The Other OSR: Adventure Module M2: Moonspike Tower

An isolated location, a village in peril, a need for outside agents—the player characters, and a secret long forgotten. These are all the classic ingredients for a type of Dungeons & Dungeons scenario which has been with us from the beginning with T1 The Village of Hommlet and B2, Keep on the Borderlands and continuing with Scourge of the Howling Horde for Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition and H1 Keep on the Shadowfall for Dungeons & Dragons, Fourth Edition—and beyond! Adventure Module M1: The Terror of Ettinmarsh fits this same pattern. The hillfort village of Anminster sits astride the road through the Ettinmarsh, an isolated stop along a minor trade route, but both trade and travel have been disrupted by bandits and the local lord’s capacity to respond has been limited by the loss of half of his soldiery. Thus, he has need for freelancers—that is, the player characters—to investigate and perhaps put an end to the danger threatening Anminster.

All this sounds like an Old School Renaissance adventure for the retroclone of your choice—and it is. Not the retroclone what you were thinking of though, but for Adventure Module M1: The Terror of Ettinmarsh, which is written for use with Classic Fantasy: Dungeoneering Adventures, d100 Style!, the supplement for Mythras which is designed to do Dungeons & Dragons-style adventuring with a percentile mechanic, a stronger emphasis on skills, and the use of passions. Published by The Design Mechanism—and available in the United Kingdom via Aeon Games—Adventure Module M1: The Terror of Ettinmarsh is designed for characters of Rank One and Two. It is intended as an introduction to the world of Greymoor, the setting for Classic Fantasy adventures—surely a nod to Greyhawk, one of the original Dungeons & Dragons campaign worlds, but noticeably does not include a great deal in the way of background about that setting. Instead the given background is very much focused on supporting the set-up for the adventure and its sequels, the first of which is Adventure Module M2: Moonspike Tower.

Adventure Module M2: Moonspike Tower is a follow on from Adventure Module M1: The Terror of Ettinmarsh, building on the set-up provided in Adventure Module M1: The Terror of Ettinmarsh, that of an isolated location beset by banditry—in this case, a tribe of goblins. Importantly, what the events of Adventure Module M1: The Terror of Ettinmarsh did was focus on another situation—one confined to the village fort of Anminster and below—rather than the bandit threat. Essentially, Adventure Module M1: The Terror of Ettinmarsh left that plot thread hanging, but its sequel picks up on it and brings it to a somewhat succinct conclusion. Again designed for characters of Rank One and Two, the scenario opens with the both the village and the adventurers being alerted to an attack on a caravan out on the causeway through the swamp. Clues at the burning caravan point back into the swamp and to an ancient tower—the tower of the scenario’s title, once the home of an ancient Elven necromancer and now widely believed to be haunted. Here the Goblin band which has been plaguing the causeway and surrounding area have its base.

The six floors of the narrowing Moonspike Tower are described in some detail as are the inhabitants, as there is more to the location than a Goblin lair. In fact, there is a chance that the player characters can roleplay their way through the situation, but there likelihood is that that they will have to fight their way in and up to atop the tower. Notably, there is a strange artefact there that requires the player characters to return to Adventure Module M1: The Terror of Ettinmarsh to activate and if activated will require the Game Master to develop further adventures (though Kefitzah Haderech: Incunabulum of the Uncanny Gates and Portals from Lost Pages may well be useful). 

Effectively, Moonspike Tower and the Goblin lair wraps up the plot which began in Adventure Module M1: The Terror of Ettinmarsh and brings it to a close. Yet, this only takes up sixteen pages of Adventure Module M2: Moonspike Tower, so what of the other twenty or so pages? Well, some of those pages are given over to monster stats, exactly as you would expect, but the remainder is split into two sections.

The first is ‘Tomb Lair of the Kobolds’. Just six pages long, it presents base of a small band of Kobolds which the Game Master can drop in her campaign in and around the Ettinmarsh where Adventure Module M1: The Terror of Ettinmarsh and Adventure Module M2: Moonspike Tower are set. It can be used as a random encounter or a hook is included to draw the player characters to the Kobold lair. Short and detailed, in terms of rewards it deliver more magical items than in previous adventures, but it feels too similar to the Goblin lair of Moonspike Tower in being another encounter with evil humanoids. Nor does it feel like a development of the earlier content in both adventures, when perhaps the rest of the module could have given more information about the area around Anminister and Ettinmarsh. In particular, where the artefact atop Moonspike Tower might lead could have been developed as could the bedraggled settlement of Sunken Veldra, which is marked on the map.

The remainder of Adventure Module M2: Moonspike Tower—almost half—is given over to a set of encounter tables. These have been copied from the Classic Fantasy Unearthed Companion and modified for use in the supplement’s default setting of Mystamyr. They cover travel on all types of terrain as well as flight and do include notes on special encounters. In general, should the Game Master want to expand upon possible encounter in and around Ettinmarsh, then the tables are useful.

Yet, as useful as the Random Encounter tables are and as decent a mini-encounter/dungeon ‘Tomb Lair of the Kobolds’ is, both feel out of place in Adventure Module M2: Moonspike Tower. Arguably, Adventure Module M2: Moonspike Tower should be concentrating on bringing the adventure and plot begun in the previous adventure to a close. Well, actually it does, but only in the first sixteen pages, leaving the author to fill the scenario/supplement with seemingly random content. So the question is, should the Moonspike Tower encounter really have been included in this adventure at all and instead been included in Adventure Module M1: The Terror of Ettinmarsh? Arguably so, given its length… That would have been allowed room for the encounter with the Kobolds and perhaps another two encounters to support the Random Encounter tables or perhaps some background on Ettinmarsh and the wider area so that a Game Master can create material of her on. 

