Solitaire: Bloody and Alone in Appalachia

Maybe it went wrong when you drove off the highway and into that small town? Needed some gas or a place to stay for the night or simply a rest room. Took a wrong turn on the trail and found yourself outside a house in the woods? For whatever reason, you have found yourself in the small town of Bludworth Hollow in the Appalachian Hills of Eastern Kentucky. And them Appalachians take against strangers and to them there is no one stranger than city folk. And you are definitely city folk. The store owner took one look at you and with a curl of his lip, he knew you were not from around here. And then that was when everything went black… When you woke up, there was a bruise on the back of your head, you were in a barn, your wallet gone, and you had no idea where you were. There was a radio nearby that you might be able to call for help and if all else fails, you have been left with a video recorder on which you might have time to record what happens to you. Or maybe that is what they want, to record your last hours. To record your terror as the situation closes around you. As you scramble to switch the recorder on and point at it your face, your hands trembling, you think you hear movement. Is someone coming? Are they coming to help? Are they coming to hound you…?

This is the set-up for Bloody and Alone in Appalachia, published by Beyond Cataclysm Games following a successful Kickstarter campaign and based on SURVIVE THIS!! Bloody Appalachia, the Old School Renaissance roleplaying game published by Bloat Games. Where SURVIVE THIS!! Bloody Appalachia is a typical roleplaying game, Bloody and Alone in Appalachia is a solo journalling game, and is thus best played when all but the last Player Character has been hunted down and butchered! Further, instead of using rules derived from Dungeons & Dragons, for its mechanics Bloody and Alone in Appalachia uses the rules and format of The Wretched, the Science Fiction journalling game published by Loot the Room. Thus, the game requires two ordinary decks of playing cards without the Jokers, a six-sided die, a Jenga or similar tower block game, and a set of tokens. In addition, the player will require a means of recording the results of the game. It is suggested that audio or video logs work best, but a traditional journal will also work too. The roleplaying game is inspired by films such as The Blair Witch Project, Cabin in the Woods, Deliverance, and just about any backwoods horror film you care to name. Lastly, one major difference between Bloody and Alone in Appalachia and The Wretched is the number of antagonists that it offers. Typically, a solo journalling game like The Wretched presents a difficult situation and one threat. In Bloody and Alone in Appalachia there are not one threat, but thirteen! The Butcher. Bigfoot. Children of the Corn. Dirty Hoof. Fairies. Iris Lynch. Jack the Scarecrow. Piggy Lee. Reggie ‘The Mad Miner’. The Sheriff. Las Bandisas. The Ruby Mind Cooperative. The Wild Wrestler. The player will only face one of these at a time, and what that means is the player can return to play Bloody and Alone in Appalachia over and over in an attempt to escape and defeat a different foe each time. This gives it a replayability factor that is rare amongst solo journalling games.

Set-up is simple. The Jenga tower is set up with a random number of blocks pulled to represent the battering the player has already suffered and the stress he is currently suffering. Every time the player is instructed to pull a block, it represents another wound suffered, and if the Jenga tower collapses, it means that the player has died, whether from this one last wound or stress as his heart gives out. Each deck of playing cards is shuffled. One becomes the Event deck, the other the wound deck. Each day of the player’s travails is divided into two phases. Phase One is ‘The Tasks’, whilst Phase Two is ‘The Log’. There are four steps in Phase One and two in Phase Two. In ‘The Tasks’, the player draws a random number of cards from the Event Deck and works through them one by one, consulting ‘The Tourist Guide’ for each one. ‘The Tourist Guide’ is broken into four card types corresponding to the four suits in an ordinary deck of playing cards.

Hearts represents an encounter of a ‘Personal’ nature. For example, the nine of hearts entry reads, “A rusty hook bounces off the chain-link fence as someone—or something—tries to entangle you. You vault the fence in a single burst of adrenaline, but the razor blades at the top cause you to stumble. Pull from the tower.” Diamonds are the ‘Physical’ world about the player, representing places in and around Bludworth Hollow. For example, the seven of Diamonds entry reads, “The Bokenheel Bridge tricked you—it’s desperately dangerous and can’t leave the town here. How did you learn that miserable lesson? Pull from the tower.” The clubs are ‘People’, individuals that the player can meet in and about Bludworth Hollow.  For example, the eight of club reads, “When Mayor Hooper asked you to follow him, you hoped it would be the first favour in a chain that would lead you to freedom. What you saw at the Town Hall instead taught you that hope comes to Bludworth Hollow to die. What did you see?” Lastly, spades represent the monster stalking the player in and around Bludworth Hollow. Each one of the thirteen monsters has its own set of entries. This enhances the replay value of Bloody and Alone in Appalachia simply in terms of variety, but with thirteen entries per monster, the player could actually replay Bloody and Alone in Appalachia with the same monster and it still be different. Further, each monster not only has thirteen entries, it also has some background, but also two locations which can visited if the right diamonds card are drawn.

In Phase Two, or ‘The Log’, the player takes the time to consider what has happened to him that day. What he learned about the town and its inhabitants? Did he encounter the monster? How is he feeling? He then records his diary for the day.

The Wound deck simply gives fifty-two options for injuries the player might suffer. They are simply described, leaving it up to the player describe them as graphically as wants. The player is further supported with advice and a decent example of play—a nice addition for a solo journalling game—plus tables for NPC motivations and things to be found in and about the town. There is also a map of Bludworth Hollow which the player can use or create his own during play.

Like all of journalling games based on The Wretched, the subject matters of Bloody and Alone in Appalachia are dark and distressing. The player is going to be chased and cut, stalked and stabbed, pursued and punched, and more. In other words, the horror is not going to let up. However, it does lean into the clichés of rural, back woods, redneck horror, but ultimately, it is up to the player to decide how he handles these elements of his playthrough.

Physically, Bloody and Alone in Appalachia is cleanly and tidily presented. There is no art bar that on the front and back cover. There is more artwork than is typical for a solo journalling game based on The Wretched, primarily illustrating the thirteen monsters in Bloody and Alone in Appalachia.

Bloody and Alone in Appalachia is easy to play, but challenging to win. And win not once, but thirteen times! It all depends upon the draw of the cards, but every card is potentially interesting prompting the player to be creative in telling his own story. This is in line with The Wretched format, but Bloody and Alone in Appalachia goes bigger and bloodier than most solo journalling games. With thirteen monsters, Bloody and Alone in Appalachia dishes up more hillbilly horror than you ever imagine you wanted and will bring the player back to the back woods again and again to see if he can survive another monster.

Solitaire: Exclusion Zone Botanist

Call of Cthulhu is the preeminent roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror and has been for over four decades now. The roleplaying game gives the chance for the players and their Investigators to explore a world in which the latter are exposed, initially often indirectly, but as the story or investigation progresses, increasingly directly, to alien forces beyond their comprehension. So, beyond that what they encounter is often interpreted as indescribable, yet supernatural monsters or gods wielding magic, but in reality is something more, a confrontation with the true nature of the universe and the realisation as to the terrible insignificance of mankind with it and an understanding that despite, there are those that would embrace and worship the powers that be for their own ends. Such a realisation and such an understanding often leave those so foolish as to investigate the unknown clutching at, or even, losing their sanity, and condemned to a life knowing truths to which they wish they were never exposed. This blueprint has set the way in which other games—roleplaying games, board games, card games, and more—have presented Lovecraftian investigative horror, but as many as there that do follow that blueprint, there are others have explored the Mythos in different ways.

Cthulhoid Choices is a strand of reviews that examine other roleplaying games of Lovecraftian investigative horror and of Cosmic, but not necessarily Horror. Previous reviews which can be considered part of this strand include Cthulhu Hack, Realms of Crawling Chaos, and the Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game.

—oOo—

The North East Unified Containment & Sylvan Exclusion Zone 502-H is a densely forested area that the government deemed to be a danger to the country and quarantined. All access and egress are denied. Inside the 103 km2 area, the forest continues to grow, but not only grow for its flora mutates and anything, or indeed, anyone, who enters and stays for too long also mutates. Yet the government deems that the North East Unified Containment & Sylvan Exclusion Zone 502-H, or just ‘Exclusion Zone’, is monitored inside and out. It thus orders the bureau to regularly send operatives into the ‘Exclusion Zone’ to monitor and catalogue the new species of plant to be found within its confines. This is not without its dangers. Some of the previous botanists sent into the ‘Exclusion Zone’ have never returned via the ‘Infiltration/Exfiltration Portal’ and rumours says that some who did return were radically changed by their experiences and discoveries within the Exclusion Zone. Operation within the Exclusion Zone is hampered by the inability of all and any electronic or electrical equipment to function within the Exclusion Zone. Operatives are equipped with standard camping and survival gear, a standard handgun, and the means to sketch and record the new plants found within its confines. You are the next operative, the next ‘Exclusion Zone Botanist’.

