Miskatonic Monday #10: Hocus Pocus

Between October 2003 and October 2013, Chaosium, Inc. published a series of books for Call of Cthulhu under the Miskatonic University Library Association brand. Whether a sourcebook, scenario, anthology, or campaign, each was a showcase for their authors—amateur rather than professional, but fans of Call of Cthulhu nonetheless—to put forward their ideas and share them with others. The programme was notable for having launched the writing careers of several authors, but for every Cthulhu Invictus, The Pastores, Primal State, Ripples from Carcosa, and Halloween Horror, there was a Five Go Mad in Egypt, Return of the Ripper, Rise of the Dead, Rise ofthe Dead II: The Raid, and more...

The Miskatonic University Library Association brand is no more, alas, but what we have in its stead is the Miskatonic Repository, based on the same format as the DM’s Guild for Dungeons & Dragons. It is thus, “...a new way for creators to publish and distribute their own original Call of Cthulhu content including scenarios, settings, spells and more...” To support the endeavours of their creators, Chaosium has provided templates and art packs, both free to use, so that the resulting releases can look and feel as professional as possible. To support the efforts of these contributors, Miskatonic Monday is an occasional series of reviews which will in turn examine an item drawn from the far reaches of the Miskatonic Repository.

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Name: Hocus Pocus

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.

Author: Adam Gauntlett

Setting: Jazz Age

Product: Scenario

What You Get: 1.9 MB, 22-page full colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: That cool cat got some moves in a Hoodoo Hoedown.

Plot Hook: The investigators are hired to find out where a wannabe Hoodoo man got his latest and amazingly greatest act from—it is cutting into a better man's bottom line.

Plot Development: A black cat, your numbers are in, Houdini's ex-dive, and a horse's head all under radium's bright glare.

Plot Support: Eight plus NPCs; two nicely detailed occulted occult tomes; investigation angles neatly organised.

Production Values: Needs a slight edit.

Pros

# Few NPCs for the Keeper to roleplay

# Straightforward, but involving plot
# Companion scenario to The Man Downstairs
# Companion scenario to Harlem Unbound
# Companion scenario to Tales of the Sleepless City
# Companion scenario to Masks of Nyarlathotep and Day of the Beast
# Opportunity for the investigators to become a band of brothers 

Cons

# Keeper will need to provide area map of New York

# Main villain of the piece mostly kept off stage

Conclusion

# Meaty investgative scenario

# Solid plot

The Massively Multiplayer offline Role-Playing Game

E.D.R.P.G. or Elite: Dangerous Roleplaying Game is a roleplaying game based on the computer game of the same name, a rare thing, a pen and paper roleplaying game based on a computer game. Developed by Spidermind Games and published via Modiphius Entertainment following a successful Kickstarter campaign, it presents a far future Science Fiction setting in which owning your spaceship and space travel is cheap—and so is your life as the police shoot first and might ask questions later, entire systems are overrun with space pirates, and corporate interests dominate the galaxy. Into this free-for-all capitalist paradise come the player characters, hotshot pilots with the best customised ships on a budget, transporting cargo from space station to another in the hopes of making profit enough to upgrade every aspect of their ships before upgrading to an entirely new model of ship! This is, of course, the classic ‘Lone Wolf’ campaign as played in every version of the computer game, Elite, right back to the 1984 original, including the most recent version of the game, Elite: Dangerous. Now where Elite: Dangerous and Elite: Dangerous Roleplaying Game differ from the original, is that Elite: Dangerous is not just a lone player experience—it is a MMORPG or Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games which can be played together, and Elite: Dangerous Roleplaying Game offers exploration, espionage, and military campaigns as well as the Lone Wolf campaign. All this is played out against a persistent universe which is constantly growing and aspects of this are present in the Elite: Dangerous Roleplaying Game.

Elite: Dangerous Roleplaying Game supports this with rules for combat in person, planetside in vehicles, in space between the player characters’ and enemy ships—pirates, slave traders, bounty hunters, and sometimes the police; stats for classic spaceships from the computer game which can be customised and upgraded; trading in and out of the game; and tables for both random star system and adventure generation. All of which comes packaged in a bright and cleanly presented hardback book which is nicely illustrated and written.

The starting point in Elite: Dangerous Roleplaying Game is the character, which in the game is defined by his Rank, Skills, Backgrounds, and Karma Abilities—there are no attributes such as Strength or Intelligence as skills cover everything. Rank determines the maximum levels a character can have in his skills as well as Endurance, Karma Points, and Karma Capabilities or Enhancements. There are nine Ranks, from Harmless to Elite. Skills are expressed as percentages from which a bonus is derived; Backgrounds add a little colour, but mostly provide bonuses to skills and a possible Enhancement—an improvement which sets the character apart from ordinary folk; and Karma Capabilities are little tricks characters can pull to get out of sticky situations. For example, the Hacker Background provides Computer +20, Security +10, and the Natural Genius (Computer) Enhancement. In the case of the Natural Genius (Computer) Enhancement, it raises the cap on maximum skill level for a Rank. A Karmic Capability is something like ‘Spin Wildly’, a spaceship combat maneuvre which costs 5 Karma to use and grants a +5 bonus to a pilot’s Spaceship Defence against an attack that would hit his ship.   

To create a character, a player selects or rolls for—tables are provided for the latter—four Backgrounds, selects three Karma Capabilities, improves ten skills, and then selects his starting spacecraft from a choice of four, plus variants. These include the Sidewinder FD-4, the Eagle Interceptor MR1, the Hauler Hatchback Zeta, and the Adder Cornucopia. Experienced players are given the option of spending a set budget on a basic design and customising it. Each character also comes with a standard set of equipment plus some other items depending whether they have certain skills. It should be noted that all characters receive the Pilot Trained Background and the Escape Death Karma Capability for free and in addition to the ones selected during character creation and that all skills start at ten.

