Reviews from R'lyeh: Podcast

Showing posts with label Podcast. Show all posts

Friday, 7 March 2025

Magazine Madness 34: Wyrd Science Issue 4

The gaming magazine is dead. After all, when was the last time that you were able to purchase a gaming magazine at your nearest newsagent? Games Workshop’s White Dwarf is of course the exception, but it has been over a decade since Dragon appeared in print. However, in more recent times, the hobby has found other means to bring the magazine format to the market. Digitally, of course, but publishers have also created their own in-house titles and sold them direct or through distribution. Another vehicle has been Kickststarter.com, which has allowed amateurs to write, create, fund, and publish titles of their own, much like the fanzines of Kickstarter’s ZineQuest. The resulting titles are not fanzines though, being longer, tackling broader subject matters, and more professional in terms of their layout and design.

—oOo—

Wyrd Science Vol. 1/Issue 4 was published in April, 2023 by Best in Show. It opens with a quartet of interviews. ‘PUBLISH AND BE DAMNED: SoulMuppet Publishing’ is with Zach Cox and explores how he co-founded the company and has developed it to the point where he began to experiment and begin to support authors from outside of the English-speaking hobby, such as with the ‘LATAM Breakout series’ for South American creators. Cox gives his views on the then changing nature of the hobby, how Kickstarter is being used by fewer and fewer would be publishers, who are then looking for other options. Nevertheless, he offers advice on how to run a successful Kickstarter project, but also highlights the difficulties in distribution that affect retail in particular. Although two years old, there is much within the interview that are still pertinent now. ‘CAST POD: What Am I Rolling?’ is part of the magazine’s regular series with podcasters, this time with Fiona Howat of the What I am Rolling? podcast, which hosts and runs one-shot games and in the process, showcases a wide variety of games. It is a nice introduction to the podcast and includes advice on trying new games and introducing new games to other players. ‘MAGIC GATHERINGS: Big Bad Con’ interviews the organisers of the California gaming convention which in recent years has shifted to offering a safer, more diverse, and inclusive space and encouraging the participation of persons from minority and LGBTQI+ groups. This showcases a fantastic effort to make the hobby a more welcoming place, one that should perhaps be looked to by other conventions.

Where the interviews are conducted by John Power Jr., Stuart Martyn kicks off the first of the issue’s themes with ‘The Game is Afoot’. As the title of the article suggests, that theme is investigative games, Martyn highlights roleplaying hobby’s fascination with mysteries and investigations. It pinpoints the issues with this type of scenario—their inherent logic puzzle nature which can frustrate some players and the capacity to miss clues. The primary solutions are twofold. First is to make the clues easy to find or automatically found, as in the GUMSHOE System, or have the solution to the mystery determined through play, as in Brindlewood Bay. Both feature heavily in the article and show how to date, the hobby has yet to come up with any better for the investigative style of scenario. ‘Scry Me a River’ by John Power Jr. neatly complements ‘The Game is Afoot’ and continues the investigative theme. This is a look at Rivers of London: The Roleplaying Game, which is based on the series of Urban Fantasy procedurals by Ben Aaronovitch and includes an interview with its creator, Lynn Hardy, exploring its genesis and development, made all the more interesting because the author has experience of gaming. There is even a list of tips from Hardy about running investigative games to go alongside it.

‘Bandes On The Run’ by Luke Frostick brings the investigative theme to a close with a look at and interview with Krister Sundelin, the creator of The Troubleshooters: An Action-Adventure Roleplaying Game, Swedish publisher Helmgast’s roleplaying game based on French and Belgian bande dessinée comics. This covers a wide range of inspirations from James Bond to the action-adventure television of the nineteen sixties and explores the heavier feeling mechanics. The Troubleshooters is a great little game that has not made the impact it deserved and it is nice to see it covered here. ‘Bad Moon Rising’, Mira Manga’s interview with Becky Annison, author of Werewolves of Britain for Liminal, continues the Urban Fantasy theme of Rivers of London: The Roleplaying Game, in exploring her inspirations for the supplement, some of it quite personal, in creating a very good expansion for the game and its setting.

‘Now is The Time of Monsters’ takes interviewer John Power Jr and Dave Allen, producer for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Fourth Edition in a then totally different direction, something that the roleplaying game had been waiting decades for, despite the wargame it is based upon, visiting it more than once across its numerous editions. This is the supplement, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: Lustria, which details the mysterious continent far away from the Old World. It quickly catches up with the history of the current edition in publishing what is a director’s cut of the classic campaign, The Enemy Within, and then moves beyond that. It explores what an updated version of the Lustria looks like for the twenty-first century hobby and how it presents the players and their characters with a very different, but no less deadly environment to explore.

Walton Wood’s examination of the retroclone, Errant, and interview with its creator, Ava Islam, ‘Dragons Are Fucking Cool, Man’ starts off in slightly abstract fashion, explaining it pushes away from the classic design of Dungeons & Dragons-style play, attempting to be rules light, but ‘procedure heavy’ in terms of scope. The explanation is not really clear enough, but once the article begins telling you what you play—downtrodden outcasts ever wanting to improve their lifestyles and fund the lifestyles they have combined with Levelling requiring high expenditure of gold pieces in acts of ‘Conspicuous Consumption’—it does impart a sense of what the is about at the least. Ultimately, what is clear is that Errant is the designer’s commentary on the Old School Renaissance movement and it is far from a positive one. This combined with often obtuse explanations upon the part of the designer and the reader is left feeling dissatisfied.

‘Veni, Vidi, Ludo’ by Ciro Alessandro Sacco presents a fascinating history of the Italian gaming and roleplaying hobby, beginning with the importation of Avalon Hill and SPI wargames in the nineteen sixties and seventies and moving through bootleg versions of Dungeons & Dragons to early roleplaying games such as Signori del Caos—or The Lords of Chaos—published by Black Out Editrice in 1983 and then most spectacularly, the Mentzer version of Basic Dungeons & Dragons by Editrice Giochi in 1985. It is a great introduction and it is a pity that there is not scope for further examination of these early Italian roleplaying games. The breezy article comes to a close all too soon, leaving the reader with any interest in the history of roleplaying games wanting more. It is followed by a short overview of some of the Italian roleplaying games and settings then available in English, including Lex Arcana, Fabula Ultima, and Brancalonia.

The last few articles in the issue explore a handful of boardgames that are very close to the roleplaying hobby, whether that is because of their subject matter or because their publisher also publishes roleplaying games. Three of them combine to give the magazine its second theme—dungeon crawling and board games. The first, ‘Dungeon Crawling Classics’ by Matt Thrower is not, as the title might suggest about the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game from Goodman Games, but a history of the dungeon crawler board game, from Dungeon!, published by TSR, Inc. in 1975 to Descent: Journeys in the Dark published by Fantasy Flight Games in 2005 and its more recent 2021 update, Descent: Legends of the Dark. Also discussed here is HeroQuest, the boardgame from Milton Bradley and Games Workshop that introduced dungeon exploration-style play to a wider audience in the early nineteen nineties. It explores the enduring appeal of the format—its familiarity, excitement, and camaraderie—combined with a physical format that leans into the roleplaying style of Dungeons & Dragons, whilst providing a ready realisation of the action that Dungeons & Dragons does not (at least not without a lot of extra accessories). There are a lot of dungeon crawler board games that the article could have covered and it would have been interesting to look at those options, but overall, this is good introduction to the genre.

