Blackmail & Betrayal

If you are one of the few wealthy Drow in the Spire, then the Silver Quarter is where you come to see and be seen. If you are one of the Aelfir in the Spire, then you need deign to descend to such lows as the Silver Quarter, unless you want to rebel and have fun and perhaps even cause a scandal. Famous—or is that notorious?—for its casinos, gambling houses and members-only clubs, the quarter is a renowned hotbed of dubious, if not outright illegal activity that its bosses can pay off the local bosses and local detachment of the city guard to look the other way. At the heart of it all, is Mesye So, a powerful and influential Drow, who controls the Silver Quarter from behind layer after layer of the best security that his money can buy and the best ignorance of his involvement that his bribes can engineer. Still, he hungers for greater power and influence, and perhaps his ambition and his hubris will be his undoing. It is certainly an affront to ‘The Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress’. A council of elders of these freedom fighters—or terrorists—has decided that enough is enough and that a figure such as Mesye So, of their own, should be bent to their cause. They have purchased a base of operations from which a teams of Ministers can operate in the Silver Quarter, a rundown, not quite seedy gambling den called the Manticore. Armed with what they know about Mesye So and other leading figures seen in the Silver Quarter—represented by a handful of newspaper clippings—the Ministers are to gather further intelligence and use to extort and blackmail Mesye So and others in support of ‘The Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress’ and its aims. This is the set-up for The Kings of Silver: A Campaign Frame for Spire RPG.

It is a mini-campaign for Spire: The City Must Fall, the roleplaying game of secrets and lies, trust and betrayal, violence and subversion, conspiracy and consequences, and of committing black deeds for a good cause. It is set in a mile-high tower city, known as the ‘Spire’, in the land of the Destra, the Drow, which two centuries ago the Aelfir—or ‘High Elves’—invaded and subjugated the Dark Elves. The Drow have long since been forced to serve the High Elves from their homes in the city’s lower levels and allowed only to worship one facet of Damnou, the moon goddess, instead of the three they once did. However, not all of the Drow have resigned themselves to their reduced and subjugated status and joined ‘The Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress’, or simply, the Ministry. Its members—or Ministers—venerate the dark side of the moon, the goddess of poisons and lies, shadows and secrets, her worship outlawed on pain of death, and they are sworn to destroy and subvert the dominion of the Aelfir over the Drow and the Spire. Published by Rowan, Rook, and Decard Ltd., Spire: The City Must Fall inverts traditional fantasy, making the traditional enemy in fantasy—the Drow—into the victim, and certainly the protagonist, but not necessarily the hero.

The Kings of Silver: A Campaign Frame for Spire RPG is not a traditional roleplaying scenario. It foregoes the traditional construction with prewritten encounters that the Player Characters play through one after another. Nor does it not suggest any plot or story threads, something that other campaign frameworks for Spire: The City Must Fall, such as Eidolon Sky: A Campaign Frame for Spire RPG do. Instead, it sets up a situation, that is, a chief villain (and others) who are going to be the targets of the Player Characters’ actions, and a base of operations from where the Player Characters will operation. Instead of briefing given by the council of elders, the Player Characters are furnished with a set of newspaper clippings. These include titles such as ‘New Captain of the Watch Appointed in Silver Quarter’, ‘Temple Brawl Kills Five’, ‘Mr Silver Quarter: Looking for Love?’, ‘Midwife Murderer Walks Free’, and ‘Walks-On-Light Drinks Docks Dry!’, from which the players and their characters are going to extract clues about their targets and begin to formulate a plan or two. There is a total of fourteen such clippings and they are all presented as handouts for the players. They tell the players and their characters about the doings of not just Mesye So, but also the extremely wealthy Lay-Deacon Stride-Out-Harmonious; Hestra Wander-The-Lost, famous for being famous who wants to even more famous; and Loq Walks-On-Light, a rebellious Aelfir, who might just turn on his own. Each of these and other NPCs is nicely detailed as why they are so important to the cause of ‘The Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress’, how they differ from other Aelfir, what they desire and what they despise, and what could the Player Characters get from them. Each is also accompanied by some suggested where they might be encountered, but in some cases such as Lay-Deacon Stride-Out-Harmonious and Hestra Wander-The-Lost, what they do not come with is stats. This is deliberate, since they are combatants and if they are being fought, then the probability is that the Player Characters’ blackmail and/or exhortation attempts are going poorly.

The Player Characters also receive The Manticore, the gambling club from which they will be operating. This is nicely detailed in a couple of pages, with a particular emphasis placed upon the staff. They are only given the simplest of descriptions each, but that leaves room aplenty for the Game Master to develop them according to the needs of the campaign. The players and their characters are free to leave the day to day operation of The Manticore to the staff, but they can also have their characters get involved with both of its operation and the staff and their lives, which could open up a lot of roleplaying possibilities.

The Game Master is supported with advice on running The Kings of Silver and given several tables to roll on as a source of prompts and ideas, including ‘Which House Is This Drow Noble Claiming To Come From?’ and ‘What’s The Name Of This Gambling House/Club, And What’s Interesting About It?’. There is a list too of the primary places in the Silver Quarter. Although what might happen in between is not discussed, there is an examination of the possible endings to the campaign as well as its set-up. These look at the ultimate possible consequences of the Player Characters’ actions, not all of them good.

Lastly, The Kings of Silver presents six pre-generated Player Characters. They include a Bound, one of the vigilantes who bind small gods into their weapons, who can infiltrate locations with ease; a night-club singer who is secretly a Blood-Witch with a long history of terrifying others; a Knight of the North Docks with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the city’s public houses who has brought his daughter with him as his squire; an ex-masked servant able to move amongst high society; an ex-embezzler good at cutting deals; and an ex-priest turned confidence trickster. They all come with their own character sheets.

Physically, The Kings of Silver: A Campaign Frame for Spire RPG is well presented and its contents are neatly organised and easy to reference, done in an easy-to-grasp style from start to finish. The news clippings each have a page of their own enabling the Game Master to print or copy them and once in play, the players can consult them again and again.

Although it is of scenario length, The Kings of Silver: A Campaign Frame for Spire RPG is very much a campaign framework, with a beginning and an ending (or endings). It is a juicy set-up, with lots for the players and their characters to think about, whilst giving them complete agency as how they act upon the set-up and the information that it gives them. After that, the campaign is primarily player driven as they decide how their characters will act against the NPCs they are targeting, with the Game Master supporting and reacting to those decisions. There is no set length to the campaign either, the length likely depending upon the players’ decisions and how many of the NPCs their characters will move against. The Kings of Silver: A Campaign Frame for Spire RPG lays out the basis for an entertaining campaign, but where it goes is entirely up to the players.

