d100 Traveller

Published by FrostByte Books, M-Space: d100 roleplaying in the far future is part of the continuing wave of RPGs originating in Sweden, includling Symbaroum, Mutant Chronicles, and Mutant: Year Zero. Unlike those three RPGs, M-Space is neither Swedish nor European in its origins or its tone, being very much inspired by classic American Science Fiction and classic American Science Fiction RPGs. Further, its mechanics are similarly American in design, being derived from RuneQuest and Basic RolePlaying. Specifically, M-Space uses Mythras Imperative, the streamlined version of Mythras, the new incarnation of the RPG from The Design Mechanism that previously powered RuneQuest 6.

Part of the ‘Mythras Gateway’ program, M-Space is a percentile system that will be familiar to anyone who has played any RPG using the Basic Roleplaying system, whether that is Call of Cthulhu, Hawkmoon, or Ringworld. Stats are generally rated between one and eighteen, the primary mechanic is skill based and skills are fundamental to the game, everyone has hit locations, and so combat is fairly deadly. Character creation is a matter of rolling stats and assigning points to skills derived from the character’s Culture and Career—M-Space gives Rural, Urban, and Orbital as its possible Cultures, plus free to assign skill points. Skills themselves are divided into Standard skills, which everyone knows, and Professional Skills, specialised skills that a character only knows from his Culture and his Career. Most notable of the skills is Combat Style, essentially each a package that represents training in a number of weapons. So for example, Combat Style (Bodyguard) might cover the use of Handgun, Unarmed Combat, and Evade, whereas Combat Style (Merkrai’an Rider) could include spear, knife, and brawl. The major addition to combat in comparison to other Basic Roleplaying RPGs are Special Effects, conditions such as Blind Opponent, Bypass Armour, and Rapid Reload that come into play when a combatant rolls better than an opponent. A character will also have Passions—for and against people, organisations, places, and ideas—that can be used to help augment skills for particular actions, serve as roleplaying hooks, and indicate elements of a campaign to focus on.

Our sample character is a bureaucrat who trained to be a pilot, but washed out due to low fitness evaluations. Instead he entered the civil service where his space operations training saw him posted to the Customs & Excise Transit Authority. He is ambitious and wants to prove himself as good as any spacer. He has a strong dislike of smugglers and any who would besmirch the good name of pilots or attempt to undermine what he sees as the fair and just efforts of the Customs & Excise Transit Authority.

Chae-Won Daniel
Age 41

Culture: Orbital
Career: Official

STR 13 CON 07 SIZ 12 DEX 16 INT 16 POW 14 CHA 17

Action Points: 2 Damage Modifier: – Experience Modifier: +1 Healing Rate: 2
Initiative Bonus: +16 Luck Points: 3 Power Points: 14 Movement Rate: 6

Hit Points
Head 4 Chest 6 Abdomen 5 L. Arm 3 R. Arm 3 L. Leg 4 R. Leg 4

Standard Skills:
Conceal 30%, Customs 52%, Deceit 30%, Influence 74%, Insight 73%, Locale 32%, Native Tongue 63%, Perception 50%, Sing 51%, Willpower 52%


Professional Skills:
Bureaucracy 62%, Commerce 63%, Courtesy 63%, Pilot 52%, 

Combat Skills:
Combat Style (Orbital Self-Defence) 49%

Passions
Loyalty to Home (Orbital Habitat 242) 70%
Love (Mother) 61%
Hate (Smugglers) 50%

Mechanically, M-Space is a straightforward percentile system. Anyone who has used the Mythras system before will have no issues picking up and playing M-Space just as anyone who has played any RPG using the Basic RolePlaying system will pick the rules up with ease. Beyond most simple circumstances, M-Space covers more complex situations with ‘Extended Conflicts’, such as a poker game, a race through an asteroid belt, a dinner party, and so on. These are handled through opposed rolls, with the winner inflicting damage to the loser’s Conflict Pool, each Conflict Pool being based on one or more of each participant’s stats and being created according to the needs of the situation. So to sneak into a warehouse would mean a character rolling his Stealth versus the guard’s Perception in an extended series of tests with the guard using his Intelligence as his Conflict Pool and the character his Dexterity as his Conflict Pool. 

Unsurprisingly M-Space adds a number of separate systems to handle its Science Fiction—starship design, starship combat, alien creation, world building, and vehicle design. Starship design is done by building modules. For example, one module is required per crewmember or passenger, but four modules are equal to cubicle; one module is roughly equal to one ton of cargo space; a hanger bay equal to four modules would hold an ATV, whilst ten modules would house a fighter or shuttle, and so on. On the whole the system is fairly simple, although it will require some arithmetic. Hyperspace travel is framed as a narrative device, with a Jump rating of between one and five determining how far any Hyperspace Drive will get you. A Jump of one will get your ship to the nearest few stars, a Jump of five across the subsector. Starship combat, unlike standard man-to-man missile and melee combat, involves more maneuvering, typically to gain a better position—offensive or defensive—to avoid incoming fire or to better deliver it. Like the standard combat system, starship combat has its own Special Effects, these being divided into those for Pilot and Gunnery. Like standard combat, a simplified version of the starship combat rules are also provided. Unlike the standard combat system, the starship combat rules do include a fully worked out example.

Alien creation involves addressing a number of points raised as Universal Life Form Parameters, for example, how Strange an alien is, its biosphere, body plans, and so on. Rolling on or choosing from the simple tables gives the answers and essentially allows the GM to build an alien as he goes along. For intelligent aliens the GM can add technology and culture, whilst a similar set of tables will inspire the GM to create worlds where his campaign can be set. Further notable additions include rules for Circles or organisations and how they and the player characters interact and rules for Psionics. They are divided into three spheres—Sense, Mind, and Matter—with Psionic ability, like Telepathy or Farsight, is treated as a separate skill. The rules are a fairly standard approach to Psionics, but what they do not address is how they are acquired. For example, there is no Psionicist Career given.

Rounding out M-Space are some sample space ships and sample alien lifeforms. The latter are better than the former, including as they do the Grept, an intelligent species with an advanced civilisation and society whose hierarchy is based on Psionic ability, and the Deep-Sea Gobbler, a large fish-like species that is on the verge of civilisation. Unfortunately, there is nothing original about the spaceships. From the X Fighter and the Y Fighter to the Corvette and the Destroyer, they are essentially the ships from the Star Wars franchise. Now M-Space is designed to be a toolkit to model various types of Science Fiction, not necessarily specific franchises from Science Fiction. Nowhere else is this modelling done in M-Space. Had the rulebook included sections on using the rules to model various types or franchises of Science Fiction, then these ships would have been a welcome addition to such a section, but because the author does not even bother to change the very similar names, they just stick out like a sore thumb.

