A Copernican Catastrophe

It is the year 1580 and one of the greatest mathematicians, astronomers, and physicians of the age has been dead these past thirty-seven years. Nicolaus Copernicus is most famous for formulating a model of the universe that placed the Sun rather than Earth at its centre. So, the question is, why has someone sent Doctor John Dee, court astronomer to Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, Copernicus’ coffin? And why does it contain a skeleton with a silver dagger plunged into its chest plate with a note attached which reads, “Do you Believe now?” Doctor Dee knows that the skeleton is not that of Copernicus, since he had more teeth than the skeleton, but cannot fathom why someone should send both it and the coffin to him. Nevertheless, he is definitely intrigued by the delivery and strongly suspects that this is a trap. Which is why he sends agents to the village of Frombork in Poland to investigate, since they are, after all, condemned men. Condemned men whose heresy—as minor as it was—is enough for them to have been executed long ago were it not for Sir Francis Walsingham giving them a stay of execution whilst they investigate occult threats to both Queen and kingdom, are all that stand between an even greater heresy and the reordering of the cosmos that would undo all of Copernicus’ theories! This is the situation that faces the Agents in Only A Fool, a scenario for Just Crunch Games’ The Dee Sanction, the roleplaying game of ‘Covert Enochian Intelligence’ in which the Player Characters—or Agents of Dee—are drawn into adventures in magick and politics across supernatural Tudor Europe.

Only A Fool is not your average scenario for The Dee Sanction. To begin with it is the winner of a scenario-writing competition on The Raspy Raven Discord which hosts a lot of online games, and then it is not set in Merry Olde England, but in Poland. This requires that the Player Characters speak Polish and Doctor Dee employs them because they can. This is not usual for the Player Characters in The Dee Sanction, so Only a Fool is better suited to play as a one-shot or convention scenario.

Armed with details of Copernicus’ life and studies, the Player Characters travel to the village outside of the Archcathedral of Frombork and from there investigate and follow the clues that lead them into the cathedral, Copernicus Tower where Nicolaus Copernicus conducted his astronomical research, and beyond the village to where his mistress, Anna Schilling, still lives. The investigation is relatively short and not overly complex, essentially a mini-sandbox with a handful of locations. However, the Player Characters will quickly realise that they are being watched and that despite the rationality of Copernicus’ thesis, there are men and women in the village and the Archcathedral of Frombork who very much still hold to the heliocentrism of the past several thousand years. Their belief is ardent and raises the questions, what else do they believe in and what powers does that belief grant them? In fact, belief and non-belief lies at the heart of the scenario and the Player Characters will be constantly asked if they are believers or non-believers. Both have advantages and disadvantages. Believers will see the acts of heresy that are carried out during the scenario, but will also be suspectable to them as well, whilst Non-Believers will not be affected by them because they cannot see them. Further, some NPCs will only readily talk to Believers and talking to some of those NPCs is vital to the plot.

Ultimately, the scenario will climax at a performance of the malign Dischordant Harmoney at a Grand Alignment Eclipse in which Belief and Non-Belief are the weapons that the enemy and the Player Characters must wield against each other. The Dischordant Harmoney is performed on the organ in the Archcathedral of Frombork, so the climax has an over the top Gothic feel. Given that Only a Fool is best used as a convention or one-shot scenario, it is a pity that a set of pre-generated could not have been included with the scenario.

Physically, Only A Fool is tightly laid out over three pages. It is lightly illustrated and does need an edit. The single map is slightly too small to be fully effective and would have benefited from being on a whole page rather than half a page. Nevertheless, everything is decently organised and easy to use straight from the page.

Only a Fool is pulpy Gothic horror scenario that really benefits from its very different setting to that usually seen in scenarios for The Dee Sanction and from the players and their characters having to explore the consequences of belief and non-belief. It is short, direct, and easy to prepare, so is a solid convention or one-shot scenario.

Victory & Venom

Achtung! Cthulhu is the roleplaying game of fast-paced pulp action and Mythos magic published by Modiphius Entertainment. It is pitches the Allied Agents of the Britain’s Section M, the United States’ Majestic, and the brave Resistance into a Secret War against those Nazi Agents and organisations which would command and entreat with the occult and forces beyond the understanding of mankind. They are willing to risk their lives and their sanity against malicious Nazi villains and the unfathomable gods and monsters of the Mythos themselves, each striving for supremacy in mankind’s darkest yet finest hour! Yet even the darkest of drives to take advantage of the Mythos is riven by differing ideologies and approaches pandering to Hitler’s whims. The Black Sun consists of Nazi warrior-sorcerers supreme who use foul magic and summoned creatures from nameless dimensions to dominate the battlefields of men, whilst Nachtwölfe, the Night Wolves, utilise technology, biological enhancements, and wunderwaffen (wonder weapons) to win the war for Germany. Ultimately, both utilise and fall under the malign influence of the Mythos, the forces of which have their own unknowable designs…

Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: The Serpent & The Sands is the eighth release for Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20, and the third campaign following on from Achtung! Cthulhu: Shadows of Atlantis and Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Forest of Fear. There are two notable factors about the campaign and the supplement. First is that it is the second of the ‘Early War’ campaigns, beginning in May, 1941 at the same time as the Siege of Tobruk. What this means is that it can be run after the events of Achtung! Cthulhu: Shadows of Atlantis with relatively low experienced Player Characters, despite it actually being released after Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Forest of Fear, which is set in late 1944. The second is that it is not just a campaign, but also a sourcebook for Achtung! Cthulhu, providing a guide to the allies and enemies participating in the Secret War across North Africa, their aims, equipment, NPCs, threats, and more, along with numerous Player Character options and a host of Adventure seeds that the Game Master can all use to develop her own scenarios and missions, as well as run the other scenarios that Modiphius Entertainment has published that are set in this theatre of war. This means that Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: The Serpent & The Sands is effectively two books in one. The book actually has two tables of content—one for the sourcebook half and one for the campaign—and even the edges of the pages are coloured differently to distinguish the two!

Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: The Serpent & The Sands begins with an overview of Egypt and Libya and its major settlements and locations, including those associated with the Mythos. The most notable of these is Irem, the City of Pillars, here shifted from its Arabian desert location as described in H.P. Lovecraft’s The Nameless City which describes it as having been built by a sapient reptile species. Given the latter, this makes sense, since the major Mythos threat in North Africa in Achtung! Cthulhu is not the Deep Ones or the Mi-Go or the Nazi outré agencies, Nachtwölfe and Black Sun, but the Ophidians or Serpent People. The activities of all of these factions in Achtung! Cthulhu in North Africa are also described as well as those of Section M and Majestic. The main aim of Section M is to thwart the efforts of Black Sun to scour the region for as many artefacts and tomes as it can lay its hands on and prevent Nachtwölfe from finding further deposits of Blauer Kristall that fuel its advanced weaponry. The American Majestic is not as busy in the region, at least not until after the success of Operation Torch in 1942 and whilst it shares some of the same aims as Section, is not as subtle about it, causing some friction. This does play a little into the stereotyping of Americans in the period, but that does not feel out of place in the Pulp fiction of Achtung! Cthulhu. Alongside the details of Nachtwölfe operations is a description of Adlerhorst, its own ‘Eagle’s Nest’, located in a huge cave complex hidden deep in the Tunisian desert.