Decay & Destruction

The city of Spire is in a constant state of wrack and ruin. As its overlords, the Aelfir, live a life of indolence and intrigue, the walls crack and parts of the structure shear and fall the many storeys to smash crumble on the ground below. The rot though, does not come from without, the cold and the wet finding cracks in the walls, working them and snapping them open, but from within. Deep below the city of Spire is the Heart, a ruinous tear in the fabric of the world that bleeds upwards, spreading disorder and chaos and blighting souls with rot. Unseen, its consequences have found a home in the harsh and uncaring undercity of Red Row, making the lives of its Destra inhabitants ever more dangerous, ever more dreadful. Gangs engage in open warfare, the sound of their gunfire marked by palls of spireblack gunsmoke, unable to agree on any one cause or able to resume the wary respect that kept their weapons holstered and a peace between them. Families bicker and divide, casting children aside. The Crimson Vigil, a group of violent anti-aelfir reactionaries, is openly recruiting soldiers for their forbidden cult, and with its numbers growing, how long before its actions bring the attention of the authorities down upon the whole neighbourhood? And yet despite the violence and despite the dissension that seems rife in every home and on every street, what the people of Red Row are talking about is The Weeping Maiden, a new play currently on tour! Society seems to be tearing itself apart at the seams and everything is going to wrack and ruin. This cannot be natural. There has to be someone or something behind it. Surely? This is the set-up for Blood and Dust: A Campaign Frame for Spire RPG.

It is a mini-campaign for Spire: The City Must Fall, the roleplaying game of secrets and lies, trust and betrayal, violence and subversion, conspiracy and consequences, and of committing black deeds for a good cause. It is set in a mile-high tower city, known as the ‘Spire’, in the land of the Destra, the Drow, which two centuries ago the Aelfir—or ‘High Elves’—invaded and subjugated the Dark Elves. The Drow have long since been forced to serve the High Elves from their homes in the city’s lower levels and allowed only to worship one facet of Damnou, the moon goddess, instead of the three they once did. However, not all of the Drow have resigned themselves to their reduced and subjugated status and joined ‘The Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress’, or simply, the Ministry. Its members—or Ministers—venerate the dark side of the moon, the goddess of poisons and lies, shadows and secrets, her worship outlawed on pain of death, and they are sworn to destroy and subvert the dominion of the Aelfir over the Drow and the Spire. Published by Rowan, Rook, and Decard Ltd., Spire: The City Must Fall inverts traditional fantasy, making the traditional enemy in fantasy—the Drow—into the victim, and certainly the protagonist, but not necessarily the hero.

Blood and Dust: A Campaign Frame for Spire RPG is not a traditional roleplaying scenario. It foregoes the traditional construction with prewritten encounters that the Player Characters play through one after another. Nor does it not suggest any plot or story threads, something that other campaign frameworks for Spire: The City Must Fall, such as Eidolon Sky: A Campaign Frame for Spire RPG do. Instead, it outlines an intrigue and a greater plot of sorts whose chaotic effects are playing out on Red Row and which the Player Characters are driven to investigate, and beyond the initial set-up of getting the Player Characters together, it focuses on the six factions involved. These consist of the Retroengineers employed to operate the devices that are destabilising the neighbourhood and helping to sow the chaos; the Sunlight Collective, a theatre group of radical artists and occultists fascinated to see the effect that its latest play is having on Red Row; the Knights of the North Docks, the strutting bully boys whose factionalism has turned them into extortionists; members of the City Guard, overworked with all of the unrest they have had to deal with; the Church of Absolution, a burned-out magicians and sages, destitute oracles and defrocked priests, that worships decay and wants revenge on those that stole its ideas; and the Crimson Vigil, anti-Aelfir zealots ready and happy to stir up more chaos. Some are more detailed than others—the Game Master will need to refer to the Spire: The City Must Fall for more details—but all are given motivations and suggestions as to what they might do as well as some notable NPCs.

The most detailed advice for the Game Master is on how to set the scenario up and involve the Player Characters, whether they are the pre-generated Player Characters or not. This is because there are no staged encounters or scenes, so there is no advice on how to handle them. What happens instead is the Game Master will reacting to the directions in which the players want to push their characters, which character hook and motivation and thus which faction that the want to investigate. Having set this up, the authors leave it to the Game Master at the table to respond to her players and their characters to determine what happens. There are some notes on how to end the story, primarily concerning what the remaining factions that the Player Characters do not investigate might do.

In addition, Blood and Dust: A Campaign Frame for Spire RPG includes five pre-generated Player Characters, all members of ‘The Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress’. They consist of an ex-military revolutionary and firebrand; a beautiful artistic and revolutionary idol; a Knight of the North Docks (effectively a gangster in plate armour); a Lajhan, a priest of Our Glorious Lady, the light side of the moon, the one aspect of the Drow goddess that is legal to worship, whose temple has been despoiled; and a Vermissian Sage, who hides knowledge in the Vermissian , the broken mass-transit system that runs up and down Spire. All five have their own character sheets and reasons to get involved in the investigation and adventure, such as the Lajhan’s temple having been bespoiled and the Vermissian Sage having recently been denied access to the Vermissian.

Physically, Blood and Dust: A Campaign Frame for Spire RPG is well presented and its contents are neatly organised and easy to reference, done in an easy-to-grasp style from start to finish.

Blood and Dust: A Campaign Frame for Spire RPG is not a ‘campaign frame’ as its subtitle suggests. Its emphasis and thus is structure is all on the set-up. It is described on the back cover as “…[A] series of prompts, suggestions, factions, pre-generated characters and personalities…” and it is very much that rather than a frame or framework that provides anything akin to structured campaign or plot line. Nor is it necessarily a campaign, since it is intended to be run in a few sessions. Yet as a set-up, it does work, giving the elements that a Game Master would need to run it. However, the lack of the frame and the fact that the Game master will be improvising the responses to the Player Characters’ actions does not make Blood and Dust: A Campaign Frame for Spire RPG either easy to use or necessarily suitable for the inexperienced Game Master. For the experienced Game Master, Blood and Dust: A Campaign Frame for Spire RPG provides a good set-up and content suitable for several sessions’ worth of player-driven play.

The Demon Drug

The sacred streets, back alleyways, and secret sanctuaries of New Heaven and Perch are rife with rumours and fear. A new drug has hit the streets and hit the streets hard. Dreck is making in-roads everywhere with its surefire hit, but making its addicts hyper-violent. Someone is snatching Drow off the street, but that appears to have nothing to do with a serial killer called ‘The Swan’, who kills his victims by excising their hearts and leaves them pinned up with swan wings in glass piercing their limbs, along with cryptic notes that taunt the authorities to catch him before he kills again. Then there is rumour of a demonic incursion which tore apart a tower of silence, killing everyone inside and driving everyone nearby mad. This is the set-up for Eidolon Sky: A Campaign Frame for Spire RPG.

