At the 19th Kobold

Regular as clockwork, along comes another issue of Kobold Quarterly from Open Design, the only games magazine to support Dungeons & Dragons – and its primary variants – or any more than the one RPG and make it to the shelves at your friendly, local gaming store. As with previous issues, Kobold Quarterly #19 provides support for Dungeons & Dragons style RPGs, particularly Paizo Publishing’s Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and Wizards of the Coast’s Dungeons & Dragons, Fourth Edition as well as of Dragon Age – Dark Fantasy Roleplaying from Green Ronin Publishing; and as with previous issues, Kobold Quarterly #19 comes with a theme or two. This time around, those themes are death, magic, and a trip to the East along with various other articles and regular columns.

It should be made clear upfront that the focus upon the games that the magazine normally covers shifts with Kobold Quarterly #19. There is just the one articles for Dungeons & Dragons, Fourth Edition in this issue, the rest primarily being for Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. This is not to say that the articles written for one system will not be of use for the other, but the DM or GM will have to provide the mechanics.

The issue’s death theme gets off to a decidedly clean start with Marc Radle’s “The White Necromancer: To Understand Life One Must Also Understand Death.” Written for Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, this explores characters that though fascinated with the dead, instead honour them and aid the living. The White Necromancer is an arcane spellcaster with a limited spellbook, but with the ability to heal and as his studies of the undead advance, knowledge of some of the abilities of the undead, including Ghost Walk. This is a nice twist upon the Necromancer concept, allowing a character to interact with the undead without turning to the dark side.

More deathly characters for Pathfinder Roleplaying Game are discussed in “Archetypes of Death: For a More Badass Barbarian, Druid, Monk, or Summoner” by Phillip Larwood. The three Archetypes are the Deathrager, a Barbarian whose link to the spirit world is so strong that he can stave off death and eventually, even fight on after death; the Grave Druid, a Druid that protects graveyards and wards against the undead; the Master of Worms, a Monk that uses the abilities of the undead to fight them; and the Zombie Master, a Summoner that summons a zombie or skeleton, and then is able to evolve it to his own design. Of the four, the last again feels the least interesting, but the first three feel well thought out and will make nice additions to campaigns with a darker tone to them.

With “Bottled Hubris: New Discoveries and Archetypes for Alchemists,” Jerall Toi gives new options for the Alchemist Class in Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. Using options available in the Advanced Player’s Guide and Ultimate Magic, this delves into the issue’s magic theme by giving deeper areas of study for the alchemist and new ways of playing the Class. The new Discoveries range from hardening the Alchemist’s mind to the influence of Outsiders and his skeleton with spikes against melee weapons to enhancing the intimidation effect of his intelligence and enhancing a familiar or other animal companion with another Discovery. The three new Archetypes are the Calligraphist, able to conjure creatures and weapons from his ink drawings; the Evolutionist specialises in the enhancement of his animal companion; and the Specialist, which takes up the study of singular areas of knowledge, such as the stars and planes beyond, plants, or the transmutation of metal. Of these Archetypes, the Calligraphist is likely to be the most attractive to play, whereas the Specialist as presented feels a little undeveloped.

The magic theme continues with what is potentially a divisive discussion of the magic shop in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. “Magic Shops, What's In Store: How to Turn a DM Nightmare into a Tool for Better Games” by Christina Stiles and Spike Y. Jones explores how and why the magic shop might exist in a Dungeons & Dragons style world, the divisive aspect being that some GMs feel that allowing players to purchase magic items for their characters detracts from the wondrous nature of magic and the sense of achievement in gaining such items during their adventures. The arguments are well realised and the article is supported by several sample magic shops, the most entertaining being “The Bargain Bin” and its accompanying list of items that are magical, but far from perfect (Scroll of Faecal Storm? Euw!).

The last entry following the issue’s magic theme is “The Gordian Knot” by Mario Podeschi. Again for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, this is winning entry in the magazine’s the Relics of Power competition. It is an artefact created from the very tapestry of the planes that protects the owner against detection and scrying. In either case, the owner has to work the threads of the Knot to activate its abilities. This is great artefact for any campaign that involves high level magical scrying and intrigue.

“Welcome to the Dragon Empires” is the first of two articles that take the reader out East to Tian Xia in the world of Golarion, the home setting for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. Written by James Jacobs, this is a quick introduction to the region of Golarion that will be detailed further in the forthcoming Dragon Empires Gazetteer and Dragon Empires Primer supplements as well as the current Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Adventure Path, Jade Regent.The piece is really a list of the setting’s key points, since it lacks the space to go into any detail. That said, it is a preview and the setting does look interesting.

More detail though, is to be found in the companion article, “Làu Kiritsu: Golarion’s Lord Of Absolute Obedience.” Written by Richard Pett – one of my favourite writers for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game – it describes Tian Xia’s greatest archdevil as well as the strictures that his adherents must obey absolutely. There is plenty of flavour in this article, not just in how he is worshipped, but also in the magical objects particular to Làu Kiritsu’s worship that constrain and admonish those that they are used on. The author also provides some nice advice as to how Làu Kiritsu can be used in a game and a trio of good adventure seeds.

The issue comes with three generic articles. The first is Rick Hudson’s “Courting Adventure: Bringing the Royal Court to Life in Your Games,” an excellent description of the courtier and the offices that he could take at court along with some adventure hooks and the author’s inspirations. This would be useful for any game that takes place at court – not just one in a fantasy setting, whether that is a court that the player characters have to visit or hold themselves. The latter is a possibility for characters of higher levels, of course. The second is “10 Ways to Turn Dull Traps into High-Stakes Encounters” by Britian Oates, which discusses how to make traps in a GM’s game much more of a challenge. The last is Monte Cook’s “Balance-Free Bonuses (Or, Making the Elf More Elvish),” part of his regular Game Theories column. It explores how to give “little” benefits that expand racial abilities without resorting to the traditional “+1” effect. For example, whilst Elves never get dirty and can see half again as far as humans, they also possess mystical empathy/intuition that grants them occasional flashes of insight. Only though, when the DM wants impart some information, and not when a player wants it to work. It is a well thought out set of ideas and a referee should be inspired to add these to his game or create some of his own.

The two articles for Dragon Age – Dark Fantasy Roleplaying from Green Ronin Publishing are not actually for the Dragon Age setting, but rather for the age system. They are all about characters and backgrounds, both written to tie in with Open Design’s forthcoming Midgard Campaign Setting. The first of these is “Land of Horse and Bow: 6 Midgard Campaign Setting Backgrounds for AGE” by Simon English, which give Backgrounds suitable for characters originating from the Rothenian Plain, whether that is a Free Tribes Centaur, Windrunner Elf, Steppes Shaman, or Vidam Boyar. The sextet are pleasingly accompanied by a list of Arcane Lance variants such as Flame, Lightning, Wind, and Winter that are more likely to find their way in to Dragon Age before the Backgrounds, that is until the arrival of the Midgard Campaign Setting.

