stands empty after so long and why nobody has bought it. They only half remember it from their childhoods and if they did, they would realise that the building has been in the same state for decades. The children whisper that the house is haunted, that some kid went in there, and never came out. Even so, they dare each other to climb the wall and break in… just as their parents once did. They go in to see what treasures or secrets they can find. The one that has gone unlived in for years. Sometimes a few hearty souls creep in, it is said, Most find nothing—just an empty old house. Some return shaken. A few never come out at all. The house is thus a lurking presence, perhaps not in this town, but in the next, or the next one over? Or perhaps in all of them? And if the house has been lurking all that time, what happens to it when it sits alone for so many long years? What jealousies and hatreds does it quietly nurture? What secrets does it contain, waiting to be discovered within its dark walls, crouched within its dank and dreary rooms, hungering for the return of life?

This is The Darkest House. It is a horror scenario sent in a grand house, fallen to ruin, riven by madness, stained by trauma and emotional scars. Those it draws in, it torments out of hate and spite, and even as they discover some of the house’s secrets and its origins, perhaps the best outcome they can hope for, is to escape it confines, though not the same as they were when they crossed its threshold. Published by Monte Cook Games, The Darkest House is something different, a horror scenario originally designed to be played online and with any game system. As the former, it was originally designed and delivered as an app and a set of electronic documents, combining details of the ‘Darkest House’ itself, a set of handouts in terms of texts, images, and sound files, all richly detailed. As the latter, it comes with its own ‘House System’ which allows Player Characters to be adapted from any game system run The Darkest House using the ‘House System’, the simplified nature of its mechanics making it easier to run online. A Game Master—not calling the Game Master the House Master really is a missed opportunity—could even run The Darkest House with the different Player Characters from different systems and settings if she is ambitious enough.

The Darkest House is now available as a book, which presents all of this information in physical format, but marked with QR codes to link to handouts and downloads. It enables the artwork to shine and as the Game Master to see the motifs and flow of the scenario in one place.

A Player Character in The Darkest House is measured as a Rating on a ten-point scale. Between one and two, they will need to employ stealth and avoid direct confrontations with the dangers of the house; between three and six they will still be danger, but can still survive; and seven and up and they can survive with only minor difficulty. The aim though, is not to create Player Characters particular to The Darkest House, but rather draw them in from other game systems. This points to its intended universality and is underpinned by a conversion guide that adapt those Player Characters from other roleplaying games and fit them on the ten-point scale of the House System. This is whether a Player Character’s level or primary attributes are measured on a twenty-point, six-point, or percentile scale. Thus, it would work whether the Player Character comes from Monte Cook Games’ own Cypher System, Chaosium, Inc.’s Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, or Free League Publishing’s Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying. The process is more rough and ready then exact, and will very likely require the Game Master and the players to adjust as necessary to account for particular abilities, powers, spells, or skills. This is done by awarding Boons rather than adjusting a Player Character’s base Rating. Further, some spells and abilities and their effects can be applied narratively rather than mechanically. This is likely to be easier than working out the exact effects even on the limited scale of the House System and the overall effect of the House System is one that is rough and ready rather than exact or elegant.

Mechanically, the House System measures a Player Character’s Rating versus the Rating of the task involved. The Rating of the task is added to seven to give the target number for the player to role for his character to succeed. The player rolls three six-sided dice, one of which is called the House Die. The Rating of his character is added to the result of the two ordinary dice and not the House Dice, the aim being to roll equal to or higher than the target number. If the task Rating is six or higher than the Player Character’s Rating, the task is impossible to achieve, whilst if it is six or lower than the Player Character’s Rating, the task is impossible to fail. Under the House System, the player always rolls, which means that the player rolls for his character to act and rolls for his character to avoid actions against him. Boons and Banes make a task harder to achieve, respectively, and if a Player Character has one or more of both, they cancel each other out until either the Player Character has none, or a Bane or a Bane leftover. Whether the Player Character has a Bane or a Boon, his player rolls an extra die in addition to the two six-sided dice and the House Die. If a Boon, the player discards to die with the lowest result, and if a Bane, he discards the highest result.

What then does the House Die do? In general, nothing. Under special circumstances, it comes into play. This occurs when it is the highest result on any die rolled and when the player, in desperation, has his character ‘call upon the House’ for help. Neither of these are good. When the highest result on any die rolled is the House Die, the House Acts. This begins with creaking sounds, footsteps, or similar noises being heard by the Player Characters, a figure associated with the section of the House the Player Characters are in suddenly appearing, and so on, but that is only the beginning. It escalates each time the House Acts, step-by-step, up through ten steps, and starts again at one, recycling round and round as the Player Characters explore more of the house, and roll the highest result on the House Die again and again. When a player has his character ‘call upon the House’ for help, the House Acts just if the player had rolled the highest result on the House Die and the character gains a Doom. Doom affects a Player Character in a number of ways, such as if he is wounded and falls unconscious, the number of points acting as a penalty to the player’s roll to see if the character dies. However, what a player can do is ‘spend a Doom’, which gives the Game Master permission to do something terrible to his character. Whatever happens, though, it must be significant, be bad for the character, and at the time of the Game Master’s choosing—and the Doom points can be saved as well. Worse though, the Doom Effects can linger if the Player Characters leave the House…

Harm in The Darkest House is also kept simple. The Rating of the attack is added to a roll of a six-sided die, whilst the defender’s Rating is deducted. If the result is a positive number, that is wound that the defender suffers. The House Die is not rolled for damage, a Banes and Boons can be. Physical armour will reduce this damage. Mental damage is suffered in the same way. Wounds also mean that the rolls for all actions are made with Banes.