This is the set-up for Exclusion Zone Botanist: New Agent Handbook – A Solo Drawing & Sketching Game. It is a solo drawing and journalling game in which the player will record both the plants discovered and the experiences of his character, within the ‘Exclusion Zone Botanist’. Published by Exeunt Press, it is very obviously inspired by Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer and The Colour Out of Space by H.P. Lovecraft and so is a horror game involving primarily isolation, but also the danger of body horror and gore. It requires a map of the Exclusion Zone—included in the book, a token to mark the Botanist’s position on the map, a journal or means to record the incursion, and two six-sided dice. As a ‘Drawing & Sketching Game’, Exclusion Zone Botanist also requires pens, pencils, paints, or another means of drawing and colouring. As well as a quiet space, the rulebook suggests that lights be dimmed when the game is being played.

Exclusion Zone Botanist is intended to be played hour-by-hour, hex-by-hex, and has a simple play loop. The Botanist spends one hour in each hex on the map, there being a total of twenty-eight hexes on the map divided into six numbered zones. In each hour and thus each hex, the player as the Botanist will do three things. First, he rolls to see if he has discovered a new plant; second, he rolls to see if the Exclusion Zone has corrupted him; and third, he moves on to a new hex. If he does discover a new plant, he rolls for its details. This includes its size, leaf shape, and leaf arrangement, followed by its unusual plant feature. There are four groups of increasingly weird features, from a plant with black leaves that reflect no light that the Botanist has an urge to touch and which uses some other means to survive than green chlorophyll to a plant with shiny, reflective metal skin under thick bark around which rocks and dirt floats, and then so does the Botanist. Other plants unleash corrupting spores, have caustic berries that kill flora and fauna nearby, and a trunk that appears to be marked by twisted human faces, that the Botanist thinks he might recognise… Whether or not the Botanist discovers a new plant, he determines whether he is corrupted by rolling both dice. If the result of both dice is less than the current ‘Risk Value’, which goes up over the course of a day, that is, the longer he spends in the Exclusion Zone, he becomes corrupted. This shows by the Botanist beginning to itch, and then corrupted again, to have small lumps form under his skin, and then again, followed by tiny sprouts erupting from the lumps… Lastly, the Botanist moves on to a new hex.

Ultimately, there will come a point in the day when the Botanist feels that he has done or found enough or pushed as far into the Exclusion Zone as he can. Then it is case of returning to the ‘Infiltration/Exfiltration Portal’, either by the route he took through the Exclusion Zone or via new route. The latter is more likely if he has discovered some of the weirder, perhaps deadlier, plants to be found in the Exclusion Zone. However, it still takes an hour to move each hex and the Botanist still risks suffering Corruption each and every hour…

Physically, Exclusion Zone Botanist: New Agent Handbook – A Solo Drawing & Sketching Game is well presented. The layout is stark and clean, strange plants lurking, ready to corrupt the Botanist. It is also well written and an easy read.

Exclusion Zone Botanist: New Agent Handbook – A Solo Drawing & Sketching Game reveals itself to have been a drawing game first and a journalling game second. It can be both or one or the other, but as a drawing and sketching game, the Botanist does not need to be a skilled artist to explore the Exclusion Zone. The Botanist can though, approach the drawing and sketching aspect however he wants, use whatever materials he wants, and produce as rough or as finished an illustration of each plant as he wants. There is nothing to stop the Botanist from creating simple drawings or fully realised pieces, and he can even treat the process of playing through Exclusion Zone Botanist as an artistic exercise. And of course, drawing and sketching game, Exclusion Zone Botanist is not only forcing the Botanist to contemplate the fantastic and often frightful flora in the Exclusion Zone, but to visualise and realise them too, to create an image of the source of his horror!

On one level, Exclusion Zone Botanist: New Agent Handbook – A Solo Drawing & Sketching Game is disappointing as there are no revelations or discoveries to be made that explain what the North East Unified Containment & Sylvan Exclusion Zone 502-H is. No secrets or signs, and certainly no indication that any other scientist or botanist has entered the Exclusion Zone before the Botanist. Perhaps the Exclusion Zone corrupts everything brought into its limits or its resets itself every time the Botanist enters or the Botanist is caught in a time loop? Such speculation lies outside the scope of the roleplaying game as written, whilst the lack of answers and revelation only serves to enhance the survival horror and body horror, and of course, the sense of isolation, which lie at the heart of this journalling game. Exclusion Zone Botanist: New Agent Handbook – A Solo Drawing & Sketching Game has the capacity to be truly creepy and unnerving and in asking the player to both visualise and realise that, truly horrifying.

Solitaire: The Necronomicon Gamebook: Dagon

Call of Cthulhu is the preeminent roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror and has been for over four decades now. The roleplaying game gives the chance for the players and their Investigators to explore a world in which the latter are exposed, initially often indirectly, but as the story or investigation progresses, increasingly directly, to alien forces beyond their comprehension. So, beyond that what they encounter is often interpreted as indescribable, yet supernatural monsters or gods wielding magic, but in reality is something more, a confrontation with the true nature of the universe and the realisation as to the terrible insignificance of mankind with it and an understanding that despite, there are those that would embrace and worship the powers that be for their own ends. Such a realisation and such an understanding often leave those so foolish as to investigate the unknown clutching at, or even, losing their sanity, and condemned to a life knowing truths to which they wish they were never exposed. This blueprint has set the way in which other games—roleplaying games, board games, card games, and more—have presented Lovecraftian investigative horror, but as many as there that do follow that blueprint, there are others have explored the Mythos in different ways.

Cthulhoid Choices is a strand of reviews that examine other roleplaying games of Lovecraftian investigative horror and of Cosmic, but not necessarily Horror. Previous reviews which can be considered part of this strand include Cthulhu Hack, Realms of Crawling Chaos, and the Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game.

—oOo—

Your merchantman ship sunk by Imperial German raiders. You captured and held in a cell. There is a chance that you can escape, steal a boat and then… How long will you survive adrift in the ocean waters? Will you row or drift, perhaps you may find yourself coming ashore in the hometown of your ancestors, Kingsport, the mist enshrouded city of dreams or cast ashore in a strange new land where death and madness await. This is opening to The Necronomicon Gamebook: Dagon, a solo adventure inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft, in particular, Dagon, The Festival, and The Hound, as well as The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. Published by Officina Meningi following a successful Kickstarter campaign, it enables the reader to explore the story from his own point of view and perhaps survive to influence the outcome for a different ending than that suffered by Lovecraft’s protagonist.

As a choose-your own-adventure book, The Necronomicon Gamebook: Dagon is short at just eighty entries for the main Earth-bound portion of the story with a further ten entries for the sidestep into The Dreamlands. The player will need just a six-sided die and pen and paper to play and perhaps a couple of hours to play through at most. The Player Character is lightly defined. He has three attributes, Force and Will. Force is his physical strength and ability to fight, whilst Will is his ability to withstand stress and the horrors of the cosmos. Resistance represents his physical skills and tolerance to pain. His mental state is tracked by his Madness, which begins at Well-Balanced. As it goes from Stressed to Delerium via Paranoid and Schizophrenic, the Player Character suffers penalties to die rolls, first in The Dreamlands, but later in the waking world too. He can carry some equipment, such as a medical kit that will restore Resistance and a syringe of morphine that will restore Resistance and prevent him from entering The Dreamlands. Throughout his journey, the Player Character will find money, other items, and weapons.

The combat system is simple. The player rolls the die and adds the character’s Force attribute to the roll as well as any bonus from a weapon. The opponent’s Force value is subtracted from the total and the result compared on the ‘Table of Comparison’ on the solo adventure’s combat table. The worse the result, the less damage the opponent suffers and the more the Player Character suffers, and conversely, the better the result, the more damage the opponent suffers and the less the Player Character suffers. It is possible to inflict damage without the Player Character suffering any, but the chances are low. To defeat an opponent, his or its Resistance must be reduced to zero. Although it is possible to avoid some combat situations, when it does occur, it is simple and brutal.

