Tactics & Tales (Part II)

13th Age Second Edition Gamemaster’s Guide is not the companion volume to the 13th Age Second Edition Heroes’ Handbook. Published by Pelgrane Press, it is instead a direct continuation, literally picking up with chapter eight following on from the character seven at the end of the 13th Age Second Edition Heroes’ Handbook. Together, they make up the core rules for 13th Age Second Edition, the ‘Fantasy 20’ or ‘F20’ roleplaying game derived from different editions of Dungeons & Dragons which combines the crunch of epic battles with narrative or story-telling aspects for grand adventures where the Heroes are special because of their individual ‘One Unique Thing’ which sets them apart from the inhabitants of the Dragon Empire. They are true heroes, each linked to two or three of the Icons, the great powers of the Dragon Empire in 13th Age, whose influence over the story can be positive or negative, depending upon the nature of the relationship. The 13th Age Second Edition Heroes’ Handbook contains everything necessary for the players, including rules for character creation, the place of the characters in the world and their relationships with the Icons, the great powers of the age, the core mechanics, and combat, plus a fantastic example of play and character creation. The 13th Age Second Edition Gamemaster’s Guide contains everything else, including a description of the Dragon Empire, the setting for 13th Age, advice on running the game, a bestiary, a treasury, and an introductory scenario.

The 13th Age Second Edition Gamemaster’s Guide starts with a description of its setting, the Dragon Empire. This is located at the centre of a large disc-shaped land surrounded by ocean and consists of the Land, the Underworld, and the Overworld. Seven cities line the shore of the stable Midland Sea, enabling easy travel between them, and each associated with one or more of the Icons. For example, Axis, the City of Swords, is home to the Emperor, but also has links to the Archmage, Crusader, and Great Gold Wyrm, whilst Glitterhaegen, the City of Coins is linked to Prince of Shadows, the Emperor, and the Dwarf King. It dips in and out subject matter, highlighting interesting elements of the setting, such the fact that the magic that causes the calmness of the Midland Sea forces monsters onto the nearby shores; that nobody likes to live too near the Imperial roads because they are haunted; and dungeons claw their way out of the earth and roam the land until stopped! Particular attention is paid to these dungeons as they are important and potential adventuring sites in a campaign, but for the most part, the write-up of the Dragon Empire is described by the authors as being ‘half-designed’. This is intentional as it leaves room for the Game Master to add her own details. There is a gazetteer which adds more specific details, whilst still leaving room aplenty for the Game Master’s own input.

This even applies to the history of the Dragon Empire with just a whole two pages devoted to it; or rather to the 13th Age and the past twelve Ages. Each Age began, rose and prospered before collapsing due to some catastrophe, and was replaced by a new Age. Each Age is associated with particular Icons and some Icons my appear in some Ages and not others, and so on. The overall description is brief at just two pages and so the Game Master may want to refer to one of the best supplements for the first edition of the roleplaying game, The Book of Ages.

Campaign advice discusses various topics—campaign identity, the ten-arc structure for the shorter campaign, customising the Icons to fit the campaign, and some examples. Campaign identity offers up a few other suggestions beyond the classic ‘Heroes on a Mission’, but clearly states that the ‘Forbidden Theme’ of a bait and switch theme to an Icon should never be done. The ten-arc structure is tailored to the maximum of ten Levels that a Hero in 13th Age can achieved, essentially one arc per Level, this replacing the Ten-Session Campaign concept from 13th Age First Edition. Customising the Icons to fit the campaign is intended to be a collaborative process between the Game Master and her players, starting with the Game Master selecting the Icon to her campaign’s main focus, whether as patron or villain, the players adding the Icons they want to see, and the Game Master deciding on the involvement of the unnamed Icons. This is supported by examples from each of the book’s authors. For example, ‘Servants of the Court’ sets up the Elf Queen as the primary heroic Icon with more powers and purviews than the Heroes suspect as she was also the Prince of Shadows with a combination of Archmage and Diabolist as the Icon villain. Of the other Icons, the Dwarf King had died whilst killing the Orc Lord; the Priestess championed civilisation whilst propping up a weak Emperor and was also the Dawn Captain, prophesised to die and become the Crusader; and both the High Druid and Lich King were involved elsewhere. These four examples actually better explain the concepts the customising process than the advice itself, showing the flexibility of the Icon roles in a campaign, whether that is in the 13th Age or a previous Age.

13th Age is played out in arcs, each consisting of three or four combat scenes or battles leavened with narrative scenes in between. The 13th Age Second Edition Gamemaster’s Guide discusses in detail how to design battles per arc, primarily adjusting them for the Level and number of Heroes. There is an optimal balance for the Monster Level versus the Hero Level, but the advice suggests ways in which this can be adjusted up or down, usually to fit a narrative. This might the Game Master wants the Heroes to wade through one or two hordes of monsters before they confront a bigger threat at the end of the arc, but there is plenty of scope to vary this or just simply balance all three or four of the battles that make up an arc. The advice also covers balancing the roles of monsters on the battlefield, such as archers, blockers, casters, troops, and so on; fighting a single monster type versus a single monster; ways making an encounter unfair and thus more challenging; and even making the battlefield itself dangerous as well as adding traps.

The process of designing a battle is not complex if the Game Master decides to use the suggested optimal Monster Levels, simply choosing the appropriate foes and their roles from the bestiary. However, the process does involve a little bit more arithmetic if the Game Master wants to create a battle where the Monsters Levels are not optimised to make a battle less challenging or more challenging. Fortunately, the designers have worked out the adjusted values beforehand and provide them for the Game Master in a handy table. That said, the Game Master should probably stick to the optimised Monster Levels for the first few battles and tinker with the battle design on subsequent ones. The process is pleasingly supported with a lengthy example of a Game Master designing multiple battles across the whole progress of the Heroes for First Level to Tenth Level.

Having discussed how to fit the monsters into arcs and monster roles, the 13th Age Second Edition Gamemaster’s Guide devotes half of its pages to talking about its monsters. The monster stat block is kept streamlined and as well as an explanation of the various monster abilities, there are lists of the monsters themselves by Level, strength (standard, mook, double strength, and elite), and Role. In comparison to other fantasy roleplaying games, one obvious addition to a monster stat block for 13th Age is that of an Icon symbol, indicating a specific link or relationship between a monster and an Icon. These can be positive, negative, or mixed, and not all of the Icons in 13th Age have relationships with the monsters in the 13th Age Second Edition Gamemaster’s Guide, but where they do, it enables the Game Master to tailor encounters and battles to the Icons featuring in her scenario or campaign. It is followed by more guidelines on tinkering with monsters, this on adjusting the stats of an existing monster or designing one from scratch.

The actual bestiary itself runs from Dire Rat, Giant Beetle, and Wolf to Wraith, Wyvern, and Zombie, including Demons, Dragons (notably the chromatic ones rather than the metallic ones, since the Heroes are more likely going to be fighting the former, Ghouls, Goblins, Kobolds, Oozes, Sahuagin, and Stirges, it is for the most part, very much a classic ‘F20’ style bestiary. The only new addition is the Hungry Star, but there are plenty of variations within many of the monster entries, and many have sections titled ‘Icons’, ‘In Play’, ‘In Your Campaign’ and ‘At Your Table’. For example, the Kobold entry has stats for the Kobold Recruit, Kobold Hero, Kobold Warrior, and Kobold Archer. The ‘In Your Campaign’ entry asks lots of the questions of Game Master as to the character of Kobolds in her campaign and notes that several variations appear in the 13th Age Bestiary and 13th Age Bestiary 2. The ‘Icons’ entry for the Ettin suggests that if one head has been swayed by the Diabolist, the other has been influenced by the Three. ‘In Play’ for the Otyugh states that it lives in filth and slime near the entrance to enemies’ caverns, so that it is close enough to alert the enemies if it attacks the Heroes or it joins the enemies if they are fighting the Heroes, before stating that, “Oytyughs were more common in an ancient age, when adventurers were so poor they used 10-foot poles to turn over dung heaps in search of loot.”

Some monsters get extended entries, for example, the Dragons. This makes entire sense, since as their entry notes, they are the Heroes of the monster world! Besides standard abilities, they are tough and have their own personalities, and they have dragon-ticks and campaign abilities. A dragon-trick can be used once per turn, such as its godlike reflexes that let a dragon reroll initiative or its magnificent scales to force a player to reroll an attack against its Armour Class. In comparison, campaign abilities like humanoid form or spells are intended to be used when appropriate rather than in every single battle that a dragon appears. Demons and NPCs are treated in a similar fashion adding further flexibility.