Effectively, what the House System is a meta-system, a set of rules and ultimately guidelines since it cannot cover every eventuality and every nuance from every system. It is that lack of nuance, at least mechanically, where The Darkest House is going to be lacking. What this means is that the Game Master is going to have to pick up the slack of the House System and shift what is nuance in another game system over to more narrative, even more storytelling resolution and outcome in The Darkest House.

The last thing to note about a Player Characters is that they enter the Darkest House with a truth or a lie. This essentially is weaponised as part of the play of The Darkest House, the House using it against the Player Character, attempting to shake his faith as part of the story rather than to victimise him. The Game Master should be building these truths and lies into arcs that will run throughout the Player Characters’ exploration of The Darkest House. In terms of advice, The Darkest House suggests reasons for the Player Characters to enter the house, stories that can be told in the House, and some of the objectives that the Player Characters might work towards, intentionally or not. It highlights how the house contains anachronisms even if fantasy characters venture inside, and there is magic to be found too within its walls. The House also isolates the Player Characters, making contact with the outside world technically impossible, though this will not be apparent to the Player Characters. The Game Master can instead use this against the Player Characters, deceiving them through the figures that they would otherwise trust. There is good advice on both running The Darkest House and on the challenges of running The Darkest House, all of which readies the Game Master for the campaign and the details of the House itself.

The House is described Room by Room in a lengthy series of two-page spreads that make up the bulk of the book. These come complete with a floorplan, description, overview, an illustration, and a QR code. The latter opens up a website with images and handouts that the players and their characters can view and peruse. It can include sounds too, their presence marked with an icon of its own. The commitment to the format even includes a darkened hallway, which follows the first location. Divided between areas of the House labelled father, mother, dining room, sister, lover, and ultimately, the Original House, voices whisper to intruders, a Mother figure lurks with her skeleton children in her arms ready to rebuke the Player Characters for their lack of love for her and ready to launch her children at them, a father figure looms over the Player Characters ready to deal out a beating, a door has been plastered over with notes telling the reader not to open the door, but someone keeps knocking from the other side, a clockwork child stalks the halls with a knife clutched in its hands, and so on. It veers from the little unerring uneasiness to grand theatre of the guignol and back again, always unsettling, weird, and worrying as the Player Characters edge their way from one Room to the next, picking at puzzles, poring over possible clues, and wondering what might happen next.

Lastly an appendix lists and details all of the handouts that the Player Characters might find in the House. The Game Master will still need to download these and again, they come with their own QR code. It means that even playing The Darkest House offline, the Game Master will still need Internet access and may want her players to have it to best access the scenario’s handouts and downloads.

In terms of play, The Darkest House can be played as a single big scenario, but it is really designed to be slotted into an ongoing campaign. Almost any campaign in which a ‘haunted house’ could appear. Nor is it necessarily designed to be played in one go. The Player Characters can leave and they can be pulled back in, plus there are ongoing consequences for leaving the House, especially if a Player Character has unspent Doom points. So, the Player Characters may enter the House explore some of it, escape, but re-enter the House at a later point in the campaign. Once the Player Characters have entered the House and come out, it is going to remain a lurking presence until they decide to return and deal with it.

Physically, The Darkest House is very well presented in rich dark colours, the text in red and white. The artwork is excellent, much of it seeming to lurk in the background with its repetition serving to enforce that sense of things and people lurking, ready to leap out and scare the Player Characters. It is well written and it is liberally littered with quotes from authors such as Stephen King and Shirly Jackson.

However, what must be stressed is what The Darkest House is not. It is not a traditional haunt house and it is not a traditional mystery. It means that there are not the ghosts to be found, their origins to be discovered, and their bones laid to rest, problem solved. There are ghosts, but neither ghosts nor the House are ever really going to go away until the Player Characters find a way to make the House go away and never come back. In terms of a mystery, this is a dark, haunted house, and whilst there are secrets to be revealed and aspects of the House’s history to be discovered, much like the ghosts there is no clear beginning, middle, and end, in which its origins can be discovered and the House completely dealt with as a threat. The author of The Darkest House even goes so far as to state that there are secrets to the House that he has not and will not reveal. What this means is that The Darkest House is pervaded with a sense of the ineffable and the unknowable, and whilst there is a mystery to The Darkest House, it is not a mystery to be solved and that may confound some players. This does not mean that The Darkest House cannot be played and cannot be completed. Rather it means that the expectations of what The Darkest House is and is not, are going to be different from the traditional haunted house.

The Darkest House is an audacious creation, a product designed in response to the Lockdown under COVID-19 and thus specifically designed to be played online and with any type of character from any game system. It is both grand and intimate, the great sweep of the House contrasting with the disturbing intimacy of the detail to be found in the individual Rooms, its horror lurking at the edge of the senses before cavorting at the Player Characters and then retreating… Like any big scenario or campaign. The Darkest House demands much of the Game Master, but The Darkest House demands more both mechanically because of the need for adjudication of its House System and because The Darkest House is campaign that is going to directly needle and work at the Player Characters. This also demands players mature enough to accept that this is part of the genre that v falls into.

Perhaps still best played online, The Darkest House is an ambitious design, a fantastic perturbation of puzzles and perils, torments and terrors, which combine to make a great roleplaying horror story.

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Monte Cook Games will be at UK Games Expo which takes place on Friday, May 31st to Sunday June 2nd, 2024.