Physically, Adventure Module M2: Moonspike Tower matches the standard of presentation of Adventure Module M1: The Terror of Ettinmarsh. It is clean and tidy, lightly illustrated, though not with new artwork. Like its prequel, the module would stand up to better handling with a card cover. The maps are better handled than in the prequel though, and although the area map is presented in colour on the back cover, it does include the location of various places that are meant to be hidden from the player characters.

There is no denying that Adventure Module M1: The Terror of Ettinmarsh needed a sequel. After all, it left a big plot hook left dangling… Adventure Module M2: Moonspike Tower does a decent job of providing that sequel and bringing that story line to a close, even offering a guide to using non-violent means. Yet that only takes up half of the module, and whilst the rest of module—the mini encounter and the Random Encounter Tables—is decent enough, the constituent three parts of Adventure Module M2: Moonspike Tower just do not feel as if they should be in the same module. Ettinmarsh and the surrounding area deserves more coverage, it is just a pity that Adventure Module M2: Moonspike Tower does not provide that.

Friday Filler: The Fighting Fantasy Co-op II

Escape the Dark Castle: The Game of Atmospheric Adventure brought the brutality of the Fighting Fantasy solo adventure books of the eighties to co-operative game play for up to four players in which their characters begin imprisoned in a tyrant’s castle and must work together to win their freedom. Published by Themeborne, with its multiple encounters, traps, monsters, objects, and more as well as a different end of game boss every time, Escape the Dark Castle offered a high replay value, especially as a game never lasted longer than thirty minutes. That replay value is enhanced with the release of Escape the Dark Castle: Adventure Pack 1 – Cult of the Death Knight, the first expansion for Escape the Dark Castle. Originally funded by the same Kickstarter campaign as the core game, Escape the Dark Castle: Adventure Pack 1 – Cult of the Death Knight brings replay value to the core game with a new threat to the characters’ possible escape—both big and small, three new potential escapees, and more.

In Escape the Dark Castle: Adventure Pack 1 – Cult of the Death Knight, a new figure has risen to prominence. This is the Death Knight, a legendary swordsman to whose banner flock the weak, the mindless, and the fanatic. As the ‘Lord of Decay’, he works to dominate all of the castle, including its prisoners. He corrupts and he twists, but above all he sends out curses! This is the set-up for Escape the Dark Castle’s first adventure pack, a standalone expansion whose Cards can also be mixed in with those from the core game. It includes fifteen new Chapter Cards, three new Character Cards, three new Character Dice, a Cult Die, five new Item Cards—all of them curses, and of course, a new Boss Card in the form of the Dark Knight himself. He will be the final challenge to be faced and overcome if the prisoners are to escape the Dark Castle!

The three new characters—the Bishop, the Hunter, and the Mason—are specialists. They roll six Dice for their primary Traits, the Mason for his Might, the Hunter for his Cunning, and the Bishop for his Wisdom, but just the one Die for the other two traits. Each character also has his own Die, but the specialisation has several profound effects upon gameplay. Most obviously, challenges and situations which fall within each character’s own specialisation are going to be much easier than those that are not, but conversely, challenges and situations which fall outside of their specialisation are going to be very difficult. The judicious use of items—and particularly co-operation between the characters—are the key to both their survival and their potential escape more than ever. Consequently, the fortunes of the characters in their escape attempt are going to very much swing this way and that…

The five new Item Cards are all black and all black—front and back. These have dread effects in play. ‘Accelerated Decay’ forces items drawn in a Chapter to crumble and be removed from play; ‘Crippling Injury’ prevents a Character from carrying more than one Item or a two-handed Item; ‘Temporal Vortex’ sucks all Relics in play into a vortex and back into the Item deck; and ‘Restless Spirit’ prevents a Character from resting during combat. Lastly, ‘Marked for Death’ makes a Character the target of Cultist attacks and ripe for Cult recruitment. ‘Crippling Injury’, ‘Marked for Death’, and  ‘Restless Spirit’ cannot be removed from play once drawn and stay with a Character until game’s end.

A Character who receives the ‘Marked for Death’ Curse Card is in a perilous situation and a potential threat to his fellow escapees. First, he suffers extra damage when fighting them; second, he cannot rest; and third, when his Hit Points falls below half, his player must roll the Cult Die instead of the Character Die. The Cult Die completely lacks the double symbols and the shield symbol of the Character Dice. Instead, it is only marked with single symbols on its six sides, but worse, three of those sides are marked in black. When one of these is rolled in combat, the Character has betrayed his fellow escapees as the Cult Die is added to the row of dice that the Characters must defeat on the Chapter Card! Further, the Character who rolled the Cult Die no longer participates in the fight, although he does not take any damage when he is hit. Once the combat is over, the Character who is ‘Marked for Death’ retrieves the Cult Die, ready for it to be rolled in the next combat. It is possible for a Character ‘Marked for Death’ to be healed back up to half of his Hit Points and so be able to use his Character Die once again, but should he suffer further damage he is still prone to falling into the cult’s clutches once again.

The ‘Marked for Death’ Curse is a very powerful card and once in play, will very likely seriously handicap the Characters in their escape attempt. Especially when the Cult Die replaces the Character Die of the affected Character as it also negates their potential effectiveness in combat as it limits the number of symbols they can roll. For the Bishop, the Hunter, and the Mason this is much more of a problem because as specialists, they also lose their focus.

