Wet & Wonderful

The world has ended, but if a ship can brave the Nine Swells, brace against the storms of the Outer Swells and roll with the waves of the Middle Swells, avoid being becalmed in the thick sargasso of Endswell, and withstand an attempt at becoming a prize for the mermaid pirate Capucine of the Wine Dark Sea, then it can find harbour in Vagabond Bay rather than the Admiralty blockaded Rickety. There the crew and its passengers will have reached Rainy City, a refuge in spite of the continued and variable inclemency. The goods they will have brought with them, especially foodstuffs will quickly find a price for their rarity and variety upon the tongue, and The Port Association for the Beneficial Incorporation of the Refugees and Asylum Seekers will do its utmost charity to find the newcomers a home and support in their time of need, and of course, most importantly of all, find them a hat, should none of them have none. Such a hat will be guild approved, for according to The Master and Four Wardens of the Fellowship of the Art or Mystery of Haberdashery and Millinery, no shall go without a hat, despite what the foolish delugeonists would proclaim or the Droll Union of Brolly-factors would have you believe. Welcome to Rainy City, a city where it never ceases to rain and the only season when fires are strong enough for The Molten Hands to work metal is Firelight. Where Ewts are pets and beasts of burden. Where the Harmonious Chantry of Alchemists will sell your servants ‘boiling salts’ so that you can enjoy a hot meal whatever the season. Where oozes, puddings, and slimes are a constant pest and the Puddinghand’s Union will examine every nook, cranny, and pipe of your dwelling and scour them free with alchemical solvents and powders—for a fee. Where once there was the Grand Academy of Magick, long since sunk into the murk of the waters dividing Old Town and Mids, barring a few of its highest towers that might give access to the secrets locked below. Where rainwater pours off the backs and out of the mouths of Gargoyles as they decorate and some say plot the end of the city on its highest towers and keeps, that is, until the brave members of The Society of Thatch clamber onto the city’s roofs and other slippery heights and sending them scattering so the damage their claws do to the tiles and stonework can be undone.

This is Rainy City, home to Achterfusses, the orating cephalopods who reside in the city’s pools and canals and come out in rainiest of seasons when they can breathe the ‘air’ to work, trade, sputter and cough, and give their opinions. To the diminutive Boggies of Bog End in the Sump where they enjoy water rugby and smoking reeds when they are dry enough or working as bottlers in the city’s few remaining wizard towers due to their immunities to enchantment. To Gargoyles and Ghouls, the latter enlightened flesh-eaters of Respectability Row and County Gaunt, perpetually well mannered about their old money and constant hunger, and delighted to have you to tea. To the chirping, wailing, and opportunistic Gulls—the only sea bird found in Rainy City—with wings that can grasp or fly, but not simultaneously. To the Deepsies, sufferers of ‘the Depsis’, who grow fishier and fishier every day, unhappily amphibious who mediate trade with the Underharbour or serve board salvage, sailing, and fishing boats. To the Mermaids who can slip out of their tails to walk as humans, most visiting during the wettest months of the year lest someone steal their shawls and gain power over them. To the Mine Goblins—or bearded cave elves—who hold a market in the Silver Falls Mines, but do not let just anyone attend, and dig endlessly into the Tower Cliffs for reasons they care not to divulge.

This is the setting of Rainy City as described in A Visitor’s Guide to the Rainy City. Ostensibly an actual guidebook to the city—written by no less a personage than Beauregard Hardebard, The Master and Four Wardens of the Fellowship of the Art or Mystery of Haberdashery and Millinery—it is actually a fanzine published in 2020 following a successful Kickstarter campaign by Superhero Necromancer Press (though not, it would appear, as part of ZineQuest #2). It is a systems agnostic supplement that would work with all manner of different systems and settings. Into the Odd and Troika! immediately spring to mind since both are simple to handle the baroque fripperies and arch arcanity of the setting’s strangeness. As a setting it cannot be pinned down to any one time period, the book’s line art suggesting the late medieval or early modern periods, but it could also be Georgian or Victorian as well. Its self-contained nature means it could easily be dropped into a campaign or simply exist in a water bubble all of its very own.

From the personal welcome of Beauregard Hardebard to every new visitor, A Visitor’s Guide to the Rainy City dives into describing the various peoples and places of the Rainy City. This includes its unsurprisingly wet seasons and the highly entertaining festivals that take place over the course of the year, such as The Gentle Exchange of the Fish in which every fisher and fishmonger proudly displays recently caught fish with the Peers of Fishmarket Way lording it over everyone for the duration, with public hangings, bracing auctions, cattlefish shows, crab fights, seaweed spas, flying fish races, a lanternfish brightness show, and the annual fisherfolk games. The latter consist of competitions in knot tying, sail raising, net throwing, bailing out a sinking boat, and anchor raising! There are details of what is commonly eaten and drunk, preferred pets and working beasts, and more. Then it explores the various regions of the city, from Rickety and the Swells, Vagabond Bay, and Old Town to Embassy Row, The Headlands, and Tower Cliffs. These are all given four pages of detail each, which always include the weather particular to the district, who they might interact with whilst there, how law is handled in the district, the degree of disorder and disarray, and more. The more includes the buildings of note, organisations to be found, and lastly things to do, hooks that the Game Master can develop. And every district is different and distinct, and though they are interconnected, a Game Master could, if she so wanted, take one of them and use it on its own. That though, would be to pull apart the richness of the setting as a whole.

In addition to the ‘Things to Do’ for every district, A Visitor’s Guide to the Rainy City gives eight scenario hooks in ‘The Patrons’. These include Madam Lydia, aged diviner of Old Town, noted for her dark prophecies, who now wants them to come true. Which means that the city will fall with the help of the Player Characters and her demons! Or Pizarro, the entrepreneur whose ‘Pizarro’s Dry Baths’ are a grand success and wants to expand his operations with steam baths. Except that requires that somebody capture a salamander. Lastly, there has always been The Sandestin in the Rainy City, a title and office with unclear meaning or purpose, but nevertheless, historically important. So important is the office though, that eras are identified by the holders. The holder could be an actual wizard or a charlatan or even a devil reborn each time some takes the office anew, but now? There are three pretenders to the office. Oh, the calamity.

Physically, A Visitor’s Guide to the Rainy City is charming. The artwork is subtly unnerving if you look close enough, whilst the writing is thoroughly engaging. The cartography is not bad, but it imparts a feel for the city rather than a detailed representation. If there is an issue, it is that the density of information is such that the book needs an index!

A Visitor’s Guide to the Rainy City is engaging from start to finish and you want to read stories set in the city let alone actually run a game set there. It is full of such wonderful little details that are going to astound and confound the players each time their characters visit, that they are going to want to come back again and again. A Visitor’s Guide to the Rainy City is simply delightful.

Friday Fantasy: The Dusk Bringers

Two centuries ago, a heretical cult that had begun as a radical sect within the Church of Zonurandi brought to fruition its plans for a great ritual which it believed would bring about a new Dawn for their Sun God when he would shine so very brightly. Yet in order to bring about this age of enlightenment, the world must first enter a perpetual Dusk. The Dusk never came. The cultists—including many secret members within the ranks of Church of Zonurandi—disappeared. In the time since, the Herald of the Sun, the name of the original sect within the church, and the Dusk Bringers, the name for the cult, have become nothing more than an interesting side note in the history of the Church of Zonurandi, and then only to sages and archivists. Recently, a message has been received by the authorities from the remote Wichama Valley. It is a Rite of Protection, an ancient tradition which if fulfilled would be answered with an Oath of Loyalty. What is curious is about this message is that the Wichama Valley is part of the estates belonging to the Mayweather family which has long been loyal to those it owes fealty to. So, the question is, who has sent this Rite of Protection, and what exactly do they need protection from?