Miskatonic Monday #283: The Last Dance of Lola Montez

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

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

—oOo—

Name: The Last Dance of Lola Montez: A Call of Cthulhu Modern Adventure

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author David Waldron

Setting: Ballarat, Modern day

Product: One-shot
What You Get: Forty-three page, 11.64 MB PDF

Elevator Pitch: Who suffers for their art? The artist or the aesthete?

Plot Hook: Grief isn’t something to be exploited. Until it is.
Plot Support: Staging advice, five pre-generated Investigators, eight handouts, and three NPCs.

Production Values: Reasonable.

Pros

# Engaging historically based scenario

# Opens with great roleplaying scenes

# Great historical handouts

# Decent period handouts

# Sanguivoriphobia

# Hemophobia

# Thanatophobia

Cons

# Designed for experienced Investigators

# Emotionally wrought scenario

# Overwhelms the Keeper with documents
# No maps or floorplans

# More Hammer Horror than Mythos scenario

Conclusion

# An emotionally charged wicked web of a scenario

# Narcissism and vampirism intersect in a tale of a Spanish dancer’s revenge

Rat Rummage

A rash of strange businesses broken into and odd thefts leads the monstrous investigators in the city of Spireholm to a startling revelation. Under the very streets of the city, indeed under the very cellars and sewer tunnels of the city under those streets, there are tunnels that lead deep into the unknown. Is the rattish nature of the miscreants discovered in the initial investigation a sign that some villain dwells far below like a subterranean Doctor Moreau, sending his rodent servants to the surface for reasons that only he can divulge? Or is there something else in the tunnels and caverns to be found far below the city? This is the set-up for SHIVER Gothic: Disciples of Dregstone, a companion campaign to SHIVER Gothic: Secrets of Spireholm, which itself is a campaign and setting a supplement for Shiver – Role-playing Tales in the Strange & the Unknown. Published by Parable Games, Shiver is a generic horror roleplaying game, designed to do a variety of subgenres, from modern slasher and cosmic horror to zombie outbreaks and Hammer Horror melodramas, using easy to build Player Characters archetypes and the Doom Clock as a device to ratchet up tension and push the story to a horrifying climax combined with its own dice mechanics. It is great for one-shots, especially ones inspired by horror films. If SHIVER Gothic: Secrets of Spireholm showcased how it was possible to run and play SHIVER as a proper campaign, then SHIVER Gothic: Disciples of Dregstone expands and continues that.

SHIVER Gothic: Disciples of Dregstone does two things. First it introduces the new world below the city of Spireholm and its inhabitants and second it presents a campaign that involves both. It can be used in a number of different ways. One is a straight sequel to the campaign given in SHIVER Gothic: Secrets of Spireholm. Another is as a secondary plot, essentially a ‘B plot’, that can be run alongside or interwoven with the campaign in SHIVER Gothic: Secrets of Spireholm. And lastly, it can be used as an alternate plot that can be run whenever a player is unable to play the main campaign. This gives it some flexibility, although the ideal means of use is as the ‘B plot’ so that all of the players and their characters can participate. Another option is for the players to take the roles of members of the rattish race at the heart of SHIVER Gothic: Disciples of Dregstone, although that does mean that many of the mysteries at the heart of the setting and the campaign will have to be revealed to them.

Inspired by works of fiction such as Neverwhere by Nail Gaiman and Weaveworld by Clive Barker, as well as a whole festival of films, SHIVER Gothic: Secrets of Spireholm takes the players and their characters into the Dregs, home to Scoriath, the kingdom of the Scorians. They are rat folk, twisted into intelligence by the alchemical wastes poured into the sewers and finding a home in the ruins of an ancient sunken settlement. Ruled over by the authoritarian Rat King, Rongeur Halftail, the Scorians are large, but still smaller than Humans, and have tough tails and a strong sense of smell. There is resistance to the Rat King’s rule, and the Delvers, who search for resources far below Scoriath, are divided as to whether they should explore Topside, even though the king has forbidden it. Meanwhile, the Church of the 7 Tails worships the rats’ time as four-leggers, whilst it should be no surprise that Scorians hold alchemy in high regard given their origins. Several Scorian Backgrounds are given for Scorian Player Characters, including Gutters who guard the city; Sneakers are spies and thieves; Alchemists specialises in poisons, concoctions, and bombs; Tail-Tellers are itinerant storytellers; Pale Seers are all but blind, yet have the gift of the foresight; Swarm Wardens can psionically control rat swarms; and Scurriers do all of the physical work in Scoriath. Besides possibly playing Scorians, the options for Player Characters include watch officers, urchins, concerned citizens, private citizens, reporters, monster hunters, and more. The inclusion of the Scorian Backgrounds also facilitates the easy replacement of Player Characters should one somehow die in the course of events of the campaign.

As a campaign, SHIVER Gothic: Disciples of Dregstone is shorter than SHIVER Gothic: Secrets of Spireholm, consisting of seven parts rather than ten. Its chapters follow the same format though. Each is bookended by ‘What the Director Knows’ at the beginning and at the finish, ‘Doom Events’ which are triggered on the Doom Chapter for the chapter. In addition, the campaign supplement adds ‘Doom Tolls’ alongside ‘Doom Events’. These interact with the ‘Doom Calendar’, essentially events that affect the wider world around the Player Characters. Then, between the start and the end is the meat of each scenario, which varies from one chapter to the next, but will always include key clues and story text, the the key clues given as floating clues that the Game Master can place in the particular chapter where appropriate. In between the chapters are a series of interludes. These expand upon the overview of the Dregs as a setting, such as the background history of Rongeur Halftail, more information about the Church of the 7 Tails, Scorian terminology, and so on. These are not necessarily gameable content, but add detail to the setting.

