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.

Solitaire: A Fistful of Feathers

Be Like a Crow: A Solo RPG is a journaling game which enables the player to take to the skies as a corvidae—crow, magpie, jackdaw, or rook—over multiple landscapes and differing genres, achieving objectives, exploring, and growing as they learn and grow old. Published by Critical Kit, a publisher better known for its scenarios for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. The roleplaying game combines the simple mechanics and use of a deck of playing cards typical of a journaling game with five genres—‘Urban Crow’, ‘Cyber-Crow’, ‘Gothic Crow’, ‘Fantasy Crow’, ‘Clockwork Crow’, and ‘Ravens of the Tower’. Each of these presents a different place and time for the bird to fly over, land on, encounter the denizens, and more, whilst Crowthulhu: A Cosmic Horror Setting For Be Like A Crow is a supplement that took the game in an entirely different direction, to the edge of Lovecraft Country. Now, A Fistful of Feathers – a Wild West Setting for Be Like a Crow takes the player all the way to American frontier. As in Be Like a Crow: A Solo RPG, the player’s crow will take to the air, but here fluttering and feathering over the Rooklands, perhaps as representative of the law deputised by the local sheriff or a bounty hunter, or even an outlaw on the run. Protect towns from predating gangs, take part in a sharpshooting contests (with a tiny gun), discover a nugget of gold and trade it in for cash, and more. From the Dread Canyon and Prospector’s Peril in the north to Storm Creek and the Howling Mines in the south, the Rooklands are a frontier for your crow to explore and make her own.

Mechanically, Be Like a Crow: A Solo RPG, and thus A Fistful of Feathers – a Wild West Setting for Be Like a Crow is simple. It uses a standard deck of playing cards and when a player wants his bird to undertake an action, he draws a card from the deck. This sets the difficulty number of the task. To see whether the bird succeeds, he draws another card and adds the value of a skill to the number of the card if appropriate. If it is equal or greater than the difficulty number, the bird succeeds. If an action is made with Authority, whether due to circumstances or a skill, the player draws two cards and uses the highest one, whereas if made at a Penalty, two cards are drawn and the lowest value one used. When drawn, a Joker can be used or saved for later. If the latter, it can be used to automatically succeed at a combat or skill check, to heal injuries, or to discard a card and draw again. Combat is a matter of drawing a card for each opponent, adding a skill if appropriate, and comparing the totals of the cards and the skills. The highest total wins each round and inflicts an injury. Eventually, when the deck is exhausted, the discard pile is reshuffled and becomes the new deck.

The play and thus the journaling of Be Like a Crow is driven by objectives as achieving these will enable a player’s crow to advance through his lifecycle. An objective for the ‘A Fistful of Feathers’ setting, might be for example, “A wealthy merchant is convinced her husband was murdered by [character] using [object] in [location]. Try to find the evidence and bring the culprit to justice. ($3 reward)”. The player will also need to draw cards to identify the character, the object, and the location, and then as his bird flies from hex to hex across the map, draw cards for events in flight, and then for events when he lands. The player is free to, and advised to, ignore prompts if they do not fit the story, and this may be necessary if a prompt is drawn again, but ideally, the player should be using the prompts as drawn to tell a story and build the life of his crow.

A Fistful of Feathers – a Wild West Setting for Be Like a Crow requires the core rules of Be Like a Crow, as well as a standard deck of playing cards. As well as providing the rules, it provides the prompts for events in flight and on land that are standard to each of the roleplaying game’s settings, but what A Fistful of Feathers – a Wild West Setting for Be Like a Crow provides is its own set of tables its objectives, objects, characters, and locations. Two sets of objectives are provided, one for the red suits and one for the black suits, the same again for characters or NPCs, and again for objects and locations for A Fistful of Feathers. Thus locations can be a hotel on main street or a broken stagecoach, an object might be a single Morgan silver dollar or the skull of a vulture, and a character a snake-oil seller whose product actually does what it claims or a town sheriff who will turn a blind eye to most things if they are bribed with the right object.

Most, if not all of the entries have a Wild West theme, whether that is having to rush to a town where a character is due to be hanged for crime that he did not commit with evidence that will exonerate the condemned or a debt-ridden gambler (human or otherwise), desperate and dangerous. In addition to the core play of Be Like a Crow, what A Fistful of Feathers – a Wild West Setting for Be Like a Crow does is extend the play to ‘suited, booted, and looted’. A player’s crow can earn dollars for achieving objectives and purchase objects with the money. He also has an archetype which grants a particular bonus. The Sharpshooter can inflict extra damage if the player draws a high enough card in combat. The Law Master can attempt to befriend or scare a character, and if successful, the character will give the player’s crow the information or an object in his possession. The Bounty Hunter can generate an objective to bring in a character when he lands as a bounty and if completed, will collect an object or $2. The Outlaw is hardy and resilient, suffering fewer injuries, has better navigate and search checks, and heals quicker.