The Deep Ones are a major faction in Achtung! Cthulhu, but given the environment, not in Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: The Serpent & The Sands. They are relegated to minor faction, and joined by the bloodthirsty Children of Typhon dedicated to Yig and thus rivals to the Serpent’s Tooth; a handful of Free French occultists of the Géo Gras, who loathe Black Sun in particular for looting its lore; the Mi-Go, who may occasionally ally with Nachtwölfe, but have their own alien agenda; and the Eye of Ur, an Italian association of occultists dedicated to transcending the limits of the human form, whose origins dates back to Ancient Rome and whose leaders prefer to play the long game, are obsessed with the Great Library of Alexandria, and have longstanding links to the Black Pharoah, Nyarlathotep himself. They tend to have a Roman-theme, but modernised. They do not play a role in the campaign, but do appear in some of the adventure seeds, plus, of course, their presence makes sense since Italy has colonial possessions in North Africa and is one of the Axis powers. The Eye of Ur would likely play a role in any scenario or campaign involving Italian forces or figure later in the war once the Allies have invaded Italy. Player Characters may find allies in the form of a handful of Free French occultists of the Géo Gras and the more familiar Order of the Alnim, whose members loathe the Ophidians.

For the Game Master, there are stats for numerous Allied, Axis, and occult heroes and villains. Australian infantry, New Zealand Desert Patrol Soldier, an Alnim warrior, and German Afrika Korps troops and Italian forces. The BLACK SUN Krokodilmeister has an Augmented Assault Crocodile bound to him (instead of the traditional hound) and wears a face mask with an extended and toothed maw and a trench coat of cured crocodile skin, whilst the Nachtwölfe ‘Skorpian’ Class Sniper wears a ‘Skorpian’-class environment suit to survive long periods in the desert on deep observation missions whilst armed with an MK89 ‘Auslöscher’ Sniper Rifle. It feels like something out of Dune rather than Achtung! Cthulhu. There are stats too, for members of the Eye of Ur and Serpent’s Tooth cultists.

Of course, particular attention is paid to the Ophidians, the serpentine humanoid species that once dominated the planet millions of years ago in the Pliocene Era and have long been in hibernation, whilst those who are awake consider Humanity to be nothing more than mammalian vermin. This is because the Ophidians are a major Mythos faction in the region and the primary threat in the campaign. Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: The Serpent & The Sands details their history, their long term and their current aims, and the effects of their toxins as well as what is known or conjectured about them. The latter is done via the notes, letters, and histories of the late Professor George Linden, found poisoned in his office following a fire that destroyed much of his research. It adds a human touch to the reptilian slant that follows in the descriptions of the various Ophidian villains and NPCs. Along with their bestiary—including several snake types, equipment, spells, and rituals, this aspect of the supplement significantly expands the threat of the Ophidians given in the Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Gamemaster’s Guide, providing the Game Master with options in how they can be used both in North Africa and elsewhere in the world where they might be found. The options are expanded because the Ophidians are divided between two different factions, the Atavistic and the Evolved, the former believing that their species should not change, whilst the latter believe that they should adapt to the changing nature of their world. A table of ‘Evolved Powers’ allows the Game Master to customise her Evolved Ophidian threats. Amongst the creatures listed which the Ophidians use is the Gryphon, and pleasingly, the supplement allows for the possibility that a Player Character might actually want one as a mount of his own!

Amongst the descriptions of the various items of equipment and vehicles for all of the factions, there are rules for mines and how to detect them. There are notable arms and armour such as the Dämon Luger, which feels very much like organic gun from the film, Existenz, but looks like a Luger and shoots plasma rather than teeth, and the Aegida Tactical Shield, an energy shield which looks like a scutum when activated, so used as protection device by the Eye of Ur. Lastly, Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: The Serpent & The Sands adds Robowaffe, one of them a remote-controlled walking tank (so not quite a mecha) and the other, essentially a drone.

In terms of Player Character options, the supplement provides six new archetypes—the Adventurer, Diplomat, Gambler, Guide, Smuggler, and Spy. New Backgrounds include Alnim Mystic and Warrior, Archaeologist, Desert Rat, French Foreign Legionary, Free French Fighter, Greek Sacred Band member, LRDG Officer and Soldier, and Popski’s Private Army Privateer, plus Characteristics such as ‘Blood of Yig’, ‘Called to Mystery’, and ‘Rugged’, and Talents like ‘Evil Eye’, ‘Well-Informed’, ‘Eidetic Memory’, ‘Spray and Pray’, ‘Battlefield Sawbones’, and ‘Hunker Down’. These are a mix of those suited to North Africa, but many can be combined with the options from the Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Player’s Guide and other sourcebooks. They also enable players to create the classic archetypes of the pulp genre, but also be more inventive.

Being a book of two distinct halves means that Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: The Serpent & The Sands warrants three conclusions. One for each half and then the book as a whole. There can be no doubt that the supplement half of Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: The Serpent & The Sands provides a lot for the Game Master to use in her own scenarios and campaign. There are plenty of adventure ideas too and a good overview of the setting. However, the map of the region is underwhelming and does not mark all of the locations described. Whilst there are rules for mines and minesweeping, there are no rules for desert travel or survival—at least not in the supplement half of the book. They are instead saved for a whole chapter of ‘The Serpent & The Sands’ campaign. There is no denying that they are the focus of that chapter, but arguably they should have been in the supplement half with the rest of the rules. And perhaps if Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: The Serpent & The Sands had actually been divided into two books, they would have been. If that was the case, the fifth chapter of the campaign would have been different, or at least had a different focus, whilst without the campaign half, the supplement could have included a scenario or two that explored the activities of other factions—the Eye of Ur in particular, in a bit more detail as well as one for the Ophidians that could have been added to the campaign.

The campaign in Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: The Serpent & The Sands consists of ten-parts and will take the Player Characters west from Cairo and Alexandria to Tobruk and back, as well deep into the deserts and beyond. It is fast-paced, some of the chapters being playable in a single session, and it does have a focused narrative, the Player Characters being directed and driven to attempt and complete a series of missions. So, there is not a wide variety of options in terms of what the Player Characters can do and where they can go in the grand scheme of things. This is the nature of what is effectively a military horror campaign. The Player Characters are under orders. The military nature of the setting means that mass combat occurs several times throughout the campaign and that in combination with the number of NPCs and combatants is where the relative complexity of the campaign lies.

