Quick-Start Saturday: Chivalry & Sorcery

Quick-starts are a means of trying out a roleplaying game before you buy. Each should provide a Game Master with sufficient background to introduce and explain the setting to her players, the rules to run the scenario included, and a set of ready-to-play, pre-generated characters that the players can pick up and understand almost as soon as they have sat down to play. The scenario itself should provide an introduction to the setting for the players as well as to the type of adventures that their characters will have and just an idea of some of the things their characters will be doing on said adventures. All of which should be packaged up in an easy-to-understand booklet whose contents, with a minimum of preparation upon the part of the Game Master, can be brought to the table and run for her gaming group in a single evening’s session—or perhaps two. And at the end of it, Game Master and players alike should ideally know whether they want to play the game again, perhaps purchasing another adventure or even the full rules for the roleplaying game.

Alternatively, if the Game Master already has the full rules for the roleplaying game the quick-start is for, then what it provides is a sample scenario that she still run as an introduction or even as part of her campaign for the roleplaying game. The ideal quick-start should entice and intrigue a playing group, but above all effectively introduce and teach the roleplaying game, as well as showcase both rules and setting.

—oOo—

What is it?
The Chivalry and Sorcery, 5th Edition Quick Start Rules are designed to introduce the rules and setting for the fifth edition of the medieval-set roleplaying originally published in 1977 by Fantasy Games Unlimited. Chivalry and Sorcery, 5th Edition is now published by Britannia Game Designs Ltd. and draws deeply upon Medieval history, but offers options in terms of elements of fantasy and magic and miracles that the Game Master can choose from to create her setting and game style.

It is designed to be played by between four and six players, but includes seven pre-generated Player Characters. Plus, of course, the Game Master.

It is a fifty page, full colour book.

The quick-start is lightly illustrated, but the artwork is excellent. The rules are a slightly stripped down version from the core rulebook, but do include examples of the rules which speed the learning of the game. The maps are nicely done.

How long will it take to play?
The Chivalry and Sorcery, 5th Edition Quick Start Rules and its adventure, ‘Where Heroes Fear to Tread’, can be played through in one or two sessions.

What else do you need to play?
The Chivalry and Sorcery, 5th Edition Quick Start Rules requires a pair of percentile dice and a single ten-sided die per player. The extra ten-sided die should be different in colour to the percentile dice.

Who do you play?
The seven Player Characters in the Chivalry and Sorcery, 5th Edition Quick Start Rules consist of Master William Malister, a Forester; the Knight, Sir Edmund Silverheart; Magus Barnabus Hook, Mage; Rosamund Godspell, a Priest; the Warriors, Ursilda Dortmund and Heartha Brunswick; and the Herald, Lord Otto Gavilon. All seven Player Characters are Third Level and have their own character sheet. In addition, Magus Barnabus Hook has his own grimoire and Rosamund Godspell her own prayerbook.

How is a Player Character defined?
A Player Character has nine stats—Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Intellect, Wisdom, Discipline, Bardic Voice, Appearance, and Spirit. Agility, Ferocity, and Charisma are derived attributes. Each Player Character has a similar set of base skills, skills relevant to his Vocation, and Combat skills. Attributes can range between two and twenty-five, whilst skills are represented as percentage values. A Player Character has a number of Action Points which are primarily expended on actions taken and attacks made in combat, whilst Fatigue Points are lost in combat prior to Body Points. Fatigue Points are also used to power spells.

How do the mechanics work?
Mechanically, the Chivalry and Sorcery, 5th Edition Quick Start Rules, and thus Chivalry and Sorcery, Fifth Edition, uses the ‘Skillskape’ system. This uses percentile dice as well as an extra ten-sided die. This extra die is the Crit Die. Both the percentile dice and the Crit Die are rolled at the same time. The Total Success Chance (TSC%) of a skill or action is a combination of the Basic Chance of Success (BCS%), the Player Character’s Personal Skill Factor (PSF%) in the skill, and any modifiers. It is possible to have a Total Success Chance above Maximum Chance of Success (Max%) or a Total Success Chance below the Minimum Chance of Success (Min%). The higher it is above the Maximum Chance of Success, the greater the bonus to the Crit Die, whereas the lower it is below the Minimum Chance of Success, the greater the penalty to the Crit Die.

The roll on the percentile dice determines whether the skill or attribute roll is a success or a failure. The Crit Die determines the magnitude of the success or failure. A roll of ten on the Crit Die is always a Critical result, whether a success or failure. Skills in Chivalry and Sorcery, Fifth Edition have their own specific Critical Outcomes table, but the Chivalry and Sorcery, 5th Edition Quick Start Rules uses the one table, ‘Critical Outcomes - General’.

How does combat work?
Combat in the Chivalry and Sorcery, 5th Edition Quick Start Rules uses an Action Point economy to handle movement, attacks, defensive stances, spellcasting, and other actions. Damage suffered is deducted from a combatant’s Fatigue Points, but if a Critical success is rolled on the Crit Die, an extra die’s worth of damage is rolled and that is deducted from the defendant’s Body Points. Armour and shields reduce damage, but both can be rendered useless and shields even shattered if too much damage is suffered.

How does Magic work?
In the Chivalry and Sorcery, 5th Edition Quick Start Rules, spells are fully learnt and are cast automatically. Once cast, a spell must be aimed at the target recipient, opponent, or area that the caster wants the spell to affect. A Resistance Roll by the target, if allowed, can ameliorate or even negate the effects of a spell. A spell has a cost in Fatigue Points for it to be cast. If the targeting of a spell is unsuccessful, it is dispelled without having any effect. A Critical Failure doubles the Fatigue Point cost, a Critical Success halves it.

The pre-generated Player Character, Magus Barnabus Hook, is a Hex Mage and knows a number of cantrips, sorcery spells, and hexes. Sleep and Hold Person are both cantrips; Fear and Shadowbolt are sorcery spells; and Blurred Image and Lesser Illusion are hexes. Each spell is described in detail in a sperate grimoire for Magus Barnabus Hook.

How do Miracles work?
A miracle is performed via an Act of Faith, such as a , in a fashion similar to casting spells. Some prayers or rituals automatically work, but others require a die roll. This is made against the priest’s faith or that of the person being targeted. An Act of Faith costs the priest both Fatigue Points and Spirit. A successful Act of Faith costs no Spirit, but a Critical Failure means it does and the Priest’s Faith is shaken. A Critical Success means that the Priest actually gains Spirit!

The pre-generated Player Character, Rosamund Godspell, is a Priest. She has access to prayers such as Blessing, Prayer for Luck, and Sanctification. The prayer, Restore the Faithful, can be performed to grant a believer restored Fatigue Points, whilst Cure the Wounded, does the same for Body Points. A believer can be a recipient of either spell only once per day. Each prayer is described in detail in a sperate prayer book for Rosamund Godspell.

What do you play?
In the Chivalry and Sorcery, 5th Edition Quick Start Rules, the scenario is ‘Where Heroes Fear to Tread’. This is set in Marakush, the default world for Chivalry & Sorcery. It takes place in the Kingdom of Urtind where a few days ago, a group of pilgrims was attacked and captured by a Goblin and Tylwyth Du (Dark Elf) warband and taken back to their Lord, Grink of the Rock, in the Darken Forest. The Player Characters are hired by the religious fighting order, the Order of the Blue Rose, to deliver a ransom for the pilgrims to Grink of the Rock, a dragon! The Player Characters need to cross some rough farming country and through an area known as the ‘Killing Ground’ having been the site of numerous border conflicts to get to the forest. Here they will have to deal with the dragon lord and goblins. The scenario is action-packed and can be played through in a single session or expanded with the included random encounters to last a second session.

