A Hostile Setting

The year is 2225. For the last seventy-five years, hyperdrive starships have enabled mankind to colonise, settle, explore, and most importantly, exploit the more than three hundred planets in the interstellar space surrounding the Earth. Three arms of exploration and settlement have been developed—American, German, and Japanese. The majority of settled worlds lie within a four to six Parsec radius of Earth, but there are worked, settled, and visited worlds out to a radius of forty Parsecs. It turned out that none of them are true garden worlds. Many of them are tidally locked worlds and all have environmental conditions which make survival difficult if not outright challenging or dangerous. None have been found to be home to intelligent alien species, although many are home to indigenous species deadly, or at least a danger, to man. Even the Earth is no longer safe having suffered partial environmental collapse. Billions reside on the planet, but many make the long journey in hypersleep to make a new life on another world or to work contracts on resource worlds, for in the main, deep space is a place to work. Metals and rare earths, but above all petrochemicals for the plastics industry, remain in great demand.

The need for these resources has led to the rise of several South Korean chaebol and Japanese keiretsu-like corporations whose reach extends to the far edge of explored space, greater than that of any nation. Mining and aerospace company Reiner-Gama dominates and has its operations confined to the Solar System, but others include the engineering-based Leyland-Okuda; the British-based Erebus, built up from oil extraction in the Antarctic; Russian conglomerate Voroncovo, which provides data brokerage and security services alongside heavy engineering; Hong Kong-based manufacturer, Wu-Ketai; the Tokyo-based Matsuyama which specialises in colony construction and support; and the Tharsis Corporation, a mining company which originated on Mars and is led by Compton de Vaille, who at 223, is the longest lived human in history. The activities of these and lesser corporations are regulated by the United Corporate Combine, but peace, law enforcement, and labour relations across human space are still regulated by the political blocs and organisations of Earth. In the American Arm, the Federal Colonial Marshal Service stations officers on every colony, the Union of American Space Labor supports the safety and well-being of the workers everywhere, and the United States Marines provides military protection and peacekeeping. This includes the Tau Ceti 4 colony, originally divided between China and the United States of America, where the collapse of the newly democratic China in 2166 led to the foundation five new states all of whom claimed control of the former Chinese colony, civil unrest on the colony, and then insurgency and counter-insurgency as the United States Marines stepped in as a peacekeeping force, welcomed and rejected at the same time.

This is the setting for Hostile, a gritty, near future roleplaying setting inspired by the Blue-Collar Science Fiction of the seventies and eights, including the films, Alien, Outland, and Aliens. It is a future in which space exploration and colonisation is difficult, harsh, and dangerous, but in which there are asteroid systems and worlds to be exploited and great profits to be made. Conflict is not unknown—between colonies, between colonies and corporations, between corporations, and when that gets too much the Interstellar Commerce Organisation steps in or peacekeepers such as the United States Marine Corps are sent in, but in the main, space is a working environment. One with numerous hazards—the vacuum of space, radiation, adversely high and low temperatures, poisonous planetary atmospheres, potential insanity from being exposed to hyperspace, and strange alien creatures which see you as intruder, food, or incubation for its brood—which humanity must cope with in addition to the stresses of space travel and working away from Earth.

Hostile Setting is published by Zozer Games. It is the companion volume and setting guide for the publisher’s Hostile Rules, derived from Samardan Press’ Cepheus Engine System Reference Document, the Classic Era Science Fiction 2D6-Based Open Gaming System based on Traveller. The Hostile Setting can be run using the Hostile Rules or the Cepheus rules, but is primarily designed as the setting guide for the former. Instead of offering the chance to begin again in a golden age of opportunity and adventure, the Hostile Setting instead explores a new age of work, industrialisation, danger, retrofuturism, and cynicism. The supplement provides a complete that includes a future history that runs into the twenty-third century, details of major government, corporate, and criminal players along the American Arm, data for some one-hundred-and-fifty world worlds and detailed descriptions of over twenty, rules for character creation, equipment, arms, and armour, a space bestiary, rules for handling and working the hazardous environments of the future—including zero-g, radiation, and mining, starship construction and current designs, a write-up of the USCS Hercules—a newly released commercial towing vessel, including deckplans, over thirty detailed scenario hooks, and nods aplenty to the subgenres it is inspired by.