‘The Serpent & The Sands’ campaign begins in classic pulp fashion. The Player Characters meet an old friend, Aisha Aziz, an experienced agent of the Order of the Alnim, in Alexandria and shortly after they meet in a café, she is assassinated. She has time to tell the Player Characters what she came to tell them before she dies, that they should seek the Oasis of the Veiled Moon and a ziggurat beyond, and to do so, should find the Australian, Bruce Taylor, as the time of the snake is high. Going after the assassins leads to a rooftop chase and the revelation that they are Ophidians and worshippers of Yig. As soon as it learns of this, Section M wants the Player Characters to investigate this and find out what Bruce Taylor knows. He is a soldier with the Australian army and unfortunately is stationed behind enemy lines in the besieged city of Tobruk, several days travel west of Alexandria. The Player Characters can get a lift with the Long Range Desert Group and will have the chance to gain some impromptu desert training, before being dropped off and having to get across enemy lines themselves. It turns out that Bruce Taylor is in the guardhouse and facing a firing squad for deserting. He willingly joins up with the Player Characters and his commanding officer is happy to get rid of him. Taylor is a chancer though, so not to be trusted, but the Player Characters have no choice in escorting him back to Cairo, because they need his knowledge.

Taylor will help the Player Characters and he will get them into the Oasis of the Veiled Moon and beyond, but ‘The Serpent & The Sands’ is a Pulp horror campaign and so he will betray the Player Characters. The Game Master should play up his smiling, scoundrelly nature and much like the death of Aisha Aziz, the players should expect it and to some extent accept it as part of the genre. It will follow the discovery of a site of bloody carnage in the ziggurat where the true nature of the foe that threatens the North African theatre comes to light, the release of an Ophidian called Alom Shallar from her tomb. It is at this point that Taylor exits ‘The Serpent & The Sands’, which is a pity because he is one of the few well developed NPCs in the campaign and his absence means that there is no narrative arc for him in the campaign.

Up until this point, the campaign is straightforward and direct. It takes a break in the middle for a long trek through the desert using the supplement’s travel and survival rules, before returning to that style afterwards. Instead of using pre-determined encounters as in previous and subsequent chapters, the Game Master is creating random encounters for the Player Characters to run into. There is nothing wrong with bringing desert travel and survival rules into play, but the way in which it is done in this campaign is problematic. Focusing upon them to the exclusion of all else does not push the plot forward and focusing upon them in one chapter begs several questions. Why were they not used in pervious—and subsequent—chapters involving desert travel? Why were they not included in the supplement half of Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: The Serpent & The Sands rather than the campaign half? Ultimately, the inclusion of the rules to the exclusion of all else does not make a lot of narrative sense here, as the Game Master could simply cut them and the campaign would not be affected.

After their trek in the desert, the Player Characters will get to the Caravanserai of a Thousand Fragrant Sighs. Here they can restock and supply, but also discover signs of Serpent’s Tooth cult activity and allies from the Order of the Alnim. These are vital as the Player Characters penetrate the labyrinth of the Serpent’s Lair where the Serpent’s Tooth are performing a ritual. The Player Characters have the opportunity to both disrupt the ritual and learn from the past in clues left behind by Alexander the Great as well as the location of the Temple of Stars. From this chapter onwards, the Player Characters are chasing Alom Shallar and her Ophidian retinue, attempting to stop her from finding the means and ways to complete her ultimate aim—summon the ancient Ophidian city of Sethopolis and establish herself as an important power in the middle of North Africa. These chapters are longer and more complex than the ones in the first half of the campaign, particular chapters involving puzzles and stealth, ultimately to a final confrontation in the depths of the Ophidian city. This is a tough, big battle as you would expect, but interestingly, along the way, the Player Characters can collect some allies—and not the ones that they expect. This aspect of the campaign highlights how in the Secret War of Achtung! Cthulhu, not every Mythos faction is willing to co-operate with any other and sometimes rivalries will push them to find other allies, even ones that would otherwise be enemies.

The grand sweep of North Africa allows us to draw from a variety of themes of images, especially for World War 2. Egypt has its teeming cities and its ancient history and mysteries, whilst the desert has its arid sands and scouring sandstorms, its excessive heat and lack of water. It evokes images of sweeping tank battles, hidden fields of mines, holding out against overwhelming forces as in the film Sahara, driving out of the desert in a Long Range Desert Group Patrol Vehicle to strike at Axis airfields like The Rat Patrol, Tobruk, or SAS: Rogue Heroes, and making the long trek across the dunes, hot and thirsty, trying to get back to Allied lines for one ice cold beer as in Ice Cold in Alex. Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: The Serpent & The Sands combines these with the Pulp action of secret oases, strange pyramids, untrustworthy natives—in this case, cultists, hidden kingdoms, and Nazi-punching action of Raiders of the Lost Ark! Of course, ‘The Serpent & The Sands’ campaign takes the “Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?” quote from that film and runs with it. Plus, there are one or two nods to the film throughout the campaign, including a rolling ball trap.

‘The Serpent & The Sands’ campaign is a muscular affair, an entertaining mix of pulp action and weird science. It is not a great campaign, but not a bad campaign either, both solidly straightforward and playable. There are missteps, notably the inclusion of a chapter entirely focused upon desert travel and survival when that should have been part of the campaign as a whole. The Pulp nature of the campaign’s plotting also means that the players do need to accept certain story beats such as betrayal and failure to achieve certain objectives in the later part of the campaign and so set up the final confrontation. The point is the campaign is tightly plotted. If the players can accept that, then ‘The Serpent & The Sands’ campaign is short enough that it will not outstay its welcome whilst moving on the overall campaign framework through the early part of the war.

Physically, Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: The Serpent & The Sands is well presented. The artwork is great and everything is well organised. However, it is not as accessible as it could have been, because although there are two tables of content—one for the supplement and one for the campaign—there is no index. It could have done with more artwork, especially for the NPCs to make them better presentable for the players. The campaign could also have done with more maps of certain locations. That said, their inclusion would have eased the running of the campaign rather than being a necessity.

Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: The Serpent & The Sands is literally a book of two halves. Arguably, it could and should have been two books, a supplement and a campaign. That would have given the Game Master the choice, to be able to purchase the sourcebook half of the book and use it to create her own content without having to purchase the campaign. Certainly, making it two books would have avoided some of the issues with the narrative of the campaign and made the supplement more obviously useful. However, it is not two books. Nevertheless, it is still a book of two halves and the supplement half of the book is better and more useful than the campaign side. Of course, it is useful to run the campaign, but its contents can be used beyond the campaign. The campaign itself is solid and entertaining, but no more than that. Together, they make Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: The Serpent & The Sands a good package that has a lot of playable and useful content that expands the Secret War.