SHIVER Gothic: Disciples of Dregstone begins with the investigation. This leads the Player Characters into the foulness of the city sewers before descending into the tunnels below. Here the Scorians have set up a ‘Mantrap Maze’ to prevent anyone from Topside from trying to get into Rongeur Halftail’s realm. The maze though, is a bit of a problem. It consists of fifteen encounters, not quite linear, but playing through it will definitely feel like it. Although these encounters are inventive and some of them are fun, such as having a giant trashball chase the Player Characters a la Raiders of the Lost Ark and a trap that fills with water as they try to find a way to solve a rat-themed puzzle. Of course, the Game Master need not use all of the encounters here and she could easily save some for a later visit to Scoriath, suggesting perhaps that the Scorians are shifting rooms and traps around their ‘Mantrap Maze’ each time that there is an incursion from Topside?

By the time the Player Characters reach Dregstone, they will have gained the first of many allies they will be able to befriend and recruit in the course of the campaign. She is a human who has long been trapped in the Dregs and long been searching for her sister, and she will be able to put the Player Characters in touch with the Resistance. This sets off the main plot of the campaign, as first the Player Characters have to sneak around the city, poorly disguised as Scorians, undertake a task for the Resistance to gain the trust of its members. This is the first of the campaign’s big set pieces, the disruption of a public execution, the Player Characters having to set up a rescue of several Resistance members being sent to the gallows. This will lead to their arrest, being brought before Rongeur Halftail himself and sentenced to life incarceration in Pipehold Prison. Here the authors get to play with all of the clichés of prison life—as seen on the big and small screen—as the Player Characters are forced to other prisoners for the amusement of the guards, deal with a variety of different prison personalities, and of course, make preparations for, and then carry out a grand escape! All with the strangeness of dealing with anthropomorphic rats rather than human prisoners.

The last part of the campaign sends the Player Characters scurrying below the Dregs, into dark tunnels and into regions where the delvers fear to tread. Here, the Player Characters will discover that the Scorians are not the only anthropomorphic species to have been affected by the alchemical runoff from Topside—and that species has an even worse reputation for being dirty vermin! One minor scene here feels like a cross between Beetlejuice and Dune, set on a great alchemical salt flat, but ultimately the Player Characters will discover the source of the mutations in the subterranean world, a secret that will upend the society of Dregstone, and a very knowing nod to The Fellowship of the Ring. Surprisingly, the interlude ending this discovery does actually have some gameable content, all in readiness with the final showdown with Rongeur Halftail. This is a big battle which brings the campaign to a conclusion, although there are a few options given to help the Game Master play various concluding scenes to the campaign.

Physically, SHIVER Gothic: Disciples of Dregstone is presented in a rich array of colours and with plenty of cartoonishly rattish artwork. The campaign does need an edit here and there, and one or two more maps, such as of Dregstone would have been useful too.

SHIVER Gothic: Disciples of Dregstone is a better campaign than sourcebook. In fact, as a sourcebook for the Dregs, it presents enough information for the Game Master to run the campaign, but not really quite enough to develop her own content beyond that and in mostly confining it to the interludes, not in a fashion that makes it easy to use. That said, as a campaign, SHIVER Gothic: Disciples of Dregstone is fun, especially if you have a penchant for puns—especially rattish puns—and want a grand cinematic delve into an anthropomorphic world of adventure and mystery for your SHIVER Gothic: Secrets of Spireholm campaign.

Universal Hammer Horror

The city of Spireholm stands at the southern tip of Karanthia, a country on the coast of the Balkans known as Europe’s Fang. Its isolation and its surrounding savage landscape has made it a feared target for any would-be conqueror, but that is not the only reason. In an age of modernity, industrialisation, and enlightenment, Spireholm and Karanthia are the last refuge of monsters and horrors, cast out from the rest of the continent. In Spireholm and Karanthia, myth and legend are real, and monsters walk the streets, let alone stalk the night, some welcome, others not. Constructs and creations given form and life. Shapeshifters and werewolves and the invisible. The Mad Genius. Vampires and warriors cursed with immortality. The Lucky fools who have made Faustian pacts and deals with dark patrons. The undead and those who would deal with the undead. The Monster Hunter as well as the biologist more concerned with cataloguing such creatures rather than killing them. Yet there are those in the city who do look to the outside world and trade has begun to flow readily through Spireholm’s harbour as the city’s four great families vie for power, influence, and money, the watch and the militia keep the temporal peace, the Divine Order the ecumenical and moral peace, and the Ragged Lords run crime and protect the poor in the city’s worst districts. All of which takes place behind Mayor Blumquist, who despite his wheedling and grovelling, keeps all of the city’s factions happy. As social and economic change comes to Spireholm, there is another faction, one that dates all the way back to the city’s foundation and has remained hidden since, which plots to reclaim what once belonged to it. If this faction succeeds, it will turn the clock back centuries and unleash monsters the likes of which not even the good folk of Spireholm have seen on their streets!