Just as the “Land of Horse and Bow” provides Backgrounds for one region, Josh Jarman’s “Scions of Terror: 4 New AGE Character Backgrounds for the Midgard Campaign Setting” gives Backgrounds for another, in this case, the Western Wastes. These Backgrounds have a harder edge to them, each necessary to survive the dangers of the Western Wastes, the grey desert created following a war of magic. What is interesting about both of these articles is seeing how they model elements particular to Dungeons & Dragons. In this case, races more commonly found in Dungeons & Dragons such as the Goblin with the Dust Goblin Dune Trader which scavenges the Western Wastes for artefacts and the Tiefling with the Tintagerian Hellborn.

The one article in Kobold Quarterly #19 for Dungeons & Dragons, Fourth Edition is Brian A Liberge’s “Bark at the Moon: Werewolf Themes for Your Character.” This explores the origins of lycanthropy and how to make the werewolf playable as a player character, moving it away from the ravenous beast into a more heroic role. As much as the author tries to add flavour to the various powers of this new character theme, it still feels all too mechanical and not up to the ideas presented in the main body of the article.

Similarly, this issue comes with a single adventure. As with recent issues, Matthew J. Hanson’s “Aneela, Human Cleric: Party of One” is a solo adventure. It is a quick affair, easy to play, and pits a young cleric against some undead, keeping it in theme with the issue’s deathly theme. Rounding out the issue is Kobold Quarterly’s usual book review column; Kobold Diplomacy column, this time interviewing the award-winning indie designer of Grey Ranks and Fiasco, Jason Morningstar; and Wolfgang Baur’s regular Free City of Zobeck end piece.

Physically, Kobold Quarterly #19 is disappointing. This is not to say that some of the artwork, including the cover, is excellent, but in places it feels ill suited. Further, the magazine needs editing in places, which was not the case with previous issues. Overall, the impression with Kobold Quarterly #19 is it has been rushed. It also feels as if there is less to this issue than previous ones, but that may be due to the fact that “Welcome to the Dragon Empires” is more of an enticement than something that can be added to a game.

There is much to like about this latest issue. Though some will decry its shift in emphasis away from Dungeons & Dragons, Fourth Edition to Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, this does mean that there is more room for the Dragon Age – Dark Fantasy Roleplaying articles, and the likelihood is that there will be more of them given the forthcoming publication of the Midgard Campaign Setting. Kobold Quarterly #19 contains an interesting selection of articles that each in their own way can be added to a game, with the plethora of strong options for the player outweighing the GM support.

Swash My Buckle Aloft!

Come the year 2150 AD and the choice for humanity is simple. Live under the reactionary yoke of the Neovictorians under Emperor Victor III in the few walled Change Cage cities that scatter the Earth, or live free far from the walls, either as Neobedouins, travelling the American Wilderness in mammoth or steam drawn caravans, or as air pirates, sailing the open skies between the sky-cities. This is the setting for Abney Park’s Airship Pirates RPG Based on the Songs of “Captain” Robert Brown, the latest RPG from Cubicle Seven Entertainment. As the full title suggests, Airship Pirates is based on the songs of Abney Park, a Steampunk inspired band from Seattle, the result being a spicy melange of genres spliced and riveted together. These include Steampunk, Post-Apocalypse, Pirates, and Time Travel, the latter only apparent deeper within the game’s setting. This mixing of genres has an influence on the game’s airships as they are not dirigibles with gondolas attached underneath, but more akin to vessels from the Age of Sail slung from bags of gas rather than sails. Some airships do use sails, but most are driven by steam engines or rarely, old and reclaimed diesel engines.

In the default setting for Airship Pirates, the players take the roles of the leading crew and passengers aboard an airship, running between the sky-cities and before the vessels of the Imperial Air Navy, just like the members of Abney Park, who travel aboard the HMS Ophelia. In the world of 2150 AD, the members of Abney Park are more than just pirates; they are also a popular band that performs at various sky-cities. This is their shtick, and similarly, the player characters are more than mere pirates – they might be performers themselves, mercenaries or merchants, or even owners of an aerial brothel. The game allows the players to take their shtick and not just customise their airship around it, but also gain a few skills to support their shtick.

The players have plenty of character options. They can be Neobedouin drivers, hunters, outriders, shaman, or beast dancers (who turn dance into a deadly martial art) or Skyfolk mercenaries, musicians, pirates, privateers, or showmen. Neovictorian options are unsurprisingly more Class riven, from Agitator, Chuno Ggun member (feared killers who track down escapees from the Change Cage cities, usually radical threats that the Emperor has had imprisoned), and Ganger to Academic, Air Navy Officer, and Dilettante. The Neovictorians also use Automata, employed as servants, pleasure dolls, and peelers (members of the Imperial Constabulary which enforce the law in the Emperor’s name), all of which can be player characters, their having “gone rogue.” Lastly, the Misbegotten are mutants, their bodies twisted by the toxins beneath each city and either confined to the Change Cage or assigned to the Chuno Ggun if they can fight.

Character creation is a mix of player choice and spending points. A player chooses his character’s culture (Automaton, Misbegotten, Neovictorian, or Skyfolk) and a Background, which determines a character’s starting skills that he must spend two thirds of his Character Points on. It should be pointed out that the number of skills listed under each Background varies from one Background to the next, such that one character might have ten skills to choose from and another only five. In the case of the latter, it forces the character to have only a few high skills as opposed to the former who must either generalise or choose to specialise. Then he assigns a few points to his characteristics. These can be negative as well as positive, but player characters all start with a score of one in each characteristic. A character is free to spend the last third of his Character Points on more skills and Traits (or advantages), though the likelihood is that these will not be enough. In this case, whilst a few more points are available if a player decides to take some Complications.

Name: Algernon Aston-Muggeridge
Culture: Neovictorian Social Class: Upper
Age/Gender: 23/Male Vocation: Writer
Build: Slim Hair/Eyes: Blonde/Blue

Attributes
Strength 0 Dexterity 1 Fortitude 0
Presence 2 Wits 3 Resolve 2

Derived Attributes
Initiative 8 Health 2

Common Skills
Bull 4, Charm 2, Dance 1, Empathy 4, Etiquette 1, General Knowledge 4, Perception 4, Seduction 2

Specialities
Art (Writing) 4, Conversation 3, Gambling 2, Martial Arts (Boxing) 1, Medicine 3

Complications
Family Feud, Glass Jaw, Social Chameleon

Traits
Drink Like A Fish/1, Rock Your World/1

Our example characters are an Upper Class Neovictorian Writer and a Misbegotten ex-member of the Chuno Ggun. How exactly Algernon Aston-Muggeridge and Sidney Stinger came to be companions is not something that either discuss, but one is rarely seen without the other. Records indicate that he is a qualified doctor, whilst rumours suggest that he fled the city after getting a young lady in trouble. He only says that he wanted to see the world beyond the walls. Sidney Stinger was a Misbegotten member of the Chuno Ggun silently creating a fearsome reputation as a tracker and killer. Sidney has a long, prehensile tail that ends in a sheath containing a tooth like stinger that she can use to lash out at an opponent in a lunge-like attack. She was assigned to track down Algernon, but was injured during the task and abandoned by her the other members of her team. It was Algernon that nursed her back to health and befriended her. These days she keeps an eye on Algernon whose penchant for wine, women, and dice often lands him in trouble, whilst he has been teaching her to read. Algernon is a regular contributor to Tales of the Airship Pirates, whilst Sidney works as a scout and finder for hire.