Then there are the Chapter Cards which make up the Castle and the Characters’ escape route. This is a good mix of rooms and monsters, but to that mix are added cultists. There are only five of these—so the Death Knight’s cult is not all that big—but in conjunction with the ‘Marked for Death’ Cure Card, they are dangerous! Lastly, there is the Death Knight himself, the final encounter to be overcome before the Characters can escape. With his ability to block different symbols from round to round, he is a very difficult boss to defeat.

Physically, Escape the Dark Castle: Adventure Pack 1 – Cult of the Death Knight is as well produced as the core game. The Chapter, Boss, and Character Cards are large and really easy to read and understand. Each one is illustrated in Black and White, in a style which echoes that of the Fighting Fantasy series and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay last seen in the nineteen eighties.

When the Death Knight himself has been defeated a few times, then the replay value of this expansion can be increased by mixing it into the core game. That may actually make the encounters from this pack easier to deal with because although the same Item Deck will be used, not all of the Chapter Cards from Escape the Dark Castle: Adventure Pack 1 – Cult of the Death Knight will go into the fifteen cards that make up the Castle, so there is less likelihood of a Cultist being drawn and a Character being drawn into the Cult’s clutches. Overall, Escape the Dark Castle: Adventure Pack 1 – Cult of the Death Knight is as deadly and as dangerous and as difficult as it sounds. If you enjoyed Escape the Dark Castle and were looking for more of challenge, then Escape the Dark Castle: Adventure Pack 1 – Cult of the Death Knight would be your next choice.

Miskatonic Monday #14: The Gruen Transfer

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.

—oOo—

Name: The Gruen Transfer
Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Danial Carroll


Setting: Modern Day

Product: Scenario

What You Get: 15.41 MB, 22-page full colour PDF

Elevator Pitch: Last minute mall massacre.

Plot Hook: Closing time takes on a whole meaning for the new shift at the mall.

Plot Development: It’s a reverse Dawn of the Dead with a ‘Ghoulish’ supper.

Plot Support: Six pre-generated player characters, mall map, random set-up, and season’s greetings.

Production Values: Clean and clear layout; nice map; decent pre-generated player characters

Pros

# Solid set-up

# Simple, straightforward plot

# Ordinary player characters
# Survival horror one-shot
# Inverts the Gruen Effect
# Who are the zombies?

Cons

# Little investigation, little to discover

# Faceless NPCs

# Undeveloped backstory

# No red herrings

# Unsuitable for campaign play

Conclusion

# Weak backstory & plot 

# Potential strong personal horror

An Original Sourcebook

Over the years, from the original Tékumel: Empire of the Petal Throne to the more recent Béthorm: The Plane of Tékumel, there have numerous attempts to create a roleplaying game set on Professor M.A.R. Barker’s world of Tékumel. One such was Swords & Glory, which had something of a fractured publishing history. First published by Games Science in the early 1980s, it was planned that the roleplaying game would consist of three separate books: Swords & Glory, Vol. 1: Tékumel Source Book, Swords & Glory, Vol. 2: Tékumel Player’s Handbook, and Swords & Glory, Vol. 3: GM’s Guide. Whilst the first two volumes were published, the third was not and even then, Swords & Glory, Vol. 1: Tékumel Source Book was subsequently reprinted in three volumes by Different Worlds Publications and Tita’s House of Games. More recently, the Tekumel Foundation has made Swords & Glory, Vol. 1: Tékumel Source Book and Swords & Glory, Vol. 2: Tékumel Player’s Handbook available once again as both PDFs and Print on Demand titles.

Swords & Glory, Vol. 1: Tékumel Source Book is a ‘print and scan’ version of the original Games Science edition from 1983. Unfortunately, anyone more used to modern publishing may find this to be a problem. First, the supplement is in an eight-point typeface; second, the use of diacritic marks on its vowels which Tékumel: Empire of the Petal Throne is so very famous for, are clearly marked up by hand; and third, some words are missing. Further, the writing style is scholarly and dense and the contents are organised by section by section, subject by subject in the style of old wargames rules, rather than chapter by chapter. This has two consequences.

The first is that the supplement is as dauntingly impenetrable, not helping Tékumel: Empire of the Petal Throne’s reputation as an impenetrable setting. The second is that finding a particular piece of information is not easy and this is not necessarily helped by the way in which the book is organised and written. It is organised subject by subject, essay by essay, with no breaks between the subjects. So one section might detail the Sákbe roads which run across the Five Empires, first in the Tsolyánu Empire, then in the surrounding empires and beyond, including the state of other roads, another looks at the styles of dress, and another the arms and armour wielded across the region, including non-humans. Now each of the essays are fascinating in themselves, but what it means is that finding particular facts is a challenge and getting an overall feel for a country, a people, or a race is also difficult. A more modern sourcebook would probably organise such content nation by nation, culture by culture, and race by race. Fortunately, there is an index and a glossary, both of which are useful. Nevertheless, Swords & Glory, Vol. 1: Tékumel Source Book is neither an easy nor a casual read. (It should be noted that the Different Worlds Publications and Tita’s House of Games three book reprint is vastly more readable, mostly because being split across three books the font size is much larger!) 