This is the set-up for SHIVER Gothic: Secrets of Spireholm, a supplement for Shiver – Role-playing Tales in the Strange & the Unknown. Published by Parable Games, Shiver is a generic horror roleplaying game, designed to do a variety of subgenres, from modern slasher and cosmic horror to zombie outbreaks and Hammer Horror melodramas, using easy to build Player Characters archetypes and the Doom Clock as a device to ratchet up tension and push the story to a horrifying climax combined with its own dice mechanics. It is great for one-shots, especially ones inspired by horror films. If that seems limiting, SHIVER Gothic: Secrets of Spireholm shows how Shiver can do more—a lot more. SHIVER Gothic: Secrets of Spireholm is a guide to the Gothic for Shiver, highlighting the subgenre’s sense of isolation, decaying old order versus the new, hidden secrets, and transgressive urges. SHIVER Gothic: Secrets of Spireholm is a guide to roleplaying the monsters of the Gothic subgenre. SHIVER Gothic: Secrets of Spireholm is a guide to the city of Spireholm. SHIVER Gothic: Secrets of Spireholm is a complete campaign within the city of Spireholm. SHIVER Gothic: Secrets of Spireholm introduces a new mechanic that tracks Doom, not in hours, but days. Thus, SHIVER Gothic: Secrets of Spireholm provides an array of new Player Character archetypes, city where they are accepted—for the most part, and a complete ten-part campaign for them to explore the city, its politics and its secrets.

To be fair, SHIVER Gothic: Secrets of Spireholm does not dwell on the nature of the Gothic for very long and nor does it provide an extensive guide to the city, but it is sufficient in both cases. Arguably then, its main focus is on playing as monsters and the campaign. The idea behind playing as monsters is that it grants the Player Characters access to supernatural powers that they will in turn use to fight the supernatural, but at the same time, they must constantly struggle with the light and the dark within themselves as well as their inner demons, and they must always be societal outcasts. What makes them monsters makes them untrustworthy. This will come into play through role playing rather than a given mechanic. If there is a disappointing aspect to SHIVER Gothic: Secrets of Spireholm, it is this lack of mechanical means of handling the monstrous side to roleplaying these monsters. Their inclusion would have at least supported the players’ portrayal of their characters and their characters’ darker side.

SHIVER Gothic: Secrets of Spireholm provides seven Archetypes. These are Construct, the Changed, the Mad Genius, the Immortal, the Lucky Devil, the Oddly Undead, and the Slayer. For example, the Construct has the Paths of Flesh, Machine, and Stone; the Mad Genius, the Paths of the Creator and the Alchemist; and the Immortal, the Paths of the Endless and the Vampyr. Each Archetype also has access to ten abilities, from Tier One to Tier Ten. Some of these are common to each of the Paths within an Archetype, but others are specific to a Path. Then there are over twenty Backgrounds particular to the subgenre, including Sentient Machine, Coach Driver, Regal Beast, Taxidermist, Gourmet, and more. Each provides an Ability and a Flaw. For example, the ‘Person in the Portrait’ has the Ability of Cumulative Inheritance, which provides the Player Character with plenty of wealth and an opulent home that serves as a Sanctuary to hide his secret, whilst the Flaw is ‘The Aging Artifact’, which the Player Character cannot look at, lest he be Slowed, lose Hit Points, and become Cursed. He can recover, but if ‘The Aging Artifact’ is destroyed, the Player Character dies.

With seven Archetypes, fourteen Paths, and twenty-one Backgrounds, SHIVER Gothic: Secrets of Spireholm provides the players with a wide array of build options and choices enabling them to create some classic monster types. Most of these are reinforced by the Archetypes and Paths, with the Backgrounds being used to emphasise or tweak the combination of Archetype and Path. For example, the Endless Path from the Immortal Archetype would work with the ‘Person in the Portrait’, ‘The Holy Knight’, or ‘The Regal Beast’. The end result is that the players can create characters in the style of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Penny Dreadful, or Hellboy.

The second part of SHIVER Gothic: Secrets of Spireholm is dedicated to the city and its associated campaign. It details the city itself, its history, factions, and districts in broad detail, dedicating roughly a page to each of its twelve districts. It does describe the world beyond the walls of Spireholm, if only a little, revealing that it is an alternative nineteenth century not too dissimilar to the Victorian era. It suggests ways of getting the Player Characters together, whether as members of the city watch or local militia, members or servants to the Four Families, monster hunters, or even ambassadors from abroad! Of course, the Director can just as easily mix and match these too to add further variety to the backgrounds of each of the Player Characters. SHIVER Gothic: Secrets of Spireholm also introduces the Doom Calendar. In Shiver, the Doom Clock starts at eleven o’clock at night and counts up minute by minute to Midnight and the Player Characters’ inevitable Doooommm(!), with events triggered at ‘Quarter Past’, ‘Half Past’, ‘Quarter To’, and ‘Midnight’. The Doom Calendar instead tracks this over a month rather than an hour. Each chapter in the campaign in SHIVER Gothic: Secrets of Spireholm has its Doom Calendar and as the days pass, the events—or ‘Doom Tolls’—on certain days will be triggered. This though, is on a day-to-day basis, but if in the course of a chapter, the Player Characters trigger the Midnight Doom Event on the Doom Clock, two days pass instead of one, hurrying the Doom Calendar towards the next ‘Doom Toll’. A Doom Calendar can be turned back, though this is challenging and done by performing certain deeds within the story. There are notes too for the Director to create her own Doom Calendar.

