Peril in Punjar

“Murder!” is the cry as death stalks the squalid and stinking streets of Spittle-Fields. As fog swirls around what light they carry in the dark and dingy alleys of the district abutting the Plague Gate, the Player Characters discover what will be the first of several bodies of women, accosted on the streets, their bodies slashed open far from where eyes can see, and internal organs cut free before the culprit flees back into the night. It is one hundred years since there were last such killings, a spate of brutal deaths called the ‘Autumn of Terror’, also of women, attributed to a killer never caught, but known only as the ‘Ripper’! Has he returned once again to strike fear into the good folk of some of the grimiest and grimmest quarters of the city of Punjar—Spittle-Fields Market Quarter, bustling by day, abandoned by night, the narrow alleys of Tenements Quarter, the sinister strangeness of White Chapel Quarter, and the bleakness of the Benevolent Craftsmen’s Quarter—or is some manic killing in his name? Can the Player Characters track down the killer down before he strikes again? Can the Player Characters uncover his motives and what they mean for the future of the city? Can the Player Character survive the horror revealed as they discover more? This the set-up for Return of the Ripper: An urban horror investigation for character levels 1-3.

Return of the Ripper: An urban horror investigation for character levels 1-3 is a mini-campaign published by Strange Quark Games following a successful Kickstarter campaign for use with the Dungeon Crawl Classics roleplaying game from Goodman Games. It is also a curious beast. It takes place in Punjar, a city that has been the setting for multiple scenarios in the Dungeon Crawl Classics line, but has not been detailed as a setting apart from Punjar: The Tarnished Jewel. It is a homage to the scenario, Dungeon Crawl Classics #24: Legend of the Ripper with which it shares the same theme. It is also inspired by and a prequel to Dungeon Crawl Classics #75: The Sea Queen Escapes! in that its events can lead into the events described in ‘The Sunken Kingdom of Ru’ in the scenario.

Perhaps the strangest thing about Return of the Ripper is that it is inspired by the Jack the Ripper murders in Victorian London in the late 1880s and it avoids all of the dangers of such adaptations such as giving a rationale behind the killings, such as the Cthulhu Mythos. Its primary method of doing so is by shifting the story to another genre and another city, although one heavily inspired by the London of the Ripper murders and the Victorian era. Its secondary method is to shift the story forward by a century, so what the Player Characters are investigating are murders inspired by Jack the Ripper rather than the murders that he committed. That said, Return of the Ripper is heavily inspired by two deeply connected works. One is Alan Moore’s comic strip, From Hell, and the other is Peter Ackroyd’s Hawksmoor. These are not the only influences upon Return of the Ripper, but together they underpin is cosmology and its architecture. All those influences from Michael Moorcock’s Gloriana to ‘Talon of Weng Chiang’ for Doctor Who are listed in the campaign’s own and extensive ‘Appendix N’. What is clear from this is that the author is fascinated by the Jack the Ripper murders, Ripperology, and its associated conspiracy theories.

The campaign opens with the Player Characters discovering the body of the Ripper’s first victim, Marianne Nickel. They have the chance to examine her corpse and talk to the crowd who have gathered around in the midst of Spittle-Fields Market and gain their first clues. This will give them a name and the details of a witness, which will lead them through Spittle-Fields Market and in and out of the other quarters as they trace Marianne’s movement and history. From there, the trail runs, if not cold, then at least cooler. The problem is not that it is designed as a free-form investigation with the Player Characters free to go where they will in pursuit of clues and further information, but it is written like a free-form urban sandcrawl rather than a dedicated investigation. What this means is that the murder mystery lacks structure that the Judge can easily navigate and follow the clues to reveal more of the mystery behind the murder. The plot and the motivation for the murders are both explained well and there is ‘The Murder Map’ which links the clues. Unfortunately, it is placed at the back of the book and it is not as clear is could have been.

The consequences of this are that the Judge is going to have to study Return of the Ripper quite closely in order to grasp the ins and outs of its plot, do some deconstruction of her own, and put it back together to get the best out of it. Besides ‘The Murder Map’ and the breakdown of the plot, the Judge is given three more victims whose deaths can be used to push the plot further long and a big table of rumours (for which she will need a thirty-sided die) that can be learned from NPCs (named and unnamed) and used as prompts to give the characters and their players a little nudge here and there. Plus, there is another agent with a deep interest in the murders, who may be a help or a hindrance, but is ultimately, a victim.

The investigation will ultimately reveals the culprits behind the deaths, a misogynist cult with grand plans that harness the geometric magic of the architecture of Spittle-Fields and its four quarters. From there, the campaign takes a strange turn, less Victorian urban sandcrawl, first above ground and then below, but a literal sandcrawl across a dimension beyond before delving deep into a pyramid that links to the events of Dungeon Crawl Classics #75: The Sea Queen Escapes!. Here is where the Player Characters will confront the survivors of the cult and its leader and hopefully bring the murderous reign of the Ripper to an end.

If Return of the Ripper is challenging to digest and so present to the players and their characters, it is not a challenge when comes to either detail or flavour. The people and places of this grimy, grotty quarter of Punjar are lovingly and engagingly detailed. There are places described in the write-ups for each of the quarters, such as Value Second-Hand Goods, the Ratcatcher, The Blackguard’s Bar, and others that could appear in future adventures without any changes. This is not to say that Return of the Ripper is the definite guide to Punjar’s streets, but it is a start. Perhaps the oddest addition though, is that of the Butcher of Brisbane from the Fifty-First Century, Magnus Creel, along with his murderous homunculus, Mister Sin! One other aspect of the campaign to note that it is humancentric. All of the NPCs are human, making you wish that there was the Victorian era setting for Dungeon Crawl Classics which would work with the campaign rather than playing in the fantasy genre.

Mechanically, Return of the Ripper details some thirty diseases, from the inconvenient to incurable, that the Player Characters might encounter, or worse, catch and suffer whilst in Punjar. They include Cholera, Dropsy, Typhus, Small Pox, Great Pox, Black Plague, and Bubonic Plague. This is in addition to the minor ailments like Beggar’s Boils, Gout, and Soot Lung listed earlier in the book and which the Commoners might suffer. Given the horrific and bloody nature of the campaign, it also adds rules for both Fright and Nausea. These come into play when the Player Characters encounter something horrifying or revolting, for example, being in an ominously dread place like a fog-swirled graveyard or discovering an eviscerated corpse or viewing disgusting disease symptoms such as maggot infested wounds or being doused in foul liquids like tanning fluids or sewage. This triggers a Difficulty Check and if failed, the player rolls a die equal to the value of Difficulty Check to determine the effect, making full use of the dice range in Dungeon Crawl Classics. This gives a wide variety of checks, from bring anxious for a number of rounds to actually mad (the Judge is recommended to consult The Cthulhu Alphabet for further details) for Fright and from being queasy for a few rounds to catching disease for Nausea. Nausea has an area-of-effect and does not stack, whereas Fright is time-based and does stack, so if a Player Characters is already affected, both the Difficulty Check for the next situation and the associated die rolled for the effect if failed are increased. There is a nice escalation to the effects from Fright so that a Player Character can go from jittery and unnerved to hair turning white and going mad with a lot of different effects in between rather than foisting madness immediately upon them, saving that possibility for towards the end of the campaign.

The campaign is ably supported with a lot of back matter. Not just the Appendix N, which details all of the inspirational reading and watching for the campaign, effectively serving as the designer’s notes, but also a ‘Murder Map’ that links the clues to campaign’s mystery, guides to disease in Punjar, the rules for fright and fear, a glossary of architectural terms, the campaign’s handouts, and a list of sobriquets, or first names. Unfortunately, the latter feels half finished without a list of accompanying surnames.

Physically, Return of the Ripper is a good-looking book. The cartography is clear and easy to use and the writing decent, though it needs an edit in places. The main issue with its organisation is a lack of an index.

That Return of the Ripper: An urban horror investigation for character levels 1-3 needs effort upon the part of the Judge to pull it apart and understand its plot and its various parts is disappointing, but that plot is actually a rather good Ripperology pastiche and the parts do show off the author’s fascination with the subject matter. If not as easy to prepare and run as it should be, Return of the Ripper: An urban horror investigation for character levels 1-3 has the potential to be a great adventure, a Victorian horror fantasy rife with grit and grime, determination and degradation, and eventually, hope and redemption.