Is there anything missing?
The Chivalry and Sorcery, 5th Edition Quick Start Rules are complete and it even comes multiple examples of play to help the Game Master understand the rules.

Is it easy to prepare?
The core rules presented in the Chivalry and Sorcery, 5th Edition Quick Start Rules are not too difficult to prepare. The primary issue with the rules is the number of abbreviations that the Game Master and her players need to learn, which makes the rules look more complex than they are.

Is it worth it?
Yes. The Chivalry and Sorcery rules have a reputation for being complex. Not so in the Chivalry and Sorcery, 5th Edition Quick Start Rules, which presents a streamlined version of them and supports them with plenty of examples of play and a decent scenario that can be played in a single session.

Where can you get it?
The Chivalry and Sorcery, 5th Edition Quick Start Rules is available to download here.

Friday Faction: Weird Medieval Guys

As the ideal suitor, if male, you should cut your hair in the chic bowl—or pudding bowl—style, and ideally have golden hair, and wear a houppelande, a long loose gown with flowing selves. Red is a good colour for men, indicating vitality, kingliness, and power. Blue is good for the ladies as it indicates expense. Should you ever suffer from cancer of the mouth, then you may be fortunate to receive a visit from the Virgin Mary, who will bestow upon you a kiss that will you heal of it. And should you want to press your ardour—perhaps as a show of thanks for her beneficence—there will be an angel on hand to prevent you from doing so. In order to launch a crusade, there are certain requirements which need to be fulfilled first, including equal measures of hardship and oppression, a pinch of famine, all of Europe’s collective sin and religious guilt, a helpless labouring class, a new and bordering anti-Christian empire, one Pope (never two), and an impending apocalypse. Preparation time is a single decade. Cooking time is three years. Serve with the death of thousands, including kings and princes, garnish with plunder, and four Crusader kingdoms with uncertain futures. In the event of an encounter with wolves—such as when the River Seine froze over in 1338, allowing them to race across the river and attack the citizens of Paris and dig up the city’s corpses—always remember to see the wolf before it sees you because it will lose its courage if it sees you first, plus if it sees you first, you will struck dumb, be unable to cry for help and the wolf will bite you. However, all is not lost, because if you strip down to your underwear, grab a pair of rocks and bang them together, the wolf will turn tail and run away. Lastly, if you happen to have a weapon to hand, at least a dagger, do take the time to kill the wolf. The wolf will not be happy about this and will not want you to feel happy about it either. This is a trick. Do not fall for it. Fortunately, wolves have no legal protection and you can definitely kill a wolf with that handy dagger. Which is all the sort of thing you will know because you are a weird medieval guy. Or rather, none of this is weird whatsoever, because you are a medieval guy, and all of this—and more—is the subject of Weird Medieval Guys.

Weird Medieval Guys: How to live, laugh, love (and die) in dark times is a guide to life and living in the Medieval era by Olivia W. Swarthout. Drawn from a swathe of period manuscripts on numerous visits to the British Library, and originally posted on the Weird Medieval Guys Twitter account, combines images from the manuscripts and facts from the history to present a punchy, easy to read book that takes the reader from the moment of creation itself to the end of the world with the coming of the Four Horsemen and the apocalypse, and in between, the reader from his birth to his death—and in between that there is a lot that can happen. The book is profusely illustrated, so no aspect of Medieval life goes undepicted in the rich colours of the manuscripts. Having begun with the creation of everything, Weird Medieval Guys gives you life and so lets you pick a name, learn some useful slang—such as ‘Merobia’ for a woman who likes strong wine or ‘Sterilis Amator’ for that lover who has no money, choose your astrological sign and patron saint, determine where you live in the first of the book’s several short quizzes—the options being Constantinople, London, Paris, and Venice, suggests several jobs you like, and more. It is not all hard work, as there are examinations too of play and romance, but the latter all too soon feels like hard work, what with the need to make a love potion, which whilst a lot quicker than mounting a crusade, involves a dog, some rope, a hunting horn, an ivory stake, and a mandrake, does not take into account the fact that dogs—as noted in the section on play—do not like the horn being played. Then there are possible causes of marital difficulties and if it really does not work out, the possibility of a divorce, which comes with a handy flow chart to determine if you can get a divorce, the answer of course, being mostly no, that is also the counterpart to the handy flow chart to determine if you can court the lady of your affections… Of course, it all has to come to an end and the question of your death is raised before Judgement Day is raised. Hopefully with dignity before you get caught up in a civil dispute. Perhaps here the weirdest means of settling such a dispute, in combat, between a man and a woman, is for the man to be placed in a pit up to his waist where he must fight from there with a club, whilst the woman is armed with a big rock in a clock bag and allowed to roam the ground around the man. The illustrations would not look out of place in a wrestling match.

A good half of Weird Medieval Guys: How to live, laugh, love (and die) in dark times is devoted to a bestiary. Divided into several subsections—‘Beasts’, ‘Birds’, ‘Fish’, and ‘Serpents’. Each entry is catalogued and categorised, with strengths and weaknesses, and even some Medieval stats in the form of ‘Virtue’, ‘Beauty’, and ‘Danger’. The creatures range from the ordinary, such as the lion, the wolf, and the hedgehog to the fantastic, like the manticore, the mermaid, and the amphisbaena, the latter a snake with two heads. These are all presented from the Medieval point of view, of course, such as the bat being classified as a bird and cats as being extremely dangerous. There is, of course, a section devoted to the snail and plenty of images of knights versus snails. Sadly, there is no similar section on rabbits, and that perhaps is really the only omission from Weird Medieval Guys.

What really stands out in Weird Medieval Guys is the artwork, which is of course, drawn from the source material, the manuscripts. It is fantastically colourful, profusely illustrated and all annotated in a wry tone.

Weird Medieval Guys joins a growing list of works interested in the minutiae of Medieval life and the Medieval outlook and the colourful marginalia of period manuscripts. For example, How to Slay a Dragon: A Fantasy Hero’s Guide to the Real Middle Ages by Cait Stevenson, any number of enamel pins, and the more recent The Medieval Margin-agerie – Volume 1 from Just Crunch Games, which turns those marginalia into gameable content. Of course, Weird Medieval Guys does not do that, but what it can do is influence the portrayal of the Medieval world by the Game Master, perhaps even inspire an encounter or scenario or two. Weird Medieval Guys is a wry look at the fantastically strange world of the Medieval man and woman, what they knew and what they thought, how they lived, brought to life in the artwork of the period. For anyone with a casual interest in the Medieval period, Weird Medieval Guys: How to live, laugh, love (and die) in dark times is a perfect, vividly visual introduction to its oddness and oddities.