The story of The Necronomicon Gamebook: Dagon is really one of transition through the three of Lovecraft’s short stories that inspire it. The opening scenes with the Player Character captured are drawn from Dagon, but the scenes in Kingsport are primarily from The Festival with those from The Hound made part of it. What they reveal is the existence of an ancient cult abroad in Kingsport, which at the time of the Player Character’s arrival, is readying to perform an ancient ceremony of Yule, older than Bethlehem. This becomes apparent very quickly if the Player Character visits the home of his ancestors, but he may also learn more from an old friend from college and so play out scenes from The Hound. Unless discovered or he runs away, the story pulls the Player Character into attending the ceremony of The Festival and towards the climax of the adventure book. In the process, the Player Character will learn some of Kingsport’s dark secrets and may be put a stop to the cult’s dread ritual. This will not be easy, for the Player Character will encounter horror after horror and many a deadly encounter, and even though the adventure book runs to less than a hundred entries, there many ways in which he can die or go mad. It will certainly take more than the one attempt to complete The Necronomicon Gamebook: Dagon.

The majority of the journeys in The Dreamlands are encounters rather than explorations as in the main section of the book, randomly determined by the Player Character’s Madness. The higher the result, the more dangerous and the maddening and unearthly the encounter is, before returning the Player Character to the waking world, likely the worse for the night’s poor sleep. Of course, the Player Character can die in The Dreamlands, but may also return with something that will benefit him in the waking world.

Physically, The Necronomicon Gamebook: Dagon is solidly presented and the artwork is good. Devotees of Lovecraft’s fiction will likely spot both the breaks and the inspirations, but the player need not be familiar with any of three short stories that underpin The Necronomicon Gamebook: Dagon to enjoy it. Overall, The Necronomicon Gamebook: Dagon is a short, but challenging adventure book that exposes the reader to the horrors of the cosmos and secrets lurking in Lovecraft country.

[Free RPG Day 2025] Wires in the Wood

Now in its eighteenth year, Free RPG Day for 2025 took place on Saturday, June 21st. As per usual, Free RPG Day consisted of an array of new and interesting little releases, which are traditionally tasters for forthcoming games to be released at GenCon the following August, but others are support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera or a quick-start. This included dice, miniatures, vouchers, and more. Thanks to the generosity of Waylands Forge in Birmingham, Reviews from R’lyeh was able to get hold of many of the titles released for Free RPG Day.

—oOo—

The world has changed, but whomever changed it, is long gone. The world has been abandoned. This leaves room for the world to be explored and foraged and artefacts found and artefacts upcycled. This is the very simple set-up for Wires in the Woods: A trash-foraging TTRPG. Based on the artwork of Simon J. Curd, this is published by Critical Kit, Ltd, a publisher best known for Be Like a Crow: A Solo RPG, which can be played as a solo journalling roleplaying game or as a two-player game storytelling game. The Wires in the Woods: A trash-foraging TTRPG Solo Quickstart is the version released for Free RPG Day and as the title suggests is designed to be played solo. It requires a standard deck of playing cards, two six-sided dice, a token to represent the forager’s location, and a means of recording the story.

In Wires in the Woods: A trash-foraging TTRPG Solo Quickstart, the player controls the story of a Forager, an animal who will explore the abandoned world and undertake ‘Upcycling Tasks’. This involves the discovery of artefacts left behind and combining two or more of them to solve a problem. Perhaps a bridge over a ravine creaks and is missing several planks, leaving dangerous gaps or a set of wild hedgerows form a giant puzzle that is easy to get lost in and some creatures need help finding their way out. The cycle of the game is to explore different locations, find artefacts, discover problems, and transport the upcycled artefacts to the problem to solve it. The locations, artefacts, problems, and the upcycled artefacts are used as prompts by the player record the story of his Forager.

A Forager has only the one attribute, Zeal. It costs Zeal to explore and move from location to location, but is earned by completing Upcycling Tasks. The full game allows a player to choose a different Forager, each with a different skill, but the quick-start only includes the one. This is the ‘Scamper’, a raccoon-like creature with horns or antlers, and the skill, ‘Fleet of Foot’. This enables him to move to a location with the red suite without expending any Zeal.

The exploration area has a maximum area of a six-by-four grid. The standard deck of playing cards requires a little preparation. The game is played without jokers, three cards are drawn as trigger cards and three as Upcycling Task cards. Twenty-one cards are drawn to form the locations deck. The details of the trigger cards are shuffled into the locations deck, whilst the Upcycling Task cards are kept to one side. On a turn, the player draws a card from the locations deck, adds it to the grid and notes down the location description determined by the card’s colour and value. If the card drawn is a trigger card, the player can reveal one of the three Upcycling Tasks. This is determined by the value of the trigger card. At the end of a turn, the player rolls for an event or an encounter.

Game play ends when the Forager has either un out of Zeal or completed all three of his Upcycling Tasks. Although Wires in the Woods: A trash-foraging TTRPG Solo Quickstart is a quick-start designed to introduce the game and therefore does not include all of the roleplaying game’s prompts, it does include enough to enable it to be replayed. There are twenty-six location descriptions, thirteen Upcycling Tasks, and twelve Artefacts awaiting recycling. A player could easily play through it a second time and have a different experience dealing with different Upcycling Tasks, and perhaps even a third time!

Wires in the Woods: A trash-foraging TTRPG Solo Quickstart is a post-apocalyptic setting, one in which strange, not quite recognisable (mutated?) creatures explore a world left by mankind? The location and artefact descriptions are recognisably that of our own world, although the descriptions of the artefacts leave out their actual name. Thus, “There’s something trapped inside this that looks at you. Lots of pressy things and two skinny little arms that break easily. It also has a tail. It won’t talk to you.” is actually a television! This is classic post-apocalyptic roleplaying, a player completely aware of what an object from the past is, but having to roleplay his character not knowing what it is and what it does.

Physically, Wires in the Woods: A trash-foraging TTRPG Solo Quickstart is charming little book. Simon J. Curd’s artwork is strange, perhaps a little creepy, and delightful.

Wires in the Woods: A trash-foraging TTRPG Solo Quickstart is a charming and surprising fulsome introduction to the full roleplaying game, one that provides an equally surprising amount of game play. It serves as a decent introduction to journalling roleplaying games and the artwork of Simon J. Curd.

The Little Book of Death ...in Spaace!

Escape the Dark Sector: The Game of Deep Space Adventure is about survival. About making a break from the cell of the detention block of a vast space station where they have found themselves incarcerated. They have an opportunity to escape their imprisonment, but the route they must take, between the detention block and their spaceship, is fraught with danger. The escapees must find their way out of the Detention Level, through the Heart of the Station, and then the Forgotten Zones to their impounded spaceship—and escape! Published by Themeborne Ltd., Escape the Dark Sector is the Science Fiction sequel to Escape the Dark Castle: The Game of Atmospheric Adventure, which was inspired by the Fighting Fantasy series of solo adventure books and also the dark fantasy artwork of those books. As with its fantasy predecessor, Escape the Dark Sector can be played solo or collectively and

offered plenty of replay value and variability with six Character Cards, fifty-three Chapter Cards—fifteen of which form the encounter deck, and five Boss Cards. Then of course, there are game’s three expansions: Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 1: Twisted Tech, Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 2: Mutant Syndrome, and Escape the Dark Sector – Mission Pack 3: Quantum Rift. Each of these provided players with new characters to play, a new mechanic—which meant a new challenge to overcome, new equipment, and of course, a new Boss standing in the way of the players’ escape. However, when it came to death—and there is no denying that Escape the Dark Sector is definitely about death, as well as escaping, if not more so—what neither Escape the Dark Sector, nor any of its expansions, or even Escape the Dark Castle, could offer was much mote than a mechanical outcome whenever a player’s character dies in the game.

The solution is Death in Deep Space, the Science Fiction equivalent of The Death Book for Escape the Dark Castle. This is a book of over one hundred death scenes, each corresponding to a particular Chapter or Boss. It is very easy to use. Whenever a character dies as a result of the events in a Chapter or the showdown with a Boss, he checks the relevant entry in the pages of The Death Book. This is made possible because every card in Escape the Dark Castle as well as in all three of its expansions is marked with a unique code. Cross reference the code with corresponding entry in the book, whether for a Chapter or a Boss card, read out the description provided, and so provide an unfitting, but final end for your character, followed by that of everyone else.