It is a mini-campaign for Spire: The City Must Fall, the roleplaying game of secrets and lies, trust and betrayal, violence and subversion, conspiracy and consequences, and of committing black deeds for a good cause. It is set in a mile-high tower city, known as the ‘Spire’, in the land of the Destra, the Drow, which two centuries ago the Aelfir—or ‘High Elves’—invaded and subjugated the Dark Elves. The Drow have long since been forced to serve the High Elves from their homes in the city’s lower levels and allowed only to worship one facet of Damnou, the moon goddess, instead of the three they once did. However, not all of the Drow have resigned themselves to their reduced and subjugated status and joined ‘The Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress’, or simply, the Ministry. Its members—or Ministers—venerate the dark side of the moon, the goddess of poisons and lies, shadows and secrets, her worship outlawed on pain of death, and they are sworn to destroy and subvert the dominion of the Aelfir over the Drow and the Spire. Published by Rowan, Rook, and Decard Ltd., Spire: The City Must Fall inverts traditional fantasy, making the traditional enemy in fantasy—the Drow—into the victim, and certainly the protagonist, but not necessarily the hero.

Eidolon Sky: A Campaign Frame for Spire RPG is not a traditional roleplaying scenario. It foregoes the traditional construction with prewritten encounters that the Player Characters play through one after another. Instead, it presents three plot threads that they can investigate—the drug ‘Dreck’, the serial killer ‘Swan’, and the demonic incursions. Each thread includes an opening or ‘Trigger’ scene, these being the closest to prewritten encounters in Eidolon Sky. Each of them begins their plot thread with a bang and is followed by the details that the Player Characters can discover as they investigate each thread. Stats and details of the antagonists involved in each thread are listed at their ends, but these feel underwritten in comparison to the various NPC write-ups that follow. This is because they are accompanied by a list of suggested scenes that where the Player Characters might encounter them. Essentially, what Eidolon Sky gives the Game Master is a set of plot threads and NPCs that she can set up and have her Player Characters engage with them. The Game Master is free to bring these into play as necessary, but in the main, what she will be doing is responding to the decisions of the players and the actions of their characters as Eidolon Sky is very much a player-led investigation.

The most detailed advice for the Game Master is on how to end the campaign frame. As they investigate the three threads, the Player Characters will come to realise that they are connected and following those connections will lead to the villain of the piece. Eidolon Sky both explains what will happen if the Player Characters fail and what will result depending upon their actions. This includes discussions of what leverage the Player Characters might gain over the villain, how they might seek help from other factions, and so on. Representatives of these other factions are included in the NPC descriptions given earlier.

Eidolon Sky: A Campaign Frame for Spire RPG ends with a set of five pre-generated Player Characters. They include a trader-priest, one of the Bound vigilantes, a Carrion-Priest, a Midwife, and a Vermissian Sage. All five are fully detailed and not only do they include a character sheet, they come with short backgrounds each of which has some details designed to hook them into the campaign frame’s three plot threads.

Physically, Eidolon Sky: A Campaign Frame for Spire RPG is well presented and its contents are neatly organised and easy to reference, done in an easy-to-grasp style from start to finish.

Eidolon Sky: A Campaign Frame for Spire RPG is a solid investigation for Spire: The City Must Fall, a good mix of investigation and violence in three flavours—criminal, occult, and horror. However, it also a straightforward investigation meaning that it lacks some of the moral ambiguity at the core of Spire: The City Must Fall which casts the Player Characters as much terrorists as they freedom fighters, dedicated to the cause that leads them to make difficult and questionable choices. Where the Player Characters will be making moral choices in Eidolon Sky is in deciding which faction to side with and perhaps what to do with the villain of the piece, but these are not hard choices and their consequences are lacklustre. The Game Master may want to find scenes and points in the campaign frame where she can inject some of that moral ambiguity, although she could run it as written as change of tone and style. Eidolon Sky: A Campaign Frame for Spire RPG is an entertaining and straightforward, but not typical campaign frame for Spire: The City Must Fall.

Gnashers & Nazis

Punching Nazis. Shooting Nazis. Blowing up Nazis. Setting Nazis on Fire. Scaring Nazis. Biting Nazis. Then feeding on their blood. It is 1943 and as Hitler brings about his dire plan to create Werewolf soldiers, the British government decides to strike. Not with its brightest and its best, but its darkest and its worst. Under the command of F.A.N.G., a single RAF bomber will drop six crack commandos onto Paris in their drop-coffins. Each drop-coffin contains a vampire. Their mission? Cut a bloody swathe across the City of Light, kill Nazis and feed on their blood. Once enriched, they are to storm the Eifel Tower and climb to its top where Hitler has his personal Zeppelin moored. Once aboard, they are to kill Hitler, drink his blood, and stop his Nazi werewolf programme. This is Inglorious Basterds meets The Suicide Squad in a sanguinary splatterfest in an alternate World War 2 and the setting for Eat the Reich. This is a pulp-action horror one-shot storytelling roleplaying game or a scenario with some roleplaying rules attached, published by Rowan, Rook, and Decard, best known for Spire: The City Must Fall and Heart: The City Beneath. Intended as a fun and cathartic punch-up of a game of evil action delivered on an even greater evil, Eat the Reich does not so much wear its heart on its sleeve as bare its fangs and tell you to hold still whilst it bites you.

To be fair, the elevator pitch for Eat the Reich, as hard as it punches, it is not the first thing that grabs the reader. What grabs the reader is the crazed eyes staring out of the cut-out in the front cover. After that, it is the colours used—vibrant swathes of neon pink, yellow, and blue that continue right through the length of Eat the Reich. This is technicolour in all of its comic book exuberance and brio, that in case of the front cover hides a frightened looking monster. And it is monsters that Eat the Reich makes a case for playing, noting that it is monsters preying on monsters that are even more monstrous. It includes the by now traditional advice on safety at the table, covering the X-Card and Lines and Veils, but goes beyond that to ask the Game Master and her players what is acceptable in their game. Anti-hero vampires invading occupied France, feeding on blood for the power it gives, killing and feeding fascist, are all fine. Murdering innocent civilians and acts of fascism are definitely reserved for the villains of the piece. Although there are boundaries that it definitely sets—primarily sexual violence and violence against children—Eat the Reich examines others to help guide a playing group what is and is not acceptable at its table taking into account religious sensibilities as well. It backs this up with an ‘Evil Calibration Checklist’ that a group can work through before play.

Unfortunately, the response of some to this advice—which goes further than most roleplaying game—is to see it as unnecessary moralising, especially in a roleplaying game that only runs to seventy or so pages. Perhaps in a longer roleplaying game it might not have been so prominent. On the other hand, it is not bad advice and in the context of the game, it is really only going to ask everyone to think about their limits and their expectations. And ultimately, like any advice, the Game Master and her players are free to accept it or reject it as is their wont.

Although there is advice on creating Player Characters or rather adapting the pre-generated ones, Eat the Reich really is about playing its six pre-generated Vampire Commandos. They consist of Iryna, a noble woman who is a crack shot and wields a mesmerising dark glamour; Nicole, resistance fighter and saboteur who likes blowing things up; Cosgrave, Cockney spiv and necromancer on the run from East London’s undead mafia; Chuck, a fan of cowboy films pulled out of prison to go on the mission; Astrid, ex-fighter pilot with a parasitical soul wrapped round her heart who can command spirits and hunts with a greatspear; and Flint, a half-human, half-bat who can fly and rarely speaks.