This is the set-up for The Dusk Bringers, a scenario published by LunarShadow Designs. The scenario is a departure for the publisher, which is best known for solo journalling games such as Signal to Noise or roleplaying games such as Project Cassandra: Psychics of the Cold War, because The Dusk Bringers is very much an Old School Renaissance-style adventure. Excepts for one thing. There are no stats. In other words, The Dusk Bringers is a systemless or systems agnostic scenario. This is a fantasy scenario which could be dropped into numerous settings and not so much adapted, as given stats to run with Old School Essentials, Dragonebane, or the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game. To name, but three. Ultimately, all the Game Master needs to apply stats and if the names do not fit her campaign, then change them so that they do. And if the Goblins and Ghostly Knights that comprise the majority of the scenario’s monsters—though not its threats—do not fit her campaign either, then they can be changed to. What all of this boils down to is that The Dusk Bringers is at its heart, a plot, a scenario in the true sense of the word.

However, The Dusk Bringers is not all plot. There are maps too and much of the scenario’s plot is wrapped around those maps. The Dusk Bringers was a submission to the ‘Dyson Logos Jam’, which ran throughout October 2021, using those that are available from his commercially available maps. Dyson Logos is renowned for the quality of his maps which have appeared in numerous releases for the Old School Renaissance. These include maps of what the scenario calls a keep, but is more of a tower, plus a strange temple complex connected to a mine and a map of the nearby walled settlement of Motuen township. The plot concerns a clan of goblins, which like all of its kin, lurked in the hills and caves surrounding Wichama Valley, but without being any real threat to the inhabitants. They have been driven out the mine in which they had made their home and taken refuge in Veranna Keep. However, whatever it was that the Goblins disturbed in the tunnels of their previous home has followed them to Veranna Keep and lurks still, ready to pounce on anyone foolish enough to be alone. The Goblins want help with the thing outside the walls of Veranna Keep and they want to return home, which also means dealing with what it they found in the mines.

Investigating the mines raises questions that cannot be answered there, but might be in the records to be found at the temple to Church of Zonurandi in nearby Motuen. The walled town was once prosperous, but has fallen on hard times with the paying out of the nearby mines. This has led to a loss prestige and power by the local branch of the Mayweather family to the influence of the church and the town’s merchants. The result is some tension between the head of the Mayweather family and the rest of the town, though this is more resentment than anything else. Only a two-page spread is devoted to Motuen along with an accompanying one-page description of the temple to Church of Zonurandi and its staff, but together these three pages are the highlight of The Dusk Bringers providing some local colour and roleplaying opportunities for the Game Master. Details beyond this are left for the Game Master to develop, but the basic building blocks are there.

The plot to The Dusk Bringers has a certain circularity to it, and the whole scenario can be played through in two or three sessions. Beyond this, there is a handful of story hooks that require full development upon the part of the Game Master and there is also a discussion of what happens if the Player Characters deal with the actual threat to the Wichama Valley and what happens if they decide not to. The latter has greater ramifications than the former. There are also notes on all of the scenario’s NPCs and detailed descriptions to accompany the maps.

Physically, The Dusk Bringers is cleanly and tidily presented. Both artwork and cartography are good—very good in the case of the cartography—and whilst there is very little artwork in the scenario, all of it I used to illustrate the various NPCs and monsters to be found in the scenario.

Without any stats, The Dusk Bringers feels threadbare. There is though decent advice on how to run the scenario, as well as questions that the players, their characters, and the Game Master might want answer by the end of the scenario. The outline of the scenario is also decently done. Overall, if the Game Master is looking for something that is ready-to-play with a modicum of preparation, then The Dusk Bringers is not going to be for her, but if the Referee is looking for a scenario that she can readily more design the monster and NPC stats around and adjust to make it her own, then The Dusk Bringers is a good choice.

Friday Fantasy: The Sorcerer’s Enclave

Far to the north stands the island of Ormil. At the heart of the island is the Great Lake. In the centre of the Great Lake is Olla’s Island. Standing on Olla’s Island is the Sorcerer’s Enclave. This is the last high point of civilisation in the north and no man should have reason to go beyond. This is a bastion for the study of magic and it can only be reached by the Dragon Ferry. A village, warded against those who would wish the Sorcerer’s Enclave ill, stands at the foot of the sorcerous sanctuary, but it is a mere steppingstone to the enchanted enclave that looms over it. Inside the Sorcerer’s Enclave, numerous schools of magic are studied and practised, some even simply recorded lest the knowledge be lost and need to be rediscovered in later generations. Druidic magic is one such school, part religion, part sorcery, which combines magics from across numerous later schools. The Druid’s way is practised outside, like the study of natural magics—practitioners insist the schools are very different, whilst inside, all wizards and wizards have the opportunity to learn how to use their magics offensively and defensively in the Duelling Pit, where that rarest of sights is seen—a Battle Magic wizard or witch in actual armour! Deep in the bowels of the Sorcerer’s Enclave is the Golem Manufactory where raw heartstones are infused with magic and inscribed with runes to dictate the behaviour of Golems they are placed deep within. Elsewhere alchemical arts are studied in their own laboratories, portents and omens are tracked across the sky from the observatory atop the Sorcerer’s Enclave, whilst mystic signs and alignments are tracked immediately below using a giant orrery.

The wizards and witches of the Sorcerer’s Enclave are even whispered to practise demonology, for how else can they explain the behorned, sometimes bewinged sprites that serve as their servants and assistants? All of these Minions wear hooded caps with bells on the end to prevent their presence from never being heard. After all, who wants demonic minions sneaking about a wizards’ school? Winged Minions work in The Arcanum or Great Library or the Sorcerer’s Enclave guard, members of which are recognised by their height of four foot or more, their bronze masks, and their hooked polearms. The members of Sorcerer’s Enclave are also served by Familiars as is traditional in many other schools, but here the Familiar is not duty bound to bond with a master or mistress. Instead, the Familiar Whisperer—a position of honour amongst the Minions—trains Familiars to accept that bond. This is the setting for The Sorcerer’s Enclave.

The Sorcerer’s Enclave is not a roleplaying book in the traditional sense. Published by SquareHex—best known for The Black Hack—The Sorcerer’s Enclave is more artbook than sourcebook, describing and depicting the rooms and locations of a great magical redoubt, hidden away from curious eyes and from accidentally unleashing some disastrous dweomercraft upon civilisation! The Sorcerer’s Enclave begins with a map of ‘The World as it is known’, showing the islands and their relationship. This is, unfortunately, too small to pick up on any detail on the page, but The Sorcerer’s Enclave is accompanied by a small poster map that shows the geography to far better effect. Our journey literally begins aboard the Dragon Ferry, crewed by Minions—many at the oars—with its dragon wing keel and rudder, and dragon head prow. This, like the whole of the Sorcerer’s Enclave, is shown in cross section with the Minions working and resting and there being actually little room for passengers.