The treasure chapter divides its items into two types. These are one-use items and true magic items which are essentially alive, have their own personalities, and need to be attuned to. One-use items are typically potions—healing and resistance—and runes that apply bonuses to armour or a weapon or spellcasting, and there is a guide to their discovery per Hero Level. Similarly, the availability of magic items is tracked according to the Hero Level and by the tier of the campaign—Adventurer, Champion, or Epic. The personalities of magical items are reflected in quirks, quips, and quiddities. Quirks push the wielder of a magic item to act a certain way, such as dressing nicely at every social occasion or spouting puns; quips are phrases or comments that a magic item wants to hear its wielder say or a phase it wants the wielder to do; and a quiddity is its personality, effectively turning a magic item into a mini-NPC. A true magic will typically have one or more of these and they add individuality to each and every item. In many cases, magic items have more interesting mechanical effects than they do in other ‘F20’ roleplaying games and many are also linked to particular Icons. For example, the Boots of Elvenkind are linked to the Elf Queen and Prince of Shadows and require a skill check for the wearer to move quietly, but the player rolls twice an uses the higher roll, and in game needs a Quip such as ambiguous smile or mouthing the word ‘silent’ in Elvish. The list of magic items and also of wondrous items, is not extensive, but it is more than sufficient multiple arcs and campaigns, especially when it comes to weapons, since these are not listed by sword or spear or mace, but by the magical effect, so that weapons can be tailored to the campaign and the weapons wielded by the Heroes.

The 13th Age Second Edition Gamemaster’s Guide is rounded out with an introductory adventure, ‘A Bad Moon & The Wrong Stars’. It takes the classic ‘F20’ set-up of a ‘village-in-peril’ and gives it the 13th Age twist along with plenty of room for the Game Master’s input in form of Icon links and the details of the village. That village is Longmeadow, built on some ancient ruins. The Heroes are escorting a scholar of past Ages to Longmeadow when they are attacked by strangely dressed Elves. Investigation, again tailored to the Icons, will reveal the presence of a Living Dungeon nearby. This is the site of the adventure’s climax and what is interesting here is that the dungeon design is tiny at just four locations. In another ‘F20’ roleplaying game this would probably not be enough, but in 13th Age each room is battle, so a big encounter that all together with the fight on the road makes up a whole arc. In story terms, the play of this Living Dungeon, as much as it is in 13th Age, is not about lengthy exploration, but about getting to the action and the exciting bits. Each of the locations and the battles is detailed, some quite extensively so. Overall, ‘A Bad Moon & The Wrong Stars’ is a good introduction to the play of 13th Age and its key setting feature of Living Dungeons whilst having a lot of flexibility for the Game Master to adjust it to her players and their Heroes.

The 13th Age Second Edition Gamemaster’s Guide comes to a close with an array of appendices. These include a guide to using content from 13th Age First Edition, more options for the Game Master, a price list (if the Game Master and her players want to track Gold Pieces in their campaign, though 13th Age usually avoids this), tables for Game Master, a list of 13th Age First Edition resources, an excellent combined glossary and index, and more. All very useful.

Physically, the 13th Age Second Edition Gamemaster’s Guide is well written and an enjoyable read, though there is less input and commentary in this book than their was in the 13th Age Second Edition Heroes’ Handbook. The artwork is suitably heroic for the Heroes and monstrous for the monsters and all together, very good.

Despite its origins in two earlier editions of Dungeons & Dragons, it takes some adjustment to both play and run 13th Age since its combination of crunch and story is quite structured. The 13th Age Second Edition Heroes’ Handbook eased that process for the player and the Game Master, whilst the 13th Age Second Edition Gamemaster’s Guide does the same specifically for the Game Master in helping her in the process of setting up and running battles, arcs, and campaign.

Friday Fantasy: Brought to Light

Brought to Light enables you to visit the great city of Eversink not once, but four times. The city stands at the mouth of the Serpentine River where it flows into Bay of Coins, cut through by canals crossed over by numerous bridges from one plaza to another, filled with flotillas of boats and gondolas, spoiled by outpourings of human and other waste waiting to be flushed out to sea, all to the sound of merchants, high and low, hawking their wares, and the chants of the priests. This as its cellars and basements continue to sink into the mire, despite the best efforts of the engineers of The Guild of Architects and Canal-Watchers. Eversink is a city of feuds and rivalries and secrets, some secrets hidden in the rooms of buildings swallowed by the swamp upon which the city stands and a city of laws and traditions so complex and convoluted that no city official can expect to remember them all. The only crime that agreed upon and widely known is that of Sorcery, for hand-in-hand with Sorcery comes Corruption, and if a Sorcerer chooses not to internalise it, he must instead externalise it and that spiritually scars the surrounding terrain and brings the attention of the Inquisitors for it scars the blessings of the city’s patron goddess, Denari—and that may be Eversink’s ultimate secret. This is the setting for Swords of the Serpentine, the swords and sorcery roleplaying game of daring heroism, sly politics, daring thievery, incriminating secrets, feuding houses of the nobility, rampant corruption, and bloody savagery, set in a fantasy city full of skulduggery and death, that uses the GUMSHOE System and is published by Pelgrane Press.

It is also the setting for Brought to Light, an anthology of one-shot scenarios for Swords of the Serpentine. All four were originally run as demonstration scenarios at Gen Con and all four run the gamut of the roleplaying game’s tiers of play, from Fledgling to Sovereign. Which means that they showcase a range of Player Character types, campaign set-ups, and power levels in the setting of Eversink. Each scenario is structured the same way. This includes its adventure premise, setting, tone and hints for running the game—including inspirations, plot summary with a plot map, a breakdown of both the primary adversaries and the heroes, and how to start the scenario. This is followed by map of the scenario’s various scenes and the scenes themselves, the scenes further broken down skill by skill and how they apply and what the Player Characters will learn and lastly six pre-generated Player Characters specific to the scenario. Each scenario also includes a handout.

The anthology opens with ‘Ragamuffins’. Written for the Fledgling tier, it casts the Player Characters as urchins surviving as best they can on the streets of Eversink. Opening in exciting fashion with a rooftop chase, the Urchins find their home in Sag Harbour, the worst district in the city, has been robbed! This includes a precious MacGuffin that makes them feel safe in their hovel. The culprits are their regular bullies and the Urchins have to track down both and what the pair has done with the item, which ultimately leads to a horrible conspiracy underground. ‘Ragamuffins’ mixes grime and children’s own adventure in engaging fashion.

‘Murder Most Foul!’ takes the classic country murder mystery and gives it an Eversink twist, making it a locked-room—or rather locked-mansion—mystery. Master Pietro Contrari is the most famous and most successful freelance detective in the history of Eversink, having solved over nine hundred murders in thirty-five year career! He is holding a sixtieth birthday party at his mansion and the Player Characters’ patrons want to know the secret of Contrari’s success and so have got them invitations. The Player Characters are, of course, no slouches when it comes to investigations, and of course, there will be murder. Which sounds like a fantasy version of 1976’s Murder by Death. So, there is a ball at which everyone can circulate, a murder that Master Pietro Contrari is bound to solve, and a whole mansion to explore and investigate. This is a mansion crawl in which three investigations are running in parallel—one that of Contrari into the death, the second of the Player Characters into the death, and the third of the Player Characters into Contrari himself—with the first being separate from each. The scenario even ends with a, “But tell me inspector, what I don’t understand is…” scene in which the Player Characters get to turn it back on the master detective. This is an entertaining pastiche of all the genre clichés.

‘Smuggler’s End’ is another classic murder mystery style investigation, but here the Player Characters are members of the City Watch instructed by a very rare letter from the Triskadane, the city’s highly secret, anonymous rulers, to solve the death. The body is that of nobleman with a rakish and criminally connected reputation, now dressed in rags and seemly dumped on the streets of Sag Harbour with a knife in his back. How did the victim get there and who killed him? Add into the mix a sister whose haughty manner is going to make the players hate her, let alone their characters, who wants the body back for burial and will get it back in two days, and what you have is classic police style procedural in which justice crashes into city politics.

Politics rears its ugly head again in the fourth and final scenario in the anthology. ‘Takedown’ switches the Tier up to Sovereign and has the Player Characters take command of their greater resources rather than go toe-to-toe in direct combat—whether that is physical, verbal, or sorcerous—as they are constantly harried and harassed by their enemies. Again, the Player Characters are instructed by Triskadane, the city’s highly secret, anonymous rulers, to investigate and act against Judge Lorenzo Spina, Lord High Magistrate of Eversink—one of the most power, visible figures in the city. As creepily conveyed by a child, the Triskadane has foreseen that he poses a severe threat to the city. The scenario does not have a structure so much as it considers what actions the Player Characters might take and how their various Investigative and General abilities can be applied to the investigation, what they will learn in the process, and how Spina is likely to retaliate once he becomes aware of their activities. So, bar the initial one, there are no other scenes and the investigation and play process will be much more open. Tonally, ‘Takedown’ is much darker than the other scenarios and it probably the one on its own which could be expanded from a direct four hour affair into a mini-campaign. It is effectively a freeform played at the table and so requires greater input by the Game Master.