These issues aside, Swords & Glory, Vol. 1: Tékumel Source Book is not a rulebook, that would come later with Swords & Glory, Vol. 2: Tékumel Player’s Handbook. Instead, it is a systemless sourcebook, a background book, which means that its contents can be with any roleplaying game set on Tékumel. The Game Master would just have to provide the mechanical details as necessary, for otherwise Swords & Glory, Vol. 1: Tékumel Source Book is as detailed an introduction to the setting as you would want. It begins with the planet’s physical nature before taking the reader through its history and to a lesser extent, humanity’s history. This starts some 60,000 years into the future and Tékumel’s discovery and establishment as a vacation world before the Time of Darkness and then on through the disasters and rise and fall of empires which would follow, up until the founding of the Second Imperium, which has now lasted just 2,500 years. Then it goes on to describe the peoples of the Five Empires, the many other intelligent species to be found on the world, clans, gods and religions, how everything is organised from birth to death as well as government, religion, trade, the military, daily life, and society in general, how wars are fought and what arms and armour are used, and so on and so on. 

It is full of fascinating and interesting facts. For example, how a wife claims redress from a difficult or wayward partner, from simply approaching their Clan elders to legally employing one of the assassins’ clans; what the buttons do on a Tubeway Station and in a Tuebway Car; and how the mighty three-stepped Sákbe roads are a reflection of the Tsolyánu love of displaying personal status. The book is rich in detail, which when pulled form its pages can be used to colour a Tékumel: Empire of the Petal Throne campaign and bring it to life as well as provide possible ideas for adventures and scenarios.

Rounding out Swords & Glory, Vol. 1: Tékumel Source Book is a guide to the pronunciation. This is useful because Tékumel: Empire of the Petal Throne is famous for its languages and famously, its creator, Professor M.A.R. Barker, was a linguist. For this setting, he created not just the one language—Tsolyáni—but five! In much of the source material, only Tsolyáni is examined, but here Livyáni, Mu’ugalavyáni, Salarvyyáni, and Yán Kóryáni are also discussed. In all five cases, their scripts are included too. Now this may well be too much information for some people, but then Tékumel: Empire of the Petal Throne has never been a casual game, but certainly the pronunciation guide will a Game Master get her tongue around the various terms and phrases she will need in play and the scripts can be used to form the basis of suitable handouts and the like. (It should be noted that there are those who can actually write these scripts beyond the late Professor, I have seen it done.)

So the question is, what is missing from Swords & Glory, Vol. 1: Tékumel Source Book? Well, much like the original Tékumel: Empire of the Petal Throne, there is no list of personal names or lineage names, which given the focus of the supplement on the Tsolyánu Empire, is disappointing. This is further exacerbated by the lack of names, lineage names, and clan names for Livyánu, Mu’ugalavyá, Salarvyyá, and Yán Kór, which is odd given how the sourcebook expands upon the Five Empires essay by essay. Swords & Glory, Vol. 1: Tékumel Source Book was originally published as a boxed set and included in that box was a set of maps. Indeed, the supplement makes reference to those maps, but they are not included here. They are available to purchase online.

Physically, Swords & Glory, Vol. 1: Tékumel Source Book is a clean and tidy, if dense facsimile of the original sourcebook from 1983. The book is only lightly illustrated, and although several of the pieces previously appeared in Tékumel: Empire of the Petal Throne, the artwork is excellent. 

With a fuddy-duddy layout and organisation and a dense content, Swords & Glory, Vol. 1: Tékumel Source Book is both a hard read and a challenge to use. Yet given the paucity of information about Tékumel: Empire of the Petal Throne, the information and background to be found in the pages of the Swords & Glory, Vol. 1: Tékumel Source Book, with its rich detail and flavour, means that it is exactly the supplement a Game Master would want when preparing her Tékumel: Empire of the Petal Throne campaign. 

The Other OSR: Adventure Module M1: The Terror of Ettinmarsh

An isolated location, a village in peril, a need for outside agents—the player characters, and a secret long forgotten. These are all the classic ingredients for a type of Dungeons & Dungeons scenario which has been with us from the beginning with T1 The Village of Hommlet and B2, Keep on the Borderlands and continuing with Scourge of the Howling Horde for Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition and H1 Keep on the Shadowfall for Dungeons & Dragons, Fourth Edition—and beyond! Adventure Module M1: The Terror of Ettinmarsh fits this same pattern. The hillfort village of Anminster sits astride the road through the Ettinmarsh, an isolated stop along a minor trade route, but both trade and travel have been disrupted by bandits and the local lord’s capacity to respond has been limited by the loss of half of his soldiery. Thus, he has need for freelancers—that is, the player characters—to investigate and perhaps put an end to the danger threatening Anminster.

All this sounds like an Old School Renaissance adventure for the retroclone of your choice—and it is. Not the retroclone what you were thinking of though, for Adventure Module M1: The Terror of Ettinmarsh is written for use with Classic Fantasy: Dungeoneering Adventures, d100 Style!, the supplement for Mythras which is designed to do Dungeons & Dragons-styleadventuring with a percentile mechanic, a stronger emphasis on skills, and the use of passions. Published by The Design Mechanism—and available in the United Kingdom via Aeon Games—Adventure Module M1: The Terror of Ettinmarsh is designed for characters of Rank One and Two. It is intended as an introduction to the world of Greymoor, the setting for Classic Fantasy adventures—surely a nod to Greyhawk, one of the original Dungeons & Dragons campaign worlds, but noticeably does not include a great deal in the way of background about that setting. Instead the given background is very much focused on supporting the set-up for the adventure and its sequels.

Adventure Module M1: The Terror of Ettinmarsh details just three general locations. The first is the village of Anminster, the second is the adjoining tower where Lord Anminster resides, built atop the ruins of an old Dwarven tower, and a five level dungeon below his tower. One indication of the ‘high magic’ nature of the setting is that the village has a shop where potions can be brewed and bought and a shop where magical items can be bought and sold. Their inclusion breaks any sense of naturalism there might have been to the adventure. It might have made more sense if the village population was larger and there was an obvious source for these magical items.

