[Free RPG Day 2026] The Archivist’s Curse

Now in its nineteenth year, Free RPG Day for 2026 took place on Saturday, June 27th. As per usual, Free RPG Day consisted of an array of new and interesting little releases, which are traditionally tasters for forthcoming games to be released at GenCon the following August, but others are support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera or a quick-start. This included dice, miniatures, vouchers, and more. Unfortunately, due to vagaries of International Customs, Free RPG Day in the UK did not take place until Saturday, 22nd August.

This review is possible due to the generosity of Waylands Forge in Birmingham.

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Quick-starts are a means of trying out a roleplaying game before you buy. Each should provide a Game Master with sufficient background to introduce and explain the setting to her players, the rules to run the scenario included, and a set of ready-to-play, pre-generated characters that the players can pick up and understand almost as soon as they have sat down to play. The scenario itself should provide an introduction to the setting for the players as well as to the type of adventures that their characters will have and just an idea of some of the things their characters will be doing on said adventures. All of which should be packaged up in an easy-to-understand booklet whose contents, with a minimum of preparation upon the part of the Game Master, can be brought to the table and run for her gaming group in a single evening’s session—or perhaps two. And at the end of it, Game Master and players alike should ideally know whether they want to play the game again, perhaps purchasing another adventure or even the full rules for the roleplaying game.

Alternatively, if the Game Master already has the full rules for the roleplaying game the quick-start is for, then what it provides is a sample scenario that she still run as an introduction or even as part of her campaign for the roleplaying game. The ideal quick-start should entice and intrigue a playing group, but above all effectively introduce and teach the roleplaying game, as well as showcase both rules and setting.

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What is it?
The Archivist’s Curse is the quick-start for Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying, the roleplaying game based on Vaesen: Spirits and Monsters of Scandinavian Folklore as collected and illustrated by Johan Egerkrans, and published by Free League Publishing. It is an investigative horror game set in Scandinavia during the nineteenth century that explores the clash between modernity and folklore.

The Archivist’s Curse is a forty-four page, full colour booklet.

How long will it take to play?
The Archivist’s Curse can be played in roughly a single session or two.

What else do you need to play?
The Archivist’s Curse needs at least six six-sided dice per player and a set of cards numbered from one to ten. These can be taken from an ordinary deck of playing cards.

Who do you play?
The Archivist’s Curse includes five pre-generated Player Characters. The consist of an Occultist, Private Detective, Servant, Academic, and Vampire Hunter, who all five have the ‘Sight’ and can see vaesen.

How is a Player Character defined?

A Player Character in Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying is defined by his Attributes and Skills; a Motivation, a Trauma, and a Dark Secret; a Talent and a relationship with another Player Character, a memento, and some equipment. The Attributes are Physique, Precision, Logic, and Empathy, and rated between two and five, whilst Skills are rated between one and five. Motivation explains why the Player Character is prepared to hunt down and confront vaesen, whilst Trauma explains why or how the Player Character gained the Sight; and the Dark Secret is something that the Player Character wants to keep. Each Talent is a special ability, such as ‘Medium’, which enables the Player Character to predict other people’s futures and to contact the dead or ‘Elementary’ which lets a player ask the Game Master to explain how certain clues are connected once per session. A Memento is a possession which the Player Character holds dear that by interacting with it, will help him overcome a Condition.

How do the mechanics work?

The Archivist’s Curse and Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying uses the Year Zero Engine. When a player wants his character to undertake an action, he rolls a number of six-sided dice equal to a combination of his character’s Attribute and Skill, plus whatever bonus or penalty dice the Game Master awards, such as from the situation or a Talent. To succeed, the player typically needs to roll a single Success or six—though sometimes it may be more—on any of the dice. Extra Successes can be expended to gain various effects. In combat, this will be more damage, but in other situations it will usually mean learning more information.

If a player fails a roll, he can instead choose to Push the roll. This enables the player to reroll the dice which did not result in Successes in the hope of getting some or more Successes. Doing so will inflict a Condition on the Player Character, either Exhausted, Battered, or Wounded for Physical Conditions, or Angry, Frightened, or Hopeless for Mental Conditions. Suffer too many of either Physical or Mental Conditions and the Player Character will be Broken, meaning that he cannot act.

How does combat work?

Initiative in Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying uses Initiative Cards, numbered from one to ten, which determines when a Player Character, NPC, or Vaesen acts each round, though it is possible to swap Initiative cards between Player Characters and/or friendly NPCs each Round. In each Round, a Player Character has a Slow action and a Fast action. A Fast action is typically movement or a reaction—such as dodging or parrying—whilst a Slow action will usually be an attack, whether ranged or melee. Each weapon has a base damage, which can be increased with extra successes on an attack roll, whilst some weapons also grant a bonus to attack rolls. Damage from combat is also inflicted in terms of Conditions.

In general, vaesen cannot be killed or destroyed in combat. Investigators in Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying usually confront and fight a vaesen long enough to perform a ritual that will drive it away or destroy it.

How does fear work?

A Fear test is required if a Player Character encounters a vaesen or magic, the number of Successes required determined by the Fear value of the creature, magic, or situation. Although it can be bolstered by the presence of allies, if a Fear test is failed, the Player Character can suffer from one or more metal conditions, but will be Terrified. In which case, the Player Character will either flee, freeze, faint, or frenzy. A Terrified Player Character can attempt a Fear Test on subsequent Rounds to act normally.

What do you play?

The Archivist’s Curse includes the scenario of the same name. It is not a traditional scenario for Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying in terms of its set-up. Usually, after the Player Characters have each had an encounter with one of the vaesen, they are individually invited to join The Society, an organisation dedicated to investigating and cataloguing the vaesen and their clashes with mankind. Unfortunately, The Society was dissolved and nobody has been investigating the vaesen for decades. The Player Characters are handed the keys to its decrepit headquarters, Castle Gyllencreutz, in the Swedish city of Uppsala, and directed to begin its activities once again. In ‘The Archivist’s Curse’ all five Player characters have reasons to visit the National Archives on Knights’ Isle in central Stockholm in Sweden. The set-up also requires that two Player Characters appear first in the scenario, one after the other.

The scenario is entirely location bound in the four-storey building of The National Archives. It combines a haunting and a family tragedy which are revealed over the course of the Player Characters’ investigation and exploration of The National Archives—the Esoteric and Egyptology Sections in particular. There are plenty of handouts, a superb map of The National Archives, and a countdown of weird and spooky events which will drive the story to its climax. Overall, it is a very well done investigation.

However, ‘The Archivist’s Curse’ is set up to tell the story of one particular Player Character, whilst another Player Character has been hired to investigate the other. This calls for careful roleplaying upon the part of the two players assigned those characters. The scenario also does not involve traditional vaesen and players expecting a Nordic threat may be disappointed. The scenario also works best with all five Player Characters.

‘The Archivist’s Curse’ can be played as a one-off scenario, but it could also be used as a prequel, especially if the players decide to keep the same characters from the scenario. This can be as a prequel to both the Vaesen – Starter Set and Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying itself, the former providing a short, but effective introduction to Castle Gyllencreutz and the activities of The Society. Another option is as a prequel to Vaesen: City of my Nightmares, an urban-based campaign set in and around Stockholm which involves a scenario in The National Archives.

Is there anything missing?
No. The Archivist’s Curse has everything that a Game Master needs to run the included scenario.

Is it easy to prepare?
Yes. The Archivist’s Curse uses a familiar set of rules in the Year Zero Engine and their explanation is very clear and includes several examples of play.

Is it worth it?
Yes. The Archivist’s Curse is well-appointed with great artwork, good handouts, and a superb set of floorplans of The National Archives. The scenario is excellent and a very good introduction to Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying.

The Archivist’s Curse is published by Free League Publishing, and is available to download here (coming soon).

