A Sweet Mission

Operation Peardrop is a scenario for use with WWII: Operation Whitebox, Small Niche Games’ adaptation of Mythmere Games’ Swords & Wizardry for special forces missions during World War II. Designed for three to six characters of First to Third Level, it is based on Operation Acid Drop, a pair of hit and run missions in the Pas-de-Calais of occupied France by members of No. 5 Commando which ultimately failed to achieve their objectives. In Operation Peardrop a squad of commandos is sent across the English Channel and put ashore on the French coast where it is to conduct activities overnight in and around the town of Allmont-sur-Mer. The commandos’ orders are assess the enemy’s strength and presence in the town of Allmont-sur-Mer, provide Intelligence on key locations in the town, and potentially capture an enemy soldier for interrogation; identify antiaircraft artillery sites around the town on behalf of the RAF; attempt to make contact with the French Resistance in the area; and lastly, fly the flag, by which is meant, conduct useful acts of sabotage.

The set-up for Operation Peardrop quickly gets the players in making decisions for their commandos. This includes equipping them—it is advised that they travel light—and choosing their landing spot on the French coast. The closer the landing site is to the town, the more likely it is to be guarded or patrolled, but the further away from the town, the greater the number of patrols that might be encountered. There is capacity here for one or more of the Commandos operate undercover if they are wearing civilian rather than military and perhaps be able to slip past the notice of the German occupying forces and make contact with the local inhabitants.

As a scenario, Operation Peardrop is essentially a small sandbox, the Commandos being free to conduct the mission however they want. There are though several sites of interest outside of Allmont-sur-Mer that have been marked for their attention, and one ashore, the Commandos will find clues and mysteries which will pull them further into the sandbox. The primary focus is the town itself though, as the scenario’s plots run into and out of Allmont-sur-Mer.

The tone of Operation Peardrop is fairly positive, matching that of the British black and white war movies of the period. There is a determined grimness to whole affair though, perfectly in keeping with the tone and the deeds that every stalwart Englishman (and Welshman and Scotsman and Irishman) has to carry out as part of his duty to King and country.

Technically, the Game Master has everything that she needs to run Operation Peardrop. So there are stats for all of the NPCs—both civilian and military, as well as dogs and various military—mostly utility—vehicles operated by the occupying forces. The Game Master might want to add a scientist or engineer NPC for certain scenes in the scenario, but they should be easy to create. A couple of probable encounters are detailed as well, which again will drive the mission forward. One important aspect missing from the major NPCs are physical descriptions and roleplaying notes on how to portray them. To offset this, the Game Master may need to make some roleplaying notes on most of them, lest she fall back on cliches. Another thing that is missing from Operation Peardrop which would have increased its utility is a set of pre-generated Commandos. Had they been included, then Operation Peardrop as a whole, would have made for a good convention scenario, which is how it has been playtested.

Physically, Operation Peardrop is well presented. The twenty-four page, 4.5 MB full-colour PDF is well written, neatly laid out, and has some decent maps, though the Game Master may want to add a few interior floor plans herself.

Operation Peardrop is a nicely contained, low Level mini-sandbox. The various plot strands are simple enough to adapt to the roleplaying game of the Game Master’s choice, but it brings a grim if determined tone to WWII: Operation Whitebox, one that deserves to be portrayed in black and white rather than colour. John Mills optional...

7th Sea's 7

Like the DM’s Guild for Dungeons & Dragons  and the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, there is also the Explorer’s Society for 7th Sea. It provides an outlet for fans and writers of the preeminent roleplaying game of swashbuckling action, adventure, and storytelling in Théah, an alternate and fantastical version of Europe and beyond in the seventeenth century. Inspired by films such as Ocean’s Eleven, Evan Perlman’s Sea’s 7 published by Chaosium, Inc. is a heist adventure set in a grand casino. Which means high stakes gambling, intrigue, secrets, lies, spies, dangerous liaisons, and more—but above all, rising tension as the heroes case the joint, devise and then execute the plan, doubtless ending in a flurry of action and consequences as they get away with it (or not)!

Ideally, the Game Master should have access to the Pirate Nations sourcebook, for the Queen of the Pirates has a problem and needs a favour. Someone swindled the Pirate Republic’s dock workers out of a considerable amount of money and to avoid any embarrassment, she and the Brotherhood of the Coast want it returned. Now the perpetrator has been traced to the Montaigne colony of Sylviette where she has resurfaced as the Comtesse du Janvier, operator of its newest, hottest social destination—the Casino Impérial. The Queen of the Pirates not only wants the money back, but the Comtesse du Janvier ruined. It sounds like a simple job, but security is tight, the company charming if duplicitous, and there is bound to be a plot twist or along the way. If not written into the plot, then probably due to the Heroes’ involvement.