Matt Thrower follows this up with ‘The Big Chill’ in which he interviews Isaac Childres, the designer of the mammoth dungeon crawler and adventure game, Gloomhaven, discussing its development and that of its follow up, Frosthaven. There is some similarity between this and other interviews with the designer, such as that which has appeared in the pages of Senet magazine. What this means is that there is not much being said here that is new, but for anyone unaware of Gloomhaven and its heft and effect upon the hobby, this is worth reading. Andi Ewington returns to the classic HeroQuest with ‘Quest Drive’ and how he brought the new version of the board game from Avalon Hill into his home and got his family, some of them slightly reluctantly. It is a fun piece that brings the theme to a close with large dollop of nostalgia.

Finally, the issue comes to close with ‘Trading Places’. Here Emma Partlow talks to Max McCall from Wizards of the Coast to explore how Magic: the Gathering has with its ‘Universes Beyond’ line, produced expansions that draw on the intellectual properties of other publishers. For example, the television series, Stranger Things, and the miniatures wargame, Warhammer 40,000. It does point out that the response to these expansions have been mixed, some embracing them, others seeing them as a distraction from the more traditional fantasy releases for the collectible trading card game, but the point is made that the ‘Universes Beyond’ sets are attracting the interest of fans of the universes they are based on and thus attracting new players. The article is illustrated with some great artwork drawn from the series, but does not show how that artwork will be displayed on the cards, which would perhaps have sold the idea better.

‘LOOT DROP: Automatic Dice Roller’ and ‘LOOT DROP: More Random Treasure’ highlights some gaming knickknacks that might appeal to some gamers, the former also including an interview with the creator of the electronic dice roller from Critical Machine for those who want another means apart from rolling dice, whilst the latter includes a The Wicker Man-style effigy wax candle, complete with wax Sergeant Howe and the Win or Booze beer from brewery

Deviant + Dandy which has a game on the back of the label. The best though is the Githyanki action figure from Super7 based on the Erol Otus’s classic cover image for the Fiend Folio. More interesting though, is ‘Hit Points’, the reviews section which takes in a good mix of board games, roleplaying games, and books. The board games include Undaunted Stalingrad from Osprey Games and the magazine’s ‘Game of the Month’ and Rebellion Games’ redone Judge Dredd: The Game of Crime-Fighting in Mega-City One, whilst the roleplaying games reviewed range from Cy_Borg and The Blade Runner – The Roleplaying Game Starter Set to Out of the Ashes and A Folklore Bestiary. Of course, reviewing reviews is something of a busman’s holiday, so ultimately, although the reviews all both interesting and informative, the most interesting are those of the books, Alan Moore and Ian Gibson’s The Ballard of Halo Jones, and Michael Molcher’s I Am The Law about 2000 AD’s Judge Dredd and how it influenced modern policing, both from Rebellion, are the more intriguing.

Physically, Wyrd Science Vol. 1/Issue 4 is clean and tidy, neatly laid out and well written. The artwork is well judged too and overall, the magazine looks great.

Wyrd Science Vol. 1/Issue 4 is a good rather than great issue. It is at its best when exploring something lesser known like Big Bad Con in ‘MAGIC GATHERINGS: Big Bad Con’ and its diversity programme or the look at Italian roleplaying games in ‘Veni, Vidi, Ludo’, but also taking a sidestep to look at something familiar, the dungeon crawl style game, in a different format, the board game with ‘Dungeon Crawling Classics’ and ‘Quest Drive’.

Sunday, 9 February 2025

The Magnus Mythos

For over two hundred years, since 1818, the Magnus Institute has stood on a quiet street in London, its doors open to those who have a suspicion as to the true nature of the world and those who have strange encounters that they cannot explain, yet want to tell someone, to tell some body or organisation, to tell someone who will listen to what they say and not dismiss it out of hand. To take the details without dismissing them out of hand or telling them that they are mad. For over two hundred years, the staff at the Magnus Institute have been taking such statements from members of the public and not just archiving them, but investigating them, and cataloguing the results. Over the decades, the Magnus Institute has collected and collated thousands and thousands of such statements, yet years of poor management and misfiling has mislaid the reports and only in recent years, under the management of head archivist, Jonathan Simms, has the library begun to be organised such that connections and hypothesises can be formulated… and worse, the realisation that there is a darkness stirring. A darkness that is growing and could threaten the world… There are cosmic horrors, identified as ‘Entities’, but also called the Fears, which both lie beyond and beyond human understanding, which seek to break into our world and in seeking to do so, are believed to be responsible for the supernatural phenomena that occur again and again in the statements. In doing so, they invoke fear in their victims and feed on it, grant their occult power to the Avatars who serve them and create yet more fear in our own world.

This is the set-up for The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game and also the long-running podcast, The Magnus Archives, it is based on. Published by Monte Cook Games, it is a cosmic horror roleplaying game set in the here and now—whether that is the United Kingdom where The Magnus Archive are set, or elsewhere—which uses the Cypher System, first seen in Numenera in 2013. The play of The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game begins with the investigation of Statements made by members of the public who walk into the Magnus Archives. These form the basis of the investigation and will lead to confrontation with the Avatars, cultists, and artefacts of the Fears, though this will not be without its consequences. A Statement can be created as normal by the Game Master, but it can also be created as a collective endeavour with the players taking turns to develop the statement. A campaign can be run in conjunction with the existing Magnus Archives heard in the podcast with the Player Characters working alongside the staff, or the Player Characters can create their own Magnus Archives. The Magnus Archive podcast consists of five seasons and two hundred episodes, but there is a radical shift in the storytelling in the fifth season. This shift is not reflected in The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game, which is set during the first four seasons.

A Player Character in the Cypher System and The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game has three stats or Pools. These are Might, Speed, and Intellect, and represent a combination of effort and health for a character. Typically, they range between eight and twenty in value. Might covers physical activity, strength, and melee combat; Speed, any activity involving agility, movement, stealth, or ranged combat; and Intellect, intelligence, charisma, and magical capacity. In game, points from these pools will be spent to lower the difficulty of a task, but they can also be lost through damage, whether physical or mental. A Player Character has an Edge score, tied to one of the three pools. This reduces the cost of points spent from the associated pool to lower the difficulty of a task, possibly even to zero depending upon the Edge rating.

A Player Character will also have a Type, which can either be Investigator, Protector, Elocutionist, or Occultist. The Investigator is a key role in The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game, librarians, researchers, and archivists checking the Magnus Archives and the Statements archived there, but can also be ex-policemen or private investigators. The Protector is physical, often an ex-bodyguard, policeman, or member of the armed forces, who stops others from getting hurt. The Elocutionist is good at talking to people and could be an ex-team leader, politician, or even a conman. The Occultist is similar to the Investigator, but takes a deep interest in the supernatural, and could be a simple researcher, but also an ex-magician or scam artist.

What defines a Player Character is a simple statement—“I am an adjective noun who verbs.” The noun is the Player Character’s Type, whereas the adjective is a Descriptor which describes the character and verb is the Focus, or what the character does. For example, “I am an Inquisitive Investigator who Would Rather Be Reading”, “I am a No-Nonsense Protector who Needs No Weapon”, “I am a Likeable Elocutionist who Leads”, and “I am an Enigmatic Occultist who Solves Mysteries”. This encapsulates the Player Character in the case of the Descriptor, Type, and Focus, provides points to assign to his three Pools, special abilities, skills, and a point in an Edge. To this is added a connection to the world and through this to the other Player Characters, plus a Character Arc, which provides a story that the character and player can invest themselves in as well as providing a means of earning Experience Points. Example Arcs include ‘Assist an Organisation’, ‘Instruction’, ‘Repay a Debt’, and ‘Uncover a Secret’. They are voluntary, but do provide a personal element to the play of the game. The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game lists twenty-seven Descriptors and eighteen Foci for a player to choose from, providing for a decent range of Player Characters in a simple, familiar format. To create a character, a player selects a Descriptor, Type, and Focus ,and chooses from the options given under each.