Name: Sidney Stinger
Culture: Misbegotten
Age/Gender: 17/Female Vocation: Chuno Ggun
Build: Lithe Hair/Eyes: Black/Green

Attributes
Strength 3 Dexterity 2 Fortitude 2
Presence 0 Wits 1 Resolve 3

Derived Attributes
Initiative 5 Health 4

Common Skills
Athletics 2, Dodge 2, Firearms 2, Hide & Sneak 2, Improvised Weapon 1, Intimidate 2, Might 2, Perception 2, Streetwise 1, Swordplay 2

Specialities
Business 1, Craft (Cookery) 2, Interrogation 2, Martial Arts (Baritsu) 3, Survival 2, Tactics 1, Tracking 2

Complications
Black Sheep, Distinctive Feature (Tail), Shy, Time-Sick

Traits
Assassin’s Law/1 (Baritsu), Lunge, Mutation (Claws)

Neither of these characters has been given the three skills associated with their airship and the three skills associated with their airship crew’s shtick. Character generation is easy and does not take all that long. Alternatively, Airship Pirates includes a sample airship and sample set of player characters, the HMS Cordelia and the musical band that crew her.

In addition to creating their characters, players also get to create their characters’ airship from a pool of fifty Resource Points which are spent to customise a standard design. These allow a party to design their airship around its shtick, so for example, if the HMS Good ‘Ol Days is home to the best aerial Music Hall in the known skies, she would have a Props Room and a Training Room, as well as space for the extra crew (or chorus), sails for longer voyages, a workshop for carrying repairs, and the luxurious cabin that the ship’s star, songstress Marlene Langtry-Philipps demands – otherwise she refuses to perform!

Airship Pirates is the third RPG from Cubicle Seven Entertainment to use the Heresy Game Engine mechanics previously seen in the Victoriana Second Edition and Dark Harvest RPGs. It is a dice-pool system that uses both black and white dice, the pools usually created from adding an attribute and a skill together. Any roll that comes up a one or a six counts as a success, while any roll of a six can be re-rolled to generate yet more successes. The primary method of setting difficulty is by adding black dice to the pool, three black dice for a difficult task, six for a very difficult task, and so on. Any roll that comes up a one or a six on a black die reduces the total number of successes rolled. Fortunately, rolls of six on a black die do not get rolled again. The other method of setting the difficulty of a task is by modifying the total number of dice in the pool. Anyway, a single success rolled counts as a partial success, two rolled successes as an adequate success, three rolled as a good success, and so on. For the most part, the rules used in Airship Pirates are a streamlined, simpler version of those used in Victoriana. This simplicity also aids the intention of the authors that Airship Pirates should be a cinematic game. The rules themselves are not inherently cinematic in style, but the GM’s section advises that Airship Pirates be played that way and the rules are no impediment to this.

Given the setting it no surprise that aerial combat is likely to be a regular feature of Airship Pirates. The danger is that it could have been hideously complex, but the rules given keep things simple with vehicles manoeuvring into range and unloading broadsides on each other. The rules allow for player participation, whether that is piloting the ship, manning a gun, or keeping the engines running. Once broadsides start being delivered, the player characters need to keep their heads down as it can get deadly very quickly. A ship’s crew does get abstracted though and usually bears the brunt of any incoming fire.

The included equipment list is not extensive, but it includes just about everything a game should need. It describes six types of aerial vehicles, as well as Neobedouin caravans, automaton cabs, and armoured barges and trains; ordinary rifles and revolvers and steam ones too; various services (including those provided by a lady) and tool kits; and useful items such as “Bloomers of Concealment,” Crinoline Frame – Collapsible (“Ladies, don’t perform martial arts without it!”), goggles, mechanical grog dispenser (“Let everyone get their share!”), and even a Difference Engine. If there is a downside to the equipment list it is that not everything is illustrated and certainly none of the weapons are. Another downside is that only the one airship in the game is given deck plans, that of the default vessel, the HMS Cordelia.

The setting material for Airship Pirates describes not only the setting, but how the Neovictorian Age of 2150 AD came about. Back in 2006, Abney Park was flying to gig when the aircraft the band were aboard collided with the airship, the HMS Ophelia. Not just an airship, HMS Cordelia happened to be a British time-travelling airship from 1906 on time patrol duty for the Empire. With people dead aboard both vessels, the surviving members of Abney Park took command of the Ophelia and set out on a mission of their own: to set time right and make a peaceful world. Which they did, but this new world was unprepared for the rise of Emperor Victor III’s grandfather and a new dictatorship at the dawn of the twenty-first century. In the decades since, humanity has been mostly confined to the Emperor’s Change Cage cities, leaving the rest of the North American continent to be returned to a state of primordial wilderness that it has been seen for millennia populated by bison, giant condor, giant sloths, mammoths and mastadons, and sabre-toothed cats.

The description of the setting is confined to the North American continent, describing its features in broad terms before examining the Sky-Cities, Neobedouin Tribes, and Neovictorian Change Cage cities along with their cultures in detail. Besides giving rules for the GM to create his own Sky-Cities, this background material also provides the GM with the physical room to create whatever he wants for his campaign as well as a decent amount of information to draw upon as ideas for his campaign.

At the heart of the GM’s section is a solid discussion of the various genres that make up Air Pirates and how to bring them into a game, drawing in each turn, from various lyrics by Abney Park. This is accompanied by an excellent example of how to use song lyrics as inspiration for adventure, using not one of Abney Park’s songs, but a very well-known pop song by the British rock band, the Electric Light Orchestra!

Particular attention is paid to time travel as this is what sets up the premise for the game. It is entirely possible for time to be altered by the player characters, this being the implied point of the game. Despite the fact that the guidelines for handling time travel and its effects are just about as straight forward and uncomplicated as they could be, time travel is not necessarily the focus of the game. This is primarily due to the fact that the player characters are not meant to start the game with access to a “Chrononautilus” and nor are they meant to be aware of the changes made to the timeline by Abney Park that got the world where it is in 2150 AD. In fact, apart from the “Chrononautilus” aboard the HMS Ophelia, there is only meant to be one other in a GM’s campaign and that is the one that will eventually fall into the hands of the player characters.