The Other OSR: Player’s Survival Guide

It is curious to note that since its original publication in 2018, the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG from Tuesday Knight Games has been reliant upon the single rulebook, the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG – Player’s Survival Guide. First as a ‘Zero Edition’ and then as an actual ‘First Edition’. Curious, because despite the horror roleplaying rules detailing no alien threats and giving no advice for the Warden—as the Game Master is known in Mothership—the has proved to be success, with numerous authors writing and publishing scenarios of their own as well as titles from the publisher. What the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG offered was a stripped down, fast playing Science Fiction system that supported a number of sub-genres. Most obviously Blue Collar Science Fiction with horror and Military Science Science Fiction, the most obvious inspirations being the films Alien and Aliens, as well as Outland, Dark Star, Silent Running, and Event Horizon. Yet the authors of third-party content for the roleplaying game have also offered sandboxes such as Desert Moon of Karth and Cosmic Horror like What We Give To Alien Gods, showing how the simplicity of Mothership could be adjusted to handle other types of Science Fiction. This combination of flexibility and simplicity has made it attractive to the Old School Renaissance segment of the hobby, despite Mothership not actually sharing roots with the family of Old School Renaissance roleplaying games derived from the different editions of Dungeons & Dragons. It is thus, at best, Old School Renaissance adjacent.

With the publication of the Mothership Core Box and the Mothership Deluxe Box following a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2024, the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG has a complete set of rules for what is its first edition. The includes rules the construction and option of spaceships with Shipbreaker’s Toolkit, monstrous threats with Unconfirmed Contact Reports, and a guide for refereeing the roleplaying game in the form of The Warden’s Operations Manual.

—oOo—

The Player’s Survival Guide is the core rulebook for the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG, detailing as it does the the rules for character creation, Stress and Panic, and combat. The book also comes with a content warning giving that Mothership is a horror game and best suited for mature players. Plus, there is advice on being a great player, waning them that their characters can die, that the game is stacked against them, that they will be faced with difficult choices, that they should pay attention, and finally, to accompany the content warning, to create a safe play environment. Of course, it is obvious, but is short and to the point, readying the player for his first experience of play in the Mothership universe.

A Player Character in Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG has four Stats—Strength, Speed, Intellect, and Combat—together indicate how well he might perform under trying conditions. He also has three Saves—Sanity, Fear, and Body—which are his capacity to withstand the effects of different kinds of trauma. There are four Classes, which determine what skills he begins play and how he reacts to Stress and Panic. These are Marines, Androids, Scientists, and Teamsters, essentially modelling the type of characters that appear in Alien and Aliens. When a Marine fails a Panic Check, all nearby Player Character must make a Fear Save; Fear Saves made by Player Characters close to an Android at made at a Disadvantage; when a Scientist fails a Sanity Save, all nearby Player Character gain one Stress; and once per session, a Teamster can make a Panic Check at a Disadvantage. Skills are rated as Trained, Expert, or Master, or ‘+10%’, ‘+15%’, or ‘+20%’ respectively. Penultimately, he has a Loadout, Trinket, and Patch, the Loadout being his equipment, the Trinket something that might give him good fortune, and the Patch is the slogan or saying, which may or may not have some meaning, he has sewn onto his clothes or equipment. Lastly, he has a value for ‘High Score’, which starts at zero and may not actually change since it represents the number of missions or assignments or sessions completed (or survived). It has no mechanical effect, being something that the player and Warden can track. The rules suggest that the average High Score is four, so that and better is something for both player and character to aim for.

NAME: Boyd Tófa

CLASS: Teamster

STATS

Strength 42 Speed 45 Intellect 41 Combat 44

SAVES

Sanity 35 Fear 29 Body 24

Health: 5

Stress: 2

SKILLS

Trained (+10%): Zero-G, Industrial Equipment, Rimwise

Expert (+15%): Piloting

Master (+20%):

Credits: 100cr

Trinket: Pamphlet: Android Overlords

Patch: “Powered By Coffee”

Loadout: Standard Crew Attire (AP 1), Nail Gun (32 rounds), Head Lamp, Toolbelt with Assorted Tools, Lunch Box

Player Character creation is an easy process, just as it always was with the Zero Edition of the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG. This was because the character sheet was marked with a flow chart that led the player through the process. Here in the new edition of Player’s Survival Guide it not only been retained, but slimmed down and streamlined for ease of use.

Mechanically, the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG is percentile game. To have his character undertake an action, a player rolls percentile dice, aiming to roll equal to or under the appropriate Stat. To avoid dangers, a player can make a similar roll against a Save. A Save is rolled against Sanity to withstand the illogical nature of the universe and to deal with Stress; Fear for fear itself, isolation, and emotional distress; and Body to resist physical effects such as hunger, disease, and invasion organisms. Rolls can be made with Advantage and Disadvantage, meaning that a player rolls the dice twice, taking the best result if at an Advantage and the worst result if at a Disadvantage. A roll of a double counts as a critical success if the roll is equal to, or under the Stat or Save, a critical failure if over. A critical failure also triggers a Panic Check. If appropriate, a player can add one of his character’s Skills to the roll, whether a Stat Roll or a Save.

However, there is a further penalty to failed rolls. The Player Character gains a point of Stress, up to maximum of twenty. Under certain situations, such as seeing another crewmember die, multiple crewmembers failing a Panic Check at the same time, when encountering something horrific and unearthly for the first time, a Player Character must roll a Panic Check. This is a roll of a twenty-sided die, the aim being to roll above the Player Character’s current Stress. A failure requires a roll on the Panic Table. The result is a random effect such as a ‘Loss of Confidence’, ‘Haunted’, ‘Deathwish’, or ‘Heart Attack/Short Circuit (Android)’.

Combat is designed to be fast and deadly. During each round, a Player Character can move and undertake a single action. Attacks are handled by a Combat Check and armour protects up to a certain limit, but above that is destroyed. Some Armour can have Damage Reduction. Damage is subtracted from the defendant’s Health. When Health is reduced to zero, a roll is made on the Wounds Table. The Wounds Table has options for Blunt Force, Bleeding, Gunshot, Fire & Explosives, and Gore & Massive damage.

In terms of further support, there are options for Player Character training skills, although it will actually take years to do so and apart from military training, has to be paid for. The rules cover the effects of different atmospheres, cryosickness from time spent in the cryopods used for long space journeys or hyperspace jumps, starvation, radiation, and more. When not on a mission or assignment, there are ports that the Player Characters’ ship can dock, where they can engage in rest and recreation, and mechanically, each make a Rest Save to reduce their Stress. This can be made at Advantage if a Player Character participates in consensual sex, recreational drug use, heavy drinking, prayer, or other suitable leisure activity. (This is another why the Player’s Survival Guide makes that consent is required.) Contractors can also be hired at ports and once hired, become NPCs defined by a simple format, but potentially upgradable to full Player Character should one of the existing ones somehow die…

If there is anything missing from the Player’s Survival Guide, it is the omission of the stealth skill. This seems odd given that the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG is a horror roleplaying game and such situations often require the Player Characters to sneak around to avoid alerting whatever threat they are facing. That said, one of the several examples of play does show a Player Character attempting to sneak. Instead of making a Stat Check with a Stealth skill added on as a bonus, the player instead rolls a Stat Check with the outcome being that a successful check indicates that it has been done quietly. So instead of the absence of a Stealth skill, the attempt is rolled into whatever it is that the Player Character is attempting to achieve. This could have been made clearer in the rules rather than an example of play.