Physically, Brought to Light is very well laid out, nicely illustrated, and the individual organisation of the scenarios eases the Game Master’s job. However, as much as their portraits impart a feel for the pre-generated Player Characters, none of them have any ready background that is accessible to the players. Each does have some background—it is given in the breakdown of the heroes at the start of each scenario. So, whilst useful for the Game Master, she has to find a way to impart that to the players of these characters. Another issue is the lack of maps. All of the scenarios are to be run theatre of the mind, but in some cases, such as the mansion in ‘Murder Most Foul!’, map could have been useful given its location-based play.

The problem with Brought to Light is that not that it is a collection of bad scenarios; quite the contrary. These are all good, entertaining scenarios. Rather that it consists of one-shots, convention scenarios, and whilst they can used as the basis or starting points for ongoing campaigns, they are not easy to add to a campaign. Which ultimately means that Brought to Light is not as flexible as a more general anthology of scenarios might be. Nevertheless, Brought to Light is a good showcase for Swords of the Serpentine, capturing not just some of its possible set-ups, but also the feel and flavour of Eversink, its grottiness and grandeur, corruption and capriciousness, power and pettiness, and more.

—oOo—

Pelgrane Press will be at UK Games Expo which takes place from Friday, 29th to Sunday 31st of May.

Tactics & Tales (Part I)

Let us be clear. 13th Age is Dungeons & Dragons. It offers a Dungeons & Dragons style of play. It is a Class and Level roleplaying game. It has the six traditional attributes, the traditional different Races of Dungeons & Dragons, and the various Classes of Dungeons & Dragons. It is even designed by the designers of Dungeons & Dragons. Not one edition of Dungeons & Dragons, but two editions of Dungeons & Dragons. It might even be called ‘Dungeons & Dragons 4.5’. What it calls itself is an ‘F20’ or ‘Fantasy 20’ roleplaying game, a roleplaying game derived from the family of Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying games. Yet it is also very much its own thing and has been from the start. When 13th Age was published in 2013, the hobby was in an uncertain place as it always is when it is between editions of Dungeons & Dragons. In 2013, Dungeons & Dragons, Fourth Edition was done, never having been as well received as its predecessors, and Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition had yet to appear, yet to make the splash that it did on Dungeons & Dragons’ fortieth anniversary in 2014, and yet to make its glorious ascent into the mainstream and acceptance as legitimate pastime. What was available then, was D&D Next, the playtest version of the next edition. It was into this liminal space that 13th Age slipped in 2013. Published by Pelgrane Press, 13th Age did what Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition also did. Which was to take the best features of the previous editions of Dungeons & Dragons and rework them. In the case of Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, that would be to create the next edition of the venerable roleplaying game. In the case of 13th Age, that would be to combine its style of play with a style of play that had come from another wing of the hobby, one that was radical and all but anathema to Dungeons & Dragons—storytelling games. Certainly, not a direction that Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition was ever going to go in. The aim with 13th Age was to provide story and crunch, and so it is with 13th Age, Second Edition.