Once ashore on Olla’s Island, the tour of the Sorcerer’s Enclave takes us roundabout and inside the enchanted establishment. Each location or section of the Sorcerer’s Enclave is given a two-page spread which showcases the room or facility itself as well as highlighting its location within the building as a cutaway on a silhouette of the Sorcerer’s Enclave. There are lovely little details such as a snoring wizard asleep in his chair, his feet resting on a Minion who is working on some notes and of the wooden tower atop a tree alongside the towers of the Sorcerer’s Enclave which is home to study of the Natural Arts. There is also a sense of story to The Sorcerer’s Enclave, one that becomes apparent as the reader turns its pages and progresses through the book and moves from the left to the right of the Sorcerer’s Enclave and its towers. Thus, the reader goes from the Dragon Ferry and the Dragon Jetty from the Druid’s Way and its menhir through the laboratories of the Alchemical Arts, the Great Library, the storehouse of the Masters of Secrets, and perhaps out beyond via the Portal Chamber. As the guide moves rightward, danger looms and so do the darkest secrets of the Sorcerer’s Enclave. First, there is the Thing Below, a betentacled creature lurking in a cleft in Olla’s Island, altered like many other fish and beasts of the lake by magic and alchemical spills, and then the tower that is home to the enclave’s lone necromancer, whose studies concern at least two of its Grand Magi and are revealed to the reader…

The Sorcerer’s Enclave is written and drawn by Aaron Howdle whose lovingly detailed pen and ink artwork is clearly influenced by the style of artwork being used by Games Workshop and Citadel Miniatures in the nineteen eighties such as the late Russ Nicholson and Ian Miller. Even the appearance of the Sorcerer’s Enclave as a silhouette echoes the castle logo of Citadel Miniatures. This is all confirmed by the artist’s biography at the end of the book, which actually contains more text than the rest of the book. Physically, The Sorcerer’s Enclave is lovely, the artwork is a delight, worth poring over for its exquisitely detailed locations and characters.

In game terms, there is almost nothing in The Sorcerer’s Enclave that is actually game-related. There are no stats or similar details. This means that whilst it is not immediately useful for a roleplaying game setting or rules set, the Game Master is entirely free to apply the numbers and mechanics that she wants to the setting to use it in her game world. One obvious direction of development for this, like the direction of the book’s exploration of the Sorcerer’s Enclave, would be to bring the threat of the establishment’s lone Necromancer and his plans into play. Others might be to use as a location and world to visit via the Portal Chamber or from somewhere within its own world, or to use it as a place of study for a wizard or witch-focused campaign. Of course, as a magical institute, the Sorcerer’s Enclave holds numerous tomes, potions, and other secret artefacts, all of which would interest the Player Characters.

The Sorcerer’s Enclave is simply a lovely book to own, a delightful and detailed homage to British fantasy artwork of the eighties that fans of Games Workshop and Citadel Miniatures will appreciate. As a gaming resource, The Sorcerer’s Enclave, very much awaits the input and development of the Game Master, but is especially suited to the Old School Renaissance.

Space Crime

There is a big difference between making ends meet and making a living when it comes to operating a starship. With expansive docking fees, fuel costs, and repairs to be made, let alone paying the crew, making a profit is never easy, unless that is, you pick up a contract from a crime boss. A crime boss like Algoth Nieminen, who just happened to take over and expand the Jitana Syndicate to the point where it is the primary crime organisation in the binary. Now he has a cargo which he needs transporting both carefully and speedily and he is short of his usual ships and crews. He will not say what it is, but it is sensitive and highly illegal. He will, however, say where it is. The cargo is aboard a ship which has been impounded and the held at the impound yard in orbit around Kandhara. So all the crew has to do is, fly to the Shan system, infiltrate the Kandhara Independent Impound yard, get aboard the ship, steal the cargo, and deliver it as Algoth Nieminen, as promised, right? Wrong. We not entirely wrong. The crew do have to fly to the Shan system, infiltrate the Kandhara Independent Impound yard, get aboard the ship, steal the cargo, and deliver it as Algoth Nieminen promised, but it is nowhere as simple as that. First, there are three ships and crews who worked for Algoth Nieminen in the impound and one of them has the cargo. Second, Algoth Nieminen has hired four other crews to retrieve the cargo and will only pay the bonus to the crew which successfully retrieves the cargo. Third, there is a detective who wants to make a name for himself—and if that means arresting Algoth Nieminen and breaking up the Jitana Syndicate, then all the better.

This is the set-up for The Kandhara Contraband: A System Agnostic Sci-Fi Adventure. Published by LunarShadow Designs, this as the title suggests is a rules free, mechanics free, stats free scenario for the Science Fiction genre. So more plot than numbers—and more set-up than plot—this is also a scenario which involves space crime. Which narrows it down to the types of roleplaying game it will work with. In terms of generic roleplaying games, Savage Worlds or GURPS or FATE Core would all work easily with this plot. In terms of setting, the set-up and theme points to two obvious choices. Star Wars is the most obvious, whether that is the D6 System version from West End Games or Fantasy Flight Games’ Star Wars: Edge of the Empire. The other option is the Firefly Roleplaying Game published by Margaret Weis Productions. But whichever system or setting the Game Master decides to run The Kandhara Contraband, the key elements are crime and space travel.

Half of The Kandhara Contraband is dedicated to the set-up and describing the other interested parties in the adventure. This includes the three syndicate ships and their captains who got impounded, as well as the four rival ships and their captains that Algoth Nieminen has also hired to retrieve the cargo, plus of course, the police detective. These are all given a good paragraph or two’s worth of description, which in most cases is accompanied by a question, which the Game Master has to put to her players. For example, Jacinda Sedius is the captain of The Icarus, a ship which though the same make and model as the Player Characters’, but is often on the verge of breaking down and in need of much maintenance. Captain Jacinda and her crew has suffered a rash of bad luck and really needs the payout that successfully retrieving Algoth Nieminen’s cargo would bring. The accompanying question is, “Ask the PCs about a time they have previously helped Jacinda and her crew. How many drinks does he owe them?” The Kandhara Contraband asks similar questions for each of the NPCs in the scenario, as well as at Kandhara Station, the orbital station. The effects of this are twofold. First, it involves the players in the creation of elements of the scenario, tying locations and NPCs to their characters and into the setting or game that the Game Master is running, and in the process setting up background details and roleplaying hooks. Second, if The Kandhara Contraband is run as a convention scenario—and it is about the right length to do that, even if there are no suggestions as to how to that or pace the scenario—each time it is run, it will be different for the Game Master.

The second half of The Kandhara Contraband is devoted to the scenario’s locations, which consist of the barren mining world of Shan, Kandhara Station, the orbital station above Shan, and the Kandhara Independent Impound Yard, and the final destination for the cargo. Here individuals, facilities aboard Kandhara Station, and events are all described. Most of the detail is spent on Kandhara Station, as it is here that the Player Characters will find the crews of the impounded ships and learn more about the cargo—which is very much far from ordinary.

Physically, The Kandhara Contraband is a plain and simple affair. Behind the decent cover, the scenario is unaccompanied by either maps or illustrations. Otherwise, the layout is tidy and the booklet a clean affair.

The advice for the Game Master in The Kandhara Contraband is brief. For the Game Master with experience of running a fairly improvised scenario, this should not be an issue. A less experienced Game Master might well have wanted more help and advice, or at least a summary of the events and hooks which help her more readily prepare the scenario and give her some idea as to what might happen once the players and their characters get involved.

The Kandhara Contraband: A System Agnostic Sci-Fi Adventure is plot and set-up. Both though, are more than enough to get a good session or two’s worth of Sci-Fi action and intrigue going, as well as provide content that the Game Master can easily add to her campaign and the players add to their characters’ backgrounds. Of course, it is going to need some effort upon the part of the Game Master to supply the stats, but once she has that, the Game Master is ready to run her Player Characters into trouble and hopefully, back out again, hopefully with The Kandhara Contraband in their cargo hold and out again.