Sea’s 7 is a two-Step, four-Scene adventure. In the first two scenes, the Heroes start planning the heist and spend a night at the casino looking for ways to get into the vault and the money out. In the second two steps, events escalate as the Heroes carry out their plan in the face of cruel opposition and a rival ‘heist’ before making their getaway as everything goes awry around them. The description of the Casino Impérial and its layout are detailed enough for the Game Master to run the Heroes through all four scenes, although the promised map is strangely absent. Of course, much of the action and story will be player-led, so there are lots of NPCs for their Heroes to interact with, from a nobleman on a stag do to a possible Fate Witch who is all too successful at the gaming tables; Opportunities aplenty to divert attention, uncover secrets, recruit allies, and more; Consequences to suffer, including stumbling into a tryst, getting caught sneaking around, being mistaken for someone’s enemy—did I mention that everyone at the Casino Impérial wears a mask?—and so on; plus secrets galore to uncover... There is a lot here for the Heroes to get involved in should they go looking—and they probably will—in addition to their actually robbing the place and ruining a reputation. 

Physically, Sea’s 7 comes as a 4.08 MB, full colour PDF. It is lightly illustrated, really just chapter headers showing period scenes of gambling and carousing. All very suitable and all very chaste, though doubtless, the events surrounding the Heroes’ heist attempt on the Casino Impérial will involve romantic entanglements, if not actual trysts.

With plot hooks, a handful of given nicely detailed villains, and example lists of approaches, Consequences, Opportunities, NPCs, secrets, and more, as well as solid staging advice, Sea’s 7 is a really superb toolkit for running heists in 7th Sea. There is so much information here that it is unlikely that the Game Master will use it all, though to do that, she would have to find a way to run it twice! In fact were the Game Master to run it more than once—perhaps as a convention scenario (all it would need is a good set of pre-generated Heroes)—it is unlikely that Sea’s 7 would play out the same way twice. Any 7th Sea Game Master wanting to run a heist will find Sea’s 7 invaluable and for any 7th Sea Game Master needing a short scenario to add to her campaign, Sea’s 7 is a good choice.

Unnatural Results

Control Group is an anthology of scenarios for Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game, the roleplaying game of conspiratorial and Lovecraftian investigative horror published by Arc Dream Publishing. It presents an odd set of scenarios which can be used in interesting ways, but bar the last and fourth of the quartet in anthology, none of them can be used in a standard, ongoing Delta Green campaign. All four can be used as one-shot scenarios and all four are, to one degree or another, suitable as convention scenarios. This though is not the point of Control Group. The first three scenarios are designed to be the first encounters that the player characters have with Unnatural—as the Mythos is known in Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game—with the survivors being potential recruits for Delta Green. If they are recruited, then the fourth scenario is intended to be their first ‘official’ ‘Night at the Opera’ as actual agents for Delta Green. All four scenarios are set in the past, so there is potential to use them as flashbacks also.

The quartet opens in 2010 with ‘BLACKSAT’. The player characters are NASA astronauts training for their next shuttle mission when they are assigned to a top secret mission to repair a satellite in low earth orbit. For the crew, the urge to get into space again in the face of an ageing shuttle fleet and potential program cancellation offsets the secret nature of the flight. That though, is the very least of their problems, for none of the crew are either qualified or cleared to repair the black satellite, and that means babysitting civilians who are. Worse, neither of the civilian specialists are certified—either professionally or physically—as astronauts. Neither is capable of passing any medical examination either… 

Unsurprisingly, given the nature of the mission, ‘BLACKSAT’ is tightly plotted, almost linear and fairly heavily scripted. So for the player characters, it is primarily reactive than proactive in nature. There is still plenty of room for the astronauts to act though, both prior to the launch and once they reach low earth orbit where all hell seems to break loose as the Extra Vehicular Activity specialists literally have to manhandle the civilians out of the shuttle and up to the satellite. None of this stops ‘BLACKSAT’ from being an effective piece of scientific horror as the player characters cope, first with an impossibly bureaucratic situation, second a horridly physical situation for which only they are trained to cope with, and third, the Unnatural in uncomfortably confined spaces… 

‘BLACKSAT’ is relatively short, probably taking no more than two sessions to play through. Designed for play by four or five players, it is nasty, claustrophobic piece with some horridly sympathetic NPCs for the Handler to roleplay. The likelihood is that it will end in the death or madness of everyone aboard (or not), but survivors are likely to their careers severely affected. It need not be run with a NASA crew or as shuttle mission either. There is the flexibility to shift it forward and run it with a contemporary commercial space venture, or even run it in the 1980s as a one-shot with the player characters being the cosmonaut crew of a Buran VKK Space Orbiter. After all, was the lack of funds, the real reason that the Russian shuttle programme was cancelled?

The second scenario, ‘Night Visions’, is also relatively short and also set in an enclosed space. Set in Afghanistan in 2011, the player characters are a CIA Foreign Service Officer and her protection detail attempting to make contact and negotiate with the Gath, an isolated tribe reviled by the surrounding tribes, but known to hate the Taliban. The strangely emaciated and scarred Gath are welcoming, eyeing them oddly, whilst their corpulent queen draws them ever deeper into the tribe’s strange customs. It is not difficult to think of the Tcho-Tcho here, but the Gath are weird in their own way. Getting answers from the Gath will be hampered by the language barrier and an avaricious translator, but their answers are often obtuse. ‘Night Visions’ will push at the limits of how far the player characters are willing to go to accept tribal customs. The scenario is likely to end in a cathartic gun fight—and there is a coldly technical epilogue—but up until that point, ‘Night Visions’ is a creepy and unsettling. Again, there is some flexibility with ‘Night Visions’ as a one-shot. With some adjustments, it could be run at any point during the British Empire’s interest in the region or in the 1980s during the Soviet invasion of the region.