For example, the details on the Boss card, ‘The Alien Queen’ reads as follows:

“Die, humansss!”

The Alien Queen was lying wait! Jets of venom fly towards you as she pounces—YOU must roll two HIT DICE now.

If a player should die in the course of this final confrontation before he and his companions, always a strong possibility in Escape the Dark Sector, he picks up Death in Deep Space and after finding the entry for ‘The Alien Queen’, he reads aloud the following:

The Alien Queen

Once it enters your bloodstream, the paralysing venom of the Alien Queen works quickly – a spreading rigidity coursing through your entire body, locking your joints one by one until you are all but paralysed. Even your eyelids cannot close, and you are forced to watch in horror as the terrible creature captures your fellow crew with equal ease.

With a series of hissed commands to her countless, scurrying servitor spawn, you are all dragged back her vast, deck-spanning nest. There, a slick, black, fleshy membrane covers the walls and beneath the vaguely humanoid shapes of her decomposing victims are still recognisable. Their shallow breaths rise and fall in eerie synchronicity, an indication that their suffering is yet to be ended. Soon, you and your crew join them.

Once in place, your spines are sliced open. The shimmering spools of nerve fibre that spill out are intertwined with those of the other captives suspended around – the connection sealed with a sticky, mucus coating. In this way, you become part of the fabric of the hive, a sensory node in a living web, lining the walls as far as the eye can see, warning the hive of approaching threats and passing the news back through the biotic chain in an instant.

For the rest of your days, your pain is theirs and theirs is yours; you see what they see and hear what they hear, your collective existence painfully prolonged in service to your bestial captor.

Your adventure ends here.

Physically, Death in Deep Space is a neat and tidy, if plain affair. A page of introduction explains how to use the book and contains the book’s single illustration which shows where the unique code for the Chapter or Boss card is located. Then each entry has a page of its own. There is a degree of repetition to the entries, but only a little, and it really only becomes apparent when reading the book from end to end, which is not its intended use. A small and relatively slim book, Death in Deep Space fits easily into Escape the Dark Sector: The Collector’s Box Set.

Death in Deep Space is book of endings, but one that provides a final narrative and some context to that death. Escape the Dark Sector is an enjoyable game, but character deaths can feel little, “Is that it?”. With Death in Deep Space, it is no longer the fact that you died, but very much how you died. Grim and ghoulish, The Death Book brings the death of every character, and with it, the game of Escape the Dark Sector to a nasty and unfortunate, but fitting end.

—oOo—

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

Solitaire: Innsmouth: The Stolen Child

It begins in simple, almost Film Noir fashion. There is not much call for a Private Investigator right now in Arkham. So, both cases and funds are light when the woman comes knocking at your office door. Her son, Lester, has been kidnapped, she says. Her husband did it, along with his family, and they have fled back to their hometown of Innsmouth. She wants you to get him back, but warns you that it will not be easy. The people of Innsmouth are strange, likely members of a cult, and do not take kindly to outsiders. She suggests that perhaps they can be bribed with gold, so obsessed are with the precious metal, but otherwise, you need to be careful. You promise you will be and so you find yourself ashore in the dilapidated, blighted town on the New England coast, your senses assailed by the smell of fish and the sight of buildings that were once a sign of wealth gone to seed and decrepitude. Can you rescue Lester from one of the most notorious towns in Lovecraft County? Can you find any sign of the previous investigator that the woman hired, only a week ago? Can you ‘Escape from Innsmouth’?

Innsmouth: The Stolen Child puts you in the flat shoes a Private Investigator hired to look into a kidnapping of a young boy in one of H.P. Lovecraft’s most famous creations, the town described in his short story, The Shadow Over Innsmouth. Published by Blue Fox Gamebooks following a successful Kickstarter campaign, it is a solo adventure book in the mould of the Fighting Fantasy series of solo game books as typified by The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. In fact, it is only slightly more complex than the Fighting Fantasy series and requires no more than a pair of six-sided dice and paper and pencil to play. Your character has seven attributes. These are Health, Speed, Accuracy, Stealth, Detection, and Power. Speed is how quick you are in terms of reaction time and running; Accuracy is aim and precision; Stealth is hiding and quiet movement; Detection is both spotting things and reading people; and Power is brute strength. In addition, your character also has Conspicuousness, measuring how much you stand out and bring attention to yourself. Health is set at a value of fifteen and is likely to go down over the course of the investigation, whilst Conspicuousness is set at a starting value of four and will go up and down, and even reset if your character changes his appearance. The value of the other attributes are determined by rolling a single die and adding six to each. They will not change over the course of the investigation.

Mechanically, Innsmouth: The Stolen Child is simple. For most of the attributes, you roll two six-sided dice and if the result is equal to, or lower than the value of the attribute, you succeed. Otherwise, you fail. This is reversed for Conspicuousness, where rolling higher than its value means that you have not been spotted. Combat is fast and deadly, especially when firearms are involved. Attack order is determined by Speed, successfully hitting by Accuracy, and damage by weapon. Firearms have a chance of killing a target with one shot. Damage is deducted from the Health of the character or NPC. The character does have a limited inventory and can carry and find rations, effectively the equivalent of packed lunches, which will restore Health if eaten.

Innsmouth: The Stolen Child consists of six hundred paragraphs and within moments of stepping off the boat in Innsmouth harbour, you are presented with hard choices. Investigate some crates on the wharves even though opening them might cause a noise and raise Conspicuousness? Deal with a man begging for death? Approach a solitary man sitting on the dock of the bay? The story funnels your character from the drop-off point into Innsmouth town proper where it opens up again after making rendezvousing with a contact in the town. There is a pleasingly appropriate point here to get a change of clothes and so enable the character to reduce his Conspicuousness. The story unfolds around places familiar from Lovecraft’s short story, including encountering the bus that takes the narrator from Newburyport to Innsmouth, but the much of the action and investigation takes place in the Gilman House, Innsmouth’s only hotel of note. Getting in—and getting a room—is surprisingly easy, but searching the hotel is not. Getting out, especially with young Lester in tow, is harder. Sometimes finding a uniform to use as a disguise will help, but at other times, it will not, as the hotel staff will wander what you are doing. This is a nice touch, forcing the player to think about remaining in disguise or not.

Innsmouth: The Stolen Child is an adventure that presents the reader with a lot of detail and a lot of options to chose from as you move from paragraph to paragraph, often as many as four or five. Often, the reader will find that there is not enough time to do everything at a location before you are pushed onward into the investigation. Innsmouth: The Stolen Child does not have a Sanity mechanic, but there moments throughout the investigation where the character’s fear overcomes his judgement and he flees a scene, again likely in the process losing an opportunity to investigate there further. As with all solo adventure books, as you move from one paragraph entry to the next, you switch back and forth through the pages of the book getting glimpses of artwork and wondering how you might get to them in the story from amongst the maze of entries. Or not given the fact that that is a horror scenario and you want to get away unscathed.

Physically, Innsmouth: The Stolen Childis well presented and written. The artwork, all black and white, is decent.

Innsmouth: The Stolen Child is a big adventure that presents you with a lot of detail and options to explore, in which stealth through the Conspicuousness mechanic plays a big part, whilst not shying away from the deadliness of combat. It presents both an opportunity and a reason for the reader to want to visit and hopefully, escape from, the dread town of Innsmouth, and so make an entertainingly desperate return to The Shadow Over Innsmouth.

—oOo—

Blue Fox Games will be at UK Games Expo which takes place on Friday, May 30th to Sunday June 1st, 2025.

Friday Filler: Back Stories: Alone Under the Ice

High up Mont Blanc stands the Refuge du Nid d’Aigle, a shelter considered to be the starting point for the royal route up the mountain. Here is where you last heard from John, your brother, a letter you received two weeks ago. In the letter he promised to call you in a few days, but never did. However, he also revealed that he had made an incredible discovery. This was a clue to the location of one of the greatest missing treasures from the end of World War 2—the Amber Room. Often considered to be a candidate for the ‘Eighth Wonder of the World’, the amber panels of the room, backed with gold leaf and mirrors, was looted from the Catherine Palace of Tsarskoye Selo near Saint Petersburg by the Nazis, taken to Königsberg on the Baltic coast and there lost from history! Now your brother knows where the Amber Room might be and that there are people after him. Is John simply missing? Has he been kidnapped? Is he even alive? And does he really know anything about the location of one of the greatest missing treasures of all time? And from the too few clues that he has given you, can you find John before it is too late?