13th Age, Second Edition comes in two books, one a direct continuation of the other. The first is the 13th Age Second Edition Heroes’ Handbook, which provides everything necessary for the players, including rules for character creation, the place of the characters in the world and their relationships with the Icons, the great powers of the age, the core mechanics, and combat, whilst the 13th Age Second Edition Gamemaster’s Guide contains a description of the Dragon Empire, the setting for 13th Age, advice on running the game, a bestiary, a treasury, and an introductory scenario. The emphasis in 13th Age is on the Player Characters and their exploits as heroes and legendary heroes to be, not just in the epic battles they will fight—and fight from First Level to Tenth Level, but on the epic stories that will be told in the process. The battles are the focus of the roleplaying game’s self-confessed ‘crunch’, providing detail and flavour whilst also making the battles fast-paced and exciting. The epic narrative or story-telling aspect of 13th Age is handled by making every single Player Character special with his own ‘One Unique Thing’ which sets him apart from everyone else in the Dragon Empire; by replacing skills with Backgrounds that broaden player choice, add depth to the setting, and enable flexibility in how they are used; and in linking each Player Character to two or three of the Icons, the great powers of the Dragon Empire in 13th Age, whose influence over the story can be positive or negative, depending upon the nature of the relationship.
One of the great things about 13th Age, Second Edition is that it compatible with 13th Age, First Edition, which means that the Game Master and her players have access to some great supplements, such as the Book of Ages which opens up the history of the Dragon Empire and the killer dungeon, Eyes of the Stone Thief. However, 13th Age, Second Edition is a new edition and that does mean changes. Pelgrane Press actually includes a list of the major changes here for the benefit of Game Master of 13th Age, First Edition. Much of it has been to clarify the rules as much as streamline them. For example, instead of using days as a time unit to indicate the period in which certain powers work, the term is now ‘arc’. This allows the period to be used narratively rather than being constrained by time. The number of Icons has been reduced from thirteen to twelve (actually making it easier to roll for them randomly), the Orc Lord having been killed in a recent war—exactly how is up to the Game Master and her players to decide. This is the major change to the Dragon Empire and is connected to another change, which is the removal of the Half-Orc as a player choice in terms of Race—or rather Kin as 13th Age calls it. This is intentionally done to avoid the controversy surrounding the nature of the Half-Orc, and is instead replaced by the Troll-kin. It serves a similar, combat-orientated, brutish role, but is connected to the High Druid or the Emperor Icons rather than the Orc Lord. Other changes to Kin include more choices in terms of Kin powers, the removal of ability bonuses based on Kin, and the making of Player Character Kin special. The removal of ability bonuses based on Kin means that a player can place them wherever he wants—though he will probably want to place them to benefit his choice of Class, and by making Player Character Kin special, that is, they possess the special Kin Powers rather than having every member of their Kin do so, avoids stereotyping and widens player choice.
Then all of the Classes in 13th Age have been adjusted, from minor tweaks to major overhauls. For example, the simplest and easiest of Classes to play, the Barbarian and the Paladin, receive minor tweaks, the Barbarian Rage feature changed to be a wider critical hit range rather than roll two twenty-sided dice to attack and the Paladin’s ‘Lay on Hands’ becomes a feature of the Class rather than a talent, ‘Smite’ inflicts more damage, and so on. Major overhauls include the Bard Class, whose features and talents are based on the type of performance—Brass: Horn & Trumpets, Dance: Poise & Motion, Drums: Rhythm & Percussion, Flutes & Pipes & Ocarinas, and Strings: Lutes & Harps & Guitars—which also presents a greater choice for the player. The Sorcerer retains its Breath Weapon, the type of damage depending on the Dragon-type, and gaining bonuses to both to hit and Critical Range from the Escalation die, and can empower his spells in one round to cast for double the effect, including damage, the next. There are a lot of changes here of varying magnitude throughout 13th Age, Second Edition, affecting everything from Icons and Icon connections and combat rules and more, all based on a decade’s worth of play of, and feedback about, 13th Age, First Edition. The aim is to streamline and ease play, especially for the player new to 13th Age.
To that end, one big change that the roleplaying game does make to 13th Age Second Edition Heroes’ Handbook in order to help the neophyte player and Game Master is to give an extensive example of play right after the introduction. Most examples of play run throughout a rulebook, but here 13th Age frontloads it in one go, taking the reader through the process, step-by-step, of creating a character—selecting Icon connections and determining their relationships, choosing a Class and Kin, designing a One Unique Thing, setting ability scores, selecting gear, picking Talents and a Feat, creating Backgrounds, and so on. At each stage, particularly in relation to the Icon connections, One Unique Thing, and Backgrounds, the example of play shows how they can tie into the setting and into the campaign that the Game Master is running. Once done and the example Player Character is presented on a character sheet, the Player Character is taken through her first arc, her first series of battles, in the process showcasing combat and suffering damage, resting, bringing Icon connections into play, and more. It is annotated with pointers as where to learn more about each aspect of the creation process and the play, further, like any good example of play or any good example of the rules, what 13th Age is doing here is showing the reader how the roleplaying game is first intended to be set up and then played. It saves the telling of how this is done for afterwards, the reader having been prepared for it by that point.
A Player Character in 13th Age has the traditional six abilities—Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Wisdom, Intelligence, and Charisma—plus a Kin, Class, One Unique Thing, and Backgrounds. There are fourteen Kin, which are Human, Dwarf, High Elf, Silver Elf, Wood Elf, Forgeborn, Gnome, Half-Elf, Halfling, Holy Ones, Troll-Kin, Dragonic, Holy One, and Tielfling. Of these, the Silver Elf is also known as the Drow, and the Dragonic, Forgeborn, Tielfling, and Holy One are by default less common. The nine Classes are Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Fighter, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer, and Wizard. Some obvious Classes, the Druid and the Monk, are not included, their details being in 13 True Ways, though not yet for 13th Age, Second Edition. The process is a matter of making choices rather than rolling dice, including selecting ability values.
Lottie Custard
Class: Rogue Level: 1
Kin: Halfling One Unique Thing: There isn’t a lie I haven’t heard and a truth that I haven’t hidden
Connections: Prince of Shadows (Conflicted/2), Emperor (Negative/1)
Backgrounds: I’m a Halfling, of course I can bake pies +2, My tongue is not so much silver, as golden +4, If I don’t know, I know man who can +1, Old Town Valley Girl +1 Strength 12 (+1) Constitution 15 (+2) Dexterity 17 (+3)
Wisdom 14 (+2) Intelligence 14 (+2) Charisma 17 (+3) Armour Class 15 (Light)
Physical Defence 15
Mental Defence 15
Hit Points 24
Weapons: Mother’s Third Best Flat Iron (d8), It’s just a fruit knife (1d6)
Kin Power: Evasive
Class Features: Bravado, Sneak Attack, Skulduggery
Class Talents: Shadow Walk, Shift, Wriggle, and Roll, Tumble
Class Powers: Evasive Strike (At-Will), Deadly Thrust (At-Will/1 Bravado), Flying Blade (At-Will)
Feat: Smooth Talk 13th Age is played out in arcs, each consisting of three or four combat scenes leavened with narrative scenes in between. The most basic of mechanics involves the Backgrounds, which work as skills in other roleplaying games, but narratively more flexible. A character’s Icon connections can also affect the narrative by providing knowledge, adding detail, securing help, triggering flashbacks, and other options, his player deciding what the actual effect is by working with the Game Master. This does not automatically happen every arc, a player needing to roll to see if it does for each Icon connection, and if it does, it can only happen once per arc. When an Icon comes into play, there is a chance that it will come with a ‘Twist’ and as the 13th Age Second Edition Heroes’ Handbook states, that is when, “The GM also gets to have some fun, adding a twist that improves the story by making the heroes’ lives a bit more interesting… but not so complicated that the connection turns bad for the heroes.” A twist will also occur if a player does not roll successfully to involve his character’s Icon connections, in which case the Game Master rolls for a random Icon to be involved. This is all backed up by detailed descriptions of the Icons—even the Orc Lord, helpful advice and plenty of examples and suggestions which will make the game play interesting and engaging.
Combat is comparatively much more complex and where the crunch occurs in 13th Age. It is also the focus of most of a Player Character’s Class talents, features, and feats, as well as spells for the spellcasting Classes. A Class’ talents are divided into three types that indicate their usage—at-will, once per battle, and once per arc. For example, at First Level, the Cleric Class can cast spells such as Combat Boon, Javelin of Faith, and Sacred Violence at will, Mark of Enmity and Spirits of the Righteous once per battle, and Mighty Healing and Hammer of Faith once per arc. The effects of talents increase as a Player Character rises in Level, as does total Hit Points, number of Recoveries (used for healing Hit Points) and feats, and so on up to Tenth Level. 
Where combat in 13th Age gets exciting, even exhilarating, is in the use of the Escalation Die. This sits in the middle of the table and comes into effect on the second round of the combat and then on subsequent rounds. On the second round, it gives a ‘+1’ bonus to all of the Player Characters, on the third round it gives a ‘+2’ bonus, on the fourth round, it gives a ‘+3’ bonus, and so on all the way up to the seventh round and after. It applies to the Player Characters only, not the monsters or NPCs, it can de-escalate or temporarily freeze, and it can trigger the powers of some Classes depending upon the number it is at or whether it is odd or even. The aim is to push combat forward and give it momentum once past the initially difficult rounds, rather than have it bog down in detail and unnecessary crunch.
All of the content in the 13th Age Second Edition Heroes’ Handbook (and also in the 13th Age Second Edition Gamemaster’s Guide) is supported by helpful examples, suggestions, and advice, some of which takes the form of commentary and interjections from the authors. This is where they talk directly to the players and to the Game Master, telling them how they ran their games, what worked, what did not work, what they think of some of the feedback on the changes to the new edition, and more. It adds a personal touch to what is very much not a drily academic-in-tone rulebook and escalating, a little, its engaging style.
Physically, 13th Age Second Edition Heroes’ Handbook is a great looking book. The artwork is solidly heroic fantasy, apart from the Icons, which are drawn as a cross between the decoration on Greek vases and icons for the Greek Orthodox Church. The book is well written and despite the complexity of its crunch, never less than readable. It is supported by a very decent combined index and glossary.
It is difficult to truly criticise the 13th Age Second Edition Heroes’ Handbook. The main issues are perhaps that some of the Classes are still too complex to play with ease, especially in comparison to other ‘Fantasy 20’ roleplaying games and that some fans of 13th Age, First Edition are not necessarily going to be happy with all of the changes. Yet even the designers acknowledge this and even applaud some groups that want to keep playing 13th Age their way.
The 13th Age Second Edition Heroes’ Handbook is the players’ book and the core book for 13th Age, Second Edition. It does what a new edition of a roleplaying game should do and improve and tweak the rules and the game to make it play better, in this case based on lengthy playtesting and feedback, and then make it accessible. In particular, it does this with its lengthy example of campaign set-up, character creation, and play that showcases how 13th Age is intended to be played and readies player and Game Master for the rules that follows. Yet it goes even further by having the designers explain their decisions and give alternative suggestions. 13th Age Second Edition Heroes’ Handbook is everything that the 13th Age player is going to need to help set him and his character up for some heroic fantasy.

Investigative Fantasy

Eversink has stood for a thousand years on islands raised by its patron goddess of civilisation and commerce, Denari, its tall tower and spires with their fluttering pennants thrusting into the sky even as cellars and basements continue to sink into the mire, despite the best efforts of the engineers of The Guild of Architects and Canal-Watchers. Located at the mouth of the Serpentine River where it flows into Bay of Coins, surrounded by salt flats, the city is cut through by canals crossed over by numerous bridges from one plaza to another, filled with flotillas of boats and gondolas, spoiled by outpourings of human and other waste waiting to be flushed out to sea, all to the sound of merchants, high and low, hawking their wares, and the chants of the priests of Denari. High above the city, the seagulls wheel and screech, watching for the recently dead of the wealthy and the nobility to be laid out for air burial as is the custom, so that they can peck at the corpses, whilst the bodies of the poor are slid into the swamps surrounding the city, and the victims of crime, vendetta, and bad luck are dumped into the canal to be ignored or investigated by the city watch as determined by their status and connections in life. The bereaved carve or commission likenesses of the deceased loved ones turning Eversink into a city of funereal statuary and making it world famous for its sculptors. It is a city of feuds and rivalries and secrets, some secrets hidden in the rooms of buildings swallowed by the swamp upon which the city stands. It is a city of laws and traditions so complex and convoluted that no city official can expect to remember them all and sometimes, if some legal mind or other knows better of an obscure edict forgotten from centuries ago, but still on the statute books, then such a person might get away with murder or treason or he might be convicted for the pettiest of crimes. One crime that is barely tolerated is Sorcery, for hand-in-hand with Sorcery comes Corruption, and if a Sorcerer chooses not to internalise it, he must instead externalise it and that spiritually scars the surrounding terrain and brings the attention of the Inquisitors for it scars Denari’s Blessing—and that may be Eversink’s ultimate secret.

This is the setting for Swords of the Serpentine. Published by Pelgrane Press, it is a swords and sorcery roleplaying game of daring heroism, sly politics, daring thievery, incriminating secrets, feuding houses of the nobility, rampant corruption, and bloody savagery, set in a fantasy city full of skullduggery and death, inspired by the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories by Fritz Leiber and Robert Lynn Asprin’s Thieves’ World story anthologies. Now being a roleplaying game published by Pelgrane Press, it uses the GUMSHOE System, and to be honest, the GUMSHOE System was specifically designed to handle investigation-orientated roleplaying and the last genre that you would expect the GUMSHOE System to handle is swords and sorcery. Of course, since it does use the GUMSHOE System, it means that if a Hero has points in a particular Investigative Ability, he will always be able to find clues related to the ability, and if he has points in that ability, he can gain further clues, and then it is up to the players to interpret the clue or clues found to push the story along. Yet alongside that, Swords of the Serpentine mixes in social and physical combat so that the Heroes can defeat their opponents through wit, guile, and intimidation as well as with a blade, and with sorcery powerful and easy enough to tear a tower apart, if the sorcerer is prepared to accept the corruption to both his body and soul. All of which can be enhanced by points spent from an Investigative Ability, if the Game Master agrees it applies and it fits the story. And this all takes place in a city that is an even more fantastic, more swashbuckling, more flagitious version of Venice, and in which, there is scope and encouragement for the players add details so help develop the world around their Heroes.