Savage Sherwood

The tales of Robin Hood, of a band of outlaws standing up to the tyrant King John in the Forest of Nottingham are so strongly woven into the folklore, legends, and myths ‘Merrye Olde Englande’ that they are familiar across the English-speaking world. Over the decades, the tales have been reinforced again and again by film and television, from the 1938 The Adventures of Robin Hood with Errol Flynn and the 1950s television series The Adventures of Robin Hood with Richard Greene to more recent adaptations such as the BBC’s Robin Hood of the noughties and the 2018 film, Robin Hood. These adaptions and retellings, of course, vary in quality, tone, and humour, some even having been done as comedies. Similarly, Robin Hood has been the subject of numerous roleplaying games and supplements. Some have been quite comprehensive in their treatment of the outlaw and his band, for example, the supplements Steve Jackson Games’ GURPS Robin Hood and Iron Crown Enterprises’ Robin Hood: The Role Playing Campaign are both highly regarded in this respect, whilst other supplements take a broad approach or simply touch upon the subject of Robin Hood, such as Romance of the Perilous Land from Osprey Games.

Sherwood: The Legend of Robin Hood takes a broad to the tales of Robin Hood and his merry men. Published by Battlefield Press, it is written for use with Savage Worlds, Third Edition, but versions of the supplement are also available for Pathfinder, First Edition, Swords & Wizardry, and Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, and since it is written for Savage Worlds, Third Edition, it is easily adapted to the more recent edition, Savage Worlds Adventure Edition.

Sherwood: The Legend of Robin Hood begins with a ‘Gazetteer of the 13th Century England’, which provides a historical and geographical overview of England—and to an extent, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales—for the period. It covers geography, economy, religion, everyday life, and more, including useful little details such as a list of the religious holidays during the period. Overall, it is a decent overview, giving some context for creating Player Characters and the setting. In terms of setting rules, Sherwood: The Legend of Robin Hood offers three different modes of play. These are Historical—realistic, superstition rather than magic, and relying upon Outlaw skill, luck, and confidence; Mythic England—a combination of mysticism, the supernatural, and the fantastic; and Swashbuckling—cinematic and sword-swinging! Each mode of play comes with a list of its Disallowed Hindrances and Edges, Setting Rules, and new Edges, along with a nod to its particular inspirations. Thus, for the Swashbuckling mode, it is The Adventures of Robin Hood, starring Errol Flynn; for Mythic England, it is the British Robin of Sherwood television series of the eighties; and for Historical, it is Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves from 1991. Of the three modes, Swashbuckling is actually intended to work with the first two, either Historical or Mythic England, so that the Game Master could run a Swashbuckling Historical campaign or a Swashbuckling Mythic England campaign. It should be noted that for role-players of a certain age, Mythic England, based upon Robin of Sherwood, is likely to be the default mode.

Player Characters in Sherwood: The Legend of Robin Hood are all Human. Along with a range of new Knowledge subskills, it gives a variety of new Edges and Hindrances. Thus for the latter there is Love, the type of love which going to bring a Player Character serious trouble, ‘Maladie Du Pays’, the medieval equivalent of Shell Shock, and Xenophobia, this last probably needing to carefully adjudicated by the Game Master lest it lead to inappropriate play at the table. Alongside various modified Edges, new Background Edges can make a Player Character have the Blood of the Fey, be a Knight of the Order—three are given, Knight Templar, Knight Hospitaller, and Knight Teutonic, or be Landed, for particularly rich characters; Combat Edges include Long Shot and One Shot Left, both useful for the Player Characters who want to be as good at archery as Robin Hood himself; and Social Edges include Quip!, Witty Banter, and Taunt, which all work with the Taunt skill to grant more than one attack per round.

If a campaign does involve magic, then Arcane Backgrounds include Alchemist, Conjurer, Druid, Priest, and Witch, the latter reflecting the period attitudes towards witchcraft rather than modern ones. These are nicely done and mechanically distinct, so the Alchemist concocts his spell effects into potions and the Druid casts rituals which take several rounds. The last Arcane Background is Engineer, which functions more like the Weird Science Arcane Background than magic, and enables  a character to design and build various devices.

Mechanically, Sherwood: The Legend of Robin Hood adds three new options. First, Bennies, the equivalent of Luck or Hero Points in Savage Worlds, are called Swashbuckling Points. Like Bennies, Swashbuckling Points can be used to reroll a Trait Test or Soak damage, but in Sherwood: The Legend of Robin Hood, they can also be used to add a bonus to a Trait Test, increase the success of an Agility Trick to a Raise, and for one or two Swashbuckling Points, depending upon the degree of alteration, a player can alter the story or immediate surrounds to his character’s benefit. Second, Agility can be used to perform Tricks like Attack from Above, Blade Ballet, Running Up Walls, Swinging Attacks, and more, which the players are encouraged to use Swashbuckling Points to set up. Lastly, rules for archery contests, target shooting, including the splitting of an opponent’s arrow, and speed shooting cover the signature elements of the Robin Hood legend.

Besides equipment, Sherwood: The Legend of Robin Hood gives several archetypes, including Engineer, Knave, Man-at-arms, Noble, Priest, and Yeoman, all ready for play. In each case, their role in both the setting and gaming group is discussed, as well as ways in which they might vary. For the Game Master, there is ‘Trouble in Sherwood: Adventuring in Nottingham’, covering various types of campaign, Gritty Outlaws or Political Outlaws, for example. What it highlights upfront is that whatever the type of campaign, a Robin Hood-style campaign should ideally be episodic—which nicely ties back into Robin of Sherwood—and rather than be about combat or facing monsters, should be more like an espionage campaign, involving secrecy and subterfuge. Rounding out the supplement is a set of write-ups for the major figures of  the Robin Hood legend, from Robin Hood himself and Little John to Guy of Gisborne. Lastly, ‘Mythic Sherwood’ guides the Game Master through bringing mythic elements and magic into the setting, the primary advice being to keep the effects of magic subtle, whether real or not. The aim being with the introduction of magic or any of the ‘Legends and Monsters’, from dragons and gargoyles to pookas and banshees, is to avoid the campaign from straying into territory already covered by traditional fantasy gaming.

As much content as there is in Sherwood: The Legend of Robin Hood, it is lacking a couple of areas. First, as much as the gazetteer gives context for a potential campaign, a timeline would have been useful to give more context for the history, and second, a better map would have been useful to give more context for the geography. Of course, both of these omissions can be addressed with some research upon the part of the Game Master, but the loss of a piece of art or two would certainly give room for either. 

Physically, Sherwood: The Legend of Robin Hood is a decent little book. It is well written and illustrated with public domain artwork, but it does need an edit in places and the layout could definitely have been tidier. By contemporary standards, it does feel a little too grey and plain in terms of its look, but to be fair, it would not have been greatly improved by being full colour.

Sherwood: The Legend of Robin Hood packs a lot into its seventy-two pages, playable Player Characters, new Edges and Hindrances and skills, NPC write-ups, and both campaign ideas and modes. Together, Sherwood: The Legend of Robin Hood should just about cover anything that a Game Master and her players would want in a Robin Hood campaign in what is a serviceable little supplement.

Fanzine Focus XII: Black Dogs Issue 1

On the tail of Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry.

Black Dogs: Unofficial house-rules and material for Lamentations of the Flame Princess is a new fanzine, which as the title suggests provides support for Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay. Published by Daimon Games, Black Dogs Issue 1 was released in December, 2017 and introduces the publisher’s home setting, provides some house rules, a scenario, and some new monsters.