Friday Fantasy: Creep, Skrag, Creep!

Something is really, really wrong. Your last memory was of the dinner to celebrate your good fortune, being selected to leave your isolated island home of Alviz and travel to the coastal town of Lys where you have been promised work in the copper mines and a chance of a better future. Then it was waving goodbye to friend and family aboard the sailing ship the Star of Nostro, captained by Kristene de Keradel. Now you are awake with a headache, a stiff back, and a tongue like the bark of a tree, in the low light and stench of the ship’s hold, your wrist shackled to a pole by a rusty chain. You are not alone. There are other villagers chained to the same pole as you are and then more chained to other poles scattered around the hold, some alive, but others dead and bloated, the source of the stench that is lodged in your nostrils. Then one of your fellow prisoners screams. There is movement coming out of the darkness, black dragons scuttling between those bound to the poles, and then one of them snaps at a prisoner who shrieks in pain as with a crunch the thing bites off his hand!

This is the startling set-up to Dungeon Crawl Classics Horror #5: Creep, Skrag, Creep!, a scenario published by Goodman Games for use with the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. It is both a horror and a ‘Character Funnel’. A ‘Character Funnel’ is a signature feature of Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game which takes Zero Level Player Characters—usually four per player—and pushes them through a Zero Level dungeon. Devoid of the abilities, spells, combat acumen, and Hit Points that a Class and even First Level would grant them, the Player Characters must instead rely upon their previous occupation and whatever equipment that granted them, the few Hit Points they possess, their wits, whatever they can find or scavenge, and above all, luck. The ‘Character Funnel’ has proven to be popular feature Dungeon Crawl Classics, not just to play, but also to design, because each has to present the right mix of death and danger which makes a total party kill a high probability, yet still allow for some of the Player Characters to survive and so ascend to First Level. Dungeon Crawl Classics Horror #5: Creep, Skrag, Creep! is the second Horror ‘Character Funnel’ for Dungeon Crawl Classics after Dungeon Crawl Classics Horror #1: They Served Brandolyn Red.

The opening scene of the scene drops the Player Characters into the middle of the action, desperately trying to break free of their chains as they fend off the black dragons that want to chomp down on them and their fellow prisoners. Survival is their priority, but they are also going to want answers to questions like ‘Where are the crew?’ and ‘What are those creatures?’ The Player Characters will find an answer to the first question, but finding an answer to the second will take longer. The crew are dead, and whatever those creatures are, they are going to stalk and attack the Player Characters—and worse, there is something much worse somewhere on the ship. The mother! It will attack the Player Characters—wherever they are aboard the vessel—again and again for it wants something from each and every one of them! Can the Player Characters survive long enough to work out what is going on and even longer to find a way out of the horrifying situation they are in?

By now though, the players should have worked out what is going on. The dead and gutted crew, the monsters that scuttle to attack again and again, and a ship adrift… If those clues are not enough for them to work it out, then the name of the ship that the Player Characters marooned aboard should. In fact, the name of ship, the Star of Nostro, should be a dead giveaway. For Dungeon Crawl Classics Horror #5: Creep, Skrag, Creep! is effectively an adaptation of the film Alien for Dungeon Crawl Classics, if not in deep space where no one can hear you scream, then on the high seas where everyone can!

Dungeon Crawl Classics Horror #5: Creep, Skrag, Creep! is as much an investigative scenario as it is a horror scenario. It is also very self-contained, limited to the Star of Nostro and its cargo holds, cabins and quarters, rigging, and its three decks. There are plenty of clues to be found as what has happened, but not necessarily enough time to find them all as the creatures and its offspring return to strike again and again. However, determining what has happened aboard the Star of Nostro is only half of the scenario. The second half is all about getting off the ship, because much like the film that inspired it, ultimately, there is no way for the Player Characters to stop the predations of the creature. There are clues on and about the ship that suggest a way for the Player Characters to escape the horrors that they are suffering, and if the scenario does not end in a Total Party Kill, they will have their chance in a big showdown.

There is plenty of advice for the Judge on running the scenario as well as making adjustments to tone down its lethality. Its default lethality works well for a one-shot or convention game, but if run as part of a campaign, the Judge may want to adjust it down a little. In addition, there are tables for ‘Rumors and Personality Quirks’ which add flavour and detail and help bring the Player Characters to life—at least for as long as that lasts—and ‘Sailor Tattoos’, the patterns for which can be found aboard the ship. If applied correctly, these can provide a benefit similar to the star signs that a player rolls for during character creation, working as temporary magical items. Further support is provided in the appendices, which list people, places, and things, full details of the creature, and a means of tracking it movement timing throughout the scenario, all of which makes the scenario easier to run.

Physically, Dungeon Crawl Classics Horror #5: Creep, Skrag, Creep! is as well presented as you would expect for a scenario for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. The writing, the artwork, the cover in particular, and the cartography are all excellent.

Probably the very last thing that anyone was screaming for is a scenario for Dungeon Crawl Classics or any old School Renaissance retroclone that does Alien on the high seas. Yet Dungeon Crawl Classics Horror #5: Creep, Skrag, Creep! is going to make the players scream in the opening scene, groan once they work out what is going on, and then scream and scream again as the creature keeps coming back for more. By its very nature and by its very inspiration, Dungeon Crawl Classics Horror #5: Creep, Skrag, Creep! demands more engagement than the average scenario for Dungeon Crawl Classics. If the players do buy into the survival horror of Dungeon Crawl Classics Horror #5: Creep, Skrag, Creep! and if any of their characters live to tell the tale and make First Level, then they really will have survived a horrifying ordeal!

—oOo—

Dungeon Crawl Classics Horror: The Corpse That Love Built – 2018 Halloween Module was the previous scenario in the series •

The next scenario is Dungeon Crawl Classics Horror #6: The Web of All-Torment.

Dark Tales of the Dark Wine Sea

What if everything that Homer wrote of the greatest journey across the ancient world was false? What if its hero, the greatest general of the forces arrayed before the walls of Troy led by Agamemnon, renowned for guile and his cunning, was a liar? A bully and a freebooter, a reaver and a ravager, a slaver and a pirate. What if Odysseus and his men sailed the dark wine sea, from one end of the Mediterranean to the other—and beyond, not in search of a way home denied to them by the gods, but in search of plunder as recompense for the ten years before the walls of Troy? And what if you sailed with him? Roleplaying games and supplements, such as the island-hopping campaign of Agon from One Seven and Trojan War from Green Ronin Publishing, cast the Player Characters as the heroes, serving their kings and adventuring in the name of their gods. Not in Odyssey: Black Tales. This is a roleplaying game which casts the Player Characters not as ancient Greek heroes, but as the marauders and the pirates under the command of the wily Odysseus. Yet as the lost King of Ithaca commits them to darker and darker deeds in search of plunder, there are some who suffer pangs of conscience. Will they follow the commands of Odysseus and remain Marauders or will they answer the call of conscience and morality and reject his orders, instead becoming Saviours who protect the peoples that Odysseus targets?

Odyssey: Black Tales is a ‘Class and Level’-style roleplaying game from Italian publisher, Officina Meningi. Published via a successful Kickstarter campaign, it is one-part comic book, three-parts roleplaying game and has a mature, if not quite adult, tone. The artwork, primarily consisting of two-page spreads, is very good, but whilst not explicit, does depict scenes of both torture and sexual acts. These are not illustrative of Odyssey: Black Tales’ game play, but rather of what monsters Odysseus and his crew have become and what the Player Characters revolt against—at least if they follow the Saviour path in an attempt to redeem themselves.