Half of the adventure is devoted to detailing the dungeon below Lord Anminster’s tower. In fact, this dungeon is not so much a dungeon, but an inverse tower built into the rock—and below—upon which  Lord Anminster’s tower stands. This is an ancient dwarf fortress, which served as both the home of garrison which provided protection for travellers through the Ettinmarsh and hid a darker secret at its lowest reaches. The halls, rooms, and barracks of this inverse fortress have long been abandoned and access hidden, but the latter will be revealed shortly after the start of the adventure. There is actually little to be found here, but there are clues to be found which hint at what the fortress is really protecting.

Now although the scenario set-up focuses upon banditry and threats to travellers, the actual focus of Adventure Module M1: The Terror of Ettinmarsh is what lies below Anminster. Indeed, once the adventurers arrive at the village, the scenario gives no hook or reason for them to leave and go adventuring. Instead, attacks by the undead will isolate the village further and then when Lord Anminster reports knocking from behind a wall in his tower, the player characters will be engaged to investigate and put a stop to the cause. Taking up this engagement will push them downwards to reveal dark secrets, a puzzle of sorts, and an even bigger danger. There is capacity for some decent roleplaying between the player characters and that danger and the danger is designed to be thwarted by solving a puzzle rather than combat. If it comes to combat in dealing with the threat, then the player characters are in a very great deal of trouble. As is the rest of Greymoor…

Adventure Module M1: The Terror of Ettinmarsh feels as if a bait and switch has been pulled on the players and their characters since it does not focus on the bandits and the surrounds of Anminster as its set-up suggests. In fact, that focus is the subject of Adventure Module M2: Moonspike Tower, the sequel to Adventure Module M1: The Terror of Ettinmarsh, so the Game Master and her players will have to play through both scenarios for the suggested set-up to be fulfilled. One issue where Adventure Module M1: The Terror of Ettinmarsh does feel threadbare is in its rewards and if there are few magical items are to be found, then perhaps a little more money could have been included so that the player characters could spend their rewards at ‘ye olde magik shop’ in the village. 

Physically, Adventure Module M1: The Terror of Ettinmarsh is cleanly presented. The scenario is light on artwork, but the writing is decent. The production values could have been a little higher though, a card cover instead of a paper one, for instance. The main issue with the module is that the maps are just a little fuzzy and could have been better handled. They are just about legible though.

There is an air of familiarity to Adventure Module M1: The Terror of Ettinmarsh, but that is rather the point of Classic Fantasy: Dungeoneering Adventures, d100 Style!—doing styles of adventure that are familiar, but with more detailed roleplaying rules. Overall, Adventure Module M1: The Terror of Ettinmarsh delivers a decent mix of combat and roleplaying, but comes up trumps in providing a problem which requires neither. Beyond Adventure Module M1: The Terror of Ettinmarsh, the Game Master will have to either develop further adventures of her own or run Adventure Module M2: Moonspike Tower. Either will provide a good base from which a party can go adventuring.

Rolling for RuneQuest

For as long as there has been gaming, there has been dice and every gamer has a set that he loves, loathes, and places the fate of his characters upon. A gamer’s dice can be as simple or as sophisticated as he wants, whether that is a set of dice that he can use with any roleplaying game or a set of dice particular to a specific roleplaying game, for example, the dice for Cubicle Seven Entertainment’s The One Ring RPG or any one of the Star Wars RPGs published by Fantasy Flight Games, such Star Wars: Edge of Empire, because their mechanics and their dice warrant it. Of course, this does not stop publishers and manufacturers creating and publishing dice for specific games which are themed around said games rather than mechanics. Chaosium, Inc. is one such publisher, working with Q-Workshop to create several dice sets for Call of Cthulhu, including for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition. This included a complete set of metal dice for the new edition of the roleplaying game. The very latest dice set from Q-Workshop for Chaosium, Inc. is for the newest roleplaying game from Chaosium—RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha.

In fact, Q-Workshop has published not one set of RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha dice, but two sets of RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha dice. Each RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha Dice Set is a complete set of polyhedral dice—one four-sided, one six-sided, one eight-sided, one twelve-sided, and one twenty-sided die, plus one ordinary ten-sided die and one ten-sided die marked in tens so that percentiles can be rolled. What sets the two sets apart are the colours. One set is Burgundy on Beige, the other is Gold on Turquoise. The Burgundy on Beige is nice nod to the original colours of Chaosium’s first edition of RuneQuest, whilst the latter has nice feel of antiquity in its choice of colour combination. The design though, is intended to follow that of the design of RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. Q-Workshop describe Turquoise as being “...the stone for warriors, full of energy and hope for victory. Gold is the metal for victors. Both combined are the best talisman for brave adventurers.”