Our sample character is Rise ‘Roundhouse’ Rownels a medical graduate from 5714 Coronae VII. He expected to have a career in medical science which would last his lifetime, but when he blew the whistle on the unethical activities of his employer, Kerensky-Jadin Technology GmbH, he was blackballed from the profession and lost his medical licence. Forced to turn to other employment, he found work as a boxer and a private eye. A number of missing persons cases led him offworld and now he knows he wants to follow up on those cases. For that he needs a spaceship and the settlement from his wrongful dismissal case just got him the money he needed for that. Rise ‘Roundhouse’ Rownels is a rookie pilot, but in a brawl or after you have been punched out, he more than punches above his weight.

Rise ‘Roundhouse’ Rownels
Rank: Harmless (1)
Background: Scientist, Boxer, Private Detective, Trained Doctor, Pilot Trained 
Defence (Dodge): +1 Defence (Parry): +2 Initiative: +1
Damage Bonus: +2
Karma Points: 10 Endurance: 20
Skills: Computer +23, Cyber +34, Energy Weapons +20, Fighting+37, Insight +26, Medicine +38, Parry +20, Perception +20, Science +49, Security +22, Spaceship Piloting +35, Spaceship Weapons +30, Stealth +20, Systems +21
Enhancements: Natural Genius (Science), Strong
Karma Capabilities: Diligent Medic, Escape Death, Slam, Liar, Liar!

Perhaps one of the most interesting Backgrounds to choose from is ‘Partner’. Whether a Best Friend or Boyfriend/Girlfriend, Business Partner or Husband/Wife, this is an NPC who accompanies a player character on his missions. Controlled by the Game Master, this NPC is not quite equal to a player character, but have skills, Backgrounds, and Enhancements and can make use of a player character’s Karma Capabilities. It is possible for such an NPC to be a pilot like the player character, but either way, the Partner is a player character’s companion who can help out on missions, make repairs to ships, and so on. Having a Partner necessitates choosing a spacecraft capable of carrying both the player character and his companion. 

The mechanic at the heart of Elite: Dangerous Roleplaying Game is straightforward enough. A player rolls a ten-sided die and adds a relevant Skill bonus to equal or beat a target number. Rolls of one always fail, but rolls of ten always succeed. A Skill bonus is equal to one tenth its percentile value, so for example, a Rise ‘Roundhouse’ Rownels’ Skill bonus is +3 when using Fighting, but +4 when using Science. It should be noted that since all player characters have a minimum of ten in each skill, they always have a minimum Skill bonus of +1 in any skill. Guidance for Difficulty Number is given for realistic difficulty or relative difficulty, the latter taking into account the average player character Rank, the former not. Thus under realistic difficulty, the average Difficulty Number is between nine and eleven, representing a challenging task for a professional, whereas under relative difficulty, it is seven at the Rank of Harmless, eight for Mostly Harmless and Novice, and so on… The advantages and disadvantages of both are discussed in detail, although Difficulty Numbers as a topic are not really explored until two thirds of the way through the book. Whether successful or not, this will earn the character a tick for the skill used. At the end of an adventure, each tick enables the skill to be increased by one up to the Skill Cap for the character's current Rank, but only one tick can be earned per skill per adventure.

Given its origins, it no surprise that combat plays a big part in Elite: Dangerous Roleplaying Game, spacecraft combat in particular. Personal combat is not particularly complex, being only covered in a few pages. A player character gets a move and an action per round, but can also defend himself as necessary. One interesting touch is that if a player character successfully parries a Fighting or Melee attack, then he can counter-attack. This is essentially a free action. Space combat is really dogfighting, with player characters taking an Equipment Action—assign a bonus if the spacecraft has the right equipment, deploy chaff, or deploy mines; Recharging their spacecraft’s shields; and then taking a Combat Action. The type of Combat Action depends upon the range, for which Elite: Dangerous Roleplaying Game has just the two—‘At Distance’ and ‘Up Close’. The former means that a spacecraft is at the edge of the battle, or just beyond it, whereas the latter means that the spacecraft is involved in the heat of the battle. ‘At Distance’ enables a pilot to play Chicken, Flee, Joust, Pass, Snipe, or Strafe, whilst ‘Up Close’ a pilot can attempt to deliver a Broadsides, Disengage, Dogfight, Flight assist off, Pass, and Ram. These maneuvres determine both how a spacecraft is going to move and how many weapons her pilot can fire. In general, a pilot and his spacecraft really only gets to fire once per turn, but with the Dogfight manoeuvre, multiple spacecraft can get involved and this means multiple manoeuvres and potentially, multiple chances for a pilot to fire his weapons, each time on different opponents. Once a hit is scored, damage needs to overcome a target ship’s shields and then it is applied to the ship’s hull. If a ten is rolled on the to-hit roll and the damage is sufficient to reduce the target ship’s shields to zero, then the target ship suffers damage to both the hull and one of its components. Again, the space combat rules are covered in only a few pages, but presents a chaotic free-for-all system in which the player characters really get to mix it up. They are followed by rules for vehicle combat, which are again relatively simple and straightforward.

After all this, only now does Elite: Dangerous Roleplaying Game start present any kind of background against which the game will be run. Even then, it does not open with the background to the setting, but rather with a guide to a player character’s, or rather, a freelancer’s, first spacecraft. Delivered as a legally mandatory introduction by a representative of the Faulcon Delacy corporation, it is the first piece of colour fiction to appear in the book and it is just ever so knowing and thoroughly engaging and enjoyable. It is followed by a guide to the galaxy and the major powers—the Federation, the Empire, the Alliance, and independent worlds—which although written in the same engaging style, it really is a bit short at nine pages and barely 2% of the book for a Game Master to write adventures for. On the plus side, it means that the Game Master has a lot of freedom to write adventures, but compared to other Science Fiction roleplaying games, the background is slight. Following this is a third lecture, a guide to ‘Being a Good Citizen’, how to act and what to expect as a newly qualified pilot out there in space… Given the simplicity and shortness of the rules, it seems odd to have this very short chapter of background after those rules and not before, at the beginning of the book.