Henry ‘Harry’ Brinded
“I am a Fastidious Investigator who Practically Lives Online.”
Tier 1 Investigator
Might 10 Speed 9 [Edge 1] Intellect 11 [Edge 1]
Effort 1
Inability: Intellect Defence
Abilities: Decipher, Missing Detail, Online Research
Skills: Forensics [Trained], Perception [Trained], Programming [Trained], Researching [Trained], light and medium weapons [Practised]
Arc: Uncover a Secret

What The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game does not provide for—at least at the very start—is for Player Characters who have had paranormal experiences or possess supernatural abilities. This does not mean that they do not have an interest or belief in the paranormal, but rather that they have yet to encounter definitive evidence of it. This is intended to come through play and investigation, but it is also possible through play, if a Player Character suffers enough Stress from supernatural sources, effectively touched by the influence of the Entities, he can select supernatural abilities. These are only available at higher Tiers after some extended play, though the Occultist character Type may have access to them earlier.

Mechanically, as a Cypher System roleplaying game, The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game is player facing. Thus, in combat, a player not only rolls for his character to make an attack, but also rolls to avoid any attacks made against his character. Essentially this shifts the game’s mechanical elements from the Game Master to the player, leaving the Game Master to focus on the story, on roleplaying NPCs, and so on. When it comes to tasks, the Player Character is attempting to overcome a Task Difficulty, ranging from one and Simple to ten and Impossible. The target number is actually three times the Task Difficulty. So, a Task Difficulty of four or Difficult, means that the target number is twelve, whilst a Task Difficulty of seven or Formidable, means that the target number is twenty-one. The aim of the player is lower this Task Difficulty. This can be done in a number of ways.

Modifiers, whether from favourable circumstances, skills, or good equipment, can decrease the Difficulty, whilst skills give bonuses to the roll. Trained skills—skills can either be Practised or Trained—can reduce the Difficulty, but the primary method is for a player to spend points from his relevant Stat pools. This is called applying Effort. Applying the first level of Effort, which will reduce the target number by one, is three points from the relevant Stat pool. Additional applications of Effort beyond this cost two points. The cost of spending points from a Stat pool is reduced by its associated Edge, which if the Edge is high enough, can reduce the Effort to zero, which means that the Player Character gets to do the action for free—or effortlessly!

Rolls of one enable a free GM Intrusion—essentially a complication to the current situation that does reward the Player Character with any Experience Points, whereas rolls of seventeen and eighteen in combat grant damage bonuses. Rolls of nineteen and twenty in combat can also grant damage bonuses, but alternatively, can grant minor and major effects. For example, distracting an opponent or striking a specific body part. Rolls of nineteen and twenty in non-combat situations grant minor and major effects, which the player and Game Master can decide on in play. In combat, light weapons always inflict two points of damage, medium weapons four points, and heavy weapons six points, and damage is reduced by armour. NPCs simply possess a Level, which like the Task Difficulty ranges between one and ten and is multiplied by three to get a target number to successfully attack them.

Experience Points in The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game are earned in several ways, primarily through achieving objectives, making horrifying discoveries, and so on. There are two significant means of a Player Character gaining Experience Points. The first is ‘GM Intrusion’. These are designed to make a situation and the Player Character’s life more interesting or more complicated. For example, the Player Character might automatically set off a trap or an NPC important to the Player Character is imperilled. Suggested Intrusions are given for the four character Types and the Foci. When this occurs, the Game Master makes an Intrusion and offers the player and his character two Experience Points. The player does not have to accept this ‘GM Intrusion’, but this costs an Experience Point. If he does accept the Intrusion, the player receives the two Experience Points, keeps one and then gives the other to another player, explaining why he and his character deserves the other Experience Point. The ‘GM Intrusion’ mechanic encourages a player to accept story and situational complications and place their character in danger, making the story much more exciting.

There is the reverse of the ‘GM Intrusion’, which is ‘Player Intrusion’. With this, a player spends an Experience Point to present a solution to a problem or complication. These make relatively small, quite immediate changes to a situation, such as an old friend suddenly showing up, a device used by a NPC malfunctioning, and so on.

The other means of gaining Experience Points is the Character Arc. A Player Character begins play with one Character Arc for free, but extra can be purchased at the cost of Experience Points to reflect a Player Character’s dedication to the arc’s aim. Each Character Arc consists of several steps—Opening, two or three development steps, followed by a Climax and a Resolution. Suggested Character Arcs include Avenge, Birth, Develop a Bond, Mysterious Background, and more. For example, Henry Brinded has the ‘Uncover a Secret’ Arc, which involves naming the secret, steps such as investigation, research, and tracking, leading to a climax involving a revelation and discovery as to the nature of the secret, followed by contemplation about the discovery and how it affects him and the world around him. The selection of the Character Arc during character creation signals to the Game Master what sort of story a player wants to explore with his character.

One of the aspects inherent to The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game and all Cypher System roleplaying games and settings are the Cypher System’s namesake—Cyphers. Again, first seen in Numenera, Cyphers are typically one-use things which help a Player Character. In the Science Fantasy world of Numenera, they are physical or Manifest devices and objects which might heal a Player Character, inflict damage on an opponent or hinder him, aid an attack, turn him invisible or reveal something that is invisible, increase or decrease gravity, and so on. In a modern setting like that of The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game, Cyphers do aid a Player Character, but they are Subtle rather than Manifest, and represent luck or inspiration. For example, ‘Binary’ means that the Player Character guesses the PIN code to a mobile phone or a door lock, whilst ‘What We All Ignore’ enables the Player Character to partially withstand the effects of mental shock or despair for an hour. The degree to which Cyphers play a role varies from one Cypher System roleplaying game to another, but in The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game it is to a lesser degree.

As a horror roleplaying game, The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game handles shock and fear through Stress. If a Player Character witnesses the supernatural from a distance or finds himself hanging from a roof, he will suffer one Stress; encountering a supernatural event or creature up close or discovering a gruesomely mutilated corpse, two points of Stress; and watching someone you care about die or have a supernatural event or creature directly harm him, three points of Stress. For every three points of Stress, the Player Character gains a Level of Stress. Each Stress Level hinders a Player Character’s actions by one step, but at four Stress Levels, further Levels will result in injury.

It is possible to avoid Stress, but not always, and it can be used in as a single, one-off bonus to an action in a tense situation. However, this triggers a ‘GM Intrusion’. Stress can be reduced and removed through various ways, but the long term, the player must track how many Levels of Stress his character suffers. Ten or more and the character becomes able to gain supernatural powers.

As a horror roleplaying game, what the Game Master can do in The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game is trigger ‘Horror Mode’. This can occur when the Player Characters encounter a specific creature or person, but usually happens when they enter a particular location. It is the metagaming equivalent of spooky horror sting in a film, ratchetting up the tension, signalling to the players—though not their characters, that the situation is about to get dangerous. In Horror Mode, the range in which a player can roll an Intrusion, increases from the base one to one to two. Worse, if a player does roll an Intrusion, it heightens the Horror Mode, so that there is the potential for a spiralling escalation back and forth between the Horror Mode and the range for Intrusion.