Vaesen d’Italia

Italian Chronicles is a supplement for Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying, the Roleplaying Game of investigative folklore horror set in nineteenth century Scandinavia published by Free League Publishing. There has been a push to explore the set-up at the heart of Vasen, that of the clash between folklore and modernity in an age of industrialisation, shifting populations, changing attitudes, and forgetting the customs of past as a secret organisation attempts to catalogue those forgotten customs and prevent the clashes between folklore and modernity in countries beyond Scandinavia. However, most of them have remained north of the Alps, leaving the rich folklore and culture clashes of Southern Europe under much sunnier climes unexplored. Italian Chronicles introduces us to the world of the Vaesen and the Society in nineteenth century Mythic Italy. This includes a discussion of the conflicts which lie at the heart of Italian society in the late nineteenth century—the rich versus the poor, the nobility versus the bourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie versus the proletariat; and the north-south divide between the industrialised and modernising north and the agricultural, poorer south. It provides basic introductions to the cities, many of whom are undergoing major transformations as they industrialise and peasants emigrate looking for work and a better life. There are descriptions of the leading Italian great and the good of the period, societies and groups active up and down the country; details of mysterious places; and a short history of the Society and its investigation of Vaesen in Italy. All of which is supported with three new archetypes and six new supernatural creatures.

Italian Chronicles is published as part of the Free League Workshop and starts with a description of Mythic Italy. This highlights the notable divides in the country during the period and its important cities. These include the northern industrial triangle of Turin, Milan, and Genoa, the medieval and Renaissance grandeur of Bologna and Florence, before moving south through the splendour of Rome as it rushes to be the city’s new capital, and down to Naples and Palermo, undergoing their own transformation with their loss of independence. Turin is the ‘magical city’, Italy esoteric and occultic capital which has its own zones of light and dark influencing magic in the city, whilst also standing in an alchemical triangle of ‘white magic’ along with Prague and Lyon, and an alchemical triangle of ‘black magic’ with London and San Francisco. How these zones affect magic in the city is not explored, but short descriptions of numerous arcane and occultic sites across the city, as well as legends up and down Italy, are included.

Numerous notables, including Cavour, Garibaldi, Verdi, and Puccini are given thumbnail portraits, alongside less well known figures such as Carmine Crocco, the so-called ‘Napoleon or the General of the Brigands’, the spiritualist Eusapia Palladino, and Cesere Lombroso, the father of modern criminology. The most notable of the societies and groups alongside the actual Society is the Inquisition, which is still operating in the nineteenth century and which the Society suspects of harbouring all manner of secrets, of already knowing about Vaesen, and of some of its members actually possessing the Sight that the Society’s members possess. The Inquisition has long suppressed occult practices and broken op occult organisations, most recently in the seventeenth century, the Accademia della Mandragora. One survivor of this suppression found refuge with the Society in Scandinavia and another, a herbalist, found refuge in southern Italy. The herbalist would later found the Order of Herbalists, based in Turin.

The three new archetypes are Teacher, Notable, and Migrant. Of these, the Teacher and the Migrant are obvious in what they are, whereas the Notable is not. It might be an administrator or a lawyer or a tax collector and some context would have been useful to make clear what it is. The Migrant does a new Talent, ‘Folk Wisdom’, which gives him a knowledge of folk traditions and customs as well as fairy tales, legends, and myths concerning supernatural creatures. Unfortunately, this has not been translated from the original Italian.

Numerous mysterious places and legends detailed as well as six new supernatural creatures. They include the Borda is a witch-like that haunts the swamps and marshes of the north looking to strangle the unwary with rope or ligature; Sprites are pranksters that differ in how they look across Italy, but the Monacello live in old houses in cities, has the appearance of a hooded monk, and can bring good luck, and the Salvanel, is wilder and dresses in leaves, and often makes travellers in the woods get lost; and the Marrabbecca is a shapeshifter that likes to live in the dark or shadows, preferably in old wells and water cisterns, from where it bewitches those who lean too close to the well such that they throw themselves in and are drowned. Besides their stats, all of the creature write-ups include secrets of the creatures that can be used against them and example conflicts that the Game Master can develop into fuller encounters.

Physically, Italian Chronicles is a basic affair. Unfortunately both artwork and writing are amateurish, but are at least in English. Not all of the supplement is.

One of the problems with Italian Chronicles and its version of Italy in the nineteenth century is that it attempts to present, “[A]n idealized, slightly timeless version, suitable as a backdrop for the activities of the Player Characters and the peninsula’s supernatural inhabitants.” Where that works in Vaesen is because its setting of Sweden is singular whole for whole of the nineteenth century, whereas Italy is not. In fact, Italy does not actually exist as a political entity until the Risorgimento—the unification of Italy—in 1861. Before that, the Italian peninsula consisted of a mix of kingdoms and duchies, some which were dominated by neighbouring France and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, plus the Papal State. Arguably, Italy was not fully Italy as we recognise today until the capture of Rome in 1871. And before that, before the Napoleon Wars, the Italian peninsula was even more balkanised. Now it is this balkanisation that underpins many of the geographical, cultural, and linguistic divides in Italy and thus the conflicts in Italian Chronicles, whilst the others come from the drive to modernity and industrialisation that followed unification. The result is that even though it does not say so, Italian Chronicles really only focuses on the last forty years—and arguably—the last thirty years of the nineteenth century.

The authors do make the point that, “History should be a servant that gives the game a distinctive flavour rather than a master that stifles possibilities.” Which is a valid point, and if you are not aware of this history, then this perhaps less of an issue. If you are, then it feels as if that servant and those sixty years of history are being ignored and the whole of the century is being flattened into its last third.

However, perhaps the biggest problem with Italian Chronicles is that the description of its equivalent of the ‘Society’ is underwritten with a very short history and description and an address. We are never told how different it is to those in other countries and consequently the starting point or base of operations for any investigations into the Vaesen in Italy lacks character.

There is a surprising amount of content in Italian Chronicles, but most of it varies between short and brief, meaning that if the Game Master wants to set her campaign in Italy or send his Player Characters to Italy, she is going to have to do a lot of research herself to develop its content. There is no official supplement for Italy for Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying and until there is, Italian Chronicles will have to do, but what it does is provide is only the most basic of introductions.

Dungeons & Disapora

For centuries, the Third Horizon—a system of thirty-six star systems—and a wave of colonial expansion and exploration reached through a series of portals built and abandoned long ago by an alien species now known as the Portal Builders, has existed in a state of peaceful isolation. Contact had been long lost with the First Horizon and the Second Horizon following an interstellar war which ended in the portals being permanently closed to the previous Horizons. Yet the Third Horizon was never without its tensions—tensions that would be exploited from within and without. Most notably the latter as the First Horizon fought to take control of the Third Horizon and the Second Horizon fought to prevent it, their proxies continuing the conflict across the ribbon of the stars that made the Third Horizon and changing it for ever. Some fled the war and never saw its outcome. Their ragtag fleet went in search of a signal emanating far from the Third Horizon, said to be from the Nadir, sent with its sister colony vessel, the Zenith, from Earth to Aldebaran, centuries before. The Zenith made contact with, and reinvigorated, the Third Horizon. The Nadir disappeared into the Dark Space between stars. The twelve year journey, known as the Long Traverse, brought the fleet to a system with only two gas giants it called Jumuah where the signal was lost and that was its final stop. The star portal which would hopefully have led onward, hopefully to more prosperous worlds was dead. The fleet was stranded. The survivors were forced to adapt. They labelled their new home the ‘Lost Horizon’ and founded ‘The Ship City of Coriolis the Eternal and Jumuah the First and Last’, or Ship City, in a hollowed out asteroid which they expanded with the hulls of ships no longer space worthy. That was two hundred years ago.

Almost a century after its founding, prophet-physicists made a startling discovery—the ‘Slipstream’. It enabled Greatships, gigantic, sturdy vessels capable of withstanding the buffeting ripples of the Slipstream, to navigate at near Faster-than-Light speeds to other systems. In time, following the River of Stars, the people of Jumuah and the Ship would expand beyond the Lost Horizon and establish eleven settlements and outposts across what is called the Charted Sphere. Now, despite its dangers, travel aboard the Greatships has become almost routine. In addition to new worlds and new systems, the explorers also made discoveries.