Odyssey: Black Tales presents its core game and associated game play first, interspersed between the comic book style scenes of the monstrousness of Odysseus and his crew. Six acts, from ‘The Sacking of Ismarus’ to ‘Seizing the Sirens’, take the crew across the Mediterranean, including partaking of the forbidden delights of the Lotus Eaters, battling the Cyclops, and selling souls on the shores of Hades, before the journey ends for the crew—if not, famously, Odysseus—as the Sirens take their revenge and the fate of the Player Characters is decided. Structurally, each act consists of three phases: ‘The Encounter’, ‘The Pact’, and ‘The Pillaging’. ‘The Encounter’ is when the crew come upon more People of the Sea and Odysseus gives orders as to how he wants to deal with them and the temperament of the People of the Sea, whether or not they are hostile, is determined. Away from the ship, the Player Characters together make ‘The Pact’ and forge a secret alliance that will raise Odysseus’ ire should he find out. This pact will vary according to whether the Player Characters act as Marauders, still in service to Odysseus, or as Saviours attempting to undermine Odysseus’ efforts to plunder the peoples of the Mediterranean. The reward will differ depending upon the role that the Player Characters decide to adopt. In general, the Saviours’ reward is narrative in nature, whereas the Marauders will receive material and materiel rewards. As the King of Lies, Odysseus will come to suspect the Player Characters if they act as Saviours and they may be forced to act otherwise against the People of the Sea to hide their intent, which will certainly not endear the Player Characters to the People of the Sea, who will come to regard them as Marauders anyway they are trying to avoid this. Consequently, this forces the Player Characters to tread a fine line, but this may not be enough to escape Odysseus’ wrath.

The core play of Odyssey: Black Tales is built around the six acts of Odysseus’ anger and avarice with his path to redemption and the repairing of his reputation taking place after he has confronted the Player Characters and escaped the revenge of the Sirens. The Cantor—as the Game Master is known in Odyssey: Black Tales—and her players can play through the six acts and finale, and be done. However, there is scope for the Cantor to expand her campaign by adding Quests, whether of her own creation—perhaps inspired by the maps in the Odyssey: Black Tales Map Pack—or adapted from other adventures. To that end, there are notes for the Cantor for handling roving monsters, doors and chests, secret paths, traps, and looting, as well as a bestiary, so that she can run a dungeon. The bestiary gives stats for ordinary men and women as well as classic creatures from Greek mythology, such as Cerberus, Chimera, Cyclops, Harpy, and so on. However, there is no advice as to what a typical quest for Odyssey: Black Tales might look like and how it might play. This leaves the Cantor with a lot of work to do unaided.

In terms of what the players roleplay, there are five Classes. The Spartan is a peerless warrior; the Athenian is a cultured warrior, able to read and write and well versed in the arts and philosophy; the Achaean is diplomatic and cunning; the Healer is a highly disciplined aesthete who harnesses spiritual energy to enhance his perception and change the laws of physics; and the Oracle instinctively understands the laws of sorcery to cast spells. Each Player Character has three abilities—Valour, Intelligence, and Cunning—which range between one and twelve. Each is primarily determined by the Player Character’s Class, but may be adjusted according to the difficulty that the Cantor wants to set her campaign at. The Player Character has Endurance Points, the equivalent of his Hit Points, whilst Strike Points represent the amount of damage that the Player Character can inflict, whether from a weapon or other source (but it can come from external sources). Protection is the equivalent of Armour Points, whether from actual armour or another source.

Creating a Player Character is simple. The player selects a Class and rolls the character’s Abilities. The Player Character receives some basic equipment and some money to buy more. The player also chooses a name (though there is no list included) and can add a background if he wants. The Player Character is Level 1 and has the Rank of Novice. The process is fast and simple.

Theokleia

Class: Oracle

Level: 1 Rank: Novice

Valour: 5 Intelligence: 7 Cunning: 4

Endurance Points: 5

Abilities: Sorcery

Equipment: Dagger, Burlap Sack

Mechanically, Odyssey: Black Tales is relatively simple. To have his character undertake an action, a player rolls six-sided dice and attempts to roll under the appropriate Ability. The difficulty determines the number of the dice the player rolls and the method of determining the outcome. For example, for an Easy task, the player rolls three dice and adds the two lowest results; rolls two dice and adds them together for a Normal task; and three dice and adds the two highest results for a Difficult task. A roll of two ones is always a success, but if two sixes are rolled on any dice, it is a critical failure. Overall, it feels inconsistent and it is not easy to grasp.

Combat uses similar mechanics. Initiative is determined by a six-sided die being rolled and the result deducted from the combatant’s Cunning. Combatants act in order, highest to lowest. In a round, a combatant, whether creature, NPC, or Player Character, can move or move and then act. Movement is intended to be handled using maps and figures, in particular the Odyssey: Black Tales Map Pack, but does not have to be. A combatant’s Valour determines the number of squares that can be moved. A combat action can be a Melee Attack, Ranged Attack, Defence, Manoeuvre, Retreat, Mental Power Activation, Recalling a Spell, or Casting a Spell. Of these, Defence increases the difficulty to successfully hit the defender; Manoeuvre covers any other action from changing a weapon and standing up from a prone position to picking a lock and drinking a potion; Retreat means moving towards or getting to an Escape Square on the map (or the equivalent if not using a map); Mental Power Activation is required to use the powers of the Healer; Recalling a Spell is needed to ready a spell to be cast; and Casting a Spell can be of any spell that an Oracle holds in his memory. An Oracle can hold as many spells as he likes in his memory, but there is a penalty to successfully cast a spell in combat if the Oracle holds multiple spells in his memory.

In order to successfully attack, a Player Character must make a successful Valour check. The Difficulty is Normal, meaning that two dice are rolled and added together. To determine the Strike Points—or damage—the player rolls a number of dice determined by the size of the weapon. One six-sided die for a light weapon, two for a medium weapon, and three for a heavy weapon. At higher experience Levels, a player adds more dice to this roll. The defender rolls dice equal to the Protection rating of any armour, natural or worn, and this is subtracted from the total number of Strike Points. If the Strike Points are reduced to zero, the attack inflicts no damage, but if not, the remainder are subtracted from the defender’s Endurance Points.

One oddity is the possible ‘Additional Effects’ for any attack, ranged or melee. If twelve is rolled on any attack, an Additional Effect is potentially triggered. This occurs whether the attack is successful or not. It can result in the attacker getting another attack, knocking the defender or his weapon to the ground, or even the defender striking back! Since most attacks are at Normal Difficulty and two dice have to be rolled, this means rolling double six. It is possible for a Player Character to have a Valour of twelve, the maximum value allowed by the gods, whether by increasing it through experience or setting the overall difficulty of the game to high at the start of the campaign. However, the Additional Effect is not based on skill, or rather on Ability. It is simply a lucky roll, and for almost every situation will occur when the attacker fails.

The casting of magic requires an Oracle to recall a spell to his memory, and he can hold as many spells in his memory as he wants, although this imposes a penalty to cast any spell during combat. The Oracle starts play knowing a wide range of destructive, psychic, and special spells, and will learn rituals at each experience Level gained. To successfully cast a spell, an Oracle’s player must succeed at an Intelligence check at Normal difficulty, minus the Complexity of the spell, which ranges from one to four. For example, Harmonious Lament is a Psychic spell that makes it harder for an attacker to successfully strike an opponent and has a Complexity of one, whereas Curse inflicts five six-sided dice’s worth of Strike Points and has a Complexity of four. If the attempt fails, the Oracle does not forget the spell, but can attempt to cast again, but with a bonus to the roll that reduces the Complexity penalty. This can be done again and again until the Complexity value is reduced to zero or the spell is cast.

Also included in Odyssey: Black Tales are rules for group checks and challenges, and the setting is supported by a decent equipment list and a lengthy loot section. The latter better supports long term play since the campaign itself gives out specific loot in each act. There is advice too on playing Odyssey: Black Tales solo or with two players, and these are workable enough.

One of the claims about Odyssey: Black Tales is that the rules are compatible with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, Old School Essentials, and Mörk Borg. This is both true and untrue. It would be challenging to adapt it straight from the core rulebook, whereas what the Game Master will actually need to facilitate the process with ease is the expansion supplement, Black Tales – Adventures in the Mediterranean and Conversion Kit.

Physically, Odyssey: Black Tales is stark jet black throughout with white text and great art. The book is slightly overwritten in places, especially when trying to explain the rules, but a careful read-through is enough for them to be clear.