Physically, Airship Pirates is done in full colour throughout. This being a game whose primary genre is Steampunk, it is very brown, but there is enough to colour to keep it from getting monotonous. Some of the artwork is perhaps too cartoon like in style, jarring somewhat with the rest of the book. The book itself is well written, and despite needing an edit here or there, it is very readable.

The book is not perfect though. If in coming to Airship Pirates unaware of Abney Park and what they sing about, the reader might be left a bit ill-informed as what the game is about. The problem is essentially that the book does not give up enough information up front as what it is about and what there is tends to be a little too broad in nature. Similarly, some of the setting material is buried deep in the book and even finding it (or anything else) having read the book is problematic because the index is anaemic.

One problem with Airship Pirates is one that many a RPG suffers from in that although the Inventor is available as a Background for determining his core skills, his raison d'être is not actually addressed in the rules. Until they are, the GM is just going to have to rule on an inventor’s gadgeteering himself. Another issue might be the lack of campaign advice in terms of set up. As written, the idea is that the player characters will form a group, fly an airship, and either form a circus troupe, a mercenary group, or go trading, and have adventures along the way. The book lacks advice on these different concepts and the adventures that they might lend themselves too, and neither does it look at other campaign ideas. Without more support, the default campaign feels a little too much like that of Firefly with a genre twist and a shtick added on. True, the addition of Time Travel adds an interesting wrinkle to this set up, but again, it is not necessarily the focus of Airship Pirates.

Hopefully, some of the problems inherent to Airship Pirates will be addressed in a forthcoming supplement, but it should be made clear that they do not impede the play of the game in the short term – and Airship Pirates is very playable. Its core mix of the Steampunk and pirate genres will appeal to many gamers and allowing them to choose their crew’s shtick is an excellent means of directing the type of game that they want. Whether it is manners or buccaneering that the players want, Abney Park’s Airship Pirates RPG Based on the Songs of “Captain” Robert Brown does both in equal rip-roaring, swashbuckling measures.

Halloween Horror II.III

In coming to this review, I find myself with something of handicap. You see, being English and of a certain antiquity, I never came across Clifford the Big Red Dog by Norman Bridwell. I never read it when I was a child, nor did I read it to my daughter when she was of a similar age. I was all about Doctor Seuss and Maurice Sendak and Roald Dahl, and not Norman Bridwell. Which is a shame when coming to Cliffourd the Big Red God, a re-interpretation by Kennith Hite of the short story by H.P. Lovecraft, “The Dunwich Horror.” Being by H.P. Lovecraft, I have read “The Dunwich Horror,” although I have not read it to my daughter. (Come to think of it, perhaps the next time she visits, I should bind her to a chair and make her listen to my reading…).

In the children’s book, Clifford is a puce puppy, which despite being the runt of the litter, is chosen as a pet by Emily Elizabeth. Good natured, if naïve, Clifford grows to love his owner and she her dog in return, their becoming the best of friends. Clifford also grows in size, being the big red dog of the title such that Elizabeth Emily frequently rides on his back as if he was a horse.

In “The Dunwich Horror,” young Wilbur Whateley also has a close friend who grows to massive size, though it unlikely that he ever went for a ride on his back. Wilbur certainly cares for his friend, though he is rarely seen and Wilbur never takes him out for a walk, on a leash or otherwise. Wilbur’s friend does get to go on a walk – well, it is more of a rampage actually – but only after Wilbur’s death at the paws of a dog. And no, the dog is not Clifford. Then again, Emily Elizabeth does not die either, so Clifford never goes on a rampage across the Dunwich countryside. Hold on, but what would happen if Clifford actually did kill Wilbur and… Well, that is a tale for a crossover and not the tale of Cliffourd the Big Red God.

Cliffourd the Big Red God is the third in Atlas Games’ Mini Mythos series by Kenneth Hite and illustrated by Andy Hopp that re-tell classics of children’s literature through the short stories of horror author, H.P. Lovecraft. Or re-tell the classic short stories of horror author, H.P. Lovecraft through the works of children’s literature. Anyway, in this bright and breezy retold tale, young Wilbur Whately and he too has a big ruddy dog, er god. This is Cliffourd, who is big and red and does not like dogs (so the Cliffourd the Big Red God meets Clifford the Big Red Dog crossover seems unlikely), but does like eldritch tomes, non-Euclidian games, hide ‘n’ seek, and is the biggest, reddest god in Dunwich! He would actually like to be the biggest, reddest god in all of the universe, but when you track as much mud into hush, book-lined halls as Cliffourd does, the librarians usually have something to say about that!

Of course, at the end of it all, Wilbur still has his Cliffourd, and just like Elizabeth Emily loves Clifford despite the scrapes that his size gets him into, Wilbur loves his Cliffourd. Of course, Cliffourd the Big Red God is better than all of the other batrachian, cyclopean, squamous, and tentacular gods – because Wilbur loves him.

Cliffourd the Big Red God is another charming tale written for old children. Warped and twisted old children, who can either read it to each other or to children in the hope of making them warped and twisted too.

Halloween Horror II.II

The very latest title for Call of Cthulhu, Chaosium, Inc.’s RPG of Lovecraftian investigative horror, is strange for several reasons and quite possibly the strangest release for the game for some time. Red Eye of Azathoth: Unspeakable Adventures Straddling a Millennium is strange because it has been released not by one of the usual suspects – Chaosium, Inc., Pagan Publishing, Goodman Games, Miskatonic River Press, Super Genius Games, Cubicle Seven Entertainment, or even Pelgrane Press, but by Open Design, LLC. Which is a publisher better known for publishing Kobold Quarterly and various supplements for Paizo Publishing’s Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and Wizards of the Coast’s Dungeons & Dragons, Fourth Edition, especially for the Midgard Campaign Setting and its Free City of Zobeck. Second, it is strange because this experience with the Dungeons & Dragons format informs the feel and style of Red Eye of Azathoth throughout. Third, it is strange because although Red Eye of Azathoth adheres to the traditional onionskin format so beloved of the Call of Cthulhu campaign, it does not arrange its slivers of onionskin location by location, but time period by time period. Fourth, each of the five scenarios that comprise Red Eye of Azathoth can each be played through in order as a campaign, or as a series of one-shots in any order. Fifth, Red Eye of Azathoth is strange because it is only available as a PDF, physical copies only being available to patrons of the project at Open Design that eventually became Red Eye of Azathoth.

The five parts of Red Eye of Azathoth are in turn set in Dark Ages England, early Medieval Japan, Renaissance Spain, the New World, and the Wild West. What these disparate times and places have in common are the effects of the garish, gaudy glow of a ruddy comet the passing of which leaves in its wake, death, destruction, madness, and chaos. In each of these times, the adventurers find themselves confronted with strange situations and presented with mysteries, each of which takes a series of flashbacks to understand, the number of flashbacks growing as the campaign progresses. It is these flashbacks and the information and skills that they impart that together make up the campaign’s primary clues. Thus by the end of the fifth and final chapter, the adventurers will have learned what is really going on.