The third scenario takes place in 2012 and is the most technically complex of the quartet in Control Group. ‘Sick Again’ switches the action back to the USA, with a quick-response team of doctors and scientists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent to Hudson’s Well, a small town in Arizona, where an outbreak of unknown origins has occurred. The town is ill-equipped to deal with an outbreak and the team will have its hands full tracking the infection status of the patients, researching the victims, and examining the symptoms and developing a treatment, and enacting a containment plan, as well as dealing with other events. There is a lot here for both players and Handler to keep track of and as oddly unsettling as the disease involved is, there is relatively little horror to ‘Sick Again’. That is, until the investigators locate the disease vector and then it gets weird… ‘Sick Again’ has ties back to classic Delta Green canon and may well be a frustrating piece of scientific horror until the completely strange finale.

Unlike the previous two scenarios, the pre-generated investigators provided for ‘Sick Again’ do not come with any background and so not only are they bland, the players are expected to create their backgrounds, bonds, and so on. The backgrounds and connections allow for some motivated interplay between those characters, but here the investigators feel cold and impersonal.

No pre-generated investigators are provided for the fourth and last scenario in the anthology, it being expected that investigators be created by playing the first three scenarios. ‘Wormwood Arena’ takes place in Kansas in 2013 when a Delta Green affiliate flags a potentially dangerous symbol on a pamphlet from a New Age-style sect called ‘Harmonic Bliss’. Further investigation reveals that the sect’s founders are missing and it has a new charismatic leader. So the question is, have they been kidnapped or murdered? In order to find out the investigators will need to go undercover, which requires roleplaying upon roleplaying upon the part of the players. Again there is the element of how far the investigators will go in order to learn what they need to know, followed by an unexpectedly weird turn of events. Until then, ‘Wormwood Arena’ feels underplayed, even languid until the potentially explosive finale.

Although the book needs a slight edit in places, Control Group is a very nicely presented hardback. Its fully painted artwork is excellent and the handouts are all very well done.

The design intent of the four scenarios in Control Group may well mean that a Handler is unlikely to use them, since barring the fourth scenario their various set-ups are for specific groups and so cannot be added to an ongoing campaign. Beyond this limitation, there is a surprising flexibility to the first three, whether they are used as origins stories, flashbacks, one-shots, or convention scenarios. Of the four, ‘BLACKSAT’ and ‘Night Visions’ are the easiest to run and the most direct in their presentation of the Unnatural, whilst ‘Sick Again’ nicely builds its mystery before making a swerve into the uncanny. Overall Control Group provides some excellent means of introducing players to Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game and their player characters and potential agents to the Unnatural and the mission of Delta Green.

A Sanguinary Starter

Legacy of Lies is a jump-start for use with Vampire: The Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition Dark Ages. Published by Onyx Path Publishing, it presents an introduction to the Vampire: The Masquerade Dark Ages setting, the basic rules, a complete scenario, and five ready-to-play vampires. It is set in 1242—primarily in Europe at the time of the ongoing Mongol Invasion as Russian forces commanded by Alexander Nevsky defeated an invasion attempt by the Teutonic Knights. Although the Mongol Hordes would suffer defeats they would sweep through Russia, Poland, Hungary, and more, representing an ongoing threat. In the vampire world, the War of the Princes continues, threatening to reach the continent’s most westerly reaches—England. Here in the Roman city of Chester, the Prince, Marcus Verus, seeks to enter torpor and rest, but believes his rivals, including Robert Durand, Baron of Edinburgh, is plotting against him and would take advantage of his lengthy absence. This is the set-up for the scenario at the heart of Legacy of Lies, which sees several vampires (the player characters) brought together by Marcus Versus to investigate possible plots against him.

Legacy of Lies introduces the world of Vampire: The Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition Dark Ages with a good lexicon of the terms and phrases used throughout the core rules and the jump-start and explains the vampiric world of 1242, focusing in particular on those clans who are active in the War of the Princes in England, the nature and traditions of vampiric society, and its hierarchy. There is much here that will be familiar to long time devotees of Vampire: The Masquerade—whether in its current or previous incarnations—and so Legacy of Lies will be easy for them to pick up and play. That familiarity though, does not preclude anyone new to Vampire: The Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition Dark Ages and the World of Darkness, from quickly grasping the ideas, concepts, and set-up given in Legacy of Lies.

Both Vampire: The Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition Dark Ages and Legacy of Lies use the Storytelling mechanics. This means rolling dice pools of ten-sided dice, with results of eight, nine, and ten counting as successes. Rolls of ten allow rerolls as long as a player keeps rolling ten. Anything more than five successes counts as an exceptional result. Under certain situations this grants a character a beneficial condition, such as Informed or Inspired. Penalties reduce the number of dice that can be rolled, but never below a single die. This last die becomes the chance die and only a ten counts as a success on the chance die—and cannot be rerolled—whereas a roll of a one on the chance die counts as a dramatic failure. 