Technology wise, Elite: Dangerous Roleplaying Game presents a setting where both Faster-Than-Light travel and ownership of personal spacecraft is common. What is not common is the generation of gravity, so player characters are equipped with mag boots, whose use can play a big role in zero-g combat. In addition to listing all of the personal equipment, Elite: Dangerous Roleplaying Game does a nice thing with its personal weapons. It gives generic stats for auto pistols, laser pistols, submachine guns, assault beamers, and so on, but it treats non-generic models as both different and rare, so that whenever a player character gets hold of one, it is special. Besides all this, cybernetics are also given, but once installed, if they are too obvious, they have a deleterious effect upon a character’s Karma points and his social skills. Likewise, heavy armour has a similar effect, but conversely, wearing the right clothing can have a positive effect.  

From the Adder, the Anaconda, and the Asp Explorer to the Type-9 Heavy, the Viper MK III, and the Vulture, Elite: Dangerous Roleplaying Game details some sixteen spacecraft models and their variants. All taken from the computer game, this provides plenty of standard models to buy off the shelf—or upgrade to—but also the rules to allow a player character to modify his ship according to his taste and design. There are lots of options here and should support the player characters and their equipment progression in the long term, although this is very much a set of mechanics that is best handled between adventures. Unlike the section on spacecraft, the section on vehicles just lists various models without the rules to modify them.

The Game Master’s section covers the basic rules as well as game types—military and police, espionage and intrigue, exploration, Lone Wolf, mission-based, and sandbox games. The standard game type is, of course, the Lone Wolf, a la the Elite: Dangerous computer game. They feel a bit short, more of a good start than overall helpful, and the Lone Wolf game type has issues of its own as we shall see… This section also provides further discussion about the rules, including handling combined personal, spacecraft, and vehicular combat, as well as handling trade during adventures. Again, this is kept fairly light, but really the default set-up is for trade is handled between adventures as can be asteroid mining, exploration, and bounty hunting. This enables a player character to earn some income between adventures and essentially moves what might not very interesting to play through off-stage. Then, it gives the Game Master the perfect means to take the player characters to another location ready for an adventure, to introduce an NPC or a threat, drop a clue, and so on, thus leading into the next adventure. 

In general, those threats come in three scales—individual, vehicle, and spaceship scale. These include soldiers and mercenaries, criminals, police and security, assassins, as well as alien animals and drones. These are fully statted out and described, all ready to use with the ‘Random Generation System’. This set of tables can be used to create two things—star system and missions or adventures. There is no adventure in Elite: Dangerous Roleplaying Game, but there is the means to create plenty. Each mission type is broken down into three or four types and accompanied by five possible twists, so there is a good mix here. What the combination of the extensive list of opponents combined with the star system and mission generator is model the procedural generation of game play in Elite: Dangerous. Now a roleplaying game needs slightly more rational rationale to its play, so the use of these tables requires an experienced Game Master or a bit of preparation beforehand. Rounding out Elite: Dangerous Roleplaying Game is an extensive set of forms to help record the details of a game.

Physically, Elite: Dangerous Roleplaying Game is an impressive book. It is a relatively light read and it is extensively illustrated in full colour. Now what it lacks is an index and that is a major, not to say, inexcusably frustrating, omission by modern standards as it will seriously hamper the use of the book. Now the book is well organised and the colour of the pages is nicely selected to make certain sections stand out, but there is no denying that there should have been an index. Full examples of character generation, general play, and space combat would been useful additions too, especially for anyone coming to the roleplaying game from the computer game without any experience of having played a roleplaying game before.

There is one very big difference between Elite: Dangerous Roleplaying Game and just every Science Fiction roleplaying game, whether it is Traveller, Firefly Roleplaying Game, and Coriolis: The Third Horizon, and that is the player characters do not crew their own ship, but crew their own ships. Thus they are not the pilot, engineer, gunner, medic, steward, navigator, and so on aboard their ship, but the pilot, engineer, gunner, medic, steward, navigator, and so on aboard their own ships. Now there is an option in the game for the player characters to crew the one ship as there is a ship suitable for that listed, but in the game’s default set-up, with everyone having their own ship, having their own objective in acquiring sufficient monies to pay for upgrades, and so on, there is a sense of the collective present in most other roleplaying games that is not present in Elite: Dangerous Roleplaying Game. If the Game Master is running a campaign built around military and police, espionage and intrigue, exploration, or mission-based games, then there is reason enough for the player characters to stick together, but in the Lone Wolf and the sandbox game suggestions, it is less obvious and the Game Master will really need to come up with something plausible if the player characters are to form a party and more importantly, stick together...

There are several things that Elite: Dangerous Roleplaying Game is missing. One is sufficient background that would help impart the feel of the setting and help a Game Master write scenarios. The second is the lack of a map of the galaxy. It need not be detailed, but it would have been nice to learn the geographical relationship between the various powers. The third is the absence of an  index, which points to certain lack of professionalism as an roleplaying game should have index. The fourth is a scenario, which will be something of an issue for anyone coming to the roleplaying game from the computer game without any experience of having played or run a roleplaying game before. Admittedly, had there there been a scenario, what type of game should it have covered—military and police, espionage and intrigue, exploration, Lone Wolf, mission-based, or sandbox? This is all despite the fact that the mechanics and the means to play Elite: Dangerous Roleplaying Game are lightly handled and relatively simple to play, and thus easy to learn and suitable for those new to roleplaying.

Ultimately, what Elite: Dangerous Roleplaying Game cannot do is reconcile the Lone Wolf campaign play of the Elite: Dangerous computer game with the collective needs and set-up of the party in a roleplaying game and this is why the other game types are stronger and easier to use. It may need more exploration in a future supplement if the Lone Wolf game type is be fully realised as a possible campaign set-up for Elite: Dangerous Roleplaying Game.