Almost three-quarters of SHIVER Gothic: Secrets of Spireholm is dedicated to a ten-part campaign. Each of the ten chapters is bookended by ‘What the Director Knows’ at the beginning and at the finish, ‘Exploring the Wider Mystery’ which suggests how the Director might expand the campaign and ‘Doom Events’ which are triggered on the Doom Chapter for the chapter. Between the start and the end is the meat of the scenario, which varies from one chapter to the next, but between the chapters are a series of interludes. Initially, they cover setting up a sanctuary for the Player Characters and dealing with an NPC who can prove to be a useful ally to the Player Characters if they remain on his good side. Later, they explore the backgrounds and details of the numerous factions within the threat facing Spireholm that the Player Characters will fight and investigate.

The opening two chapters of the campaign involve the city’s major families. First, the aristocratic and influential Pontwhistles, whose fortunes are on the decline, and then the extremely wealthy and surprisingly technocratic Silvarri. In ‘A Mournful Howl’, the heir to the Pontwhistle is found dead. Investigating with the help of the city’s leading information broker, the trail leads into an abandoned library and a nest of ghouls before turning back to where it all started. The Player Characters may cheated at its end, but at least learn there are dangerous foes abroad in the city. The head of the Silvarri family, a noted inventor, engages the Player Characters to test the security of ‘The Clockwork Vault’ by breaking into the clockwork maze. This presents the Player Characters with a series of technical puzzles and traps to overcome, but once in the vault gives them access, at least temporarily, to a number of artefacts and devices. In fact, the campaign is littered with these, ready to be found and used by the Player Characters, some of the most fun being suitable for a masked ball that they will attend later in the campaign. However, none of those in the Clockwork Vault can be removed unless the Player Characters are very careful. One is integral to the plot and reveals the first hints as to the nature of the threat the city faces.

The various factions threatening the city make their first moves in ‘On Strange Tides’ when rumours of disappearances and strangers draw the Player Characters to the city’s docks. Investigating one of the ships leads to a confrontation with vampires, but there are too many and the Player Characters are forced to escape from the docks in what should be an exciting carriage chase. A local detective from the Watch guides the Player Characters into the Stacks, the behest of one of the Ragged Lords, the city’s poorest district, which has been beset by a rash of murders and disappearances. Investigating again sends them to the docks, but not the official docks. These are the Smuggler’s Dock and beyond lies the Flooded District where the Player Characters will find themselves chased by pirates, before descending upon a nest, not of vampires or spiders, but spider vampires! This is a big creepy battle with another vampiric faction. It is followed by ‘The House on the Harrowed Hill’ when the Ragged Lords invite the Player Characters to a symposium to reward them and to discuss further action, but when another guest, Archbishop Orcini of the Divine Order, is found dead, they are perfectly placed to investigate. This is the most traditional of the chapters to date, but includes advice on the order of events and how to link the clues together.

The city begins to react in ‘Quarantine’. The Divine Order, in response to the monsters kept at Madame Mordeaux’s Arena being released to run wild in the Stacks, places the city in lockdown. This takes place whilst the Player Characters are solving the murder the house on Harrowed Hill, which of course, sits atop the Stacks. Somehow the Player Characters must get across the district and escape back into the city. Before them lies a district in which monsters are running amok and cultists dedicated to the vampires are moving openly on the streets. The Player Characters may be able to rest and resupply at their sanctuary, but ultimately, they are going to have to fight their way out. More paranoia is sewn in ‘The Reaper’s Letters’ as some of the city’s most powerful figures receive notes and promptly die afterwards. At the bequest of the wheedling Mayor Blumquist, the Player Characters investigate, a process made all the more difficult by the Divine Order’s patrols. Much of the action takes place in one of Spireholm’s few green spaces, first in the woods, then in exotic gardens and wetlands, before climaxing in a poison garden. The different environment is a radical change from the campaign to date, enabling the authors to present the Player Characters with a new range of challenges.

By the end of ‘The Masquerade Falls’, the Player Characters should have learned that every reward comes with two sides, though at least they get to dress up and go to the ball. The highlight is an auction for the benefit of the city’s poor, and the highlight of the auction is another artefact the vampires want. So, the Player Characters are not just going to the ball, they are going to a heist. This chapter switches the action so that the Player Characters are more active than reactive, but whether they succeed or fail, the vampires now make their move to remove what they regard as the real threat to their plans—the Divine Order. They strike in ‘The Divine District’, turning the Divine Order’s sacrament upon itself and thus making part of it a threat rather than an obstacle. Defeating the suborned members of the Divine Order potentially gives the Player Characters access to items that will help them in the final confrontation in ‘The Sunken Spire’. The campaign comes to a climax as the Player Characters descend below, discovering Spireholm’s darkest secrets and hopefully putting an end to the plans that the vampires have for the city.

In addition, SHIVER Gothic: Secrets of Spireholm includes the bonus Spireholm tale, ‘It Lives!’, which can be run early in the campaign. It does not actually relate to the campaign directly, but the scenario’s major NPC is the author of some of the background content given in the interludes. Playing this scenario would introduce her to the Player Characters and thus possibly give them access to this information.

SHIVER Gothic: Secrets of Spireholm is a big pulpy campaign built on a trough of archetypes. It is a horror campaign with vampires, so there are vampires on a ship, there is a masked ball, there is subversion of the blood, there is a murder mystery, there is a poison garden. The setting of Spireholm is a weird clash of archetypes too, that of Transylvania meets the fog-bound streets of London. On paper, it should not work, it is too much. Yet given that the starting point for the Player Characters is archetypal monsters and associated characters—Dorian Gray, Dracula, Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde, the Invisible Man, the Werewolf, Allan Quartermain—the players will already have accepted the premise for both setting and campaign by the time they have created their characters. However, the campaign is rough around the edges and as much as the players and their characters are expected to accept all of its archetypal elements, they should also expect some clichés when it comes to the storytelling. It is literally the nature of the beast.