Important to every vampire is his Willpower. It can be spent to achieve automatic successes, to resist automatic impulses—such as flinching away from sunlight and fire, to ignore wound penalties, to resist or control frenzy (when a vampire loses self-control through fear, rage, or hunger and succumbs to his inner beast, turning into a murderous monster), and resist mental powers being used them. It is also used as part of certain supernatural Disciplines that the various Clans have access to and teach. It is gained when a player roleplays his vampire’s nature and achieves his goals, as well as upon waking or completing a story. Obviously, a vampire needs to feed upon mortals for their vitae, or blood, as it is lost upon their awakening each night, for healing damage, to imitate being one of the living, and to use some of the Disciplines. For example, Celerity improves a vampire’s Dexterity and movement, but with the expenditure of blood, can ignore multiple action penalties and increase her speed even further.

Characters or vampires themselves are mechanically defined by nine attributes—Composure, Dexterity, Intelligence, Manipulation, Presence, Resolve, Stamina, Strength, and Wits—and skills in three categories—Mental, Physical, and Social, all ranging between one and five. Similarly, they have Backgrounds (the equivalent of advantages and disadvantages), such as Allies, Domain, Influence, and Status, which are rated on the same scale.  They also have a Nature and a Demeanour, such as a Conformist—someone who believes in the group rather than the individual. Vampires are also members of a Clan. There are some thirteen in Vampire: The Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition Dark Ages, but only five appear in Legacy of Lies. These are Brujah, Gangrel, Nosferatu, Toreador, and Ventrue, each of which embodies and includes certain types of vampire. So Brujah are principled warriors, Gangrel are outcasts who prefer wilderness, Nosferatu are physically twisted spies, Toreador are artistes, and Ventrue are natural nobles and leaders. 

Having presented the mechanics and the background to Vampire: The Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition Dark Ages, the jump-start presents the eponymous adventure, ‘Legacy of Lies’. This takes places in thirteenth century England, Scotland, and France. The player characters are summoned to Chester to undertake a secret mission for its prince, either because they or their sire owes Marcus Verus a favour. The mission will see them first visit France and learn what they can from an informant before returning to report to Verus, before going on Edinburgh to determine who exactly is plotting against the Baron of Chester. Although amounting to just six scenes, chronologically, ‘Legacy of Lies’ is not a short scenario, taking place over several months to take account of the difficulties and length of travel. The scenario also presents a variety of different scenes, mostly social, but some physical too. So there are opportunities to hunt and feed as well as for combat in between the many social and investigative situations that the scenario presents. In doing so, the authors nicely showcase vampire life in the twelfth century—both the mundane and the arcane.

A pleasing touch is that at the start of each scene, the difficulty ratings—Mental, Physical, and Social—are presented to make the Storyteller’s task easier. The various scenes are well organised and explained, but one issue with ‘Legacy of Lies’ is that the full details of the plot are not fully explained until several scenes into the scenario. This makes preparation more of a challenge than it deserves to be, especially if the Storyteller is new to Vampire: The Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition Dark Ages—or even to roleplaying.

Legacy of Lies comes with five pre-generated player character vampires  ready to play. They include a Brujah Irish nun, a Middle Eastern Toreador merchant, an English Ventrue noblewoman, a Mongol Gangrel adventurer, and an English Nosferatu spymaster. If the choice of vampires—all of them neonates of tenth or eleventh generation—feels somewhat traditional, they at least come with a wide range of backgrounds and origins.

Physically, Legacy of Lies is a full colour book, with fully painted illustrations of both the player characters and the NPCs. It is a pity that the NPC illustrations appear in a group as otherwise they would have been easy for the Storyteller to show to her players when they appear in her chronicle. The book needs a slight edit in places, but is otherwise easy to read and digest.

Legacy of Lies is an excellent introduction to Vampire: The Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition Dark Ages. Not just the mechanics of the Storyteller System, but with the scenario the life of a vampire in 1242, both at, and away from court, as well. It showcases what a chronicle can be like and the expectations that are placed on the player characters as much as the chance they have to exercise their vampiric immortality. The scenario itself is involving—though it will require a close read upon the part of the Storyteller—and should provide two or three sessions’ worth of good play, whether as a one-shot or the beginning of a Vampire: The Masquerade Dark Ages chronicle.

An Other OSR Quartet

The Spire of Quetzel is an anthology of four scenarios for use with Forbidden Lands – Raiders & Rogues in a Cursed World, the ‘Retro Open-World Survival Fantasy RPG’ published by Free League. It presents four locations which the Game Master can slot into her Forbidden Lands campaign—whether her own or Raven’s Purge, the roleplaying game’s epic eight-part campaign with an open structure built around eight locations and a finale at a ninth location—or possibly run as one-shots. They reflect the open play style of Forbidden Lands, in which the players and their characters are explorers, travelling across territories which have been cut off for centuries and of which they know little except legends. Such legends serve as hooks, pushing the characters to visit the setting’s adventure sites—villages, castles, and dungeons—and pulling them into the region’s history and secrets, often revealing the dark truths of lands that have been under a blood mist and demon-infested for centuries. Whether encountering a dreaming Demon-Queen, a prison of strange beasts who call themselves a family, a coven of witches who do not get along, or the weird graveyard of the last thunder lizard to walk this land, what marks these scenarios as different are their authors.