There is some crossover between Hostile Setting and Hostile Rules. This is primarily mechanically in terms of the Career options—including Corporate Agent, Corporate Executive, Colonist, Commercial Spacer, Marine, Marshal, Military Spacer, Physician, Ranger, Roughneck, Scientist, Survey Scout, and Technician. The Android Career is included also, but primarily for NPCs. The possibility of an Android as a Player Character is discussed and it is strongly—in fact, very strongly—advised that should a Player Character Android be included in a campaign, it should not be able to break its programming. Only six general options are suggested for androids—spacer, survey, scout, physician, scientist and technician. Elsewhere, Hostile Setting and Hostile Rules complement each other. Hostile Setting provides not just the setting that Hostile Rules lacks, but also details of specific arms and armour, equipment, and starships, as well as the rules for creating the latter. The rules for spaceship construction does feel slightly superfluous given the number of vessels detailed as part of the setting, but doubtless, there will be some Game Masters and readers who enjoy tinkering with them and designing their own starships.

In terms of what type of campaigns can be run in the Hostile Setting background, several options are discussed. These include working as troubleshooters, working as a crew of an interstellar transport, members of the United States Marine Corps or Federal Colonial Marshal Service, or explorers out on the frontier. The peacekeeping mission of Tau Ceti 4 lends itself to a low intensity military campaign and Hostile Setting focuses on this colony more than any other in the book with some colourful fiction for the situation there. A Hostile Setting campaign need not even leave a colony or mining station though, the Game Master could easily develop a colony which could support any number of situations involving exploration, survival, criminal activities, technical difficulties, labour relations, and more. For the Game Master wanting a nod to the primary inspiration for Hostile Setting, the film, Alien, there is guidance for creating and handling horror in the setting and a discussion of the types of exomorph—or alien horror—that the Player Characters might encounter in the far, dark reaches of space. Whilst several examples are included, the Game Master is advised to introduce these with care. A number of hyperspace anomalies are also discussed as potential sources of fear. Whatever the type of campaign chosen, there is some solid advice on how to describe the setting, including excellent lists of elements which can help enforce the look and feel of the environment.

Physically, Hostile Setting is serviceably done. The artwork is decent, capturing very much the grim and gritty feel of space being a working environment. One noticeable design feature is the text size, which although sans serif, is large.

The contents of Hostile Setting will feel familiar to anyone who played or read either Traveller or Cepheus, but very much filtered through not one, but three different Science Fiction subgenres—Blue Collar Science Fiction, Horror Science Fiction, and Military Science Fiction—and combined into one heavily implied setting with obvious inspirations. Hostile Setting can use either of those rules, but best works with Hostile Rules, since they complement each other. Further, the Hostile Setting showcases a setting not just where a Xenomorph—or in this case, an Exomorph—could be encountered somewhere far out from the safety of the Earth, but a Science Fiction setting rife with other dangers and other story possibilities. In fact, to come to the Hostile Setting expecting to focus mainly on encounters with dangerous alien lifeforms would lead to disappointment and to solely focus on that in play, would be to ignore those other, in many ways, more interesting story possibilities.

For the Game Master who wants a near future, grim and gritty Science Fiction setting which focuses upon Blue Collar protagonists rather than heroes, the Hostile Setting is a very good choice. The Hostile Setting takes its Blue-Collar Science Fiction inspirations and provides a well-realised background with support and scenario suggestions aplenty.

Hostile Mechanics

Hostile is a gritty, near future roleplaying game inspired by the Blue-Collar Science Fiction of films such as Alien, Bladerunner, and Outland. It is a future in which space exploration and colonisation is difficult, harsh, and dangerous, but in which there are asteroid systems and worlds to be exploited and great profits to be made. Conflict is not unknown—between colonies, between colonies and corporations, between corporations, and when that gets too much the Interstellar Commerce Organisation steps in or peacekeepers such as the United States Marine Corps are sent in, but in the main, space is a working environment. One with numerous hazards—the vacuum of space, radiation, adversely high and low temperatures, poisonous planetary atmospheres, potential insanity from being exposed to hyperspace, and strange alien creatures which see you as intruder, food, or incubation for its brood—which humanity must cope with in addition to the stresses of space travel and working away from Earth.