Each Vampire has seven stats—Brawl, Con, Fix, Search, Shoot, Sneak, and Terrify—rated between one and four. He will also have some equipment each marked with a number of use boxes; four Abilities, some of which require the expenditure of Blood, some of which require a player to roll dice and assign a Special result to them; Advances when he learns from the campaign against the Nazis; and Injury boxes. For example, Iryna has an ‘Exquisite Hunting Rifle’ which grants an extra die when she is elevated; a ‘Magic Cavalry Sabre’ which grants a bonus when she charges with it; ‘Explosive Runes’ that wok better if concealed; and ‘Cigarettes taken from the pockets of a hanged man’ to smoke and regain two Blood. Her Abilities include ‘Dark Glamour’ to mesmerise those nearby with her unearthly appearance; summoning a swarm of bats under her control with ‘Night’s Willing Servants’; and reducing a Threat’s Attack rating by one with ‘Deadeye Shot’. Her Advances include ‘Hell’s Ravenous Fire’, ‘Enervation of the Soul’, and ‘Mantle of the Fell Beast’, whilst her Injuries are randomly determined, which might be ‘Suit Torn’ or ‘Abdominal Puncture’, ‘Shoulder Injury’ or ‘Arm Removed’, and so on. Each Vampire’s character sheet is easy to read and comes with a great illustration.

Mechanically, Eat the Reich uses the HAVOC Engine. To have his Vampire undertake an action, a player rolls a number of six-sided dice equal to an appropriate stat plus any bonus dice from an item of equipment used or an Ability. The Game Master rolls a number of dice equal to the current Threat or Attack rating. Results of four and five count as a Success each, whilst a six counts as a Critical. There are multiple ways in which a player can now spend his Vampire’s Successes and Criticals. If the situation has an Objective, they can be spent to advance it; to counter a Threat and reduce it; to active a Special; to feed on a Nazi; and to defend against an attack. When defending, a Success counters a Success rolled by the Game Master, whilst a Critical counters a Critical. A Critical can also be used as a Special to activate various Abilities. Any Success or Critical not defended against like this means that the Vampire suffers an Injury, and if he suffers too many Injuries and dies, he can at least go out in a ‘Blaze of Glory’ with one last roll of a bigger dice pool. Blood can also be spent to heal a Vampire. Lastly, feeding on Nazi blood fills up a Vampire’s Blood which he can subsequently spend to active various Abilities.

In addition to rolling the dice and assigning the dice, what a player is expected to do with each Success or Critical is narrate the outcome and describe the actions of his vampire. Once per session, if a player rolls two Successes or fewer, he can instead narrate a flashback scene of a prior mission which somehow helps this one and reroll all of the dice again.

There is a definite loop to the play of Eat the Reich. A Vampire needs Blood and thus needs to feed on Nazis, in order to have Blood to activate Abilities or heal himself. So, he needs to keep a flow of Blood going from scene to scene, action to action, but this has to be balanced against the needs of an individual scene, whether that is reducing a Threat and thus its capacity to Attack the Vampires or work towards an Objective. Plus, he also has to counter the Attack rolls made by the Threats to prevent himself from being Injured. However, when a Vampire lands in his Drop Coffin, he has no Blood, as it has been used to heal him from the drop, which means that his player has to make Successful rolls in order to get Blood to get the play loop running. It does make for a slow start to the action.

The play of Eat the Reich is one big mission. Essentially, rampaging across Paris until the Vampires get to the Eifel Tower and ascending to the final confrontation against Hitler. After the briefing and the coffin drop, this takes place across three sectors of Paris. This is a comic book version of Paris rather than an historical recreation, but then having already thrown the Vampires into the mix, it not being historically accurate is hardly going to break immersion. Working their way across three sectors, the Vampires will start off in somewhere like the Place de la Sirène where there are families and bistros and the only threat they will face are police patrols, their Objective being to get out of the open and into cover. In Sector 2, they might have to get through ‘The German Technology Pavilion’ and get out the other side. They will face Stahlsoldat, half-men, half-machine warriors, but will also have the opportunity to find loot such as a ‘Prototype Beam Emitter’ and achieve secondary Objectives such as powering up a weapons platform. As the Vampires move from sector to sector, the locations become more interesting and complex, including a chance for the Vampires to team up with the Resistance at the ‘Le Cochon Noir’ and battle magically-animated suits of armour and use medieval weaponry in the ‘Museum of European Warfare’! Eventually, the Vampires will make it to the Eifel Tower and hopefully defeat his minions and kill Hitler.

Physically, Eat the Reich is a riot of colour. This is used in such a way that it does not impede the legibility of the text, which is clear and well written.

Eat the Reich is a one-shot. Two or three session’s worth of play and the playthrough is done. Whilst there are suggestions for sequels, including going up against Churchill—for unfortunate historical reasons—and perhaps they might want to play it again, but switching vampires, a group is unlikely to play through it again. Of course, the Game Master could run it for another group. It is simple to play and as a storytelling game gives plenty of room for every player to narrate how vicious and nasty and frightening his vampire is, in a very violent comic book caper. Nevertheless, however a group decides to play, whatever boundaries they set for themselves, Eat the Reich is a blast to play, a blaze of blood and brutalising Nazis, of monsters masticating on monsters, and ripping the heart out of the Reich.

From Beyond

In the mile-high tower of the Spire, the Aelfir—the High Elves—enjoy lives of extreme luxury, waited upon by the Destra—the Drow—whom they have subjugated and continue to oppress the criminal revolutionaries that would rise up and overthrow them. In the City Beneath, where heretical churches have found the freedom to worship their forbidden gods and organised crime to operate the drug farms that supply the needs of the Spire above, the Aelfir find themselves free of conformity, the Destra free of repression. They are joined by Gnolls and Humans. Some simply live free of the stifling Aelfir control, whether by means lawful or unlawful, others are driven to beyond the Undercity, delving ever deeper into the bowels of the world in search of the fabled Heart, or perhaps their heart’s desire. There are also those who use the Undercity as a sanctuary, as a base of operations, from which they lead the rebellion against the Aelfir. They are members of the Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress, both a faith and a revolutionary movement, and outlawed for both reasons. As the Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress foments and funds rebellion and unrest in the Spire above, it sends cells of its black ops paramilitary wing, Throne Division, scurrying up the Spire to conduct assassinations, acts of sabotage and blackmail, abductions, extractions, and more. The City Beneath then, is a home to many, sanctuary to some, a base of operations to others, a stepping stone to elsewhere for a few, and a thorn in the side for even fewer. What though, would happen if the City Underneath was threatened from somewhere else, perhaps a means of escape?