All four scenarios in The Spire of Quetzel are written by some of the leading writers in the Old School Renaissance. They include Patrick Stuart, the author of Veins of the Earth for use with Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay; Chris McDowall, the designer of Into the Odd; Ben Milton, the designer of Maze Rats; and Karl Stjernberg, the designer of The Rad-Hack. They include a castle, a village, and two dungeons, all four of which are easily added to a campaign.

The quartet opens with Patrick Stuart’s eponymously titled ‘The Spire of Quetzel’, not so much a castle as a tower of high magic and mystery. The adventurers are approached by a crow-masked figure who asks them to perform a task—enter the tower where a long dead half elf, half demon sorcerer lies dreaming and return with her heart, a black gem. Once inside, the player characters first having to negotiate with demons before ascending into the tower’s upper reaches where its locations transcend the walls, spread out somewhere above the clouds. Several of these locations have a maze-like feel—one that the Game Master will need to improvise as the player characters progress—as well as an actual maze. Other scenarios for Forbidden Lands tend to have grim and gritty feel, but there is a sense of the ethereal to ‘The Spire of Quetzel’, one that echoes the dissolute and aged feel of an encounter that might be had by Michael Moorcock’s Elric of Melniboné.

The first of two dungeons in The Spire of Quetzel, Chris McDowall’s ‘The Bright Vault’ is home to a clutch of Demon spawn, siblings imprisoned in a blessed gaol lest they escape and wreak havoc upon a world only beginning to come to terms with the lifting of demon mists and some of the secrets so revealed. All four siblings are very different in terms of nature and motivation, and as much as the player characters will interact with them, they will be interacting with their guardian more and who will play a major role in their interaction with her charges. It also means that in places the Game Master is likely to be roleplaying one NPC against another and that is not always interesting for the players. Of the four scenarios in the anthology this is most awkward to run and prepare.

Technically, ‘The Hexenwald’ is a village, but really it is a set of similarly-themed locations—a coven of witches spread throughout a wood, on and around a lake. Ben Milton’s scenario is home to five witches, each with different pre-occupations and relationships with her sisters. Individually, these are interesting little encounters, but they are really designed to work together, their relationships driving potential events. Yet their homes feel too spread out to quite do that. Thus the Game Master might want to drive these motivations and interactions more proactively or have The Hexenwald a location that her player characters do not visit once, but several times, each time perhaps encountering different witches. Unlike the other scenarios in the anthology, ‘The Hexenwald’ is one that has the potential to be used in the long term.

Lastly, ‘Graveyard of Thunder’ by Karl Stjernberg is an entertaining change of tone, earthier and perhaps more natural. The location is actually a near-mythical dinosaur graveyard, which at the time of the player characters’ incursion is home to the cave system’s guardians and the last dinosaur which has come to die. They are not the only persons with an interest in the site, for an orc band has searched for the Graveyard of Thunder and its potential riches. The scenario is a pleasing contrast to the other three in the anthology, possessing a mythical naturalism where the others are archly arcane.

Physically, The Spire of Quetzel is a slim, but pleasing hardback, nicely illustrated with maps done in the same style as other Forbidden Lands books. Each scenario follows the same format as those other books—Background, Legend, Getting Here, Locations, Monsters and NPCs, and Events. In general, this works, but occasionally, where an NPC plays a major role in the scenario, for example, in ‘The Bright Vault’, having more information about the NPC upfront would make the descriptions of various locations clearer, less obtuse. Of course, this is not an insurmountable problem, but rather an issue upon first read and preparing the scenario with ease, and it helps that the fact that each of the four scenarios is barely twenty pages in length.

Unlike the scenarios in Forbidden Lands or Raven’s Purge, the four in The Spire of Quetzel are easier to adapt to other Old School Renaissance retroclones, not in terms of mechanics, but certainly in terms of plots and themes. Thus The Spire of Quetzel is a ready source of scenarios should the Game Master look outside of the Dungeons & Dragons-derived retroclones, but of course, the four scenarios in this anthology are best suited for addition to a Forbidden Lands campaign. They can be used as is, as one-shots, or as individual locations to be encountered in between others that are part of a campaign. Although some need a little more preparation than others, The Spire of Quetzel is solid collection of short scenarios that can be readily added to a Forbidden Lands campaign.

Miskatonic Monday #26: Shepherd of Moths

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 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 of the 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 depths of the Miskatonic Depository.

—oOo—

Name: Shepherd of Moths

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Marek Golonka

Setting: Any, any university town
Product: Scenario
What You Get: 26.62 MB, 15-page full colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Can the price of knowledge be too high?

Plot Hook: Scholarly ambitions and disagreements unleash a Mythos mentor on a university town.
Plot Development: Missing persons, cancelled lectures, and visions and visions and visions and visions.
Plot Support: Multiple hooks, a new Mythos entity, visions, and long term consequences!