Nevertheless, despite these issues, what you have in Elite: Dangerous Roleplaying Game is a relatively light, Science Fiction roleplaying game which does its very best to model the Elite: Dangerous computer game. It might not provide as much background as it should, but it certainly provides the means and the mechanics for the players to take their freelancers to the spacelanes and trade their way to fame and fortune.

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Spidermind Games will be at UK Games Expo which will take place between June 1st and June 3rd, 2018 at Birmingham NEC. This is the world’s fourth largest gaming convention and the biggest in the United Kingdom.

A Whovian Quartet

There can be no denying that Cubicle Seven Entertainment has released plenty of adventures for Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space – The Roleplaying Game. After all, there is a sourcebook for every single incarnation of the Doctor, from the First Doctor to the Ninth Doctor and beyond, as well as U.N.I.T. and time travel. Yet even taking into account the twelve-part campaign in The Eighth Doctor Sourcebook, the roleplaying game is rather short of scenarios that the Game Master can simply add to his campaign. One solution is All of Time and Space Volume 1, a quartet of adventures set firmly during the tenure of the Twelfth Doctor—or at least after the events on Trenzalore.

All of Time and Space Volume 1 opens with ‘Ghost Engines’ by Gareth Ryder Hanrahan. The hunt for a missing boy in the present finds the time travellers shunted back into Victorian England where the railway industry is undergoing some form of rapid advancement and conglomeration as a railway engineer appears to bringing the country within the reach of his company, ‘The Great Compass’. Yet this railway engineer might not be as clever or as charitable as everyone says he is, so where exactly are his advances in railway technology coming from? There is a lovely mix of elements here, from Bertie Wooster types and suspicious policemen to ghost trains and steamborgs, with a healthy dash of The Paternoster Gang thrown in, allowing the Game Master to crack open the Paternoster Investigations sourcebook. (Although they are referred to, neither Professor George Litefoot nor Henry Gordon Jago make an appearance, but there is no reason why they should not!) ‘Ghost Engines’ gets the anthology off to a very good start with delightful and well done mystery with lots of opportunity for roleplaying and adventure. 

The opportunities for roleplaying and adventure continue in ‘The Northern Knights’, but adds intrigue into the mix. Written by Walt Ciechanowski, it sends the time travellers into the religious schism between Catholicism and Protestantism in Elizabethan England. A strange plague has befallen a Shropshire village and the nearby castle, one beyond the capacity of a visiting physician to cure—perhaps the time travellers can help? The task is made the difficult by the presence of a very special guest at the castle—Mary, Queen of Scots! It gets a whole lot more complex when the castle is besieged by Catholic knights who would overthrow Queen Elizabeth and raise Mary in her stead, knights who not only northern, but silver! Which means of course, the Cybermen are involved in what is essentially ‘The Time Warrior’ meets ‘Silver Nemesis’. This is another rich adventure with lots of detail, even one which looks to be an anachronism, but actually not.

The third scenario, by Nick Huggins, is perhaps the cleverest one in the quartet, combining elements of ‘Silence in the Library’ and ‘The Time of Angels’ with ‘The Doctor’s Wife’. In ‘Schrödinger’s Expedition’, the time travellers find themselves aboard a space station, but a strange one, given the strange arrangement of rooms, warehouses, libraries, swimming rooms, corridors, and more. Add to this two parallel expeditions to the station—one military, one scientific—and odd flora and fauna, and what you have is an intriguing little puzzle. A puzzle which is made all the more difficult by the fact that neither expedition can meet, but getting them to work together is the key to solving ‘Schrödinger’s Expedition’. Now there is the danger with this kind of adventure that it is too clever for its own good and that makes it all the more difficult to run, but the advice which accompanies this adventure on how to run it is pleasingly helpful.

The last adventure is Timothy Ferguson’s ‘The Tomb of Cleopatra’. Another anachronism—an artefact which looks like a Cyberman’s head—has turned up in an archaeological exhibition in Egypt, so of course, the question, where has it been? To find out how, the time travellers have to go back to Roman Egypt not long after the death of Cleopatra and get involved in the opposition to the recently imposed Roman occupation. There is a nice bit of bait and switch involving a threat integral to the era of the Eleventh Doctor, but in some ways, the scenario is the most workmanlike of the four.

All four scenarios in All of Time and Space Volume 1 are nicely written with plenty of detail and good advice for staging them. There is also good advice for setting up and running each adventure, not just with time travellers equipped with a TARDIS, but other means, so that members of U.N.I.T. or Torchwood might go back in time and solve these instead of the Doctor and his Companions (or player character equivalents). Each is also rounded out with further hooks and ideas for sequels and more.

Physically, All of Time and Space Volume 1 is very well presented and organised, and is liberally illustrated with lots of photographs taken from episodes of the Tenth Doctor, Eleventh Doctor, and Twelfth Doctor. Where the book is disappointing, is in the editing as there are some ugly turns of phrase.

Now there is not a bad adventure to be had in All of Time and Space Volume 1. Yet more care could have been taken with the choice of scenarios to be included in this first volume—two of the scenarios involve the Cybermen and three involve both technological anachronisms in Earth’s past and manipulation of events in Earth’s past. Of course these are standard tropes to be found in Doctor Who, but it means that there is a fundamental similarity between too many of these scenarios—a similarity which could have been avoided with better development and editorial guidance and the authors being helped to be a bit more inventive. Again, none of these are bad scenarios, but it would have better to spread them between All of Time and Space Volume I and All of Time and Space Volume II—when the latter appears, rather than containing them all in the one book.

The best way to get around the similarities of the adventures in All of Time and Space Volume I would be to run adventures between each, because otherwise, this is an excellent quartet of adventures for use with Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space – The Roleplaying Game. The very best thing about these four is that if you thought about it, any one of them works as well on the page and at the table as they might on the television screen.

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Cubicle Seven Entertainment will be at UK Games Expo which will take place between June 1st and June 3rd, 2018 at Birmingham NEC. This is the world’s fourth largest gaming convention and the biggest in the United Kingdom.