Which highlights the biggest problem at the heart of M-Space—how is M-Space to be used? What sort of Science Fiction can it be used to emulate? The author never addresses this nor does he talk about the genre. Part of the problem is that what M-Space really does is emulate another RPG—Traveller, and Classic Traveller at that, published in 1977 by Game Designers’ Workshop. If M-Space is emulating a forty year old RPG, then Traveller—especially in the form of its setting, the Third Imperium—is based more on the Imperial Science Fiction of the 1940s and 1950s, of Poul Anderson, Isaac Asimov, Bertram Chandler, Robert A. Heinlein, H. Beam Piper, E.C. Tubb, and others. The author makes this explicit with the inclusion of the Tech Level Table from Traveller—included as Traveller is under Creative Common license and by the author as a direct homage—but the similarities between Traveller and M-Space run throughout the pages of the the RPG. The inclusion of the Tech Level Table just confirms the similarities.

Further, there is no advice for the GM whatsoever. So in addition to no discussion of Science Fiction and its various subgenres, there is no advice on running M-Space or Science Fiction in general. The lack of advice on running M-Space is compounded by the general lack of examples in the book. Now there is an example of starship combat and there are examples here and there, but there is no example of play or of character generation. None of this will be that much of issue for the experienced GM, but anyone new to roleplaying or science fiction roleplaying will find little to help them here.

Physically, M-Space comes as a black and white square volume. In places the writing could have benefited from a tighter edit and there is no denying that the author’s style is rather dry. Which is no surprise given the toolkit nature of M-Space. In terms of illustrations, each chapter is prefaced by a fully painted piece that works even in grayscale, but elsewhere the artwork is less effective. In particular, many of the thumbnail portraits are superfluous placeholders. Decent enough, but do no more than take up space and do not evoke the RPG’s genre.

As much as M-Space is an emulation of Traveller, it is not particularly strong emulation of Imperial Science Fiction or of any particular subgenre of Science Fiction. It could certainly be used to run a Traveller-like game, or one set in the far future of the Third Imperium, the near futures of Firefly or 2300AD, and with a stretch, even the Pulpier settings of Star Wars and the Star Frontiers RPG. How exactly you would go about recreating any of those settings or creating one of the GM’s own devising, is down to the GM—there is no advice given in M-Space. This is M-Space’s biggest weakness. Essentially, how do you use M-Space? How do I use the tools in M-Space to this or that? Of course, this will not stop an experienced GM who will know how to use the tools provided in M-Space to tinker away and create a setting of his choice, whereas a GM with less experience should probably look at an RPG other than M-Space. This also means that M-Space is not an RPG written with players in mind, as there no hook nor an elevator pitch with which to grab them, because beyond character generation, M-Space is about the tools that GM has to play with.

A Beast of an Adventure

The Beast of Ledsham is the first supplement released for Maelstrom Domesday, the Norman set RPG published by Arion Games as a prequel and second edition to the 1984 RPG, Maelstrom. This new RPG is set in 1086, some twenty years after the Norman invasion of 1066, and presents a country still recovering from repeated invasions—by the Scots and the Danes; from repeated rebellions and suppressions within; and finally from the ‘Harrying of the North’, the violent suppression of not just a series of Anglo-Saxon uprisings, but of the Anglo-Saxon peoples in the region, resulting in the death of tens of thousands. This is the year in which the Domesday Book, a great survey of the men and lands of the King William the Conqueror is completed, even as the king’s attention continues to be divided between consolidating his rule over England and holding off the French king’s designs upon Normandy. Thus the king’s men cannot be everywhere and when his peace is disrupted, the taxes cannot be collected,, there are further signs of rebellion, or things that cannot truly be explained, other powerful men of the kingdom are prepared to step in to support both king and church. Often they cannot act directly and arrange to have their agents act for them—agents such as the player characters, who each have had some kind of encounter with the supernatural that is the Maelstrom…!

Characters in Maelstrom Domesday are ordinary men and women—they can be archers, beggars, craftsmen, huntsmen, knights, ladies, men-at-arms, outlaws, peasants, priests, squires, and wisemen/wisewomen. In the default campaign set-up, the characters each have an encounter with something weird and been employed by a local lord to investigate strange things going on in his holdings. It should be noted that this is historical game, which means that there are many occupations that will not be available to female characters. Further whilst magic using characters are possible, it is rare that one will be rolled up during character creation.

The Beast of Ledsham is a short adventure in which the characters are tasked with visiting the village of Ledsham to the west of York—the default campaign location in the core rulebook—where it is reported that something evil lurks in the surrounding woods, preying on game and the villagers. This matter has to be addressed quickly as the Norman baron Ilbert de Lacy will move to do what the characters have been ordered to do, but he will do so employing harsh, direct methods as he thinks that the villagers have been poaching his deer.

Written for use with novice or experienced characters, The Beast of Ledsham consists of a twenty-eight page booklet which mostly consists of a description of the village and its inhabitants. In order to conduct the investigation, the characters will need to interview the villagers. In the doing so, they will be faced with a prejudice or two—Normans are not always well liked in Ledsham—and perhaps uncover one or two things going on in the village. This is necessary, since it aid in their final uncovering of what exactly is going on in Ledsham.

The problem is that The Beast of Ledsham focuses on building the suspicions of the player character and in so doing, pointing them towards the village’s other secrets. This is necessary after all, but in the process, it initially completely ignores clues about the adventure’s obvious plot and leaves the GM with the task of creating them himself. Essentially, what is going to happen is that the player characters are going to turn up in Ledsham, start asking questions about the beast that has been threatening the villagers and their livelihood, and the GM will be unable to give those answers because it is apparent that they knowing nothing! Which is a problem because the player characters are going to want those questions answered—after all, it is why they are in Ledsham in the first place.

Once the investigators get on track, then The Beast of Ledsham presents a decent enough scenario. The investigation itself involves lots interviews and interrogations and except for a minor optional encounter at the start and the confrontation with the creature at the end, it involves little in the way of combat. Indeed, none of the female characters are given stats because when it comes to combat, they will flee rather than fight. 

For the most part, The Beast of Ledsham is decently enough presented. The artwork feels a bit rough and the book could do with an edit. Ultimately, that is what The Beast of Ledsham needed—another edit, someone else’s eyes going over—to spot the fundamental omissions. The Beast of Ledsham is not unworkable or unplayable, but it needs work to get there...

New Colonial Cthulhu

For Call of Cthulhu, the continent of Australia is best known through the supplement, Terror Australis; in full form, the campaign, The Complete Masks of Nyarlathotep; and by extension, the Masks of Nyarlathotep Companion. The focus of these three books is firmly upon the RPG’s default period, that is, the Jazz Age of the 1920s. This though is to ignore the centuries of history since coming of Europeans in the late eighteenth century and the millennia of history before the coming Europeans when the only inhabitants of the continent were the Aborigines. Thankfully, in 2016’s most unexpected release for 2016, Australian small press publisher, Cthulhu Reborn, sets out to address this lack with a supplement devoted to a period famliar that will be familiar to many an Australian, but little known beyond the shores of the continent.