The issue begins by highlighting the differences between the setting for Black Dogs and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay. The setting is historically based, primarily in Europe, but in the late medieval period rather than the early modern period of Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay and most of its adventures. So the late fifthteenth century rather than the early to mid seventeenth. There is less horror at the heart of the Black Dogs setting although it remains very much a dark fantasy world. Fights are meant to be uncommon and the player characters are ‘good guys’, members of the Black Dogs, an informal network of monster hunters, which was once a religious warrior order excommunicated and wiped out by the church. The church and the peasantry remain fearful of the Black Dogs, but sometimes respect what they do…

The world of the Black Dogs is divided between the urban and the rural. Knowledge, medicine, and science of an advanced nature are to be found in universities and monasteries, and the cities, but the rural areas are some thirty years behind in all three terms. The military is split between those who would wield sword and musket and those who wield lance and wear plate armour. The wild between the towns and cities remains fearful and untamed, perhaps waiting for the Black Dogs to make a difference.

The most notable fact about a Black Dogs campaign is that both the players and the Game Master create more than one character and play the campaign troupe style, switching characters as necessary, including the players taking control of those created by the Game Master. Black Dogs characters look like Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay characters, but have three secondary attributes for each ability. These are Luck, Talent, and Save. The first is burned for re-rolls of the associated ability; Talent is burned to increase the related ability or Save by a point; and Save replaces Saving Throws in the game, being rolled on a single six-sided die. All three are rated between one and six, and once points of Luck and Talent are burned, they are permanently lost. Rolls can be made directly against abilities for various actions and the Game Master is encouraged to opt for a ‘yes, but’ outcome for failed rolls. Other changes at this stage—there will be more in future issues—include basing starting monies off Charisma and rolling two dice for any action or save to handle Advantage or Disadvantage. Overall, the changes are a move away from the lethality of Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay and towards the more player facing mechanics of The Black Hack, catering to both contemporary and Old School Renaissance.

The centerpiece for Black Dogs Issue 1 is ‘Flussburg’, both a location and a scenario. It is a small village of farmers and fishermen on the banks of a river crossed by a ramshackle imperial bridge. The village is highly conservative, the informal council of head farmer, chief fisherman, and village priest resisting all attempts at change, but a family of skilled blacksmiths is fomenting for change—repairs to the bridge, greater taxation, more people and trade, and increased prosperity—and sooner or later the village will come to blows. Besides this, there are threats just lurking beyond the limits of the village, out in the Wild, including mercenaries, trolls, and strange flora and the fruit they bear… Accompanied by a nice map and a decent description, ‘Flussburg’ builds on its set-up with a series of timed events for each of the various factions which starting on day one serve to pull the player characters into what is going on in the fractious village. Supporting ‘Flussburg’ are write-ups of the various NPCs and monsters involved in ‘Trees and Trolls’. ‘Flussburg’ is a pleasing small if ambitious scenario with a good mix of combative, investigative, and roleplaying opportunities.


Physically, Black Dogs Issue 1 is clean, tidy, and well laid out. The writing is good and is an enjoyable read. The fanzine is lightly illustrated, but the artwork is decent enough. The contents of Black Dogs Issue 1 can really be divided into three—setting, rules, and scenario. The least interesting of the three are the rules, but really they are only a start to new rules and mechanics which will be developed in future issues. The setting gives the background to the scenario and lays the groundwork for the scenario and possible campaign which extends out from it. The scenario though, ‘Flussburg’, is a fresh take upon the traditional ‘village in danger’ set-up—and that without a hint of a dungeon—and does a good job of balancing threats internal and external. ‘Flussburg’ is also easily adapted to the Retroclone or rules system of your choice. Black Dogs Issue 1 is an impressive first issue and hopefully future issues will maintain the same standard.

Friday Filler: The Cousins' Filler

In the second half of the fifteenth century, the Wars of the Roses were fought between two rival branches of the royal House of Plantagenet—the House of Lancaster and the House of York—to determine who would rule England. Ultimately, it would lead to the extinction of the House of Lancaster, the defeat of the House of York, and the founding of the House of Tudor, which would rule England until the beginning of the seventeenth century. Were you to want to explore this dynastic conflict by playing a game or two, then the classic boardgame, Kingmaker, is the perfect choice, but that game is out of print and if you can track down a copy, it takes multiple players, and it takes several hours to play. The Cousins’ War, published by Surprised Stare Games, offers an alternative. It is a two-player game, for players aged twelve and over, designed to be played in roughly thirty minutes. Distilling a thirty-year conflict down into micro-wargame, The Cousins’ War combines area control, action card, dice and bluffing mechanics to present a game with a solid theme, involving mechanics, and easy portability. 

The Cousins’ War consists a game board, seventeen Action cards, one Play Aid card, twenty-six wooden cubes, one black cylinder, and three six-sided dice, plus a twelve-page rulebook. The game board is done on thick card and depicts England and Wales and a Turn Track. England and Wales are divided into three areas—South, Central (the Midlands and Wales), and North—and marked with the site of the conflict’s seven major battles. A short history of the Wars of the Roses is given on the back, a nice touch as that would otherwise have been in the rulebook. The Action cards are divided into two types. There is one for each battle, each Battle card giving its date and location, the starting forces present, and the number of Command Points it grants. Command Points are used to add Troops to a player’s Reserve or the Battlefield; Move or Place Influence; Remove an opponent’s Influence. The remaining ten Action cards are Event cards, which can be used in one of two ways. They can be used to generate Command Points or to bring its Primary Event into play. Each Event card also has a Secondary Event which affects an opponent and is triggered if the Event Card’s Round number matches the current Round number.

For example, the ‘Earl of Northumberland’ Event card grants on the one Command Point, but as an Event, it enables a player to ‘Add 1 or 2 cubes to the North Region from your Reserve.’ If played on the second or fourth Round, then the Opponent or Lancaster player may ‘Add 1 cube to any single Region from their Reserve.’

The represent both the Influence and the troops of each House. There are twelve red cubes for Lancaster and twelve white cubes for York, whilst the French are represented by two blue cubes. When placed on the game board, the cubes represent a House’s Influence in each Region, but serve as Troops in a Battle—the French cubes are always Troops. Although nicely presented, the rulebook is not as clearly written as it could be and it assumes that the players have some experience with the mechanics in The Cousins’ War. A careful read through of the rulebook is probably a good idea as is a careful play through.

The Cousins’ War is played out over five Rounds, each consisting of seven Phases. In the first few Phases, players draw and swap Action cards and determine which Battle will be fought during the Round. In the later Phases, the players take it in turn to use Action cards to alter their Influence in the three regions of England and Wales or to bring Troops into a Battle. Attempts to alter a House’s Influence are not a given. There is a chance it may fail, which increases the greater the Influence already has in a Region. Then any Battle is resolved, the winner gaining Influence in the Region where the Battle was fought or an adjacent Region.

Mechanics for battles in The Cousins’ War are essentially ‘Liar’s Dice’. Players take it in turn to roll the three dice and declare the result. The player with the worst result loses cubes or Troops from the Battle and once all of his Troops have been forced from the Battle, he also loses the Battle. The mechanics being ‘Liar’s Dice’ means that the active player does not have to declare the actual result of his dice roll, but can instead Bluff his opponent. His Opponent can either believe him and accept the result, or challenge him as to the veracity of the dice roll. If the challenged declaration is true, the Opponent loses, but if not, the active player loses. What The Cousins’ War allows though, is for a player to actually alter his dice roll by playing an Action card and spending Command Points to alter the values on the dice. Both players continue rolling, declaring, bluffing, and challenging until one House has troops left on the Battle. The winner gains Influence in the Region as well as the Battle card itself.