In terms of locations, A Fistful of Feathers – a Wild West Setting for Be Like a Crow includes its own setting, the Rooklands, a Wild West frontier of rocks, semi-desert, mesas, canyons, mines, and more. This is a classic Wild West setting as depicted on screen.

Physically, A Fistful of Feathers – a Wild West Setting for Be Like a Crow is a slim affair. It is lightly illustrated with images appropriate to the genre and the map is nicely done, but it does need a slight edit. As a supplement to Be Like a Crow, there is a dusty, hot wind quality to A Fistful of Feathers – a Wild West Setting for Be Like a Crow. Between the vultures overhead and the varmints on the ground, A Fistful of Feathers – a Wild West Setting for Be Like a Crow is a new way to explore a crow’s life in a classic genre from a bird’s-eye view.

Solitaire: Tome of Terror: Transylvania

What marks Tome of Terror: Transylvania—as well as the rest of The StoryMaster’s Tales series—as being different is that it a solo adventure book best played by more than one player and that each and every scene in its story contains a QR code. Scan this and click on the link and the reader will automatically be taken to the narration for the location, which provides a description, some possible actions, and some suitably ominous music. It certainly ups the atmosphere as the stalwart heroes set out to investigate tales of vampires, werewolves, ghosts, and other monsters in the lands of Transylvania and the castle itself. It consists of some fifty locations, comes with four pre-generated Investigators, a means for a player to create his own, maps—some blanks so that the adventures can be played again, a list of potential rewards, and its own neat twist on the dice on the page flipping mechanic. Tome of Terror: Transylvania is inspired by the classics of the genre such as Dracula and Frankenstein, as well as the Hammer Horror films, and so takes place sometime in the nineteenth century.

Published by StoryMaster’s Tales, Tome of Terror: Transylvania is intended to be played by between one and five players—preferably the latter—aged seven and over. Given its subject matter and the text-heavy format, with younger players, more mature players will be required to play alongside them, perhaps with an adult as StoryMaster. Thus, Tome of Terror: Transylvania can be played as a family game.

An Investigator in Tome of Terror: Transylvania has a Name, Occupation—either Author, Explorer, Priest, and Professor, and several attributes. These include Fighting Skill, Supernatural Insight, Fortune, Study Level, Reflex, Health, and LEU. Of these, LEU is a currency which can be spent during the Investigators’ enquires; Reflex is his dexterity; Study Level is his concentration and curiosity; Fortune his luck; Supernatural Sight his capacity to see and face the forces of the unnatural. Alternatively, a player can create his own. If he does so, he sets his Health at ten and Fortune at four, and then divides ten points between Fighting Skill, Supernatural Insight, Study Level, and Reflex. LEU is also randomly determined. He is also free to decide upon his Investigator’s Occupation rather than adhere to those of the given four. These four include a priest drawn to investigate the supernatural, an authoress in search of authentic background for her next novel, a professor in search of an old student—one Victor Frankenstein, and an explorer in search of the strange, the exotic, and adventure.

Mechanically, Tome of Terror: Transylvania uses a four-sided die and a six-sided die. It does not use a simple type of roll, varying depending upon the situation. Sometimes a player will be asked to roll equal to or under a given attribute on a six-sided die. Combat though, requires a player to roll a six-sided die and add his Fighting Skill, the aim to roll higher than the opposing roll made by the StoryMaster. Whomever loses the roll also loses a point of Health and if the latter is reduced to zero, the combatant is dead. Weapons add to a combatant’s Fighting Skill. When fighting against supernatural creatures, a player adds his Investigator’s Fighting Skill and Supernatural Insight to get his attack total. Group attacks, whether by the Investigators co-operating together or the Investigators and their companions, are done with everyone taking it in turns to attack. Lastly, if the Investigators want to flee a fight, then they can do so, but will lose a point of Health in the process. At other times, a four-sided die is rolled to determine a random outcome and Fortune can be gained and lost throughout the story. So simple enough, but not immediately obvious or easy to grasp, although it is clear that the author is trying to make Tome of Terror: Transylvania easy to run.

Alternatively, an eight-sided die and a ten-sided die can be used instead of the four-sided die and the six-sided die if the players want to make Tome of Terror: Transylvania more challenging. If the players lack dice, a player can instead flick through the pages with his thumb and when he stops at a page, the numbers on the dice immediately above where his thumb is on the page, those are his die results. There are seven combinations of four-sided dice and six-sided dice on each and every page, which provides numerous combinations and plenty of random results.