Published by Zozer Games, Hostile is derived from Samardan Press’ Cepheus Engine System Reference Document, the Classic Era Science Fiction 2D6-Based Open Gaming System based on Traveller. It is a standalone game system and setting which is divided into two volumes, Hostile Rules and Hostile Setting. To encompass the military Science Fiction aspect the setting—obviously inspired by Aliens—Hostile encompasses the squad level combat rules from Modern War, but that is only one option of play explored in Hostile Rules. In total, Hostile Rules covers the task resolution mechanics, character creation, survival rules, stress and panic rules, starship and ground combat, starship operations, creating worlds, trade and salvage, encounter tables, and more. What Hostile Rules does not do is provide an actual setting, although that is either referred to or inferred to throughout its pages, for typical wages and costs of items and services in 2250, as well as the licences and qualifications associated with the roleplaying game’s skills, both in the military and out.

Hostile Rules is itself not entirely complete and is not a standalone rulebook. Most obviously, there are no weapon stats given in the combat sections of Hostile Rules—that is saved for Hostile Setting.

The fundamentals of Hostile will be familiar to Referees and players of Traveller. The core mechanic consists of two-sided dice rolled against a target of eight or more, to which are added stat-derived modifiers; characters tend to be older, having gone through several four-year terms of service in a career and may suffer the effects of aging; in combat, damage is taken directly by a character’s three physical attributes—Strength, Dexterity, and Endurance; and starship travel is measured in the number of parsecs travelled. In flavour and feel though, Hostile Rules is very different to Traveller, being grim and gritty near future Science Fiction as opposed to the far future Imperial Science Fiction of Traveller.

Hostile Rules begins by explaining its core mechanic. For the standard skill role, it explains the perception roll and the characteristic roll, all done in a couple of pages, or so. It also discusses the types of campaigns which it can be used to run. These are typically built around particular crew types, including colony work crews, corporate investigation teams, roughneck crews, commercial starship crews, marine corps squads, private military contractors, and more. Then it explains character creation, with options for designed rather than random creation. Although the setting of Hostile is humanocentric, it includes options for the genetically engineered Android and Prole, but neither are intended as options for Player Characters. Proles are needy and introverted with a four-year lifespan, whilst Androids are passive and non-aggressive, and the designers advise the Referee to be careful before allowing an Android with ‘broken programming’ in play.

A character in Hostile is defined by six characteristics—Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, Intellect, Education, and Social Standing—each rolled on two six-sided dice and expressed as line of numbers and letters called UPP or Universal Personality Profile. A Player Character’s homeworld provides some base skills at level zero, with career options including Corporate Agent, Corporate Executive, Colonist, Commercial Spacer, Marine, Marshal, Military Spacer, Physician, Ranger, Roughneck, Scientist, Survey Scout, and Technician. The Android Career is included for NPCs. Then a player rolls for the character’s Career, term by term, with mustering benefits at the end. In addition, Hostile Rules adds tables for his appearance, height, weight, psych evaluation, reason for leaving Earth, suit badges, and more. This nicely adds flavour and detail. All of the details for each Career is neatly contained on the single page.

Chandra Pham is from Singapore on Earth and signed on with Kuorox Interplanetary as a crewhand and for the last two decades has risen through the ranks, qualifying as a senior broker before being appointed captain of the Blue Hildegard. Two years ago, the Blue Hildegard was hijacked following a gun battle in which numerous members of the crew and hijackers were killed. Captain Pham managed to lead an escape attempt and overpower the hijacker, but was badly injured during the incident, losing her right eye. Although an ICO Court of Inquiry exonerated her, it pointed to lax Kuorox Interplanetary operating procedures which enabled the hijacking. Chandra Pham was let go by Kuorox Interplanetary, but received Star Envoy Club Membership as a reward and is currently looking for an independent berth or opportunities to trade.