Pros
# First release in English release in the Zgrozy line
# Detailed plot outline rather than a scenario
# Easy to adapt to any university town
# Easy to adapt to any time period 
# Potential for long term consequences for the investigators
# Interesting new Mythos entity
# European feel, but no specifics
# Potential sequel to Spark of Life?
# Decent art

Cons
# Needs an edit
# Detailed plot outline rather than a scenario
# Could be slightly better organised
# European feel, but no specifics
# Works best with some prior set-up

Conclusion
# Solid start to the Zgrozy line
# Flexible, but works best with prior set-up.
# Visions aplenty for the Keeper to inflict on her investigators.

The King is Dead, Long Roleplay the King!

From Castles & Crusades, OSRIC, and Labyrinth Lord to Swords & Wizardry, Left Buried: Cryptdigger’s Guide to Survival, and Classic Fantasy: Dungeoneering Adventures, d100 Style!, there is a retroclone to fit your desired style and tone of Old School fantasy roleplaying. So the question is, why bother with The King of Dungeons, a retroclone of a retrovlone? Published and written by Baz Stevens of Grand Scheme Publishing—co-host of the UK podcast, The Smart Party—following a successful Kickstarter campaign, The King of Dungeons uses the Archmage Engine, also used in 13th Age Glorantha, and first seen in Pelgrane Press’ 13th Age. Since 13th Age draws from both Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition and Dungeons & Dragons, Fourth Edition for its mechanics, thus making The King of Dungeons a retroclone of a retroclone. What The King of Dungeons uses though, is a streamlined version of the Archmage Engine, to essentially present the Basic Dungeons & Dragons equivalent of 13th Age—but that is not the selling point of The King of Dungeons. No, the selling point of The King of Dungeons is that it corporatises the dungeon bash.

Before that though, it turns dungeoneering and adventuring a la Dungeons & Dragons-style into a profession. Then it has those professions join a Guild (rather than be in a party), which sets up a Guild house, perhaps with staff or a library or an alchemist’s lab or… And Guilds are recognised entities which can lobby for Charters—or missions—which typically involve going down dungeons. This recognition is due to the political influence of The Adventuring Party, a group of adventurers who retired, went political cross-national and cross planar, helped unionise the Guilds and in return for granting each Guild a licence, had them sign up to the Adventurer’s Code. These bylaws govern Guild activity, such as ‘The Law of Unity’, which states that may never split the party, and ‘The Law of Vengeance’, which states that no member of the Adventuring Party—and all Guild members are also members of the Adventuring Party—can willingly or by omission cause the death of another member of the Adventuring. Which means that rival Guilds cannot fight each other, although they may feud or compete for Charters, though what happens down a dungeon... 

Within a Guild, adventurers do not Level up, so much as get promoted until such times as they are wealthy enough to take on other adventurers and train them up. Then perhaps, those newly recruited professionals can go off and undertake Charters assigned by one of the senior adventurers. In other words, once a player character has got to the point where he cannot adventure, his player can start refereeing Charters for the new junior adventurers, as can the other players with senior adventurers.

As written, this feels more like the set-up for an American television series about a law firm, with junior associates being given minor cases to litigate or take to court, their continued success leading to them getting promoted to senior associates and on track to become partners in the law firm. Of course, instead of taking on cases and fighting them out in court, in The King of Dungeons, the Guild is taking on Charters and fighting them out in dungeons, successful completion of Charters means that in due course the adventurers will be promoted, take on bigger Charters, start bringing in Charters to the Guild rather than clients coming to them, begin hiring junior adventurers who will be assigned Charters of their own, and so on.

If there is one American television series that The King of Dungeons felt like in reading this, it was The Good Wife. And low and behold, when turning to the section for the ‘King of Dungeons’—as the Game Master is known—it is the exact television series that the author has based the structure of the roleplaying game on. Yet, the author goes even further in applying that structure. Not just in the set-up of modelling a Guild upon a law firm, but also in the types of play and agendas. So where in a series like The Good Wife, there are scenes dedicated to court, to the case, and to the law firm, in The King of Dungeons, there scenes, or time, dedicated to combat, to the adventure, and to the Guild. Then in The Good Wife, there are plots dealing with the case, the cast, and the law firm, in The King of Dungeons, there are agendas, specifically, Charter agendas, adventurer agendas, and Guild agendas. A Charter agenda might last a session (episode) or two, an adventurer agenda several sessions (episodes), and a Guild agenda a whole campaign (season).

Guilds then are The King of Dungeon’s innovation. In play, a Guild is set up at the same time as adventurer creation. The players choose or roll for the type—military, thieves, dilettantes, preservers, missionaries, and band—and then concept, Guild house, and pub, the latter the drinking hole where the Guild meets up to unwind and hold a post mortem on its just finished Charter and conduct assessments and appraisals on it adventurers. They also roll or choose the Guild’s Speciality, but together decide on its Alignment.