An Excellent Engineless Elevensome

There is a gap between the one-shot and the campaign that is rarely filled. The gap between the one or two session scenario and the campaign that will run over the course of years in multiple sessions. The gap between one-shots like Viral and Lady Blackbird and full campaigns such as Impossible Landscapes and The Curse of Strahd. It is this gap where the shorter campaign takes place, somewhere between say four or five adventures and say, a maximum of twelve. Yet the hobby does not often offer campaigns of such length, tending towards the extremes in terms of length rather than the median. That though, is not an issue with Odd Jobs: RPG Micro Settings Vol. I. This is a collection of eleven mini- or micro-settings, each complete with a background, character options, NPCs, a detailed mini-campaign, adventure seeds, bonus material, and more. Taking in everything from collecting ghosts to return to Earth from across the Solar System and running the rails between bubbles of stable reality to playing the stock market which measures and tracks the worshippers of your god and searching signs of intelligent life on a distant planet as you become that life, this anthology brings a together a plethora of weird and wonderful campaign ideas designed to be played in three to four sessions (but can go longer if the extra content is used).

Odd Jobs: RPG Micro Settings Vol. I is published by MacGuffin & Co. following a successful Kickstarter campaign and the first thing that you really need to know about it is that it is systemless. There are no stats of any kind in the book. Which means that the Game Master will need to put in some extra effort when preparing one of the book’s campaigns, providing the necessary stats and abilities, and so on. However, after explaining what a roleplaying game and a micro-setting is, the authors do discuss the choice of system in the book’s introduction. What is great here is that they suggest a number of different roleplaying games, pairing them with each of the various micro-settings in the book. These range from Fate Condensed, The Black Hack, and Cthulhu Hack to Savage Worlds, the Cypher System, and Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. Now any of the micro settings in Odd Jobs: RPG Micro Settings Vol. I can be adapted to the rules system of the Game Master’s choice, but the suggestions can lead a Game Master and her players to try out a new set of rules or if they already know one set of rules, the Game Master can pick up this book and prepare the setting paired with her preferred rules straight away. (And then look at the other settings.) It should be noted that two of the settings carry content warnings, but these are kept short and to the point.

Each of the settings and campaigns in Odd Jobs: RPG Micro Settings Vol. I follows roughly the same format. It opens with three pages of background, followed by a page or so each of character ideas and locations. These initial pages are for both player and Game Master, but the remaining pages, beginning with ‘Secrets’ are clearly for the Game Master’s eyes only. This is followed by a list of NPCs, the mini-campaign itself—consisting of four adventures, the latter full of surprising twists, before being rounded off with a handful of adventure seeds and some bonus content. The latter can be as simple as a bonus adventure, but can also include further character ideas and tables for creating random elements in the setting. The book itself is rounded out with bonus content for all eleven campaigns.

Odd Jobs: RPG Micro Settings Vol. I very quickly gets on with the first setting and campaign—and it grabs the reader from the off. ‘Ghost Ship’ combines Dead Like Me with Office Space, but in space! When somebody dies, their spirit passes on, but only on Earth. Which is a problem when someone dies off-world. Someone has to collect the ghosts—some of whom are not always friendly and need to be harpooned!—and return them to Earth. The setting classifies the ghosts by belligerency, and has the Player Characters as ghost collectors discovering that there is much more going on and that some of the ghosts really do not want to go back. It is followed by ‘Twisted Rails’ in which the Player Characters crew a steam train ferrying freight and passengers from one Bubble of stable reality to another, riding the rails which have been laid across the chaos in between that resulted when reality broke down. The Player Characters will have to contend with rail pirates on parallel lines attempting to capture their train. This campaign is accompanied by tables for creating new Bubbles. The third campaign, ‘Not Far to Bermuda’, gets a bit weird. It is set aboard the Wanderlust, a large passenger liner which has been on the Atlantic Islands Cruise for at least two-hundred-and-ninety-four days. Fortunately, the food has not run out, though it varies unexpectedly, and whilst discipline and society has not exactly broken down or broken out into violence, it has coalesced into a series of cliques which need to be carefully navigated. This is where the Player Characters come in, being members of the hospitality staff, such as poolside entertainer, excursion leader, or events manager, whose old roles seem to have fallen away as the trip has continued. Quite where the ship is and where it is going is the focus of the campaign as the voyage continues.

‘Guardians’ is a flashback to the seventies and rural France with the Player Characters as nuns whose reputation and conduct has resulted in their being seconded to the ‘les Sœurs de Notre-Dame de la Vérité’ (‘The Sisters of Our Lady of Truth) whose duty is to guard ‘la Fosse de l’Enfer’, literally a ‘Pit of Hell’. This campaign can vary in tone from dark comedy to psychological horror and comes with a table of options for the dark secrets that each of the nuns is harbouring, and plenty of suggestions as to what exactly is in the pit. This is potentially the darkest of the campaigns in the anthology. ‘Atlantis City’ goes under the sea to explore what happened to the mythical lost city when it was sunk in ages past. It turns to gambling and becomes a den of vice and criminality, the aquatic equivalent of Las Vegas or Atlantic City. As the Player Characters take over a casino, they have to contend with the Kingdom of the Merfolk and the Deep Ones of the Deep Collective attempting to muscle in on the vice trade along with rival casino crews and city politics which have been dominated by the same family for millennia. The other darker setting in the anthology is ‘Duskhollow P.D.’, which combines hard-boiled detective stories with horror in a weird interzone urban sprawl where the rain never stops and where the crimes can involve cults, sorcerers, revenants, and more, including something squamous. This campaign differs from the others in that there is no one secret to what is behind the nature of the city, but several which the Game Master can pick and choose from, and rather than run a campaign with a beginning, middle, and end, be run as a series of one-shots into which the Game Master can insert the clues. Of all the campaigns in Odd Jobs: RPG Micro Settings Vol. I, it is not a case of ‘run and done’, but intermittent cases which can be run in between other campaigns.

‘MIX: Missing In X-mas’ is the jolliest of campaigns in Odd Jobs: RPG Micro Settings Vol. I, but starts with a bang. It is Christmas night and Santa Claus has gone missing somewhere over Germany. Where could he be? This is no Nightmare Before Christmas, but the Player Characters—Elves, Reindeer, Gingerbread Persons, Snowpersons, Nutcrackers, and Toys—have to leap into the breach to continue the deliveries as well as discover quite where Father Christmas has got to. The campaign comes with a big table of presents to deliver and plenty of drops down the chimney to go wrong and get out again without any child being the wiser to the presence of the Player Characters. ‘Primetime Colosseum’ is a campaign in which the Player Characters are gladiators in an Ancient Rome where myth and magic are real, including resurrection potions. So gladiators can fight and die and come back and fight again. The various roles are not so much inspired by classic gladiator types, but by modern wrestling. The campaign itself sees the Player Characters and their gladiatorial school hit primetime, find fame and fortune, and suffer the consequences. Of all the campaigns in the anthology, ‘Wizard’s Staff’ feels the most familiar in which the staff and assistants of the notoriously evil enchanter Balphior who have to step up and fill in after he goes and dies in unsurprisingly bizarre circumstances. They are going to have to cover in his absence and survive the avaricious interest of others if they find out about their master’s death. This requires a degree of cunning and subterfuge, but can be comedic too.