Not only are all five of the scenarios in Red Eye of Azathoth written for use with pre-generated characters, they are also written to be played with four participants. In some cases, the scenarios suggest how another player could be added, but not always. Further, the issue of creating new characters is not really addressed as part of the campaign, though new skills are explained. This necessary because this quintet is set entirely outside of the time frames discussed in Call of Cthulhu. In fact, the two sources that Red Eye of Azathoth draws from for its rules are actually out of print and unavailable, being the otherwise disappointing Cthulhu: Dark Ages and still the best treatment of its subject, “The Good, the Bad, and the Utterly Insane: Call of Cthulhu in the Wild West,” which appeared in Pegasus Press’ Worlds of Cthulhu #2.

Red Eye of Azathoth opens with a bloody bang, in media res, with “That Which is Dead Shall Refuse to Lie.” It is Walpurgis Night, Sunday April 30th, 887 AD on the tidal island of Lindisfarne, Northumbria, and the famed monastery has been stormed by a Viking raiding party. Under a blood red sky and before rising seas, the four adventurers – two Viking pagans and two enslaved Christian monks, must overcome their natural mistrust of each other to face a sorcerer that they can all see on top of the monastery’s tower. This is bloody affair, gorier than most Call of Cthulhu scenarios, the need to enter and explore the monastery to get to the final showdown and the number of combat encounters, make it all read very much like a dungeon. Apart from the dangers present in the scenario itself, the initial danger is that the Viking characters will overplay the master-slave relationship that the scenario opens with, possibly hampering the investigation later on. Still, this gets the campaign off to a start with a bang.

It is followed by “The Silence of Thousands Shall Quell the Refrain,” which is set in Japan in 1287 AD. This places the investigators in the pre-samurai era with their being sent to study the marvellous village of Iwaizumi, which come war, famine, or typhoon has always been able to pay its tribute to the emperor, and this without petitioning the throne on any matter in return. The curious reputation of the village is exacerbated by the curious nature of villagers, everyone one of them silent and illiterate. This sets up what could be a stumbling block to the easy running and playing of the scenario in that the villagers communicate through the use of sketched pictograms. The Keeper is encouraged to act this out between the player characters and the NPCs, a process that could grow wearisome all too quickly. Fortunately, the scenario does feel that long, but again, like the scenario before it, “The Silence of Thousands Shall Quell the Refrain” is a combat orientated adventure.

This is not to say that there is no investigation involved, but the real issue with the scenario is that unlike its predecessor, it really does feel like a generic Dungeons & Dragons scenario, one that could be set elsewhere, let alone early medieval Japan. Effectively that of there being a village under threat and the adventurers must deal with the threat, though the twist at the beginning is that the village of Iwaizumi is at least initially mysterious rather than obviously dangerous.

The middle scenario though, is more interesting, at least historically. “Fires of Hatred Defile the Sky” takes place in Valencia, Spain in 1487 AD at the height of the Spanish Inquisition. The descent of three angels upon the city has been taken as a blessing by the “Grace of Valencia,” Bishop Esteban del Cassandro, to root out every non-believer and heretic in the city. As the scenario opens, each adventurer finds himself gagged and hooded, under arrest and held by the Inquisition. The adventure involves the characters finding allies and avoiding being subject to inquisitive torture, their escaping the prison, all already with a good idea as to who the scenario’s antagonist is. Proving it is not just another matter, but also the point of the scenario. Doing so, involves a chase sequence before breaking into the antagonist’s quarters.

If there is an element in “Fires of Hatred Defile the Sky” that feels at odds with Lovecraftian investigative horror, it is the inclusion of magic that feels more Euclidean. For example, one investigator knows how to construct a golem whilst another can command snakes and even transform himself into a snake. Lovecraftian Purists are unlikely to appreciate this, and Dungeons & Dragons players will probably be dismayed at the lack of spells. Ultimately, their inclusion does feel out of place providing as they do too easy a solution to some of the situations presented in the scenario.

The lost colony of Roanoke is no stranger to Call of Cthulhu, having previously been visited in “Whispers from the Abyss” in the Theatre of the Mind Enterprises’ anthology, Whispers from the Abyss and Other Tales – pleasingly acknowledged in the text of the fourth scenario. Set in 1587 AD, “Lost Shall Be Those Bearing Souls Split in Twain” finds the adventurers crossing the Atlantic to join in the colonisation efforts spearheaded by Sir Walter Raleigh in the New World. Upon arrival, they and their fellow colonists find the existing settlement abandoned, which sets up the scenario’s first mystery and first problem. That is, what happened to the former inhabitants and was it something to do with the indigenous peoples native to the region; and how will they survive the all too imminent winter? At least looking into the first problem will bring the newly arrived colonists into contact with the natives, and here the scenario’s tension lies – dealing with one or more peoples whose relationships with new colonists’ predecessors threaten their own relationship with the native. This is all the whilst both the colonists and the natives are haunted by creature out of legends of the New World.

Unlike the previous scenarios, “Lost Shall Be Those Bearing Souls Split in Twain” is a more event driven adventure and by setting it on the edge of the New World, it also feels less confined than the previous adventures. There is also less of a reliance upon the format and play style of the Dungeons & Dragons scenario, it is less combative in nature, and ultimately, less linearity.

Red Eye of Azathoth comes to a close in the “Weird West” of the Arizona Territory of 1887 AD. “And Madness Shall Rise to Devour the West” opens with such a shuddering bang, it behoves me not to spoil it for any potential player. Once the scenario gets moving, the investigators must make their into the isolated township of Desperation to find its inhabitants harrowed by hunger and the perpetual sandstorm that rings the town, and the town itself under the control of several fierce Marshals with a tough approach to law enforcement. After the more traditional feel of a Call of Cthulhu scenario in “Lost Shall Be Those Bearing Souls Split in Twain,” this scenario reverts to the pattern by the first three adventures and is more combative and explorative in nature. Given the modern era of the setting, it would seem natural that this combative aspect would involve firearms, and indeed the scenario does. Yet there is an effect within the scenario that prevents their working, forcing the investigators to rely upon their comparatively weak melee skills. It seems so odds at the setting to remove something so intrinsic to it. Another issue with “And Madness Shall Rise to Devour the West” is its change of tone compared to the earlier scenarios; it is inherently pulpy with super competent investigators two of whom possess several spells.