More than half of The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game is a dedicated to the background of The Magnus Archive. These include the details of the Fears, like ‘The Buried’, ‘The Spiral’, and ‘The Extinction’, making clear that they are not gods and are mostly mindless. Nevertheless, this does not stop them from wanting to manifest in the world, working through Avatars and cultists to perform the complex and demanding ritual that will achieve this. There is also a bestiary of monsters and NPCs drawn from the podcast. The NPCs are created as archetypes so that the Game Master can use their roles in a Magnus Archives campaign of her own rather than use the character from the Podcast, but includes their names and quotes from them if she instead wants to use the characters that appear in the stories. So, for example, Jonathan Sims is presented as the Archivist, Mikaele Salesa as the Artefact Dealer, Jurgen Leitner as the Book Collector, and so on. Besides this, there are numerous creatures and servants of the Entities—Cultists of the Divine Host, Clown Dolls, Dabblers, the Notthem, the Perfect Stranger, and much, much more. All come with complete stats, lore, and a GM Intrusion, such as the Player Character finding, tripping over, or is sent a bag of human teeth as a result of, or prior to, encountering one of the Perfect Strangers. Where necessary, the entries also have their own Stress values. All are very nicely illustrated.

Artefacts are given a similar treatment, most possessing a related Entity, an amount of Stress they inflict, and Fear effect triggered by a GM Intrusion. For example, the ‘Gorilla Skin’ is a taxidermized hide of a gorilla worn as a cape, which when worn, turns the wearer into a stranger to anyone and everyone. It is associated with The Stranger and its Fear causes the wearer to no longer recognise himself in the mirror. Although it is not the case with every artefact, the ‘Gorilla Skin’ can be used as part of the ritual to summon the Entity with which it is associated.

There is advice for the Game Master on creating her own artefacts and monsters, even on adapting such entities as The Mothman. This is addition to solid advice on running the game—handling the rules, NPCs, and the players, and narrating and running the game. There is a discussion on the type of horror in The Magnus Archive and The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game, cosmic horror, drawing parallels between it and the horror of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. However, it makes clear that although there are parallels, the horror of the podcast and this roleplaying game is not that of Lovecraft. The advice extends to creating investigations and writing Statements which are the spur for the players and their characters to investigate. This is a corollary to the advice already given on the process of the players collectively writing a Statement which will form the basis of the investigation. This adds a storytelling element prior to the play of The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game, the aim being to create a story in miniature which raises questions, but does not answer them and which the Game Master can then develop into a proper investigation. It does mean that the Game Master has relatively little time between the Statement process and running the resulting sessions, so she needs to be able to prepare content on the fly. Consequently, this option is better suited to the more experienced Game Master rather someone who is a fan of the podcast and is running a roleplaying game for the first time.

Rounding out The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game are two scenarios. Both begin with Statements that are also available as recordings made by the cast of the podcast via a QR code and in both cases add a nice little bit of verisimilitude. ‘The Resurrection Mound’ is a short, introductory investigation into a strange insect-infested mound in the back garden that appears to resurrect the dead. It is a creepy little affair whose action really all takes place in a single house. The second adventure, ‘Liquify’, begins with the Statement from a dead man and draws the Player Characters out into the countryside to confirm the Statement and determine if the man reported trying to get into the dead man’s home was responsible. It is a more expansive investigation, though only by a little. It is written as introductory adventure, but is intended for characters and players with a little more experience. Overall, both are good little adventures.

Physically, The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game is very well presented and everything is clearly explained. Extensive use of the sidebars is made to suggest further links elsewhere in the book and to add commentary and advice. There are innumerable references and extracts from The Magnus Archive podcast throughout the book that add flavour and detail from the source material. The artwork is excellent throughout.

The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game is not the definitive sourcebook for The Magnus Archive podcast, although there is a great deal of content drawn and adapted from the podcast within its pages. That content will not only interest fans of the podcast, but also make them want to play The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game. It is also clear from the introduction to the makers of The Magnus Archive that they are roleplayers already, so it is very likely that fans of the podcast will be aware of what roleplaying is. That said, it is not necessary for a roleplayer to be a fan of, or even known anything about, The Magnus Archive podcast, in order to play The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game. The set-up for the podcast and thus The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game is simple enough that a roleplayer could play this as an urban horror and cosmic horror roleplaying game and enjoy it, but be none the wiser. Fans of the podcast will enjoy the references and drawing parallels between the adventures of their characters and those on the podcast.

Above all, the The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game is a good adaptation of The Magnus Archive that offers investigative urban horror and cosmic horror in an engaging and well written fashion, backed up with plenty of good advice and two creepy starting Statements to look into.

Saturday, 27 April 2024

Mountain of Madness

Ten years ago, the Abisko Mine was forcibly shut down following an explosion which killed many of the mine workers. Located in the far north of Sweden above the village of Abisko, all that remained of the mine was a crater. There were few if any survivors and no investigation, the cause of the disaster becoming first the subject of conjecture, and then rumour, as the incident was forgotten about. Recently, the mine and its surrounding area was bought by the Svea Mining Corp, owned by Karl Magnusson and his wife Sigrid. They have attracted the interest of scientists, the attention of the military, and the money of investors with rumours of the discovery of a new type of gemstone that could change the fate of Sweden and the course of the world, speeding up the pace of industrialisation which is already sweeping the country. Yet there are those who have not forgotten the explosion that closed down the original Abisko Mine, and worse, they believe that the gemstone is not something that should be exploited, but instead studied and kept careful control of, lest it fall into the wrong hands. One of these is Franzibald Hansen, Danish author and expert on Norse mythology. Although wealthy and knowledgeable, he lacks the means to investigate himself, let alone deal with the problem as he sees it beyond being a lone voice. Thus, he turns to one of his old contacts and through her, the Society, the body of scholars and adventurers based in Castle Gyllencreutz in Upsala, whose gift of second sight enabled them to see the Vaesen, the supernatural creatures who have for centuries lived alongside the folk of Scandinavia. With their help, Franzibald Hansen is sure that he can prevent the Magnussons from bringing their plan to fruition and the gemstones from falling into the wrong hands.

This is the set-up for The Lost Mountain Saga, the first campaign for use with Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying, the Roleplaying Game of investigative folklore horror set in nineteenth century Scandinavia published by Free League Publishing. As well as being the first campaign for Vaesen, what is also notable about The Lost Mountain Saga is that it is based on a podcast of the same name that the author has adapted for use with Vaesen. This continues the phenomenon of roleplaying podcast adaptations previously seen with Critical Role and Tal’Dorei Campaign Setting Reborn from Darrington Press and Old Gods of Appalachia from Monte Cook Games. In the case of The Lost Mountain Saga, the result is a relatively short campaign, consisting of five parts that take place over the course of a year, from September to August. The only requirement for it is the core rules and the fact that the Player Characters are members of the society and have conducted a handful of investigations, and thus be able to improve the facilities at Castle Gyllencreutz. Optional are other scenarios for Vaesen. There are gaps of several months between the third and fourth parts and between the fourth and fifth parts where the Game Master could run another scenario or two. That said, if the Game Master decides not to run other scenarios between the five parts of The Lost Mountain Saga, then the campaign can be played through quite quickly at a rate of two or three sessions per scenario—at the very most.