They found ruins. They found signs that Humanity was not the first to settle the Great Dark and the region around Charted Space. They found Gardens, Shallows, Structures, and Deep Vaults. They began to learn about them by translating the glyphs left on the ruins and the artefacts the explorers and archaeologists found. They also found the Blight. Whether it appears as blooms, as frost, as dust, or as ice, Blight is a plague that corrupts both structures and biology, that can kill and destroy, but also leave its sufferers with strange visions. And the deeper that explorers and archaeologists delve, the greater the danger of Blight. Today, almost two hundred years after the Long Traverse began, the Explorers’ Guild has risen to direct expeditions to the twelve most significant sites discovered to date and to search for other ruins.

This is the setting for Coriolis: The Great Dark. Published by Free League Publishing following a successful Kickstarter campaign, it is sequel to Coriolis: The Third Horizon, a more traditional Science fiction roleplaying game with strong Middle Eastern themes and flavour. It marks a radical departure in terms of style and tone as well as what you play in Coriolis: The Third Horizon. In Coriolis: The Great Dark, the Player Characters are not the crew of a spaceship, travelling from one world to the next, trading, investigating, fighting, and running, as they would be Coriolis: The Third Horizon and many other Science Fiction roleplaying game. Instead, they members of, or working for, the Explorers’ Guild. As teams, they will travel aboard a Greatship on the Slipstream, be dropped off in system before the Greatship departs, and make their own way to a world or moon or asteroid and explore a ruin, delving deep into its reaches, looking for discoveries, artefacts, and information. However, time is short, resources are limited, and there is the constant threat of the Blight. It feels like the Player Characters are delving into dungeons in deep space, but if this is dungeoneering Science Fiction style, it is a style—and setting—that is inspired by nineteenth-century expeditions, deep-sea diving, and pulp archaeology. The dangers of the unknown are not the only threats that the explorers face in entering the ruins. The criminal organisation known as the Black Toad sends teams into ruins to harvest the Blight and turn it into a drug that is smoked for its hallucinogenic properties. Acts of piracy have been attributed to a group known as the Wreckers and there are creatures and other things lurking in the ruins.

A Player Character is defined by his Profession, attributes, Health, Hope, and Heart, Talents, Quirk, and Keepsake. The Professions are Artist, Enforcer, Esoteric, Odd Jobber, Roughneck, Scholar, Scoundrel, and Traveller. Each provides sample names, gives a key attribute and Talents, some equipment, and a Speciality, which grants an extra Talent. Of the Professions, the Esoteric is a mystic or prophet driven reshape the peoples of the Lost Horizon and the Odd Jobber covers a range of roles such as Guild Clerk, Alley Cook, or Artefact Dealer. All of the Professions provide a variety of roles and associated Talents each of which expand a Player Character’s background. Most Talents can be taken up to three times and add a bonus base die for each level. For example, ‘Streetwise’ adds a bonus base die per Talent level to locate stolen goods, find a contact, or learn rumours, which ‘Jury-Rig’ does the same for crafting or repairing mechanical devices and components. A Player Character has six attributes—Strength, Agility, Logic, Perception, Insight, and Empathy—and three stats—Health, Hope, and Heart—which measure how much trauma he can suffer before he is broken. The attributes range in value between one and five, except the key attribute for a Profession. His Quirk represents a flaw that when roleplayed will earn a Player Character Experience Points and a Keepsake his means of recovering Hope.

To create character, a player selects an origin, chooses a Profession and Speciality, divides twenty-four between his character’s attributes, chooses three more levels of Talents from the Profession, choose a Quirk, a Keepsake, and some equipment, and then a name, appearance, and a reason why the character became an Explorer. Many of these elements can be rolled for as well.

Name: Chandra Koulidis

Profession: Odd Jobber

Speciality: Stair Peddler

ATTRIBUTES

Strength 2 Agility 4 Logic 4

Perception 3 Insight 4 Empathy 5

Health 6 Hope 9 Heart 7

TALENTS

Actor (1), Charmer (2), Cultural Savant (1), Mentalist (1), Streetwise (1)

Origin: Among the Alleys and Shanties of Aluminium Bay

Associated Faction: The Black Toad

Contact: Cook Lissa Losoi

Quirk: Wears makeup

Keepsake: Piece of a Builder shard

Appearance: Unruly hair

Reason for becoming an Explorer: To escape the drudgery of everyday life

Equipment: Fancy clothing, waking pills, bottle of shroom brandy

Mechanically, Coriolis: The Great Dark, uses the Year Zero engine, first seen in Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days. To have a character undertake an action, a player rolls a number of Base Dice equal to a combination of attribute and applicable Talent, plus Gear Dice. A single roll of a six (or the symbol on the custom dice for Coriolis: The Great Dark) indicates a Success. Multiple Successes improve the outcome, especially in combat and conflict. If the roll is a failure and no sixes are rolled, or a player wants more Successes, he can Push the roll. This enables him to reroll any dice which did not result in a one or six. A roll can be Pushed once and any rolls of one on the Base Dice indicate that the Player Character loses a point of Hope, whilst any rolls of one on the Gear Dice indicate that the item of equipment used is damaged and needs to be repaired, and if happens multiple times, it will break. Other Player Characters can help another on a task, each one contributing an extra Base Die to the player making the roll.

Conflict in Coriolis: The Great Dark uses the same core mechanics. Initiative uses a deck of cards numbered from one to ten and the rules for conflict cover both ranged and close combat, plus social conflict. A combatant can move once and do one action per round. Reactions, such as blocking or dodging, are counted as actions and so use up a Player Character’s action in a round. A single Success is required to inflict the base damage for an attack, but extra Successes can be expended to increase damage as well as other effects. In close combat can be used to wrestle an object from an opponent, trip him, or push him away. Ranged combat allows for aimed fire, full auto, cover, and so on. Armour has the potential to protect against damage, requiring a roll and Successes to be rolled, to be effective. If a Player Character suffers more damage that reduces his Health to zero, he is Broken and cannot act. Critical damage is inflicted if the number of successes rolled are equal to, or exceed, the ‘Crit Threshold’ for the weapon. This necessitates a roll on the ‘Critical Injuries’ table. Two critical injuries will both NPCs and Player Characters.

Social combat is handled via rolls versus an opponent’s Empathy or Strength attributes. The rules also cover chases and vehicle combat, including spaceship combat. The rules for both are simply handled and overall, the rules for Coriolis: The Great Dark are a very traditional version of the Year Zero mechanics.

The play of Coriolis: The Great Dark switches back and forth between life and intrigue in Ship City and exploring the Ruins in the Great Dark. To support the former, there is a detailed description of Ship City, its districts and the powerful guilds—the Navigators Guild, the Machinists Guild, the Gardeners Guild, and the Coriolites, the families that adhere to the traditions of the Third Horizon, and the Black Toad, the shadowy criminal cartel operating throughout the Charted Sphere, as well as the less powerful, though still influential Explorers Guild. The background on the rest of Charted Space is not as detailed, but there is more than enough information to bring it to life on the Player Characters’ expeditions.

Expeditions form the second part and primary focus of play in Coriolis: The Great Dark and that starts with the creation of a Crew. There are five positions on the Crew—Delver, Scout, Burrower, Guard, and Archaeologist. The Delver leads the way into Ruins; the Scout looks for hidden dangers ahead; the Burrower digs paths and secures routes through tunnels and caves; the Guard protects the Crew; and the Archaeologist interprets the Ruins, as well as glyphs and artefacts found. The Explorers Guild trains Crew members in particular Manoeuvres. For example, the Burrower can use ‘Destabilise’ in conjunction with an explosive charge to destroy a wall or blockage to either open up a route or block it, whilst the Delver can use ‘Rally’ to restore Hope or remove a Condition for all nearby Explorers. These are extra combat actions that can be used specifically during a delve.