So how does Tome of Terror: Transylvania play? Although it can be played solo, it is really designed to be played by five participants, one of whom takes the role of the StoryMaster. Essentially then, he takes the role of the Game Master. The other players take the role of the Investigators. Then everyone picks a Tale from the four included in the book. These are ‘Horror of the Vampire’, ‘Mark of the Werewolf’, ‘Curse of Frankenstein’, and ‘Spirits of the Dead’. Each of these presents the players and their Investigators with an objective and a reward, and after this is read out, the story proper begins at the Tavern. Each of the fifty entries in Tome of Terror: Transylvania is several pages long, varying in length between two and six pages. Each has its own illustration, introduction in bold (which matches that of its narration) and then four options. For example, “Ask for something to drink”, “See what there is to eat”, “Talk to a local”, and “Search the tavern”. Each of the four entries is then greatly expanded depending upon what the Investigators are attempting to do. The players are free to choose which options they want, though no more than two options chosen per encounter. The combination of this and the multiple tales means that the Tome of Terror: Transylvania can be played more than once.

Of course, Tome of Terror: Transylvania is intended to be dramatic, and the author actually performs many of these tales as the StoryMaster. The StoryMaster in Tome of Terror: Transylvania is encouraged to make the ending of each tale as dramatic as possible, to put on a performance, and to be fair, a certain degree of performance is required, since there is a lot of text to go through and present.

Physically, Tome of Terror: Transylvania starts poorly, but gets better. The initial explanation and set-up, and the explanation of rules, could all be more clearly presented for ease of play. However, once the tale starts, the writing improves as the author is clearly enjoying himself. The artwork and the maps are all good, and like the writing, the layout of the various entries is far better than that of the first part of the book.

Mechanically, Tome of Terror: Transylvania is simple, but as simple as the rules are, they are also messy and could have been more consistent. Put that aside, they are simple enough to use and they are simple to impart to players not used to roleplaying. Where Tome of Terror: Transylvania shines is in the tales themselves and the exploration of Transylvania and the revelation of its horrors. Unlike other solo adventure books, Tome of Terror: Transylvania really deserves a participating audience and a Storymaster who can ham it up!

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 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. Now it has its own history book.

You Are The Hero: A History of Fighting Fantasy™ Gamebooks is that history book. Funded via Kickstarter, this is the definitive guide to the series and the phenomenon; a ‘coffee table’ style book lavishly illustrated with artwork that has both graced the insides and the outs of titles in the Fighting Fantasy™ series, from first—The Warlock of Firetop Mountain—to the last, Blood of the Zombies. This includes the book covers by the likes of Peter Andrew Jones, Ian Miller, Ian McCaig, as well as the internal illustrations of Russ Nicholson, Martin McKenna, Alan Langford—and more!

That more includes the original map for The Warlock of Firetop Mountain; original notes for The Forest of Doom; details about cameo appearances made by Livingstone and Jackson in Fighting Fantasy artwork; maps of the worlds and locations of the Fighting Fantasy series; plus the input of not just the artists and authors involved in every Fighting Fantasy title, but the fans too. The array of opinions given here are surprisingly frank. Most of them are as positive, even as gushing, as you would expect, but some are bluntly critical, in some cases by authors and artists of their own work. This gives the book a refreshingly engaging feel. Also explored are the other media where Fighting Fantasy appears—board games, computer games, phone games, magazines, and more. The book is thus thoroughly comprehensive, all but exhaustive in its coverage of all things Fighting Fantasy. Along the way it throws in fact after fact about the books, their creators, and the Fighting Fantasy phenomenon, all before bringing right up to date with the publication of Ian Livingstone’s Blood of the Zombies and the adaptations of the Fighting Fantasy series into titles that be played on tablets and mobile telephones.

To an extent, You Are The Hero is not just a history of the Fighting Fantasy series. It should be no surprise to the reader given that Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson created the series, that this volume also sketches a biography of the two men’s careers, and thus of Games Workshop and the games and computer industries in the UK over the last forty or so years. If there is an issue with You Are The Hero it is that it feels slightly rushed. It needs an edit in places and the layout is clumsy in places. Perhaps the book’s biggest weakness is its lack of an index, which is disappointing given that the subtitle of the book is ‘A History of Fighting Fantasy™ Gamebooks’—and that suggests that the book is intended to be reference work. The lack of an index is only a hindrance to that purpose.