This is the set-up for Back Stories: Alone Under the Ice. Published by La Boîte de Jeu, it is a storytelling game that is very much like a ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ book or a ‘Click & Point’ computer adventure in which the story is told by proceeding through a deck and making choices when prompted. However, although it may possess the playstyle of a ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ book or a ‘Click & Point’ computer adventure, Back Stories: Alone Under the Ice is not necessarily a solo game. It is designed to be played by between one and six players, aged ten and over, and in an hour or less. Thus, it can be played solo, but it can also be played co-operatively, with the players deciding together what the heroine of the story—Sophie—will do in each scene and location, the current cards being laid out in front the players for everyone to see and examine. Yet unlike a ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ book or a ‘Click & Point’ computer adventure, there is no random factor in Back Stories: Alone Under the Ice. No dice to roll as in a solo adventure book or clicking a button in a computer game. All of it what happens as Sophie searches for her brother is down to the players, the choices they make, and the consequences of those choices.

Back Stories: Alone Under the Ice consists of a deck of one-hundred-and-twenty-eight cards. The cards are large, full colour, double-sided, numbered between one and one-hundred-and-twenty-eight, and played through in order starting with one and moving through card by card. Of course, depending on the players’ choices, they will not see every card in the deck on a single play though. They are likely to skip over whole sections of the deck as determined by their choices. The cards come in six types. The purple cards are Character, Objective, and Ending cards. These represent Sophie and what she wants to do. The green Clue cards give information about a situation or a challenge. The yellow Story cards move the adventure on. The dark blue Situation cards depict items, locations, or people. Often they can be arranged together to form larger scenes. The light blue Action cards are what Sophie can do and in the game they are used to interact with the Situation cards. They form the key mechanical part of play and come in two types. The ‘Window’ cards have a rectangular hole cut in them and text indicating the action, such as ‘Search Gather Explore the area’, whilst the ‘Notch’ cards have notches cut into the side. The red ‘Status’ cards indicate Sophie’s current condition, such as ‘Sophie is weak’ or ‘Frozen’.

At the start of Back Stories: Alone Under the Ice, the player takes the top card off the deck, turns it over. This is card number one. He reads it and follows the instructions. Initially, this will be to draw the next set of numbered cards. They are placed on the table so that everyone can see the current Objective card; the Action cards available and thus, what Sophie can do in the scene; and the Situation cards that show what Sophie can see. These are areas on the table known as the Objective area, Player area, and Panorama area, respectively. Once the cards are in front of them, the players debate and decide what they want Sophie to do, choosing an Action card to combine with a Situation card. When this happens, the player takes the Action card and slides it behind the chosen Situation card. He then picks up the two cards—Action and Situation—together and turns them over. Most of the reverse of the Situation card will be hidden apart from what can be seen through the window or notch of the Action card. The window will reveal information, whilst the notch will show a number indicating the code for a lock or another Situation card that the players must now consult.

For example, Sophie has arrived at the Refuge du Nid d’Aigle. This is Card One. It tells her which cards to draw and place on the table. They include several Action cards and several Situation cards. Card Eight states, ‘Someone is waiting upstairs in the lobby’, and depicts a young man leaning against a bar. The players decide that they want to talk to the young man, but cannot decide between the simple ‘Chat Talk’ Action card or the ‘Ask about your brother John card’. After a quick debate, they select the ‘Chat Talk’ Action card as it is not confrontational. The player picks up the ‘Chat Talk’ Action card, which is Card Five and slides it behind the ‘Someone is waiting upstairs in the lobby’ card or Card Eight. When the player turns the two cards over, he can read the text and the clue that is not covered. The players are free to use as many Action cards as they want, but each one and the consequences that follow, must be completed before another action can be attempted.

Initially, most of the actions the player will be directing Sophie to take will involve talking and asking questions, but as play proceeds, other Action cards and actions become available. Sophie also has opportunities for theft and violence, the latter when she picks up/steals an ice pick—which then has its own Action card—though resorting to such methods will probably get her hurt or mistrusted, depending on the action. Yet there are also some utterly amazing Action cards and thus actions that come about due to particular circumstances, such as ‘Feel around using your hands’ when Sophie is in the pitch dark or ‘Match×1’ which she can strike to reveal where is in the darkness!

Back Stories: Alone Under the Ice is not a challenging game (or puzzle?) to play, certainly not in terms of the rules or mechanics, and is not too challenging in terms of the story. In fact, the publishers rate the difficulty at two out of five. The simplicity of play and the standard sequence of card numbers means that Back Stories: Alone Under the Ice is also easy to set back up again. So, if the players fail the first time, they can set it back up and try again and start looking for other clues and interesting ways to interact in a different way with the locations and people within the mystery. Even when the players do solve the mystery and find John, there is nothing to stop them resetting the game and examining other clues to find out where they might lead Sophie. That said, with just one-hundred-and-twenty-eight cards and a difficulty of two out of five, subsequent playthroughs are not going vary too widely, though of course, the endings probably will.

Physically, Back Stories: Alone Under the Ice comes in a small, but solid box. The cards are all glossy and full of vibrant colour, whilst the artwork on them is excellent. The rules are clearly explained, though the text on the cards might be a little small for some readers.

Back Stories: Alone Under the Ice is a solo adventure book in a box, with the cards replacing the paragraphs and giving the mystery a pleasing physicality that twists the tension a little as the players slide an Action card behind a Situation card in the hope of getting a good clue. This is a game that people are going to want to play and play again until they have solved the mystery at its heart and if they have played it in a group, they are likely to want to try it again, playing alone this time. However, once the mystery is solved, there is relatively little need to play again. Except, that is, if a player wants to introduce it to a new group, because although it has a slightly longer playing time of an hour, the combination of the game play’s simplicity and tension with the intrigue of the mystery, means that it works as an ice breaker game as well. That simplicity plus the mystery means it works as a family game as well.

Back Stories: Alone Under the Ice packs a good mystery, excellent artwork, and clever play into its solid little box.

Solitaire: Aces Over the Adriatic

There is something utterly romantic and beguiling as you soar through the skies above the azure waters of the Adriatic, the sun glinting off your wingtips, the wind rushing past your head, and the roar of the engine in your ears. Higher, faster, the dreams of your nation embodied in the sleek frame of the machine in your hands, for a moment you are free. Free of the demands of national pride and prestige, free of expectations, and maybe even free of the memories that you can never truly escape, no matter how fast or how high you fly… And then you turn over and dive. Dive back down to the exaltation of the crowds, to the popping glare of the press, to be amongst the men and women placed on a pedestal who are your peers and like you, know the freedom of flight, and to return to the horrors of your past and the creeping horror of Fascism along the shores of the Adriatic.

In Aces Over the Adriatic: A Solo RPG, you are that pilot. Perhaps a veteran of the Great War, mourning the loss of comrades, your skill and experience has put you at the controls of a seaplane, an entry into the ongoing Coupe d’Aviation Maritime Jacques Schneider, a biennial race for seaplanes and flying boats. You race for your country, but you also race for the memory of your friends lost in combat and you race for the love and glory of flying. Yet the speed and manoeuvrability of your machine may also see you undertaking missions facing pirates that are a threat the skies over the Adriatic, delivering urgent mail to Milan, or carrying contraband in sealed cases. Published by Critical Kit, Ltd, a publisher best known for Be Like a Crow: A Solo RPG, this is actually a French roleplaying game written in conjunction with the Musée de l’Hydraviation in Biscarrosse, France. It is semi-historical in that in addition to being inspired by the technical innovation and the romance brought about by the Schneider Trophy in the interwar years, it is also inspired by the Studio Ghibli film, Porco Rosso.

A Pilot in Aces Over the Adriatic: A Solo RPG is defined by his Nationality, Age, some Personality features, a personal distinctive feature, a distinctive feature for his aircraft, and a Perk. Nationality will also determine the Pilot’s name and possibly the type of aircraft he is flying, whilst age will determine whether or not he served in the Great War. The Perk can apply to the aircraft, such as ‘Military-grade weapons’ or ‘Speed’, or it can apply to the Pilot like ‘Calm’ or ‘Daredevil’. He also has values for Gauge, Glory, and Nostalgia. Gauge represents the amount of damage that both Pilot and aircraft can withstand; Glory is the Pilot’s fame and ambition, as it rises, the Pilot will gain Perks, a nickname, and honorary titles; and Nostalgia is the Pilot’s link to his past and if it grows too high, the Pilot may suffer from melancholy and if it reaches ten, will forces them to hang up his flying helmet and goggles.