In addition to some personal equipment, the Explorers Guild provides the Crew with a rover and an interplanetary shuttle. Both will be carried aboard the Greatship that ferries the Crew to the system destination where it drops the Crew off. The oddest item that the Explorers Guild loans the Crew is a Bird, also called a ‘Garuda’, which serves as a guardian spirit and Blight-finder. They are actually bioengineered artifacts discovered in the Ruins and awakened, willing to co-operate with the peoples of Ship City. Many are kept as companions and there is specific Bird Market in Ship City. In the illustrations, the Birds have a hawk-like appearance. Although they vary in terms of type and ability, the Birds are indispensable when it comes to exploring Ruins. In particular, their ‘Clear Blight’, ‘Blight Scan’, and ‘Soak Blight’ powers help a Crew keep safe on a delve. Whilst the individual Player Characters will earn Experience Points, collectively as a Crew they can earn Crew Points for taking on a challenge, going on a trek or delve, making discoveries, and so on. These can be spent to learn new manoeuvres, as well as to improve the vehicles and the Bird. Effectively, improving the vehicles and the Bird are the equivalent of the community improvement rules found in other roleplaying games from Free League Publishing. Plus, there are Talents which help a Player Character interact with his Crew’s Bird more easily. Choosing a Bird and both a rover and a shuttle is a collective endeavour that comes at the end of Player Character generation.

Name: Fench

Type: Guide

Health: 4 Energy: 3

Appearance: Ink black with a long beak and bold personality

Special Power: Farsight

Basic Powers: Attack, Defend, Clear Blight, Blight Scan, Sock Blight, Glow

Expeditions can be mounted for many reasons, such as finding new sites to colonise, prospecting for new resources, and even to find new Slipstream routes, but the iconic type of expedition is the ‘Delve’ into Ruins. There are rules for land exploration, which essentially covers the Crew touching down in its shuttle and then making its way to the Ruin site by rover. Once there, the rules shift. Not just in intensity, but also in their axis. If the journey to a Ruin is horizontal across the landscape, the Delve swings through ninety degrees into the vertical. Not every Delve has this verticality, but most do, and it makes a Delve feel more like spelunking or potholing. Of course, one of the inspirations in Coriolis: The Great Dark is deep-sea diving and this is reflected in the heavy suits that the Crew members wear and are depicted in the art. A Delve also has the feel of a mountain climbing expedition and mechanically by the journeying rules in other roleplaying games from Free League Publishing. Mountain climbing because a Crew has to keep track of Supply—consumables including oxygen, water, food, energy, ammunition, and light—and establish camps where Supply caches can be laid up, and the journeying rules because the Player Characters will have specific roles on an expedition or Delve.

Like those journeying rules, in a Delve a Crew is trying to get to a key location or locations. This has a specific procedure, first making a Delve roll to move into the next area, then dealing with any hazards, and dealing and suffering from any Blight. Blight can be encountered anywhere, but is primarily associated with Ruins and often with the strange creatures and things discovered there. The Delve suits that each Crewmember wears provides some protection against the Blight, but if a Crewmember does suffer from Blight, it reduces his Heart stat. If this is reduced, his player rolls on the ‘Blight Manifestation’ table to represent its direct effect, which can be temporary or permanent. For example, the Crewmember might be stricken with uncontrollable shivering that leaves him Exhausted; temporal dissonance that causes lapses in time perception such that the Crewmember always goes last in combat; crystalline blooms grow from the Crewmember’s skin causing pain and piercing his Delve suit; and even ‘Wander the Pale Halls’ after the Crewmember falls into a coma, experiencing vivid hallucinations of the Pale Halls, leaving him permanently Broken.

The play switches to more traditional exploration once the Crew reaches a location. Here its members can search for artefacts, shards, and secrets. The Game Master has a good set of tables for creating Delves, defining its age, purpose, type, depth, theme, quirks, discoveries to be made, Blight levels encountered, and more. She can populate it with threats and creatures, the latter from the roleplaying game’s extensive bestiary, and even rival parties also exploring the Ruin. This is supported by an extensive discussion on the nature of the Ruins and the themes of the roleplaying game—Space as a wild sea, a sense of wonder, the mystery and enigma of the Builders and who they were, as well as intrigue, hope, and teamwork. The advice for the Game Master is excellent, covering not just running the roleplaying game, but also creating her own content for it. The Game Master is also supported with a sample scenario, ‘The Black Ziggurat’ in which the Explorers Guild sends the Crew to look for a missing Navigator near the eponymous site. The scenario emphasises the Delve aspect of play, but adds some intrigue into the mix as well.

Lastly, ‘The Outcast Explorer’ presents the option to play Coriolis: The Great Dark in solo mode. In these rules, the player still roleplays an Explorer, but one who has been spurned by everyone except the Explorers Guild. It sponsors the Outcast to explore the Red Garden, a vast valley located on Ilum, one of the moons of the two gas giants in the Jumuah System, which is dotted with labyrinthine Builders ruins. However, the Explorers Guild does not care how the Outcast conducts his expedition or if he survives. If he does, the Explorers Guild will simply sponsor him again. The rules are solidly serviceable for what you would expect for solo play, though of course, they do lose that shared sense of trepidation and wonder and awe at exploring the unknown. In the meantime, there is nothing to stop the Game Master visiting some of the tables for ‘The Outcast Explorer’ for further inspiration for Delves of her own.

If there is a downside to Coriolis: The Great Dark, it is that it does not explore the aftermath of expeditions and Delves as well as it should. What the Player Characters are rewarded with by the Explorers Guild and how their discoveries might change perspectives on who and what the Builders were and so on. The likelihood is that some of the ramifications will be explored in future releases, such as the campaign, The Flowers of Algorab.

Physically, Coriolis: The Great Dark is very well presented. It is well written and the artwork is excellent, capturing that sense of wonder almost at the end of the universe and the strangeness of what the Player Characters might find below, coupled with the slightly ramshackle feel of Ship City.

There can be no doubt that Coriolis: The Great Dark is a radical shift Coriolis: The Third Horizon. Where the setting of Coriolis: The Third Horizon was more open and traditional in what the Player Characters could do and more obvious in its Middle Eastern inspiration, Coriolis: The Great Dark is constrained and less obvious in its inspiration. There still is a Middle Eastern inspiration, but less is made of it, as if the culture of Ship City has evolved and changed in response to its change of circumstances, giving it a refreshing unfamiliarity. There is grime and grit to the setting too, its ramshackle nature have less of the sheen of Coriolis: The Third Horizon and more of a Blue Collar Science Fiction look and feel. There are likely more types of stories that can be told and roleplayed in the setting of Coriolis: The Great Dark, but its core activity is Delving and exploration, discovering secrets, revealing mysteries and experiencing the wonder and awe of both the past—what the Builders left behind—and Charted Space. Coriolis: The Great Dark brings a sense of cosmic curiosity and the mystery of the unknown to Science Fiction roleplaying, ready to be experienced, for discoveries to be made, and secrets to be revealed.

