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Secrets of Tibet
Publisher: Chaosium
by Alexander L. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 04/11/2014 06:24:53

Originally published at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2013/12/05/tabletop-review-secrets-of-tibet-call-of-cthulhu/

Secrets of Tibet is the latest is the “Secrets” set of campaign settings that Chaosium puts out for its Call of Cthulhu line. They did kind of a stealth release of the digital version on Thanksgiving Eve, so unless you keep your eyes peeled to their official website, you might have missed that this came out.

What makes Secrets of Tibet interesting is neither Lovecraft nor his contemporaries ever set a Mythos related story in the setting of Tibet. At the same time it’s so often romanticized for its culture and isolated location, that it makes perfect sense that someone eventually did either a Secrets or Monograph piece on the country/region (depending on how you look at Tibet).As well, Secrets of Tibet becomes the first official release for Call of Cthulhu, 7th Edition, beating even the two core rulebooks by several months. Of course without the core rulebooks (Which, like most Kickstarter projects, are rather delayed) the only thing you have to run Secrets of Tibet with is the Quick Start Rules for the time being. Good news though – the book does devote five pages on how to convert the book to previous editions of the game so that you can use it with say, Fifth or Sixth Edition until 7e is finally released en masse. The conversion guide is a real highlight of the book, especially if you haven’t paid close attention to the changes coming with 7e. It highlights both some of the really good and really bad ideas that are going into 7e and should help you decide if you want to invest in the new edition or stick with an older version of the game. If you haven’t been paying attention to the forthcoming changes, I suggest you read this section of the book FIRST (It probably should be closer to the front instead of towards the back due to its release before the core 7e books). Otherwise you might be in for a bit of culture shock when you see average joes and their 75-80 STR.

So with that out of the way, let’s talk about the actual content of Secrets of Tibet. As you might have guessed, the bulk of the book is a campaign guide that discusses Tibet in great detail. The book also contains three adventures for use with the setting, but we’ll talk more about them later. I was disappointed that the book shied away from the Chinese occupation of Tibet since 1950 as it’s such a huge part of the modern era for both countries. Information on this ongoing debacle would have been of use to Keepers who know only the window dressings about the issue or remember Richard Gere protesting Chinese occupation of Tibet in the 1980s and 90s. The good news is the book does go into detail about every other historical aspect of Tibet, including 1500 years of conflict between China and Tibet highlighting occasions where both have been the aggressor (and even invader) in situations. Because most CoC games tend to take place between the 1890s and 1940s, Secrets of Tibet will more than satisfy fans of those time periods. Gamers who prefer a more modern CoC setting like Delta Green will have to do a little research to flesh out current day Tibet for their gamers.

Honestly, Secrets of Tibet is exactly what I want from a campaign setting/guide for a RPG. Similar to the recent Sundering campaign guides, Wizards of the Coast has put out for Dungeons & Dragons, Secrets of Tibet almost overloads you with quality information about the region, culture, indigenous people, politics, religion, history, food and weather. It’s wonderful and although your brain can’t possibly fit in every last detail that Secrets of Tibet throws at you, you will love just how in-depth this book goes. I should also point out the majority of content (outside of the adventures) is about the real history of Tibet rather than a Cthulhu-ized version of the location ala what you might see for a World of Darkness campaign setting book. Instead, the actual game pieces are supplementary to the various essays that comprise Secrets of Tibet. You’ll see conjecture about how Lovecraftian beasties and creations could fit into Tibetan folklore rather than hamfisting Mythos creatures into the setting. For example, the book suggests that Sky Burials in a CoC version of reality could have come about due to not wanting ghouls to desecrate the corpses of loved ones. It’s a subtle and optional choice yet it still manages to stick closely to both the reality of the Tibetan people and to CoC canon. I love this.

Of course the entire book isn’t a non-fiction treatise disguised as a campaign setting book for a popular role-playing game line. For every bit of real world information, you’ll get a sidebar or a full follow-up on how the information works with game mechanics. After an article on the history of Tibet, you get a few paragraphs on how the region can be a gateway to the Dreamlands. Almost thirty pages of Secrets of Tibet are devoted to the topic of religion. You’ll find some new spells, the ability to create a Tulpa, and even mechanics for reading The Tibetan Book of the Dead, all interspersed with a ton of real world content. After a rundown on the people of Tibet, you are given a whopping eleven new Investigator professions. I should also point out that some of the Occupations including stat changes and that said changes are with Seventh Edition rules in mind, So Keepers, don’t let your 6e players come to you and say, “I get +10 to my STR since I am a Fighting Monk.” So on and so forth through the book. Some gamers might want a lot more mechanics and stat blocks that the book provides, but I think the fact the book leans heavily on actual substance about the location is what really makes the book shine.