As its title suggests, Convicts & Cthulhu: Call of Cthulhu Roleplaying in the Penal Colonies of 18th Century Australia, explores the presence of the Mythos and presents roleplaying opportunities in the very early days of Australia’s colonial history. When it was not a colony in a traditional sense, but a penal colony, a gaol on the other side of the world where the dregs of the United Kingdom’s society could be transported to work out their sentence. When it was not yet officially Australia, but simply New South Wales. When it was not yet quite self-sufficient, but reliant upon the meagre support—other than in terms of fresh convicts and the labour that they can provide—from the mother country. The broad focus for Convicts & Cthulhu is during the decade or two after European settlement, roughly 1795 to 1810, and more closely on the events leading up to, during, and after the Rum Rebellion of 1808. The supplement casts the player characters—who will go to become investigators—as convicts, as government officials, as members of the New South Wales Corps, and even as free settlers come to start afresh. Theirs is a rough and ready land and society, effectively under military rule and justice, but one that is rife with corruption and graft, for many men of the NSW Corps are the worst soldiers that England can send, some no worse than the convicts they guard. Even when London becomes aware of the corruption, it appoints the least suitable man to solve the problem—Captain William Bligh of the infamous Mutiny on the Bounty, no less!

Convicts & Cthulhu goes into some depth about the early years of the New South Wales colony. This includes its history, daily life, trade, relations with the Aborigines—both as bad as and better than you would expect, as well as presenting a gazetteer of the principal places in the colony. These are Sydney and Parramatta plus places in between and come with maps of the major settlements and descriptions of notable NPCs (though not stats), such as Captain William Bligh and John Macarthur, the NSW Corps officer and entrepreneur who would foment the Rum Rebellion against Bligh. Also described are various Aboriginal settlements as well as Van Diemen’s Land (modern Tasmania) and Norfolk Island, a place of secondary punishment, essentially the penal colony’s penal colony.

In terms of what roles the players can take, Convicts & Cthulhu divides its character templates into three categories. These are Indigenous Occupations, Convict Occupations, and Free Occupations. They include Hunter/Gatherer, Clever-Man/Woman, and Indigenous Convict/Labourer for the first; Career Criminal, Fallen Clergyman, and Political Agitator for the second; and Farmer/Settler, NSW Corps Officer, and Publican (Bar Owner) for the third—amongst others. Each makes use of the adjusted skills list particular to the setting. This adds various Aboriginal skills like Alcheringa Dream Lore, Dream Song, and Lore (Aboriginal), replaces Psychology with Insight from Cthulhu Invictus and Cthulhu: Dark Ages, adds the Religion skill, and gives reduced starting percentages for skills such as Language (Own) and Swim. It does make use of the Credit Rating skill as per Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, noting that barter predominates in the colony and that a convict’s Credit Rating will vary according to whether or not he is still serving his sentence or been given a pardon, and so on. A notable addition are the rules from the recently released Pulp Cthulhu for the effects being drunk. This is not surprising given the amount of alcohol consumed in eighteenth century English society and the fact that the primary currency during the period that is the main focus for Convicts & Cthulhu is rum.

What Convicts & Cthulhu does not do is add much in the way of the Mythos. There are new cults, such as the Sharks-Tooth Cult, the Industrious Brothers of the New World—perhaps an offshoot of the Brotherhood of the Beast and New World Industries?, the Outcast Dreamers, and so on. These are really thumbnail descriptions left for the Keeper to develop and in fact, the Heralds of the Silver Dawn, which appears in the supplement’s scenario, is better developed. Some indigenous horrors are also described, but not given stats for. An experienced Keeper will probably be able to devise some stats from the descriptions alone, but for the less experienced Keeper, this may be an issue, at least until the supplement, Secrets of Australia is released. That said, the lack of availability of Secrets of Australia as of 2016 also presents problems that bear returning to… Nevertheless, the given presence of the Mythos in Convicts & Cthulhu feels about right. It is not overdone and there is no sense that entities or agents of the Mythos are running wild. The fact that the colony is rough and ready, grasps desperately in places at the veneer of civilisation, and is surrounded on all sides by the great unknown and the alien, means that when either is at work, there are layers upon layers that it can hide behind.

The bulk of ‘Mythos Tales’ presents the scenario, ‘Un-Fresh Off The Boat’. With a title echoing that of the ‘Fresh Off the Boat’ scenario and campaign starter for Tékumel: Empire of the Petal Throne, this introductory affair brings the player characters—they are not yet investigators—to New South Wales. They have come as convicts sentenced to transportation, new recruits to the New South Wales Corps, recently appointed government officials, or even settlers looking to make a new start, but after a long, tiring voyage, they find themselves quarantined aboard ships whose crew and passengers are beset by a horridly pustulent disease. Fortunately, they have not contracted this malady themselves, so this means that they are best suited to go ashore surreptitiously to track another passenger who jumped overboard and fled ashore.

Designed to be run in a single session, ‘Un-Fresh Off The Boat’ is a relatively straightforward investigation that touches upon various aspects of the Convicts & Cthulhu setting—the social order of convicts versus gaolers, the rough nature of colonial justice, the uncouth nature of society, and so on. It is primarily a social and interactive affair, although it does come to a bloody, violent climax, one that any convicts who number amongst the investigators will find to be a tough challenge. It is a good starting scenario, setting the investigators up for their life to come in the new world and hinting at some of the dark secrets. It is followed by six scenario seeds, each with options as to the source of the threats they each present, all of which are nicely detailed. Rounding out Convicts & Cthulhu is a good bibliography, some sample NPC stats, and a Convicts & Cthulhu Investigator Sheet.

Physically, Convicts & Cthulhu feels a bit tightly produced, but that is down to the printing process rather than anything else. Otherwise , it is cleanly presented. It is profusely illustrated with a mix of publically available artwork and maps, plus some excellent new maps and new artwork, the latter being rather good. It does need another edit and the writing could be clearer and tighter in places.

That there is plenty of detail presented in Convicts & Cthulhu to help the Keeper bring the rough and ready colony alive is undeniable. In places though, the supplement does feel lacking. There is not a great of information on the Aborigines or their culture, on the ‘monsters’ indigenous to the new country whether of the Mythos or not, and there is no background information provided for the various Character Templates. The first two issues are likely to be addressed in the forthcoming Secrets of Australia, but the fact that it is suggested that the Keeper refer to that supplement, does mean that the Convicts & Cthulhu does feel like an adjunct to it. The third issue can probably be addressed with some historical research, but the lack of familiarity with the British Isles of the Georgian period is likely to be an issue for some. One issue that some may have with the supplement and its setting is that it is not particularly kind to women and players may be uncomfortable with the misogyny of the period and especially of the setting.

Convicts & Cthulhu presents a new society—with new social mores and traditions—to work in too and an investigation process that will rely on the physical and the personal means rather than the academic or technical means—the latter two being particularly limited in the penal colony. It comes with a good beginning scenario, ‘Un-Fresh Off The Boat’, which is begging for a sequel, even a campaign, though more scenarios would also be appreciated. The supplement itself could even be expanded with more information and more scenarios. (Cthulhu Reborn has already begun addressing this issue with the Tickets to Leave series, each a small supplement that addresses particular aspects of the setting.) Above all Convicts & Cthulhu presents a new period of history and a new setting to explore in Call of Cthulhu, one that is not only accessible and richly detailed, but also feels refreshing and different to periods and settings previously explored by the RPG. Currently available as a Pay What You Want supplement, Convicts & Cthulhu: Call of Cthulhu Roleplaying in the Penal Colonies of 18th Century Australia is bargain that deserves both your time and more support.