Vows & Vaesen

Vaesen: City of my Nightmares is a campaign for Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying, the Roleplaying Game of investigative folklore horror set in nineteenth century Scandinavia published by Free League Publishing. It differs from campaigns and scenarios for the roleplaying game in that they are primarily set along that boundary between the rural and the raw countryside where modernity and progress clashes with tradition and folklore as the knowledge of the customs that enabled Vaesen and man to live alongside each other is being lost. Instead, Vaesen: City of my Nightmares takes in or near the ‘Venice of the North’, the city of Stockholm. Here, in the Swedish capital, the Player Characters will still be confronted with the clash between the old and the new. Between science and savagery, monarchism and unionism, new institutions replacing the old, and quite literally the past and the future, but all driven by all too human fear, ambition, and revenge. This is a city-based campaign that will involve the Player Characters in the doings of the nouveau rich, the avantgarde, and the poor and the oppressed, and more importantly in terms of the roleplaying game and its background, will involve them in both the history of the Society they belong to and the history of its founder. As a consequence of all of this, Vaesen: City of my Nightmares is better suited to be run with experienced Player Characters, ones who have conducted several investigations, thus enabling their players to appreciate the campaign’s contrast in terms of setting and the revelations that will be uncovered as part of their investigations. The campaign is ideally run after the events of Vaesen: Seasons of Mystery and whilst it will be helpful have copies of Johan Egerkrans’ The Undead and Vaesen to hand, they are not absolutely necessary. In the case of the latter, the ‘Codex Occultum’ from the Vaesen – Starter Set is an easy substitute. Lastly, although Vaesen: City of my Nightmares is set in and around the city of Stockholm, it can be shifted to other European cities if the Game Master prefers. Of course, the Game Master will need to change the setting details to fit the new location.

Vaesen: City of my Nightmares was funded as part of the joint Kickststarter for Vaesen: Mythic Carpathia. It takes place in late nineteenth century Sweden and involves numerous historical figures that have been adjusted slightly to fit the setting, its events playing out over the course of a year and consisting of four parts with several months in between. This enables the Game Master to run a scenario or two between the events of Vaesen: City of my Nightmares, which is also the best way in which to run it. There is a plot that runs through the whole campaign, but it is not a strong one. Certainly not strong enough to drive the Player Characters to continue their investigation from one part to the next directly and this is reflected by the months long gaps between scenarios and the instigating factor for each scenario. This is the cork magnet, August T. Lysander, a self-made wealthy capitalist, who has taken an interest in the activities of the Society and made several donations to keep its current incarnation operating. In turn, he will ask the Player Characters for their help and reward them for giving it. Of course, these adventures can be run their own, but that would negate the plot to the campaign. All four scenarios are organised in the same fashion. They start with the background and breakdown the Countdown of events that will occur as time goes on, ultimately leading to a Catastrophe if the mystery remains unsolved and the situation unresolved. This is followed by a list of the clues that become available after each step of the Countdown, pleasingly with the core, key clues clearly marked, and then the scenario’s pertinent locations. Each scenario ends with a breakdown of the climax and its aftermath. The organisation is consistent and accessible throughout, and in addition the scenarios are supported with a good overview of Stockholm in the late nineteenth century accompanied by excellent period maps. Notably, the period map of the city is included on a poster map in the book, but further, the back of this poster map is presented as the front cover for a copy of the City Gazette, Stockholm’s conservative newspaper. It is full of clues and hints for the four scenarios in Vaesen: City of my Nightmares, but especially the first scenario. Each of the scenarios should take roughly two to three sessions’ worth of play to complete.

The first part of the campaign is ‘Scent of a Killer’, which takes . Businessman August T. Lysander makes a request of the Society. Of late, the Town Between Two Bridges district of Stockholm has beset by a series of killings, common criminals found ripped apart. Now a noted tenor at the Royal Swedish Opera has been found dead too, and so the newly founded Police Department is being pushed to investigate this death at the very least. However, the nature of the killings means that the police cannot make head nor tail of them, let alone any progress. The case is a matter of medical malpractice—of a sort, as is another situation in the city. Experienced players will likely work out what the problem is very quickly, but knowing what the problem is and both identifying the culprit and dealing with is another matter. This is a good start to the campaign, setting the tone for the urban mysteries that are to come.

The Player Characters get some respite the following year in ‘Song to the Moon’, when August T. Lysander invites them to stay with him and his family at his summer retreat on Goose Island in the Stockholm archipelago. This is not only to say thanks for their efforts helping the city Police Department the previous autumn, but also to consult with them about the nature of Vaesen. The beguiling idyll is broken by series of strange drownings that trap everyone on the island. The deaths are not the only strangeness pervading Goose Island, though the Player Characters may not uncover all of it. This scenario combines horror with a classic country house murder and hints that not all is well in the Lysander family.

August T. Lysander’s interest in Vaesen comes to the fore a matter of six months later in the autumn in ‘The Haunted Library’. He makes another request of the Society and the Player Characters, this time to help him to find the lost notes of Carl Linnaeus, the founder of the Society himself. He believes that they are hidden in a secret library beneath the National Archives on Knights Island in Stockholm. So far, he has been unable to penetrate far into the labyrinthine catacombs under the National Archives and thinks that those with the Sight—in other words, the Player Characters—will have better luck. The Player Characters will be faced with a maze, and despite being haunted by a number of ghosts, but will eventually be able to find their way to a ‘Chamber of Riddles’. Doing so reveals the strangest of encounters in the campaign—windows into the very past of Carl Linnaeus! These are essentially mini-mysteries that reveal the biologist and physician’s past and some of his secrets, many of which are pertinent to the mystery at the heart of the campaign.

‘The Haunted Library’ climaxes with the intervention of the Rosenbergers, the rival organisation which split from the Society. Their appearance in the campaign is an oddity since they have rarely appeared in previous scenarios for Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying and whilst they appear in the next and final scenario in campaign, the eponymous, ‘City of My Nightmares’, it is a pity that there is not greater scope to explore this aspect of the setting. It is perhaps a missed opportunity, perhaps one that the Game Master could follow up herself.

In ‘City of My Nightmares’, the Player Characters are once again recalled to Stockholm, but this time not by August T. Lysander. Instead, the letter is from a renowned spiritualist and artist who received a portentous message from a spirit during a séance. They find a city tense with worker unrest and filled with an uncertainty that quickly tips over into dance and destruction. Against this backdrop of increasing civil agitation, the Player Characters must work out who is being warned about in the message and find a way to stop the threat. This is a much more challenging scenario than the previous three, but it ultimately reveals the real threats that the Player Characters and the Society face, one of them a returning from previous scenarios. The ‘City of My Nightmares’ brings the campaign to a satisfying climax. After which, the Player Characters are likely going to be relieved to return to the countryside for a more traditional investigation!

If there is an issue with Vaesen: City of my Nightmares, it is one that is found in many scenarios and campaigns—the introduction of an NPC that the players and their characters have to trust. This is as much a problem with stories and players themselves and their not always trusting nature when it comes to such NPCs. It may well be a good idea to introduce the major NPC in this campaign and portray him as helpful and useful long before the campaign starts.

Physically, Vaesen: City of my Nightmares is very well presented. It is well written and easy to understand, whilst the cartography—old and new—has a pleasingly period feel. The artwork, including the handouts, is, of course, excellent.

Vaesen: City of my Nightmares is an engaging campaign, best played intermittently as written, that veteran players will enjoy, whilst wholly new players may find a bit more challenging. Vaesen: City of my Nightmares presents a contrasting backdrop, a chance to explore the history of the Society, and brings urban fantasy and horror to Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying, if only for a little while.

Work is Scary

“A new life awaits you in the Off-world colonies! A chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure!”—Blade Runner

Building Better Worlds is the second campaign supplement for Alien: The Roleplaying Game. It is unfortunately, the last supplement for Alien: The Roleplaying Game. It is fortunately, compatible with Alien: The Roleplaying Game – Evolved Edition, just as is every other release for Alien: The Roleplaying Game. There are several ways in which Alien: The Roleplaying Game can be played. It has three themes, two modes, and three models. The three themes are Space Horror and Sci-Fi Action, combined with a Sense of Wonder, whilst the two modes are Cinematic and Campaign. Cinematic mode is designed to emulate the drama of a film set within the Alien universe, and so emphasises high stakes, faster, more brutal play, and will be deadlier, whilst the Campaign mode is for longer, more traditional play, still brutal, if not deadly, but more survivable. Of the two, the Cinematic mode is suited to one-shots, to convention play, and as introductions to the mechanics and setting of Alien: The Roleplaying Game. The three models are Colonial Marines, essentially military missions like Aliens; Frontier Colonists—miners, prospectors, and settlers trying to survive for a better life on an all but barren planet; and Space Truckers—starship crews hauling goods and resources, as in Alien. Of the support to date, the trilogy of scenarios—Chariot of the Gods (also available in the Alien: The Roleplaying Game Starter Set), Destroyer of Worlds, and Heart of Darkness—have all been in the Cinematic mode, but for different models, focusing in turn upon Space Truckers, Colonial Marines, and Scientists. Together they form a thematically connected campaign, whereas the Colonial Marines Operations Manual not only detailed the United States Colonial Marine Corps, it also provided a full campaign for the Colonial Marines model. Building Better Worlds does the same, but for Frontier Colonists and Space Truckers.