A Hero in Swords of the Serpentine, much like a Player Character in other GUMSHOE System roleplaying games, is primarily defined by two types of abilities and their associated pools of points. Investigative Abilities, such as Servility, Felonious Intent, Scurrilous Rumours, Corruption, and Tactics of Death, enable a Hero to find clues related to the ability and when spending points from their associated pools, to gain bonuses of various types. This includes increasing the amount of damage inflicted, increase the effectiveness of a General Ability, gain temporary Armour or Grit, create a unique special effect, and more. Investigative Abilities are divided across four Professions—Sentinel (a cross between a private investigator and a ghost hunter, because they can sometimes see ghosts), Sorcerer, Thief, and Warrior—and a fifth category, Social. A Hero can have ratings in any of the Investigative Abilities across the four Professions as well as Social, or specialise in one or two. One or two points in an Investigative Ability is enough to get by, but a maximum rating of five is world class.

The General Abilities include Athletics, Bind Wounds, Burglary, Preparedness, Stealth, Sorcery, Sway, and Warfare, as well as Health and Morale, and can go as high as fifteen. At a rating of eight or more though in a General Ability other than Health and Morale, a Hero is an expert and qualifies for a Talent. For example, Athletics grants ‘Dodge’, the capacity to try and dodge attacks; Preparedness gives ‘Flashback’, enabling the player to narrate how his Hero set up a secret plan or contingency for just the exact situation right now; and for Stealth, ‘Where’d She Go’ enables a Hero to slip out of a scene and reappear again at an opportune moment.

In addition, a Hero has Allegiances and Minor, But Iconic Equipment. Allegiances are with factions within the city, like the Ancient Nobility or The Guild of Architects and Canal-Watchers, and can be spent like Investigative Abilities. Minor, But Iconic Equipment is gear that a Hero will nearly always have that in part will define who he is, but will not provide any mechanical benefit. He will also a handful of Adjectives to describe who he is and three Drives, what he believes to be ‘Best in Life’.

To create a Hero, a player chooses a Profession. He defines both Adjectives and Drives. Then he assigns points to his Hero’s Investigative Abilities, the total amount determined by the number of players, a standard set of points to General Abilities, divides another set amount between Health and Morale, and assigns points to represent his Allegiances, both Allies and Enemies. Alternatively, Swords of the Serpentine does provide some ready-to-play templates.

Name: Tregeller Bordignon
Profession: Secret Keeper (Thief)
Adjectives: Small, Acquisitive, Curious, Slippery, Bemused
What is Best in Life?: Knowledge for knowledge’s sake, the perfect barb, a party

ALLEGIANCES
Nobility 2, The Guild of Architects and Canal Watchers 1 (Enemy)

INVESTIGATIVE ABILITIES
Social – Charm 2, Liar’s Tell 1, Nobility 1, Taunt 1
Sentinel – Laws & Traditions 1
Thief – City’s Secrets 1, Ridiculous Luck 1, Scurrilous Rumours 1, Skulduggery 1
Sorcerer – Forgotten Lore 1
Warrior – Spot Frailty 1

GENERAL ABILITIES
Athletics 3, Burglary 4, Preparedness 8, Stealth 8, Sway 5, Warfare 2

HEALTH (Threshold 3): 8
MORALE (Threshold 4): 10

ICONIC GEAR
Antique fan, the finest frock, lockpicks, little black book in code, ancient coin

Mechanically, Investigative Abilities can be used in two ways. One is to find clues and follow leads, the other is to spend points to trigger powerful effects. For example, to use Laws & Traditions to create an abstruse law or ordinance that applies in the moment or Prophecy to be able to put your hands on some easy wealth, know when to sneak into a building unobserved, gain a use of the ‘Flashback’ Talent from Preparedness or to know the best course of action in a fight. Points from General Abilities are spent as modifiers to a simple roll on a six-sided die to beat a Target Number. The latter applies to combat as well, the Target Number determined by the defendant’s Threshold for either Health or Morale, typically three or four. For each three points the roll exceeds the target, the attack can affect an extra target, and a result of five or more higher than the target indicates an attack is a critical and inflicts an extra die’s worth of damage. However, combat in Swords of the Serpentine is not just physical. It is also social and sorcerous, and besides using the Warfare General Ability in a fight, a Hero can use Sway and Sorcery to attack as well, depending upon the situation. But that is not all. Damage can be boosted by spending points from Investigative Abilities. For example, Charm or Scurrilous Rumours might be used to undermine an opponent in a Sway attack; City’s Secrets to manoeuvre an opponent onto a crumbling bridge or slippery cobblestones to add to damage inflicted by Warfare; and Know Monstrosities to identify a creature’s weak spots in a Sorcery, Sway, or Warfare attack. Plus, attacks do not have to inflict lethal damage. With a Manoeuvre, a Hero could inflict a condition upon an opponent, for example, temporarily blinding them with a Sorcery or Warfare attack or tricking him with Sorcery or Sway attack.

Truth be told, the GUMSHOE System has never been renowned for its combat system, but even the expansion from one form of combat—physical, to three, with the addition of Sorcery and Sway, adds depth and options to how a Hero handles a situation. Yet Swords of the Serpentine goes further. The use of Investigative Abilities to augment and add damage in combat opens up numerous different ways in which a Hero can fight and more, it elevates Swords of the Serpentine into a cinematic style of play that is perfect for its Swords and Sorcery genre.

Whilst Prophecy and Spirit Sight are not exactly passive Investigative Abilities in Swords of the Serpentine, Sorcery is magic put into action, and it is the Corruption Investigative Ability that makes it both powerful and dangerous. Sorcery is either learnt from the hidden remnants of the long-dead Serpentine empire that once stood upon the site where Eversink now stands or because the sorcerer has been possessed by or is host to a demon, spirit, or small god. Sorcery typically either does Health or Morale damage (but can do both) and for each point in Corruption, a Sorcerer has knowledge of a particular Sphere of magic, such as ageing, blood, curses, earth, lightning, love, luck, necromancy, statuary (which is more powerful than you think when you take into consideration the fact that Eversink is rife with funereal statuary), and so on. Rather than just giving a list of spells that might fit under this sphere or that sphere, Swords of the Serpentine allows a sorcerer to cast any spell he wants that his player can justify as working within that theme and the Game Master agrees. It can even be used to explain how a sorcerer’s Investigative Abilities work as well, for example, using Athletics to leap across a street from one roof at another, but explaining it working because the sorcerer creates a temporary bridge that only he can run across.

However, unique and powerful effects require a player to spend points of Corruption and then his Hero deal with the consequences. Corruption can be spent to inflict exceptional damage to one opponent or target anyone within range or it can be used to cast unique and powerful spells with a sorcerer’s spheres of magic. Swords of the Serpentine does not include a list of ready to cast spells, so instead, casting a spell of this type is a matter of negotiation between the player and the Game Master to determine the cost in terms of Corruption. Immobilise a merchant vessel by binding it with seaweed using the Plants sphere? Make two deadly enemies fall in love the next time they confront each other with the Love sphere? Enable your party to breath underwater into order to access a submerged building by drawing from the Water sphere? All possible, but all require the use of Corruption as does the laying of sorcerous traps and the laying of glyphs.

Unfortunately, the Corruption must be assuaged. This can be done in one of two ways, either ‘Internalised’ or ‘Externalised’. If Internalised, with a Health test, it changes something physical about the Sorcerer, but if ‘Externalised’, it can affect the Heroes’ morale or sickens and pollutes the reality in the immediate area, scarring it in a way that can be seen with Second Sight. Sorcerers who do internalise their Corruption may be tolerated, even accepted if they are members working of the Guild of Architects and Canal-Watchers.

This though is the basics of Sorcery in Swords of the Serpentine, the players expected to grasp the advanced rules in time. This includes rituals, astrology, true names, curses, and traps. Further, Swords of the Serpentine suggests optional ways in which sorcery can be used in the roleplaying game. One is to use charms and trinkets instead of casting spells, whilst another is to replace Corruption with Thaumaturgy. This shifts sorcery to a more rigorous, even ‘scientific’ form encompassing alchemy, mesmerism, and poisons. The result is the magic of such thaumaturgists is less showy, but also much such inventive.