Physically, the Player’s Survival Guide is very well presented. The layout is clean and tidy, and the book is easy to read. Learning the rules is eased by the numerous examples of play. The artwork is also good throughout.

The ‘Zero Edition’ of the Player’s Survival Guide has proved to be a Science Fiction workhouse, supporting the creation of numerous scenarios and supplements and fanzines within the Blue Collar Science Fiction, Military Science Fiction, Science Fiction Horror genres. The Player’s Survival Guide for Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG, First Edition does and will do the same thing. The new edition of the Player’s Survival Guide is really accessible and everything in its pages are easy to learn—helped by the reference guide on the back—and it lays the foundation of the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG.

Revenants in the Renaissance

The year is 1348 and mankind is subject to a divine punishment for its sins. For the last two years, all of Europe has suffered the devastating Black Plague which seems to spread fire and kills almost everyone it touches. The symptoms are easy to spot, black spots on the skin and swollen lymph nodes called buboes. Yet there is a second symptom, one that remains secret, one that the Papacy fights in a hidden war, and one it is desperate to eradicate—the Revenant Plague. Victims of the Black Plague are known to rise and not only spread its symptoms, but also feed upon the flesh of the living. The Papacy instituted the Ordo Mortis, a military order dedicated to not only fighting the secret war against the Revenant Plague, but also to keeping knowledge of the war against the Revenant Plague a secret. Word of it cannot spread, for it would weaken faith in the Catholic Church. It means that not only do all of the symptoms of the Revenant Plague have to be eradicated, but do any signs of infection and all knowledge of it. The members of the Ordo Mortis will face holy challenges in cutting down the risen revenants and unholy challenges in keeping its duties a secret. This is the set-up for Píaga 1348, a storytelling game from NEED! Games, the Italian publisher best known for the Fabula Ultima TTJRPG.

As a supernatural horror roleplaying game, Píaga 1348—meaning ‘Plague 1348—requires some choices to be made in terms of its set-up. To that end it includes a discussion of safety tools, though surprisingly without a reference to the X-Card. It suggests three options in terms of tone—‘Dramatic’, ‘Sinister’, and ‘Grotesque’—pairing them with the film, The Name of the Rose, the computer game Bloodthorne, and the films, Army of Darkness and Monty Python and the Holy Grail, thus effectively doubling as a bibliography. The tone is going to affect both the game’s style of play and its atmosphere, going from Greek tragedy to splatter punk with streak of black humour with creepy and mysterious in between. Further choices need to be made as to the nature of the world. This includes the size of the Revenant outbreak, the character and name of the Pontifex, the size and motto of the Ordo Mortis, and the nature and size of the missions that its soldiers—the Player Characters—are to be sent on. Lastly, the player who will take the role of the Ludi Magister—as the Game Master is known in Píaga 1348—is decided. This is important as the players will take in turn to undertake this role from one mission to the next. The process for this set-up is shared between the players.

A soldier in the Ordo Mortis will likely look like and be equipped any other knight, though he need not be. A Soldier is simply defined by several traits. These are the ‘Motto of the Ordo’; ‘Name’, including both full name and nickname, if any; ‘Description’; ‘Weapon’, which can either be physical or metaphorical (metaphorical is the better of the options here as it tends to be more flexible); and ‘Armour’, which should ideally be figurate rather than physical. These are the five core traits, but he also has entries for ‘What I Want’, ‘What I Don’t Want’, and ‘Traumas’, the latter physical, psychological, and social wounds suffered when a conflict is lost. A player simply has to define these traits in order to create his Soldier, either creating them or picking them from the suggestions included in the rulebook.

Name: Gunther of Cologne

Motto of the Ordo: Holy is our mission, unholy is their end

Description: An arrogant ex-tax collector with an eye for opportunity

Weapon: Everyone has a weakness and I will exploit every last one

Armour: Faith will only get you so far, money will get you further

What I Want: The favour of his Holiness, a penny in his pocket

What I Don’t Want: To die penniless

Once a mission has been decided upon, the player to the left of the Ludi Magister becomes the ‘Soldier on Duty’ and the Ludi Magister asks him what he perceives and based on those answers, frames the scene for her players, primarily the ‘Soldier on Duty’ as he will be leading the action for the scene and his player the conversation with the Ludi Magister. The advice for the Ludi Magister is to twist the interpretation of the senses that the ‘Soldier on Duty’ to make it dramatic and set the tension high from the start to reflect a world in crisis—physically and spiritually. The scene proceeds as normal until the point where something occurs that the ‘Soldier on Duty’ does not want to happen, in which a conflict ensues. When a conflict ensues, the player of the ‘Soldier on Duty’ decides what his Soldier wants to do and builds a dice pool based on his five core traits. For each of them that the player can persuade the Ludi Magister to include, a six-sided die is added to the pool. Every result of five or six counts as a Success and only one Success is required for Soldier to achieve the objective outlined by the player. The Ludi Magister will narrate the outcome of the dice roll, though if a failure because no Successes are rolled, the Soldier on Duty will suffer a Trauma.

Any excess Success go into the Morale Pool, which on subsequent turns, the ‘Soldier on Duty’ can draw from to increase the size of dice pool. Additional dice can come from the two sources. One is the other Soldiers, who can contribute dice based on their traits. The second is from a ‘Gamble’, in which the player adds a die of another colour to his dice pool. On a result of one, two, or three, nothing happens, but on a four, five, or six, the Soldier is ‘Exposed’. What this means that is a Soldier on Duty can still succeed—that is, roll a five or six—and still be ‘Exposed’. When ‘Exposed’, a roll is made on the ‘Gamble’s Outcome’ table. The result might be that a Soldier cannot use any further ‘Gamble’ attempts in the mission or that the Soldier is wounded and infected by a Revenant! Another way to gain more dice is for the Soldier to sacrifice himself, but will also result in his death. Whatever the result, the outcome is narrated by the player.

What is important here is there is an economy to a player’s use of his Soldier’s five core traits. If they can be used all in one go whilst a Soldier is the ‘Soldier on Duty’, then they can be refreshed to be used on subsequent turns. Whilst a Soldier can use them to help another Soldier who is the current ‘Soldier on Duty’, it will mean that he will have fewer to use when it is his turn to be ‘Soldier on Duty’. Running out of traits and having none to confront a situation when a ‘Soldier on Duty’ on Duty means that he will automatically fail. This forces a player to husband the use of those traits from scene to scene.