Senior Captain Chandra Pham, Age 38
Homeworld: Earth
Height: 159 cm Weight: 64 kg
Psych Evaluation: Selfish (Concerned with reward and compensation)
Reason for Leaving Earth: Caught up in political turmoil
Distinctive Feature: Shades
Qualifications: Commercial Brokerage Licence, ICO Sensor & Signals Licence, ICO Cargo Loader Licence, ICO Space Transportation Licence, UASL Pressure Suit Handling Licence

578C86
Commercial Spacer (5 Terms)
Brawling-0, Broker-4, Carousing-0, Comms-1, Computer-1, Ground Vehicle-0, Gun Combat-1, Loader-1, Navigation-1, Pilot-2, Streetwise-0, Vacc Suit-1
Cr. 20,000
Star Envoy Club Membership

As well as providing rules for a multitude of environmental hazards, from acid, hiking, and diseases to arctic and desert, pressure loss, and hunger, Hostile Rules includes rules for stress and panic. This can occur when a starship or vacc suit takes damage for the first time, suffering damage to reduce an attribute to half or more, losing control during a spacewalk, and more. This is a standard Intelligence roll and if failed, the Player Character temporarily loses a point of Intelligence, potentially making further Stress checks harder to pass. If a Player Character’s Intelligence is reduced to half or zero in this way, a Panic Check is made and if failed, he will act accordingly to a roll on the Panic Effects table. In general, this favours Player Characters who have a high Intelligence, but there is a spiral loss, at least temporarily, to Stress checks from any lost Intelligence and of course, scope to roleplay a character’s response.

The combat rules cover everything from personal combat all the up to vehicular combat. This includes blind, area, and frenzy fire, calling for fire support, handling NPCs, the scale between man portable and vehicular weapons, and more. Space combat is also covered, but in some ways, the chapter on starship is actually more interesting, getting right down into the nitty gritty of details such refueling, loading and unloading, fight and hyperspace, landing, and more. What this impresses upon the reader is that Hostile is not setting in which a starship necessarily takes off, travels, and lands somewhere. This all takes effort and work upon the part of the crew, and whilst it need not be played out each and every time, it should be done at least once, if not twice, to reinforce the nature of space travel. One aspect which is like Traveller in the Hostile Rules is that travel in hyperspace is done outside of star systems and two aspects in which it is not, is that hyperspace travel is done in hypersleep and that starships can travel for more than week. Which means that a starship capable of travelling three parsecs per week would cover that distance in a week, a shop capable of only traveling one per week, would take three. One pleasing genre enforcing element is that commercial starship crews make most of their money through bonuses, not base pay, so Player Characters get to gripe about their bonus!

Hostile Rules also goes in quite details about worlds and world data, especially its physical characteristics. There are rules here for creating worlds, adding trade classifications and bases, and more, although there is no checklist, so it does look as if they are not actually there! As with the small arms, actual world data for individual colonies and settlements within the setting are saved for Hostile Setting. There are rules for trade though, and salvage.

Hostile Rules is rounded off with a lengthy set of encounter tables and advice for the Referee. The encounter tables handle everything from Space Encounters and Starport Encounters to Colony Encounters and Patron Encounters, as rules for handling interaction between the Player Characters and the NPCs. It also includes tables and guidance for Animal Encounters, including creating them, though this does not extend as far as Exomorphs—or Alien Horrors! There is a nice little essay here on making them interesting and different to that of the Xenomorphs, the obvious inspiration for Hostile. It only runs to a couple of pages, so it is a pity that it could not be longer, but unlike the other animals, there are no tables to help the Referee create her own, though there are plenty of ideas included to make encounters with them different and challenging.

The advice for the Referee is excellent, covering campaign types—the fact that the different crew types allow for a range of Player Character types, adjudicating the rules, how to create scenarios, including a example inspired by a horror film, how to prepare so that you can improvise better, and finally, run campaigns. The latter feels shorter and less useful than the rest, but overall, this is all helpful advice.

Physically, Hostile Rules is serviceably done. The artwork is excellent, capturing very much the grim and gritty feel of space being a working environment. One noticeable design feature is the text size, which although sans serif, is large. Hostile Rules could have easily been a shorter book with a smaller sized typeface, but the larger size is very easy to read.

The absence of weapons is the biggest issue with Hostile Rules. It is obvious why it lacks them—Hostile Rules and Hostile Setting are designed to complement each other. However, with the addition of weapons stats, Hostile Rules would all be a standalone set of roleplaying rules.

The contents of Hostile Rules will feel familiar to anyone who played or read either Traveller or Cepheus, but very much filtered through not one, but three different Science Fiction subgenres—Blue Collar Science Fiction, Horror Science Fiction, and Military Science Fiction—and combined into one heavily implied setting with obvious inspirations. Bar the absence of weapons, Hostile Rules does very much feel like a Cepheus Engine version of Alien and Aliens, minus the Xenomorphs. This is not to say that this is a bad thing, but like the Aliens Universe, and even more so with Hostile there are numerous tales to be told which do involve conflict and exploration and strangeness without encountering a Xenomorph, or in this case, an Exomorph. Although Hostile Rules includes rules for Exomorphs and a Referee can run games involving them, they are not its focus as they are in Free League Publishing’s Alien: The Roleplaying Game. Plus, of course, Hostile already has enough elements within it that are trying to kill the Player Characters.