Gear and wealth are mostly abstracted, though there is a list of various items including arms, armour, poisons, charms, and magical objects. In terms of support for the Game Master there is a good selection of NPCs from across the social spectrum as well as monstrosities that suit the urban setting of Eversink and its surrounding wetlands. Including haughty duellists, snivelling lackeys, and back-alley leeches—and delightfully, a flock of watch-geese, alongside animated statues, the batrachian chugguts from the surrounding swamps, the doppelgangers known as the Faceless, Penanggalan, and others, there is a subtle feel to these adversaries, lurking threats more than rampaging monsters.

The advice for the Game Master is also good, cover character creation, Investigative Ability expenditure, how to create mysteries and leads, and constructing adventures and customising the roleplaying game. There is a lengthy description of Eversink, covering everything from the fact that its buildings are constantly sinking and the nature of the goddess Denari to divinity and divine power and sumptuary laws and ‘Sinkish Law’, with food, drink, climate, sports, history, and more detailed in between. Each of its districts is described and accompanied by a plot hook for the Game Master to develop and the various possible Allegiances and enemies that the Player Characters can have, are also examined. One of these does include The Triskadane, the city government which a Player Character could actually be part of, seemingly randomly selected—as is the custom—to run the city. There is a surprisingly lengthy (actually only two pages) discussion on the importance of trade to the city and an overview of the threats faced by Eversink. Further, given the focus of Swords of the Serpentine upon the city of Eversink, the other surprise is the chapter on the nations beyond the city. Again, quite lengthy, but included because the Heroes might need to visit, but definitely come back, and because they may be somewhere where Outlander Heroes come from.

Rounding out Swords of the Serpentine is the scenario, ‘Corpse Astray’. This throws the Heroes straight into the action aboard a vessel bound for Eversink, but under attack by pirates! Designed as an introductory adventure, this gives a chance for the players to get their first experience of the rules and begin to explore just what their Heroes are capable of, as they deal with a cunning plan of revenge that has hijacked by someone else and turned into an even bigger threat to Eversink. It is nicely Machiavellian for starting scenario, but actually includes a note at the end of the first for the Game Master that if the players decide that their Heroes want to run off and join the pirates to go with it and have fun! But also save the rest of the adventure for another set of heroes!

This note is indicative of the style and the writing in Swords of the Serpentine. From the start, there is advice for the Game Master and player alike. It is direct about the roleplaying game and what it does, it suggests campaign frameworks—a favourite being ‘Bookhounds of Eversink’, a nod to Bookhounds of London for Trail of Cthulhu, provides quick references at the start of every chapter that make everything easier to grasp, there are boxes of designer notes, Game Master advice, and player advice throughout, and so on. And honestly, these boxes of notes and advice are brilliant, full of ideas and history and background to the roleplaying game. For example, the designer notes on the Sentinel explain that their original name was investigators, which the designers decided was a terrible name for a hero in a swords and sorcery adventure, but tells the reader that the Profession’s Laws and Traditions ability is fun because it grants them narrative control to declare something legal or illegal, whilst the Spirit Sight ability provides insight into ghosts and demons granted by no other Profession, and lastly suggests with a change of theming, the role could be turned into that of a paladin, whilst the Designer Notes on using Preparedness as a combat ability has an amusing story from the playtest. All of which gives Swords of the Serpentine a much lighter and more informal tone, as if the designer is chatting to the reader, and it makes the rulebook such an engaging read.

Physically, Swords of the Serpentine is very well presented. The artwork varies a little in quality, but is generally good. The writing is excellent.

Swords of the Serpentine is the most engaging and exciting, and actually accessible of the GUMSHOE System roleplaying games from Pelgrane Press to date. Yes, it does use the GUMSHOE System, which is designed to handle investigative roleplaying, but it shifts the action and focus away from that to one of swords, sorcery, and secrets in a fantastically Florentine city combined with play that encourages, even demands inventive input by the players, all whilst keeping everything else mechanically simple. Swords of the Serpentine is a superb roleplaying game that does swords and sorcery in way that you would never think possible, giving the GUMSHOE System a swagger you never thought it was capable of.

The Curwen Connection

Okay. Let us start with the pitch. The Borellus Connection is The Case of Charles Dexter Ward meets The French Connection with the journalistic attention to detail of Frederick Forsyth writing a Suppressed Transmission. And if that fails to get your gaming juices roiling, then there is definitely something missing from your essential saltes since your last resurrection. It is crime meets Cthulhu, the Age of Aquarius shot up on smack, DELTA GREEN versus the drug trade, when the cowboys could protect the USA—and the world—with a bit of swagger, and evil was still easy to identify, sometimes because they were still your allies despite what happened in World War 2. It is a campaign of Lovecraftian investigative horror that will take you places rarely visited in the genre in an age that remains all but unexplored in roleplaying.

The Borellus Connection is a campaign for The Fall of DELTA GREEN, the winner of the 2019 Gold ENNIE Award for Best Setting. Published by Pelgrane Press and using the GUMSHOE System, what The Fall of DELTA GREEN does is turn the clock back on DELTA GREEN—and its modern iteration, DELTA GREEN: The Roleplaying Game from Arc Dream Publishing—to take a ride through its last hurrah, the decade of the swinging sixties in which the USA would land men on the Moon, but get mired in conflict in Southeast Asia, in which the optimism of hippism and free love would be marred by murder, and in which DELTA GREEN would be overwhelmed by threats domestic and foreign—and its own hubris. The campaign will take the Agents from the sweltering heat of the jungles of the Vietnam War and into the sweaty morass of money and misfeasance that is Saigon, before swinging into the weird reality of burgeoning international air travel, and then to Turkey and Lebanon. From there it races back across Europe to the cutting edge of the Cold War and the dark aftermath of the previous war, and at last, brings the campaign home and into the wake for the death of the counterculture, as the dark romantism of the previous century torments the next. This is a campaign designed by Ken Hite—the author of The Fall of DELTA GREEN—but actually developed and written by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan.

The campaign does not stipulate what types of Agents it requires the players to roleplay. Both military veterans and former members of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics will be useful, but members of the FBI will be good as will any Agent with good surveillance skills. Similarly, there are no skills stipulated as being necessary to complete the campaign, but slots left open for languages may prove to be useful.

The campaign begins in 1968 just prior to the establishment of the BNDD, or Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, by the Justice Department. As the precursor of the DEA, it is assigned to investigate and disrupt the flow of drugs into the United States, in particular, the heroin coming out of the Golden Triangle in Southeast Asia and Turkey. The Agents are assigned to the new agency, but investigating and stopping the worldwide trade in narcotics is only half of their job and their least important one. The global nature of the trade means that the Agents can be assigned to any number of exotic, faraway places with legitimate reasons to be there. Which is perfect cover for their other job—investigating and thwarting the forces of the Unnatural before they become a threat to American interests and the world. What this means is that there is a constant duality to The Borellus Connection. The Agents’ investigations are always twofold—the drugs and the Unnatural—and there is always a constant pull back and forth between. Fortunately, or unfortunately, as the campaign progresses, it becomes clear that the Unnatural has coiled its ways around the drug trade, so making it potentially easier to investigate both at the same time, but potentially making the investigation of the drug trade Unnaturally dangerous, as opposed to just dangerous.

The campaign provides a good overview of the BNDD, who the Agents’ DELTA GREEN handler is, and of the linked twin networks that entwine their way through the campaign. One is the drug trade itself, running out of the Golden Triangle, east to the USA and also out of Turkey, and both west through Marseille to the USA. This network is dominated by the Union Corse—and closer to home in the USA by the Mafia. The other network is headed by an immortal sorcerer, an associate of Joseph Curwen of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward fame, who hides within the Union Corse as its chief chemist and who uses its network to secrete his own agents around the world to protect his own interests and to work towards his plans for domination beyond his mortal immortality. This includes moving a lot the necessary materials via the same routes as the heroin. The campaign constantly hints that there is a lot more going than it outwardly appears and there is a shadowy figure behind it all, but the Agents do not learn his identity or get the chance to confront him until the very last mission.

The campaign begins with ‘Operation JADE PHOENIX’. Following a briefing at the CIA headquarters at Langley, the Agents are sent into Laos to confirm that a Kuomintang-backed Shan warlord is funding his operations through opium smuggling, but in reality, their mission is to help conduct a double assassination. The CIA wants the warlord dead, whilst DELTA GREEN’s target is a Kuen-Yuin sorcerer. They will have a military escort, but the assassinations are to be carried out by a United States Marine Corps sniper, one Sergeant Adolph Lepus, already just a few shots away from being the stone-cold killer feared by every DELTA GREEN agent in the future. The scenario is perhaps the most straightforward, certainly the simplest, of the missions in the campaign, even if it is complicated by an inexperienced commanding officer of the escort, the limited time frame set by Tiger Transit, and the Mythos machinations of the second target. It is otherwise a twisted military or mercenary style scenario, one in which some of the Agents are likely to be out of their depth—or out of their comfort zone, that should introduce the players and their Agents to the core of the campaign.