There were ‘choose your adventure path’ style books available before the Fighting Fantasy™ series, whether that is the solo adventures for the Tunnels & Trolls RPG or my first experience with the genre, Mission to Planet L, part of the Tracker book series in 1975. Similarly there were various books and titles that appeared alongside the Fighting Fantasy™ series. Of course, they are not the subject of You Are The Hero, so there remains to be written a definitive history of the ‘choose your adventure path’ style book. Jonathan Green, the author of You Are The Hero and himself the author of four Fighting Fantasy adventures, is perhaps the man to write such a history… After all, he has already written the Fighting Fantasy chapter right here. As much a trip down memory lane as an informative and fascinating exploration of gaming before the digital age brought into said digital age, You Are The Hero: A History of Fighting Fantasy™ Gamebooks is the definitive guide and history to the phenomenon that introduced reading, interactive fiction, and fantasy roleplaying to a wider audience than ever before.

One for All

The roleplaying hobby is divided when it comes to deciding what is, and what is not a legitimate review. One opinion holds that it is perfectly alright to review a roleplaying book after it has been read and its contents been given some considered thought. Another decries this approach totally and claims that for a review to be legitimate, the RPG or supplement in general must be played through to gain a full understanding of how the game or the contents of the supplement work when played through. Both points of view are valid, and both have their problems. With the first point of view, it is true that not every kink in an RPG’s design is going to necessarily come out in a simple read through. The second though, ignores two important practicalities. One is that few people have the time to read and digest every RPG or supplement and then play them, and this practicality is exacerbated by another, the fact that reviewing roleplaying games and supplements is done by amateurs in their own time. Roleplaying is a time consuming hobby and playing a new roleplaying game or supplement takes time, which is something of a problem when the demand for reviews is immediate or as soon after the title in question is released as is possible. It is also ignores that to a certain extent, one roleplaying game plays pretty much like another and in writing a review, much of the task is interpreting how the rules reflect the setting and vice versa. Having read and played a variety of RPGs helps with this process and gives a reviewer an understanding of how they work.

Fortunately, Open Design has something new out that negates the debate all together, because it has to be played through in order to be read. Best known for publishing Kobold Quarterly, the only roleplaying periodical to make it to the shelves at your local, friendly gaming store, recent issues of the magazine, specifically issues #18 and #19 contained solo adventures that could be played with the minimum of rules and dice. These proved popular enough for Open Design to launch the Party of One series, a new line of solo adventures that require nothing more than paper, pencil, and six-, eight-, and twenty-sided dice. Further, each of the adventures is compatible with Paizo Publishing’s Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Beginner Box, so they are good choice for players wanting more experience with the game on their own.

The first entry in the Party of One series is Kalgor Bloodhammer and the Ghouls through the Breach. It comes as an 11.89 Mb, fourteen page PDF that contains a total of seventy-three paragraphs. It is done in full colour throughout, although there are only the two illustrations. One useful use of colour is that the rules pertinent to each entry are marked in red. Rounding out the adventure are two character sheets, one for a first level character, the other for a third level character. Both sheets though, are for the adventure’s character, a Dwarf Fighter, Kalgor Bloodhammer who has ambitions to enlist in the Iron Shields, the elite guards that protect his home city.

The first part of the adventure sees Kalgor Bloodhammer attempt to join the Iron Shields, whilst the second sees him come to the defence of the city against an incursion of Ghouls (this is not a spoiler as they are mentioned in the adventure’s title. It primarily involves our protagonist moving between a limited number of locations, protecting his fellow Dwarves, gaining allies, and even a magical aid or two, and discovering secrets. Yes, discovering secrets… There is much more going on in this adventure than the simple need to defend a Dwarfish city, and depending upon what he discovers, Kalgor will have to make some important decisions at the end of the scenario. The presence of these secrets and the non-linear nature of the adventure – that Kalgor is free to travel between various locations – do add much to the play of the adventure, even a little depth and certainly the requirement to make more interesting decisions than where to go and what to hit.

As enjoyable as Kalgor Bloodhammer and the Ghouls through the Breach is, it does leave a question or two unanswered – not with the adventure itself, but with the support. For example, it provides character sheets for Kalgor at both first and third level. From examining both, it is apparent that it is the third level character that is being played and not the first, but the stats do not quite match up. For example, the Attack Bonus for Kalgor in the adventure is +8, but only +6 on the sheet. Further, nowhere does it explain why either version of the character is included in the PDF. Lastly, it would have been nice if Experience Point awards had been included so that a player could track his success over the course of the adventure and then even take a character onto other adventures.

Kalgor Bloodhammer and the Ghouls through the Breach can be played through in about an hour. Perhaps a little longer if a player wants to explore its entire story. The result is enjoyable and fun, the combat tense, and the choices presented all have ramifications. The mechanics are kept simple and in line with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Beginner Box, such that a player could easily create his own character using the rules and play through this adventure to see how it would. Overall, Kalgor Bloodhammer and the Ghouls through the Breach gets the new Party of One series off to a good start.