Friday Filler: Temp Worker Assassins

How do you feel about your boss? Does the boss ever annoy the heck out of you? Do you have the urge to do something about it? You could go postal, take up the weapon of choice, and strike him down, but that would be too obvious, so why not put a bit of planning into it? Why not hire assassins and send them to do the job for you? The easiest way of getting them into the place where you work—Bureaucrat Castle—is as temps on a one-week contract. Unfortunately, only the security is so good at Bureaucrat Castle none of the assassins have been able to smuggle their weapons in. Fortunately, the assassins are so good they can turn anything into a weapon, including office supplies. So your assassins have a week in which to assemble the best weapons they can from the stationery cupboard and take the opportunities to strike at Bureaucrat Castle’s Health & Safety Halfling, Internal Audit Ninja, and Acquisitions Merger Viking! (If only real life was like this?)

This is the set-up for Temp Worker Assassins, worker placement-decking building, hand-manipulation game published following a successful Kickstarter campaign and a launch at UK Games Expo, 2017. It is designed to be played by between two and four players, aged fourteen and over, in roughly forty minutes. From one round to the next, players will send their assassins to the Forbidden Stationery Cupboard, the Really Spooky Recycling Area, and Malevolent R&D Department amongst others to gain offices supplies such as the Evil Pencil Sharpner, the Pointy Edged Clipboard, Not-So-Floppy Disk, and Hideous Highlighter Pen, all in readiness to launch an assassination attempt at a chosen target.

The game consists of some one-hundred-and ninety cards, twenty Assassin Meeples (five of each colour), a Starting Player Marker, and a fourteen-page rulebook. Of the cards, forty consist of four identical decks, one per player. These are mostly Fairly Sharp Pencils and Reasonably Blunt Pencils, providing +1 or +0 Attack respectively. Even if a player has all of these in his hand, they are rarely sufficient to make a successful assassination attempt on a target, so better cards are needed. These come in the form of the Stationery Supply cards, of which there are sixty. Four of these are placed face up to form the available Stationary with the Stationery Supply deck nearby. There are forty Department Cards, ten of which will form the various locations in Bureaucrat Castle where a player will send his Assassin Meeples to gain more cards, improve his hand of cards, and gain other benefits. Forty-five Target Cards provide the victims for the players’ assassination attempts. Five of these are actually Typing Pool Zombies, which mostly stationary, are easier to assassinate, but worth fewer Victory Points. Three of these Targets will be available to assassinate at any one time, as will one Typing Pool Zombie. Together, the number of Department Cards and Target Cards gives Temp Worker Assassins a fair degree of replay value.

The last card type in the game is the Turn Marker card. There is one of these for each day and they each provide a better bonus as the game progresses through the week. They are won by the first player to make a successful assassination attempt on a day and go into the player’s discard pile. Here is where it is worth targeting the Typing Pool Zombies as although they may not be worth points, a quick stab with a bunch of pencils might be enough to bump one off as soon as an assassin gets into the office and so get the Turn Marker card for that day. Lastly, there is the rulebook. This is nicely laid out and easy to read, but it is underwritten as some of the rules are not as clear as they could be despite the game’s relative simplicity. 

Turns are quite simple. Beginning with the Starting Player—who will change day-by-day—the players take it in turn to place one of their assassins on Department Card or Target Card to make an assassination attempt. The Department Cards provide several actions, including Clear (discard and refresh the Stationery Supply cards), Draw (draw cards from a player’s deck), Gain (Take a face-up Stationery Supply card), Research (take cards from the Stationery Supply deck, add one to a player’s hand and discard the rest), and Trash (remove a card in your hand from the game). Some Department Cards provide just one of these actions, but others give a mix of them which all must be carried out. Other Department Cards provide a bonus to weapon types during assassination attempts amongst other benefits. This being a worker placement game, it means that it is possible to block access to a Department Card for other players and it does mean that as a turn progresses, there will be fewer Department Cards for a player to put his assassin meeples on, giving him fewer choices. That said, this is offset by the fact that some Department Cards have multiple spaces.

Once a player feels he has enough Stationery Supply cards to hand—there is no hand limit—he can make an assassination attempt. This is not a simple process, as it does require a player to chain his Stationery Supply cards in order to have the greatest effect—learning how to do this effectively is one of the game’s challenges. So Scaring Staples grants ‘Up to 2 Staplers get +2 Attack’, so a player needs to have another two Stapler cards in his hands and they will also have their effects as well as an Attack value. This allows for a certain degree of deck design, player trying to Gain cards from the Stationery Supply that will make a particular card work. In many cases, a player will also be discarding and drawing cards from his deck. In the early stages of the game this may be an issue because a player is unlikely to have particularly powerful cards in his deck, but later in the game, if he has been able to raid the Stationery Supply cards, he will certainly have better cards to draw from. One notable difference from a great many deck building games is that when taken from the Stationary Supply, the cards do not go into a player’s discard pile, but his hand. This means that he can prepare for an assassination attempt on his turn as much he might have to reply upon what is in his deck. If successful, the assassinated Target card goes into the player’s victory pile. Some Target cards provide bonuses in addition to their Bounty value.

After an assassination attempt, whether successful or unsuccessful, an assassin meeple is sent to Security. (He is not arrested, fired, or anything, but can return to work the following day—it appears that Bureaucrat Castle is really keen on its temps working out their period of employment.) The player discards both his hand and the cards played as part of the assassination attempt, draws a new hand of five cards, and continues play. Once everyone has played all of their assassin meeples on a day, it ends, they clock off, and a new day begins with a new Turn Marker card. This continues until the end of the fifth turn—or Friday—when everyone clocks off and the game ends. The player with the most Bounty points gained from assassinated Targets is the winner.