When a Soldier suffers a Trauma, it can be physical, psychological, or social, the nature of which is decided by the Ludi Magister. In general, the effect of a Trauma is more narrative in nature than mechanical, except under two circumstances. One is if a Soldier is either bitten, scratched, or wounded by a Revenant as a first or second Trauma, in which case the Soldier becomes a carrier of Revenant Plague. He can hide this, but if he dies, he will rise as a Revenant. The other is the effect of the third Trauma which will cause the Solder to exit the mission. How depends on the type of Trauma. A physical Trauma means he has died, a psychological Trauma pushes him into madness, and social Trauma makes him flee the Ordo Mortis all together. At this point, the Soldier can become a Tutelary, a dead soul watching and protecting the other Soldiers, or a Spectator, able to tell scenes from his former life that might give hints as to the current situation when it his turn to be the ‘Soldier on Duty’.

Play like this continues from round to round, with the Ludi Magister narrating another scene between them until the mission is over. At the end of a mission, the surviving Soldiers have a chance to reflect upon their actions and their successes—if any. At this point, the players have the opportunity to change various traits and even add another ‘What I Want’ or ‘What I Don’t Want’. After that, another mission, typically in another session, can be run by another player serving as the Ludi Magister.

Píaga 1348 provides a lot of support for the Ludi Magister. This includes several good examples of play, hints in terms of framing scenes and the narrative, motifs of the Ordo Mortis, and suggestions as the nature of Revenants and the world. There are several scenarios too. These are not scenarios in the traditional roleplaying sense, but more a themed set of prompts and rumours that the Ludi Magister—whose ever turn it is—can use to set up a mission. Píaga 1348 comes to a close with a quick-start and some designer notes, but also includes an excellent appendix of ‘Historical Essays’ which are these for everyone to read. Covering such subjects as the power of the pope—Boniface VIII, warfare in the period, famine, pestilence, and the nature of death, these are short pieces, but useful and informative.

Physically, Píaga 1348 is fantastically presented. The woodcut style artwork and the use of a Gothic fount very gives it a singular look and conveys a lot of atmosphere to the Ludi Magister.

Píaga 1348 can be seen as the answer to the question, “What would a zombie uprising look like in the Middle Ages?” Which is as terrifying, if not more so, than it would today since it follows awful deaths by the Black Plague and it would be regarded as the vindication of the danse macabre and the triumph of death over life. It also places the Soldiers of the Ordo Mortis on a mission from God himself to wipe out not only death itself, but all signs and knowledge of this triumph of death. That means they have to kill the living too, including the innocent. What this means is that Píaga 1348 is a simple and oppressively atmospheric storytelling game with a brutal edge.

Gnashers & Nazis

Punching Nazis. Shooting Nazis. Blowing up Nazis. Setting Nazis on Fire. Scare Nazis. Bite Nazis. Then feed 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 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 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 it 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; Niclole, 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 and assign a Special to it; 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 Criticals 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 induvial 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.

Blood for the Blood Queen!

It is 1586 and Queen Elizabeth holds Mary, Queen of Scots still prisoner. Powerful, yet on the periphery of Europe, she is anathema to every good Catholic and every Catholic majesty on the continent, and to the Pope in Rome. Philip II of Spain, once also King of England by marriage to Elizabeth’s older half-sister, Queen Mary, sees it as his divine duty to overthrow his sister-in-law as a heretic and install Mary, Queen of Scots on the throne of England. It is a year before Queen Elizabeth will execute Mary, Queen of Scots and two years before King Philip launched the ill-fated Spanish Armada to defeat England’s sea power and invade, making England catholic once again. Meanwhile, he plots and directs court to undermine the English throne at every turn. In 1586, at his bidding, his court astrologer, Abiathar Crescas, will launch a plot that will see Queen Elizabeth suborned and replaced by the end of the year! Only the condemned men and women in the employ of Doctor John Dee, heretics themselves who would have been executed long ago were it not for Sir Francis Walsingham giving them a stay of execution whilst they investigate occult threats to both Queen and kingdom, are all that stand between Spain and a dastardly demonic plot to overthrow her majesty! This is the situation that faces the Agents in Abaddon’s Puppet, a scenario for Just Crunch Games’ The Dee Sanction, the roleplaying game of ‘Covert Enochian Intelligence’ in which the Player Characters—or Agents of Dee—are drawn into adventures in magick and politics across supernatural Tudor Europe.

Abaddon’s Puppet takes place in late 1586. It begins with Doctor John Dee instructing the Agents to continue investigating Christopher Marlowe after the events outlined in the scenario, ‘Ex Libris’ (which can be found in The Dee Sanction Adventures: A True & Faithful Transcription of Matters Concerning Lost Books, Strange Sorceries, Befouled Poppets, Accusations of Witchcraft, and Assorted HELLSCAPES) and word reaching the Agents of the bodies of children being found in the Thames, each one strangely withered, as if aged. This gives the Agents two lines of inquiry, one more difficult than the other. Investigating Christopher Marlowe is hampered by the fact that he has disappeared, but he was last seen coaching a young actor, Victor Smith, who has also disappeared. The Agents need to be circumspect here, since the clues point to Victor Smith working at the estate of Lord Wessex at nearby Egham. The other line of inquiry is more direct, taking the Agents along the banks of the Thames and surrounding streets on the trail of the bodies leading to an orphanage and a foundered ship just upriver. Eventually, this will lead to signs of very bloody doings in a nearby cellar. If the Agents are quick, they may well discover the perpetrators of bloody doings in situ and bring the scenario to much earlier end. However, it is more likely that they will be long gone by the Agents get there and it will be necessary to follow the other line of inquiry to the conclusion of the scenario. This takes place at Kenilworth Castle, owned by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, a favourite of Queen Elizabeth, where Abiathar Crescas and other Catholic conspirators work to bring their demonic plan to fruition and so engineer her dethronement and replacement by Mary, Queen of Scots.

Abaddon’s Puppet is a well organised affair. Each plot strand—the two investigations into Christopher Marlowe and the bodies in the water, followed by the journey to and the confrontation at Castle Kenilworth—is presented on a single page. This includes an overview and lists of clues, characters, and locations, the lists presenting the information as a series of bullet points. However, there is no direct connective tissue between the lists and it is not directly clear as to what clue each NPC knows and why. For the experienced Game Master this is not a problem as she can make the narrative connections and so bring the interactions between the NPCs and the Agents to life. For the less experienced Game Master this will be more of a hurdle and she may well want to assign each clue to a particular NPC or group of NPCs as part of her preparation. The Game Master might also want to create a few minor NPCs too should the players and their Agents want to talk to the families of the ‘adopted’ children. Otherwise, the organisation makes the scenario very easy to run from the page.