The influence of the Dungeons & Dragons format on the feel and style of Red Eye of Azathoth shows most obviously in the characters and the campaign’s physicality. It is important to stress the difference between the characters of Red Eye of Azathoth and the investigators of Call of Cthulhu. In Call of Cthulhu, the investigators are ordinary men and women of varying degrees of competence though rarely what might be called super competence, especially when it comes to combat. Whereas the “investigators” of Red Eye of Azathoth owe more to high level adventurers of Dungeons & Dragons in terms of skills and combat expertise, rather than arcane or divine abilities, although several of the pre-generated adventurers possess both spells and knowledge of the Mythos. Their skills are thus high – though this often matched by the capability of the antagonists – which when combined with the lack of traditional investigative processes, makes the “investigators” of Red Eye of Azathoth more like adventurers. Further, without those traditional investigative processes, the means of resolving the five scenarios takes on a more physical, more combative nature.

It should be noted that the structure of the campaign and its use of different adventurers in each time period also impacts on the campaign in interesting ways. In the traditional onionskin campaign, an investigator’s Sanity is whittled down as the events of the campaign progress, such that there is often a loss of player characters due to deleterious effects of encountering the Mythos. In Red Eye of Azathoth, this is avoided because essentially, the characters are refreshed from one scenario to the next. Though to an extent, the traditional Sanity whittling is countered with some quite strong Sanity losses within the scenarios themselves. Red Eye of Azathoth also avoids the loss of knowledge common to other Call of Cthulhu campaigns that would come with the death of investigators with the flashback mechanic, though they still begin each scenario unaware of who the campaign’s villain is and of course, who he will be in each scenario.

The structure of the campaign also expects a little more of the Keeper. Naturally, the protagonist is working to achieve certain objectives, but in each scenario, the adventurers have the opportunity to curtail certain elements of these. So a Keeper needs to maintain a track of what the adventurers have done or not done in one adventure, as this not only has an effect during the subsequent adventures, but also on the campaign’s finale. Essentially, by campaign’s end, the Keeper will have assembled a check list in which he needs to have checked off what the investigators have done and determine how well they will have done overall.

Physically, Red Eye of Azathoth is a clean and tidy looking book. Oddly, it is actually better for a Keeper to own the PDF version of the book, rather than the printed version. This is because the PDF makes use of colour, making it easier to read, especially the maps. In the printed book, they are sometimes too dark to read. If there is an issue with the book, it is that it needs another edit just to tidy it up.

Ultimately, it is difficult not to read Red Eye of Azathoth as a Dungeons & Dragons campaign written with the drier, less forgiving set of rules in Call of Cthulhu. There should be no criticism inherent to such a concept, but in the execution as evidenced by this mini-campaign, the result is not wholly satisfying. The individual scenarios themselves feel too short and often too linear; the antagonist too fleeting a figure until the climax of each scenario when the investigators get a chance to beat him up; and the campaign often a little too fantastic in the way that the characters are designed. This is not to deny the interest that lies in exploring the settings and period of at least the first four scenarios or in the way in which the first four scenarios are set up. Similarly, the means of passing information from previous scenarios to the latest is interesting and well done, helping to get past the issue of dealing with player knowledge (though to help work against player knowledge, I would suggest that initially they only be told that they are playing one-shots rather than a campaign).

For some players, Red Eye of Azathoth: Unspeakable Adventures Straddling a Millennium is just going to be too different a campaign for them to play, whether they normally play Call of Cthulhu or Dungeons & Dragons in their classic styles. For Call of Cthulhu, it is too pulpy and too reliant on combat to deal with its threats, whilst for Dungeons & Dragons, the investigators are probably too weak and the settings not quite fantastic enough. Given the campaign’s source, it is no surprise that its influences are worn so readily, and if both players and Keeper can embrace both these influences and the campaign’s structure, then there is an interesting experience to be gained from playing through the campaign. Whilst those influences and its structure is always going to make it a stranger when compared to other campaigns, Red Eye of Azathoth: Unspeakable Adventures Straddling a Millennium is nevertheless a brave attempt to do something different with the classic Call of Cthulhu campaign.

Halloween Horror II.I

Out of Time is an anthology for Pelgrane Press’ Trail of Cthulhu that collates four scenarios previously singly as PDF titles. Each of the four is a detailed one-shot complete with pre-generated investigators with each scenario in turn taking place on the Western Front during the Great War; on the most barren outpost of France’s colonial empire in the 1930s; to Science Fiction’s lunatic fringe in early 1950s California; and to the after effects of nuclear testing in the South Pacific, again in the early 1950s. Any one of the four, all of which tend towards the Purist rather than the Pulp style of play, can with some effort be run as a convention style scenario, but really any of these four merits a good session or two’s worth of play.

The anthology opens with Adam Gauntlett’s “Not So Quiet,” which is set entirely within the confines of Military Hospital Number Five not far behind the Allied lines in 1917. The investigators have either been posted there as staff or wounded, have been sent there as patients. Arriving after a hellish journey in an ambulance convoy, the patients are assigned to their wards to rest and the staff sent to work. In the days to come, it becomes apparent that not all is well at the hospital: mortality rates seem high, even amongst those that would otherwise appear to be on the road to recovery; the wards are ruled by the head nurse with a rod of iron; the experimental electro-shock therapy seems to be more than therapy; off the rounds drug treatments; and simply an air of malevolence that hides something more desperate.

Discovering what is going takes careful interrogation; such is the paranoia that pervades the hospital. The process is hampered by the patient-staff divide, for while individually each investigator will be able to gather a certain amount of information, but bringing the investigators together to share that information is another matter. So for the most part, the GM will be running single scenes until the climax itself. Nevertheless, “Not So Quiet” is strong on atmosphere, with plenty of opportunity for the investigators to inveigle their way into what is really going.

The second scenario is “The Black Drop” by Jason Morningstar. As it opens, the investigators find themselves aboard a freighter bound for the Kerguelen Islands located at the far southern reaches of the Indian Ocean. The French government has decided to shut down its failed colony there and the passengers are either to aid in its closure or to take advantage of this very last opportunity to visit the islands. The windswept and almost sub-Antarctic archipelago is a known site from which the Transit of Venus can be viewed and some have suggested a potential deep water anchorage for use in the forthcoming conflict that everyone fears, so when the crew of the freighter picks up German radio traffic, just who else has an interest in the Kerguelens and what is the nature of that interest?

All too quickly, the investigators find themselves ashore and at the mercy of the elements, the foreign barrenness of the island, and the colonists whose intentions are anything other than the desire to return to France. Given their situation the investigators need help, if not allies, and the latter come in the form of the German party which has its own objectives. This sets up the first of two tensions within “The Black Drop” – can the investigators, let alone the players, ally themselves with forces that they know to be “evil,” in other words, the Nazis? The other being that of how far the investigators will go to prevent the coming of a greater evil, one that has been present on Kerguelen from when it was part of a much larger land mass...