Dicing For Sanity

The focus of so many exotic curios and occult artefacts at the museum is the cause of a new threat to Arkham. They weaken the barriers to the beyond, letting Gates open and monsters in, and laying a path for an Ancient One to make its way to Earth and lay waste to mankind. Only a number of dedicated investigators have the knowledge and will, and perhaps the allies and the tools, if not necessarily the time, to locate a sufficient number of Elder Signs that will seal the portals and prevent the arrival of the Ancient One. This is the set up for Elder Sign, the latest board game from the designers of Arkham Horror that uses the same art work and trade dress as seen in both Arkham Horror and the recently released Mansions of Madness.

Fantasy Flight Game’s third board game of facing Lovecraftian horror, Elder Sign is, like Arkham Horror, a co-operative game designed to be played by between one and eight players, with a playing time of between one and two hours. The co-operative element means that the opponents faced by players are not each other, but by the game itself and its mechanics. It also means that there is a time component to Elder Sign, not only in terms of a time limit before the Ancient One arrives, but also in terms of events (of a random nature) that occur regularly throughout the game’s play. In order to counter the effects of these events, and eventually, the arrival of the Ancient One, the Investigators will explore the Museum and have Adventures within its confines, the aim being to marshal the resources necessary to save the world.

Elder Sign is comprised of several sets of large and small cards, various tokens and counters, a card clock, and a set of customised dice. The large cards are divided between decks of Investigators, Adventures, and Ancient Ones, whilst the small cards are divided between decks of Common and Unique items, Spells, and Allies – all beneficial to the Investigators, whilst Mythos cards describe the events and effects that occur every time that the clock strikes Midnight and linger until the clock strikes Midnight again.

There are sixteen individual Investigators to choose from. Each one gives an Investigator his maximum Sanity and Stamina, his Starting Items, and a special ability. For example, Dexter Drake is a magician who whenever he gains a Spell card during play, he always gains an extra one, whilst Gloria Goldberg is an author whose Psychic Sensitivity grants her extra dice to roll when visiting Other World Adventure Cards.

During a game, the Investigators will face one of eight Ancient Ones. They include Azathoth, Cthulhu, Hastur, Ithaqua, Nyarlathotep, Shub-Niggurath, Yig, and Yog-Sothoth. Each one gives the number of Elder Signs needed to prevent it from being awoken, which occurs when the Doom Track on the card is filled; a special ability that applies throughout a game; a means of Attack once it is awoken; and a Combat Task that must be completed by the Investigators to weaken and eventually banish it from the Earth. So for example, for Cthulhu, the Special Ability is “Dreams of Madness,” which reduces every Investigator’s maximum Sanity and Stamina by one. Thirteen Elder Signs are needed to banish this Ancient One, but it only needs eleven tokens for the Doom Track to be filled and Cthulhu to be woken up. When Cthulhu does Attack, it reduces each Investigator’s Sanity or Stamina by one and adds another token to his Doom Track. The latter is a problem because in order to defeat an awoken Ancient One, the Investigators have to remove all of the tokens from the Doom Track. To remove a Token, an Investigator has to roll the given Combat Task.

Each Adventure Card has a title, a Trophy value, some flavour text, a set of Tasks that need to be completed if an Investigator is to succeed at the Adventure itself, and a set of Penalties for if an Investigator fails to complete the Adventure and a set of Rewards if he does. Some Adventure Cards also have a Terror effect that occurs if an Investigator does not complete a Task on each roll and some stipulate that their Tasks have to be done in order rather than the order of a player’s choosing. Most of the Adventure Cards take place in the Museum such as “Remains of the High Priest” and “The Gift Shop,” but others take place off world, like “The Dreamlands” and “The City of the Great Race.” In general, the Rewards and Penalties for the Other World Adventure cards are greater and they are also harder to complete.

Penalties on an Adventure Card can deduct Sanity and Stamina from an Investigator, cause a Monster to appear, advance the Clock, or add another Doom Token to the Doom Track on the Ancient One Card. Rewards can grant Items, Spells, and Allies as well as Elder Signs and Clue Tokens. They can also open Gates to Other World Adventure Cards. Not all of the Rewards are good – sometimes they are mix of the good and the bad.

The small cards represent Common and Unique items, Spells, and Allies as well as Mythos effects. They add extra dice to a Task attempt or alter dice rolls; enable an Investigator to restore Sanity or Stamina; or in the case of some Spells, let an Investigator store dice results between attempts at a Task. Allies grant another special ability, such as Richard Upton Pickman’s being able to change results on the dice in a certain fashion. Each Mythos card has two effects. The first occurs as soon as it is drawn, whilst the second lasts until the next Mythos card is drawn. For example, immediate effect of “The Stars Align…” is to add a Doom token to the Doom Track, whilst the lingering effect, “…Before Reason Fails,” lets the Tasks on Adventure Cards be done in any order, even if they stipulate that they must be done in order.