All five chapters of the campaign follow the same structure as other scenarios for Vaesen. The ‘Background’ and ‘Conflicts’ explains the situation for each scenario, whilst the ‘Invitation’ tells the Game Master how to get the Player Characters involved. In The Lost Mountain Saga, this includes letters, invitations, and the personal request of Franzibald Hansen, which will lead to the town or village where the mystery is taking place, the getting there detailed in the ‘Journey’, typically a mix of railway and coach journeys. It should be noted that every mystery has a moment or two when the Player Characters can prepare and goes into some detail about the journey. There is an opportunity for roleplaying here, perhaps resulting in longer travel scenes than the core rulebook necessarily recommends. The ‘Countdown and Catastrophe’ presents the Game Master with one or two sets of events which take place as the Player Characters’ investigation proceeds, sometimes triggered by the Player Characters, sometimes triggered by the NPCs, whilst ‘Locations’ cover NPCs, Challenges, and Clues, all leading to a ‘Confrontation’ and its eventual ‘Aftermath’. The mysteries are well organised, a mix of the sandbox and events which the Game Master will need to carefully orchestrate around the actions of her Player Characters. Only the most pertinent of the locations in each town or village is described and the Game Master is advised to create others as needed, though she will very likely need a ready list of Swedish names to hand for whenever the Player Characters run into an NPC or two. That said, the campaign is fairly linear and self-contained, meaning that relatively little preparation is required outside of the campaign itself and it can serve as an introductory or starter campaign the first time Game Master could run after she has run a few scenarios.

The campaign opens with ‘Duty and Despair’, with news of the reopening of the Great Copper Mountain mine of Falun. This brings the portly bon viveur, Franzibald Hansen, to Castle Gyllencreutz. He has received a letter from the local priest about an outbreak of witchcraft and requests their help in investigating it. Almost everyone in the town seems charmed by the exceptionally stern Reverend Bruselius, who quickly settles on the culprit and prepares to hold a trial. Is she guilty, or is there someone else responsible and can the Player Characters identify them in time? However, in discovering this, the Player Characters will encounter another vaesan, one which will already have taken its first victim—Franzibald Hansen! It seems that he had an interest in Falun more than the outbreak of witchcraft, but quite will be revealed in the next few chapters.

‘The Beginning of the Fall’ shifts the mystery back to Upsala where the university is hosting an exclusive ball which will be attended by members of the nobility, the military, and the science community. This is because Karl and Sigrid Magnusson are going to announce the nature of the gemstones their operation has unearthed at the Abisko Mine. At the same time, there are reports of overcrowding at the city’s asylum, including a journalist who wrote an article critical of the Svea Mining Corp. Is this a coincidence? The ball is a chance for the Player Characters to mix with members of high society—military, noble, and scientific—so the Game Master may want to have some NPCs ready here, as well as a chance to get a good look at the strange gemstones. In addition, some of Franzibald Hansen’s secrets will be revealed!

The middle part of The Lost Mountain Saga is ‘Where the Sun Dies’, and it sends the Player Characters off in an entirely different direction—Norway! Norwegian Police Commissioner Olof Dahl comes to the Castle Gyllencreutz asking for their help. Contact has been lost with the island of Værøya above the arctic circle as it appears have suffered a radical fall in temperature weeks before it is normally due and to date, none of the rescue missions have returned. Having travelled to Bergen, the Player Characters set sail aboard an icebreaker commanded by one Captain Harrock—“Billions of bilious blue blistering barnacles!!”—and so investigate the island. From having to ski across the ace to reach Værøya to confronting the frosty foe responsible, this is an entertaining scenario that is quite creepy and unsettling in places.

‘The Prince and the Witch’ returns the action to Upsala and to the great Valborg bonfire next to the Royal Mounds of Upsala for the ancient spring festival. There a young woman asks for the Society’s help. She is a member of the Vanadisir, an organisation whose members claim to be the descendants of the Norse goddess Freja, and she wants help in rescuing her leader from an evil man in this forest. It turns out that ‘he’ is not a prince, but a snake, and not the only one in this linear encounter which draws the Player Characters back into the past. The confrontation is particularly nicely handled here.

The campaign comes to a close with ‘The Lost Mountain Saga’. A plea from an unexpected quarter sends the Player Characters back to where the campaign begins to reveal the secrets of the Abisko Mine and the true dangers that it represents to all of Sweden. The scenario literally ticks down to the climax in a race to prevent the Svea Mining Corp’s plans coming to fruition and a final confrontation.
Physically, The Lost Mountain Saga is everything that you would expect a book for Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying to be. It is well written and presented, but the artwork and the cartography are both excellent, evoking a mixture of nineteenth century charm and folkloric horror. The book itself is actually a lovely artefact in its own right.

The Lost Mountain Saga is a short campaign as well as being an uncomplicated campaign. This and its year-long, but handful of chapters, structure give it space and a flexibility into which the Game Master can add or develop her own content. This may well be necessary to offset its quite linear nature and the fact that the campaign veers away from its storyline in its middle chapters. If the campaign is instead played through at pace, this may not be an issue though. Overall, The Lost Mountain Saga is a good starter campaign for Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying, suitable for the Game Master looking for a first campaign and the veteran Game Master looking for something lighter.

Saturday, 29 April 2023

Magazine Madness 19: Wyrd Science – The Horror Issue

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Wyrd Science – The Horror Issue (Vol. 1/Issue 3) was published by Best in Show in September, 2021 following a successful Kickstarter campaign. There are some ten interviews in the issue, beginning with ‘Publish & Be Damned: The Merry Mushmen’, or rather Eric Nieudan and Olivier Revenu, the French publishers best known for Knock! #1 An Adventure Gaming Bric-à-Brac and its subsequent issues. They give a little of their history and how they came to work together and their interest in the Old School Renaissance, including both Knock! and other projects. ‘Cast Pod: the Vintage RPG Podcast’ continues the magazine’s showcasing of a podcast in each issue and this time it is the podcast, The Vintage RPG Podcast run by Stu Horvath and John ‘Hambome’ McGuire. The podcast is dedicated to the history and art of RPGs, but the interviewees explain how they came to hosting a podcast and how they about creating an episode and in the process create a community around themselves.

Two artists are interviewed in Wyrd Science – The Horror Issue. The first is Tazio Bettin in ‘Art of Darkness: Tazio Bettin – Fighting Fantasy’. An Italian artist, he is the illustrator of Secrets of Salmonis, one of the two titles released for the fortieth anniversary of the Fighting Fantasy series and the first to be written by the series’ co-creator, Steve Jackson. There is some fantastic artwork on show here alongside the interview, in which the artist talks about his work and his turning his interest and hobby into a full time occupation. The second is Jonathan Sacha. In ‘Monstrous Arcana: Goblins & Gardens’ we find out how he came to be interested in Tarot decks and adapting the monsters of Dungeons & Dragons in weirdly bucolic, but unsettling Tarot deck by combining them with a gardening book!

Where all of the previous interviews have been conducted by John Power Jr, the editor of the magazine, Will Salmon interviews David Hughes of Plumeria Pictures on the release on Blu-ray of the 1982 television film starring Tom Hanks, Monsters & Mazes. The interview provides some context for the film and is more positive about it than others might be.