“The Black Drop” has quite an open structure with even the evil at its heart being left up to the GM to decide. The Kerguelen Islands are themselves nicely described, with a focus on the dangerous nature of their landscape. Whilst the provided pre-generated investigators do together possess some potential tensions contemporary of the period between them, they do themselves feel underwritten. Conversely, of all of the four scenarios in Out of Time, this is the one that would be the easiest to fit into an existing campaign, the given flashbacks that develop the scenario’s background being easily adapted into scenes that would push the investigators to visit the Kerguelen Islands. If there are parallels between this scenario and any other, it would be the classic Beyond the Mountains of Madness for Call of Cthulhu. The author deserves kudos, not just for a bleakly desperate scenario, but also for labelling one of the sections, “The Unholy Lambeth of the Antipodes.”

Bill White provides two scenarios for “Out of Time,” both of which are set in the early 1950s. The first of these is “The Big Hoodoo,” a big slice of Californian Voodo that draws heavily from Science Fiction history while setting it quite literally in the parallel universe next door in your neighbour’s backyard. Further, the pre-generated investigators are not your typical antiquarian or your gun-toting Private Eye, but the literati of the Science Fiction world – Robert Heinlein, ex-Navy engineer and author; his second wife, Virginia, also an ex-Navy engineer; Anthony Boucher, Science Fiction editor and mystery author; and lastly, a young and up and coming Philip K. Dick. As the scenario opens, all four are in Los Angeles en route to attend the funeral of late Jack Parsons, rocketry pioneer and occultist who was killed in an explosion in his garage laboratory. The scenario suggests other Science Fiction luminaries who might be attendance should there be more than four players.

What follows is a complex, dense affair that echoes Film Noir, though sun drenched rather ensnared in shadows. This complexity and the wide array of clues available would need careful pruning for a convention game, let alone a normal one, threatening as it does to sprawl wildly if the GM does not keep a tight rein on the narrative. It presents a heady mix of science and the occult, government interest and charlatanry, the Mythos and Enochian Magic all based on the real world relationships, histories, and beliefs of the scenario’s antagonists, most notably those of a renamed L. Ron Hubbard. The author puts an amusing twist upon them and Hubbard’s self-actualisation teachings – though fans of Asimov might object to said twist – that just exacerbates the weirdness of “The Big Hoodoo.”

There are a number of issues that a GM must address in wanting to run “The Big Hoodoo.” It is very specific in terms of setting and protagonists, not only making it difficult to adapt to other times and settings, but also making it difficult to run it without using the pre-generated investigators. The ultimate issue is one of how much the players are prepared to buy into playing and interacting with Science Fiction luminaries – unless they have read the works of the authors in question, they are unlikely to gain much from this scenario.

Rounding out Out of Time is Bill White’s second scenario, “Castle Bravo.” Again set in the early 1950s, this is an attempt to do the period’s “Atomic Horror” without veering off into the more traditional campiness of the genre. Like the rest of the scenarios in the collection, it is a Purist affair, and like “Not So Quiet” before it, “Castle Bravo” concerns the military. This time the investigators are members of the crew of the USS Bairoko, a US carrier assigned to monitor a series of secret thermonuclear test shots in the Bikini atoll called Operation Castle.

In comparison with “The Big Hoodoo,” this is potentially a more action orientated adventure, despite being a Purist scenario. It is also a more focused and direct affair that starts with the bang of the atomic detonation and from there events take on an increasingly weird turn. The investigators face not only the dangers of the fallout, but also the transmogrification of fellow crewmembers and their own falling into increasingly odd fugue states. They also haunted by an antagonist whose own transmogrification echoes that of Doctor Manhattan from Alan Moore’s Watchmen. In addition to having to get to the heart of the threat that they really face, the investigators must also help keep their vessel at a necessary readiness to face their threat and negotiate with their superiors in order to gain the means to deal with said threat.

The oddity of the latter means that having roleplayed their way into military characters, the players then have to roleplay their characters doing unmilitary actions. Another issue with the scenario is that only the one investigator is subject to the anagnorisis, the scenario’s “big reveal.” Nevertheless, this is an enjoyably muscular adventure, one that relies on interaction as much as it does action.

Physically, Out of Time is another excellent looking book, just as you would expect for a title for Trail of Cthulhu. It is not quite as well presented though. This shows in the poor handling of the some of the page references, a hangover from when the four scenarios were available individually. That said, the page numbers on the contents page are correct. It also shows in some of the artwork. It is not a matter of the artwork being bad, for Jérôme Huguenin’s work continues to be excellent, but rather some of it feels irrelevant to the story.

All four of the scenarios in this anthology need a very careful read through, though this is in part is eased by the inclusion of a set of designer notes from the supplement’s three authors. Thus for “Not So Quiet,” Adam Gauntlett discusses the dangers of being wounded during World War I; for “The Black Drop,” Jason Morningstar explores how his scenario might be run during the nineteenth rather the twentieth century; and for “The Big Hoodoo,” Bill White provides detailed, if not to say, very welcome, playtest notes. He does not however, provide any for “Castle Bravo.” This is not as much of a problem as it might have been with the previous three scenarios, as “Castle Bravo” is a comparatively straightforward. Still, their inclusion would have been useful.

Being one-shots and particular to a time and place in each case, the four scenarios herein are far from flexible. With a tweak here and there, they can be moved towards the game’s Pulp mode of play, but shifting out their periods is more difficult. Of the four, “The Black Drop” is the easiest to run with a standard group and existing campaign, whilst “Not So Quiet” could be used as the start of a World War I set campaign. “Not So Quiet” could be run as a flashback to explain the investigator’s previous experience with the Mythos.

The very title of Out of Time hints at the desperate nature of the four scenarios in the anthology. Three of the four also take Trail of Cthulhu out of its traditional period of the 1930s, while the fourth, “The Black Drop,” certainly takes Trail of Cthulhu far from civilisation. All four though continue Trail of Cthulhu's tradition of strong strong with well written and well realised scenarios.

Dicing For Sanity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The TALENT Campaign

For a game as old as Arc Dream Publishing’s GODLIKE: Superhero Roleplaying in a World on Fire, 1936–1946, it seems a shame that there is so little support for it, let alone the fact that for a game with a setting – the whole of the Second World War – as rife with possibilities, it has never been given a campaign of its own. All that changes with the release of Black Devils Brigade: The First Special Service Force and the Italian Campaign, 1943–1944, the first full length adventure campaign for the GODLIKE, the RPG that took Talents or the common soldiery with an amazing abilities to war against the Axis Powers. In GODLIKE the player characters are soldiers first, not only highly trained, but also trained in how to use talents such as being able to open any locked door simply by pointing at it, momentarily freeze time and sidestep bullets, or go to sleep and have their skeleton climb out of their body to fight for them. Not only are the Allied Talents up against the military might of Nazi Germany, but also the Übermenschen, the Nazi Talents who are part of the SS and who revel in their powers and the Aryan ideals of the “Super Race.” At the heart of the game lies each Talent’s Will, this fuels his powers and his ability to cancel out another Talent’s powers, but which can be lost if he loses a contest of Wills with an enemy Talent. In Black Devils Brigade: The First Special Service Force and the Italian Campaign, 1943–1944, this will all come to the fore as the Talents are taken from training right through the length of the Italian campaign.