Physically, SHIVER Gothic: Secrets of Spireholm is a decent looking book. The illustrations feel very much like the style of Mike Mignola and Hellboy, much like the core rulebook, so have a comic book look. The book does look busy in places with some pages feeling cluttered with various stats and details which need to be highlighted and placed in boxes of their own. Lastly, the book does need an edit as there is missing text and other errors in places.

SHIVER Gothic: Secrets of Spireholm showcases how Shiver – Role-playing Tales in the Strange & the Unknown can do more than one-shots, that with the introduction of the Doom Calendar, it can do longer stories and campaigns. Which is very welcome. Above all though, SHIVER Gothic: Secrets of Spireholm is a chance to play out a grand pulpy campaign of Gothic action in a horrifying alternate nineteenth century. It lets the players create characters like those of the Universal Monsters—and others, and then roleplay them in the style of Hammer Horror. Which is a delicious combination.

A Hammer Horror Horror Quick-Start

The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beyond the Grave! is a quick-start for They Came From Beyond the Grave!, the roleplaying game of the shock, the terror, the eroticism, and the  humor of 1970s horror films. It is inspired by the output of Hammer Film Productions, Amicus Productions, and Roger Corman—so The Curse of Frankenstein and Captain Kronos – Vampire Hunter, The City of the Dead and Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors, and House of Usher and The Raven, and more... Its tales are not just from the 1970s, but also the nineteenth century, and they are performed by actors with rich, fruity voices ready to project all the way to the back of the auditorium, who are all going to give their all, despite wishing that they were performing on the stage, which is the proper venue for men of their talents and stature. Published by Onyx Path Publishing, The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beyond the Grave! provides everything necessary for a gaming group to give the roleplaying game a try and perhaps even use it as the starter scenario to a horror campaign set in the miserable, grim and grimy dark ages of the England in the seventies and the gaslight reaches of the Victorian era. This includes a basic explanation of the rules, a nine-scene scenario—the ‘The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory!’ of the title, and five pre-generated Player Characters or protagonists, plus Trademarks for all of the Player Characters, Quip Cards, and Cinematic Cards.

The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beyond the Grave! employs the Storypath system. A distillation of the earlier Storyteller system, it is simpler and streamlined, designed for slightly cinematic, effect driven play. The core mechanic uses dice pools of ten-sided dice, typically formed from the combination of a skill and an attribute, for example Intellect and Science to analyse a problem, Aim and Dexterity to fire a gun, and Empathy and Manipulation to unobtrusively get someone to do what a character wants. These skill and attribute combinations are designed to be flexible, with a character’s preferred method being described as a character’s Favoured Approach. So a character whose Favoured Approach is Force, would use Close Combat and Might in a melee fight; if Finesse, Close Combat and Dexterity; and if Resilience, then Close Combat and Stamina.

The aim when rolling, is to score Successes, a Success being a result of eight or more. Rolls of ten count as two in They Came From Beyond the Grave!, rather than the capacity for the player to roll again for further Successes. Typically, a player only needs to roll one Success for a character to succeed at a task, though it can be as many as three, and ideally, he will want to roll more. Not only because Successes can be used to buy off Complications—ranging between one and five—but also because they can be used to buy Stunts which will impose Complications for others, create an Enhancement for another action, or one that makes it difficult to act against a character. Stunts cost at least one Success and each of the five pre-generated protagonists in The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beyond the Grave!  possesses three favoured Stunts. These include ‘Uncover the Truth’, ‘Spot Weakness’, ‘Oracular Gaze’, and more. However, where combat Stunts like ‘Increase Damage’, ‘Knockdown/Trip’, and ‘Pin Down’ are explained, there appears to be no explanation for the three favoured Stunts for each of the Protagonists.

Under the Storypath system, and thus in They Came From Beyond the Grave!, failure is never complete. Either a player can spend a Rewrite to reroll; accept the failure, accept its consequences and a Consolation; or if the roll was a failure and a one was rolled on the die, suffer the consequences of a Botch and earn two Rewrites for the Writer’s Pool.

Both ‘The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory!’ and They Came From Beyond the Grave! use a number of mechanics which help enforce the genre. Unlike Party Beach Creature Feature! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beneath the Sea!, the quick-start for They Came From Beneath the Sea!, Protagonists do not have access to Trademarks, each tied to a particular skill, which grant the player two extra dice on a related roll per Trademark, but when activated and there are some Successes left over from the completed task, enable the player to gain Directorial Control of the film. There is scope for them in They Came From Beyond the Grave! as there is space for them on the character sheet, but they do not appear in The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beyond the Grave!.

A Protagonist does have Quips, like ‘I always believed human sacrifice died out.’ or ‘There's your proof — the proof of your own eyes.’ When used, they require everyone around the table to vote whether or not their use is appropriate, but if a Quip is successful, it earns a player another die to a roll or a reroll if a complex action. Rewrites are another genre-enforcing mechanic and are drawn from the Writers’ Pool, which is a group resource. They require all players to agree to their use, but with that agreement, a Rewrite can be used to make rerolls or add dice to a roll, as well as to active Cinematic Powers. Several of these are listed, including ‘I’m a Serious Actor’ which grants a bonus to the Protagonist’s Social Attributes after he uses his serious acting chops to elevate the film; ‘Same Set, Different Movie’ in which the Protagonist—or the actor playing him recognises the set of the film from another and uses it to his advantage; and ‘Waxing Poe-etical’ which has the player narrating the actions of his protagonist in rhyme and everyone joining in to gain an Enhancement for all associated rolls. Several Rewrites are included in The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beyond the Grave!, but only five are used in play.