The Witch in the Woods

the Pale Lady: an adventure for characters of levels a  is a scenario for Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay, the dark, mature Old School Renaissance retroclone published by Lamentations of the Flame Princess. It is written by Zzarchov Kowolski, the designer of the well-regarded Scenic Dunnsmouth, and plays upon fears of the unknown in the woods, of witches and abducted children, and of the fey. At just twelve pages long, it presents a short encounter that can be played through in a session or two and is self-contained enough that it can be dropped into most campaigns.

The player characters are employed by an Abbess to launch a raid on the estate of a witch known as the ‘Pale Lady’ who lives deep in the woods and who each spring sends her strange rabbit-men soldiers out to abduct children from nearby villages. Fortunately, this estate remains sealed for the rest of the year, but spring is fast approaching and thanks to a man who previously escaped his white mistress, the Abbess knows the incantation that will open the thick briar thickets that separate our world from the estate. The Abbess is also interested in some of the Pale Lady’s secrets, believing them to be of religious significance. In return for their help, the Abbess promises to give the adventurers a religious relic, a sword used in the Crusades.

What the adventurers find on the other side of the briar patch is more or less a plantation being worked by the abducted children. The Pale Lady’s plantation consists of no more than a few locations—the fields, the reed huts where the abducted children are kept, and her great hall. At this point, the adventurers could do no more than defeat the Rabbit-men, steal away as many of the children as they can, and make a run for it. This though would mean that they miss the weirdness of the scenario and to an extent it highlights an issue with the Pale Lady in that the players and their characters do have to be the active agents in the scenario, as for the most part, the Pale Lady is quite unlikely to stir from her watery throne. Should they investigate great hall and perhaps interact with her, the adventurers will gain hints as to the secrets that the Pale Lady is keeping. The first of these hints is to the existence of a great artefact in her possession, the second is to her source of rabbit-men. Both are nothing to be trifled with…

What the Pale Lady owns is a great source of magic, an artefact akin to the ‘time cube’ that appeared in the author’s Scenic Dunnsmouth. (In fact, were other ‘cubes’ of similar nature to appear in the author’s other works, one might suggest that he was doing something to the ‘Cosmic Cubes’ of the Marvel Universe.) To determine the nature of the artefact may take some puzzling out—though the Pale Lady can be persauded to explain all in return for certain fecund bargains… This being Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay, it should be no surprise that this is the sort of artefact that mortal men should not be playing about with and that there are greater and weirder dangers to be suffered from using it than any great powers that can be gained from it… Certainly, by the end of the Pale Lady, the adventurers will be questioning their sense of self.

If the Pale Lady lacks anything, it is a stronger introduction to help the Referee get the scenario started with greater ease and a better hook to get the adventurers involved. Otherwise, the scenario is well presented with solid artwork. the Pale Lady received only a limited print run, but is available in PDF.

The presence of the strange lady at its heart, of mirrors, and humanoid rabbits point in a slight fashion to the works of Lewis Carroll—Alice’s Adventures in  Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass—such that the Pale Lady would work well with A Red & Pleasant Land. Yet where the mood of A Red & Pleasant Land is Gand Guignol and High Gothic, that of the Pale Lady of quiet oppression and the weird. Only when the player characters poke it hard enough and get too curious do the weird and the oppression make their presence fully known. For the most part, the Pale Lady underplays its weird and its horror, making the players and their characters work for it, and the scenario works all the better for that.

A Perfect Investigation

Although there is no scenario in the rulebook for Shadow of the Demon Lord, the first RPG released by Schwalb Entertainment following a successful Kickstarter campaign, one of the excellent decisions upon the part of the designer has been to release support—and release it early—in the form of scenarios for the game. This way a gaming group can get playing quickly, even if they are just using the core rules presented in Victims of the Demon Lord: Starter Guide and an adventure. In addition, the publisher has also released Tales of the Demon Lord, a complete mini-campaign that takes a party of characters from Zero Level up to Eleventh Level. In the meantime, the twenty-second adventure is One Perfect Moment.

One Perfect Moment is the third adventure written for characters who have entered their first or Novice Path, that is of First or Second Level. It is written by Colin McComb, who has contributed to settings as diverse as Birthright, Planescape, and Ravenloft. It comes as a ten page, 25.22 MB PDF. Physically, One Perfect Moment is decently presented with a nice piece of cartography and two good illustrations. The GM needs to give the scenario a careful read through, primarily to understand how its structure works, for One Perfect Moment is an investigative scenario played against the clock. Note that the scenario has been written using content from The Demon Lord’s Companion, but alternatives are provided the GM who does not have that supplement. Note also that the content of the scenario is of a mature nature and the second piece of artwork is definitely of a mature nature.

The setting for One Perfect Moment is the town of Granville, a small trading town astride a major route between two cities. (Ideally it should be located near the city of Set, but really it can be set anywhere.) Some weeks prior to the arrival of the player characters in the town, the Adepts of the Epiphany came to Granville. They promise enlightenment through ecstasy and pleasure, telling worshipers they would gain insight at moments of utter bliss. Whilst the Adepts of the Epiphany might be genuine in their intent and teachings, the branch that came to Granville is anything but! The player characters are are spending the night in the small trading town when first thing the following day, they are summoned to an audience with its leading citizen, Loria Cassenault. Her niece and heir, Fallon, has fallen in with the Adepts of the Epiphany and spends her time on spiritual matters rather than on learning the family business and preparing for her inheritance. Loria Cassenault wants the player characters to determine how much danger Fallon is in, to rescue her if necessary, and to protect her family, her family name, and thus her family fortune.

In investigating Fallon and the Adepts of the Epiphany, One Perfect Moment presents plenty of leads to follow. These include tracing agents previously employed by Loria Cassenault, asking around town about the Adepts of the Epiphany, talking to Fallon’s friends and Fallon herself, and so on. Each of these takes a certain amount of time and each comes with one or two complications that only add to the time taken to gather clues. Whilst it would be tempting to for the player characters to split up, this would be ill advised, since some of the complications do involve combat and having too few numbers might make such encounters just a little too challenging. The timed structure of the investigation and the various leads should suggest to the players and their characters that they are up against a deadline, but unless the player characters really mess around, they do have sufficient time to follow leads, gather clues, draw some kind of conclusion, and act before the deadline falls.

If there is a problem with the scenario, it is that whilst its conclusion does cover a variety of possible outcomes, it leaves the GM to fully work out the effects that all these outcomes will have on the town and populace of Granville. This perhaps could have been better developed and thus have provided a better means for the GM to better present the ramifications of the events in the town. Overall though, One Perfect Moment presents a good mix of roleplaying and investigative opportunities with a timing mechanism for the latter being simple and easy for the GM to keep track of.