The penultimate campaign is ‘Start-Up Culture’. This is a world in which the gods are real and their power and influence via the number of worshippers they have is tracked on the OSE or ‘Oracle Spiritual Exchange’. The players get to create their own god, such as the ‘God of Reluctant Teamwork’ or ‘God of Lazy Afternoons’, and power said god up the OSE by proselytising and gaining worshippers. Rounding out the anthology is ‘Fixer Upper’, a piece of straight Science Fiction in which the Player Characters are robots surveying a planet—the ‘Fixer Upper’ of the title, in the far future to determine three things. If it is suitable to be inhabited by humans, if it needs to be terraformed, and if it is already occupied by a species exhibiting ‘Personhood’. As the players roleplay through the campaign, their robots not only explore more of the world, but begin to diverge from their programming to the point where they are the ones exhibiting ‘Personhood’. It is a fascinating philosophical piece in the vein of Philip K. Dick with which to close the anthology.

Physically, RPG Micro Settings Vol. I is very nicely presented. It is done in full colour, with artwork and typography which is different for each and every campaign. This gives each a distinct feel and makes them standout when browsing the book.

Odd Jobs: RPG Micro Settings Vol. I offers some memorable, fully developed campaign ideas which it combines with flexibility in terms of choice of system and running time—any one of them could be run in the suggested three to four sessions, but also easily extended with the plentiful story hooks and seeds. Odd Jobs: RPG Micro Settings Vol. I is an exemplary elevensome, full of good ideas and entertainingly brilliant concepts that you will want to run as a Game Master and roleplay as a player.

—oOo—

Both Reviews from R’lyeh and MacGuffin & Co. will be at DragonMeet on Saturday, 3rd December, 2022.

Rural Ruminations

Maps form such a fundamental part of our gaming experience. We explore them. We journey across them. We delve into them. We defend them. We attack them. We draw them. We create stories using them. We have been gaming maps for centuries, whether it is to conduct wargames like Kriegsspiel or H.G. Wells’ Little Wars, or more recently explore great dungeons such as B2 Keep on the Borderlands or sprawling sandboxes such as X1 Isle of Dread, or even create a community and its history with a game like The Quiet Year. There is also something else that we can do with maps and that is contemplate, and it is something that Paths does. Designed and drawn by the British Children’s Laureate, children’s book illustrator and author, and political cartoonist, Chris Riddell, Paths is the first game to be published by Betonmond. Or rather it is the first game published by Betonmond that is not a game, although it could be if you wanted.

Paths consists of fifty-two, large one-hundred-and-twenty-five by eighty-five-millimetre cards. Each depicts a landscape crisscrossed by one or more paths. A steep path leads up a hill to a round tower with a single door. A statue of a mermaid sits in the middle of a plaza around which stand a pyramid, a column, and other features. Paths cut through tunnels in the hills. A narrow path joins a junction surrounded by tall, narrow houses. A village sits atop a cliff overlooking a tower below. A field is divided by several routes, but leaves a single tent isolated. An abyss is encircled by the paths. A great viaduct crosses over a valley path. Paths connect to steps that descend to a single platform over a chasm or seemingly connect at random underneath a house that hangs from a wall. Who lives in the tower? Who was the mermaid? What lies in the tunnels? Who lives in the village and where does the narrow path lead? Why is the village higher than the tower? Who lurks in the abyss? What is the platform over the chasm used for? Who lives in the home hanging from the wall? These are just some of the questions that the cards in Paths provoke.

All of the cards are beautifully bucolic and are designed to form a grid, depicting an ever-greater area and range of terrain. As a deck they can be shuffled, cards drawn and laid out to form a whole map, and then done again and again to create new maps each time. Paths suggests that two cards be selected to mark the beginning and the end of a route, and then cards be drawn to map out the route between them, whether direct or meandering. The participant is encouraged to examine each card, asking what it makes him think of or how he feels? The process is intended to be contemplative, even meditative, the participant almost taking a walking holiday across his loving room table.

Lastly, Paths turns the participant into a player and the map cards into a game. It is suggested the map is built collaboratively with perhaps one player as the map-maker who knows the secrets behind each card and location to be revealed as the other players and their heroes add each card to the map. It is suggested that tokens be used and notes taken and dice be used for dice-battles—if needed. These are the limits of the suggestions in Paths, but it would be incredibly easy to import a set of simple rules or even create some. For example…

Paths: The RPG

1. Each player creates an adventurer, for example, a wizard or a warrior. Then name the character.
2. Players take turns as the Map-Maker. When it is your turn, draw a card and add it to the map. Describe it and answer any questions the other players have about it as their adventurers explore it. Portray any characters who live there. Perhaps they want to help the adventurers? Have something to tell them or sell to them (or both)? Perhaps they are hiding secrets? Is there an obstacle or some monsters? Are there secrets to be found?
3. As a player, describe what your adventurer does. Who does he talk to? Where does he look? Let the other players do the same.
4. If there is an obstacle or monster, the Map-Maker rolls a six-sided die. Each player rolls a six-sided die for his adventurer (another player rolls for the current Map-Maker’s adventurer). The highest result defeats or stops the other. If an adventurer would have an advantage because of the situation, a good idea, or he just would (perhaps through force of arms as a warrior or a spell cast by a wizard), he rolls two dice instead on one.
5. The next player becomes the Map-Maker.

Physically, the cards in Paths are large, glossy, and feel good in the hand. The leaflet runs to four pages and is a quick and simple read.

However the participant, player, or Map-Maker uses Paths, there is ultimately a simple truth to Paths. Which is that this set of cards is a beautiful and lovely artifact. A beautiful and lovely artifact which works as inspiration, contemplation, or a game.

Cannibal Cults in the Clouds

Eat the Rich takes place one hundred-and-fifty years from now in a horrible future in which the Earth has been overrun by flesh-eating humans who have fallen victim to ‘The Hunger’, an unknown apocalyptic-plague of unknown origins. Amongst the Ravenous, there are a few survivors who have proven to have an immunity to the virus and a few who have managed to get by without being bitten or infected. There are others who have managed to escape it all, the genetically and cybernetically-enhanced ruling class, who reside in a majestic cloud-piercing levitating spire from where they can look down upon the survivors grubbing away in the mud below. Many when they look up, they see the home of the Gods and wonder what life might be like above their squalid existence. Now a Cult wants someone to ascend to the Godspire and capture a God. The Assembly, the leader of the Cult, knows that survivors of ‘The Hunger’ assume the properties and memories of anyone they eat—dead or alive. If they can consume the flesh of a God, what glorious memories and abilities will they gain? Will they include the  knowledge they will help humanity restore the Ravaged Earth of this terrible future?

In Eat the Rich, the Player Characters will put aboard a lift-spacecraft which will take them to the Godspire. There they will explore its heights and its secrets, discover what has come of the Gods, and ultimately, find themselves threatened by something which will prove to be a danger to the whole of the world below. It is designed to be played by a small group of players. Four pre-generated Player Characters are provided, but there are guidelines too for generating them. This includes starting equipment, background, talents, and motivations. What will the Player Characters make of this strange, new, and vertical world? What will they discover and what secrets will they reveal? How will the Gods react to intruders from the Earth below?