One issue with the game is the Typing Pool Zombies. They sort of provide a catch-up mechanism should another player be running away with number of Targets successfully assassinated. Essentially, they enable another player to make an early assassination attempt at the start of a day in order to gain the benefit of the day’s Turn Marker card. They do provide a powerful bonus, but only if a player can grab it. There is nothing to stop the leading player from grabbing the Turn Marker card bonus early on and so give his assassins a further boost. Now when taken, a Turn Marker card goes into a player’s discard pile—and not his hand like Stationery Supply cards—but it is a powerful bonus when it comes back out to play nonetheless. The problem essentially, is that as a catch-up mechanism, there is no guarantee that it will actually help…

Physically, Temp Worker Assassins is a very nicely presented game. The cards are sturdy enough and their instructions easy to read. The artwork though, especially on the Target Cards is very good—if only it had been bigger! The rulebook is somewhat underwritten, but does include a good example of how an assassination is supposed to work. It would have been nice if the assassin meeples had been a bit more thematic, but you cannot have everything.

Temp Worker Assassins not only has great artwork, but it has a fun theme too. A lot of thought has gone into the names and looks of the Target Cards as well as the name of the various offices and departments at Bureaucrat Castle (you may not have actually worked in some of these locations, but it probably feels as if you have). Once you get the hang of it, a game of Temp Worker Assassins should play faster than the suggested forty minutes—which feels a bit long anyway. This should only take the one play through, but after that, the game’s humour, and the replay value in the variety of the Department and Target cards will bring Temp Worker Assassins back to the table.

Fanzine Focus XI: Hearts in Glorantha Issue 6

On the tail of Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby when it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showcased how another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry.

The heyday of the RuneQuest fanzine is long past, but with the forthcoming renaissance in roleplaying games set in Glorantha, it is good to see the return of the fanzine, Hearts in Glorantha, after a hiatus of five years. Published by D101 Games, as a fanzine, Hearts in Glorantha has a focus upon adventures and gameable content which the Game Master can bring to her gaming group. Behind its delightfully and aggressively anatine cover, Hearts in Glorantha Issue 6 comes with four adventures—for HeroQuest Glorantha, RuneQuest Classic, and System-less, a little background, and some memories. It is a good mix with content for both veteran Gloranthaphiles and those new to the setting.

It opens with ‘The Awakening’, a system-less adventure by Scott Crowder. In it the adventurers find themselves caught in a dream of the Brown Dragon of Dragon Pass at a point between the Dragonrise and the Dragonkill. Stranded in the lost city of Harna Gamoon amidst an army of Yelmalians they must negotiate their way through the dreamscape to if not change history, then at least set it on another course. This is a scenario that Gloranthaphiles will enjoy as it allows them to both explore a period of Dragon Pass’ history and be its heroes some half a millennium later. The scenario is relatively easy to adapt to the rules of the Game Master’s choice, and would be even simpler to run under HeroQuest Glorantha.

Also for devoted Gloranthaphiles, Barry Blatt’s ‘God Forgot’ details the islands of God Forgot in the Holy Country. Adventurers will need good reason to visit these islands as their inhabitants, the Inagreen, are unwelcoming and stand-offish, preferring visitors to stick to Casino Town or Talar’s Hold with its Foreign Quarter. They have good reason for this, having been the victims of crusade in the Second Age and now their primary contact with the outside world is through the mercenaries of their six ‘Legions’, the military-crime families of the Horali caste which squabble with other over who controls what on the islands and thus who can make donations to them (as they are not allowed to trade). Instead of worshipping gods, the Inagreen muse and philosophise about the Logical Laws, and several volumes devoted to such thinking are given in the article. Given the default point of view in Glorantha is that of the theists of Sartar, this is both a weird and an interesting article to read. It may be used as background for player characters or as a strange place for the player characters to visit, but perhaps a scenario hook or two or ideas on how to create Inagreen characters might have helped with either.

‘Light and Death’, by Neil Smith, takes place in the city of Raibanth in the Heartlands of the Lunar Empire. The player characters are members of same League assigned by their patriarch to protect the architect of a new bridge across the Joat river and further strengthen the ties between Old and New Raibanth. They must deal with protestors, a murder, religious fanatics, and illumination in order to prevent the construction of the bridge from being halted. The scenario comes with five pre-generated characters and is relatively short and linear in structure, so it would work well as a convention scenario. One issue with ‘Light and Death’ is that it is written for use with HeroQuest, First Edition rather than HeroQuest, Second Edition or HeroQuest Glorantha, so the Game Master may need to do adaptation to run it under those rulesets.

‘Memories of RuneQuest 2’ is nice callback for long time Gloranthaphiles, especially since RuneQuest Classic has not long been released. It is followed by the ‘Ian Cooper Interview’, a Question & Answer article with the line editor of HeroQuest. An informative piece, it starts with Ian’s gaming history and involvement in writing Glorantha before coming up to date with the Red Cow Saga—The Coming Storm and The Eleven Lights. Throughout the issue are sprinkled four scenario hooks by Newt Newport, such as ‘One of our Fish is Missing’ in which the player characters must find out what has happened to a village’s magic fish and ‘Hunter’s Tower’, a wilderness encounter with a mysterious structure with one door which opens only to lure game animals inside with sweet music. Each of the quartet comes with three options enabling the Game Master to select the reason as to what is going on. Stuart Mousir-Harrison’s ‘Why the Story is the Best’ is a lovely little vignette which pleasingly highlights the difference between knowledge and story by showing us why Lhankor Mhy knows things and Issaries tells us tales.

Matt Ryan’s ‘The Lightbringers’ Quest’ is written as an introductory HeroQuest adventure to be run and played in one session players both unfamiliar with setting of Glorantha and the mechanics of HeroQuest. It allows the players to roleplay their way through one of greatest of Glorantha’s myths—that of Orlanth the Storm God descending into the Underworld with his companions to free Yelm the Sun God. This is not a Hero Quest in the usual sense of Glorantha, but a ‘God Quest’ in which the player characters are Petty Gods, who will go on the quest on behalf of the Storm God and petition the Sun God for his atonement and friendship. This is a fantastic—in both senses of the word—introduction to the mythology of Glorantha and enables the players to roleplay both interesting characters and situations, which sadly they are unlikely, at least in the case of the characters, to play again. Now of course, this scenario deviates from canonical Glorantha in the sense that it was the Lightbringers who undertook this quest, not the Petty Gods of the player characters. One option here is to have those Petty Gods become the Lightbringers and so deviate further from canonical Glorantha, but another might be to see this quest as essentially a Hero Quest for the gods, a ‘God Quest’ if you will, enforcing the mythology and history of Glorantha in their quest to become Young Gods rather than Petty Gods.