The Talents in Black Devils Brigade are members of the First Special Service Force (FSSF), a joint American-Canadian unit raised and trained as commandoes specialising in winter warfare, their intended mission to carry out strike missions behind enemy lines in Norway and Romania. When this became impossible, the unit was first sent to the Pacific to help re-capture the Aleutians from the Japanese, before being going to Italy and fighting at Anzio. Many of the initial recruits were originally miners, mountaineers, and lumberjacks, tough outdoorsmen who were also expected to speak a second language. This is reflected in the extra points that a Forceman receives for his Stats. One factor reflected in character generation in this alternate world is the fact that the First Special Service Force kept its Talents when they manifested and did not send them to train with Talent Operations Group at its Achnacarry Commando Training School. Thus a player receives just twenty points with which to create the abilities of his FSSF Talent.

Our sample FSSF Talent is Henning Huber, a Canadian who as the son of German immigrants wants to prove himself to be a Canadian rather than a German. He trained as a telephone engineer, which often meant repairing telephone lines in all weathers and which resulted in him being assigned to the FSSF’s Communication Detachment, part of its Service Section. His Talent manifested during a live fire exercise when one of his detachment was wounded and he found himself without sufficient medical equipment to treat the wound. With no one else available, he literally grabbed other kits from Forcemen elsewhere on the battlefield. He can grab objects vital to his survival or that of others, but only if he is scared and he has no control over what item he gets. In recent battles he has managed grab weapons from both his colleagues and his enemies, and even one occasion, a whole tank! For his reason, he is known as “Lucky Dip.”

Corporal Henning Huber, “Lucky Dip,” Talent Section, FSSF
Body 3 Coordination 3 Sense 2
Brains 3 Command 2 Cool 2
Base Will 4
Current Will 8
Motivations: Prove himself to be Canadian, not German; Force Esprit des Corps
Skills: Anti-Tank Rocket 1 (4d), Bluff 1 (3d), Brawling 1 (4d), Climb 2 (5d), Drive (Automobile) 1 (4d), Electronics 2 (5d), Endurance 2 (5d), Explosives 1 (4d), Forward Observer 1 (4d), French 1 (4d), German 2 (5d), Grenade 1 (4d), Instrument (Piano) 1 (4d), Knife Fighting 2 (5d), Machine Gun 1 (4d), Map Reading 1 (4d), Mechanics 1 (4d), Mortar 1 (4d), Navigation (Land) 1 (4d), Parachuting 1 (4d), Pistol 1 (4d), Radio Operation 2 (5d), Rifle 2 (5d), Sight 1 (3d), Skiing 1 (4d), Stealth 2 (5d), Submachine Gun 2 (5d), Survival 2 (5d), Tactics 1 (4d), Telephony 2 (5d)
Talents (16 Will Points)
Fetch: Reflexively grab what he needs when in an emergency 8d+1wd (Qualities: Attacks, Robust, Useful Outside of Combat. Base Cost: 4/8/16. Extra: Reflexive +2/+4/+8; Flaw: Peace of Mind – Scared -2/-4/-8; Flaw: Uncontrollable -3/-6/-12; Final Cost 1/4/8; 16 points).

So a Forceman Talent character can be created with twenty points, but this is a real problem for Black Devils Brigade as a supplement. In a standard game of GODLIKE, Talent Operations Group characters receive twenty-five points to spend on their Talent abilities and it can be challenging enough to create interesting characters on this point total. On the twenty points that an FSSF Talent gets it is very difficult without resorting to the common default of buying Super Stats and Super Skills. In play, this disparity widens when the FSSF Talents face the Übermenschen, who are often built on as many as eighty or more points. To an extent this is a feature of the game, pitching the better trained Allied Talents with less effective abilities against the Übermenschen with emphasis on powers over training. It forces a player to be inventive, not just in creating the character, but also in playing the game. Now while the inclusion of the FSSF’s first eight Talents as playable characters is laudable, it would have been useful to have if not more characters, then at least some ready-to-play, Talent packages built on twenty points.

Although the bulk of Black Devils Brigade is devoted the FSSF’s time in Italy, it includes enough background information with which the GM could run the Talents through some sessions training stateside or the anti-climax that was the recapture of the Aleutians. Once in Italy, the Talents will naturally find themselves constantly at the centre of the action, being called upon to perform scouting missions, assaults, patrols, and more over mountain, rural, and urban terrain. Not only will they face normal veterans of both the Wehrmacht and the SS, but also the Übermenschen, who are also members of the SS. More specifically, the Talents will often themselves sent out to deal with the threats posed by the Übermenschen. The campaign details some fifty of them, complete with fully worked powers and personalities, both of which vary widely. It should be made clear that not every of the Übermenschen is an avowed Nazi – many are simply trying to survive, while others have second thoughts.

Naturally, the focus in Black Devils Brigade is on combat, and plenty of it, with the player characters finding themselves being tested again and again. That said, the campaign includes several situations that do not involve combat, including comfort missions, relationships with civilians, inter-unit rivalries, and army politics. These both break up what could have been a very one-note campaign and provide yet more opportunities for roleplaying. Throughout the campaign, the Talents are at the centre of the attention and the action, reflecting the fact of their importance in the war fought in GODLIKE and the need to keep the player characters at that centre of attention.

Rounding out the campaign is a lengthy appendix that not only includes the pre-generated Talents but also several sets of rules. These cover making Sneak Attacks – a common tactic used by the Forcemen in their raids across enemy lines; Bombardment – artillery is a constant threat; One Roll Patrols – a means of generating random patrol missions from the type, terrain, and complications with a single roll of eleven dice; Minefields – laid by both sides; and FUBAR situations. The latter dealing with the random bad things that can happen on the battlefield, coming into play only when a player rolls poorly.

Physically, Black Devils Brigade is well laid out and well written with decent artwork. In places the GM will need to pay careful attention to the maps and their descriptions in the text as it is not always easy for the GM to visualise the battlefield, and this may well be a problem in trying to impart the lay of the land to the players. Even though the campaign does work hard to keep the emphasis in the battles on the player characters, there is the feeling that miniatures would help in order to have both players and GM visualise and interact with the battlefield, though in bringing them to the game would make it much more expensive.

In truth, we have been waiting for Black Devils Brigade for quite some time now. To date we have had excursions for GODLIKE to the Pacific and Western Europe, but for the most part, the Italian Campaign has been ignored. Not now though, for Black Devils Brigade: The First Special Service Force and the Italian Campaign, 1943–1944 does it full justice in presenting a challenging, sometimes too challenging, a roleplaying campaign that will give months of play.