Our sample Guild is Roister Doister Boys, made up of third or fourth offspring of local nobles who have turned to adventuring rather do whatever it is that their parents want them to do. Not get married, not take up a commission in the army, or join the church. They had tried blackmail and robbery and assassination, not all together, but individually, and unlike adventuring professionally, there is less of a chance of their being arrested and executed if they were instead a legally sanctioned Guild. Plus if they can make some money along the way, what better way to stick it to their parents (and pay for their drinks).

Roister Doister Boys 
Type: Band
Concept: Gang
Guild House: Back of a Pub
Pub: The Marquis Club
Speciality: Exploration
Alignment: Pater’s a duke, you know?

The Guild will also be given its own character sheet, complete with stats like an adventurer, which come into play when the adventurers want to act like a group rather than as individuals. Examples include chases, diplomacy, investigation, and so on. Lastly, a Guild should ideally have one of each of the six Classes in The King of Dungeons as an adventurer. If they lack any one of them, then all rolls made with the stat associated with the missing Class are made at a disadvantage. So for example, if a Guild lacked a Rogue, whose associated stat is Dexterity, then all Guild stealth checks or rolls to climb a tower would be at a disadvantage. 

An Adventurer in The King of Dungeons is defined by his Culture, Class, stats and their associated tell, alignment, expertise, and lifestyle. Culture is the equivalent of Race in other roleplaying games, the six given being Draconic, Dwarf, Elf, Goblin, Human, and Infernal. These can be the classic fantasy interpretations of such races, but a table is included which can provide a twist to each Culture should a player want to create a different interpretation. The six Classes in The King of Dungeons are Warrior, Rogue, Priest, Mage, Scholar, and Commander. The first four of these are the classic Classes of the Old School Renaissance, but the Scholar brings knowledge and insight to the completion of Charters, including both research in the library and the field, whilst the Commander brings leadership and management skills to both the completion of Charters and Guild operation. The King of Dungeons uses the classic six attributes—Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma, instead of being on the three to eighteen scale, each is measured between zero and five, essentially the stats’ bonuses rather than the stat values themselves. The best two and the worst two stats have tells, phrases that make adventurers stand out from each other. Again, Alignments are not the classic Alignments of the Old School Renaissance, but beliefs in concepts like civilisation, magic, thievery, and so on, as well as the gods. There are also three dark paths in terms of Alignment—Diabolic, (un)Death, and Villainy. For NPCs only, of course (unless that is how your adventurer or Guild swings…). Lastly, every adventurer has expertise in five areas. Three of these are already decided in a player’s choice of Culture, Class, and Alignment, but the player is free to select the last two, ideally inspired by the adventurer’s backstory. Lastly, an adventurer’s wealth is reflected in his Coin, Kit, and Lifestyle. One of these the adventurer will have the advantage with, another the disadvantage with.

Creating an adventurer is a matter of choosing or rolling—if there is a table to roll on—all of these elements, and then selecting the various abilities from the chosen Class. So Warriors get Talents like Heavy Metal, which reduces damage taken by half once per combat, or Power Attack, adding extra damage to an attack once per combat. They also get Exploits, Like Brace For It, which when triggered by any missed attack, means that until a Warrior attacks again, any critical attack is taken as a normal attack instead, or Make ‘Em Flinch, which on any natural even miss, lets the Warrior inflict damage equal to his Charisma. Every Class has Talents of its own, Rogues get Schemes as well as greater weapon damage because they are trained killers; Priests make Prayers, either to Take Confession and cast on one recipient, or to Deliver a Sermon to affect more recipients, but to lesser effect; and Mages get minor spells or Tricks to cast as well as a full range of spells to choose from. Scholars have Theorems and Insights to give advice to and support their Guild, typically delivered in a rambling monologue. Many Theorems and Insights have ongoing effects which need to be maintained with a successful Save and an extra effect when brought to a finale or Exclamation. For example, the Theory of Skirmishing needs to be maintained with a Save, requires a Charisma-based attack to be successful against several targets, inflicts 5d6 plus Charisma damage, and as long as the Scholar continues making a successful attack from turn to turn, continues inflicting damage. If the Save is failed or the Scholar decides to end the Theorem, the attack is made one last time, but on a miss, it inflicts half damage. Lastly, Commanders have Commands which require Command Points, and Tactics which do not. So with the Command, Try Again, which costs two Command Points, an ally is given the advantage on an attack and if a twenty is rolled on the attack, the Commander gains a Command Point. Whereas, the Tactical Strike Tactic can be done at will, and grants an ally a free attack with the Commander’s Charisma as a damage bonus, but requires a Save to reuse.

Otinaar Dreched
Culture: Draconic (Hunted to the brink of extinction by Dwarves)
Alignment: Civilisation
Class: Scholar Level: One

Hit Points: 30
Recoveries: d8

Defences
Fortitude 14 Reflex 14 Will 14

Strength +0 (Emaciated with work and worry)
Dexterity +2
Constitution +5 (Wiry for his frame)
Intelligence +3
Wisdom +4 (Assured in his knowledge)
Charisma +1 (Scholarly shabbiness)

Expertise: Guerilla Fighter, Tomb Delver

Wealth
Coin, Kit (Advantage), Lifestyle (Disadvantage)

Equipment
Clippers, scale wax, mirror, map, heavy breathable clothing, laden with stuff, scroll tubes of notes and maps, astrolabe.