Doors to Elsewhere is a supplement for Heart: The City Beneath, a roleplaying game that explores the horror, tragedies, and consequences of delving too deep into dungeons. Published by Rowan, Rook, and Decard Ltd., like the other supplements for Heart: The City Beneath—Sanctum, Vermissian Black Ops, and Burned and Broken—it explores other ways in which to roleplay in its world underneath. Where it differs is that it actually takes the Player Characters away from the City to explore another place and from there, potentially, whole new dimensions. This opportunity comes when dozens of doors that were not there before suddenly appear and open. On the other side is a strange land between the dimensions. This is the City Elsewhere, home to untold numbers of people, who live in buildings that reach four or five storeys into the sky, the upper levels connected by wrought iron bridges, their homes connected to markets and workshops by warrens of alleys and streets. By day, the vast city is a blaze of colour, noise, and light, but at night, only the light remains, fizzing and fizzling in the streetlights that provide sanctuaries against the dark. And such sanctuaries are needed, for no one walks the streets voluntarily now. Between the light of the lamps and darkness beyond, there is no shadow, there is only a darkness that is home to the Interstitials, pools of liquid darkness that smell of curdled milk whose mandibles click at locks to unpick them, whose claws clack on the cobbles and so make you realise that your companions number more than you can count, and who want to eat you and spread the darkness. They abhor the light and something or someone is stealing the Power Crystals that fuel the lights of the City Elsewhere. Citizens of Elsewhere remain inside and lock their doors at night, but many have begun fleeing the city, leaving via the many passageways that lead to doors to other dimensions—and that includes the City Beneath. Can the City Beneath provide them with sanctuary as it does others, or now that the doors are open, will the Interstitials follow and bring their eternal death and darkness with them?

This is a campaign framework which begins in the City Beneath rather than away from it as do the other supplements for Heart: The City Beneath. Its set-up presents an immediately intriguing mystery, one almost on the Player Characters’ doorstep. The framework really consists of that beginning and its possible endings, leaving what happens in between in the hands of the Game Master and her players. This includes the culprits behind the theft of the Power Crystals, Doors to Elsewhere suggesting multiple options, some of whom might be surprisingly close to home for the Player Characters. After that, it explores the nature of the City Elsewhere, the main factions in the city and their notable personalities, various locations or landmarks that the Player Characters might visit, the dimensions that the Player Characters might find themselves in if they take a wrong turn, and a set of tables for bringing the City Elsewhere and its inhabitants to life.

Some of the flavour of the difference of the City Elsewhere comes through in the small details. For example, one possible door from the City Beneath to the City Elsewhere is described as a corpse, slumped over, through coral has blossomed to form a doorway, whilst potential means of overcoming the language barrier is solved by everyone smoking from the same hookah to temporarily understand each other or a book, when handed to the Player Characters by an NPC, reveals in exact detail, the conversation they would have if they spoke the same language. At the Crowdswallow Market—where the bustling crowds over seven streets never quite seem to buy anything, the Player Characters might want to buy a Fighting-Rope, since bloodshed is forbidden in the City Elsewhere or a Light Bomb, as it is one of the few things that harms the Interstitials. Other locations include the Café De L’Autre Monde, which always remains a café no what happens in the City Elsewhere and serves a delightful menu of cakes; the Desert Maiden, a ship lost at sea that crash-landed atop an artist’s workshop and become a bar; and the Street of Doors, the City Elsewhere’s central street lined with stable doors to other dimensions, allowing travel to and from Approved Realms—if the toll is paid, of course.

The City Elsewhere’s major factions include the City itself and only the one guild, the Guild of Cartographers, which seeks to catalogue and control every portal. Surprisingly, the Vermissian Collective has a presence in the City Elsewhere. The group of scholars and explorers who map and examine the transport network which runs up and down the Spire to the City Beneath and beyond, maintains an embassy in the City Elsewhere. It has become much busier since the doors to the City Elsewhere began opening. Not all of the factions are happy to see the Doors open. The Hounds—or the Glorious 33rd—are dedicated to finding every door, closing the ones they can, and boobytrapping the ones they cannot.

Doors to Elsewhere also has discussion on ‘Dimensional Theory’ and descriptions of some of the major dimensions that have multiple, stable links to the City Elsewhere, along with several minor ones that are harder to reach. A favourite from the latter is ‘The Place Where Cats Go When No-One’s Watching’, a constant twilight labyrinth of rooftops, alleys, airing cupboards, bins with fish in, and more, that all cats can access if nobody is watching. Sadly, non-cats are not allowed and to them it is anything other than a feline paradise. The SS Freebird is ship that sails on the aether between dimensions, the collective of shamans, magi, fringe scientists, de-frocked priests, and occult oddities that make up its crew working to maintain and improve their vessel when not docking at other dimensions and partying hard—really hard!

Rounding out Doors to Elsewhere is a list of the (story) beats—minor, major, and zenith—that the Player Characters can hit whilst in the City Elsewhere and the advances available. There is some advice on how running as different a campaign in the City Elsewhere compared to the City Beneath, but it is relatively light. It is backed up with a set of random tables for creating details in play at the table.

Physically, Doors to Elsewhere is a slim, very well-presented book. It is lightly illustrated, but the artwork is excellent and the book is easy to read and understand.

Much as with Sanctum, Vermissian Black Ops, and Burned and Broken before it, Doors to Elsewhere presents a different campaign focus and set-up for Heart: The City Beneath. In fact, a very different campaign focus and set-up for Heart: The City Beneath, one with an external rather than an internal focus. It enables to the Player Characters to explore and contrast their existence in the City Beneath with the City Elsewhere and beyond, but as much as it is filled with lovely little details and intriguing secrets as you would expect for a supplement for Heart: The City Beneath, ultimately, Doors to Elsewhere does feel like an outlier.

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Rowan, Rook, and Decard Ltd. will be at UK Games Expo which takes place on Friday, May 30th to Sunday June 1st, 2025.

Reviews from R’lyeh Post-Christmas Dozen 2024

Since 2001, Reviews from R’lyeh have contributed to a series of Christmas lists at Ogrecave.com—and at RPGaction.com before that, suggesting not necessarily the best board and roleplaying games of the preceding year, but the titles from the last twelve months that you might like to receive and give. Continuing the break with tradition—in that the following is just the one list and in that for reasons beyond its control, OgreCave.com is not running its own lists—Reviews from R’lyeh would once again like present its own list. Further, as is also traditional, Reviews from R’lyeh has not devolved into the need to cast about ‘Baleful Blandishments’ to all concerned or otherwise based upon the arbitrary organisation of days. So as Reviews from R’lyeh presents its annual (Post-)Christmas Dozen, I can only hope that the following list includes one of your favourites, or even better still, includes a game that you did not have and someone was happy to hide in gaudy paper and place under that dead tree for you. If not, then this is a list of what would have been good under that tree and what you should purchase yourself to read and play in the months to come.