That core comes to the fore in ‘Operation ALONSO’, the most complex scenario in the campaign. The Agents are turned around in Hong Kong on their way home and sent back to Vietnam as newly minted recruits for the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. Once there, their cover operation is to run surveillance on a narcotics summit at the Continental Palace hotel in Saigon between Unione Corse bosses and emissaries from Marseille with local operations, whilst their actual mission is to ferret out signs of a resurgent Cthulhu cult that DELTA GREEN targeted a decade before. The challenge for the Agents is not only to navigate an unfamiliar city and equally unfamiliar military and espionage operations all on a war footing, but navigate a city where virtually everyone is on the take and their actions have a chance of alerting not only the heroin operation they are investigating, but also the Viet Cong that have infiltrated the city. Arouse the suspicions of either and the Agents will find themselves becoming the targets. In addition to infiltrating the hotel where the summit is being held, the Agents have to look for the activities of the Cthulhu cult in Saigon and beyond into the swamps outside the city where they might get a chance to conduct their own defoliation operation. They will also discover for the first time how weird and twisted some of the operatives connected to Union Corse really are. This as opposed to ‘Operation JADE PHOENIX’, where the weirdness seems local.

The scenario is made also the more complex by being set at the height of the Vietnam War and so amidst a morass of strange names and abbreviations. Add in a lot of organisations with different aims and sometimes overlapping areas of responsibility, and there is a lot for both the Handler and her players, let alone the Agents, to keep track off. It also makes it more challenging in comparison to prepare. Otherwise, this is a quagmire of a scenario, hot and sticky, that will take multiple sessions to complete.

The campaign narrows—quite literally—to the width and length of a Boeing 707. In ‘Operation HORUS HOURS’, the Agents are given another pair of assignments to conduct during their return to the USA. The BNDD wants the Agents to track some smugglers into the USA and DELTA GREEN wants the Agents to identify the purchaser in the USA of an Unnatural relic being transported aboard the aeroplane by a courier. The scenario takes place at the very dawn of the golden age of international air travel, but before the arrival of the Boeing 747 and similar large passenger jets, so the journey back from Hong Kong is via Sydney, Australia, Tahiti and Easter Island, Santiago, Buenos Aires, Panama City, and Los Angeles, and takes over one hundred hours in total! Since this is 1968, the Agents and other passengers aboard the flight have a lot of freedom of movement and face much lower security compared to modern flights, so the Agents have scope to move around, identify the smugglers, and spot the courier—and similarly, the smugglers and the courier have the opportunity to realise they are being watched and who by.

This tense, enclosed environment is exacerbated by the release of a nasty chemical that gets into the ventilation system and unleashes some of the Unnatural contraband being smuggled as well as tipping passengers and crew alike over into series of trippy dreams. And the dreams get weirder and weirder the closer the aeroplane gets to the site of sunken R’lyeh, a lovely contrivance of a flypast that brings another aspect of the Unnatural into play and requires intervention on Easter Island. ‘Operation HORUS HOURS’ has a submarine feel to it, of the Agents lost as if underwater, drowning in dreams and drugs.

The arrival of the Agents in the USA at the end of ‘Operation HORUS HOURS’ brings the first half of The Borellus Connection to close. The second half moves to the Middle East and Europe where the Agents investigate the drug trafficking running through Marseille for the BNDD and what looks like the activities—past and present—of an occultist somehow connected to the Union Corse for DELTA GREEN. ‘Operation DE PROFUNDIS’ takes place in eastern Turkey where the BNDD wants the Agents to investigate how the heroin is being transported through the country and DELTA GREEN wants them to investigate the death of Charles Whiteman, a British archaeologist at a dig site after his body vanished on the way back to England. Since this is set at an archaeological dig site, this has the feel of a more traditional scenario for almost any other roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror, but all more creepier because of the appearance and behaviour of the man who arrives to take control of the dig site with the permission of the dead and missing man! Clumsy and awkward, with a raspy voice and his hands always covered in gloves. He is very obviously suspicious and hiding something… This is likely the Agents’ first encounter with one of the servants of the shadowy figure at the heart of the conspiracy. All of these servants are monstrous in their way, but surprisingly, there is something sad about this man.

The location for ‘Operation SECOND LOOK’ is Beirut, Lebanon where the BNDD wants a drug deal investigated, and DELTA GREEN wants know why François Genoud, a Swiss Nazi sympathiser and intelligence broker, stopped informing for them and ‘gently’ reminded who he owes his continued existence to what he thinks are members of the CIA. Getting to the Genoud takes a bit of work and if they lean on him too hard, he goes running to his actual CIA masters, headed by retired agent, Miles Copeland, Jr., which will likely lead to the Agents earning a rebuke. The Agents can also discover the smuggling operation is shipping something big through the city, something guarded by a contingent of soldiers from the Egyptian army! The city has a post-colonial, seedy opulence to it and members of the Union Corse have a legitimacy that enables them to operate in the open, leading to scenes where the Agents have the opportunity to rub shoulders with them and even receive an offer that exposes the friction within the Union Corse and between the campaign’s two strands.

By now it should be clear that the use the Union Corse’s smuggling routes is twofold. One—and most obviously—to traffic drugs into the USA, and the other, hiding within that operation, to transport occult materials around the world. DELTA GREEN has the Agents follow the latter track, following the route of Charles Whiteman’s body into Germany in ‘Operation PURITAN’. Unfortunately, the Agents get sidetracked by another DELTA GREEN investigation meaning that it is no longer a duality, but a triality! Another DELTA GREEN briefing officer in Munich tasks the Agent with investigating what appears to be Unnatural prayers being broadcast via Radio Liberty into the Soviet Union. This forces the Agents into a more challenging balancing act, but as their investigation into the broadcasts takes them into Munich’s Turkish diaspora, it becomes apparent that all three are connected and lead back to the past activities in central Europe of the sorcerer at the heart of conspiracy. To confirm this, the Agents must cross the Iron Curtain on a quick excursion to Prague in the Prague Spring and almost back in time to dark house warped by monstrous sorceries. The mission comes to an end with a chance to save the world, but potentially end history in another twenty years, although the Agents are unlikely to be aware of either.

The penultimate mission is ‘Operation MISTRAL’ set in Marseille. By this point, the Agents know that they are on the trail of Jaques Vènice, the scar-faced chemist responsible for ensuring the quality of the heroin coming out of Turkey and the Golden Triangle and very probably using the Union Corse’s smuggling network as a cover for his own sorcerous activities. They may also have learnt his true identity. In ‘Operation MISTRAL’ they have chance to track him down in Marseille, the heart of the Union Corse’s smuggling operation. Another Mythos element comes into play here as the sorcerer uses a cult dedicated to another entity and the student protests that began in Paris and have spread to ‘La Cité Phocéenne’ as cover for his activities, as well as links to the authorities for both the Union Corse and the cult. The Agents may have an ally here and may also be able to take advantage of the friction within the Union Corse which will see one faction give up Jaques Vènice and potentially reveal his true identity. Either way, the Agents are definitely on his trail now and the operation will likely end with them chasing him across France and perhaps through another reality, all the way to the campaign’s finale.

‘Operation NEPENTHE’—named for the drug capable of banishing grief or trouble from a person’s mind described in Homer’s Odyssey—brings the campaign home to ‘Mob-town’, the city of Baltimore infamous for its riots, of which the latest it is trying to recover from with a national guard presence on the streets. The Agents are ostensibly here to follow up on Union Corse links to the city, but their DELTA GREEN handler all but gives them carte blanche to do what takes to stop the sorcerer’s plans. The latter has deep historical rather than modern ties to the city and as his gathered energies and plans coalesce, thorn bushes sprout from the strangest of places, the eyes of the city’s junkies turn towards the Agents, and time slips… The Agents need to slip too, back into city’s past and that of sorcerer, perhaps as far back as the last days of Baltimore’s most famous son. Of course, there is also the chance of the Agents getting lost in time and of failure, of the eastern seaboard getting lost in a bubble of time, but if they succeed, knowing that they saved millions is the only reward, and that they alone, are the only ones to know, are the only reward.

The Borellus Connection is a big sprawling campaign in the mode of the globetrotting campaigns of classic Lovecraftian investigative horror. Yet it owes some of its structure and tone to the conspiratorial structure of campaign in the designer’s other roleplaying game, Night’s Black Agents, whilst at the same time being loose enough that many of the individual scenarios could be run on their own. In addition to duality of the campaign’s entwined threads, its secrets are heavily obfuscated behind layers of obligation and history, and is only in the very later parts of the campaign that the players and their Agents begin to realise who or what they are facing. Since the Agents are sent hither and thither, they and their players do not have overall agency as they might in other globetrotting campaigns of classic Lovecraftian investigative horror and so it is not easy for them to step back from the overall campaign and work out what the overall picture is. The intricacy and connections within the campaign mean that the players are probably going to need their own corkboard, let alone their Agents. In terms of tone, the campaign veers towards Pulp, but there is often a brutality to it, hulking in the shadows until forced to act. The best and most unnerving of that brutality may occur after one or more of the Agents has been killed.