Physically, Abaddon’s Puppet is short, but decently organised and illustrated. Everything is clearly laid out and easy to find, and although lightly illustrated, it is a nice-looking scenario.

Taking some inspiration from the film Shakespeare in Love, Abaddon’s Puppet presents a dark, twisted plot against Queen Elizabeth that combines some pleasing investigation, a horrifying and challenging confrontation against the occult, and outright, bloody treason! In truth, the Agents are going to be lucky to survive the confrontation against Abaddon at the end of the scenario, but if they do, they will have proved their worth and their loyalty to the crown. Of course, having already been condemned to death and under stay of execution, their reward is never going to be more than a mere thanks and another assignment. Such is the power of The Dee Sanction.

One Bad Lock-In

If they are very lucky, for the agents of Doctor John Dee, it will be an evening like any other. Unluckily—rather luckily, for were they not such agents serving the crown, Walsingham would have not spared them their sentence for heresy—it is not going to be an evening like any other. Their employer, Mister Garland, sends the agents on what should be a simple collection task at The Admiral’s Compass, an inn in the once great port of Winchelsea, its once busy harbour silted up and its status as one of the Cinque Ports long since lost. Take possession of a valuable package and safely transport it Dee at Mortlake, they are told. Unfortunately, the contents of the package are far more dangerous than the Agents might suppose and certainly far more dangerous than the unfortunately greedy and larcenous stable boy at the inn could ever imagine. However, a furtive delivery and collection and a foolish theft are not the only events that are going to take place and be resolved at The Admiral’s Compass that night. This is the situation as laid out to the Agents in The Admiral’s Compass, a scenario for Just Crunch Games’ The Dee Sanction, the roleplaying game of ‘Covert Enochian Intelligence’ in which the Player Characters—or Agents of Dee—are drawn into adventures in magick and politics across supernatural Tudor Europe.

TheAdmiral’s Compass is a short, single session scenario, published under the ‘Sanction Community Content Creation Licence’, that is location-based and could easily be run as a convention scenario, but just as simply slipped into an ongoing campaign. Its events all take place within the confines of the inn over the course of a single evening. Besides the collection of the package, the other threads—appropriately—involve a prisoner exchange with a Spanish envoy and the sad story of a young sailor whom came home scarred by his experiences serving aboard the Counter Armada launched by Sir Francis Drake in April, 1589, following the defeat of the Spanish Armada the previous year. Initially, the three strands are separate, but by mid-evening, they will crash into each other and become increasingly intertwined and involve the Agents more and more. This all takes place against the backdrop of a storm that keeps the inn isolated and its staff and patrons reluctant to step outside, plus the growing realisation that something is stalking them both. Mixed into this are at least a couple of creepy scenes, more so if either player or Agent is an arachnophobe!

Physically, The Admiral’s Compass is short, but decently organised and illustrated. Everything is clearly laid out and easy to find and there is both a floorplan and a description of the Inn. Overall, a nice-looking scenario.

The Admiral’s Compass can be run as a standard or a convention scenario or one-shot. As either of the later, the Game Master will need to prepare some ready-to-play Agents, complete with agendas of their own and agendas tied to the various members of staff and patrons at the inn. Otherwise, The Admiral’s Compass is a neat little horror scenario which takes place on a dark and stormy night.

“Let dead bodies lie”

It never pays to unearth the dead. Of late, rumours of ghosts and strange sightings have beset the London parish of Saint Poulkar, culminating in the recent attack by oddly acting rats upon a local child. These sightings have been centred near a converted Catholic estate that belongs to the Church, an estate that is recorded as having been the site of a mass burial site from the city’s last great Bubonic Plague outbreak in 1563. In addition, in response to complaints about the stench of the plague pit, ecclesiastical authorities have given permission for it to be excavated and cleared of the bones. Are the two connected? Certainly, the former is reason enough for Sir Francis Walsingham to want his agents to investigate and determine if there was something bad buried in the garden and if it represents a threat to the Crown and the natural order. And then deal with it. This is the situation as laid out to the Agents in Buried Dreams, a scenario for Just Crunch Games’ The Dee Sanction, the roleplaying game of ‘Covert Enochian Intelligence’ in which the Player Characters—or Agents of Dee—are drawn into adventures in magick and politics across supernatural Tudor Europe.

Buried Dreams is a short, single session scenario, published under the ‘Sanction Community Content Creation Licence’, that is location-based and could easily be run as a convention scenario. It has a nice mix of elements. A frail old priest descending into senility after living too long near the plague pit in house belonging to the church, a ghostly woman walking at night, a team of diggers who have down tools at the conditions and the frightening apparitions, and a bullied engineer are the least of it. With some investigation the Player Characters can discover what the Catholic Church used the house for during the reign of Queen Mary I and before, what the Anglican Church did afterwards in response, and find signs of it to if they are sharp-eyed. It will be quickly obvious that all signs point to the pit and whatever it is that the church interred there, but finding someone else other than the striking labourers to dig further may prove to be a challenge and when they have discovered what was buried, what to do with it may prove to be an even bigger challenge. Ultimately, the problem shifts from one of the dig being the potential cause of the supernatural to whether it might actually be the solution in the face of a dangerous outbreak of occult activity. If the Player Characters do not act, the situation on the former estate will descend into one of murder, growing fear, and ultimately mass possession.

Physically, Buried Dreams is plainly presented. There only the one piece of artwork, used to illustrate the villain (so ideally, the Game Master should get more illustrations for the other NPCs lest it appear that the villain is being singled out) and a map of Elizabethan London. The later is nice, but too small to be of much use. A map of the estate would have been useful.

Buried Dreams is a short sharp scenario of horror resulting from misunderstanding and fear. It is easy to prepare and its London location makes it easy for the Game Master to add it to her campaign.

Your Vaesen Starter

A good starter set has to do a number of different things. It has to introduce and explain the roleplaying game it is a starter set for, whether that is the roleplaying game’s setting, mechanics, or both. It has to both tell and show what the players and their characters are expected to do in the setting and how they do it, first with the rules and then with a scenario. It has to provide everything that a group needs to play—rules, scenario, pre-generated Player Characters, and dice—and ideally more. Maps, handouts, tokens, and the like are all items that will help bring the world of the roleplaying game’s setting to life and give the players something to look at and interact with. Above all, a good starter should showcase the roleplaying game and entice both Game Master and her players to want to roleplay more with the rules and in that setting by picking up the core rulebook, and if the contents of the start set support continued play, whether that is providing an extra set of dice or maps for the setting, then all the better.