Building Better Worlds is a book that will take you out—far out—into the Alien universe to the Outer Rim Territories as far as the frontier of the Weyland Isles Sector, and then quite literally beyond, that is, ‘Beyond the 20 Parsec Limit’ where there is little hope of help or rescue if an outpost or colony gets into trouble or needs rescuing. Building Better Worlds is a book about the future of humanity and finding new worlds, living on worlds and settlements far from Earth not always best suited to colonisation, about making the lengthy journeys between them, and surviving some of the deadliest of secrets and dangers in the galaxy. With Building Better Worlds, the Game Mother can run campaigns that focus on searching for and discovering new planets—hopefully suited to settlement or exploitation, if not both; on settling, working, and developing colonies; and on transporting goods and passengers between them. It is designed to be used by both player and Game Mother and so is book of two halves. The first half includes an explanation of the fundamentals of exploration and colonisation, the colonisation timeline, a mix of governmental non-governmental organisations, guidelines to creating suitable Player Characters as well as two new careers, numerous weapons, vehicles of all types, and other equipment, and some ideas around which campaigns could be based. This half, roughly a third of the book, is for the player, whilst the longer second half is for the Game Master. That half includes two catalogues, one of the systems and colonies of the frontier, the other of the parts of the Weyland-Yutani Extrasolar Species Catalogue that Weyland-Yutani does not want you to see, ‘The Lost Worlds’, a complete sandbox campaign beyond the frontier, and the expanded means to create new worlds and colonies, and for running a colony.

The supplement opens with the facts of colonisation and space travel. That it is heroic, that it is dirty, that it is dangerous, and that it is expensive. That explorers need to be hardy and well-trained and that the pay is invariably good, whilst colonists need to be even more hardy, prepared for life on another world, and expect to be paid little, if at all. Both are likely to need to pay back for their training, though this is easier for explorers who make more income, and both exploration and colonisation expeditions are going to be funded by wealthy corporations, governments, or institutions. The history of colonisation runs from 2029 CE and the Weyland Era to the 2190s and the Black Gold Rush following the terrorist nuclear bombings of petroleum supply colonies, the Colony Wars, and the Great Mother Mission launched to contact lost colonies. However, the explanation of events is organised by category and the timeline crammed into a two-page spread, so it is difficult to get a proper feel for the flow of events.

The organisations chapter includes descriptions of positions on Scientific Exploration Vehicular (SEV) Expeditions and the Extrasolar Colonization Administration (ECA), useful as potential roles for both Player Characters and NPCs, whilst the governmental organization and corporation descriptions are a mix of the familiar and unfamiliar. The Weyland-Yutani Corporation, the Seegson Corporation, United Americas, Colonial Marine Corps, Union of Progressive Peoples, and more will be familiar, expanding upon the information in both the Alien: The Roleplaying Game corebook and the Colonial Marines Operations Manual. The less familiar includes the Central Confederation of Africa, which is a minor, but rising interstellar power, and the New Albion Protectorate, a former colony located in the Weyland Isles, which seceded from the Three World Empire (3WE) and is prompting other colonies to follow suit in an effort commonly called ‘3WExit’ (you can tell that the author is British).

In terms of character options, Building Better World offers two new Careers as well as discussing how the different Careers from Alien: The Roleplaying Game can find their way onto exploration missions and colonisations expeditions and why they might join both, along with a table of possible personal agendas, which is very good. Each is also given two new Frontier Talents and two items of Frontier Gear. For example, the Frontier Talents for the Colonial Marshal are ‘Menacing’ and ‘Tough’, whilst the items of Frontier Gear are a ‘Bounty hunter/Investigator licence’ or ‘Handcuffs’. The two new Careers are the Wildcatter and the Entertainer. The Wildcatter is a prospector or surveyor who explores new worlds looking for resources or suitable sites for colonisation. The Entertainer is suggested as being a performer, croupier, unofficial club owner, waiter, barkeep, or other profession, which is less useful for most campaigns. It would need a static set-up—a base or a colony or a space station—to be a logical character option, and when things go sideways as they should, would also be the basis for a replacement Player Character.

There is a good selection of new gear and ships which can be found all across the frontier and beyond. New weapons, armour and suits, other equipment, vehicles, and spacecraft. The other equipment ranges from items as simple as a Folding Spade and Digging Fork (which of course, can be sued as a weapon) and as complex as the ‘Omni-Tech SDDG Sonic Deterrent Defence Grid’ designed to deter indigenous wildlife and pests from getting inside a perimeter. It is effective against humans though, inducing stress. The vehicles are typically large, multi-wheeled, and rugged, the COBB-C/D ‘Grasshopper Multivector Helijet’ an exception. The spaceships include the Lockmart Model 439SL Class 7 Excavator which has a heavy mining drill in its prow; the Weyland Heliades-Class, the first FTL-capable spacecraft; and colony vessels such as the Lockmart Model TB22C Borrowdale Class Transfer Vehicle and W-Y Model CY78.3 Affiance-Class U Colony Ship.

Surprisingly, the advice and suggestions for campaigns is in the half of Building Better Worlds for the player rather than in the section for the Game Mother. There are rules for surviving new environmental conditions, but the most interesting content here is the discussion of campaign types, set-ups, and expedition types. There are some colony classifications described too, including the ‘Shake and Bake’, ‘Extra Crispy’, ‘Giffy Popped’, and ‘Armed and Hammered’, that will give certain colonies similar feels. The two types of campaign discussed are Explorer and Colony Campaigns and together with the list of potential expedition types, such as supply and cargo runs, salvage ops, prospecting, scientific field-trips, and more, gives the Game Mother a decent range of ideas around which to base campaigns and plots. These are solid prompts, but as much they give the Game Mother some good starting points, the reader is left wanting more as each is worthy of further expansion and discussion.

For the Game Master, Building Better Worlds is also broken into two halves, one more general in nature, the other specific to the campaign, ‘The Lost Worlds’. The more general half begins with details of eighteen new systems located in the Outer Rim Territories, the Frontier, and Beyond the 20 Parsec Limit. Each has a description that gives its history and current status, plus list of stats and details that includes affiliation, classification, climate and temperature, terrain, notable colonies, population, and key resources. There are no hooks given so the Game Mother will need to work hard to develop these into fuller adventure locations with reasons why anyone would visit them. At half a page, they are underwritten and perhaps point towards the need for a world guide for Alien: The Roleplaying Game – Evolved Edition.

The second section is the ‘Weyland-Yutani Extrasolar Species Catalogue’. From Abominations and Fulfremmen (Perfected) to Protomorphs and and Xenomorphs, this is an expanded bestiary of your worst nightmares that nobody wants to meet and this being for Alien: The Roleplaying Game, unfortunately will. Many of these have been taken from the film Prometheus and the cinematic scenario, Heart of Darkness. Some also appear in the campaign that follows, but this still expands the options available to the Game Mother wanting to surprise and unnerve her players and their characters.