As with other scenarios from Games Omnivorous, Eat the Rich is a system agnostic scenario, but it does not fit the genres of the previous entries in the line. Both The Feast on Titanhead, and The Seed are fantasy scenarios, but Cabin Risotto Fever and Mouth Brood are modern-set affairs, although they call all be easily adapted to other time periods. Mouth Brood though, can be shifted into the Science Fiction genre, whereas Eat the Rich sits firmly in that genre as well as the Post Apocalypse genre. Which means that it could be run using the rules for Metamorphosis Alpha: Fantastic Role-Playing Game of Science Fiction Adventures on a Lost Starship, Gamma World, or Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic, for example. Similarly, it is easy to adapt to any number of modern or Science Fiction roleplaying games. These include Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition or Chill, third Edition, as well as Alien: The Roleplaying Game, Traveller, and MOTHERSHIP Sci-Fi Horror Roleplaying Game. It would also really work well with Numenera. Of course, if Eat the Rich is run using any of the systems suggested, the scenario need not be set on Earth. Its set-up is simple, flexible, and easy for the Game Master to adjust as necessary. However, just like The Feast on Titanhead, The Seed, Cabin Risotto Fever, and Mouth Brood before it, Eat the Rich adheres to the ‘Manifestus Omnivorous’, the ten points of which are:

1. All books are adventures.
2. The adventures must be system agnostic.
3. The adventures must take place on Earth.
4. The adventures can only have one location.
5. The adventures can only have one monster.
6. The adventures must include saprophagy or osteophagy.
7. The adventures must include a voracious eater.
8. The adventures must have less than 6,666 words.
9. The adventures can only be in two colours.
10. The adventures cannot have good taste. (This is the lost rule.)

As we have come to expect for scenarios from Games Omnivorous, Eat the Rich adheres to all ten rules. It is an adventure, it is system agnostic, it takes place on Earth (although technically, it takes place above the Earth), it has one location, it has the one monster, it includes both Saprophagy—the obtaining of nutrients through the consumption of decomposing dead plant or animal biomass—and Osteophagy—the practice of animals, usually herbivores, consuming bones, it involves a voracious eater, the word count is not high—the scenario only runs to twenty-four pages, and it is presented in two colours—in this case, a dark red and silver on white. Lastly, where previous entries in the series have exhibited Rule #10, it is debatable whether or or not Eat the Rich fails to exhibit good taste—though perhaps that may ultimately be up to how the players and their characters react to it.

The scenario is self-contained, the location amounting to just eight locations and six out of the twenty-four pages that make up Eat the Rich. The Godspire is an odd mix of aesthetic and the technical, a luxury enclave beyond the comprehension of the Player Characters where the line between sufficiently advanced technology blends into magic. Some of the technology is described along with the handful of locations aboard the Godspire, as is the main threat aboard the floating spindle.

Eat the Rich is primarily a setting, a small environment awaiting the intrusion of the Player Characters, the inhabitants—the the ‘Gods’ of legend, the Technology Priests, and the scenario’s ‘monster’—reacting to their invasive presence. It requires a fair deal of preparation upon the part of the Game Master, primarily in terms of creating the stats for the various NPCs, monsters, and more. She is though supported by a pair of tables of random encounters and random inhabitants aboard the Godspire. She will also need to provide guidance for her players if they want to create characters of their own, or adapt the four pre-generated Player Characters to the system of her choice.

Physically, as with the other titles in the ‘Manifestus Omnivorous’ series, Eat the Rich is very nicely presented. The cover is of sturdy card, whilst the pages are of a thick paper stock, giving the book a lovely feel in the hand. The scenario is decently written and quite detailed in terms of its locations. The artwork has an odd feel to it, a strangeness which reflects the weirdness of the setting.

A combination of the television series, The Walking Dead and the films, Zardoz and Elysium, Eat the Rich is a strange mix of fragility and the unknown with the Player Characters being hunted up and down the Godspire. The setting and its strangeness do make Eat the Rich the most difficult of the ‘Manifestus Omnivorous’ series to add to a campaign, but easy to run as a one-shot.

Escape from Cleveland

If you want to get some idea of what Extraction From Demon-Fucked Cleveland 1996 is like, take the soundtracks to two John Carpenter films—Escape from New York and Prince of Darkness—and crush them together, and you pretty much have the whole thing in a nutshell. Since nineteen seventy-four, the Ohio-state city has been under quarantine. Inside the closed off walls, the city environs have been a literal hell hole which has been the personal fiefdom of a demon queen. There is even a ceasefire declared between the United States of America and what is now enemy occupied territory. That was twenty-two and three hours ago. Three hours ago, the plane carrying the President of the United States of America was shot down over Cleveland airspace. The President is implanted with a biometric scanner which shows his life signs as well as approximate location. The Player Characters’ team is to enter the Cleveland Demonic Zone via Lake Erie to the northwest, make its way to the Demon Queen’s Moon Citadel. There they are to secure the President and escort him to the extraction point on the eastern of edge of the zone. There is no possibility of failure. If the team cannot extract the President, it is not getting out either… There will be no extraction for the team without the President.

The set-up for Extraction From Demon-Fucked Cleveland 1996 is simple and obvious. Replace gangs with demons and what you have is the plot to John Carpenter’s Escape from New York in this adventure from MegaCorp Games, nominated for the 2022 Ennie Award for Best Adventure. The sense of urgency is built into its plot, each area within the zone taking thirty minutes to cross and each encounter, combat or otherwise, takes fifteen minutes to complete. The environment is literally on fire and the ambient temperature is incredibly hot. Plus there are demons, none of which are going to be happy with an incursion by humans. Fortunately, maximum firepower is authorised in order to execute the mission.

The Player Characters are free to explore the Cleveland Demonic Zone as they want and very much if they have the time. Although not immediately obvious, there are advantages to doing so. Perhaps there will be opportunities to find out more about the Demon Queen’s activities in the zone or finding an easier way out of the Cleveland Demonic Zone. The Game Master is given a countdown clock to track the progress of the Player Character across the zone, descriptions of the various areas in the zone, details of the hostiles that they will probably face, and a table of possible encounters. And that pretty much is it. There are some redacted details in the scenario and everything for Extraction From Demon-Fucked Cleveland 1996 fits on two sides of a single sheet of paper. That is because it is a pamphlet adventure. It is also systemless.

Extraction From Demon-Fucked Cleveland 1996 can be played with any ruleset which can do an alternate nineties in which demons roam the earth—or at least Cleveland—and have done so since nineteen seventy-four. Savage Worlds would work, as would Modern AGE or the Cypher System. Depending upon the choice of system and the tone that the Game Master is aiming for the scenario can run as a grim and gritty mission or it can be run in a more Pulp style. All the Game Master has to do is create the demons following the descriptions given and perhaps some pre-generated Player Characters. These can be as clichéd as the Game Master wants depending on the type of game she wants to run. Once done, the Game Master has everything necessary to run a horror-tinged action-packed thriller.

Physically, Extraction From Demon-Fucked Cleveland 1996 is tidily presented. It needs an edit in place for clarity as the format means the author is being a little too concise in his writing.

However, is it any good? Is it good value for money? Is it even original? The answers to all those questions is a yes and a no. Yes, it is original because it presents a fun twist upon a familiar plot, but definitely no because that plot is lifted wholesale from a film. Yes, it is good value for money because it supplies a set-up and plot to which all the Game Master has to do is provide the necessary stats, but no because of the lack of originality. Yes, it is good because its tone is fun and the players are likely to enjoy the action and stealth affair to which this lends itself, but no, because of the lack of originality. Ultimately, it comes down to whether or not the players can overcome the lack of originality in Extraction From Demon-Fucked Cleveland 1996. If they can put it aside and buy into the action and tone of Extraction From Demon-Fucked Cleveland 1996, then the players are going to have a blast with this popcorn-powered, cheese covered horror thriller cover of John Carpenter’s Escape from New York.