The issue’s horror theme swings into action with ‘I Will Show You Fear In A Handful Of Games...’ by Shannon Appelcline, which takes the reader through a history of the horror genre in roleplaying. He does this in a series of one-page mini essays, each one dedicated to a particular ear. Thus we begin in the early days of the hobby and Dungeons & Dragons, in which its horror was best seen in modules such as X1 Isle of Dread and I1 Dwellers of the Forbidden City veering towards the Lovecraftian, but quickly steering away following issues with Deities & Demigods and mostly adhering to Pulp horror. The title of the opening essay, ‘Dark Shadows: 1974-1986’ is a nice nod to the soap opera of the period. The article really takes off with the appearance of Call of Cthulhu, the Satanic Panic of the eighties (of which the aforementioned Mazes & Monsters was a partial instigator), and the appearance of Vampire: The Masquerade in 1990, tracing their evolution over the past forty years and coming up to date with the more recent broadening of means, such as the Jenga of Dread, and areas explore, like LGBT adolescence with Monsterhearts and the feminine fairytale in Bluebeard’s Bride. It is an excellent history and with any luck, should future issues of Wyrd Science explore other genres, there will be similar articles.

Roleplaying games and the Gothic collide in Jack Shear’s ‘Wuthering Frights’. Here he looks at his favorite setting, Ravenloft. First seen in the 1983 module, I6 Ravenloft, this would be later developed into a full setting with the Realm of Terror boxed set in 1990. Shear examines the origins of Dungeons & Dragons’ signature villain, Count Strahd von Zarovich, of I6 Ravenloft fame, in Dracula and then each of the other Domains and their villains more recently for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition presented in Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft. A clearer bibliography might have helped what is otherwise an informative article and useful accompaniment to whichever version of the Ravenloft setting that the Dungeon Master is using.

Just as horror roleplaying games have changed over the decade, so have their portrayal of mental health. After all, the nature of the genre is all about the loss of self and control—physically, emotionally, and mentally. However, as Stuart Martyn points out in ‘Mind Games’, the portrayal of that loss, especially the mental loss, has not always been an accurate one, often leading to the enforcement of stereotypes about mental health and a lack of understanding of those suffering from poor mental health. To be fair, much of this can be explained by a game’s age. Call of Cthulhu is rightfully acknowledged as the first roleplaying game to explore fear and model the loss of control through its Sanity mechanics, but Call of Cthulhu and Vampire: The Masquerade are singled out as leading examples poor portrayals of mental health. However, as the article moves into the twenty-first century and comes up-to-date, it makes clear that modern iterations of these roleplaying games, as well as others, designers have shown more awareness and understanding of the subject and better tried to reflect that in their games. This is a fascinating look at a key mechanic, or least concept, that almost no roleplaying game can really avoid dealing with, and how it has changed over the years.

John Power Jr. takes us temporarily to the ‘Mythic North’ of Scandinavia, before returning to the British Isles in ‘This Septic Isle’ and an interview with Graeme Davis about Mythic Britain & Ireland, his supplement for Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying. This highlights the stronger tensions and divisions present in nineteenth century Britain, discusses some of the new Vaesen to be found in the new setting, and interestingly, suggests how the limited geography of the setting can lead to distinct variations upon the Vaesen within only a few miles. Davis also draws the distinction between the horror of Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying and the horror of Call of Cthulhu, primarily in that the later the aim at best is not to lose, whilst in the former, it is possible to resolve situations without necessarily resorting to despair. A different type of horror roleplaying game, Campfire, is discussed in ‘Flames of Fear!’, Samantha Nelson’s interview with its creators, Adam Vass and Will Jobst. Campfire is a storytelling game inspired by the horror anthologies such as Creepshow and Are You Afraid Of The Dark? The game uses decks of cards as prompts to encourage the players to tell horror stories about the protagonists rather than a single character each and also allows the players to step back from the story itself to comment upon the ongoing narrative as they are watching it unfold. This is shared storytelling and designed for shorter sessions than most roleplaying games.

Just as Call of Cthulhu remains the template for horror roleplaying in general, Ridley Scott’s 1979 Alien remains the template for all Science Fiction horror games. John Power Jr.’s ‘Dark Future’ looks the three roleplaying games and how they handle horror and fear in examining this meeting of genres. Most obvious here is Free League Publishing’s Alien: The Roleplaying Game, but Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG – Player’s Survival Guide is also inspired by the film too. The third roleplaying game is The Wretched, a solo-journalling game about the last survivor aboard a spaceship whose crew was killed by alien monstrosity except for the survivor. One aspect of these settings that the article does not really explore is the class distinction between these and other horror roleplaying games. These are all Blue-Collar sci-Fi horror roleplaying games whereas many horror roleplaying games are not. Again, this is a legacy of the film Alien. Featuring interviews with the designers of three roleplaying games, article however, does nicely balance the unknown, but not cosmic, nature of the sub-genre’s horror against the possibility of survival—and even hope.

Wyrd Science – The Horror Issue also interviews the team at Rowan, Rook, & Deckard. They talk to Luke Frostick in ‘The Importance of Powerful Deaths’ about the origins of Spire: The City Must Fall and the consequences that its protagonists—Drow rebels seen as terrorists by the High Elf state—suffer in acting against the regime. Spire is not necessarily seen as a horror roleplaying game, at least not in the traditional sense, but the article makes it clear that it has strong horror elements. The article explores how the team works together and some of the ideas and concepts which make it into the setting, but without restricting the setting for the Game Master and her creativity. The issue returns to the Old School Renaissance with ‘In The Darkest Recesses of Ourselves’, an interview by Walton Wood with Paolo Greco of Lost Pages about The Book of Gaub. This brings out the horrific nature of the book and its spells and their broader effect upon a campaign. It is a pity that this book comes from Old School Renaissance, because being systems agnostic it can have a wider use in non-fantasy genres and settings too. The interview does not necessarily suggest this, but it highlights the nature of the book and will hopefully bring it to the attention of a wider audience. The interview by John Power Jr. of Guilherme Gontijo, in ‘Silver Scream’ turns to mundane horror, but horror, nonetheless. Blurred Lines – Giallo Detective Solo RPG is the Brazilian designer’s solo journalling game designed by the Italian giallo cinema of the sixties in which the protagonist is a crime scene photographer who hunting, and in turn being hunted, by a serial killer. Like the earlier The Wretched, this explores the notion of playing alone and at night, how that can immerse the player deeper into the game. The interview also notes the difficulty in bringing designs from Latin America to the English-speaking hobby and various attempts to support this.

The last two articles in Wyrd Science – The Horror Issue do not switch subject, but they do switch format under discussion. In ‘Roll & Fright’, Dan Thurot asks whether a sense of horror can be created in playing a board game, pointing to hidden identity or movement games such as Fury of Dracula or Battlestar Galactica, as possible vehicles as they both add a high degree of uncertainty to play. Whilst he acknowledges that most horror board games are merely themed, adding the veneer of the genre, he ultimately concludes that it is possible, if only under its terms. The challenge being that sense of immersion and the loss of control at the heart of the genre makes it all the more difficult to do in a board game. The last interview in the magazine is again by John Power Jr. and with wargames designer, Joseph McCullough. In ‘A Field of Horror’, the designer of the highly regarded Frostgrave: Fantasy Wargames in the Frozen City talks about his latest design, The Silver Bayonet, which fuses Napoleonic wargaming with horror and narrative storytelling. This looks to be a fascinating setting and with rules for solo play included suggests it can be played on a more casual basis without the need for more confrontational play of traditional wargaming.