The game includes Sanity, Stamina, Investigator, Clue (these allow re-rolls of the dice), Elder Sign and Doom Tokens. There are also Monster Markers, little card strips that when summoned can replace Tasks on an Adventure Card to make them more difficult to complete. Each Monster Marker has a piece of flavour text on the reverse and a Trophy value.

The final components are the card Clock, used to measure the passing of time and determine when new Mythos cards are drawn; the Museum Entrance card; and the dice. The Museum Entrance card represents somewhere where an Investigator can go to “Receive First Aid,” “Search the Lost & Found,” or “Buy A Souvenir.” This usually requires an Investigator to expend Trophy points won by completing Adventure Cards or defeating Monsters, or to expend various tokens or items.

The dice are the heart of the game, rolled by an Investigator to try and match the symbols listed for each Task on the Adventure cards. They come in three colours. The six green dice are the most common and all of them are usually rolled when a Task is attempted. The yellow dice gives better results than a green die whilst the red dice gives better results than the yellow die. It usually takes the expenditure of a Common Item card to add the Yellow die to a player’s roll and the expenditure of a Unique Item card to add the red die. There is only the one yellow and one red die in the game.

Game set up is quick and simple. Each player selects an Investigator and receives its starting items. An Ancient One is chosen and placed on the table where everyone can see it along with the Clock – which is set at midnight, the Museum Entrance card, and six Adventure Cards. The first Mythos card is drawn and takes effect.

On his a turn, a player sends his Investigator to the chosen Adventure Card. He takes up the green dice and the yellow or red die if he decides to use an Item or has a Special Ability. The Tasks are arranged on each Adventure Card in lines and with each roll of the dice, a player must match the symbols on a single line with those on the dice. He can only attempt to match the symbols on one line at a time and if he does, he places those dice on the symbols on the card. He can then go on to roll for the Tasks on the other lines. If he fails to roll the right symbols for a line, he can continue rolling, but must discard a die each time he fails to match the symbols. On some Adventure Cards, there is a Terror effect for failing to match any symbols and rolling a Terror on the dice. If the player completes all of the Tasks, he receives all of the rewards at the bottom of the Adventure Card. He also receives the Adventure Card to keep as a Trophy which can be spent at the Museum Entrance for various effects. If he does not complete any of them, he suffers the penalties also given at the bottom of the Adventure Card.

Alternatively, a player could have sent his Investigator to the Museum Entrance. As soon as a player’s turn is over the Clock is advanced one quarter of the way round its face. When the Clock reaches Midnight a new Mythos Card is drawn and its effects applied. Since the two effects on the Mythos Cards vary greatly, often the players will find themselves hoping for one with less dangerous effects. So drawing one every fourth turn is another way in which Elder Sign can turn up the tension.

Our sample Adventure Card is “Lights Out.” Harvey Walters’ player decides that the reward of an Elder Sign is worth going for. The individual Tasks on each line are not difficult in themselves, but the Arrow symbol beside them means that they have to be done in order. Harvey has at his disposal one Unique Item – a copy of “Cultes des Ghoules” that lets him add the red die to a Task attempt, and one Spell card, the spell “Flesh Ward,” which lets him store a die roll between attempts. Harvey decides that he will use both, meaning that he rolls both the green and the red dice.

On the first roll, Harvey gets the results of 1 Clue, 2 Clue, Scroll, Scroll, Skull, and Tentacle on the green dice. On the red die, he gets the Wild Card symbol, which can be used to match any other symbol. The 1 Clue and 2 Clue symbols are enough to complete the Task on the first line and places those dice on the Adventure Card. He takes the red die and stores it on the Spell Card. This leaves him with just four green dice to roll.

On the second roll, Harvey needs two Skulls, but is unlucky and gets neither. He is forced to discard one of the green dice leaving him with three to roll. He gets 1 Clue, 3 Clue, and a Skull. He needs another Skull, so uses the Wild Card symbol on the red die that he stored earlier to match the symbols needed to complete the Task. This leaves him with just two dice and needing two Scrolls to complete the third Task and the whole Adventure Card. He rolls a Scroll and a Tentacle. Ordinarily this would not be enough, but Harvey’s Special Ability allows him to change a single Tentacle result on the dice to a Scroll, and as soon as he does he has completed all of the Tasks and the Adventure Card.

As a reward, he gains an Elder Sign and a Spell Card plus the Adventure Card to spend as a Trophy. A new Adventure Card is then added. If he failed, he would have lost two Stamina and added another Token to the Doom Track on the Ancient One’s card.