In general, the numbers on the dice are easy to read, but those on the Burgundy on Beige set are easier to read than those on the Gold on Turquoise set. Anyone rolling the higher numbered dice—ten-sided and above—will have to take care when identifying the six or the nine as the dot used to determine which way up they should be is a bit small, especially on the twenty-sided die. In addition to the numbers, the face on each die has a bronze age style pattern border and is marked with a single rune. They start off with Air, Earth, Fire, and Water—the four basic Elementals Runes—on the four-sided die, to which are added Darkness and Moon on the six-sided die to cover the full six Elemental Runes. The Death, Disorder, Harmony, Illusion, Life, Movement, Stasis, and Truth Power Runes appear on the eight-sided die, whilst the Form Runes—Fate Infinity, Luck, Magic, and Mastery—appear on the ten-sided dice not once, but twice. This is on both the standard ten-sided die and on the percentile ten-sided die. The Beast, Chaos, Dragonnewt, Man, Plant, and Spirit Form Runes appear not twice, but four times on the twelve-sided die—twice on two different faces. Lastly, the Air, Beast, Chaos, Darkness, Death, Disorder, Dragonnewt, Earth, Fate, Fertility, Fire, Illusion, Man, Moon, Movement, Plant, Spirit, Stasis, Truth, and Water Runes appear on twenty-sided die.

What this means is that it is possible for a player or Game Master to roll Runes as well as numbers. This can be useful in 13th Age Glorantha where the Runes have to be rolled at the start of adventures. That said, whilst none of the Runes impinge upon the numbers, there is problem with the Runes having to share the same die faces as the usual numbers. On the lower number dice, the four-sided and the six-sided, the Runes are easy to identify. On the higher number dice, especially on the twenty-sided die, the Runes are small and far from easy to identify. Again, the Runes are easier to read on the Burgundy on Beige set as the contrast is better.

Perhaps though, a Rune set of dice, with the Runes placed more prominently, might be a nice addition to the range? The good news is that Q-Workshop will be producing another pair of dice sets for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. These are Expansion Dice sets, again in the Burgundy on Beige and Gold on Turquoise colours. They will include an easy-to-read Runic twenty-sided die, a twenty-sided Hit Location die, and a twelve-sided die for tracking Strike Ranks in combat. Should Q-Workshop decide to design a further set, then a Lunar-themed set might be an idea—perhaps ‘Gold on Scarlet’? And if there is a RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha metal dice set, then they definitely have to be bronze—at least in colour.

In the hand, the dice feel a bit light, but that is probably down to personal preference. In practice, neither the Burgundy on Beige or the Gold on Turquoise set felt any different when rolled. (A personal issue is that the Gold on Turquoise did not stand out as well on my dark green felt dice tray, but a different dice tray would solve that.) One problem for Gloranthaphiles is that more one of them at the table may have a set of these, so perhaps they need to take a little extra care in counting many dice they have their RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha Dice Set at the end of each session. The good news is that neither RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha Dice Set is just a RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha Dice Set. Of course, both will be used for that purpose and being a standard polyhedral set means that they can be used with many other roleplaying games, from Dungeons & Dragons to Savage Worlds. The fact that they can be used with other roleplaying games is of interest to both Chaosium and Gloranthophiles. The twenty-sided die can of course be used with HeroQuest Glorantha, whilst all of the dice can be used with 13th Age Glorantha. So devotees of all three roleplaying games—or even just one of them—will get use out of a RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha Dice Set. So of the two, which is better? The Burgundy on Beige set is better to use because its dice are easier to read, the Gold on Turquoise set is simply prettier. Opinions will vary though and other Gloranthaphiles will have their opinion. It is simply nice to have the choice to choose from. Either way, the RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha Dice Sets are nicely designed sets of dice, perfect for not just for one roleplaying game set in Glorantha, but for three—HeroQuest Glorantha, 13th Age Glorantha, and RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha.

Coping with the Unnatural

Originally published by Pagan Publishing in 1997, twenty years on, Arc Dream Publishing is updating Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game, ‘A Role-Playing Game of Lovecraftian Horror and Conspiracy’, its take upon modern Lovecraftian investigative horror, to a post-War on Terror, Trump-dominated, divided world. A taster of the setting as well as a scenario and a Handler’s Screen were provided in Delta Green: Need to Know. The roleplaying game consists of two books, Delta Green: Agent’s Handbook and Delta Green: Handler’s Guide. The first of these presents the core rules and the background to the game’s investigators—or Agents as player characters are known—whilst the second presents the greater background, the secret, but unfortunate true nature of the world and universe which will ultimately drive those exposed to it insane and cause them to lose their humanity. 

The Agents are primarily members of United States law enforcement agencies, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation or Immigration and Customs Enforcement; the Department of Defense, such as the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases or 318th Cyberspace Operations Group; intelligence and diplomatic agencies, such as the Central Intelligence Agency or the Department of State; and public safety agencies, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the Environmental Protection Agency. Some are civilians, typically specialists of one kind or another not usually employed by the US government. What they have in common is that they have been co-opted into Delta Green, a covert group within the United States federal government tasked with investigating, containing, and concealing unnatural threats and events which are a danger to the United States, let alone the world. They work off budget, hiding it within normal expenses; they do not know who leads the group—indeed they are unlikely to meet Delta Green members other than their fellow cell members and their briefing contact; and they keep what they discover a secret—and they suffer for it. The consequences of their facing the unknown will corrode their sanity, and consequently disrupt their mental wellbeing and both their professional and personal relationships.