Where ‘The Lightbringers’ Quest’ is problematic is in its use. The players are expected to create their own gods as part of the play through of the scenario and if playing this scenario at home, then this is not an issue. As a convention scenario, which the author suggests it can be ran as, ‘The Lightbringers’ Quest’ is a bit long and overwritten for the traditional four-hour slot they usually run to. Thus, the Game Master may need to do some trimming of the encounters and probably provide some pre-generated gods.

Rounding out Hearts in Glorantha Issue 6 is ‘Duck Hill’. Since there was a Duck on the cover, there had to be a Duck adventure and this scenario by Newt Newport is it. Written for use with RuneQuest Classic, this involves a mad Duck, a Duck day of celebration, and a dungeon. It is short—no pun intended—it is fun, and it is just a bit silly.

Physically, Hearts in Glorantha Issue 6 is a clean and tidy book, decently edited and illustrated. As a forty-eight-page A4-size book, it does not feel all that sturdy though.

Hearts in Glorantha Issue 6 is a packed with good content and content that can be gamed, whatever flavour of mechanics you prefer. There is enough material in its pages to serve as a jumping on point as well as enough to keep veterans of the setting entertained.

Fanzine Focus XI: Fantastic Exciting Imaginative: The Holmes Art ’Zine, Volume One

On the tail of Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showcased how another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. Leading the way in their support for Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have been the fanzines The Undercroft and Vacant Ritual Assembly. As seen in Volume Two, Fantastic Exciting Imaginative: The Holmes Art ’Zine is a fanzine of a different stripe.

Published by Inner Ham, Fantastic Exciting Imaginative: The Holmes Art ’Zine is draws from a unique source for its inspiration—the original version of Basic Dungeons & Dragons designed by Doctor John Eric Holmes and published in 1977. Specifically, it draws from Doctor Holmes’ description of the game as “fantastic, exciting, and imaginative” for both its title and its content. That content is simply a medley of monsters, magic, and more, with new spells, magical items, NPCs, and creatures created by some twenty-four or so diverse contributors, each entry drawn from a particular illustration to be found in the pages of the Holmes’ edition of Basic Dungeons & Dragons. What this means is that the fanzine really does consist of things that you can add to your game without any particular theme or flavour. This has the downside that some of the content is perfectly acceptable in terms of Dungeons & Dragons, but somewhat bland in terms of its fantasy. Thankfully some of the content rises above this blandness to present interesting content which will definitely add to your game.

With little ceremony, the issue jumps straight into its content, starting with magic items such as the ‘Wand of Dazzling Light’, which reduces a target’s Armour bonus and levies a to hit penalty and the Dragon Shield which grants a second Saving Throw versus Breath Weapon against the breath weapon of dragons whose colour matches that of the shield. Swords figure strongly amongst the magic items in the issue, such as ‘The Yellow Sword’ which may force the wielder to runaway when outnumbered; the ‘Sword of Demon Banishment’ can bar a demon from returning to the earthly plane if the sword is left in the body of the demon; and the ‘Scabbard of Spells & Magical Wonderment’ which comes with many possible powers which it fuses into a sword when the user decides. Each scabbard typically has four such powers—randomly generated—and they are one-use only. One other interesting item is the ‘Forked Staff’, which a Cleric or Magic-User can use to split their spells to affect multiple targets and even reduce the number of targets a spell cast at the party will affect. These are all lightly drawn, whereas ‘“Gore” – Axe of Minotaur’ is much more detailed and flavoursome, a weapon with mighty powers but also the curse of turning its wielder into a minotaur.

The new monsters start off with the ‘Unigoyle’, a wingless gargoyle with a cyclops-style horn; ‘Regal Lizard Men’—civilised lizard men and the similar ‘Iguanadyte’; and ‘Sleeping Skeletons’, the smashed bones of animated skeletons which swarm onto targets and together immobilise them. None of these monsters are really all that interesting, but where the issue does get interesting is in its development of existing monsters. So, ‘Six Orc Tribes’ provides short descriptions of Orc tribes to provide them with a little variation, whilst ‘Deformities & Personality Conflicts for Individual Orcs’ can add flavour and detail to an Orc of the Dungeon Master’s choosing, and ‘Full-Bellied Dragon’ provides rules for determining what a dragon might do on a full meal. Monsters beginning with the letter ‘h’ get interesting coverage in Fantastic Exciting Imaginative: The Holmes Art ’Zine, Volume One. So the Harpy gets the Harpy Axe which can be thrown and have it return to its fetid hands thrice a day, whilst Harpy Bones can inflict Cause Light Wounds once per day which takes the form of a large eagle-like bird pecking the target! The Queen Harpy is a stronger, tougher Harpy who commands a roost of Harpies and may be able to use certain spells. The other ‘h’ is the Hydra, which gets lots of love with ‘Seven Uses for the Many Head of a Hydra’ such as a hydra which swallows its targets for its Magic-User master and Hydra-head stew which can be boiled down to create a giant’s bane, and with ‘Hydra Lore’ which suggests some Hyra have an immortal head, whilst others breath a poison which slows men, elves, and dwarves down.