Wyrd Science – The Horror Issue is rounded out with ‘Hit Points’, its extensive reviews sections. It includes reviews of wargames such as Warlord Games’ Sláine – Kiss My Axe Starter Set, roleplaying games like the RuneQuest Starter set from Chaosium, Inc. and Orbital Blues from Soulmuppet Publishing, board games such as Tales From The Loop: The Boardgame from Free League Publishing, and a range solo games (all revewed by Anna Blackwell), like Be Like a Crow and Bucket of Bolts, before looking at Christopher Frayling’s Vampire Cinema – The First one Hundred Years and various films and television series, which has a report from the FrightFest 2022. Two of the more interesting reviews here are of The Elusive Shift: How Role-Playing Games Forged Their Identity by Jon Peterson and Slaying the Dragon: A Secret History of Dungeons & Dragons by Ben Riggs, pleasingly placed opposite each other in an entirely appropriate pairing. Lastly, the issue catches up with the adventures of Mira Manga in ‘Appendix M’. It adds a personal touch to the magazine and brings it to a close.

Physically, Wyrd Science – The Horror Issue is impressively bright and breezy—despite its subject matter. The layout is clean and tidy, but the issue does need another edit in places though.

Wyrd Science – The Horror Issue covers a wide range of roleplaying games in exploring the issue’s genre. Some of the roleplaying games and supplements, such as Call of Cthulhu, Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft, and Mythic Britain & Ireland obviously fall into the horror genre, others less obviously so, for example, The Book of Gaub. There is a lot to read and discover in the pages of the magazine and that is where it is at its best, finding out about a game you never heard of or wanted to know more about. Yet the format of the magazine, or at least this issue, makes it unbalanced and often not as engaging to read as it deserves to be. There are simply too many interviews in the issue compared to other articles, so that the other articles, whether Shannon Appelcline’s ‘I Will Show You Fear In A Handful Of Games...’ and Jack Shear’s ‘Wuthering Frights’ stand out more because they are different rather just because they are both interesting and informative. Consequently, whilst the issue is interesting and informative, providing an engaging look at a particular genre in roleplaying, Wyrd Science – The Horror Issue is better for what it covers rather than the way it covers its content.

Sunday, 1 May 2022

Magazine Madness 14: Wyrd Science – Expert Rules

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Most magazines for the roleplaying hobby give the gamer support for the game of his choice, or at the very least, support for the hobby’s more popular roleplaying games. Whether that is new monsters, spells, treasures, reviews of newly released titles, scenarios, discussions of how to play, painting guides, and the like… That is how it has been all the way back to the earliest days of The Dragon and White Dwarf magazines. Wyrd Science is different—and Wyrd Science – Expert Rules (Wyrd Science Vol. 1/Issue 2) is different in comparison to Wyrd Science Session Zero. Neither contain a single monster, spell, treasure, review, scenario, or the like, but with Wyrd Science – Expert Rules gone is the organisation of ‘Common Items’ and ‘Rare Items’ of the inaugural issue. Instead, it is divided between a ‘Quick-start’ section providing reasonably short introductions to various aspects of the hobby, whilst the ‘Features’ provides even longer pieces that together look at the old and the very new.

Wyrd Science – Expert Rules (Vol. 1/Issue 2) was published by Best in Show in September, 2021 following a successful Kickstarter campaign. If Wyrd Science Session Zero took a little of its cue from the red box edition of Basic Dungeons & Dragons, then with its pastel blue cover and subtitle of ‘Fantasy Adventure Game Expert Magazine’, the second issue of Wyrd Science takes its cue from Expert Dungeons & Dragons—or rather the expert rules of the Moldvay/Cook B/X Dungeons & Dragons published in 1981 and which was forty years old in 2021. However, the modern reader should allay any fears that Wyrd Science – Expert Rules (Vol. 1/Issue 2) is all about the ‘Old School’. No, whilst this issue definitely looks back, it very much looks forward to the here and now with its coverage of current gaming releases outside of the Old School Renaissance. The result is a pleasing mix of contrasts and thoroughly engaging reads.

The ‘Quick-start Section’ dives straight in with a series of interesting interviews. ‘Cast Pod: What Would The Smart Party Do?’ interviews Baz Stevenson of the UK’s long running podcast, What Would The Smart Party Do? This follows on from ‘Zoom Of Horrors – The Smart Party On Gaming Online In 2020’ from Wyrd Science Session Zero which explained how they adapted to playing online in 2020 and how it came to dominate much of their social life and how they coped with so many roleplaying games competing for their attention. This article looks more at Stevenson’s experiences both playing and hosting the podcast, providing a good overview and introduction to the prospective listener. ‘Work In Progress: Coyote & Crow’ is an interview with Connor Alexander, the designer of the now released Science Fiction and fantasy roleplaying game set in a First Nations alternate future where colonisation never happened and created by Native authors and artists. This highlights some of the challenges of creating and then running a highly successful Kickstarter campaign—over one million dollars—and how that affected the design of the game, and again, another good interview.

If ‘Work In Progress: Coyote & Crow’ was looking at a modern design, ‘HEX LIBRIS: Jon Peterson – The Elusive Shift’ is the first article in Wyrd Science – Expert Rules to look back. The magazine’s third interview is with Jon Peterson, who has just then had published The Elusive Shift – How Role-Playing Games Forged Their Identity. This history explores early role-playing games evolved in the nineteen seventies whilst searching for that point where they became roleplaying games. Anyone who has read that book will still find much to be of interest in the interview, whilst anyone else should be intrigued enough to go find a copy.

‘ART OF DARKNESS: The 1000 Year Play-through’ follows on from Anna Maxwell’s ‘Quickstart – Alone In The Dark’ from Wyrd Science Session Zero, which explored the growth of solo play during the COVID-19 periods of lockdown, highlighting in particular the superb storytelling to found through playing Tim Hutchings’ Thousand Year Old Vampire. Here the magazine interviews the Wellington-based designer, Tim Denee, who began illustrating his play-through of the game. The interview is short and to the point, but is undone by only having two illustrations taken from that play-through. Thankfully, they can be found here, but another page highlighting them would not have gone amiss.

‘KICKSTOPPING: The Shipping Forecast’ examines the impact of the Pandemic on shipping and gaming—and the forecast is not good, whilst ‘CREDIT CARDS: MAGIC COLLECTORS In The Black’ highlights the recent rise in price at auction of some of the rarest cards for both Magic: The Gathering and Pokémon. Anna Blackwell examines another trend in ‘DESIGN OF THE TIMES: Small Games, Big Ideas’. This is the concept of designers challenging themselves to create playable games in as small a format as possible. These include on a business card, on a single page, and in mint tins and even jam jars! There is an emphasis here on the boardgame rather than the roleplaying game, but there are plenty of those to be found if you go looking. There are lots of examples given and these are useful pointers, though the article does lack illustrations. The ‘Quick-start Section’ comes to close with ‘Pierre Mortel’s CROOKED TALES: The Found Diary of a Crowman adventurer – Chapter 2’ which chronicles the further adventures of a hapless adventurer, whilst Mira Manga goes out with ‘MANGA’s MUSINGS: LARPing Around’ taking herself away from the computer screen (mostly) and back into the gaming world.