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The Making of the Original Dungeons & Dragons 1970 – 1977
Wizards of the Coast ($99.99/£75)
In an exceptional year for books about the history of the hobby, the first entry on the list is the most controversial, but an absolute must for the Dungeons & Dragons fan who has an interest in the early history of the world’s most popular roleplaying game. To help celebrate the fiftieth anniversary, this massive volume charts the gestation and development through letters and fanzines of the ideas that would ultimately lead to the publication of Original Dungeons & Dragons in 1974. The hefty tome draws heavily on the archives to fully reproduce Chainmail – rules for medieval miniatures and its Fantasy Supplement that were the precursors to Dungeons & Dragons, the very first draft of Dungeons & Dragons, and much, much more, all the way up to the published version and beyond. Were you so inclined, the reproductions in this book are so good that you could actually run a game based on the rules they present! Everything is faithfully reproduced and accompanied by a commentary from Jon Peterson, one of the hobby’s few historians, the result is a superb book, one that genuinely gives the fan of the roleplaying game the opportunity to look at documents and correspondences that they would otherwise never have the chance to look at or read. The Making of the Original Dungeons & Dragons 1970 – 1977 is like having a Dungeons & Dragons museum of your own, but one that you can pull from your shelf and browse any time you like. If you really have any interest in the development of the roleplaying hobby, let alone that of Dungeons & Dragons, this book is essential.

Eat The Reich
Rowan, Rook, & Decard ($30/£25)
Why bother punching a Nazi, when you can fucking eat a Nazi? Eat The Reich is the all-action roleplaying game in which the Player Characters are a team of crack vampire commandos coffin dropped on Paris in 1943. And then cutting, stabbing, biting, rending, and blood draining their way across the City of Lights and up the ranks of the German occupiers to the top and beyond. And beyond means getting hold of Adolf Hitler himself—currently lurking in his zeppelin moored to the Eiffel Tower, so atop Paris effectively—and drink all of his amphetamine-fuelled blood. If that does not sound like a great hook for a session or three of over-the-top, blood-drenched action, then what the hell are you here for? Eat The Reich is designed to be fast-playing with an emphasis on carnage, blood magic, meaningful flashbacks, and the slaughter of hundreds and hundreds of Fascists. Which is not enough Fascists. All of which is packaged in a swathe of vibrant pinks, blues, and yellows that give the combined roleplaying game and scenario a neon punk energy all of its very own. Play Eat The Reich. Kill Nazis. Drink their blood. Is there anything better?

The Horrendous Hounds of Hendenburgh
The Merry Mushmen ($28/£22.50)
The village of Hendenburgh stands in the middle of the Kryptwood, an ancient forest steeped in legend and history recently beset by murderous demon hounds, ripping apart anyone who dares enter its reaches and even snatching lone villagers from the streets of the small settlement. These are the only dangers faced by the villagers: Highwaymen lurk in the forest, ready to pounce on Hendenburgh’s misfortune; a coven of witches wants everything to be returned to normal; the old silver mine stands abandoned, infested with monsters that drove out the miners and sowed the seeds of Hendenburgh’s poverty; a Bridge Troll has gone on strike after a drunken pixie failed to pay the toll; and at its heart, the Tomb of the Tyrant, the last resting place of the Kryptwood Tyrant, a despot who ruled the region a thousand years ago. This is a great set-up for the fantastically well-produced The Horrendous Hounds of Hendenburgh, a story-packed low-Level hexcrawl with lots going on and plenty of plots for the Player Characters to get involved in. It is also a fine sequel to the equally as good Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow (and that is worth picking up too) and both are written for use with Old School Essentials, but The Horrendous Hounds of Hendenburgh is a just that much more fun with its combination of Hammer Horror with shades of Monty Python.

Aces Over The Adriatic – A Solo RPG
Critical Kit Ltd. ($15/£12)
Since lockdown there has been a rise in interest in and play of the solo journaling games that rather than tell a story in the choose-your-own-adventure-path of classics like The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, provide the situations and the prompts that the player will react to in order to write the story of his character’s experiences and how he reacts to them. Many offer a chance to experience and tell a story of horror or wonder, such as a Thousand Year Old Vampire or Colostle: A Solo RPG Adventure, but Aces Over The Adriatic takes the reader back barely a century to explore the wonders of the age in the gleaming skies over the azure of the Adriatic. In the latter half of the Jazz Age, the cutting age technology and the future of flight lay in the seaplane! In a golden age of aeronautical development, experimentation, and speed, the great nations of the era competed to win the Schneider Cup, awarded to the fastest seaplane in the competition held twice a year. As a pilot, the reader not only gets to fly the greatest aeroplanes of the age and enter the Schneider Cup, but soar into the skies and embrace the romance of the air. However, this is a solo journalling game inspired by Hayao Miyazaki’s Porco Rosso, so the pilot has to deal with air pirates as well as his rivals and the weather! This is a chance for the reader to tell the stories of his pilot’s adventures and encounters with most famous men and women of the time in a glorious epic of another age.

Moria – Through the Doors of Durin
Free League Publishing ($46/£36)
For all the dungeons that the roleplaying hobby has given us in the last half century, there is the one dungeon from literature that inspired them all and lives in our imagination—Moria, from Tolkien’s Middle-earth. In The Lord of the Rings we discover the fate of Balin’s expedition and see Gandalf confronted by the great evil that is the Balrog, Durin’s Ban, but in Moria – Through the Doors of Durin for The One Ring, Second Edition, we get to explore it ourselves. Originally the city of Dwarrowdelf, the seat of a Dwarven kingdom, for centuries it has been infested with Orcs, Goblins, and, of course, much, much worse. However, it has a scope and grandeur that could never be mapped out in a single book, being too large and extensive to map every nook and cranny, so instead, Moria – Through the Doors of Durin details over twenty great Landmarks, each a potential destination involving danger and adventure, and each a major location within the mines. Getting to them is no easy task though, so every trek to and between them these Landmarks, employs the Journey mechanics of The One Ring, so that whilst getting there can be fraught with dread and danger, the focus is what the Player-heroes discover at the Landmarks. Combine this with a hoard of Patrons, foes, encounters, and treasures, and the Loremaster has all the means to take her players and their heroes into the greatest dungeon in literature, whether for a single delve or an extended campaign!

BattleTech Universe
Catalyst Game Labs ($49.99/£45)
Whilst it might be first, Dungeons & Dragons is not the only roleplaying game or game with an anniversary in 2024. BattleTech: A Game of Armoured Combat was published in 1984 and in the forty years since, through multiple publishers, the game has received numerous sets of new rules, supplements, several ranges of miniatures—both plastic and metal, over one hundred novels, a cartoon series, a collectible card game, and multiple computer games. All of which has constantly developed the setting and background and stories to the Inner Sphere—and beyond—at the beginning of the thirty-first century, so that from the beginning of the Fourth Succession War to capture of Terra by the returning the Clans, the focus is upon one-and-twenty-six years of history! It is however, a rich, detailed, and daunting history, so difficult to fully grasp and comprehend. However, BattleTech Universe is a sourcebook that presents the history to BattleTech is an easy to digest and understand fashion, highlighting the factions and individuals and their objectives, at every juncture and turn of events, all lavishly illustrated drawing upon artwork form forty years of BattleTech games, supplements, and novels.