Name: Otillie Gottschalk
Nationality: German
Age: 31
Nickname: None
Honorary Title: None
Personality: Clever, Chatty, Clumsy
Distinctive Features: Pet Dachshund, ‘Rudy’
Aircraft’s Distinctive Features: Dark Blue
Perks: Intuition
Gauge: 4
Glory: 0
Nostalgia: 0

Actions and Questions are handled in a straightforward manner. An answer to a question can be determined by a simple roll of a six-sided die, but there is a table of more nuanced answer options included. For actions, A Pilot in Aces Over the Adriatic: A Solo RPG employs the ‘Push System’. When the player wants his Pilot to undertake an action, he rolls a six-sided die. This is the ‘Initial Die’. It is impossible to fail on the roll of the ‘Initial Die’. A result of four or less is a ‘Weak Success’, or a success with consequences, whilst a result of five or six is a ‘Strong Success’. It is as simple as that, but what if the player rolls a ‘Weak Success’, but wants a ‘Strong Success’? he can then roll a which can lead to a failure. The results of the ‘Push Die’ are added to the results of the ‘Initial Die’. If the total is still less than four, it is still a ‘Weak Success’ and the player can roll another ‘Push Die’; if it is five or six, it is a ‘Strong Success’; and if it is seven or more, it is a failure. Effectively, the Pilot is constantly pushing the envelope and there is a chance that it can be pushed too far.

The play of the games flows back and forth between Missions and Memories. A mission might be to ferry a wealthy passenger to Venice or help cover the story of another famous pilot for the Pilot’s national press. A Memory can come from any activity, such as visiting a city or whilst a Pilot repairs his aircraft, and might be about the war, friends, past loves, and so on. Both require a roll to succeed. Each Mission has four Challenge Points and the player rolls to reduce these, a ‘Strong Success’ reducing two, ‘Weak Success’, and a failure, none. The faster a player can reduce the Challenge Points, the more Glory his Pilot will be rewarded. Glory can be spent to gain more Perks and as the total Glory accrued rises, the Pilot will gain a Nickname and an Honorary Title. However, results of a Failure and a ‘Weak Success’ both reduce ‘Gauge’ the joint measure of damage that a Pilot and his aircraft can suffer. Pilot and aeroplane can keep flying as long as their Gauge is one or more, but if it is reduced to zero, they will crash.

A Memory takes place between Missions. If successful, it can restore Gauge and refresh Perks used. However, in the process of reliving a Memory, a Pilot gains Nostalgia and if that ever rises to ten, the Pilot will retire. In addition, it is possible to have a Flashback during a Mission, which works similar to a Memory and also increases Nostalgia. So there is a balance here between keeping flying and succeeding and getting lost in reminiscence. And of course, throughout, the player is writing a journal—or is that keeping a logbook?—of the story of his Pilot and his aeroplane over the skies of Europe. It is here Aces Over the Adriatic: A Solo RPG that comes into its own in supporting the Player.

Aces Over the Adriatic: A Solo RPG is rich in background detail. There are descriptions of Europe in the interwar period, Fascist Italy, seaplanes and flying boats, the Schneider Trophy, and more. These descriptions are more overview than detail, but they are enough for the player to start with. Besides the table of Missions, there is ‘The Control Tower’ which provides tables for weather conditions, iconic places, NPCs including historical pilots and sponsors, generating pirate group names, and more. All of which the player can use to generate details and elements of his Pilot’s life in and out of the cockpit and as it is logged. There is advice too on how to play Aces Over the Adriatic: A Solo RPG, the author suggesting, for example, that the player control and tell the stories of multiple Pilots at once as if writing a drama, and on how to make the play harder or easier.

Unlike many journalling games, Aces Over the Adriatic: A Solo RPG has the scope to be more than just a solo game. The rules are simple and straightforward and the content in terms of setting and support is potentially more than enough for a Game Master—Air Marshal?—to run Aces Over the Adriatic: A Solo RPG as a storytelling game for a small group of players, whose Pilots could simply be rivals, members of a squadron, or even an aerial circus.

Physically, Aces Over the Adriatic: A Solo RPG is a beautiful little book. There are plenty of period photographs and the book is well written. The character sheet is a little busy, but it has everything on there that a player needs to know, including the basics of the rules.

Aces Over the Adriatic: A Solo RPG does over romanticise its setting a little, content to let the spectre of Fascism hang in the background rather than engage with it and so leaving the darker elements of play to the Memories of the Pilot and thus in the past rather than in the now. Thus, despite being based on the history of the Interwar Period, it leans more towards the fantasy of its other inspiration, the Studio Ghibli film, Porco Rosso, in its play. To be fair though, bringing that into play would have been challenging and since the player is telling the story of his Pilot, he is free to bring those elements into play if he wants to. Nevertheless, Aces Over the Adriatic: A Solo RPG is an utterly charming roleplaying game and an utter delight for fans of history, especially aviation history.

Solitaire: Notorious

In the midst of the galactic war, the authorities are stretched thin. They cannot prosecute crime in the way that they before hostilities began. This role has been supplanted by the Nomad’s Guild, an independent, neutral organisation which licenses individuals to locate persons who have had a bounty placed on their head(s), to bring those persons to justice, dead or alive—no disintegrations, and collect the bounty. Such individuals are called Nomads and as long as a Nomad adheres to the Guild Code—Finish the Job, Only Kill When Necessary, Nomads Don’t Fight Nomads, Your Employer’s Business is their Own, and Don’t Get Attached—he can continue to collect bounties. Break the code and he is in danger of having a bounty put on his own head and becoming a target. In the course of prosecuting a contract, a Nomad will track down his target, scour the underworld and backwaters of the planet where he is hiding, and take him in. Resistance by the target of the bounty will not be the only difficulty faced by the Nomad. There may be suspicious locals and rival Nomads to be faced or avoided in getting to the target. Worse, there are six factions who regularly post bounties, and sometimes rival faction may take exception to the bounty you are about to collect! The question is, should a Nomad finish the job, collect the bounty, and so enhance what may be an infamous reputation? Or may be there is a reason not to collect at all, which means putting a price on a Nomad’s head?

This sounds like a situation in the Star Wars universe with bounty hunters going after criminals and rebels, and whilst it is not that, it is one inspired by the likes of The Empire Strikes Back and The Mandalorian. This is the set-up for Notorious: Hardscrabble bounty hunting amid intergalactic war, a solo journalling game published by AlwaysCheckers Publishing, published following a successful Kickstarter campaign. A Nomad falls into one of six types—the Armour, the Assassin, the Bot, the Brute, the Scoundrel, and the Uncanny. Each provides a Loadout—Ranged and Melee weapons, and Outfit, as well as Origin, Scar, and Trigger. The latter three add colour to the Nomad and the player is encouraged to think about others might react to his appearance and how his Nomad acts. The illustrations for these heavily suggest the influence of Star Wars. For example, the Armour looks not unlike Bobba Fett, the Bot like IG-88, and the Uncanny like Forom. He also has three attributes—Favour, Notoriety, and Motivation—representing a Nomad’s reputation on planet, adherence to the Nomad Code, and drive to succeed. Lastly, he has a Species, a Name, and a Personality. To create a Nomad, a player rolls for everything bar the attributes which always start out the same, or picks the options he wants.

Name: Mako Suds

Type: The Brute
Species: Kimano (Amphibious)
Personality: Assured
Weakness: Expectant father with eggs in his pouch
Origin: Your whole life has been dedicated to pursuing victories in worship of a fickle god
Scar: You proudly wear a belt flaunting teeth, pelts, and other morbid hunting trophies
Trigger: A New Uprising member thwarted your most glorious and lucrative bounty capture

Favour 2
Notoriety 0
Motivation 2
Loadout: rapid-fire Laser Rifle, Power Hammer, no helmet, chest bandolier, ill-fitting jumpsuit

Key to play are the Nomad’s ‘Reactions’ used to interact with Locals, Assets, Hostiles, Leads, and Target on a planet. These are ‘Speak’, ‘Threaten’, ‘Attack’, and ‘Recruit’, and not all of them can be used against the various persons a Nomad will run into. For example, a Nomad can ‘Speak’ to anyone, but a Hostile; can only ‘Threaten’ a Hostile’; and cannot ‘Attack’ a Local or an Asset. Reactions are generally resolved by rolling two six-sided dice, one for the Nomad and one for the opponent. Whichever one rolls the highest wins the challenge and indicates the outcome. The roll for the Nomad is modified by half the value of his Favour, except for ‘Threaten’, when half of his Notoriety is used. A player can expend a point of his Nomad’s Motivation to reroll. Some Reactions automatically work. For example, a ‘Speak’ Reaction always works against a Lead or a Target. The ‘Speak’, ‘Threaten’, and ‘Recruit’ Reactions have random tables that provide a prompt for the player if successful.