The end of each Round involves checking to see if the victory conditions have been met. These are met if a player controls all three Regions on the game board; by the player who controls the most Regions at the end of the game; or by the player who has won the most Battles if both players control the same number of Regions.

Despite its size and play time—both small—The Cousins’ War presents each player with plenty of tactical choice. Of course, there is choice to bluff or challenge in Battles, but in the Event cards, each player will really need to give careful thought as to how to get the best out of each card. This is because each has three options—use its Command Points, use its Event, and whether or not its Secondary Event will benefit his opponent. Plus, where to spend Command Points—Influence on the game board or Battles. Winning Battles affects the outcome of The Cousins’ War and may be key to winning it if neither House has sufficient Influence in play.

Physically, The Cousins’ War is very nicely presented. Both cards and game board are well designed and nicely carry through the Wars of the Roses theme. The illustration on the cover of the box is really quite good and it is a pity that none of the cards are illustrated. The rulebook is slightly underwritten, especially if coming to the Action card mechanic for the first time. There are two things that the game could benefit from. One is a second Play Aid card and the second is another set of dice, since the players will ultimately be comparing dice rolls in Battles.

Even though a microgame, The Cousins’ War does feel a bit fiddly in places, especially in the number of Phases which have to played through each turn. It also feels odd to have the three-different mechanics in the one game—the area control, action cards, and ‘Liar’s Dice’—as they would seem to be a bad fit. That said, the luck element of the dice mechanics, both for Battles and determining Influence do balance out the non-luck element of the Action cards. Further, once you play through a game or two, it becomes clear that they each work to direct each player’s Command Points and Influence. It is just not as clear as it should be that the mechanics do interlock.

As a microgame, The Cousins’ War streamlines thirty years of history and conflict with three interlocking mechanics that offer solid play and tactical choice.

—oOo—

Surprised Stare Games will be at UK Games Expo which will take place between June 1st and June 3rd, 2018 at Birmingham NEC. This is the world’s fourth largest gaming convention and the biggest in the United Kingdom.

Bluff to Market

A royal visit is a big boost to any city and Nottingham is no exception. The forthcoming visit of Prince John has swelled the city’s population and thus the size of the potential purses to spend at the city’s market. With the increased demand for goods, merchants from far and wide have an opportunity to make big profits by shipping goods in, or really making big profits by smuggling illegal goods in! Unfortunately, the Sheriff of Nottingham wants to be seen to be doing his job—and that includes inspecting all of the goods coming into his city. If a merchant is found to be smuggling, then the Sheriff will definitely fine him and confiscate the smuggled goods, that is, unless the merchant bribes the Sheriff first!

This is the set-up for Sheriff of Nottingham, a game published by Arcane Wonders. It is a game of bluff, deduction, and trickery in which the players take turns being the Sheriff whilst the others are merchants shipping their goods past the Sheriff. Each turn a player fills a sack with goods and then declares how many and the type of goods that he has in a sack. The Sheriff can only guess at what might be in the sack. He has the right to inspect every sack for illegal goods. If he discovers any, the merchant is fined; if none are found, then the Sheriff must compensate the merchant!

Winner of the 2015 Origins Award for Best Board Game, Sheriff of Nottingham is designed for three to five players, aged thirteen and up. It primarily consists of two-hundred-and-sixteen goods cards, most of which are green and represent legal goods—apples, cheese, bread, and chicken. The rest are red and represent illegal goods—pepper, mead, silk, and crossbows! In addition, there are Royal Goods—they are illegal and marked with a banner and worth extra if a merchant successfully smuggles them past the Sheriff. The Royal Goods are an extra option not used in the base game. Each goods card is marked with two numbers, one that represents the reward gained at game’s end if it gets to a merchant’s Stand, the other being the fine paid if the goods card is confiscated or the Sheriff inspects legitimate goods.

Besides the cards, there are over a hundred coins in various denominations, five Merchant Stand and Merchant Bags in matching colours, the Sheriff marker, and the rulebook. Each Stand illustrates a player’s merchant as well as giving the game order and a place to store successfully shipped goods. the Sheriff marker is used to indicate which player is currently the Sheriff.

All of the components are of a nice quality. The cards look good and feel good in the hand; the money and Stand are of thick card; and the rule book is clearly written. The artwork is excellent, especially the illustrations of the Sheriff and the merchants. A nice touch is that the inner tray holding the game’s components can be taken out of the box and used to arrange them during play.

At game’s start, each player receives fifty gold and six Goods cards as well as a matching Merchant Stand and Merchant Bag. Once the cards have been thoroughly shuffled—and they do need a good shuffle—two discard piles of face-up cards are formed of five Goods each are formed either side of the deck. One player is the starting Sheriff.

Each turn consists of five Phases—Market, Load Merchant Bag, Declaration, Inspection, and End of the Round. All of the players must complete a Phase before moving onto the next and the Sheriff is only involved the last three Phases. In the Market Phase, the players can discard up to five Goods and then draw back up to six. These new Goods can be drawn from the draw pile or either discard pile. Drawing from a discard pile means that a player will have some idea as to what he might draw, but it also gives the Sheriff a hint as to what a merchant has in his hand.

In the Load Merchant Bag, a merchant loads his Merchant Bag with between one and five Goods, then snaps the bag closed. These are the Goods that a merchant wants to take to market. In the Declaration Phase, a merchant states aloud what is in his bag, but can only say the contents consist of Legal Goods, one type of Goods, and how many. For example, “My bag contains three Apples.” This of course could be true, but it might also be a lie. Instead the bag might contain illegal Goods or legal Goods different to those declared.

In the Inspection Phase, the Sheriff is free to open any or all of the merchants’ bags. Before that happens though, the Sheriff is free to demur and the merchants are free to bribe the Sheriff. They can offer him money or Goods from their Stands or their Merchant’s Bag—be they legal or illegal. They can persuade him to open the bag of another Merchant. The Sheriff is free to accept these bribes, negotiate for more, but once he opens a bag or hands it back to its merchant, then no more bribes can be made. The results are final. In the End of the Round Phase, fines are paid if illegal Goods have been found or legal Goods unnecessarily inspected.

Then the role of Sheriff passes to next player and another turn begins. This continues until each player has been Sheriff twice—or three times in a three-player game—and everyone totals up their money and the value of the Goods they successfully shipped. The two players who shipped the most of a Good are crowned the King and Queen of Cheese (or Apples or Bread or…) and score bonus Gold. The merchant with the most money is the winner.

Sheriff of Nottingham is not though, a board game. Its emphasis on social interaction—negotiation, bribery, and bluff—make it a party game. The quality of the cards and the fun of snapping the bags open also give the game a pleasing physicality. Its easy rules and engaging theme also make it an easy game to introduce to and play with non-gamers. This also means that its replay value is not as high and much of the game’s fun depends on who you play with and the game is not as satisfying to play with three players as it is with four or five. Another issue is that game can be won by playing it entirely safe, by not having to smuggle goods past the Sheriff or indeed, bribing the Sheriff and this runs counter to the point of the game. This can be a bit disappointing even as you are bluffing the Sheriff into believing that you cannot be smuggling illegal or mixed goods and forcing him to check your bag and take the consequences.