For the Handler there is not much advice on setting up the campaign and the advice throughout is not always as strong as it could be. Hence, this really is a campaign for the experienced Handler in terms of its structure and detail, but the balance between the Mythos and the mundane is well handled and the campaign is rich in historical detail. The Agents really get to get to meet some real and genuinely interesting historical figures and the Handler who wants more detail, there is a decent bibliography at the end. In terms of the Mythos, there is no one central threat in terms of the other, although the campaign does bounce between several differing Mythos traditions. Rather the threat faced is arguably all too human, but one who has fully embraced the inhuman in an attempt to realise his ambitions.

Physically, The Borellus Connection is a dense affair and as a whole, heavy going. Individual missions are well organised and explained with details of the mission spine and the key characters at the start before diving into the detail. The cartography is decent, but the artwork is intentionally obfuscatory, hinting and suggesting rather than clarifying.

The Borellus Connection is a big demanding campaign that is going to take no little commitment upon the part of the Handler, her players, and their Agents to run, play, and complete. There is a fantastic sense of energy and grime to this campaign, of the Agents constantly wading through the seedy underbelly of both humanity and alchemy, caught between the mundane and the Mythos, and ultimately, out of game, how far and what strange places, The Borellus Connection takes one of H.P. Lovecraft’s most famous stories.

Deadly Dinners

A woman sits at the dining table, the meal ready before her, a housewife and siren awaiting the arrival of her husband home, working late, or is he? Lovers, one poisoning the other to keep them even as they stray. Siblings, monsters all, confined by their father’s love and control until they have had enough and decided to ensure their escape by eating him. A nuclear family of loving cannibals whose predations have become too much and as the police closes in, enjoy one last meal of each other. A New Year’s Eve party at the end of 1999 when the world might end at the stroke of midnight and the ball drops, whilst visions of an alternate present haunt the party-goers. Mealtimes—dinner especially—can be times to celebrate, but sometimes they are performances of tension and despair, each course serving up another dish and another act that ratchets up the tension until it becomes unbearable and someone snaps. Seething. Shouting. Screaming. Raging. Worse. Thankfully, these are not scenes of everyday domestic distress, but of set-ups for—and from—the Suburban Consumption of the Monstrous.

Suburban Consumption of the Monstrous is an anthology of American freeform live action horror roleplaying games that use the themes of food and consumption to explore horror in suburban environments. Published by Pelgrane Press—better known for Trail of Cthulhu and 13th Age and similar roleplaying games—following a successful Kickstarter campaign, Suburban Consumption of the Monstrous is written and designed by Banana Chan and Sadia Bies, and contains a total of fourteen ‘Live Action Role Playing’ games or LARPs. These are not the traditional fantasy LARPS with multiple participants wielding foam weapons, but much smaller, more intimate affairs, that emphasise drama and tension. This is done via the set-up and then through character design and prompts. The players are free to interpret these prompts within the play, but these LARPS are designed to tell a particular story even if the outcome will vary from one playthrough to the next. The format and style is influenced by the Nordic style, but the fourteen here are classified as American freeform LARPS. All fourteen though, are reminiscent of murder mystery parties, each twisted into their own American horror story.

Suburban Consumption of the Monstrous opens with a short explanation of what LARPS, before delving into a discussion of calibration tools and setting expectations, essentially safety tools. Some of these are particular to LARPS, like ‘Tap and Scratch’, tap being used to indicate that a player wants to step out of a scene, ‘scratch’ to indicate that a player is enjoying a scene. Others, such as ‘Lines and Veils’ and the ‘X-Card’ will be familiar to standard tabletop roleplaying games. There are notes too on expectations for solo play, since some of the LARPs in the anthology are designed for one, and the experience of play can be made all the more intense because of the solitary situation. There is advice too for how to handle the debriefing following a solo LARP, necessary because being designed for one, there is no scope for post-play discussion with others as there is in a standard LARP with more participants.

The fourteen LARPs in Suburban Consumption of the Monstrous range widely in terms of length and number of participants. From one to as many as eight players, and from under an hour to no more than three. All follow the same format. This includes, obviously, the playing time and the number of players, but to this are listed content warnings, tone and media touchstones—inspirational reading and watching, calibration tools—safety tools to be observed for the particular LARP, and items needed. The latter typically begin with a dinner meal and a table, and can be as simple as print-outs of the LARP’s prompt cards and a mannequin, or as complex as an unusual ingredient, a washcloth, a bathtub, a cup of water, a coin, and a pair of pyjamas. Others require video recordings, particular room types, and more. Following some background there is always a guide to how the LARP will work, but beyond that, each of the LARPs will vary. Many include character and prompt cards that are required in order to play.

Suburban Consumption of the Monstrous opens with ‘A Housewife in Her Twenties’, a solo affair in which a housewife—who happens to be a siren—who goes through the steps of preparing to have her husband come home from work. Doing her make-up, dressing, and preparing and cooking the evening meal, before sitting down to eat—and all this is actually doing those things rather than describing acting them out as you would in a roleplaying game. Throughout there are prompts and questions as to how you react, and there is potential here for transgression, and it is intentionally designed to scritch and scratch and needle, both physically and emotionally. Similarly, ‘TV Dinner’ is very personal as the player, living alone, enjoys a takeout meal, and suddenly realises that someone in the television series he is watching is talking to him. This explores loneliness and what might change as a result of the interaction. All three of the solo LARPs here have the feel more of solo journalling games, although the LARP aspect calls for a physicality that most journalling games do not.

‘My Love, A Poison’ is designed for two players. It is about a relationship that is about to founder, one poisoning the other after discovering their infidelity. It is intimate, consensually so, the player poisoner lacing the victim’s food with an unusual flavour. There is no reveal in the sense that the poisoned participant is caught unaware, both players knowing from the starter who is the poisoner and the poisoned. ‘Goodbye Father’ is not dissimilar. It is for three players, all taking the roles of monstrous siblings who want to escape the constraints their father has placed on their lives and have jointly decided to kill and consume him. The tension and horror of knowing what is coming is ratchetted up by much of the play being done in silence, communication being done via notes or even texts, except when Father speaks, and ultimately when he is dead and they escape. Then they freely find their voices… ‘Love and Betrayal’ begins with three of its protagonists waking up to encounter a Personal Assistant hurrying to get them to rehearsals for scenes from a soap opera. As they do so, the Personal Assistant interrupts with notes from the ‘Director’ on how he wants them to perform, stuck to their scripts becoming increasingly revelatory with secrets about themselves rather than their characters in the soap opera. It is short and direct and very quickly the players will learn that their characters are in a seriously perilous situation. For more players—as many as six—is ‘What Lies Beneath’ is another family affair, which begins on a sombre note. One of their number, the youngest, recently died, and there are revelations about his death to be made by each of the other members of the family. The LARP requires a fair bit of set-up in terms of questions, both as a group and a player. There is a lot in this LARP that is unspoken, and that includes quite literally the ‘Unspoken’, an unacknowledged presence that literally lurks under the table. The ‘Unspoken’ is almost the LARP’s director, using certain actions to indicate that someone is lying, when to reveal secrets, and ultimately to replace one of the family. It is weird and requires quite a lot upon the part of the person playing the ‘Unspoken’.

Physically, Suburban Consumption of the Monstrous is a lovely book. It is well written, with clear and careful instructions and advice. The artwork is a colourful range of the weird and the disturbing, each piece pointing to the horrors to come in the LARPs that follow. Thankfully, the tooth motif on the dust jacket does not follow through into the pages of the anthology.

Inspired by films such as Get Out and Hereditary, television series like Hannibal and Sharp Objects, the French folk tale Bluebeard, and Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1944 play No Exit, Suburban Consumption of the Monstrous is a demanding set of horrifying situations, fraught with emotion and tension that preys upon the participants, whilst asking a lot of them in terms of commitment. Players new to LARPS, even mature players—which is what the anthology demands—may find that too much, even with the excellent advice on safety tools and running each one. Nevertheless, they likely benefit from the presence and guidance of more experienced players. Who, of course, will find a great deal to engage with and run here. In terms of physical set-up and commitment, the contents of Suburban Consumption of the Monstrous are less demanding, because they are all designed to be run at home.

Suburban Consumption of the Monstrous is an excellent anthology of LARPs that brings the horror of the family and its relationships to the perfect venue—at the dinner table—and keeps it at home.

—oOo—

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