The ‘Attack’ Reaction works differently in that it can be repeated and the roll is modified by Assets and Equipment for the Nomad and by Equipment for the opponent. Assets and Equipment that provide defence simply block a single attack per point. The Outcome of the ‘Attack’ Reaction is more complex and more varied than other Reactions and depends on the opponent. A Nomad will gain Favour for sparing a Hostile or Lead, but lose it for sparing a Target. He will gain Notoriety for killing a Hostile or Lead, and Favour for killing or capturing a Target. Failure can result in the Nomad being badly beaten up or injured, attracting the attention of local law enforcement and lose Notoriety, and so on.

Play of Notorious can be as a one-shot telling the story of one bounty or a series of stories each telling the story of a bounty. There are tables to create planets along with their predominant species and destinations, as well as giving the competing factions on that world. The factions consist of the Old Empire, the New Uprising, the Targ Cartel, the Red Moon syndicate, the Trade Alliance, and the Mystic Order. Each is given a short description and several reasons why it might issue a contract. They are all used to create the details of the contract. The fulfilment of the Contract is told through a loop which consists of two parts, ‘Exploration’ and ‘Destinations’, during which the player rolls on tables for each. These can generate events and Leads that will take the Nomad closer and closer to his Target. Every entry includes two options to add variety and allow for the Nomad to revisit an entry. Some Destinations also enable the Nomad to search the area.

The easiest way to generate a Lead is for the Nomad to increase his Notoriety. Effectively, as the Nomad’s reputation grows, the more likely they are to talk to him, but what this means is killing Leads and Hostiles. There is a table for creating a Lead, but the third Lead becomes the Target of the bounty, whom the players gets to detail based on the prompts on the Targets table. There are also ‘Showdowns’ tables to determine where the Nomad faces the Target down. Lastly, the ‘Epilogue’ table determines the response to how the Nomad completed the Contract.

Physically, Notorious is a short, spiral-bound book, a format which eases the player’s need to flip back and forth between tables. The writing is clear and easy to understand, and the artwork is excellent, cartoonishly invoking the feel of Star Wars without copying from it directly. One oddity is the number of reference numbers, but without any footnotes or endnotes.

Notorious is easy to pick up and play, and at two hours at most, has a pleasingly concise playing time. It can be played with the player taking just a few notes as he goes along, but he also can take the time to write the Contract up as a story in journalling fashion. The latter enables the player to build the planet where the hunt takes place up around the Nomad as he progresses. Much of the setting of Notorious is described with the barest of bones, but this leaves plenty of room for the player to flesh out the world based on the prompts provided in the tables. As the factions come into play, their motivations will also begin to influence the bigger story, especially over the course of multiple Contracts and whilst the Nomad Code says that ‘Your Employer’s Business is their Own’ and ‘Don’t Get Attached’, how long that will last up to the player and his Nomad. There is also another way in which Notorious can be used and that is to generate contracts, bounties, and thus adventures for other Science Fiction roleplaying games. Effectively, a player could play Notorious for himself, but use its content as a Game Master to run it for other players.

Notorious: Hardscrabble bounty hunting amid intergalactic war successfully combines a thrilling Science Fiction journalling game of investigation and action all of its own with a systems neutral sourcebook for other Science Fiction roleplaying games. It is a winning little combination.

Solitaire: Death in Berlin

Between 1961 and 1989, the city of Berlin was divided by more than ideology. It was divided by the Berlin Wall, built in August, 1961 by the Deutsche Demoktratische Republik to stem the flow of citizens from the East to the West. It focused the world’s attention upon the divide between East and West Germany, between the capitalism of the West and the Communism of the East, embodied by the permanent border constructed of brick, explosive mines, sentry posts, machine guns, and so on. The ‘Grey City’ had been divided between the four Allied powers since the end of World War 2, but the Berlin Wall extended the Iron Curtain between East and West through the city rather than just around it. Both sides—the Soviet and the Allies—operated networks of spies and conducted operations in each other’s territories in an effort to discover what the other knew and what secrets they held, and in return, attempted to prevent secrets and other assets from falling into the enemy’s hands. This secret conflict between the NATO Allies and the Soviet Union and its proxies in the Warsaw Pact had been ongoing since before World War 2 and it would inspire films and fiction, such as that of Len Deighton and John le Carré, throughout the Cold War—and since. It would also inspire roleplaying games such as Top Secret, Spione, and Project Cassandra: Psychics of the Cold War. One of the aspects of espionage and the Cold War is the loneliness and that is ripe for exploration in solo roleplaying such as Numb3r Stations – A Solo RPG and Death in Berlin: Spy Games During the Cold War 1961-1989.

Death in Berlin: Spy Games During the Cold War 1961-1989 is a solo roleplaying and journalling game published by Critical Kit Ltd., best known for its solo journalling game, Be Like a Crow: A Solo RPG and its scenarios for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, such as A Yuletide Snowball Massacre: A Ridiculously Festive Battle Royale for 5E and The City of a Hundred Ships. In Death in Berlin, the player will be telling the story of a spy in service to one of the agencies from either the Western Bloc or the Eastern Bloc. Thus, he can be a member of the Central Intelligence Agency or MI6 as much as he could be a member of the Komitet gosudarstvennoï bezopasnosti or the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit. His role is counter-espionage, uncovering conspiracies and operations conducted by the other side.

Death in Berlin is really divided in two parts. The first part is a source book which describes the setting for the game, Berlin and the Cold War. The latter begins with George Orwell’s first use of the term and runs through the history in brisk fashion, and is accompanied by a guide to Berlin across all four sectors. There are maps too, showing the various checkpoints through the wall—there were far more than just Checkpoint Charlie—and the city’s various districts. There are cultural elements covered too, such as the Trabant and the symbolic figures known as the Ampelmännnchen on the pedestrian crossing lights. There is discussion as well of the various agencies, equipment that the player and his opponents might wield in the field, and the language of spycraft. The discussion of the espionage world is shorter than the coverage of the city though. The author states that this material is not designed as a sourcebook for the period and even suggests further reading for the benefit of the reader. However, this potentially still leaves a younger player with more work to do to familiarise himself with the period.

In terms of game play, Death in Berlin requires a full set of polyhedral dice and an ordinary deck of playing cards, of which, only cards valued from seven to Ace are used. An Agent is simply defined. He has two stats, Rank and Heat. Rank represents his progress through the agency and starts at one, raises by one for each conspiracy he foils (that involves a Queen, King, or Ace card), up to a maximum of five. Heat is a measure of how many risks the Agent has taken and how much of a liability he is becoming. It ranges in value from zero to six. It rises by one each time the player identifies what connects two members of a conspiracy. Should it rise to six, the Agent’s cover is blown and the game ends. An Agent also has a Motivation, such as Ideology or Ambition.

Death in Berlin uses a set of tables to help set up and run the game. One provides a narrative arc for what is effectively a season, such as the ‘Monitor’ Mode of Operation, ‘An Artist’ as the Target, and ‘Space’ as the Goal. Further tables can provide a yes or no answer to a question—qualified, if necessary, a suspect or two, names for NPCs of various nationalities, as well as places, weather, items, and possible codenames. Some of these will be useful at the start, some of them in play. Either way, the player is free to roll or pick from them as is his wont. The structure of play is formed by a pyramid of the playing cards, representing the whole of the conspiracy with each card representing a Suspect, four wide at the bottom, then three wide, two wide, and lastly the single card at the top. At least one seven is placed on the lowest level and cards are drawn and placed in the pyramid, ensuring that each card’s value is equal to or greater by a few points than its neighbouring cards. Initially, this is only horizontally in the lowest row, but switches to vertical for the upper levels. This creates a pyramid of ascending values. The top, most valuable card will be the big target or Suspect. The suit for each card, Spade for the military, police, and intelligence, Clubs for politicians and civil service, Diamonds for business and finance, and Hearts for the arts and vice, determines the area in which field, a Suspect works or is employed, whilst the value of the card is his rank. A random roll determines if he works for the West or the East.