The rules in The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beyond the Grave! are not quite as well explained as they could be. Beyond the basic rules, which are clear enough, the rules for combat are explained in the scenes where they might happen in the scenario and there is no explanation of the Stunts for the Protagonists. That aside, the rules are all easy to use in play. They are specifically designed to encourage and support cinematic play, even badly cinematic play, and whilst they are genre-enforcing, there are quite a few of them. So as much as the players need to lean into the genre and their Protagonists, they also need to lean into the genre-enforcing mechanics—the Rewrites, the Cinematic Powers, and more—to get their full effect. This is not an impediment to play as such, but more of a requirement than players might expect of the roleplaying game.

A Protagonist in Both ‘The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory!’ and They Came From Beyond the Grave! has nine Attributes—Intellect, Cunning, Resolving, Might, Dexterity, Stamina, Presence, Manipulation, and Composure; a range a skills, Quips, and Favoured Stunts. A Protagonist also has a Path each for his Archetype, Origin, and Ambition, but these do not play a role in the jump-start, whilst of his three Aspirations, or goals, only the two short term Aspirations really count in The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beyond the Grave!.

The five Protagonists included in The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beyond the Grave! consist of an elderly and authorative parapsychology professor, a brilliant, but disillusioned scientist, an ex-cop turned skeptical researcher, an eccentric medium, and a would-be hero dupe. Each is presented in full colour over two pages with the character sheet on one and an illustration and background on the other. The character sheets are easy to read and the background easy to pick up.

The scenario, ‘The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory!’, on two stormy separate, but connected, nights. The Protagonists are members of a parapsychology research team from the University of Portsmouth (technically Portsmouth Polytechnic at the time of the scenario) who are visiting Abbeyham Priory, a gothic pile with a long reputation for being haunted and being associated with witch hunts. Once the Protagonists get past the small crowd of protestors objecting to the idea of ghost hunters visiting a place of God and gain entry to the abbey, they find the nuns frosty and unwelcoming. The building is shabby, dusty, and cobweb strewn, the floors creak and there is nowhere to escape the draughts. The nuns seem to watch their every move, and despite what the Protagonists’ ghost hunting equipment fails to detect, there seems to be signs of ghosts everywhere. Well, if not ghosts, then something strange is definitely going on.

The Protagonists are members of a parapsychology research team from the University of Portsmouth (technically Portsmouth Polytechnic at the time of the scenario) who are visiting Abbeyham Priory, a gothic pile with a long reputation for being haunted and being associated with witch hunts. Once the Protagonists get past the small crowd of protestors objecting to the idea of ghost hunters visiting a place of God and gain entry to the abbey, they find the nuns frosty and unwelcoming. The building is shabby, dusty, and cobweb strewn, the floors creak and there is nowhere to escape the draughts. The nuns seem to watch their every move, and despite what the Protagonists’ ghost hunting equipment fails to detect, there seems to be signs of ghosts everywhere. Well, if not ghosts, then something strange is going on!

‘The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory!’ is designed to be played in four hours—and so is suitable to be run as a convention scenario—and is designed as a fairly linear countdown to a big finale. Which is entirely fitting for the genre. It contains a detailed description of the abbey, (though there is no map), which the Protagonists have plenty of opportunity to explore and are encouraged to do so to gain clues as to what is exactly going on at the abbey. Some of the clues come from a series of flashback scenes which foreshadow the events of the present in ‘The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory!’. These are set in the nineteenth century and involve visitors to Abbeyham Priory very similar to the Protagonists and who are in fact roleplayed by the players as variations upon their Protagonists! As the scenario counts down, its scenes cut back and forth between the present and the past, one set of Protagonists desperately fighting to withstand their inevitable doom, the other set  desperately fighting to withstand their potentially inevitable doom.

Physically, The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beyond the Grave! is a slim softback, done in full colour throughout. The artwork is excellent and gloriously depicts the campy, over the top horror of its genre. Therea re two main issues with the quick-start. One is that the rules explanation is underwritten and there are elements, such as the explanations of the Trademark Stunts missing. The other is the structure of the scenario, which writes some of the core rules for the roleplaying game into scenes when they should really have been placed together with the explanation of the basic rules. Consequently, The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beyond the Grave! does need a thorough read through as part of preparation, both to grasp the overall rules as well as the structure of the scenario.

It should be noted that ‘The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory!’ is a very British scenario. Consequently, it includes an explanation of what ‘jumble’ and a ‘jumble sale’ are and the Protagonists get a scene in an Austin Allegro. Which is either the result of brilliant research or the author getting revenge for childhood nightmares spent in the back seat of one on very long family holidays. Either way, for players of a certain age, it will bring back terrifying flashbacks of their own...

Although it needs a little more preparation than perhaps is necessary to ready the players for the rules, The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beyond the Grave! has everything the Director and her players need for one night’s session of a dark and stormy night, creepy nuns and salacious nuns, jump scares, creaks and groans from cheap sets, and over over acting. Anyone looking for down at heel frights and the richest, fruitiest of hammy performances as the clock ticks down to horror should prepare for a night at The Haunting of Abbeyham Priory! A Jumpstart for They Came From Beyond the Grave!