If you are looking for a well designed, fun party game, then Sheriff of Nottingham is a good choice. It is satisfyingly simple and engaging, perfectly suited to the non-gamer and the gamer looking for a lighter diversion.

Fanzine Focus VII: Burgs & Bailiffs: Warfare Too

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry.

Burgs & Bailiffs is not written with any particular Retroclone in mind. Published by Lost Pages, it is instead a generic fanzine for use with Dungeons & Dragons-style Roleplaying Games that explores aspects of the history that the medievalism of Dungeons & Dragons is based upon. It takes its tone from the strapline, “Life in the Middle Ages were some kind of extremely hardcore live RPG that went on 24 hours a day”, so is thoroughly rooted in the history that Dungeons & Dragons is based upon rather than the fantasy. The first issue, Burgs & Bailiffs: Hunger, Disease, & the Law, as its title suggests, dealt with various subjects, whilst the third, Burgs & Bailiffs: Trinity – The Poor Pilgrim’s Almanack, or, The Handbook of Pilgrimage and Relic Theft focused on the one to no little depth. Published in August, 2013, the second issue, Burgs & Bailiffs: Warfare Too, also focuses on the one issue, though not to the same depth. Indeed, given the depth to which it explores its subject matter, it is no surprise that Burgs & Bailiffs: Trinity took over three years to bring to fruition in December, 2016.

Burgs & Bailiffs: Warfare Too presents seven articles that cover various aspects of warefare in the Middle Ages. It opens with two articles by Lee Reynoldson. The first is ‘Warlord: a Moldvay Class’, a Human Warrior Class in line with Tom Moldvay’s 1981 revision of Basic Dungeons & Dragons. The Warlord adds +1 to group initiative, can rally retainers, employ tactics in co-operation with allies—shield wall, ferocious charge, or wall of spears, and eventually as a Great Leader, recruit a warband. Although not incapable as a warrior, the Warlord is not equal to the Fighter, and a footnote suggests allowing the Class to use arms and armour as a Fighter, but at a cost of increasing the Experience Points needed for each Level. In a party that hires lots or retainers or a campaign that involves a heavy dose of mass combat the Warlord is a useful addition, otherwise it may be just a little too specialised.

The second is ‘Warband: Abstract Skirmishing for Redwald’, which presents a set of rules for handling combat in the author’s Rædwald setting. Although this includes the fielding of Magic-Users in battles, these rules are for handling small scale engagements between warbands, ostensibly in Dark Ages, Saxon England-like period. The rules, which are written for use with the Retroclone of your choice, cover simple sieges too, though only really against hill forts, small walled towns, and the like. The rules are simple and workmanlike enough that the results of the articles that follow in Burgs & Bailiffs: Warfare Too could be used to flesh out the results and so make any such battles memorable.

Ghoul Ghast’s ‘Battlefield Encounters’ provides the first of many tables for handling all things battle-related. In this article, the tables provide encounters at various stages of the battle—during deployment and under missile fire, then at the initial clash and into the mêlée, and depending upon the battle’s outcome, during any pursuit or flight. The last table covers nightfall once the battle is over. Designed to include the fantastical as well as the mundane, the majority of the encounters are understandably combat related, but there are some roleplaying encounters too.

Mike Monaco explores battles and their outcomes for the player characters in two articles. The first, ‘In Battle’ gives suggestions as to what might happen to the player characters in a battle, one table providing options for player characters who refrain from entering combat, another for those who enter combat. It accompanied by a quick and dirty set of rules for handling and resolving battles with the Battle of Hastings given as an example. Overall, these are decent enough rules for handling battles quickly and easily.

In ‘After the Battle’, the second article, Mike Monaco looks at what could happen to a player character in the aftermath of a battle in which the player character was fighting in a defeated or routed unit, was captured, or was on the losing side. This is determined by rolling on the given table, the results ranging from being wounded in the rout and escaping to playing dead, but ending up dead because the enemy’s squires were tasked with ensuring that you are. Mostly, it suggests interesting, if terrible ways of a player character meeting his end. There are twenty results on the table, but it takes eight pages to detail them all because each entry is illustrated by a picture taken from the Maciejowski Bible. Sadly not colour, these images add a gruesome flavour to each character’s end, perfectly in-keeping with the grim nature of Burgs & Bailiffs.

Charles Taylor’s ‘The Cost of Castles’ is the longest and most detailed article in the issue. Primarily focusing on the one castle, the Chateau de Langeais, built in the very early Middle Ages, it details background to the castle being built as well as its structure and the materials, men and skills, and time needed for its construction. It expands to include the support necessary in terms of food and thus both farmland and peasants needed to support such a venture. Although not an exacting examination, the conclusion to the article—which includes a look at much larger, more expensive castles—is that building castles is a costly venture. Surprisingly though, they would actually be a cheaper option in the long run, as maintaining a force of knights was an ongoing expense.

The issue closes with a simple one-page article by B. Eisenhofer and Paolo Greco. ‘Goedendag & Franziska’ describes two weapons of the period. The first is a two-handed club with a spear’s head, which can be set to receive a charge and then used to batter the fallen rider. It is a cheap weapon wielded by peasants. The latter is a more familiar weapon, a short-hafted throwing axe that could impede or break the enemy’s shields. With stats suitable for any Retroclone, the only thing letting this article down is the lack of illustrations.

Physically, Burgs & Bailiffs: Warfare Too is neater and tidier than Burgs & Bailiffs: Hunger, Disease, & the Law. Nor does it employ too tiny a font for it to be read with ease. Barring the ‘After the Battle’ article, it is under-illustrated though, but is not quite as dry as the previous issue.

If there is an issue with Burgs & Bailiffs: Warfare Too, it is the familiarity of the subject matter. After all, how many articles and supplements have there been over the years that cover this subject matter for Dungeons & Dragons? Such a familiarity does not mean that the articles in the issue either bad or uninteresting, indeed both ‘In Battle’ and ‘After the Battle’ are entertaining. Nevertheless, Burgs & Bailiffs: Warfare Too is not quite as interesting as the articles in either Burgs & Bailiffs: Hunger, Disease, & the Law or Burgs & Bailiffs: Trinity – The Poor Pilgrim’s Almanack, or, The Handbook of Pilgrimage and Relic Theft.

—oOo—

Lost Pages will have a stand at UK Games Expo, which will take place between June 2nd and June 4th, 2017 at Birmingham NEC. This is the world’s fourth largest gaming convention and the biggest in the United Kingdom.

Fanzine Focus VI: Burgs & Bailiffs: Hunger, Disease, & the Law

On the tail of Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry.

Burgs & Bailiffs is not written with any particular Retroclone in mind. Published by Lost Pages, it is instead a generic fanzine for use with Dungeons & Dragons-style Roleplaying Games that explores aspects of the history that the medievalism of Dungeons & Dragons is based upon. It takes its tone from the strapline, “Life in the Middle Ages were some kind of extremely hardcore live RPG that went on 24 hours a day”, so is thoroughly rooted in the history that Dungeons & Dragons is based upon rather than the fantasy. Future releases in the series will deal with warfare and then pilgrimages—the latter an excellent and all but definitive treatment upon the subject for Dungeons & Dragons, but the first release dealt with the eponymous hunger, disease, and the law. One way in which the fanzines of today differ from the fanzines of the past is that they never truly go out of print. Thus the first issue, Burgs & Bailiffs: Hunger, Disease, & the Law, published in April, 2013, is still available in Print On Demand.