Delta Green is a roleplaying game whose themes are investigation and uncertainty, suspense and horror, violence and moral choices, sanity and comprehension, keeping secrets, and personal and professional consequences. What it is not, and this despite its origins, is a roleplaying game of investigating the Cthulhu Mythos. Rather, it is one of investigating the Unnatural, that which is not natural to the fragility of the human psyche—and sometimes the human body—but in fact reflects the true nature of the cosmos. It is also a game of covering it up and containing it, lest the world at large is exposed to its corrosive effects. To an extent, this is made easier by the fact that the Unnatural is rarely encountered, but lethal when it is, and in the main, because humanity is jaded enough to not believe the stories of its existence. Of course, the Handler—as the Keeper is known in Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game—as well as veteran players of Delta Green and other roleplaying games of Lovecraftian investigative horror, will recognise many of these elements as being of the Cthulhu Mythos. The latter though, is not a term used in the Agent’s Handbook, where hints as to the nature of the Unnatural are shifted to the documentation and reports which appear in the book’s stunning illustrations. Fundamentally, this shifting of the Cthulhu Mythos to the Unnatural represents an attempt to mystify and occlude the races and entities from the writings of H.P. Lovecraft and others—at least from the point of view of both player and Agent.

In Delta Green, characters or Agents are defined by six statistics—Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Power, and Charisma; derived attributes which represent their mental and physical strength; a Profession, what an Agent does as a job and what skills they have; skills—their training and their education; and their Bonds, the ties they have professionally and personally which keep them grounded in the natural world. Every stat has derived value—equal to five times its value—to roll against when using it directly and stats under nine or over twelve also have a distinguishing feature. An Agent also has Bonds—personal connections—that tie him to the natural world that to some extent will bolster his ability to withstand the ‘Unnatural’, but yet will suffer as consequence. In terms of skills there are relatively few changes, most of which to reduce the number of skills to choose from. So Alertness covers perception-based skills like Spot Hidden and Listen, Firearms covers guns, and so on. For obvious reasons, there is Cthulhu Mythos skill, it instead being replaced by the Unnatural skill, which covers all “Things Man Was Not Meant to Know”. In addition to skills, Agents can have special training, such lockpicking, parachuting, or SCUBA diving, each tied to an existing skill, or in some cases, a Stat.

To create an Agent, a player either rolls his Agent’s Statistics (roll four six-sided dice, drop the lowest, and assign freely), divides seventy-two points between the six Statistics, or choose from one of the sets of numbers included in the Agent’s Handbook. After determining the derived attributes, a player picks a Profession. The most obvious Professions for Delta Green are Federal Agent, which can represent working for any one of a number of United States government federal agencies, and Special Operator, representing a member of the United States’ special forces. Both the agencies and special forces are detailed later in the Agent’s Handbook, allowing both player and Handler to detail their Agent’s professional life and background. Only a few of the Professions can be described as being classically Lovecraftian, the others are all very modern. Skills provided by Professions are set values, as are the Bonus Skill Points a player can assign. A player is free to assign the eight Bonus Skill Points or can choose any one of the optional Bonus Skill Point Packages, each representing specific training or previous training, from Artist, Actor, or Musician, Athlete, and Author, Editor, or Journalist to Soldier or Marine, Translator, or Urban Explorer. Besides this a player needs to decide on his Agent’s Bonds—essentially the more time consuming the job, the fewer bonds available, Motivations, and if playing a veteran of the covert group, then the reason for being co-opted into Delta Green. This is a traumatic incident in their past such as Extreme Violence, Imprisonment, Things Man Was Not Meant to Know and so on. Each is mostly traumatically deleterious to an Agent’s stats, though there may be some minor bonuses too.

Captain Mary Purcell, MD, US Army
U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases
Age 32, American

STR 10/50
CON 14/70
DEX 14/70
INT 17/85 (Logical)
POW 15/75 (Dogged)
CHA 16/80 (Persuasive)

Hit Points 12
Willpower Points 15
Sanity Points 75
Breaking Point 60

Bonds
My father, Professor Henry Purcell (16)
USAMRIID Team (16)
My boyfriend, Jeff Carter (16)

Motivations
Understanding disease
Fulfilling my service to the United States
Being equal to any male colleague

Traumatic Background
None

Incidents of SAN loss without going insane
Violence [ ] [ ] [ ] adapted | Helplessness [ ] [ ] [ ] adapted

Skills: Alertness 50%, Bureaucracy 70%, First Aid 60%, Forensics 40%, Medicine 60%, Military Science (Land) 20%, Persuade 60%, Pharmacy 70%, Science (Biology) 60%, Science (Epidemiology) 50%, Science (Genetics) 50%, Search 40%, Surgery 20%

Weapons
None

Overall, the creation process is relatively quick, mostly a matter of making choices and assigning set packages of points. The result is that an Agent looks not dissimilar to an Investigator, the same attributes being used as statistics, although Size is not used. Mechanically, Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game employs a percentile system—no surprise given that it is derived from the Basic Roleplay System, but it keeps its mechanics even simpler. Penalties and bonuses rarely amount to more than a flat -20% or +20% and when it comes to a Luck roll, an Agent has just a flat 50%. In Delta Green it is not a derived value. Combat is noticeably deadlier with many weapons having a flat Lethality rating in addition to the damage they ordinarily do. For example, a short burst from a submachine gun has a Lethality rating of 10%, whilst a grenade has a Lethality rating of 15% in a 10 metre radius. Roll under this and an Agent or the target—if human—is dead. Not even Body Armour protects against this, though cover will. Even if failed, the results of the percentile rolled for the Lethality check are added together and applied as damage, rather rolling individual damage dice. It can thus be very deadly, so Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game is not designed to be a combat focussed game. It plays a role, but its lethality should ideally encourage players to be as cautious as their characters are probably trained to be. 