Like other Archmage Engine roleplaying games, The King of Dungeons is limited to just ten Levels. Once an adventurer has reached Tenth Level, he is eligible for retirement. And just like other Archmage Engine roleplaying games, the Levels in The King of Dungeons are broken int0 three tiers—Adventurer (First to Third Level), Conqueror (Fourth to Seventh Level), and King (Eighth to Tenth Level), each tier determining numerous factors throughout the game. So the effects of Class abilities, the value of adventurers’ Expertise dice, standard skill targets, how many dice rolled for damage, and so on. Unlike 13th Age and other Archmage Engine roleplaying games, The King of Dungeons does not use the ‘One Unique Thing’ which separates every player character from every other.

Mechanically though, the core of The King of Dungeons is still the d20 System. So rolls of one are fumbles and twenty are fumbles and situations where an adventurer has the advantage or disadvantage, two twenty-sided dice are rolled, the best result being kept when he has the advantage, the worst when he is at a disadvantage. After this, there are a lot of tweaks. So fumbles also earn the Guild Bonds, which can then be spent to gain Advantage in a roll and all Saves are rolled on an six-sided die—a standard Save being four or more, Easy two or more, and Hard just six. Instead of skills or Backgrounds as in 13th Age, an Adventurer has areas of Expertise, drawn from his Culture, Class, and Alignment as his two Expertise skills, represented by a die type rolled and added to any die roll. The die type rises from Tier to Tier, as do the standard Target Numbers—fifteen at Adventurer, twenty at Conqueror, and so on.

There are further tweaks to combat. Initiative rolls are made against an opponent’s Initiative rating. Fail and the opponent acts before the Adventurer, succeed and the Adventurer acts first. Initiative rolls are made each round, but in the first round, they are made using Wisdom, the second they are made using Dexterity, the third and subsequent rounds using Constitution. This is model the effects of fighting over several rounds as the combatants become increasingly tired by their efforts. Melee attack rolls are made against an opponent’s Fortitude, missile attacks against an opponent’s Reflex, and most spell attacks against an opponent’s Will. Damage is dealt out in six-sided dice—or eight-sided dice for Rogues because they are vicious killers—the number rolled increasing as an Adventurer is promoted. Of course, The King of Dungeons being an Archmage Engine roleplaying game means that it uses the Escalation die, the six-sided die which sits in front of the King of Dungeons and goes up by plus one each round after the second, the players adding it to their adventurers’ attack rolls as it rises. And as with other Archmage Engine roleplaying games, many of the various abilities of The King of Dungeons’ Classes are keyed to the state of the Escalation die.

For the King of Dungeons, the Dungeon Master, there is advice on running the game, setting up agendas and charters, creating monsters, and bringing both the authorities and rival Guilds. Overall, it is good advice, but the section on Charters feels undeveloped, almost as if the author is writing around the subject rather than about it. The concept is that the King of Dungeons can take any dungeon adventure and either use all of it or particular excerpts from it as a Charter, but the advice on how to do that could have been stronger and more helpful. Of course, the designer knows how to do this, but not every new King of Dungeons will be because a Charter is different. If there is anything missing from The King of Dungeons it is a sample Charter.

What is interesting about The King of Dungeons is that it is not about setting, but about structure. Indeed, there is no setting given, but together, adventurer Professionalism and Guilds provide both reason and framework. Reason to go down dungeons and undertake missions and for freelancers such as adventurers to exist and framework to explain adventurer promotion and to give something upon which to hang the larger story or campaign. Of course, it is a light framework, one that does not quite hold together when too closely looked at, but that does not prevent it from working.

Physically, The King of Dungeons is a decent book. It is illustrated with a range of character illustrations and maps which are not always as sharply presented as they could. The book does feel as it could have been better organised in places and sometimes as if the author is writing around the subject rather than about it. Another issue is that perhaps the core concepts could have been more strongly presented, especially about the corporatisation and the running of a campaign of The King of Dungeons as television series.

There is a pleasing simplicity to many of the changes made to the mechanics by The King of Dungeons. So the new Save mechanic, the variable Expertise rolls, the Initiative rules, and so on, are understandable, and even logical, changes. Changing to them is another matter since in many cases players are used to playing a Dungeons & Dragons-style roleplaying game in a certain way. This is not say that making the change is insurmountable—far from it—but it does require an adjustment. As does having different values to roll against when making an attack, but for all that, there is a complexity to The King of Dungeons, one that it cannot escape given its use of the Archemage Engine. This complexity lies in the different, often asymmetrical abilities for the six Classes in The King of Dungeons, and as much as they bring interesting tactical options to play, there is not a pick up and play quality to them. There is a learning curve here… Nevertheless, the designer should be praised for simplifying the mechanics around the abilities, if not the abilities themselves. 

The King of Dungeons is not amazing, but it is clever. Its set-up of the Guilds and the interactions around them are undeniably rife with story and roleplaying potential as much as the Charters—or dungeons—are rife with action potential. This is the selling point to The King of Dungeons and what sets it apart from other retroclones.