Dreams and Machines
Modiphius Entertainment ($45/£35)
Most post-apocalyptic roleplaying games present harsh and unforgiving futures, with technology that has to be scavenged and hard fought for, but the future of Dreams and Machines is more positive and hopeful, set on a colony world where everyone can see the signs of the technology that turned on their ancestors and triggered the Builder War. These are the Wakers, the mechs built to serve the Builder, a programme to develop resource and power control, which litter the landscape and everyone fears will react and carry out the instructions of their corrupt programming. This is a world where the Player Characters work to build their community and forge links with other communities, to make lives better and protect them against dangers such as the Wakers and the Thralls, humans wrapped in loops of wire and marked with ash and paint, who up out of the ground to aggressively raid and steal food and technology from the communities. One of the interesting legacies of the technology is the way in which it can be interacted with, through GLIFs, or ‘Graphic Layer Instruction Format’ patterns that that once learned enable Archivists to use them spells to instruct technology and the Wakers, whilst the Spears, dedicated to protecting communities with their vicious Electrospears, mark themselves with Hunter-GLIFs that temporarily conceal them from the optical sensors of hostile machines. Overall, Dreams and Machines feels cleaner, more positive, and more hopeful than other roleplaying games of its genre.

Call of Cthulhu: Arkham
Chaosium, Inc. ($59.99/£48.99)
The city of Arkham crown—if not the jewel that is Miskatonic University—in the milieu of Lovecraft’s fiction, the New England town at its heart, witch-haunted and fabled, rich in secrets and conspiracies and crime. Call of Cthulhu: Arkham returns it to print for call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, to detail everything from town and its history, its inhabitants, its shops and its societies to its dread secrets and even worse, the people and things that keep them! Just as the original Arkham Unveiled was in 1990, this supplement is the keystone to the Lovecraft Country series of scenario anthologies and setting books, and it enables the classic Call of Cthulhu Investigator to remain at home and have a family and a job to investigate the strangeness all around him rather than going on some expensive round the world, never to be seen again. This sets up a very different style of campaign, one based in the community as much as it is in the surrounding region with the Investigators discovering secrets and facing threats which are much closer to home. Call of Cthulhu: Arkham is a great updating of a classic supplement and setting that successfully makes them both more accessible and useable, whilst laying the groundwork for a terrible series of encounters and threats to faced by the Investigators in the future. (And if this is not enough Arkham, then Welcome to Arkham: An Illustrated Guide for Visitors to the Town of ARKHAM, MASSACHUSETTS, and Environs Including DUNWICH, INNSMOUTH, and KINGSPORT is also good.)

Outgunned Adventure
Two Little Mice ($55/£45)
Sadly, we do not have an official Indiana Jones roleplaying game, but we do have one which will do all of the action of the Pulp action and archaeology genre. This is Outgunned Adventure, a roleplaying game inspired by Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Mummy, which of course, sends the adventurers off in search of treasures and secrets in the remotest parts of the world, from deep in the jungles of Central America to the sandy deserts of Egypt, from the mountains of the Himalayas to the islands of the South Seas, more often than not, chased by rival archaeologists and treasure hunters, cultists and Nazis. The heroes and heroines of Outgunned Adventure must search and research, jump and duck, and punch and kick their way to glory and success if they are get that invaluable treasure to the right place and prevent it from falling into the wrong hands! Outgunned Adventure is a Genre book for Outgunned, the Cinematic Action RPG inspired by Die Hard, Kingsman, Ocean’s Eleven, Hot Fuzz, and much, much more. Outgunned—and thus Outgunned Adventure—is a roleplaying game in which the Adventurers cannot fail. At worst, they can succeed in an uninteresting way, so it is better to gamble in succeeding in a more exciting and thrilling fashion in keeping with the genre! Outgunned Adventure is fast playing and captures all of the pace and excitement of some our favourite action films.

XCRAWL Classics Roleplaying Game
Goodman Games ($59.99/£45.99)
Imagine a world where the number one sport is not football or cricket, but a death sport called Xtreme Dungeon Crawling! Some adventurers do delve deep into the caverns and labyrinths below the earth, but if they really want to become famous, they turn Professional and form teams which enrol in leagues which stage manufactured dungeons live-streamed via spellphones throughout the North American Empire and beyond. If they can survive the arena, with its horrific monsters, lethal traps, magical hazards, and challenging puzzles, then they had better wish their agent is good, because he has to navigate the shark-infested waters of corporate sponsorship, rival teams and their agents, the networks, and even the Action Guild, responsible for running the events. But then it is the only way to become the superstar influencers and live celebrity lifestyles few in the Empire can imagine, backed up with for endorsement deals and corporate sponsorships, and the fabulous cash prizes earned for slaying monsters. Using the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game rules, what the XCRAWL Classics Roleplaying Game does to take Dungeons & Dragons-style play and modernises it with all of the razzmatazz and energy modern wrestling! This is as witty and as entertaining to play as it sounds and creates some great over-the-top gaming.

Pendragon Core Rulebook
Chaosium, Inc.  ($49.99/£39.99)
The Pendragon Core Rulebook returns to print the classic Arthurian roleplaying game that designer Greg Stafford considered be his masterpiece with a brand new, illuminated edition. It provides all of the rules and details to create young Cyrmic knights ready to ride out in service to the liege lord and ultimately King Arthur, to go in search of adventure and quests, to attend court and participate in tournaments and more. There is so much more to Pendragon with the Pendragon Core Rulebook covering the creation of a Player-knight and the duties he will undertake, combat, and the duties of a knight, but focusing very much on how he will behave and carry himself. At the core of the game are thirteen pairs of Personality Traits—Chaste and Lustful, Honest and Deceitful, Valorous and Cowardly, and so on—that the player will roleplay as they determine how his knight will act, usually in the best interests of the knight in mind, but at other times, especially when the knight is being tested, against the interests of the knight, and possibly those of his fellow knights! The Personality Traits are flexible though, and will change over time, enabling a player to roleplay his knight becoming a better person, knowing that sometimes, the Personality Traits will tell him otherwise. The Pendragon Core Rulebook provides everything that a player needs to begin playing and the Game Master with the basic rules, thus laying the groundwork for the Pendragon Gamemaster’s Book and Great Pendragon Campaign to come.