Odyssey: Black Tales wants to be two things and it succeeds at one and does not succeed at the other. In the first, it wants to be a storytelling game, telling the unrevealed epic of Odysseus before he retold it, not as an anti-hero, but as a villain, and the fall of the Player Characters who stood by him and the redemption of the Player Characters who stood against him, in secret at first, and then openly in the final act. Across the six acts and the finale, Odyssey: Black Tales gives the structure for the players and their characters to tell that tale. In the second, Odyssey: Black Tales wants to take the players and their characters beyond that epic. This could be after the end of the campaign and its confrontation between Odysseus, the Player Characters, and the Sirens, but it could be an entirely different campaign in the Ancient Greek world. To support that, Odyssey: Black Tales includes rules for Player Character advancement, monsters, loot, and various different situations, particularly if a dungeon-like environment is involved. What Odyssey: Black Tales does not provide is background to the Ancient Greek world or its gods and mythology or any advice for the Cantor, whether that is really on running Odyssey: Black Tales or on creating content of her own. In fact, the Cantor is left to her own devices and experience to that end. This is where Odyssey: Black Tales fails.

Odyssey: Black Tales is the basis for a solid, Old School Renaissance-style roleplaying game set in the Ancient Greek world that ably supports its retelling of Homer’s Odyssey with Odysseus as the villain and the path to his own rehabilitation as a hero. There can be no doubt that Odyssey: Black Tales has scope for play beyond this arc, but the support for that is simply not present. In the hands of an experienced Cantor, this is not an issue, but for anyone else, it makes the wider roleplaying and storytelling possibilities of Odyssey: Black Tales a challenge.

Friday Fantasy: Outcast Unseelie and the Ooze Between

Four centuries ago, the dwarves mining the Brackenhoorg struck the mountain’s knotted nexus of lye lines and in the process caused the mine to be flooded with verdigrint ooze. As a consequence, the Dwarves shut the mine down and closed it up before fleeing the mountain. Four weeks ago, fey lord and vintner, Slaveral, steered his planar-travelling villa into the mountain and crashed it into the mines. Four months ago, he accidentally attempted to poison the Unseelie Queen with a cold-iron-laced bottle and after she turned him and his servants into giant bugs, banished him from the realm of the fey. Inside, Lord Slaveral, now an elephant-sized flea, drank deep of the verdigrint ooze and oozed himself into a coma. Yet Lord Slaveral is not without his followers beyond the confines of them mine and now, following a rockslide that exposed the gatehouse to the mine, a band of his cultists has entered the old mine to worship and free their lord. The cultists are not the only ones to learn that the mine is accessible once again. The wizard Calamastes is said to be prepared to pay for a rubbing of an old Dwarven Everstone located in the mine; the mine boss, Dericka Horn, recalls stories of burrowing creatures that worked the Brackenhoorg and wants an intact egg; local Halfling, Kasden Orchenhopper, claims his son went into the gatehouse with his ‘bug-faced’ friends and wants him found; and the Onyx Ducke is said to have donated a Staff of Healing to the Brackenhoorg before the mines flooded. Anyone of these could be reason enough to want to explore Brackenhoorg.

This is the set-up for Outcast Unseelie and the Ooze Between, an ooze overlaid, gunge gooped, slimed slathered scenario from Slime Mind Studio for use with ShadowDark, the retroclone inspired by both the Old School Renaissance and Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition from The Arcane Library. Funded via a Kickstarter campaign, it presents a weird, cloyingly sweet miasmic dungeon for a party of Player Characters of First to Third Level. As they enter the former mine, the Player Characters will discover every surface is covered or encrusted with a green slime (not the Green Slime monster of classic Dungeons & Dragons fantasy) that oozes out of cracks, drips from the ceiling, and pools on the floor. Worse, it adheres to metal, blood, and fire, eating into metal and covering it with a patina that leaves weapons severely weakened and armour inflexible, as well as attracting bugs, slugs, and snails that get super drunk on its sweetness. Places are infested with Perish Lillies, a plant with a red flower and blood-sucking thorns that can release a sparkly, psychedelic pollen! Verdigools, ooze-drowned dwarves, lurk here and there; the Goolette, a hulking, slavering lizard dripping green slime stalks the halls; and jolly, murder-living cultists dedicated to Slaveral, seek new victims to sacrifice when not enjoying the steamy shrine/spa where everyone in the mine can enjoy the relaxing pool of warm saliva!

The design of both the scenario and the dungeon is dominated by the colour green with splashes of red here and there. The dungeon itself is very nicely designed. The mine level sits atop the remains of Lord Slaveral’s damaged inter-planar villa and its grounds. Every entry is presented in a clear, easy format with bullet points that enable the Game Master to work straight from the page. Sound plays an important role in the dungeon, such as the occupants of a neighbouring room which can hear loud noises made by the Player Characters, slurping sounds from another room, and so on. There is a dynamic feel to the dungeon, at least in terms of its physicality. There are some fantastic locations such as a tunnel which is blocked with scarlet lilies that have blood-sucking thorns and if cleared will regrow if it has a source of blood—and there happens to be the corpse of cultist entangled in its roots; an ‘Ooze Cascade’, an emerald waterfall of verdigrint ooze that has been frozen by a fireball-slinging cultist whose body is encased in the waterfall(!); and the ‘Steamy Shrine’ filled with green steam created from a mix of verdigrint ooze aerated by a spit spewing mask worn by a statue and due to a widely-known curse that turns the tongue into a grub that east everything, is treated as neutral ground. In general, the mines level is more interesting than that of Lord Slaveral’s shunted villa.

There can be no doubt that Outcast Unseelie and the Ooze Between is delightfully foul, fetid, and fuggy in its atmosphere and ambiance, but the scenario does not quite work in terms of storytelling. To begin with, the hooks are underwritten, and apart from the missing Halfling, Meck, do not personalise the reasons why the Player Characters would want to delve very far in the Brackenhoorg. Of course, the Brackenhoorg has only recently opened up, so chronologically, it might be challenging to develop interesting hooks, but once the Player Characters are in the mine, the scenario does not go out of its way to pull them in. Relying upon a combination of player and character curiosity is not enough. The environment itself is off-putting, the green verdigrint ooze encrusting everything and making equipment harder to use, impeding their progress and given that Outcast Unseelie and the Ooze Between is meant to be a puzzle dungeon, the puzzle aspects of the dungeon are really pushed into the background, as are, to a lesser effect, the Fey aspects of the dungeon. Further, it is not easy to bring the aims of the NPCs into play in the dungeon. Which is disappointing given that they are behind what has happened so far in the mine. There is a timeline of events that will happen if the Player Characters do nothing, but these have very little effect upon the mine as a whole. What it more needed is a stronger idea of the events that will happen and what the NPCs will do if the Player Characters actually do something. For example, what if the cultists and their leader fail in their plan to sacrifice another NPC? The major NPCs are presented in an accessible format, which does include motivations, but it is simply not enough.

Physically, Outcast Unseelie and the Ooze Between is superbly presented. The layout, the artwork, and the cartography are excellent, contributing to so much of the atmosphere of the scenario.

Marvellously mucculent and oozily original, Outcast Unseelie and the Ooze Between is a genuinely atmospheric and different dungeon. It should be, could be, a great dungeon, but ultimately, the Game Master needs to develop its plot and the aims of the NPCs to make them easier and more obvious for the players and their characters to engage with them. Do that and Outcast Unseelie and the Ooze Between has the chance to really shine with an oily sheen as it deserves and be a truly memorable adventure.