The subject matters for Burgs & Bailiffs: Hunger, Disease, & the Law are of course, obvious. To that end, the fanzine contains nine articles exploring various aspects of these subjects and more. The issue opens with ‘Medieval Tournaments: The Real Mêlées’, an examination of what really took place at tournaments rather than the idealised versions we have in our heads, so quite simply a whole lot fewer jousts and more bloodied, day long combats for practice and the taking of ransoms, though with a few rules to prevent deaths if not injuries. As well as looking at how and why they were run, the author suggests questions to ask when setting one up in-game and then gives rules for handling the mêlée and the likelihood of fighting random knights with varying skill levels. There are lots of roleplaying opportunities in this one article, which includes some character archetypes that the player characters might encounter on and off the field of mêlée.

A similar if shorter article by Shorty Monster, ‘Bowmen, Class, & War’ looks at the role of the bowmen in English society during the medieval period. It covers how and why they trained and then how they fought in battle—literally, very dirty indeed. There are fewer roleplaying opportunities suggested in this article, but for anyone wanting to play an archer in medieval England, this should be required reading.

Upon first glance, neither ‘Medieval Tournaments: The Real Mêlées’ nor  ‘Bowmen, Class, & War’  pertain to any of the three subjects given in the fanzine’s title. The link to both though, is the law. Certainly it was a English legal requirement that all men of suitable age practice archery in the event that their lords raise them as levies in any conflict—whether for or against the King. As to the mêlées, these were at first banned as being disruptive to the public order due to their popularity, since the ban failed, they were formalised and legalised to prevent disorder and then unnecessary death which would prevent the nobility from carrying their duties to the king. The obvious legally themed content comes from Mike Monaco in the form of two articles. The first is ‘Settling Disputes: Ordeals & Trials’ which looks at Medieval justice and how it was applied. This includes ordeals by various means, including by fire walking, water, and ingestion, trials by jury and by combat, as well as punishment. Lots of gaming potential here of course, whether the player characters are the accused, aiding the accused, or thwarting him. The second is ‘The Night Watch’, which deals with the enforcers of the curfews that affected every town and city who can arrest curfew breakers. Besides giving rules for creating members of the Night Watch, the article lists the exceptions who could legally move about at night, like doctors, midwifes, nightsoil collectors, and so on, as well as random encounters at night for urban and rural settings.

The articles about hunger are more a look who medieval society is fed and what it eats. First, Paolo Greco’s ‘Food Surplus: Cities & Armies’ looks at how important food is and how useful a surplus is in feeding greater areas and even armies. Controlling this supply is potentially ripe with gaming potential, whether dealing with selling it, stealing it, protecting it, and so on. The article also comes with several adventure ideas. This is a solid article that echoes the much earlier Designing a Quasi-Medieval Society for D&D (White Dwarf #29 and White Dwarf #30) and  ‘The Town Planner’ series (White Dwarf #30, White Dwarf #31, and White Dwarf #32), both by Paul Vernon—the author of the well regarded module, Starstone. This article is accompanied by ‘Medieval Cooking or: What is in that Meat Pie?’ by Steve Sigety and and ‘Recipes: Pottage’ by Steve Sigety and Paolo Greco, both articles that add flavour to the issue (though this being the medieval period, just not very much).

Lastly, Jeremy Whalen’s ‘Pestilence & Putrescence’ and then Mike Monaco’s ‘Leeches, Clysters, and a Hole in the Head: Old School Medicine for Grimmer Games’, address the subject of disease. Together, the two provide a look at Medieval medicine and medicinal theories—primarily miasmas and humours, and treatments—including of course, leeches. Trepanation is also recommended as a surprisingly effective treatment for swellings of the brain. In some ways, these two articles show just how ‘hardcore’ life in the Medieval period was and so live up to the fanzine’s strapline.

Physically, Burgs & Bailiffs: Hunger, Disease, & the Law is plainly presented. It is lightly illustrated and then with publically available art. The writing in places could have done with another edit and the font size is just that little too small for easy reading. The writing style is drier than in most other fanzines, but this is due to the dryness of the subject matter rather anything else.

The contents Burgs & Bailiffs: Hunger, Disease, & the Law will add history to any medieval campaign specifically run using Dungeons & Dragons, though the dryness of that history may not suit every Dungeon Master’s campaign. That said, its content will suit more historically-based settings like that of DOM Publishing’s Dark Albion: The Rose War or Green Ronin Publishing’s Medieval Player's Manual as well as the previously mentioned Starstone. A nice touch is that the fanzine does include a good bibliography for further reading, but the fanzine probably contains more than enough history for most Dungeon Masters. Much of the contents may be familiar with veteran gamers, but even if they are, Burgs & Bailiffs: Hunger, Disease, & the Law contains ideas aplenty as to how to bring its content and thus verisimilitude to a Dungeon Master’s campaign.

Piety & Profit

Given the degree of Medievalism present in a great many fantasy RPGs, especially those of the Old School Renaissance, it is often forgotten or ignored the importance of faith, worship, and religion in the lives of all and sundry, from kings and queens to servants and serfs. Even the role and Class of the Cleric in such games ignores this to a certain extent, but a new supplement focuses very much on this importance and shows how it can become a major aspect of a campaign. Burgs & Bailiffs: Trinity – The Poor Pilgrim’s Almanack, or, The Handbook of Pilgrimage and Relic Theft examines the role and importance that going on a pilgrimage, relics, and thus relic theft, including as it does the adage, “Pilgrimages in the Middle Ages were some kind of extremely hardcore live RPG that went on 24 hours a day”. Published by Lost Pages, Burgs & Bailiffs: Trinity is the third in the series of supplements, the previous having been Burgs & Bailiffs: Warfare Too and the next will be Burgs & Bailiffs: For King & Country. This third supplement though is a historical sourcebook that covers the Middle Ages, roughly from the Fifth Century until the Fifteenth, though there is no doubt that its contents would apply much, much later. It is compatible with most Retroclones, but its focus on history and relatively limited number of rules mean that its content could prove useful in any number of RPGs, whether that is Atlas Games’ Ars Magica, Arion Games’ Maelstrom, Games Workshop’s Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Green Ronin Publishing’s Medieval Player’s Manual, and even Pelgrane Press’ Bookhounds of London.

What Burgs & Bailiffs: Trinity – The Poor Pilgrim’s Almanack covers is travel in the Middle Ages, the Medieval approach to death and beyond, relics and their theft, catacombs, and pilgrimage destinations. It also provides a new spell system structure for the Cleric Class and a new Class in the form of the Palmer. It is nicely illustrated with period artwork and some interesting maps, though the lack of an index does impede its use as an easy reference.