Beyond the End of the World

The Elder is dying. For years he has kept the young safe in the Ark, safe from the things and the dangers outside in the Zone. Safe from the plague and the rot, from the freaks and the ferals, from the monsters and the mutants, from the ruins and the weather—all caused by the Apocalypse that saw the death of the Ancients of the Old Age. Without the Elder, the unstable, barely human young of the Ark with their amazing powers will no longer have his guidance and have begun to coalesce into factions and gangs that will fight for the Ark’s increasingly scarce resources. There are others that see beyond this factionalism and infighting and who believe that if the Elder is too old to give answers, then perhaps they lie elsewhere—in the Zone. There they might find the answers to where they are from and to why they cannot reproduce, artifacts of the Old Age that will help them improve and secure the future of the Ark, and perhaps they might even find Eden, the last sanctuary of the Ancients…

This is Year Zero for the Ark and its inhabitants.

This is also the setup for Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days, a translation of the Swedish RPG published by Free League Publishing, Mutant - År Noll, published in English by Modiphius Entertainment. Mutant - År Noll—or Mutant: Year Zero—is the fifth and latest incarnation of Mutant, the 1984 RPG from which Mutant Chronicles would also spring. Mutant itself was influenced by another RPG, Gamma World, the TSR, Inc. game from which many post-apocalypse set RPGs would derive, and it is Gamma World and Mutant that Mutant: Year Zero harks back to. This shows in a certain wackiness in both the cartoon style artwork that illustrates the book and the mutant powers that the player characters can have. There are major differences though that set Mutant: Year Zero apart from Gamma World. Most obviously, these are the fact that Mutant: Year Zero only offers the Mutant as a player character option, as opposed to the unmutated Human or ‘Pure Strain Human’, Mutant Human, Sentient Animals or Plants, and Androids of Gamma World. The other difference is that although there is a certain Pulp sensibility to Mutant: Year Zero, the RPG is a drier, deadlier, grittier, and just not as wacky or weird as Gamma World.

The other major difference between Mutant: Year Zero and Gamma World is that Mutant: Year Zero introduces two elements not found in Gamma World. The first are the rules for technological development—as well as scavenged technology—and the Ark, that enable the Ark to be developed and improved depending upon what technology and artifacts the player characters bring back with them from the Zone. The second is that the game does come with a metaplot that pushes the player characters towards discovering some of the secrets of the game and this is supported by ‘The Path to Eden’, a scenario included in the core book. Like Gamma World, the setup in Mutant: Year Zero means that it can be set almost anywhere, for example, in the players’ own home town, but to fit its metaplot, Mutant: Year Zero demands a certain type of setup in that the Ark should be located on the edge of, or within, a major city, one preferably with waterways, a mass transit system, multi-storey buildings (if not skyscrapers). So ideally, a national capital or capital-sized city. The examples given in Mutant: Year Zero and supported by write-ups and maps inside the front and back covers, are The Big Smoke and The Dead Apple. Of course, the GM is free to set his Mutant: Year Zero wherever he wants and adjust that setting as he likes.

A character in Mutant: Year Zero is defined by four attributes—Strength, Agility, Wits, and Empathy, each rated between one and five; a Role—Enforcer, Gearhead, Stalker, Fixer, Dog Handler, Chronicler, Boss, and Slave; skills—a mix of the generic and the specialist defined by his Role; Talents—minor tricks and moves initially defined by his Role; and Mutations, essentially superhuman abilities that are powerful, but unpredictable. Attributes are rated between one and five and can be reduced temporarily by certain effects. For example, Strength is reduced by Damage and recovered by (eating) Grub, whilst Wits are reduced by Confusion and recovered by Sleep. Each Role includes a key attribute and a specialist skill; gives options for a character’s appearance, relationships to the other player characters and to NPCs, and big dreams; and the character’s starting gear.

To create a character, a player assigns fourteen points to his character’s attributes, with only the key attribute being allowed to have an initial rating of five. He then selects a Role and chooses from the options roles given. What is really interesting is that as each player selects a different Role, the options for the relationships with the NPCs are different each time, so that one player character might hate an NPC, whilst needing to protect another, and then another player character might need to protect the first NPC, whilst hating another, and so on and so on. What this builds is a relationship network between the player characters and the NPCs in the Ark. Of course, the GM may want to change the names to fit wherever his Ark is located, but as long as he is consistent in the use of the names, this effectively sets up both a relationship network and some motivations for the player characters.

Some ten points need to be assigned to the character’s skills. All skills are rated between one and five and a character has ten points to assign to the twelve basic skills and a Specialist skill. No skill can be assigned more than three points and one point must be assigned to the Specialist skill. Compared to the rest of character generation, a player has no choice in what Mutation he receives—it is entirely random. It is possible that a character may start the game with more than one Mutation, but this at the cost of an attribute point. Later in the game, a character can gain more mutations.

Nerack
Role: Gearhead

Attributes
Strength 2, Agility 3, Wits 5, Empathy 2

Skills
Endure (Strength) 1, Force (Strength) 0, Fight (Strength) 0, Sneak (Agility) 1, Move (Agility) 1, Shoot (Agility) 1, Scout (Wits) 1, Comprehend (Wits) 2, Know the Zone (Wits) 0, Sense Emotion (Empathy) 1, Manipulate (Empathy) 1, Heal (Empathy) 0, Jury-Rig (Wits) 2

Talents
Tinkerer (+2 to repair rolls)

Mutations
Insect Wings (Fly up to 100’, Fly and attack, or Intense Buzzing)

Relationships
Hanok (PC) is a bit slow on the uptake. Best explain stuff. In detail.
Wiss (PC) is awesome. Keep close.
Poll (PC) is out for your gear. Keep it close.

You hate… The Fixer Sixter, who tricked you out of an artifact.
You need to protect… The Boss Johammed, who pays for your jury-rigs.

Your Big Dream
To build something that will change the People’s life forever.

Gear
9 bullets, 2 rations of Grub, 6 rations of water, scrap pistol, shotgun (artifact)

Appearance
Face: Hairless, Body: Thin, Clothes: Patched up raincoat

Where Mutant: Year Zero is relatively straightforward in terms of character generation, it begins to get a bit complex in terms of the game rules and mechanics. Mutant: Year Zero uses a mix of cards and dice. Now the cards, consisting of three decks—Artifact, Mutation, and Threat decks—are actually support decks. So when determining a character’s Mutation during character generation, his player draws from the Mutation deck; at the start of a session, the GM draws from the Threat deck to determine a random danger or threat that the player characters might face; and when an artifact is found, a player draws from the Artifact deck. Fortunately, none of the three decks are crucial to play and their content is replicated in the Mutant: Year Zero core rules.