The Other OSR: Wraithborn

What happens when you die? Does your soul ascend to heaven and eternal peace as a reward for your piety and lifetime’s worth of good deeds? Are you cast down into hell as punishment for your sins and impropriety, suffering an eternity of torment and agony? Or are you washed ashore of somewhere in between, a liminal space that might be a purgatory, a place from which you move on, your soul washed of your sins, or simply trapped in the lands that border on nothing? Awakening under a blood red moon in lands of perpetual night, not living, not dead, but undead, the memories of who you once were stripped away from you and what cords of faith you had in life with the gods cut in twain. In lands where vampires proudly walk the streets and quest for more lands to conquer and blood to take, where the Fae quail from their vengeful god in their Lonely Isles, where mechanical monsters hunt the Mystland to taunt and torment the people hidden within their fortresses, and where in the perpetual lunar night, silver falls as rain the Ever Dusk to burn and scourge the skin and souls of the undead. Renounced, rejected, and reviled by those gods, the majority undead take on lives and roles that they might have had in life, though they cannot recall what they were. Others rise above that, perhaps becoming the monsters that their new forms embody, revelling in their new nature and imposing it on others, but others seek to rise above that, seeking honour and enlightenment even though there is no way to pass through the Veil that the gods have placed around the lands that make up their new home. These lands are the Tortured Isles in the world of S’Gàth, where the undead know that if they die, it is not permanent and they cannot pass on. Instead, they can only be reborn as undead again, memories lost of what they were, ready to start again.

This is the setting for Wraithborn: Role Play in the Realm of the Undead, a roleplaying game published by Theatre Macabre following a successful Kickstarter campaign. Mechanically Wraithborn is based upon Mörk Borg, the Swedish pre-apocalypse Old School Renaissance style roleplaying game designed by Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell and also published by Free League Publishing. A player rolls a twenty-sided die, modifies the result by one of his character’s abilities, and attempts to beat a Difficulty Rating of twelve, though the Difficulty Rating can be higher or lower. The Difficulty Rating may go up or down depending on the situation, but whatever the situation, the player always rolls, even in combat or as Mörk Borg terms it, violence.

In terms of what you play, creating Player Characters in Wraithborn  adds tables for determining personality, physique, wealth, and monstrous feature. There are optional rules for each Player Character’s cursed existence—inspired by his monstrous feature, what his destined purpose might be, and Omens. The latter are tied to the Player Character’s destined purpose and work as gifts, and as he gains Levels, gives him options in terms of altering reality, reading the passage of time, hearing the unsaid, and manipulating the aether. All of these are optional, but they add depth and detail to a Player Character. One notable addition to a Player Character in Wraithborn is a fifth stat, ‘Clarity’, which is measure of a Player Character’s magic casting ability, memory, and intelligence, pushing Wraithborn away slightly from its Mörk Borg roots and towards a more traditional roleplaying game. 

The ten Classes in Wraithborn consist of Blood Seeker, Damphyr, FaeBound Daemon, Ironclad, Lunari Mage, Stormbringer, Wraithborn, Wyld Kin, Wyvern Rider, and Zarowka. The IronClad are faithful warriors who serve the IronLairds and who sought out and destroyed Heaven’s Gate, one of the events which triggered the Veiling of the Tortured Isles by the gods, and now protect the MystLand. Vampires come in several types, but hunger for blood and all practise Haematology or Bloodcraft and cast Blood Curses. Vampires in the Tortured Isles thirst for domination and sail from the north across the Severed Seas in their red-sailed ships and in the cities they conquer, they store the blood they tithe in banks. All vampires need to drink blood, and they suffer penalties if they do not . However, unlike a true Vampire, the Damphyr must drink daily, but can transform into vampiric beasts, create tonics, grow vampiric wings, gain greater presence, call forth the legions of the dead, and so on. Damphyr also suffers from ageing. The Blood Seeker is a hybrid Damphyr-arachnid whose spider-like protrusions can pierce victims and directly draw blood from them to store in the blood abdomens on his back and collect them for his master’s blood banks or sell them as part of the Blood trade. The Wyld-Kin connects to the natural world—both flora and fauna—through lyrical telepathy, can transform into both, taking on bestial forms such as arachnids, bears, and more.

A Wyvern Rider is tethered or soul-bound to the wyvern he rides, whilst the Zarowka is an incorporeal practitioner of umbral magic, his player spending Reaction Points to cloak others in Umbral Armour or with Drown in Darkness, suffocating and blinding them, or set them alight with Radiance or set a Light Trap of crystalline shards. The Stormbringer is so attuned to the Aetheric Elements that he can adapt and strange his physical form to embody Elemental properties of S’Gàth—flesh, gold, oil, salt, and stone. The Lunari Mageis a Fae who draws upon the light of the lost sun reflected off the Moon to cast magic, the power varying according to the Lunar cycle, whilst  the FaeBound Daemon is drawn from the Realm of Infernal Fire and bound in the body of a dead Fae and so suffer persistent Red Rot, but command powers of flame outside of magics of S’Gàth. Unfortunately, the creation process is not easy with a lot of paging back and forth through the book to look at the basic steps and then looking at individual Classes and then the various elements of each Class.

Wraithborn uses a unique magic system built around Aetheric Elements—flesh, gold, oil, salt, and stone. Instead of simply casting spells and forgetting them or using a simple points system, spellcasters invest dice of three types in spells to cast them. Ritual or six-sided dice are a caster’s inherent magical ability; Moon or four-sided dice represent the fleeting magical influence of the Aether; and Phase or eight-sided dice represent the phases of the Moon, but are only available to Fae. Ritual dice are gained as part of the Player Character’s Class and refreshed daily, whereas Moon dice are gained from in-game activities, such as killing foes, absorbing power, making offerings, and so on. When a player wants his character to cast a spell, he invests dice in an attempt to equal or exceed the casting threshold of the spell. Moon dice can also be used to boost the subsequent die roll. This is a standard roll of a twenty-sided die and its result will not only determine if the spell is successfully cast or not, but also if the dice are expended as result of the casting attempt. Further, elements can be combined to create new elements, so that a combination of flesh and oil make blood, gold and stone make steel, and so on. This is not without its complexity in comparison to spellcasting systems in other roleplaying games—especially those in the Old School Renaissance—but it also means greater player involvement and flexibility. The roleplaying game’s spellcasting Classes grant extra bonuses with the system. For example, the Stormbringer attunes to two elements daily to grant extra dice, whilst the Lunari Mage gains extra dice that are better depending upon the phase of the Moon.

Wraithborn oozes flavour and atmosphere, but it is a roleplaying game with problems. It provides some great Player Character options and a nicely done new magic system, but it does not help the Game Master with advice on how to run it—beyond addressing the horror of the setting before play and not revelling in this aspect of the setting—or really how to set up a campaign or what to do with it. It does not help in this with the lack of a scenario, whilst there are solo play rules, these are brief, and perhaps best work as a series of prompts for the Game Master rather than something to use to generate long term solo play. To be fair though, there is a scenario at the end of The Tortured Isles, the campaign setting for Wraithborn, but that is in another supplement.

Physically, Wraithborn: Role Play in the Realm of the Undead is vibrant swathes of black and red, swirled in with other colours and classic pieces of art. As good as it looks and as much atmosphere as it imparts, it is a problem. It takes the Doompunk art style of Mörk Borg and over-energises it, not only making it a challenging read (especially if you have conditions such as colour blindness or dyslexia), but also making content and details difficult to find. This could and should have been offset by an index, but it lacks one. This is an error of judgement for a volume that really needs one. 

Wraithborn: Role Play in the Realm of the Undead is the grim dark of Mörk Borg twisted and made even darker and grimmer under a perpetual night and a waxing, waning blood red moon and storm clouds of silver in which the undead twist and turn, wondering where they came from and wondering what the future holds, knowing that it holds nothing. It is potentially, a great sequel to the apocalyptic drowning of the last land of Tveland, as foretold by the prophecies of the Two-Headed Basilisks in Mörk Borg. Of course, it also stands as a roleplaying game in its own right. Or rather not quite. Amidst the interesting Player Character options and the sharp tang of its magic system, as well as the descriptions of the Tortured Isles, Wraithborn hints at possibilities and ideas, but it never really examines what the objective of the roleplaying game is or what it is that the Wraithborn do in S’Gàth. Wraithborn: Role Play in the Realm of the Undead is ripe with play options and drips atmosphere, but really is awaiting a Game Master with good ideas or a campaign.