Cloak Crawl

Wizards are known for their eccentricity, none more so than Riblerim the Unsure, Master Diviner, for when he set out to create and build a theme park, it was not only wondrous and whimsical, but it was also actually constructed in an ultra-dimensional realm woven into his cloak. It consisted of several themed islands floating in a golden sky connected by a winding monoriver plied by cute animal-themed boats and Giant Flying Galapagos Turtles. It was both a private refuge and somewhere to receive guests, known to its creator as Riblerim’s Interesting Place, but then it became something else—a sanctuary! During the Great Needle Pusher Purge, all seamstresses and tailors, long suspected of sorcery, one and all, were persecuted and driven into exile, which of course, led to the Great Wearing of Nothing but Rags. That is, naturally, all forgotten now, but the question of what happened to all those fleeing needleworkers and clothcutters and more, remains one of much debate… What happened though, was that Riblerim the Unsure came to their aid. Refusing to watch the seamstresses and tailors be persecuted and driven out, he established ‘Costumiers with Latent Arcane Magicks Refuge Initiative & Motivation Scheme’—or CLAMRIMS, for short—and sought the exiled, freethinking clothiers and modistes, and offered them shelter in what had previously been wholly a sanctum for just himself and his guests. A sanctum that he drew about himself and thus carried with him everywhere he went. Then Riblerim the Unsure disappeared. That was fifty years ago…

In more recent times, Cambros, the sari-draped Warbot, has been seen wandering the land, wrapped in a great cloak, said to have belonged to his friend, Riblerim the Unsure. He wants to find his friend, whom he is sure can be found in the cloak. In return for the Player Characters’ aid, he offers adventure unlike any that they have been on before and great treasures to be found, and with his uttering of the Passcode, they are whisked into the cloak and the weird and wonderful world of Riblerim’s Interesting Place. They find themselves in the Welcominarium, an island complete with a wizard’s tower in classic style, a large orientation map marked with ‘You Are Here’ and an arrow, the Slips aYe Olde Gift Shop shaped like a wizard’s conical hat, and a dock on the monoriver, at which the animal themed boats—the horsey, the rocking pony, the seahorsey, the unpiggie, the pegaswan, and naturally, the teacup too, all sit ready to transport their passengers elsewhere. That elsewhere consists of several islands floating in the sky, around, above, and below the Player Characters. They include the feudal mini-kingdom of Avalon; the springiness of Bouncy Island, complete with white pellet rafting; the constant end of day Sunset Island; the benighted and lovelorn Adult Island; and the ostentatiously studious Island of Special Interests.

This is the set-up for Capes and Cloaks and Cowls and a Park, a highly detailed, but systemless sandbox scenario whose sense of wonder and whimsy combine the classic funhouse style of dungeon with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. It is published by Mottokrosh Machinations, following a successful Kickstarter campaign, a publisher best known for Hypertellurians: Fantastic Thrills Through the Ultracosm, an Old School Renaissance adjacent roleplaying game of retro science fantasy. Numerous suggestions are given to get the Player Characters to and then inside the cloak—or rather into Riblerim’s Interesting Place. The default arrival point is the Welcominarium, but the Game Master is free to have them end up wherever seems the most appropriate, or fun. From there, the Player Characters are free to go wherever they want, or at least wherever the animal themed boats (or the teacup) will take—including up stream as well as down. Each island is a realm of its own, consisting of three or more adventure sites all following a particular theme. For example, Avalon is home to a fairy tale castle where tourneys and jousting are held to appease the self-appointed queen, Moronoe, nearly surrounded by dark forest lush with game and the domain of secretive druids. There is a seemingly endless cosplay closet at the dock where the Player Characters will alight, one which they can enter and select a suitable outfit for their time on the island. In comparison, Bouncy Island seems all but deserted, yet it does have its ruler, an Elfin figure whose cloak appears to mimic his moments and who can often be seen frolicking up and down the White Pellet Rafting route. Like many of the inhabitants, he knows many secrets of the Riblerim’s Interesting Place and might be persuaded to share one or more if the Player Characters are willing to brave the dangers of The Plastic Gauntlet—which like the rest of Bouncy Island, has definite springiness to it.

All of the adventure sites in Capes and Cloaks and Cowls and a Park are nicely detailed—its interior spaces more so. These include both the floorplans for locations such as the Museum of Divination, as well as dungeons like the Tomb of the Last Knight and The Plastic Gauntlet. These are also neatly arranged so that the maps and map keys are opposite each other.

Mechanically, Capes and Cloaks and Cowls and a Park is designed to be systemless. Or rather, written to be used with any roleplaying game, for it does actually have a system of its very own. This is the ‘HAWK’ structure, which stands for ‘Has’, ‘Acts’, ‘Wants’, and ‘Knows’, which is used to describe and define each of the major NPCs who appear in the scenario. The lack of numbers though, has its upsides and its downsides. Obviously, the Game Master can adapt Capes and Cloaks and Cowls and a Park to the roleplaying game of her choice, whether that is 13th Age, the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, Hypertellurians, or Old School Essentials. All would work. The downside is that all together there are a lot of NPCs and monsters to provide stats for, but that is offset by how succinct the design of the individual islands is. The Player Characters are likely to be exploring one island at a time, so the Game Master need not necessarily adapt the whole of Capes and Cloaks and Cowls and a Park in one go.

Given the nature of its setting and many of its inhabitants, it should be no surprise that most of the main treasures in Capes and Cloaks and Cowls and a Park consist of cloaks, mantles, shawls, stoles, and the like. For example, the Dwarven War Cloak is made of thumb-sized iron bars which can interlock to form a personal fortification whilst the Concordant Cowl of Teeth, consisting of an array of molars, incisors, and canines strung together with silver chains, is simply an intimidating—and sometimes—an enraging sight. The other treasures to be found in Riblerim’s Interesting Place are much less detailed and generally simpler in nature, like the Ruby Opera Gloves, enchanted by vampires to make the wearer unnoticeable to humans or the carved soap, a heavy cake of rainbow tulip and hope-scented soap into which has been artfully scratched a trigonometrical formula. Decipher the formula and the Player Character casts Venusian magics with greater power. As with the rest of the content in Capes and Cloaks and Cowls and a Park, none of these items have stats, but their simplicity makes them easy to adapt to the roleplaying game of the Game Master’s choice. Also included is a guide to making the studying and use of grimoires more interesting than mere spellbooks, which could also be adapted to the whatever rules the Game Master is using.

Physically, Capes and Cloaks and Cowls and a Park is beautifully presented, done in retro-lush colours that add to the sense of unreality of Riblerim’s Interesting Place. The cartography is also excellent. If there is an issue with the presentation, it is that the layout is too tight and the text a little too small in places, making the book slightly difficult to read. There is advice though for both Game Master and players on how to handle the tone and some of the scenario’s content, which is clearly marked for each location and includes spiders, demonic summonings—under mostly safe conditions, cannibalism, and more. This is through the use of lines and veils, and the X-card, although the self-contained nature of the scenario’s varying islands do help to separate this more adult content.

As a sandcrawl, Capes and Cloaks and Cowls and a Park differs in that its individual locations, its islands floating on the fabric of Riblerim’s cloak, are discrete and there is relatively little to connect them narratively. This is because this is not really a sandcrawl with factions and the power and influence of its NPCs do not extend beyond the confines of their respective islands. Here perhaps some advice or a table listing what each of the NPCs want and how those wants crossover could have been useful. However, there are threads which run right across the theme park that is Riblerim’s Interesting Place. In particular, a lot of the NPCs that the Player Characters will encounter are the equivalent of staff or actors. They look the part, and they play the part, but their lack of competence in comparison to the Player Characters adds to the sense of unreality of the already strange realm. Similarly, the fact that Riblerim’s Interesting Place has its own currency—Aesopian Rupees—exchanged for whispered secrets, also adds to the unreality as well as driving the players to come up with increasingly interesting confessions for their characters to pay for anything!