The dice are another matter. Mutant: Year Zero uses six-sided dice. Sometimes these rolled as standard six-sided dice, typically whenever a table has to be rolled on, usually a roll of ‘d66’ or ‘d666’. Otherwise, they are divided into three types—the yellow Base dice, the green Skill dice, and the black Gear dice. In addition to the number six all dice are marked with the radiation symbol on that face. This indicates a success when rolled. On the 1 face of the yellow Base dice there is a biohazard symbol, whilst on the 1 face of the black Gear dice, there is an explosion symbol. Rolling either symbol is counted as a failure. The green Skill dice do not have an extra symbol of their 1 faces. Now a game of Mutant: Year Zero can be run without using the specific Mutant: Year Zero dice, but it does at least require pools of the three different coloured dice to represent the Base, Gear, and Skill dice.

To undertake an action, a character assembles a dice pool consisting of Base, Gear, and Skill dice. These should be yellow Base dice equal to the attribute used, black Gear dice equal to the Bonus for the item of any Gear used, and green Skill dice equal to his skill. A roll of six on any of the dice rolled counts as a success, but rolling more successes are better as these can be spent on stunts. The types of stunt available are listed skill by skill. So with the Fight skill, you might inflict extra damage, grab an opponent’s weapon, or knock him over, while with Comprehend, you would not only work out how how an artefact works, you could teach others too. If no sixes are rolled, then the action is a failure. The results are even worse if ones or biohazard symbols on the yellow Base dice or explosion symbols on the black Gear dice are rolled. Each biohazard rolled inflicts a point of trauma on the associated attribute, but also generates a Mutant Point that can be used to activate a character’s Mutations. Each explosion rolled causes the gear used to degrade and so reduces the Bonus it provides on future actions, until repaired that is.

Nerack is part of an expedition out in the Zone that has encountered Scen, a Water Merchant in the shadow of a car cake, a building that keeps old cars crushed on alternating levels. Whilst their expedition leader enters negotiations, Nerack is distracted by the hunting rifle that Lueb, Scen’s bodygaurd, has slung over shoulder, wondering where it came from and how much Lueb might trade it for. Just then, Wiss, who has been keeping a lookout from up on the car cake shouts a warning—a band of Zone Ghouls has boiled out of the shadows and is charging the meeting. Nerack is surprised to see that Lueb does not unshoulder his gun, but pulls out a spiked club. Seeing him looking, Lueb explains, “Gun broken. Carry for show.”

“Use my shotgun,” Nerack urges. “I can fix your rifle.” Lueb nods and they swap weapons. The gearhead pulls out his tools and gets to work. As a Gearhead, Nerack will use his Jury-Rig skill, which is based on his Wits attribute, and he also has the Tinkerer Talent which grants him a +2 to his rolls. The GM explains that the difficulty of the task is equal to the Gear bonus that hunting rifle would normally grant, which is +2. This sets the Difficulty to Hard or -2. The Tinkerer Talent counters the Difficulty, but Nerack still has to make roll one success. To make it just a little easier, the GM grants Nerack’s player a single Gear die because he has the right tools.

So Nerack is rolling five Base dice, two Skill dice, and one Gear die. Rolling the dice, Nerack gets two Biohazard symbols and no Radiation symbols on the Base dice, no Radiation symbols on the Skill dice, and one Radiation symbol on the Gear die. Nerack succeeds. Since he rolled one Radiation symbol, Nerack succeeded and the repair task is done.

Yet what if Nerack had rolled no Radiation symbols and thus failed? In this situation, he can the extra effort and Push the roll and reroll in an attempt to get some or more Radiation symbols. He cannot reroll any dice that came up as Biohazard, Explosion, or Radiation symbols, and worse, any Biohazard symbols rolled, including those from the original roll count as Trauma. In addition, each Biohazard symbol rolled generates a Mutant Point that can be spent activate Mutations.

Returning to the example, in the first roll, Nerack rolled  five Base dice, two Skill dice, and one Gear die, and got two Biohazard symbols on the Base dice and no other results. Having failed, he Pushes the roll. He sets the Base dice with the Biohazard symbols aside and re-rolls the remaining three Base dice, two Skill dice, and one Gear die. This time he rolls one Radiation symbol on the Base dice and one on the Skill dice, but he rolls one Explosion symbol on the Gear die. So he succeeds, but with one Explosion symbol, the GM rules that Nerack’s tools are broken, and with two Biohazard symbols from the Base dice, there is some cost in terms of Trauma. Since Nerack was using a Wits-based skill, this is Confusion Trauma, which the GM rules as Nerack so concentrating on the repair task, that he loses track of the fight around him. On the plus side, Nerack generates a pair of Mutant Points that he can use for his Mutant Ability. 

Mutations require Mutant Points to be activated. Use of mutations can go awry, for example, it might require more Mutant Points to be activated, the mutation might shut down or it might inflict trauma on a mutant, or the mutant might mutate. This may be purely cosmetic, but it might result in the mutant acquiring a new, random mutation.

Combat in Mutant: Year Zero is a quick and nasty. Characters can perform either an action and a maneuvre or two maneuvres each turn. An Action is anything that requires a skill roll or activation of a Mutation, whereas a maneuvre covers anything else that might do—move, dive for cover, draw a weapon, aim a gun, reload a gun, and so on. Trauma, whether from being attacked or intimidated, or when Pushing a roll, comes in four types each of which decreases one of a character’s attributes. So Damage decreases Strength and can inflict critical injuries, Fatigue decreases Agility, Confusion decreases Wits, and Doubt decreases Empathy, which essentially means that Damage and Fatigue covers physical trauma and Confusion and Doubt covers social and mental trauma. When an attribute is reduced to zero, then a character is broken and cannot use skills, perform actions, or activate mutations. A broken character can be killed with a coup de grace.

The starting point for a Mutant: Year Zero campaign is the Ark. This is where the player characters grew up. This involves deciding what type of Ark it is, perhaps the wreck of an aeroplane or a skyscraper; where it is in the starting zone and what its layout is; who its Bosses are and what sort of Bosses they are; and the size of its population and its water source. The relationship between the player characters and some of these Bosses will already have been set up during character generation. The players will also decide upon the Ark’s Development Levels. There are four of these—Food Supply, Culture, Technology, and Warfare—which each ranges between zero and thirty-nine. Improving the Development Levels is part of campaign play in Mutant Zero, the players deciding the direction in which the Ark will develop, working on particular projects, such building a pigsty to improve the Food Supply or establishing Suffrage to improve Technology. Bringing back and analysing artefacts from expeditions can also improve Development Levels.

Holding an Assembly to decide what Development Level to focus on and then the projects themselves works as a framing device—as well as a source of conflict and roleplaying—between the game’s main emphasis, that of going on expeditions into the Zone. First into sector immediately surrounding the Ark and then the sectors beyond that. The GM is given two sample Zones—The Big Smoke and The Dead Apple—but is also given the means to create his own. Not only determining what artifacts might be found, but also the levels of the ever pervasive Rot—the combined nuclear, biological, and chemical side effects of whatever it was that caused the Apocalypse and which can accumulate in a Mutant’s body; ruins and threats to be found in the Zone; and what events that might be encountered. The threats might include Beast Mutants, Morlocks, Water Traders, Nightmare Flowers, Acid Rain, Inertia Fields, Unexploded Ordnance, and more.