Squawk Borg

If Pirate Borg pitches itself as the “Worst Pirate RPG Ever Made™!”, then get ready for the “Worst Parrot RPG Ever Made™!”. Well, to be fair, compared to pirates, there really is not any competition when it comes to parrot-themed roleplaying games. In fact, the only other one that springs to mind is Pirates of Pugmire from Onyx Path Publishing, and that actually also does pirates and parrots (as well as other anthropomorphic animals). To be even fairer, this review is not even of actual roleplaying game, so arguably, Pirates of Pugmire does not have any competition at all when it comes to actual pirates and parrots roleplaying games. Instead, Parrot Borg: A Scenario for Pirate Borg is an adventure for the the “Worst Pirate RPG Ever Made™!” published by Limithron via Free League Publishing, especially for ‘International Talk Like a Pirate Day’—or is that ‘International Squawk Like a Parrot Day’?—which takes place on Saturday, 19th September each year.

Parrot Borg: A Scenario for Pirate Borg is both a scenario and a mini supplement for Pirate Borg. It enables players to create and roleplay the parrot companions to their usual pirate characters, either as essentially what is a new character Class (though the Game Master will need to decide on the improvements should a Player-Parrot ever level up) or as an animal companion to each Player-Pirate. (And if you want to take a narrative note from Wraith: The Oblivion, you could even have each player’s Parrot companion be played by another player!) A Player-Parrot is treated just like a Player-Pirate in Pirate Borg with the same ability scores and limited Hit Points and Devil’s Luck. A Player-Parrot is of course capable of flight and has simple attacks including claws and beak, but also a ranged poo attack (which requires some reload time—or that straining time?) that each do minimum damage. A Player-Parrot also has a Type, Physical Trademark, Starting Weapon, and a Special Ability. The Type is a Player-Parrot’s species such as Macaw, Parakeet, Cockatoo, Grey, and Amazon, whilst the Physical Trademark can be clipped wings and scruffy, missing leg, or even being a skeleton or ghost! Starting Weapons include sharper beaks or talons, a weapon, a deadly spit, or even Mega Poo! A Special Ability can be an ability improvement, starting play with a random relic or ritual, or simply being lucky. Of course, Player-Parrots are meant to be throwaway—or is that ‘flyaway’?—characters, but as a mini-supplement, Parrot Borg: A Scenario for Pirate Borg provides a good mix of character types and abilities that a player can take as inspiration too for his parrot’s personality in less than half a page.

The scenario in Parrot Borg: A Scenario for Pirate Borg is a hexcrawl—or is that ‘wing-crawl’?—with a simple set-up and simple solution. The Player-Parrots’ pirate crew have gone ashore on a small archipelago to raid a small town and fort held by the English/Spanish/French (delete as appropriate), but left their parrot companions aboard ship because they heard a rumour that the commander of the fort has a menagerie of animals dangerous to parrots. Several days have passed and still the pirates have not returned. So, either the pirates have successfully raided the fort and town and have been celebrating since, or they have been captured or killed by the authorities. Either way, the Player-Parrots need to check.

From the Player-Parrots’ sloop, they can wing their way out over the islands looking for the missing pirates. There are twelve locations, each neatly detailed. There is a graveyard and a sea cave to explore as well as a villa—home to the fort’s commander, the small town, and the fort itself. Soldiers will take pot-shots at the Parrot-Players and there are birds who will harass them, but in some ways the biggest problem for the Player-Parrots will be the capuchin monkeys which will cause a nuisance wherever they are. They chase a ghost in the Graveyard to get a bite of her for the ASH and caper and agitate for fruit (but not bananas, they hate bananas). There are small stories here to be told too, some of which will play out the Player-Parrots explore.

Of course, what the Player-Parrots are looking for is their Pirates. Some are held in the gaol as you would expect, but others are scattered around islands. Some need rescuing, some do not, and some even need saving! How this is done is all up to the Player-Parrots, but their players will need to be inventive and work together to achieve their aims. This is primarily because the Player-Parrots are fragile and really should avoid combat if they can. However, if the Player-Parrots rescue a pirate, that pirate becomes a Player-Pirate. A player can either switch to playing a pirate or stick with his parrot, but if not, the pirate becomes a back-up or replacement character.

Lastly, Parrot Borg: A Scenario for Pirate Borg is different to other scenarios. One reason is, of course, the fact that the players are roleplaying parrots. The other reason is that the scenario has winning conditions. Rescuing pirates, finding treasure, killing soldiers, and pooing on things will all score points. If the scenario is being run on its own, then the points are not that important. However, Parrot Borg: A Scenario for Pirate Borg could be run as a tournament event and then the (parrot) points would mean a whole lot more.

Physically, Parrot Borg: A Scenario for Pirate Borg is very nicely presented. It is a trifold, pamphlet adventure done in full colours with a great cover and a very lovely map. The format means that the writing style is concise, but the content is neatly organised and laid out so the Game Master can run it straight from the one side.

Parrot Borg: A Scenario for Pirate Borg is a very silly affair, but it is also a fun affair. Whether as a one-shot from other roleplaying games or a diversion from a Pirate Borg campaign, Parrot Borg: A Scenario for Pirate Borg is a chance for the players to squawk if they want to fly faster and get polymerous with their parrots.

2006: Revenge of the Rat King

1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.

—oOo—

This is an evil dungeon. For example, the first room consists of a set of stairs which lead down to a door. Murky water is pooled in front of the door. That is simple enough. However, the door cannot be opened because the passage on the other side has been filled with rubble, which will take several hours to clear and that after the strenuous effort to smash the door down. Whilst the Player Characters are doing that, they are standing in the pool of water which hides several caltrops whose points have been laced with poison called Vein Rot, which does Strength damage and halves movement. Ah, I hear you say, “What about secret doors?” Well, yes, of course. There is a secret door, but you know what? That has been trapped too. Opening the secret door releases clouds of finely powdered glass, which if a Player Character breathes in, causes Constitution damage. Which is evil and just the first room. Then the dungeon proceeds to batter the players and their characters over their heads with another fourteen encounters with different mechanics and different traps and monsters, but in a very similar vein… If it sounds like someone has it in for the players and their characters, that is because someone has—and it is not Harley Stroh.

Obviously, the clue to fact that this is the start of a revenge scenario is in the title, Dungeon Crawl Classics #27: Revenge of the Rat King. Designed for a party of between four and six Player Characters of Fourth to Sixth Level, this is the twenty-seventh entry in the original line-up of Dungeon Crawl Classics from Goodman Games. Being published in 2006, it is not written for use with the publisher’s own Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, but for Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition published by Wizards of the Coast. It is also a sequel to the very first entry in the series, Dungeon Crawl Classics #1: Idylls of the Rat King. In that scenario, the Player Characters’ investigations into raids by Goblin bandits on caravans carrying silver ore lead to the nearby Gannu Silver Mine which turned out to be infested by not just Goblins, but rats and Wererats. The final confrontation in the mine is with Lawrence Gannu, cursed by the villagers of Silverton to be a Wererat after they blamed his father for a dangerous discovery in the mines, returned to take his revenge upon the villagers. Now Aaron Gannu, father of Lawrence, has discovered that it was the Player Characters who killed his son and has engineered a plot to snare them in his clutches and their certain deaths. He will have his revenge!

Dungeon Crawl Classics #27: Revenge of the Rat King is really a dungeon in three acts. The first part opens with the Player Characters in the city of Soulgrave tracking down a ring of slavers and having found an entrance to one of its staging areas under its streets. Very quickly, the Player Characters will find themselves facing challenging situations, both in terms of traps and foes. Monsters harry the Player Characters, scampering away when they get too close and barely giving them time to recover before the next encounter, whilst a rattish figure taunts them all the way. It is linear, including some nasty traps and an unguided and consequently perilous ride on a skiff down a raging storm sewer, and gruelling. The latter intentionally so. Intentionally because Aaron Gannu wants to capture the Player Characters rather than kill them—at this stage. Ultimately, he will. In the second act, the Player Characters wake up dressed in rags, chained up, and bereft of their equipment. After escaping, they must find their way down another rushing waterway and eventually, their equipment, arming them ready to face their captor at the end of the scenario. The third and final act of the scenario is shorter and just as bruising, but the Player Characters have the benefit of their equipment and so the encounters leading up the finale are almost a relief for the players if not their characters.