The Features section begins with coverage of the roleplaying game which inspired the issue—B/X Basic Dungeons & Dragons with a trilogy of articles. ‘Dungeon Life Begins at 40’ is an interview with the surviving members of the team involved in the creation of this version of Basic Dungeons & Dragons—David ‘Zeb’ Cook and Stephen Marsh—and explores the genesis of the edition and its continuing influence today. Along with some crisply produced piece of artwork from this edition, this captures the flavour and intent of the edition, laying the groundwork for the subsequent two articles. Peter Bebergal’s ‘Words Against Wizardry’ highlights how the ‘Inspirational Source Material’ in B/X Basic Dungeons & Dragons was in many ways better than that offered by E. Gary Gygax’s ‘Appendix N’ to be found in the Dungeon Master’s Guide for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, whilst ‘B/X to the Future’ looks at how the Old School Renaissance came about and was really kicked off with Troll Lord Games’ 2004 Castles & Crusades, before coming up to date to examine the many retroclones and near-retroclones have been inspired by B/X Basic Dungeons & Dragons. At the head of them in 2020 when Wyrd Science – Expert Rules was published, and still there today, is Old School Essentials. The article points out that the Old School Renaissance is not all dungeon-delving, and that there are other options within with the movement when it comes to roleplaying and storytelling, such as Troika, Mausrítter, and MOTHERSHIP Sci-Fi Horror RoleplayingGame. Together this is a lovely trilogy of articles which showcase just influential this edition of Basic Dungeons & Dragons has been.

If the first part of the Features section is a trilogy of articles about one game and its influence, the next trilogy focuses on three, much more modern titles, starting with Thirsty Sword Lesbians. Romance is not a new subject in roleplaying, but for the most part, it has been explored in storytelling games rather than mainstream titles. Wyrd Science – Expert Rules leaps into the definite here and now with ‘Violence is Easy. Romance is Hard.’, Rob Wieland’s look at Thirsty Sword Lesbians. This roleplaying game not only brought romance front and centre, it put it into the mechanics, it puts it in the title too. It is a game which promises ‘Queer Action Romance’, and whilst that may not be for everyone, it is nevertheless a valid and exciting genre in which to roleplay, and this article not only makes that clear, it makes the prospect sound fun and entertaining. ‘Hammers Ready, Prepare to Smash!’ leaps into the future of the Warhammer ‘World That Was’ with an examination of Warhammer Age of Sigmar Soulbound, the heroic, action-orientated high fantasy roleplaying game. The Player Characters are the Soulbound, an ancient order of individuals granted a measure of a storm god’s power, drawn into bindings, and assigned missions to fulfil that god’s will. Combining an interview with its creative director at Cubicle Seven Entertainment, Emmet Byrne, it emphasises the strange mix of character types, Daughters of Khaine alongside Priests of Signar; whilst how they are heroes, they cannot necessarily solve every problem they are presented with; and a very different set of mechanics versus Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay as well as the change in tone. The third roleplaying game examined here is Wanderhome in ‘In Wanderhome, They’ll Be Okay, They’ll All Be Okay’, Aimee Hart provides an examination of the anthropomorphic and pastoral roleplaying game set in world that is healing following a great war in which the Player Characters wander and explore the world, as well as interviewing the designer, Jay Dragon. The Player Characters are involved in part of this healing, helping to ease traumas where they cannot solve issues, and where they can, very rarely resorting to violence or combat. Wanderhome comes across as a roleplaying game in which the Player Characters are definitely trying to make the world better, and sounds a fascinating prospect.

In ‘Making Waves – Pamela Punzalan On The Rise Of RPGSEA’, Wyrd Science Session Zero gave space to voices not usually heard in the roleplaying community—those from South-East Asia. Wyrd Science – Expert Rules follows this up with a pair of articles that examine the roleplaying scene in Latin America. The first is ‘South of the Borderlands’, in which Diogo Nogueira examines the scene in Brazil. It is a good introduction to the state of the hobby in the country, noting that it began with imported and photo-copied editions of titles from the English-speaking market and how interest was spurred by the very popular Dungeons & Dragons cartoon. However, it only really mentions a handful of homegrown titles and it lacks a timeline or history that a better overview would have given. Certainly mention and highlighting more of the former might have served as a better hook for anyone intrigued by what might be available would have been useful. The second article, ‘What Was Written Must Be Destroyed’, an interview with the Argentinian designer, Gavriel Quiroga. This focuses on his then new dark Science Fiction fantasy roleplaying game WARPLAND in which science and learning has been shunned as the cause of a barely remembered, now-incomprehensible cataclysm, and in its stead, a hollow religion’s iron-clad fist forces ignorance on surviving members of humanity. This is to ensure that such a disaster never happens again. This is a brief overview of the game that looks to worth examining to really get a fuller idea of what it is about. This pair of articles point to the creativity brimming in Latin America, but only really skims the surface. It deserves another, more comprehensive visit.

‘Let’s Open Up This Pit’ takes the issue into the realms of wargaming to looking at how that hobby has diversified with a range of new, often radical designs. The article points to shift to simpler styles of play and the shift in role-players entering or re-entering that hobby with the simplicity of designs such as Frostgrave: Fantasy Wargames in the Frozen City and its family of titles. Its coverage of the Indie design movement is backed up with a solid selection of examples. The article also mentions how wargamers miss the old Games Workshop title, Mordheim, of which Frostgrave is similar, and in ‘Streets of Rage’ Luke Frostick goes in search of that long-lost skirmish game to see it is still played and supported. Of course, with the Internet it is. This is an interesting little article which will have certain gamers getting out their boxes of Mordheim rules and miniatures once again. Continuing the miniatures theme on from his earlier ‘Model Behaviour – Luke Shaw On Building Miniature Communities’ in Wyrd Science Session Zero, Luke Shaw enters the community of figure painters to interview four professional miniature painters who offer video tutorials and run YouTube channels. Again, this is another solid article exploring an aspect of the hobby that is being enhanced by social media. The wargaming theme comes to a close with ‘Craft, Work’, Willard Foxton Todd’s lengthy interview with the prolific Science Fiction and Fantasy author, Guy Haley, best known for his Warhammer fiction. Another good piece.

‘A Space Where We Belong’ does feel pushed to the back of Wyrd Science – Expert Rules, which is probably not the intention. Ellen Knight’s interview with four women involved in the industry, including roleplaying and board games, explores some of the attitudes they unfortunately have to face, but it really explores what they are doing to change those and made either hobby a more welcoming space. That is no bad thing, but again, this piece could easily have been more upfront in the issue.

‘Escape to New York’ interviews Pontus Björlin, the Swedish designer of ALTNYC88, the fanzine roleplaying game inspired by The Warriors and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and set in the rundown New York of the nineteen eighties, whilst rounding out Wyrd Science – Expert Rules is over twenty or so review of board games, wargames, and roleplaying games. There is a decent mix here, although some games get more space than others, and then in ‘HIT POINTS: FILM/TV’, Will Salmon gives a round up of watchable content in 2020. Lastly, there is ‘TIMESLIP’, with which Ian Livingstone takes us back to 1976 and memories of Gen Con triggered by a very special photograph.

Physically, Wyrd Science – Expert Rules is impressively bright and breezy. The layout is clean and tidy, with decent use of photographs against pieces of art as more like spot fillers. The issue does need another edit in places though.

Wyrd Science – Expert Rules is less parochial than Wyrd Science Session Zero. This is not say that the first issue was bad, but rather that Wyrd Science – Expert Rules has broadened its coverage of the gaming scene, so less of roleplaying, boardgaming, and miniatures gaming in the United Kingdom, per se, but more of it around the world. Consequently, it feels less constrained, primarily because it is not written with COVID-19 in mind, although its influence is there as you would expect. It covers its broad range of subjects with what is for the most part, an excellent series of articles and interviews, never less than entertaining and informative. In places, it could have done with more history and more context, especially the Latin American article, which would have made the content of Wyrd Science – Expert Rules more useful. Nevertheless, Wyrd Science – Expert Rules contains an excellent mix of interesting and engaging articles that are a real pleasure to see in print.