Although no actual scenario is included in Mutant: Year Zero, what is given is a quintet of special locations or Zone Sectors. These are complete descriptions of locations around which a scenario or two can be built. These are drawn from the staples of the post-apocalypse genre, so a rival Ark, a cult devoted to a weapon of great destruction built by the Ancients, a gang who make use of modified vehicles, and so on. Rounding out the RPG is a discussion the metaplot at the heart of Mutant: Year Zero and if not its endpoint, then at least the end of a chapter. It includes a complete description of where this will take place and of the secrets that might be revealed when the player characters reach there. The discussion includes suggestions as to how to set the metaplot up.

Now a GM and his players do not have to adhere to the metaplot. If they do, there is a definite end point to Mutant: Year Zero, at least until further supplements are published that take the setting beyond this point. Until then, there is plenty of information in the RP to keep a campaign going, much of it revolving around the building and protecting of the community that is the Ark. This is in addition to future support for the RPG as well as any number of  supplements for other post-apocalypse RPGs that could easily be scavenged for ideas or adapted. That said, scope for character growth is relatively limited in Mutant: Year Zero and there are really only a few character options available in the core rules. This will probably become apparent once a campaign has lost a few player characters—a likelihood given how deadly the RPG is. That though changes with the release of Mutant: Genlab Alpha, which adds rules for mutant animals, a campaign setting, and rules for adding mutant animals to the default setting of Mutant: Year Zero.

Mutant: Year Zero is well presented, it is well written—the GM advice is good in particular—and the artwork nicely captures the scrappy, makeshift, and scoured feeling of the setting. As written, Mutant: Year Zero is not a toolkit to run post-apocalyptic campaigns in general. There are elements here though that an experienced GM could extract to other types of post-apocalyptic campaigns, for example a Road Warrior-style campaign, but as written, Mutant: Year Zero is designed with its metaplot in mind. Indeed, there can be no doubt that Mutant: Year Zero is well designed and written to that end. If there is a real downside to the game, it is the need for specialist dice. To be fair the game can be run without those, but it will run easier with them and just using them them with dice of the right colour still requires a bit of effort.

Although Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days does not do everything that you might want a post-apocalypse to do, what it does do, it does very well. It sets up its metaplot and campaign starting point in an engaging manner and with innumerable roleplaying hooks and drives for the players and their characters. It provides the GM with the tools to build the world around the starting point and tailor it to a location of his choice. It does this in a bright, easy to read, and well presented book. Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days is as engaging and as accessible a treatment of the post-apocalypse as you would want to play.

A Very English End Times

 As much as it has been heralded, little is known of the End Times, that end of days when the ‘Stars come right’ and the Mythos rises wild to reclaim what it once possessed. Barring the Miskatonic University Library Association monographs, End Times and Ripples from Carcosa, the nature of the End Times has little touched upon in Call of Cthulhu, or indeed, in Lovecraftian investigative horror in general. That is until 2015 when Pelgrane Press released Cthulhu Apocalypse. This is a supplement for Trail of Cthulhu, the publisher’s clue-orientated RPG of Lovecraftian investigative horror, one that explores the nature of a Mythos influenced apocalypse not in the next one hundred years as hinted at in the End Times, but an apocalypse in 1936. Specifically, November 2nd, 1936. It provides the means to set up an apocalypse—are entities of the Mythos responsible or are they merely taking advantage of a natural or manmade disaster?—and explore its events and effects. First in its immediate aftermath—in the Aftershock, and then later, perhaps years later—in the Wasteland. Cthulhu Apocalypse is rounded out with a full campaign that will see the player characters explore an England that has fallen and decide not only her fate, but perhaps that of the world.

Cthulhu Apocalypse is notable for two reasons. First, it is actually a collation and development of several earlier releases—The Apocalypse Machine, The Dead White World, and Slaves of the Mother—by Graham Walmsley, the designer of the minimalist Cthulhu Dark and the author of Stealing Cthulhu, into a larger whole with co-author, Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan. Second, it inducts the works of stalwarts of the post-apocalypse genre into the Mythos—authors such as John Christopher, Richard Matheson, H.G. Wells, and John Wyndham. So The Death of Grass and The Tripod Trilogy, I am Legend, War of the Worlds, and The Day of the Triffids, The Midwich Cuckoos, and The Kraken Awakes. Now although not all of these authors are English, the inclusion of both Wells and Wyndham does lend the ‘end times’ presented in Cthulhu Apocalypse a certain coziness that is further exacerbated by the Middle Class set-up to the campaign included in the supplement. Rest assured though, even when faced with death of food crops, of interplanetary invaders piloting great tripod machines, of ‘vampires’ feeding like locusts, of plants walking, alien invasions via surrogacy, and intelligences from the sea attacking the land, there is room enough—and more, given the reduced population—for Mythos-induced madness. Nevertheless, Cthulhu Apocalypse cannot quite escape it feeling very, very English.

Cthulhu Apocalypse opens with the presentation of the ‘Apocalypse Machine’, not so much a machine as a tool/flowchart that provides the means to build an apocalyptic disaster and track its effects on both mankind and the planet. Starting with a cause—humanity, the Mythos, or nature—it looks how various disasters are affected by the various causes. The disasters include monsters, technology, weapons, diseases, floods, heat, cold, and more. Casualties are also considered, not just biology and soil, food and water, but also reality and books.  Then by adjusting four dials—the Humanity Dial, the Time Dial, the Weird Dial, and the Adrenaline Dial—the Keeper can answer four questions about the apocalypse. Essentially, how humanity reacted to the apocalypse; when did the apocalypse take place; how weird is the post-apocalyptic world; and how gritty or exhilarating is it to play? At lower levels, the Humanity Dial indicates that mankind survives as individuals rather than as communities and that murder is common, whereas at higher levels mankind retains its humanity and decency and wanting to rebuild society. The Time Dial goes from zero and the apocalypse occurring in the first investigation, then up by years through the next generation and beyond to a time that has no memory of it happening. This determines whether the investigators and society will be scavenging or rebuilding. The Weird Dial goes from the ordinary world to adding mutants and psychic powers before making them integral to the setting along with weird technology. The Adrenaline Dial begins with mankind’s sadness at, and reflection of, all that has been lost and gets turned up to driving hotrods through crumbling city streets, guns blazing. Essentially by following the ‘Apocalypse Machine’ flowchart and adjusting the results with the four dials, the Keeper gets to create the basics of the setting for his ‘Cthulhu Apocalypse’.