The scenario requires some preparation in terms of hooking the Player Characters in. It does suggest several ways to do that, all of them tied into the slave ring hook. Yet the Dungeon Master may still want to develop some background in her campaign involving a slave ring before the Player Characters get to this scenario, whether that is in the city of Soulgrave or one of her own choosing. Ideally though, the Dungeon Master should run Dungeon Crawl Classics #27: Revenge of the Rat King as a sequel to Dungeon Crawl Classics #1: Idylls of the Rat King, otherwise the revenge plot at its heart will not just be as significant to either the players or their characters.

If those issues can all be dealt with, the scenario’s primary problem remains insurmountable. This is the fact that it is linear. In fact, each of its three acts is linear. Act one to get the Player Characters captured, act two to get the Player Characters free and to their equipment, and act three to get the Player Characters to the finale and the confrontation with Aaron Gannu. Each is testing in its way, the first act grinding the Player Characters down, the second acting stripping them bare, and the third building them back up again. The designer is telling not just a story of revenge, but a revenge epic! One, of course, starring a variable cast, yet that also means that the scenario’s plot has to run for it to work. That is, the Player Characters have to be captured, they have to lose their equipment, and they have to regain it. In effect, no matter how foolish or clever the players and their characters are in the first act—and clever play, along with lucky aplenty, can curtail the effect of some of the challenges they will face, it does not actually matter. For some Dungeon Masters and some players this may be too much of an imposition upon player agency.

Most obviously, Dungeon Crawl Classics #27: Revenge of the Rat King is connected to Dungeon Crawl Classics #1: Idylls of the Rat King, but there are one or two nods to other roleplaying classics in the book too. One is the cover, a delightful homage to the cover of the Player’s Handbook for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition, but with a statue of a rat god replacing the demon, larcenous adventurers swarming all over it of course and attempting to prise out the gemstones it has eyes! The Player Characters will discover this very statue towards the end of the dungeon. Inside, the scenario develops the slavers theme by taking inspiration in one or two locations to A1-4, Scourge of the Slave Lords, such as having to run along the tops of walls of cages holding captured slaves as in A2 Secret of the Slavers Stockade and the whole sequence to the second part of the scenario in which the Player Characters wake and find themselves clothed, but completely lacking equipment and must rely upon wits and abilities is inspired by A4 In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords.

The scenario includes some new magical items and a new monster too. The latter is the Redtooth Troll, a troll afflicted with wererat lycanthropy. His encounter in the scenario starts with him under a bridge and reaching up and over to knock the Player Characters off.

Penultimately—and notably, Dungeon Crawl Classics #1: Idylls of the Rat King and Dungeon Crawl Classics #27: Revenge of the Rat King have something else in common beyond one being the sequel to the other. This is that both have subsequently been adapted for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. These are Fifth Edition Fantasy #31: Idylls of the Rat King and Fifth Edition Fantasy #36: Revenge of the Rat King.

Physically, Dungeon Crawl Classics #27: Revenge of the Rat King is generally well presented. There is a lot to work through and prepare as many of the NPCs and monsters are highly detailed. The artwork is excellent throughout and there are many images here that the Dungeon Master can show to her players in addition to the handouts at the end of the scenario. One big improvement in Dungeon Crawl Classics #27: Revenge of the Rat King is the cartography which more detailed and interesting than in Dungeon Crawl Classics #1: Idylls of the Rat King.

Dungeon Crawl Classics #27: Revenge of the Rat King is not quite a death trap dungeon because it is not designed to kill the Player Characters. It is, however, designed to hurt them, scour at their resources, and put them through the wringer and make them as well as their players work really hard. Every encounter in the dungeon is challenging, but the first act is really testing and full of nastily inventive scenes. The Dungeon Master is going to really enjoy running Dungeon Crawl Classics #27: Revenge of the Rat King; the players not quite so much—unless they like a challenge.

[Free RPG Day 2026] Terror in Tortuga

Now in its nineteenth year, Free RPG Day for 2026 took place on Saturday, June 27th. As per usual, Free RPG Day consisted of an array of new and interesting little releases, which are traditionally tasters for forthcoming games to be released at GenCon the following August, but others are support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera or a quick-start. This included dice, miniatures, vouchers, and more. Unfortunately, due to vagaries of International Customs, Free RPG Day in the UK did not take place until Saturday, 22nd August.

This review is possible due to the generosity of Waylands Forge in Birmingham.

—oOo—

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 Terror in Tortuga: PIRATE BORG Quickstart & Adventure is the quick-start for Pirate Borg, the self-described, “Worst Pirate RPG Ever Made™!”. It is published by Limithron via Free League Publishing.

The Terror in Tortuga: PIRATE BORG Quickstart & Adventure is a twenty page, full colour booklet.

How long will it take to play?
The Terror in Tortuga: PIRATE BORG Quickstart & Adventure includes the scenario, ‘Terror in Tortuga’, a sandbox affair which is more open ended and can be played through in a single session or it might last two or three sessions.

What else do you need to play?
The Terror in Tortuga: PIRATE BORG Quickstart & Adventure needs a full set of polyhedral dice per player.

Who do you play?
The Terror in Tortuga: PIRATE BORG Quickstart & Adventure does not include any pre-generated Player Pirates. Instead, it gives full rules for creating a Player Pirate of a single Class, that is, ‘Pirate’, much like the Pirate Borg Starter Set. (Alternatively, players can create pirates using the publisher’s Random PC Generator or create them using the full rules in the Pirate Borg core rulebook.)

How is a Player Character defined?

In Pirate Borg, a Player Pirate is defined by his Abilities, Class, gear, and Devil’s Luck. The five Abilities are Strength, Agility, Presence, Toughness, and Spirit, each rated between ‘-3’ and ‘+3’. A Player Pirate also has a weapon, clothing, and hat as well as a container, a cheap item, and a fancy item. Additional tables also provide a background, distinctive flaw, physical trademark, idiosyncrasies, unfortunate incidents and conditions, and thing of importance. All of these things are rolled for along with the Pirate Borg’s core abilities.

How do the mechanics work?

Mechanically Pirate Borg is based upon Mörk Borg—hence the name—the Swedish pre-apocalypse Old School Renaissance style roleplaying game designed by Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell and also published by Free League Publishing. A player rolls a twenty-sided die, modifies the result by one of his character’s abilities, and attempts to beat a Difficulty Rating of twelve, though the Difficulty Rating can be higher or lower. The Difficulty Rating may go up or down depending on the situation, but whatever the situation, the player always rolls, even in combat or as both Mörk Borg and Pirate Borg terms it, violence.

Every Player Character also has the Devil’s Luck. Each Class receives a different amount of this, but the Pirate Class, the only Class presented in the Terror in Tortuga: PIRATE BORG Quickstart & Adventure only has one or two points. It can be spent to inflict maximum damage on a single attack, reroll any die, lower the Difficulty rating of a Test, neutralise a Critical or a Fumble, and to lower damage suffered by a random amount.

It should be noted that the Terror in Tortuga: PIRATE BORG Quickstart & Adventure neatly summaries the rules, including those for combat, to a single two-page spread at the rear of the book.

How does combat work?

Initiative in the Terror in Tortuga: PIRATE BORG Quickstart & Adventure is a simple roll of a six-sided die, with the enemies going first if low, the Player Pirates if high. Violence requires a roll of a twenty-sided versus twelve, modified by Strength for a physical attack and Presence for a ranged attack, to hit. It is the same roll to avoid being hit, modified by Agility. Armour is represented by a die value, from -d2 for light armour to -d6 for heavy armour, representing the amount of damage it stops. Medium and heavy armour each add a modifier to any Agility action by the Player Pirate, including defending himself. This is pleasingly simple and offers a character some tactical choice—just when is it better to avoid taking the blows or avoid taking the damage? Armour can also be damaged, due to a Fumble when defending, reducing its protective effectiveness, and a critical hit in combat inflicts double damage or allows another attack. A fumble with a black powder firearm will result in a misfire. A Player Pirate whose Hit Points are reduced to below zero is dead, but at zero, is broken and can recover.

How does magic work?