Fantastic Exciting Imaginative: The Holmes Art ’Zine, Volume One comes with relatively few spells. For the Magic-User, there is ‘Calm’, which does it says on the tin to monsters and of course, ‘Elmer’s Glue’ produces a strong adhesive, but also marks the first mention Elmer the Minotaur Wizard more fully detailed in Fantastic Exciting Imaginative: The Holmes Art ’Zine, Volume Two. Where that future issue has the one Dwarf NPC, this first issue has three, plus in ‘A Smattering of Typical And Atypical Gear for Dwarven NPCs’, a table of items and equipment for them (and other dwarves) to carry. ‘The Brothers Grymthrall’ describes three mercenary, ruthless Dwarves—Torvald the Badger (including his Harness of the Crag-Badger, which turns him into a battle-frenzied crag-badger); Ulryk the Unlovely, The Beast of Shrikesburg, disfigured and mute and bad-tempered; and Rangvald of Vulturespire, who wears the Cleft Shield of the Spire-Guard and the Helm of the Spire-Guard, both family heirlooms. All three NPCs, either Third or Fourth Level Swordsmen, are fully stated out and fully kitted, including magic items, ready as foes or hirelings!

Physically, Fantastic Exciting Imaginative: The Holmes Art ’Zine, Volume One is neat and tidy, with a reasonable mix of rough, if ready art, and full of content which is relatively easy to drop into a campaign world. That said, an encounter or two, or even a scenario, inspired like the rest of the contents of the fanzine, by illustrations to be found in the pages of the Holmes’ edition of Basic Dungeons & Dragons, would add to its pages. Now, the quality of the content is varied and not all of it is particularly interesting. Fortunately, the interesting and the fun far outweighs the not as interesting and thus in Fantastic Exciting Imaginative: The Holmes Art ’Zine, Volume One you have a good mix of material and a format ready to be adhered to with Fantastic Exciting Imaginative: The Holmes Art ’Zine, Volume Two.

Fanzine Focus XI: The Undercroft No. 10

On the tail of Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showcased how another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. Leading the way in their support for Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have been the fanzines The Undercroft and Vacant Ritual Assembly.

Published in August 2016, The Undercroft No. 10 comes with just four articles. It opens with ‘Babel Square’ by Sándor Gebei, which describes a city location, part-exotic bazaar, part-bohemian quarter where strange encounters and strange goods are to be had. For example, a marching band of mice might pass through, playing the best of military mouse tunes or a hot air balloon might land in the middle of the street with a young girl dressed in blue, her pet dire wolf, and middle-aged man in green aboard. Found here is the Gallery of the Moonstone Swan, where artist Quil-Xon crafts beautiful body parts in obsidian, life-size bronzes of people, and so on, whilst the Corner of the Emerald Empress is a lavish restaurant  which serves specialities such as auroch haggis and cockatrice balut. Although there is not much depth to the description of Babel Square, there are lots and lots details with which a Referee can bring out its flavour and exoticism. It is perhaps though, not really suited to the grim and grimy feel which is the default for Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay. Instead its fantasy is more high than low and there is a dissipated, decadent quality to the piece.

Corruption comes to the fore in the ‘void’ described by Luke Gearing, the author of Fever Swamp. Its inky blackness is warm and embracing, granting knowledge and power, but ultimately twisting and corroding from within to turn individuals into Occulted Husks and perverting the design of spells. Its effects are shown in the fall of the Occulted Kingdom and its Occulted Queen, as well as the artefacts created in response to its insidious influence, such as the Court-Black clothing won by courtiers to hide their corruption. Three example tainted spells are also listed, enough at least to suggest how a Referee might twist others, plus rules for corrupting the player characters and its effects upon them. This is a pernicious thing, but again, apocalyptic and much like an article in the previous issue, campaign ending.

Greg Gorgonmilk offers up some things in ‘A Miscellany’. For example, ‘Dead Fairy in a Lamp’ is a rosy glass tube containing tiny bones and wings, which when rattled and a certain word is spoken, casts an intense, warm light which reveals invisible objects and a clear view through stone, whilst ‘The Cloak of Beards’ is a magical patchwork vestment of some length, woven from the beards of twenty ancient kings and lined with mouse velvet, which grant the wearer regal charisma, bearing, and influence. There are just four things described here, each quite detailed and not a little decadent in their design. Certainly these are very far from the often brutalist design of magic items in Dungeons & Dragons.

Rounding out the issue is ‘The Officers’ Rest’. Written by Ezra Claverie, the designer of Crypts of Indormancy and set in the same world as that scenario, ‘The Officers’ Rest’ details part of the Her Majesty’s Western Shipyard and Submarine Pens of the Elven navy, abandoned long ago after the fall of the Elven Empire. It is also the lair of one their leftover warmachines… More specifically, this is set in the same location as ‘Decoherence Wight’ from The Undercroft No. 7, but is not quite as apocalyptic. It does have a pleasing post-industrial feel of abandonment, but unfortunately, ‘The Officers’ Rest’ suffers from the same issue as ‘Decoherence Wight’ in that it does not provide a reason for the player characters to go there. This is compounded by the lack context, in that the several pieces have appeared in the pages of the fanzine describing bits of the author’s setting, as well as Crypts of Indormancy, but they are all excerpts and we have yet to see an overview or really an introduction. This is clearly the author’s campaign world and it seems a shame to just show snapshots.

Physically, The Undercroft No. 1o is well presented. The artwork is decent and the writing clear. The editorial for the issue opens with the lines, “on this our tenth issue it is important to remember that this will not last forever there was a time when this publication did not exists and there will again be a time when it ceases…” Take this into consideration this then, for The Undercroft No. 10, if not the last issue, is at least the last issue since August, 2016. That may well be a good thing, for The Undercroft No. 10 feels a little tired, too drawn out perhaps for the articles it contains. None of them are actually bad articles, but as much as they are well presented, they do not feel easy to use or to bring into a campaign. Perhaps The Undercroft will return after it has had a well-deserved rest, perhaps not. Either way, The Undercroft No. 10 is not an unreasonable point at which to

—oOo—

The Undercroft fanzine and other titles from the Melsonian Arts Council will be available from Squarehex at UK Games Expo which will take place between June 1st and June 3rd, 2018 at Birmingham NEC. This is the world’s fourth largest gaming convention and the biggest in the United Kingdom.