When the Doom Track is fully filled on the Ancient One’s card, it awakes and comes to Earth. At that point every Investigator has to face it, battling to remove the Doom Tokens from the Track. This uses the same dice mechanics as for the Tasks on the Adventure Cards.

Should either the Sanity or Stamina of an Investigator be reduced to zero, he deemed to have been devoured! His player must start afresh with a new Investigator, including new Starting Items. He loses those previously held by the now devoured Investigator. If an Investigator is devoured by the awakened Ancient One, no new Investigator can join the fight against him.

Winning a game of Elder Sign is not easy, but it is made all the harder when certain Adventure and Mythos Cards and Monsters appear that have the Locked Die icon on them. These temporarily remove a die that matches the colour on the icon from the game, thus reducing the number of dice each player has to roll on his turn until the Adventure Card or the Monster that has confiscated the die has been dealt with, or the effects of the Mythos Card have been replaced with a new one when the Clock strikes Midnight. Fortunately, in addition to using Investigator Special Abilities and the various Spell and Item Cards to give themselves an advantage, players can do things. First, Clue Tokens allow players to re-roll dice. Second, they can Focus a die – saving a die result for a subsequent Task, but at the cost of discarding another die, or Assist another player on the same Adventure Card – giving them a die result that they can use on their turn in attempting the Tasks on that Adventure Card. The downside to this is that it reduces the number of dice every player has to roll until the Assisted player’s turn.

Physically, Elder Sign is up to Fantasy Flight Games’ usual standards. Everything is of a high quality as you would expect, and the illustrations, all of which will be familiar to players of Arkham Horror and Mansions of Madness, are excellent. The rulebook is perhaps a little succinct at twelve pages, with some more examples of play being needed to better get the play of the game across. If there is an issue with the components, it is that some of the components are just a little too small for easy handling and thus some of the artwork’s effectiveness is lost.

Elder Sign is described as a co-operative dice game, but whilst the dice rolling lies at the heart of mechanics and game resolution, the game is really a “co-operative dice and decision” game. The players have to decide where their Investigators have to go and which Adventure Cards they should attempt to resolve, this decision usually being influenced by the number of Elder Signs available as Rewards on the current Adventure Cards or the Adventure Cards or Monsters with the locked dice on them. Of course, sometimes a player will attempt to resolve an Adventure Card for the Item and Spell Cards that it would reward him. They also need to decide how to apply their dice rolls, and in all of this, a player is free to solicit advice from the other players. This then, is the game’s “co-operative” element.

In comparison with Fantasy Flight Games’ other titles of Lovecraftian investigative horror, Elder Sign is simpler, more direct, and quicker to play. It is less location focused than either Arkham Horror or Mansions of Madness, so it has less of a narrative structure to it, but because a player is rolling the dice multiple times during his turn, it actually feels like you are doing more than in either of those games, especially in Mansions of Madness where a player’s actions feel severely limited.

The combined effect of the reduced narrative structure in comparison to Fantasy Flight Games’ other Lovecraftian board games and the focus on the dice rolling to resolve the Adventure Cards is to make Elder Sign feel mechanical in play. It is possible that much of the game’s flavour and colour could fade into the background if the players do focus too much on the dice and the mechanics. That said, this is not necessarily an issue for the more casual player.

With eight Ancient Ones to face and forty-eight Adventure and eight Other World Adventure Cards, and sixteen Investigators to play, the core set for Elder Sign offers plenty of replay value. Plus, the format is ripe for expansion. The actual downtime between turns is not necessarily high, but of course with more players there is a slightly longer wait. When it is a player’s turn, the rolling of the dice to resolve the Tasks of an Adventure Card can be quite tense, which just adds to the atmosphere and feel of the game seen in the art.

Above all, Elder Sign captures much of the tension and atmosphere of fighting desperately against the Mythos. That it does so in such a self-contained and time constrained manner is a sign of a good design, at the heart of which is the clever, tension inducing dice rolling. Not too complex for the casual player, but still evocative for the Lovecraft devotee.

Lonesome Fears

How the lone Call of Cthulhu player doth suffer? In the past the fantasy fan has been well served with solo adventures aplenty, from Tunnels & Trolls to the phenomenon that was the Fighting Fantasy series. The horror fan was and always has been less well served, though the Call of Cthulhu devotee has had four titles that he could play on his own. These included two from Chaosium, Alone Against the Wendigo and Alone Against the Dark; one from Pagan Publishing, Alone on Halloween; and lastly, Triad Entertainment’s Grimrock Isle. The combined solo adventures and a small campaign, of the solo adventures, is the only one still in print. With all but one of those books unavailable, there is another option. One that involves a single player and a single Keeper rather than the single player, and one that is free.