The second half of the section for the Game Mother is ‘The Lost Worlds’, a campaign that takes up just under half of Building Better Worlds. It builds off the timeline given earlier and set in the 2190s, concerns the Great Mother Mission. This is a combined multi-national, multi-corporation humanitarian, recontact, and recolonisation expedition launched by the United Nations Interstellar Settlement Corps to discover what happened to the settlements and peoples of the Far Spinward Colonies following their isolation from the Outer Rim due to a series of massive solar ejections, gamma bursts, and waves of radiation. It has been seventy-five years since contact was lost and numerous vested interests want to know what has happened to the millions of people who settled the region. There is even hope that if successful, the Great Mother Mission will serve as an example of co-operation and goodwill in the face of increased hostilities between the United Americas and the Union of Progressive Peoples. Of course, the expedition is rife with tensions and issues, both political and corporate, and these will drive the actions of the expedition members NPCs for much of the campaign and influence those of the Player Characters too.

The Player Characters are members of the expedition assigned to the UNCSS Solovetsky Island, one of Great Mother Mission’s four Magellan-class J Science Exploration Vessels (SEV). They can take just about any role about ship, but need to be free to conduct planet-based missions too. Otherwise, the players have a lot of freedom in terms of what characters they can create and roleplay. The campaign consists of seven chapters or expeditions, the first six of which can be played in any order as a sandbox, the completion of each one reward the players and their characters with another piece of the campaign’s metapuzzle, whilst the seventh serves as the campaign’s finale. Alternatively, they can be run as one-shots, but that would negate the tension and mystery that builds as the campaign progresses. The lose structure of the campaign also means that the Game Master has room to create her own scenarios set on other worlds in the Far Spinward Colonies. She may want to do that to have her Player Characters discover what happened to the other colonies that were not necessarily affected by the campaign’s emerging threat. The campaign includes a Session Zero for set-up and guidance on how to handle downtime scenes between the expeditions, as well as list of events that can occur as necessary or because of the Player Characters’ actions.

Over the course of the campaign, the Player Characters will visit colonies riven by a family feud, divided into extreme haves and have-nots, on the edge of insurrection, and seemingly empty bar strict automation. They will also conduct a search and rescue mission for a lost expedition vessel and even help set up and run a colony. The latter makes use of the colony creation and operation rules and advice in the supplement’s appendix which also include expanded rules for creating star systems and planets. Structurally, since ‘The Lost Worlds’ can be played in any order, it does lack a sense of space or urgency as written. Rather urgency is going to build from the narrative and the discoveries that the Player Characters make as opposed to inbuilt timing mechanism. Thus, by the end of the sixth part of the campaign, the Player Characters will have uncovered, even encountered, and hopefully understood the nature of a threat to not just the Far Spinward Colonies, but all of occupied space. Again and again, the Player Characters will find signs of ‘alien’ activity and even be confronted by it, but where in a Cinematic scenario, the objectives are simply survival and escape, here they are also to learn and wonder at some the secrets that the campaign will reveal.

Building Better Worlds does feel as if it should be two books, one focusing on its themes of colonisation and exploration, the other on its campaign. Perhaps as two books, the one devoted to colonisation and exploration would have had more room for colonies of the Alien universe to be expanded upon and detailed. Plus, ‘The Lost Worlds’ is more of a re-exploratory campaign than an exploratory campaign and were it not for the expedition where the Player Characters get to set up and run a colony, that part of the supplement would have been ignored. However, this does not mean that as just the one book, Building Better Worlds is a bad book by any stretch of the imagination.

Physically, Building Better Worlds is a great looking book. It is well written and the artwork is as excellent as you would expect for the line. As with other books for Alien: The Roleplaying Game, the layout is fairly open and thus easier to read. Being for the first edition of the roleplaying game, it still uses the black background that some readers have an issue with.

Building Better Worlds expands Alien: The Roleplaying Game—and consequently Alien: The Roleplaying Game – Evolved Edition—with a wealth of options, campaign ideas and playstyles, threats and other dangers, that all together open the possibilities of the roleplaying game’s Campaign mode and the Frontier Colonist campaign model. It then showcases them with a great campaign that delivers an escalating combination of horror and hubris.

Your Vaesen Starter

A good starter set has to do a number of different things. It has to introduce and explain the roleplaying game it is a starter set for, whether that is the roleplaying game’s setting, mechanics, or both. It has to both tell and show what the players and their characters are expected to do in the setting and how they do it, first with the rules and then with a scenario. It has to provide everything that a group needs to play—rules, scenario, pre-generated Player Characters, and dice—and ideally more. Maps, handouts, tokens, and the like are all items that will help bring the world of the roleplaying game’s setting to life and give the players something to look at and interact with. Above all, a good starter should showcase the roleplaying game and entice both Game Master and her players to want to roleplay more with the rules and in that setting by picking up the core rulebook, and if the contents of the start set support continued play, whether that is providing an extra set of dice or maps for the setting, then all the better.

—oOo—

The Vaesen – Starter Set is the introduction to Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying, the roleplaying game based on Vaesen: Spirits and Monsters of Scandinavian Folklore as collected and illustrated by Johan Egerkrans, and published by Free League Publishing. It is an investigative horror game set in Scandinavia during the nineteenth century, using the Year Zero engine first seen in Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days, and subsequently a wide array of roleplaying games. It is set in the Mythic North of Scandinavia in the nineteenth century, a time when old traditions and secrets of the past clash against modernity and industrialisation. In dark forests and deep valleys, along brown rivers and at the edge of forgotten groves, in the eaves and in the shadows, there lurk creatures and monsters called ‘Vaesen’ that have begun to hate man. In ages past, everyone knew how to interact with Vaesen so that both could live alongside each other. Now many of those that knew have died or left to find work in the cities, whilst others have come to the mountains and the rivers and the forests to plunder and exploit what they want in the name of progress, so destroying the homes of the Vaesen and making them feel unwanted and unloved. In the past, a secret organisation known as The Society investigated both the Vaesen and their clashes with mankind, but it has long dissolved, its members retired or confined to an asylum, and its headquarters, Castle Gyllencreutz, in the Swedish city of Uppsala, shut up. Yet there are still those who have the Sight, those Thursday’s Children, who can see Vaesen, and perhaps they need a purpose worthy of their gift?

This is the set-up for both the Vaesen – Starter Set and Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying, but the Vaesen – Starter Set is designed to be an introduction to not just the rules and the setting for Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying, but also to its set-up. This will involve both players and their characters learning about the Vaesen, The Society, and Castle Gyllencreutz, and preparing for further investigations and more mysteries. It designed for play by five players and the Game Master and will provide them both one or two sessions’ worth of play.

Open up the Vaesen – Starter Set and what the Game Master will find first is a set of ten Vaesen dice and Initiative cards. Below that is the ‘Getting Started’ sheet which provides a quick introduction to Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying, what to do first with the contents of the Vaesen – Starter Set, and what to do after a group has played through its contents. Below that are three books. The first is the sixteen-page ‘Rules’ booklet, the second is the twelve-page ‘The Haunting of Castle Gyllencreutz’ scenario book, and the third is the forty-four-page ‘Codex Occultum’. Underneath that is a set of five Reference Sheets—one per player, three handouts for the ‘The Haunting of Castle Gyllencreutz’ scenario, five pre-generated Player Characters, and two maps. One of the maps is a particularly good cutaway map of Castle Gyllencreutz, which is new to Vaesen, whilst the other, larger map is double-sided, one side showing the Mythic North, the other the city of Uppsala, home to Castle Gyllencreutz.

Anyone who has played a Year Zero roleplaying game will instantly grasp the rules for Vaesen, but they are quickly and easily explained in the ‘Rules’ booklet. To have his character undertake an action, a player will roll a number of six-sided dice equal to a combination of his character’s Attribute and Skill, plus whatever bonus or penalty dice the Game Master awards, such as from the situation or a Talent. To succeed, all he needs to roll is typically one Success or six—though sometimes it may be more—on any of the dice. Extra Successes can be expended to gain various effects. In combat, this will be more damage, but in other situations it will usually mean learning more information. These are tailored to the scenario in the Vaesen – Starter Set, but are further expanded upon in Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying.