Although not complete, Hostile Rules is an engagingly accessible set of rules and mechanics which serve to make space and the frontier a dangerous place to be, let alone work. In combination with Hostile Setting it will provided a solid, detailed design, both in terms of the rules and the grim and gritty future.

Ave Britannia

Over the years, there have been plenty of roleplaying games set in the Roman Empire, from TSR, Inc.’s Glory of Rome supplement for use with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Second Edition and Deep7’s entertainingly simple Pax Gladius 1PG to Golden Goblin Press’ excellent The 7th Edition Guide to Cthulhu Invictus: Cosmic Horror Roleplaying in Ancient Rome and Thyrsus Games’ sublime FVLMINATA: Armed With Lightning. To this cohort of titles can be added 43 AD - Invasion & Insurrection - Roleplaying in Roman Britain. Published by Zozer Games, this is roleplaying game set in the first century AD during the invasion and subsequent pacification campaigns by the Roman Empire right up to the campaigns in the Caledonia in the early third century. The players take the role of members of the Legions, soldiers ordered to conduct special missions in order to further Rome’s right of conquest, but doing so far from home, in a hostile land full of natives ready to kill you and druids determined to curse you with their magic, a land said to be on the edge of the world, and a land so cold and wet that socks are a really good idea.

43 AD is thus a historical military roleplaying game set in a world of gods, magic, and the unknown and the untrustworthy, and which is dark and horrible because Britannia is a thoroughly unpleasant place. Yet for all of the actual horror of being assigned to the edge of the world, there may be a truth to the dark magic of the Druids and the tales of witches and monsters which lurk out in the thick forests and the stinking bogs. For there is option for the Game Master to run 43 AD not as a straight historical military game, but as a historical horror military game. So then there really is truth and substance to the folktales about the Flayed Man, Hunting Crows, and the Cauldron Born, and there are Dark Druids who have turned to magics of the blackest kind to drive out the invaders.

Characters in 43 AD are members of a legion, from relatively raw recruits to experienced veterans. They come from all across the empire and from all backgrounds, and whilst they may be simple legionaries, they might also be scouts, accountants, scribes, and more. A character is defined by five Attributes—Might (physical and combat prowess), Fate (luck and the will of the gods), Hits (health and endurance), Craft (construction and repair tasks), and Learning (education and social skills); Cultural Origins, which provides a bonus and base language; Character Type, like coward, veteran, or hero, which provides another bonus; Social Class, from Landless Poor to Noble; and Events. Each character has four of these, one explaining why they joined up and the others detailing things that have happened they enlisted. A character also has Allies & Enemies, Background Details, and Wealth & Equipment.

To create a character a player can roll dice—just one six-sided die for his character’s Might and Fate, with more dice rolled to determine his Hits, and both Learning and Craft being set at 1 each. Alternatively, a player can divide twelve points between Might, Fate, and Hits. Two six-sided dice are rolled on various tables to other aspects of the character, whilst a percentile dice roll is needed to determine the various events which have befallen him. Various bonuses from this may increase a character’s attributes as well as grant him skills.

Aulus
Might 6 Fate 5 Craft 1 Learning 3
Hits 17 Combat/AV 9/2
Legionary Age 19
Character Type: Thinker
Origins: German Craftsman
Appearance: Blond and stocky with thick fingers and a winning grin
Sestertii: 80
Background: From near the Rhine where his family are potters, Aulus—Germanic name being Folcher before enlisting—joined the Roman army to prove to his brother that he could be something better as he was no potter. Having training with the tribal warriors, he was already a capable fighter and an ability to learn Latin easily got him noticed and a head for numbers got him assigned as a clerk to the legion’s offices by a friend in the staff section. He is currently having a secret affair with another soldier’s woman, a member of a local tribe and her brother and his wife are currently spreading scurrilous rumours about him. Aulus’ centurion is looking to promote him to actuarius in the future. 
Skills: Warcry!, Evaluate, 
Kit Choice: Spearman