This is Free Trader Beowulf
Mongoose Publishing ($59.99/£45)
In the year of its fiftieth anniversary, it was no surprise that Dungeons & Dragons got all the fanfare and the attention, but 2024 also saw the release of another good history of another long-lived game. Indeed, there are very few roleplaying games that have the depth and detail and storied history to have an actual book devoted them, but Traveller is one of them. With multiple editions and multiple publishers, Traveller has almost as many years to explore in This is Free Trader Beowulf from Mongoose Publishing. This charts the history and development of the world’s longest running Science Fiction roleplaying game, examining the many decisions and changes made with each new edition and supplement, not just upon the part of the creators and developers, but also the fans who would make their own contributions too. Accompanied discussions of books that would have been and comparisons with the rest of the hobby for context as well as lengthy lists of everything published for the roleplaying game in each of its iterations, This is Free Trader Beowulf is written by the authors of the Designers & Dragons series of roleplaying histories and he provides a thoroughly detailed and well researched book that every fan of Traveller will want and every roleplayer with an interest in the development and history of roleplaying games.

Spurned and Splintered

In the mile-high tower of the Spire, the Aelfir—the High Elves—enjoy lives of extreme luxury, waited upon by the Destra—the Drow—whom they have subjugated and continue to oppress the criminal revolutionaries that would rise up and overthrow them. In the City Beneath, where heretical churches have found the freedom to worship their forbidden gods and organised crime to operate the drug farms that supply the needs of the Spire above, the Aelfir find themselves free of conformity, the Destra free of repression. They are joined by Gnolls and Humans. Some simply live free of the stifling Aelfir control, whether by means lawful or unlawful, others are driven to beyond the Undercity, delving ever deeper into the bowels of the world in search of the fabled Heart, or perhaps their heart’s desire. There are those though, who find themselves exiled to the city below, cut off from the world they once knew and they once fought for. Once you were members of the Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress, both a faith and a revolutionary movement, and outlawed for both reasons. As the Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress foments and funds rebellion and unrest in the Spire above, some it casts out and if they are lucky, they find themselves in the City below. Perhaps someone made a mistake. Perhaps someone took more than they gave. Possibly secrets were revealed. Perhaps by someone else or perhaps by you. It does not matter, for then the misgivings began to spread. Rumours about betrayals and bribes and worse, and so you became a hindrance rather than a help. Your only use to the cause was as something to placate the authorities, and so you were betrayed.

Were you sent on a mission, your handlers knowing you were going to fail? Were simply traded away to give the high priests of the Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress an advantage? Were you set up as a lesson to others? Does it matter? You became a traitor and you ran.

Burned and Broken is a supplement for Heart: The City Beneath, a roleplaying game that explores the horror, tragedies, and consequences of delving too deep into dungeons. Published by Rowan, Rook, and Decard Ltd., like the other supplements for Heart: The City Beneath—Sanctum and Vermissian Black Ops—explores other ways in which to roleplay in its world underneath. For Burned and Broken, this is to translate the spies, killers, and revolutionaries of Spire: The City Must Fall to the lawless nightmare of Heart: The City Beneath. This, though, is not done by simply adapting the Player Characters’ stats from one roleplaying game to another. Instead, Burned and Broken will chart the events that lead to the collective fall of the ex-operatives of the Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress, which ultimately, will prepare them for life in the City Below.

First though, Burned and Broken expands upon Derelictus, described as the ‘City Between’ Spire and Heart. In Heart: The City Beneath, this is just one Landmark that the Player Characters can visit, here it is broken into multiple Landmarks, beginning with Haven Station, the starting point for most people’s entry into Heart, and multiple Delves, like a Pig Farm that the Player Characters accidentally wander into, a warren of half-starved pigs that feed on who knows what and the pigs know the Player Characters are just something to feed on, although a very mobile something… Neither Delves nor Landmarks are safe, especially for newcomers, but Delves are far more dangerous. For the Player Characters from Spire: The City Must Fall, ‘the burned and broken’, their progress into Heart is tracked via Fall. In Heart: The City Beneath, the Player Characters each have Callings, which keep them in the Heart, but also push them to Heart. ‘Fall’ in Burned and Broken is shared between the Player Characters, who each pick a story beat from one of three categories—‘Leave’, ‘Acclimatise’, and ‘Become’. These respectively, get a Player Character out of Spire, help them adapt to its unfamiliarity, and lastly, begin to make connections with the peoples and places of the City Beneath. Fulfilling a beat first gets a Player Character a Calling as per Heart: The City Beneath, and then the abilities and advances from the selected Class.

If the first two sections of Burned and Broken take the Player Characters into the City Beneath and chart their progress, the third looks at their beginnings. Consequently, ‘Origins’ feels out of place, as if should have been at the start. It presents several packages of skills, domains, equipment, and abilities that each represent why the Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress recruited a Player Character and what a Player Character brought to the City Beneath. These are not direct adaptations, as various abilities do not fit the realm of Heart: The City Beneath and not all of them work as well below as they do above.

Despite Burned and Broken telling the Game Master that it is not designed to simply present a means of adapting a Player Character from Spire: The City Must Fall to Heart: The City Beneathh, it does actually give such a means! This, though, comes towards the back of the book and it is a very quick-and-dirty method that will definitely require the adjudication of the Game Master to fix potential issues. The advice on running a Burned and Broken campaign is decent though, highlighting the fact it is designed to tell a particular story, one of translation and change, that predominantly takes place in Derelictus, in the upper part of Heart. After all, the Player Characters are not ready to, let alone capable of surviving, a further descent beyond its confines. Plus, the Game Master is given some adversaries who will be hunting the Player Characters, including the Spire City Guard and Ministry Silence Operative.

Although the Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress is very much focused on fomenting its rebellion and resistance against the Aelfir masters of the Spire and so reclaiming the Destra home, it does maintain action operations in the City Beneath. Most obviously for Burned and Broken, this would actually be to track down agents of the Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress which have gone rogue or it deems to have turned traitor. Of course, the other option would be for the Player Characters to be seen to be disavowed by the Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress and then transition into agents still working for it, but in the City Beneath rather than the Spire. Several ideas are suggested as what operations they might be sent on, including some that involve the weirdness of the Heart: The City Below, such as breaking into the Slumbering Depths to assassinate an Aelfir before it is born in the mortal world and descending to the Maw where anything that is undestroyable elsewhere can be got rid of here! Lastly, Burned and Broken includes Minister as a Calling. This enables the creation of a Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress agent from the start in a Heart: The City Beneath campaign, equal to that of the other Player Characters.

Physically, Burned and Broken is a slim, very well-presented book. The artwork is excellent and the book is easy to read and understand. The order of the various feels slightly odd, but this is a minor issue.

Much as with Sanctum and Vermissian Black Ops before it, Burned and Broken presents a different campaign focus and set-up for Heart: The City Beneath. Unlike those supplements, it sets out to tell a specific story, one of betrayal, survival, and adaptation. It is a classic espionage tale, but here there is little chance of the ex-Minsters—the Player Characters—coming in from the cold. It allows though a campaign to transition from Spire: The City Must Fall to Heart: The City Beneath and gives opportunities for the Player Characters to grow and change in ways they would never have imagined in telling its one story.

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Rowan, Rook, and Decard Ltd. will be at UK Games Expo which takes place on Friday, May 31st to Sunday June 2nd, 2024.