Once the apocalypse is itself set, then Cthulhu Apocalypse explores the role of the investigator in the ‘end times’. This begins with Occupations, dropping some like the Dilettante and Private Investigator, but adding Agitator, Armourer, Drifter, Socialite, Survivalist, and so forth. The roles played by each Occupation in both Aftermath and Wasteland-set campaigns are discussed and every Occupation has an Scavenging Speciality as well as a Special Ability. As per Trail of Cthulhu, every investigator in Cthulhu Apocalypse has a Drive, essentially what pushes him to scrutinise the unfathomable and confront the horror, but because the horror is overt—even running wild—rather than covert in Cthulhu Apocalypse, the Drive needs to be stronger to push an investigator to go towards the horror rather than the other way. As per the Occupations, Cthulhu Apocalypse drops some Drives as unsuitable, but adds others. A nice touch is that several include samples taken from works of fiction. How the various Investigative Abilities work in the Aftermath and the Wasteland is also examined. Notably, the science abilities can identify things that are ‘beyond science’ and Cthulhu Mythos plays more of a prominent role because with the Mythos abroad, it is essentially confirming what all those blasphemous tomes wrote about years ago… Only one General Ability is added and this is appropriately, Scavenging.

As much as an Investigator’s Drive pushes him to confront the Mythos in the newly upturned world, what holds him back from total insanity in Cthulhu Apocalypse—at least for a while—are his Sources and Pillars of Stability. The first are his friends and family, which in the post-apocalypse he still believes to be alive, whilst the latter are more his sincerest held beliefs, such country, faith, humanity, and so on. Both support and can refresh an Investigator’s Stability, for example, an Investigator can invoke a Source of Stability by writing them a letter or doing something that reminds him of their memory. As much as the Keeper is advised to look for opportunities to question, undermine, and smash, he is also advised not to drive too many of the Investigators mentally ill, essentially enough to demonstrate that the situation of the apocalypse is enough to drive men insane, but without it destabilising a campaign. Nevertheless, Cthulhu Apocalypse adds several new mental illnesses to inflict upon the Investigators, including delusion and denial as well as numerous defence mechanisms, like displacement, eldritch babbling, night terrors, sleepwalking, and so on.

The effect of the Apocalypse is not only deleterious to the Investigator’s mental wellbeing, but it can also physically affect them too. When it comes to improving an Investigator, there will be times when the Investigator will receive not Improvement Points, but Affliction Points. When assigned to an Ability, that Ability becomes more than than mankind can possibly know, its use all but unnatural in the eyes of others. Affliction Points can also be assigned to new Abilities—Psychic Afflictions—that work as Investigative Abilities. They range from Aura Reading, Control, and Dreaming to Psychic Scream, Remote Viewing, and Telepathy. To be honest, these are more tools for the Keeper than the players as they are not intended to provide definitive answers, but rather hints and vagaries. Nevertheless, they are in keeping with the genre.

Besides covering equipment in the post-apocalyptic world, Cthulhu Apocalypse guides the Keeper through an overview of the decaying Earth and gives solid advice to the Keeper on running a Cthulhu Apocalypse campaign and to the player on roleplaying in a Cthulhu Apocalypse campaign. Lastly, Cthulhu Apocalypse looks at each place and role of each important Mythos entity in this new world. Primarily these are ideas about they might bring about an apocalypse, but several new entities are added to the familiar roster that includes Azathoth, Cthulhu, Deep Ones, Elder Things, Mi-Go, and more. These additions are drawn from the works aforementioned authors and consist of the Children from The Midwich Cuckoos and both the Martians and the Red Weed from The War of the World.

A good two thirds of Cthulhu Apocalypse is devoted to a single campaign, plus several scenarios. The campaign consists of ‘The Dead White World’ and ‘Slaves to the Mother’. ‘The Dead White World’ has a very definite set up and although guidelines are given for creating investigators suited to the campaign, the Investigators should essentially be Middle Class and be on their way to a wedding in the town of Dover on the southeast coast. They awaken to find that the train they were on has crashed, that the world around them has died, and that strange plants now infect the land. The apocalypse here is not one born of the Mythos, but as the scenarios progress and the Investigators move from Dover back across the country, they discover not only the changes wrought by the plants, but also the response of the Mythos to both the plants and the changes. This response will come to a head at the climax of ‘The Dead White World’ when the Investigators have an opportunity to decide who prevails and will immediately inherit this upturned world.

The cause of the apocalypse and the foe at the heart of ‘The Dead White World’ is neither the Mythos, nor anything previously described in Cthulhu Apocalypse, but it is decidedly Wyndhamesque. Indeed, the campaign feels very much like a cosy catastrophe, both authors incorporating encounters similar to those in Wyndham’s fiction and seen in other works of post-apocalyptic fiction. Thus we encounter groups of survivors holding one last party, others steadfastly going about life they had before the apocalypse, and holdouts making some sort of accommodation with the ‘enemy’ in the new world. As Wyndhamesque as these encounters are, the authors do not forget the Mythos nor the mechanics of Trail of Cthulhu. This leads to some delightfully odd encounters that pleasingly mix the Mythos with the apocalypse, in particular with a postman in London and later with a gangster in Brighton that is a knowing nod to Graham Greene.

There is a three-year interregnum between the events of the first part of the campaign, ‘The Dead White World’, and second part, ‘Slaves to the Mother’, reflecting the fact that there was a three-year interregnum between the two being published. By this time the Investigators will have been greatly changed by the events of the apocalypse, perhaps even become Afflicted mutants. In ‘Slaves to the Mother’, they are once again drawn across England, constantly seeking sanctuary, but driven hither and thither, ultimately to perhaps find a solution to the world’s ills. This half of the campaign reflects the choices made by the Investigators at the denouement of ‘The Dead White World’, between the Wyndhamesque and the Mythos, but ultimately, the Mythos prevails as it should—and in a manner that scholars of the Mythos will be greatly familiar with.

Rounding out the campaign are a number of short scenarios set in North America, where perhaps the Investigators may have escaped to after the close of ‘Slaves to the Mother’. They primarily take place in the Midwest and draw more heavily and immediately from the Mythos than the campaign does. These are decent scenarios, but they are more postscripts to the campaign and are better used as one-shots rather than extensions. The campaign itself feels episodic and in places, linear as if it is dragging the Investigators through its events. Despite this, the campaign is a delightful exercise in exploring the horror behind the cosy and the mannered.

Physically, Cthulhu Apocalypse comes as a sturdy hardback, illustrated in black and white. It is as assuredly presented as previous titles for Trail of Cthulhu. The artwork is excellent and the writing clear, though Graham Walmsley’s voice is notably strong in the first half of the book, having a direct, questioning style previously seen in Stealing Cthulhu. If the book is lacking, it is that there is no bibliography.

As much as Cthulhu Apocalypse presents an end of the world in the desperate decade, there is no reason why its mechanics cannot be applied to other times and periods. The same can be said of the campaign, as the apocalypse renders most technology useless, though there are nuances to the campaign that may not be appropriate to the modern day. Adapting the campaign to places outside of the United Kingdom is also possible, but more of a challenge than updating it to the modern day.

Whether run as is or as the means to end an existing campaign, Cthulhu Apocalypse presents the tools to bring about the End Times of the Keeper’s own devising, constantly asking questions and making suggestions as his ideas are put through the Apocalypse Machine. It further supports the tools with a fully realised example, an enjoyably mannered and literary campaign—in the form of ‘The Dead White World’ and ‘Slaves to the Mother’—that lets a Keeper and his players explore an End Times that never was.