Mechanically, 43 AD is fairly simple, using a roll of two six-sided dice plus an Attribute—Might, Fate, Craft, or Learning to beat a difficulty number. This is usually ten, but can be higher. The use of skills, from Acting, Carry Burden, and Detect Lies to Two Attacks, War Cry, and Work Horse enable a character to do something without the skill he would not be able to. There is no skill roll as such, although knowledge and use of a skill might grant a character a bonus on an attribute roll. In general, Might is used for combat and physical actions; Fate is used a a luck saving throw, for example to survive a poisoning attempt, spot an ambush, and so on, but can also be expended to call for divine aid and automatically succeed at an action; Craft is used for construction and making repairs; and Learning for knowledge and social actions.

Combat uses the same mechanic and has a brutal quality to it. Opponents make opposed rolls of two six-sided dice plus their Combat value, which is equal to their Might plus the killing efficiency of their weapons. Results of zero mean a draw; if one opponent rolls higher than the other by one, two, or three points, then he inflicts that many number of points in terms of damage; if he rolls four or higher, then he inflicts a Crippling Blow—attacker’s choice; and if he rolls eight or higher, then he can inflict a maiming blow. It is possible to roll this by one of to means. First by rolling a natural twelve, which enables a player to roll and add another six-sided die. Second by saving the bonus one, two, or three points rolled higher than an opponent, the character making a feint maneuvre rather than an attack. These can be saved up and used in a later combat round, but are lost if the character suffers any damage.

Fate can be spent to fight on despite having suffered a Crippling Blow, but armour can stop damage also. For each point of armour worn—one for a helm or mail, two for a breastplate, and three for segmented armour—a defender rolls a six-sided die. If a six is rolled on any of them, then the attack is negated! First aid is available and turns out to be quite effective, though combat is brutal and likely to leave scars. As well as tables for Crippling Blows and Maiming Blows, there are tables for Stunning Blows for unarmed combat too.

For example, Aulus has heard some of the rumours that Cunittos, the brother of the girl he has been seeing, has been spreading about him. He goes to see him to persuade him to stop, but instead Cunittos annoys Aulus, who calls the German, “A Roman lackey, a Rhine ox yoked to the legions!” Aulus yells back that he will have no choice but to point out that the Briton has been cheating on his taxes—and whether or not this is true—Cunittos is angered enough to grab a sword and swing it at the stocky German. Cunittos is a trained, but not seasoned warrior—the local tribe has gone soft under Roman occupation— and has a Might of 3 and a Long Sword of +2 to give a Combat value of 5. It would be higher, but Cunittos only grabs has sword, not his sword and shield. He is, however, wearing some protective magic in an amulet, which which has a Armour Value of 2 and works in a similar fashion to armour. Aulus has his dagger and his gladius, is wearing mail, but not carrying his shield. So this gives him a Combat value of 8.

In the first round, the Game Master rolls 11, plus Cunittos’ Combat value of 5 for a total of 16. This must have been a surprise attack! Aulus’ player can only manage a total of 14, meaning that Aulus would suffer 2 Hits of damage, but he is wearing mail, so his player gets to roll a single six-sided die. Unfortunately, he does not and Aulus’ Hits are reduced from 17 to 15. In the second round, the Game Master rolls just 10 for Cunittos, whilst Aulus’ player rolls 12. Instead of inflicting damage, Aulus’ player decides to save the to hits over Cunittos for the next round and describes how the legionary backs up, fending off the Briton’s attack, but is already looking for an opening. On the third round, the Game Master rolls just 12 for Cunittos, but Aulus’ player rolls 14, which with the addition of the two saved, becomes 16 and that is more than four points greater than his opponent. Aulus’ player gets to choose a Crippling Blow to inflict on the Briton and selects an arm hit, leaving Cunittos’ sword arm bloodied and unable to hold a sword…

The combat is not over though, as Cunittos’ wife, Una, comes upon the fight and with a scream charges at Aulus. Una has a Might of 2 and is using a dagger, so has a Combat value of 3. Aulus’ player decides that he is not even going to use his sword and just punches her… The Game Master rolls a lowly 7 for Una, whereas Aulus’ player—using only the German’s Might of 6—rolls a natural 12, so rolls an extra die for another 3 and then adds Aulus’s Might for a total of 21. This is 14 more than Una’s attack and so Aulus can do an Advanced Unarmed Move. In this case, Strangle! as Aulus’ player describes this as the stocky German reaching out and grabbing Una by the throat before she can really get close to stick him with her dagger… Aulus then turns to Cunittos and says, “Your move, shithead?”