In Pirate Borg, a Player Pirate has access to Arcane Rituals. They are not available in the Terror in Tortuga: PIRATE BORG Quickstart & Adventure.

What do you play?

The scenario in Terror in Tortuga: PIRATE BORG Quickstart & Adventure is ‘Terror in Tortuga’. It is a mini-sandbox on the island port of Tortuga, a self-styled ‘Cesspool of Scum, Filth, and ASH’, a sin city currently under the control of Anne Bonney and her crew; Calico Jack, ASH broker; and the Flail, Ghoul Lord of Tortuga. Besides describing the three NPCs, the scenario includes detailed descriptions of the various locations in the port, rumours and secrets, random events, and a projected timeline which suggests what might happen if the Player Pirates do nothing.

The scenario is preceded by a quick overview of the setting, including an explanation of what ASH is. Which is the desiccated ectoplasmic remnants of destroyed undead that can be inhaled or smoked for magical effects. It is also highly addictive. Four jobs and hooks are detailed and these can be mixed and matched to fit the length and scope of the intended session. These include clearing Tortuga of all undead, including the Flail; harvesting ASH and/or the undead; assassinating Calico Jack; and robbing an ASH warehouse. The scenario includes the full details of ‘Fort de Rocher’, the zombie-infested headquarters of the Flail.

Is there anything missing?
No. The Terror in Tortuga: PIRATE BORG Quickstart & Adventure is complete as is.

Is it easy to prepare?
Yes. The Terror in Tortuga: PIRATE BORG Quickstart & Adventure is easy to grasp and prepare. It is Player Pirate-driven, so the Game Master will need to adjust events for their actions.

Is it worth it?
Yes. The Terror in Tortuga: PIRATE BORG Quickstart & Adventure includes everything for a great introduction to Pirate Borg offering plenty to do in Tortuga, whether running as a one shot or adding to a campaign.

The Terror in Tortuga: PIRATE BORG Quickstart & Adventure is available to download here.

[Free RPG Day 2026] Creature Curation Presents #1

Now in its nineteenth year, Free RPG Day for 2026 took place on Saturday, June 27th. As per usual, Free RPG Day consisted of an array of new and interesting little releases, which are traditionally tasters for forthcoming games to be released at GenCon the following August, but others are support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera or a quick-start. This included dice, miniatures, vouchers, and more. Unfortunately, due to vagaries of International Customs, Free RPG Day in the UK did not take place until Saturday, 22nd August.

This review is possible due to the generosity of Waylands Forge in Birmingham.

—oOo—

Creature Curation Presents #1 is a slightly different product for Free RPG Day because it is an anthology of three adventures for three different roleplaying games, all three of them compatible with Mörk Borg, the Swedish pre-apocalypse Old School Renaissance retroclone designed by Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell and published by Free League Publishing. One of the three roleplaying games will be familiar, it previously having appeared as support for Free RPG Day with Into the Würmhole back in 2021, whilst the others will be less so. One thing to bear in mind with Creature Curation Presents #1 is that whilst it states that the quick-start rules are included, this is not actually the case. Instead QR codes are provided for each of the three roleplaying games as well as either a QR code to a character generator for the roleplaying game or a set of pre-generated Player Characters. This makes preparation a little slower than it ordinarily might have been if they had been included, but not overly so.

The first scenario, ‘Impaled Obelisk’, is for Vast Grimm, the pre-apocalypse Science Fiction roleplaying game set in a very future in which cultists have unleashed the infection of THEY, whose infection of Würms and the Grimm have hollowed out and shattered worlds, including the Earth. Humanity’s last hope is the Gate of Infinite Stars, through which the uninfected survivors can escape and find a universe where they will be free of the Würms and the gnawing… In the meantime, pirates and cultists prey on the survivors as desperate men and women gather together in Legions and explore what remains of the universe, perhaps hoping to find something that will towards humanity’s continued survival and the construction of the Gate of Infinite Stars

In ‘Impaled Obelisk’, the Legion answer the distress call of the Gallant Obelisk, a starship that went missing nine decades ago and is found to have crashed nose first into the surface of the planetoid, Caladron 7. It is unlikely that any of the original crew are still alive, but there may still be much to scavenge, some of which will be valuable, some of which might help mankind. Caladron 7’s low gravity means that the Player Characters can easily propel themselves up its length, exploring its corridors, research facilities, scientific laboratories, crew quarters, engineering spaces, and more. Everything seems to be covered in a Web Goo and none of the bodies of the crew can be found. ‘Impaled Obelisk’ is a classic ‘wrecked spaceship as dungeon’ scenario, not a little like Alien, but ‘Grimm’ in its own way. It is easy to run as a one-shot or add to a Game Master’s campaign.

The second scenario is for Raptor Ruckus. This is inspired by 1993’s Jurassic Park and is a survival horror roleplaying game in which the Player Characters are staff at the world’s new and greatest theme park about to excite the world about dinosaurs once again! Of course, things can go wrong. There can be storms or breakdowns or worse, agents of Basilisk, the anti-human doomsday cult, working to sabotage and undermine the whole project!

In ‘Airborne’, the Player Characters are returning to the island park after showing off one of the dinosaurs to investors on the mainland. They are travelling aboard a Lockheed C-130 transport along with a kentosaurus, sedated and caged. Suddenly, there is a bang and the aeroplane pitches nose down—is it about to crash? Just as bad is that one of the creature handlers draws a gun and points it at the Player Characters! Thus, the adventure starts with a bang and carries on from there as they are faced by one dangerously dinosaurous situation after another. They have to get out of the aeroplane, are attacked by Pteranodons on the way down, and find themselves on the wrong side of the fence back in the dinosaur park! And even when they get to the other side, it looks like saboteurs have been hard at work whilst the Player Characters have been away on the mainland. The scenario includes the stats for some dinosaurs, a pair of fanatical cultists, and an entertaining NPC to portray. Pleasingly, it does include a dinosaur chase, exactly as you would want, and overall, this is an excitingly tense chase scenario from start to finish that can lead into Fragmentation, the first campaign for Raptor Ruckus.

The third scenario is for Neon Bastardz. This is a near future roleplaying game inspired by Neon Lords of the Toxic Wasteland and all of the bad ‘B’ and straight to video trashy Sci-Fi movies of the eighties and noughties. The Player Characters are Skumdogs, lowlife-not-quite-scum pushed to take the dirty jobs no one wants to do, from cleaning the sewers of CHUDs to finding radical treasures in the wastelands for the Detroit-Prime Hyper-Lux.

In ‘Killing Detroit Prime Style’, the Player Characters are gangers, members of a war party perhaps hired to do a job for BioRent Worldwide, Detroit-Prime’s leading biotech manufacturer. The offices of BioRent Worldwide on floor #207 of the city’s megablock have been taken over by Ninja. It is up to the gangers to break into the building, ascend to floor #207, find the Ninja and beat their ass before sending them back to their dojo in body bags. Floor #207 is large with separate areas that might take up whole floors in lesser blocks, but whether the cubicle maze, client consultation room, organ storage, executive offices, and so on, the gangers will find Ninja. The gangers can earn ‘Friendship Points’ by saving civilians who are at risk, sparing an enemy who surrenders, giving an emotional speech, fighting back-to-back with an ally, and so on. They can be spent to re-roll any die, heal a downed ally, add a bonus to an ally’s attack, and so on. All very eighties buddy movie and cinematic. ‘Killing Detroit Prime Style’ is a beat ’em up scenario, very much more style than substance and easily the easiest of the three scenarios in the anthology to prepare.

Physically, Creature Curation Presents #1 is a blast of bright neon colour. Of the three, ‘Airborne’ for Raptor Ruckus is underwritten in places, but otherwise, all three are easy to grasp. The artwork is decent throughout, but the cartography is plain if serviceable.

Creature Curation Presents #1 packs in three easy-to-run scenarios that a Game Master can each run in a single session. ‘Impaled Obelisk’ for Vast Grimm and ‘Airborne’ for Raptor Ruckus are the best of the three, as ‘Killing Detroit Prime Style’ is Neon Bastardz is simplistic, but all three are solid introductions to their respective roleplaying games.