As befitting a roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror, Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game has rules for Sanity, including loss and recovery. In comparison to other roleplaying games of Lovecraftian investigative horror, those here are both complex and nuanced. An Agent can suffer Sanity loss from both suffering and inflicting violence and from a sense of Helplessness as well as the Unnatural. When an Agent suffers a loss of five points of Sanity in one encounter, Temporary Insanity occurs, simply triggering a ‘flight or fight’ response and lasting only a few minutes. If an Agent loses Sanity enough to fall below his Breaking Point—essentially when the terror or stress has become too much, equal to Sanity minus his POW or Willpower—he can acquire a Disorder which will develop later. The nature of the Disorder is determined by the source of the Sanity loss. So PTSD from Violence, Anxiety Disorder from Helplessness, Depersonalisation Disorder from the Unnatural, and so on. Should an Agent lose Sanity or encounter a traumatic trigger related to his Disorder, an acute episode of it can occur.


However, in Delta Green, there are ways of preserving an Agent’s Sanity. Willpower can spent to reduce to Sanity loss, but at the same this reduces the value of an Agent’s Bonds, reflecting the loss of and connection to humanity represented by the Bonds. An Agent can adapt to sources of Sanity loss from Violence or Helplessness, but whilst this makes him immune to such losses, he also becomes more inhuman. Willpower is a finite resource, but it can be regained through rest, fulfilling a motivation, and so on. Personal pursuits away from an assignment enable an Agent to strengthen a Bond, undergo therapy and regain Sanity, improve a Stat or skill, and so on. A disorder can also be overcome, but it takes time and it never truly goes away—trauma or severe Sanity loss can trigger it again. In general, the Sanity rules in the Delta Green: Agent's Handbook reflect the wider effect of Sanity loss and the place of each Agent’s place in the world.

This is continued with the guide to ‘Home’. Just a few pages long, this explores what might happen to an Agent once he has returned from a Delta Green mission. Each player is expected to roleplay a scene exploring how their Agents have been changed by what happened on the mission, but are then given the opportunity to deal with any sanity loss, perhaps by going on retreat, fulfilling responsibilities to Bonds and personal relationships, entering therapy, working to improve a skill or Stat, and doing special training. Alternatively, an Agent can study a previous case or the Unnatural! This is likely to result in a Sanity loss, of course. Worse, an Agent might get fired or prosecuted as the result of a Delta Green mission and this is also covered.

Although these Sanity rules add a complexity in comparison to other roleplaying games of Lovecraftian investigative horror, they also add nuance and subtlety, and they add opportunities for the players to explore the consequences of their Agents’ actions. The Bonds definitely serve to make the rules for Sanity in Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game more than just numbers and to provide good hooks for roleplaying.

The Agent’s Handbook provides not just the physical details on the equipment and the vehicles that an Agent might be able to obtain, but also how to get them—either by purchasing them or requisitioning them. This can be very difficult as the funds an Agent may officially have access to may be fairly limited and the ability to hide expenses or obtain other sources of funding makes the Program Manager Occupation and the Accounting skill a whole lot more important and a whole lot less dull. Money is treated as an abstract, as a series of expenses ranging from incidental and standard up to major and extreme. The tools of the trade are covered for most types of Agents, as are weapons, armour, vehicles, surveillance, breaking and entering, survival, and communication devices and computers. A range of services is also detailed. 

Perhaps a third of the Agent’s Handbook is devoted to the agencies, departments, and regiments that an Agent can belong to. Delta Green was always renowned for the fact that it set high standards in its treatment it gave the alphabetti-spaghetti federal agencies. The Agent’s Handbook not only meets those standards, but exceeds them. For each agency, department, or regiment, it explains its jurisdiction, whether it can enforce laws and what they are, how it is organised and how it operates, any areas of friction, and how to play a member of the organisation. Various Occupations are also listed for each agency. The ten agencies covered are the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Defence—including the various military service branches, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Department of State, the US Marshals Service, and US Special Operations Command. Previous versions of Delta Green provided information about a far greater number of agencies, but not necessarily in great detail. Here, the agencies are afforded greater detail—some three or four pages each—the result providing more information about playing a member of each, how they operate, and so on. Not only is this background much more playable than before, it also provides a good overview of the US federal investigative landscape.

Rounding out the Agent’s Handbook is a set of appendices. These give an introduction to tradecraft with accompanying mechanics for surveillance, pursuit,  interrogation, disposal of body, and Delta Green’s infamous ‘Green Boxes’, the latter being cell’s storage facilities and boxes for anything and everything from weapons and corpses to medical supplies and evidence of the Unnatural. Glossaries lists terms for equipment, persons, information/misinformation, locations, operations, and so on. All useful facts and procedures for playing characters who have specific professional information and skills that the players probably lack.

Physically, Delta Green: Agent’s Handbook is a superbly professional hardback. The writing is clear and easy to understand, its treatment of its subject being matter of fact and straightforward with barely a hint of the Unnatural. Where the Unnatural creeps into the book is the fully painted artwork and the faux documentation of Delta Green operations. The latter are a horrifying read in themselves and they could easily form the basis of handouts ready to unnerve a Handler’s Agents and their players.

The Delta Green: Agent’s Handbook provides a superb resource for both player and Handler for roleplaying modern conspiracy and Lovecraftian horror scenarios and campaigns that is Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game. The first with some well written background the US intelligence and federal agency landscape, the latter with the nasty nature of the Sanity rules, which very effectively show off the corrosive effects—and more importantly, the consequences—of encountering the Unnatural. What is amazing is that it does so when only hinting at the terrible nature of the Unnatural via the book’s art and in-game documentation. In updating it to the modern day, the Delta Green: Agent’s Handbook brings lethality and a grim and gritty tone as well as PTSD and depression home to Lovecraftian investigative horror, whilst saving the Unnatural for the Handler’s Guide.