In terms of character improvement, 43 AD provides two tracks. These are based on character action from assignment to assignment rather than on nebulous experience points. First, for participating and succeeding on missions, characters earn Glory which not only earns them awards, but also gets them noticed. Once their superiors recognise them, might be appointed to a junior position like Optio (deputy to the centurion), Artificer (military engineer), or Actuarius (military scribe). Once a character has held four of these positions, then he is eligible to be promoted to centurion. These positions each grant a skill, but some also have requirements, typically Latin literacy. To improve his attributes—and also to restore any fate expended on calling for divine aid or using certain skills—a character will need to make sacrifices to his god. He can also join a collegium, which grants him access to a brotherhood and a skill. Both sacrifices and collegium membership costs sestertii, so legionaries will need a way to make money, either through promotion, loot, gambling, or awards. All together, this makes progression more of a thoughtful process with the greater opportunity for roleplaying away for missions.

43 AD provides a great deal of background about the Roman legions—operations, daily activities, campaigns, and fortifications; the Roman occupation and pacification of Britannia; and the tribes of the newly conquered province. There is a lot of information presented here, all of it useful and all of it content that the Game Master could bring to his campaign. Yet, there is a fair degree of repetition in that information, especially in terms of what the Legions and the Legionaries do.Included in all of this information are maps of the province, fortification lines, tribal hills forts and duns, plus NPC stats for locals and legionaries, and a starting location. This is Danum Fort, located on the River Don, currently manned by the First Cohort of Morini, all from a tribe in Belgica province. It includes more NPCs and several adventure ideas, one of which is inspired by the work of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and another which involves a Night Hag. This is in addition to the plethora of adventure and campaign ideas which can be found throughout the book, enough to keep a campaign going for multiple sessions. Rounding out the book is a reference section and decent bibliography.

Much of the focus of 43 AD has been on the horror in a campaign involving the invasion, occupation, and pacification of a foreign land, including references to the Vietnam War. An option is given though, to add both the supernatural and horror to a campaign. In this, it takes its inspiration from films such as Aliens, Dog Soldiers, The Bunker, Predator, and others. The horror though is used to explain why the Britons do what are to Roman eyes, certain barbaric things—cutting off the heads, the throwing of human sacrifices into peat bogs in particular ways, tying victims to posts at the bottom of deep pits, and so on. 43 AD is relatively light on advice for the Game Master on running a horror campaign, so she may have to look elsewhere should she want such advice. Of course, there are plenty of supernatural threats detailed, from Cave Crawlers and Hunting Crows to the Invisible Hound and Vengeful Spirits, plus several individuals of a supernatural nature. A number of quite dark and twisted spells are included, but these are only available to Druids and Witches and they are both NPC types.

What is missing from the rules are any means of handling the response to the horror inherent to a 43 AD campaign, whether it involves the supernatural or not. So no sanity or shock rules, which given the emphasis on both types of horror in the setting, is disappointing.

Physically, 43 AD is generally tidy and decently illustrated. Much of the art depicts the brutality of Roman occupation, and whilst it is not explicit, it is not pleasant either. Whilst the maps are easy to read, they are not necessarily as crisply presented as they could be. The main problem with 43 AD is that it could be better organised so that the rules sections could be together and it does need another edit to excise the repetition.

One issue that 43 AD does not address is that of playing female characters. Now it is a military roleplaying game and a historical roleplaying game, so the playing of male characters only is very much part of its set-up. Yet despite that, some ways around it could have been suggested, perhaps by allowing native characters to included as guides? It remains though a very male-orientated game, but that is very much in keeping with the setting and not the fault of the game itself. And anyway, the set-up allows for a diverse range of character types and backgrounds—from all over the Roman Empire.

The biggest disappointment with 43 AD is the lack of rules for handling horror and its effects, but a good Game Master and players happy to roleplay this should be able to sidestep the issue. That aside, 43 AD - Invasion & Insurrection - Roleplaying in Roman Britain does a fine job of bringing the horror of campaigning in a foreign land—one we are all familiar with—to life.