Travel it seems in the Middle Ages was a lot more common than most realise. Mostly obviously travel was for military and mercantile reasons, but men and women from all classes also travelled for religious purposes, often as far as the Holy Land and back. They were going on pilgrimage to sites of religious worship as signs of their devotion, prestige, to give thanksgiving, to find a cure, to make a penance, and even to escape a debt or go as someone else’s proxy. In addition to their destination, pilgrims would stop off at other sites along the way—shrines, churches, catacombs, and more. Not only would these sites be associated with particular saints, for example, the tomb of St. Chad in Lichfield or the Basilica of St. Madeleine with Mary Magdalene and John the Baptist in Burgundy, but as the Middle Ages progressed, they came to house holy relics. These consisted of not only clothing and other possessions belonging to the saints, but their body parts too—hair, teeth, nails, and bones!—and even the milk and tears that such relics wept. Praying to, or touching, such relics could grant healing and even miracles, so they became venerated for this as much as their holy providence. The degree of providence was classified into three Classes, ranging from Class III, oil poured over an actual relic and collected or a cobblestone from a street in the Holy Land, up to Class I, such a piece of the True Cross or a bone or body part of an actual saint.

Money though, came to play a great role in the relics and pilgrimage business. There was money to be made in providing travel and shelter to pilgrims and pilgrims made offerings  to shrines—peasants perhaps a votive offering or a coin or two, whilst the rich donated great sums, which in turn could be used to erect and decorate great churches and cathedrals around relics and further enhance the shrines. Since there was money involved, everyone wanted to get in on the game and since not everyone had access to a holy relic, they had two choices. Steal one—either from a holy site or from a tomb or catacomb, or make one. So relics were traded back and forth, stolen or subject to ‘Furta Sacra’ as the theft of relics was known, and manufactured just so that a ‘new shrine’ and its surrounding businesses could get in on the action.

Essentially, this is what Burgs & Bailiffs: Trinity is all about. The player characters are pilgrims, travelling from one end of Christianity to the other, visiting shrines and praying as penances or simply as signs of their devotion. Alternatively, they might be thieves or forgers, plundering tombs and catacombs or faking relics to sell to needy churches or credulous pilgrims. Campaigns built around pilgrimage and relics would involve a lot of travel and the difficulties involved in it, piety or least displays of it, and brigandage and other forms of extortion. Pilgrimages can involve any kind of character, but Clerics might need to pray before a particular relic, Fighters to guard the large groups in which pilgrims travelled, and Thieves because they can steal from both the pilgrims and pilgrimage sites.

Given the subject matter of Burgs & Bailiffs: Trinity, it is no surprise that the one Class it focuses us on is the Cleric. It alters the clerical spell system by making spells require relics as their material component. Two options are given to that end. The first suggests that a Cleric need to possess a relic to cast spells or miracles beyond First Level spells. Similarly, relics can also be used to Turn the undead and aid in healing, the more powerful the relic, the more effective it is. Such relics are not consumed in the casting of spells, but the more powerful the spell, the higher the class of relic required, for example, a Class I relic would be required to cast a spell of Fifth Level and above. In the second option, the Cleric needs to visit particular shrines to learn certain spells and apart from First Level and Second Level spells, a Cleric will need to pray before an altar or shrine in order all other spells. To that end Burgs & Bailiffs: Trinity amends the Clerical spell list to include shrines where they can prayed for and learned. In both options, the Cleric Class is now driven to travel in order to learn his miracles or spells.

The Palmer is a new Class that can work miracles and eventually establish shrines. Yet where the traditionally ordained Cleric gains his spells through divine favour, the Palmer must actually pray at specific shrines to gain spells or miracles. Further, he can Busk through storytelling, the selling of indulgences, and the giving of sermons to make a living, as well as eventually, to establish a shrine to further support himself and have somewhere to pray. The Referee will need to seed a campaign with shrines in order for the Palmer to travel to. This Class is intended to replace the traditional Dungeons & Dragons-style Cleric, perhaps in a dryer, more historical campaign.

A good fifth of Burgs & Bailiffs: Trinity is devoted to shrines and pilgrimage sites from England and Ireland to the Mediterranean and the Levant, though relics and shrines in Near East and Asia are also discussed. The relics themselves are described in some detail, while tables allow the Referee to create his own. A similar treatment is accorded catacombs, with attention paid to actual historical sites, such as those of Rome and Malta, whilst tables enable the Referee to again create his own. Further tables give encounters to have whilst on pilgrimage, boons to be granted pilgrims, and more, while the book ends with tables of adventure seeds.

As good as the material is in Burgs & Bailiffs: Trinity, the book is perhaps lacking in a couple of areas. There is no real discussion of the role of the other traditional Dungeons & Dragons-style Classes in a campaign that focuses on pilgrimages and relics and nor is there any discussion of actual campaigns that focus on pilgrimages and relics. This means that the supplement lacks a certain degree of application.

Burgs & Bailiffs: Trinity feels thoroughly researched and is full of rich detail. How useful a supplement it is, depends upon the role of faith and religion in a campaign, but there is content here that can be simply used to flavour a campaign or used as the basis of a campaign. Burgs & Bailiffs: Trinity – The Poor Pilgrim’s Almanack, or, The Handbook of Pilgrimage and Relic Theft might not necessarily be the most immediately useful supplement, but it is quite possibly the definite supplement on relics and pilgrimages for Dungeons & Dragons or the Retroclone of your choice.

Fenland Fears

The Colour Beyond Time: A Medieval Mythos Mystery is scenario written by John R. Davis, the author of The Jack Hack. It is a medieval mystery adventure with Lovecraftian flavour that describes itself as “An adventure for use with any eldritch horror & mystery roleplaying game.”, essentially a plot without a system. What this means is that the GM can use the system of his choice to run the scenario, be it Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, Savage Worlds, Maelstrom Domesday, or Cryptworld, so long as the system has a means of handling mental shock and instability. Cthulhu Dark Ages would be an obvious fit, although at time of publication, details of this supplement are only hinted at in Cthulhu Through the Ages.

More specifically, The Colour Beyond Time is designed to be played by between three and five players—plus GM—and is set in an area of fenland, much like that of Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, Lincolnshire, and Norfolk, in roughly the year 1100 AD. The player characters are in service of the recently appointed baron, Philip De Guiarme, sent out to assess the southern extent of his barony. This includes the village of Honningsby, an isolated place on the coast. As the scenario opens, they are on their way there, stopping first at the hamlet of Farabridge to stay overnight. Here the party first learns of the dark doings in the Honningsby and its surrounds over which 'greenfire' fell from the sky some months past… Once in Honningsby, the characters will find further strangeness. Villagers seemingly frozen, visions—of both the future and the past, and more.

The Colour Beyond Time is an odd little scenario. There is little combat involved and there is no real confrontation with the alien being that is the cause of the weirdness that has befallen Honningsby and its surrounds. Rather, this is an investigative and interpersonal scenario in which medieval men encounter the aftereffects of a Mythos event. Even the educated amongst them will have little understanding of what has gone on and perhaps never truly will.

Physically, The Colour Beyond Time is a 2.64 MB, five page, black and white PDF available from RPGnow.com. It is best described as decidedly rough and unsteadily ready. Although the artwork is excellent and the layout workmanlike, the scenario is begging for a proper edit. The cartography is also rather scrappy.

Overall, The Colour Beyond Time: A Medieval Mythos Mystery feels underwritten and underdeveloped. It is more of a Mythos vignette than a full scenario, but it is not without a sense of isolation and brutal ignorance that more than fits the setting. It could have been expanded in places and perhaps the inclusion of a set of pre-generated player character backgrounds might not have gone amiss. Nevertheless, there is potential for an session or two—at most—in The Colour Beyond Time: A Medieval Mythos Mystery and perhaps interest enough to examine the forthcoming sequel, After The Mountfall Madness. That is not really too bad for a scenario that costs $1.