If a player fails a roll, he can instead choose to Push the roll. This enables the player to reroll the dice which did not result in Successes in the hope of getting some or more Successes. Doing so will inflict a Condition on the Player Character, either Exhausted, Battered, or Wounded for Physical Conditions, or Angry, Frightened, or Hopeless for Mental Conditions. Suffer too many of either Physical or Mental Conditions and the Player Character will be Broken, meaning that he cannot act. Damage from combat is also inflicted in terms of Conditions. The Initiative Cards, numbered from one to ten, determine when a Player Character, NPC, or Vaesen acts each round, though it is possible to swap Initiative cards between Player Characters and/or friendly NPCs each round, and in each Round, a Player Character has a Slow action and a Fast action. A Fear test is required if a Player Character encounters a Vaesen or magic, the number of Successes required determined by the Fear value of the creature, magic, or situation. Overall, the explanation of the rules in ‘Rules’ booklet is brisk, but covers most situations and is backed up by examples of play. It also provides explanations of what roleplaying is and what Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying is.

The ‘The Haunting of Castle Gyllencreutz’ scenario book opens with the Player Characters being invited to a tavern in the poor part of Uppsala where they will meet the elderly Linnea Elfeklint. She will tell them that like herself, they are one of Thursday’s Children and have Sight, which means that they can see creatures known as Vaesen that most people cannot. She will also tell them about The Society and Castle Gyllencreutz and that she wants to restart The Society. However, she will explain that she does not have access to Castle Gyllencreutz as her ex-fiancé possesses its deeds and that recently other Thursday’s Children have gone to the castle and not returned. This half of the scenario sets up its mystery, whilst second half involves investigation in the castle itself. The castle is in a dilapidated state inside and out, and is haunted by strange lights. The final confrontation is ethereal in nature and players who are prone to fight may be at a disadvantage. The scenario is short, but it set the Player Characters with ready access to Castle Gyllencreutz and further play of Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying.

The five pre-generated Player Characters consist of a Hunter, a military officer, a priest, a writer, and a vagabond. All five have an illustration and some background as well as full stats and game details, including notes on what each think of the other four Player Characters. Each player will have a Reference Card, which neatly summarises the rules for ease of play.

The third booklet in the Vaesen – Starter Set, the ‘Codex Occultum’, is actually the thickest and is effectively the players’ own copy of Vaesen: Spirits and Monsters of Scandinavian Folklore as collected and illustrated by Johan Egerkrans and their characters’ guide to the Vaesen. From the Ash Tree Wife to the Wood Wife, it illustrates and describes some twenty-two Vaesen and how they might be banished, appeased, or otherwise dealt with. This is lovely little reference work—both in game and out—and it is highly likely the one item in the Vaesen – Starter Set that the players will return to over and over. Lastly, the maps of both Uppsala and Mythic North are excellent, whilst the one of Castle Gyllencreutz shows it in its prime, potentially a status that the Player Characters cab return it to in the long run. It certainly gives the Player Characters some idea of what the castle was like and what might be behind the locked or otherwise inaccessible parts of the castle.

Physically, the Vaesen – Starter Set is very well presented. Both the ‘Rules’ booklet and ‘The Haunting of Castle Gyllencreutz’ are easy to read and grasp, whilst the physical components are of a high standard, particularly the maps and the ‘Codex Occultum’.

The Vaesen – Starter Set is a good starting package for Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying, except for one thing and that is the depth of play it offers in the box. A single scenario is less than what is expected of a good starter set today, yet the straightforward physicality of the Vaesen – Starter Set actually makes it a worthwhile purchase. Not just the Vaesen dice and the Initiative cards, but also the maps, especially the one of Castle Gyllencreutz, and of course, the ‘Codex Occultum’ handout will all support continued play of Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying long after the players have roleplayed the scenario in Vaesen – Starter Set. Arguably, the Vaesen – Starter Set is a better accessories kit than an actual starter set, but its scenario is by no means bad, and will get a Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying campaign off to a good start.

Zombies on the Thames

It is the year 1829 and polite society’s horror and disgust at the poor and the great unwashed is once again being stoked by reports of them shambling about at night, faces ashen, and looming out of the miasma along the River Thames to scare anyone and everyone, whether going about legitimate business or not. In sordid South London, in the notorious slum that is Jacob’s Island, right on the banks of the Thames, people are going missing—and worse, they are coming back very much in a discombobulated fashion! It is a very strange matter indeed, and despite it having been brought to the attention of Sir Robert Peel and his recently founded Metropolitan Police Force, there is not the manpower, or indeed, the political willpower to do a great deal about it. Which is why the Apollonian Society, whose members investigate the unseemly and the unnatural, is approached to look into the matter.

This is the set-up to Mists of Old London, a scenario for use with Vaesen – Mythic Britain & Ireland, the campaign supplement for Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying, which details the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in the nineteenth century and the clashes the arose between the old ways and the new with rapid industrialisation. The scenario is set primarily in the rotten rookery and sodden slum of Jacob’s Island, home to some of the city’s poorest inhabitants, on the south bank of the river, notable as being the home of Bill Sykes in Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist. Investigation will reveal the area is rife with tension. There has been a recent influx of immigrants from Jamaica into the slum as well as the people vanishing into the mists and then reappearing at their homes, as cold as the grave. There are also strange figures stalking the streets. One is hooded in rags and mutters curses and incantations as she clambers across the rickety walkways and bridges that connect many parts of Jacob’s Island, whilst the other strides purposefully, a gentleman in frock coat and top hat as well as a mask. She is Madame Otay, he is Monsieur Thursday.

It should be pretty clear that to the players that what their characters are facing is an infestation of zombies, appropriate for the threat that the Player Characters face, though since the word would have been little known at the time when the scenario is set, it is very unlikely that the characters will initially know they are facing and extremely unlikely that they will have come across the term before. There are opportunities for both Madame Otay and Monsieur Thursday to educate the Player Characters though. Being a scenario for Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying, there is a countdown in which things get worse, the mists will rise and worsen, and the zombies will walk the streets of Jacob’s Island openly. There are a limited number of lines of investigation, but the Player Characters should get enough clues to work out what is going and where they need to go—whether either of the major NPCs want them to, or not. All of which will lead to classic showdown at a summoning by the villain of the piece and the Player Characters in position to stop it.

This is a most serviceable scenario with a pleasingly tense and strong, if sodden atmosphere of uncertainty, tinged just a little with a fear of the unknown. Smart or experienced players will probably crack on through and complete it in a single session, though it should take no more than two sessions’ worth of play at the most otherwise. It could work as a convention in the case of the former, but it is not really set up for that. Thematically the plot could work with the Rivers of London: the Roleplaying Game or period wise with Regency Cthulhu: Dark Designs in Jane Austen’s England, both from Chaosium, Inc. In fact, retooling it for the latter for the Miskatonic Repository would work rather well.

Mists of Old London is not without its issues and the likelihood is that the complaints about are going to come from both ends of the spectrum. One is that the scenario makes use of African diaspora religion of Obeah as a feature of its plot. The other is that one of the NPCs is called ‘Nigel Barrige’, who as MP for Southwark, “…[N]ow seeks to consolidate his power by stoking parliaments [SIC] fears of the working class and social revolution.” The author goes further than this though, in what is a parody of a contemporary British political figure. To be fair, the first of these is more of an issue than the second, but the author does make clear that it is not intended faithful representation of the religion, but sticks to being a Western, dramatised version for the sake of the scenario’s plot. The author also suggests that if the Game Master is unhappy with this, then it is possible to some research and adjust as necessary. A link is provided should the Game Master want to get started. As to the second, it is parody, and parody is fair game.

Mists of Old London is published via the Free League Workshop, the community content programme for Free League Publishing, so not professionally produced. As a consequence, physically, Mists of Old London is rough. The layout and the few pieces of illustration are fine, but it really, really needs a good edit. There are also no maps.

Mists of Old London is far from a bad scenario. It just needs to be more clearly and tidily presented and supported with a map or two. Otherwise, Mists of Old London is eminently serviceable, enjoyable scenario.