Monophobia: A Fear of Solitude, made available for download by Unbound Publishing as a 1.3 Mb sixty-page black and white PDF. Describing itself as “An opuscule of adventures for lone investigators in the world of Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu,” an “opuscule” being a small or minor work, Monophobia presents a trio of adventures that a Keeper can run for a single player. All three are one shots, best suited to experienced players and should provide a good session’s worth of play. An impressively detailed pre-generated investigator is provided for each scenario. The three all take place during the twenties or thirties, but with a little effort the Keeper could set them else when.

The anthology begins by discussing the nature and issues inherent in the format. That while pitting the lone protagonist against the alien forces of the Mythos perfectly emulates stories by Lovecraft himself, such as The Case of Charles Dexter Ward and The Shadow Over Innsmouth, it places a lot of responsibility upon the shoulders of the player. No longer does he have his colleagues to rely on for his safety and to discuss the threat that they face with. The Keeper has also more to do, no longer can he sit back and listen as the players and their investigators interact, and so he will have to the adventure moving. Potentially, an adventure is more deadly, there being just the one victim, the player character, to suffer the physical and mental depredations that come with facing the Mythos. The authors suggest that some of these issues can be addressed mechanically, with Idea Rolls, with the careful choice of Sanity losses, and by making the “monsters” more circumspect in their actions. On the upside, the single investigator gets to feel the full dangers of the Mythos, and above all, the single player and Keeper set up enables the exploration of situations impossible with more participants. At the very least, one of the scenarios in this collection does that very well.

The first of the trilogy is “Vengeance From Beyond,” which explores a situation familiar to Call of Cthulhu – revenge form beyond the grave. It has an antiquarian investigator hired by a collector to locate a Mythos tome that was stolen from him. Finding both culprit and tome is relatively easy, but it also results in the death of the culprit. When the collector is driven to suicide it seems that the investigator will not be far behind him as visions threaten his sanity. Discovering the cause is again easy, but stopping it involves lots of detective work during which time the Keeper can have lots of fun haunting the investigator. This is perhaps the most traditional of the scenarios in the book and for that the least impressive.

“Of Grave Concern” is the second scenario its highlight. It is also the longest. It opens in media res with the investigator waking up in a corpse, in a coffin, in a mausoleum. Rather than being stuck as a walking corpse for the whole scenario, salvation comes with the investigator awakes once again in his own body, but the question, who was responsible for the transfer between bodies and what has he been up to while in control of the investigator’s body? This scenario sees the investigator bounce back and forth between the bodies, having only limited opportunities for investigation while in each. The scenario calls for an experienced investigator with some knowledge of the Mythos, but it also requires an experienced Keeper to handle both the pacing of scenario and the flow of clues and information to the investigator. This is a pleasingly clever scenario, one that really would only work with a single investigator and makes not just the best of this set up, but the most innovative.

The last scenario takes the investigator – the given one provided being an explorer – to a spot visited in classic Mythos fiction, but rarely in Call of Cthulhu. “Robinson Gruesome” opens with the investigator being stranded on an island near infamous Ponape. Alone, his initial concern will be for his survival, for food, water, and shelter, but soon learns that the island has regular visitors, ones that come to placate an ancient creature only they are aware of. With few resources and none of the benefits of civilisation to rely upon, this is the most combative scenario in the book, as it climaxes in a fight to the death. The antagonist has the advantage in terms of magic, but hopefully the investigator can rely upon his ingenuity.

Not since “Paperchase,” the single player and Keeper scenario that appeared in The Cthulhu Companion, has this set up been as well supported. These are not only interesting scenarios, but professionally written ones too, with one of them being quite exceptional. Although the collection needs one very last edit, by any standards you care to set, Monophobia: A Fear of Solitude is about as ready for publication as you could get. All a publisher has to do is prepare it for its layout style and it is ready to go. Indeed, if it wanted to, a publisher could use what Unbound Publishing has done with the layout, although it is simple. The question is then, why has this collection not seen publication? Compare this to the Call of Cthulhu titles published in the last decade and the question is even more puzzling.

The truth is that Monophobia: A Fear of Solitude has a limited audience as it is a niche product. Yet for that target niche, the Keeper and the single player, the collection is all but perfect – it would be perfect if the collection could be played through using just the one investigator and if it had made as full use of its set up in all three scenarios as it does in “Of Grave Concern.” This is the highlight of the trilogy, one that could grace the pages of any Call of Cthulhu anthology and still stand out. That Monophobia: A Fear of Solitude is free is not its selling point, but its bonus. That Monophobia: A Fear of Solitude is a good collection is the point.