With Capes and Cloaks and Cowls and a Park, Mottokrosh Machinations does that ‘thing within a thing, within a…’ just as it did with Brutal Imperilment in the Bag of Infinite Holding. However, rather than being constrained by being in a bag upon a bag upon a bag, there is an openness to Capes and Cloaks and Cowls and a Park. The whole of its robed realm is presented to the Player Characters, and they are free to visit any one of its discrete, individual islands however they want, encountering something different on each one, whether that is a genre, a theme, or a tone—or a combination of all three. Capes and Cloaks and Cowls and a Park is sumptuously strange, ornately odd, and richly ridiculous, a campaign within campaign, a robed resort of wonders and whimsy.

Habitat Horror

Mouth Brood is an exploratory horror scenario set in the wilds of Canada in the Yukon on the Kaskwulsh Glacier. Here a strange discovery has been made—a great biodome jutting out of the ice, revealed no doubt due to the effects of global warming and the melting of the glacier. Buried here for millennia, the biodome has clear walls, but what is inside is hidden by leaves and mist and smears of algae. There is though, something moving inside. Clicking and humming and crying. Thousands of things. Millions of things. Are they alien? Are they vestiges of a prior epoch? Are they the results of an abandoned biological project—corporate or governmental? With the discovery of the biodome, Astralem Biotech has been sent a biologists to enter the structure, investigate and catalogue its contents, and above all, return with five live specimens with promises of a bonus for each extra one brought back. What will the team discover? Is it safe? Is it dangerous? Will the team survive?

As with other scenarios from Games Omnivorous, Mouth Brood is a system agnostic scenario, but unlike previous scenarios—The Feast on Titanhead, and The Seed, but like Cabin Risotto Fever before it, this scenario takes place in the modern world rather than a fantasy one. Where Cabin Risotto Fever was set in northern Canada in 1949, the setting for Mouth Brood is the Canada of the here and now—although it does not have to be. As a module, Mouth Brood combines Science Fiction and Horror in its investigation, and like the other titles in the ‘Manifestus Omnivorous’ series is systems-agnostic. Although a modicum of stats is provided to suit a Dungeons & Dragons-style roleplaying game, Mouth Brood would work with, and be easy to adapt to any number of modern or Science Fiction roleplaying games. These include Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition or Chill, third Edition, as well as Alien: The Roleplaying Game, Traveller, and MOTHERSHIP Sci-Fi Horror Roleplaying Game. The point is, Mouth Brood need not be set in Canada, it could be shifted to the Antarctic or the Himalayas, or it could even shifted off world entirely, say to Mars or even to a planet in a different system (although that would break one of its rules listed below, but nevertheless, the possibility is there). Its set-up is simple, flexible, and easy for the Game Master to adjust as necessary. However, just like The Feast on Titanhead, The Seed, and Cabin Risotto Fever before it, Mouth Brood adheres to the Manifestus Omnivorous, the ten points of which are:

1. All books are adventures.
2. The adventures must be system agnostic.
3. The adventures must take place on Earth.
4. The adventures can only have one location.
5. The adventures can only have one monster.
6. The adventures must include saprophagy or osteophagy.
7. The adventures must include a voracious eater.
8. The adventures must have less than 6,666 words.
9. The adventures can only be in two colours.
10. The adventures cannot have good taste. (This is the lost rule.)

As we have come to expect for scenarios from Games Omnivorous, Mouth Brood adheres to all ten rules. It is an adventure, it is system agnostic, it takes place on Earth, it has one location, it has the one monster (though like the older scenarios, those others that appear are extensions of it), it includes both Saprophagy—the obtaining of nutrients through the consumption of decomposing dead plant or animal biomass—and Osteophagy—the practice of animals, usually herbivores, consuming bones, it involves a voracious eater, the word count is not high—the scenario only runs to twenty-eight pages, and it is presented in two colours—in this case, a dark green and greenish-blue over snowy white. Lastly, where previous entries in the series have exhibited Rule #10, it is debatable whether or or not Mouth Brood fails to exhibit good taste—though perhaps that may ultimately be up to how the players and their characters react to it.

The scenario is self-contained detailing a biodome and its almost fizzing, swarming ecology filled with strange creatures that the intruding Player Characters—or indeed anyone—will have never seen before. It consists of the outer cover with a map of the biodome on the inside, descriptions of its locations layered out over three levels, from the Undergrowth up through the Canopy to the Emergent, plus a lengthy Bestiary of some eighteen creatures and species. Like all Manifestus Omnivorous titles, it is bound with an elastic band and thus all of the pages can be separated. The advice for the Game Master is to use the Undergrowth, Canopy, and Emergent pages as a screen, and refer to the pages of the Bestiary during play. There is a set-up too, that of Astralem Biotech team, and there are notes on the roles, gear, and advantages of the Expedition Leader, Ecologist, Micro-biologist, and the Bio-Mathematician. These can be copied and given to the players, but the Game Master can also use them as prompts to create pre-generated Player Characters for the roleplaying game of her choice.

Mouth Brood is also a hex-crawl—though very much a mini-hex-crawl, there being seven locations for each of the biodome’s three levels (Undergrowth, Canopy, and Emergent). Each of the hexes is given a thumbnail description, but the bulk of Mouth Brood, twenty-four pages out of its thirty-six, is devoted to its Bestiary. Each entry is accorded a fantastic illustration, a description, a table of things it is doing or is being done to it, and details of what it is doing when observed. They lifeforms of all sorts, such as Acris Motorium, a semi-mobile plant with acrid acid for its sap; the similarly motile Cryptostoma Dilitatus, a swarm-like organism which can contract and spread, and stings in proportional response to contact with it; and the Velox Sanguinus, the brachial apex predator with two sets of jaws, one in its swiveling head, the other in its belly. There is something quite verdant, fetid, and even feverish about the inventiveness of all of these creatures, which could be taken from the pages of Mouth Brood and used elsewhere if the Game Master so desired.

Mouth Brood is primarily a setting, a small environment awaiting the intrusion of the Player Characters, the creatures and species in the biodome reacting to their invasive presence. There is a slight here, that of the biological team collecting samples (and a bit more), but as an exploratory scenario and a hexcrawl scenario, Mouth Brood is very much player driven, the Game Master having to the extensive ecology react to them for much their Player Characters’ explorations. In some ways, this does require a fair bit of preparation upon the part of the Game Master, who has to understand how each of the different species will react to the Player Characters’ presence and actions. In terms of play, there will be a lot of movement and then just being still and observing, such there is almost something sedentary to the scenario. That will probably change once the Player Characters come to the notice of the biodome’s predators. If using pre-generated Player Characters, the Game Master might also want to add some storyhooks and relationships to them, not only to encourage interaction, but also to ramp up the tension when the dangers of the ecology within the biodome become apparent.

Physically, as with the other titles in the  Manifestus Omnivorous series, Mouth Brood is very nicely presented. The cover is sturdy card, whilst the pages are of a thick paper stock, giving the book a lovely feel in the hand. The scenario is decently written, if a little spare in places, but the artwork is excellent and when shown to the players, should have them exclaiming, Ugh what’s that?”, at just about every entry in the Bestiary. 

Inspired by films such as Annihilation and Roadside Picnic, Mouth Brood presents a hellishly febrile ecological unknown, its self-contained nature suggesting that its horror is all inside, when ultimately, the true horror is realising the consequences of what would happen if it were outside…