—oOo—

The Vaesen – Starter Set is the introduction to Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying, the roleplaying game based on Vaesen: Spirits and Monsters of Scandinavian Folklore as collected and illustrated by Johan Egerkrans, and published by Free League Publishing. It is an investigative horror game set in Scandinavia during the nineteenth century, using the Year Zero engine first seen in Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days, and subsequently a wide array of roleplaying games. It is set in the Mythic North of Scandinavia in the nineteenth century, a time when old traditions and secrets of the past clash against modernity and industrialisation. In dark forests and deep valleys, along brown rivers and at the edge of forgotten groves, in the eaves and in the shadows, there lurk creatures and monsters called ‘Vaesen’ that have begun to hate man. In ages past, everyone knew how to interact with Vaesen so that both could live alongside each other. Now many of those that knew have died or left to find work in the cities, whilst others have come to the mountains and the rivers and the forests to plunder and exploit what they want in the name of progress, so destroying the homes of the Vaesen and making them feel unwanted and unloved. In the past, a secret organisation known as The Society investigated both the Vaesen and their clashes with mankind, but it has long dissolved, its members retired or confined to an asylum, and its headquarters, Castle Gyllencreutz, in the Swedish city of Uppsala, shut up. Yet there are still those who have the Sight, those Thursday’s Children, who can see Vaesen, and perhaps they need a purpose worthy of their gift?

This is the set-up for both the Vaesen – Starter Set and Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying, but the Vaesen – Starter Set is designed to be an introduction to not just the rules and the setting for Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying, but also to its set-up. This will involve both players and their characters learning about the Vaesen, The Society, and Castle Gyllencreutz, and preparing for further investigations and more mysteries. It designed for play by five players and the Game Master and will provide them both one or two sessions’ worth of play.

Open up the Vaesen – Starter Set and what the Game Master will find first is a set of ten Vaesen dice and Initiative cards. Below that is the ‘Getting Started’ sheet which provides a quick introduction to Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying, what to do first with the contents of the Vaesen – Starter Set, and what to do after a group has played through its contents. Below that are three books. The first is the sixteen-page ‘Rules’ booklet, the second is the twelve-page ‘The Haunting of Castle Gyllencreutz’ scenario book, and the third is the forty-four-page ‘Codex Occultum’. Underneath that is a set of five Reference Sheets—one per player, three handouts for the ‘The Haunting of Castle Gyllencreutz’ scenario, five pre-generated Player Characters, and two maps. One of the maps is a particularly good cutaway map of Castle Gyllencreutz, which is new to Vaesen, whilst the other, larger map is double-sided, one side showing the Mythic North, the other the city of Uppsala, home to Castle Gyllencreutz.
Anyone who has played a Year Zero roleplaying game will instantly grasp the rules for Vaesen, but they are quickly and easily explained in the ‘Rules’ booklet. To have his character undertake an action, a player will roll a number of six-sided dice equal to a combination of his character’s Attribute and Skill, plus whatever bonus or penalty dice the Game Master awards, such as from the situation or a Talent. To succeed, all he needs to roll is typically one Success or six—though sometimes it may be more—on any of the dice. Extra Successes can be expended to gain various effects. In combat, this will be more damage, but in other situations it will usually mean learning more information. These are tailored to the scenario in the Vaesen – Starter Set, but are further expanded upon in Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying.

If a player fails a roll, he can instead choose to Push the roll. This enables the player to reroll the dice which did not result in Successes in the hope of getting some or more Successes. Doing so will inflict a Condition on the Player Character, either Exhausted, Battered, or Wounded for Physical Conditions, or Angry, Frightened, or Hopeless for Mental Conditions. Suffer too many of either Physical or Mental Conditions and the Player Character will be Broken, meaning that he cannot act. Damage from combat is also inflicted in terms of Conditions. The Initiative Cards, numbered from one to ten, determine when a Player Character, NPC, or Vaesen acts each round, though it is possible to swap Initiative cards between Player Characters and/or friendly NPCs each round, and in each Round, a Player Character has a Slow action and a Fast action. A Fear test is required if a Player Character encounters a Vaesen or magic, the number of Successes required determined by the Fear value of the creature, magic, or situation. Overall, the explanation of the rules in ‘Rules’ booklet is brisk, but covers most situations and is backed up by examples of play. It also provides explanations of what roleplaying is and what Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying is.

The ‘The Haunting of Castle Gyllencreutz’ scenario book opens with the Player Characters being invited to a tavern in the poor part of Uppsala where they will meet the elderly Linnea Elfeklint. She will tell them that like herself, they are one of Thursday’s Children and have Sight, which means that they can see creatures known as Vaesen that most people cannot. She will also tell them about The Society and Castle Gyllencreutz and that she wants to restart The Society. However, she will explain that she does not have access to Castle Gyllencreutz as her ex-fiancé possesses its deeds and that recently other Thursday’s Children have gone to the castle and not returned. This half of the scenario sets up its mystery, whilst second half involves investigation in the castle itself. The castle is in a dilapidated state inside and out, and is haunted by strange lights. The final confrontation is ethereal in nature and players who are prone to fight may be at a disadvantage. The scenario is short, but it set the Player Characters with ready access to Castle Gyllencreutz and further play of Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying.

The five pre-generated Player Characters consist of a Hunter, a military officer, a priest, a writer, and a vagabond. All five have an illustration and some background as well as full stats and game details, including notes on what each think of the other four Player Characters. Each player will have a Reference Card, which neatly summarises the rules for ease of play.

The third booklet in the Vaesen – Starter Set, the ‘Codex Occultum’, is actually the thickest and is effectively the players’ own copy of Vaesen: Spirits and Monsters of Scandinavian Folklore as collected and illustrated by Johan Egerkrans and their characters’ guide to the Vaesen. From the Ash Tree Wife to the Wood Wife, it illustrates and describes some twenty-two Vaesen and how they might be banished, appeased, or otherwise dealt with. This is lovely little reference work—both in game and out—and it is highly likely the one item in the Vaesen – Starter Set that the players will return to over and over. Lastly, the maps of both Uppsala and Mythic North are excellent, whilst the one of Castle Gyllencreutz shows it in its prime, potentially a status that the Player Characters cab return it to in the long run. It certainly gives the Player Characters some idea of what the castle was like and what might be behind the locked or otherwise inaccessible parts of the castle.

Physically, the Vaesen – Starter Set is very well presented. Both the ‘Rules’ booklet and ‘The Haunting of Castle Gyllencreutz’ are easy to read and grasp, whilst the physical components are of a high standard, particularly the maps and the ‘Codex Occultum’.

The Vaesen – Starter Set is a good starting package for Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying, except for one thing and that is the depth of play it offers in the box. A single scenario is less than what is expected of a good starter set today, yet the straightforward physicality of the Vaesen – Starter Set actually makes it a worthwhile purchase. Not just the Vaesen dice and the Initiative cards, but also the maps, especially the one of Castle Gyllencreutz, and of course, the ‘Codex Occultum’ handout will all support continued play of Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying long after the players have roleplayed the scenario in Vaesen – Starter Set. Arguably, the Vaesen – Starter Set is a better accessories kit than an actual starter set, but its scenario is by no means bad, and will get a Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying campaign off to a good start.