Each individual card and thus Suspect is a target for surveillance upon the part of the player. The surveillance is rolled against the value of the card. If the player fails, he is spotted and gains a point of Heat. For each Rank at Rank Two and above, a player has a Silver Bullet—narratively, a disguise, a weapon, a sidekick, and so on—that sets the roll to ten plus the player’s Rank or enables him to succeed, but also increase his Heat. Heat can be lowered, but it has its own consequences.

If he succeeds, the player draws a new card and consults the Narrative Prompt table. This card determines the basics of the connection between this Suspect and another, adjacent one in the scenario. Each successful roll, each drawing of a new card, and consultation of the Narrative Prompt table is what pushes the story of the player’s investigation forward. For example, “The suspect likes gambling. And this often gets them in trouble. Someone is acting around them. Who is it? What is their relationship?” and “The target meets with one of the known suspects in the conspiracy. This takes place in a cinema in (West sector). You manage to get close enough and hear a sentence. What is it?” It is in this space, using the prompts, that the player is writing his journal and telling the story of his investigation.

Physically, Death in Berlin is simply and cleanly presented. The illustrations evoke the stark world of Berlin in the sixties and seventies, giving a feel for the city. The maps are decent too.

Play through of Death in Berlin, from the beginning investigation of the conspiracy through to the unmasking of the mastermind at its heart will take an hour or more, being dependent on the depth and detail that the player wants to work into the story. It has a slightly grubby feel, but how grubby is again dependent on the player and the style of espionage he wants to write about. The default is definitely le Carré rather than Fleming and there is nothing to stop a player from pushing into the territory of Mick Herron—at least in tone rather than period. Similarly, how much a player will get out of Death in Berlin in writing a journal is dependent upon his knowledge and appreciation of both the genre and the period when it is set.

Death in Berlin: Spy Games During the Cold War 1961-1989 is a very serviceable journalling game, one whose enjoyment and creativity very much depends upon the knowledge and interest of the player.

Picturing Solo History

There are many gamers who will tell you that it was Vampire the Masquerade that got them into roleplaying. That was in the 1990s. There are many gamers who will tell you that it was Dungeons & Dragons that got them into roleplaying. That was in the 1970s and of course, ever since... There are many gamers who will tell you that it was another phenomenon, of the 1980s, that got them into gaming, certainly if they are British, that of the Fighting Fantasy™ solo roleplaying books. Created in 1982 by Sir Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson with the publication of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, in the thirty years since, some sixty or so titles have published in the series and some seventeen million copies have been sold. In their time, the Fighting Fantasy™ series has produced bestsellers, computer games, board games, and of course, a dedicated fan base. In 2014, the series finally received the history book it deserved with the publication of You Are The Hero: A History of Fighting Fantasy™ Gamebooks and now, a decade on, there is a follow-up.

Magic Realms: The Art of Fighting Fantasy is a celebration and exploration of the pictorial presentation of the Fighting Fantasy series, for it was not famed for its accessibility and innovative format—and of course, its fantastic stories, but also its art and illustrations. Beginning with Peter Andrew Jones’ cover for The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, which stood out on the bookshelves for its then radical composition, and the internal illustrations by the late Russ Nicholson, the series introduced readers to a wide array of artists and illustrators, styles, and striking images, across the many genres that the series would encompass. In particular, the pen and inks of Nicholson would create the look of the series’ titular character, Zagor the Warlock, as well as others, but in particular, his artwork added so much to the look and feel of the series. Not just horror and fear, but the idea that monsters could be doing something other facing the brave adventurer as his player leafed through the pages of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. Dwarves playing cards and drinking into their cups, bored Goblins waiting for something to happen, a man having fallen asleep and being guarded by his dog. Yet the horror comes to the fore with images like the decomposing ghoul reaching to grab and rend the skin of the adventurer or the partially unwrapped mummy climbing over its saprophagous to attack the adventurer. Though the Fighting Fantasy series was aimed at a young teenage audience, its artwork was not. It never infantilised its fantasy, but instead, it was grim and gritty, savage and scary, enticing and exciting, and it remains so today. All of these pieces of artwork—and more—are given space in Magic Realms: The Art of Fighting Fantasy, which highlights the work of over forty artists in its pages.

Published by Unbound, and written by Sir Ian Livingstone and Jonathan Green—who previously collaborated on You Are The Hero: A History of Fighting Fantasy™ Gamebooks, what Magic Realms: The Art of Fighting Fantasy does is bring together the work of some thirty or artists who worked on the Fighting Fantasy series and more. Sir Ian Livingstone provides a foreword in which discusses his pleasure of working with so many great artists, Iain McCaig in particular, and also highlights out how artwork and artists in the series crossed over from other genres. For example, Jim Burns with his cover for both Freeway Fighter and the Games Workshop board game, Battlecars, and comic book artist Brian Bolland with his cover for Appointment with F.E.A.R. and for the Games Workshop board game, Judge Dredd: The Game of Crime-Fighting in Mega-City One (recently republished by Rebellion), as well as, of course, as his work on 2000 AD. This fostered a degree of synergy between the different genres and media, and the Fighting Fantasy series and Games Workshop beyond what was already there. Jonathan Green provides a more straightforward introduction.

Then from Chris Achilléos, Robert Ball, and Krisztián Balla to Duncan Smith, Greg Staples, and Gary Ward and Edward Crosby, Magic Realms presents the art of some thirty artists. Every artist gets to talk bout their involvement in the series and working with the commissioning editor, or many cases, the author, and the fantastic pieces they contributed. Some of the write-ups about the artists are more overviews, drawing retrospectively on older interviews, such as with Brian Bolland and Martin McKenna. Each is accompanied by the illustrations themselves. In fact, several pages of them, and typically longer than the interview. These begin with the artist’s most well-known pieces, such as Chris Achilléos’ wraparound cover to Titan: The Fighting Fantasy World, Robert Ball’s cover to the Scholastic Books’ version of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, John Blanche’s cover to The Shamutani Hills, the cover to The Caverns of the Snow Witch, and the cover to Scorpion Swamp and Fighting Fantasy: The Introductory Role-Playing Game by Duncan Smith. This is followed by a gallery of smaller images, a mixture of colour and black and white, depending on the artist. None of the art here is straight reproduction of Fighting Fantasy covers—that comes later in Magic Realms—but the art sans the titles, author names, and trade dress. Thus, artwork here can be seen in all of its glory.

Almost three quarters of Magic Realms: The Art of Fighting Fantasy is devoted to these artists, but they are not the only ones. The contributions of another twenty-artists, such as Dave Carson, Maggie Keen, Steven Lavis, and Brian Williams are acknowledged, as the artists on the overseas editions of the series. The latter highlights art that is unlikely to be familiar to most readers, unless that is, they are ardent fans or collectors of the Fighting Fantasy series, so it often brings a fresh perspective upon books with covers have long associations and are firmly cemented in the imagination of the English-speaking fan of the Fighting Fantasy series. This includes artwork from Brazil, Denmark, and France. All of covers are reproduced for the series, including those published by Puffin Books, Wizard Books, Scholastic Books, and overseas editions. There is a gallery of every cover of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain in every language, too, but that is not all. Magic Realms: The Art of Fighting Fantasy comes to a close with galleries for Warlock: The Fighting Fantasy Magazine—surely due a reprint anthology, the Fighting Fantasy graphic novels, and the miniature figures. These are lovingly presented here, stunningly painted and superbly bringing the art to life in three dimensions and making the reader wish they could bring them to the gaming table.

Physically, Magic Realms: The Art of Fighting Fantasy is exactly what you want it to be. The perfect reproduction of art accompanied by some interesting words.

There can be no doubt that Magic Realms: The Art of Fighting Fantasy is an absolute must for any fan of the Fighting Fantasy series. It shines a spotlight on both the many great artists who brought to life the words of the Fighting Fantasy authors and the great choices made by authors and editors in selecting the artists, whilst for the reader there is the thrill of being able to see all of the Fighting Fantasy all in one place and the frisson of excitement at the memory of seeing it for the first time.