Besides the really fun occupations, you have eight new skills that characters can learn. Things like Dreaming, Animal Handling and Radio Operation act just like any other CoC skill (regardless of edition), but a special note should be paid to Tibetan Status as this can ebb and flow regularly throughout a game, especially if say a PC is found to be a reincarnation of a Lama. You’ll also find a chapter devoted specifically to monsters/demons/etc ripped directly from Tibetan folklore. Of course, they are slightly and subtly modified to reflect Call of Cthulhu. Grol-Ma is an avatar of Shub-Niggurath and garuda birds are a byahkee variant. So on and so forth. These potential antagonists will be somewhat familiar to longtime COC gamers but also help to keep the correct mood and atmosphere of a Tibetan based adventure and/or campaign. A huge part of the chapter is devoted to making the mi-go part of Tibet’s past(as well as an entire adventure). This is really the only shoehorning of a Mythos race into Tibet within the book but the inclusion makes sense and it’s well done, so you won’t hear any complaints from me on this front.

The chapter on NPCs is very well done as it gives Keepers premade characters to insert into his adventure. As they are all based on real people, this is another nice historical layer of the book and it will be a nice easter egg for players who were already fans of Tibetan history and culture. I will say my only problem with this chapter is a minor one I have throughout the book and it’s that the stat blocks for NPCs are insanely overpowered. For example, no one in this chapter has a stat of under 55! In sixth or older editions that translates to no one have a stat under 11. That’s crazy high and basically means every NPC is above average at everything they do, which is unrealistic. I’ve been noticing power creep going into character stats, both pregenerated PCs and NPCs alike throughout Call of Cthulhu this year, regardless of publisher (Golden Goblin, MRP, Chaosium, etc) and it’s just odd to see characters with stats this high, especially when part of the appeal of Call of Cthulhu is about everyday people getting sucked into events far beyond their comprehension. Again though, this is a minor issue, but worth bringing up as it’s been an all too apparent trend as of late.

After this intermission of mechanics based content, Secrets of Tibet goes back to full fledged essay mode (entertaining, not dull lecture Ben Stein in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off). You get an extremely comprehensive chapter on travelling to Tibet. I’m a pretty voracious reader on the region Tibet is in (although I’m far more interested in Bhutan) like the current state of train transport from China to Tibet and the fact it just started up in 2007. I loved getting a current real world price tag for a train ticket too, as it’s a lot less that I would have thought and it makes me want to travel to Tibet that way. Again, for those who care more about mechanics than fleshing out the locale, this chapter contains information on how to run altitude sickness, a problem that affects the majority of people that come to Tibet. After that we get the final chapter of the campaign setting part of the book. It primarily focuses on the city of Lhasa, although it also includes some general odds and ends that could have been its own “Miscellaneous” style chapter. These pieces includes weapons, a look at the justice system in Tibet, a list of general names of Tibetan people, a guide to the Tibetan alphabet, foods festivals and how their calendar works. You know, things that don’t apply just to Lhasa, making them an odd inclusion at the tail end of the chapter. Again, a minor thing, but like all of Secrets of Tibet, the only things to criticize about the book are tiny things here and there that in no way take away from the overall quality or enjoyment of this release.

Now that we’ve finished discussed the campaign guide part of Secrets of Tibet we have three adventures to look at. While none of the adventures are mind-blowing or extremely memorable ones that you and your friends will talk about for months or years after you play them, all three are fine introductions to using Tibet as a region and work as first adventures for new characters. I should point out that the adventures are not designed to be played as a mini campaign as some are for foreigners visiting Tibet and others for natives. I actually like that the adventures were done this way as it gives a Keeper an option of what he wants to run. After all, to outsiders, Tibet is a strange and mysertious land full of wonder. To native characters it’s home and pretty mundane. So you get a very different atmosphere based on what group you are using and thus adventures designed for one won’t feel the same (or even work quite right) if you use them with the other.

“Dreaming of the River of Night” is an adventure for non-Tibetans and serves as an introduction to the land, the culture and the Dreamlands. A copy of the Dreamlands sourcebook is NOT needed for running this adventure, but it will flesh things out if you want a more comprehensive look at that setting. I do like the idea of tying the Dreamworlds into Tibet as the two just seem like such a nice fit. There isn’t a lot going on in this adventure. There is very little research and next to no combat. It’s primarily an atmospheric talking heads pieces that introduces player and/or characters to two locals. It might even be a great “Gamer’s first COC adventure” as long as they aren’t predisposed to nonstop hack and slash combat.

“Company Town” is designed for Tibetan native characters and is a take on the usual, “Mi-Go are up to wacky experiments” trope. This time however, the fungi from Yuggoth have dealt with an ENTIRE TOWN and it is up to players to discover what is behind the rash of recent disappearances in the area. The adventure can have a bit of a Night of the Living Dead feel to it depending on how you play it, but I’d play it more Invasion of the Body Snatchers or “angry mob.” This adventure is quite the opposite of the first one in Secrets of Tibet as it’s pretty action packed and it can get extremely combat heavy. It’s a nice contrast to “Dreaming.” While “Company Town” is a bit paint by numbers in some respects, it’s a fine adventure for introducing players to Tibet.

Our final adventure is “O’ Sleeper! Arise!” and it is the most complex adventure in the collection. The adventure warns that it can come off a bit Dues Ex Machina at the end in the hands of an inexperienced Keeper and that going this route will make it a letdown to everyone involved. I like when an adventure warns you of its potential limitations and flaws so that the Keeper can prepare for them, but more importantly PREVENT THEM FROM OCCURRING. You don’t see this type of disclaimer very often, so I’m glad it is here.

“O’ Sleeper! Arise!” takes place in Lhasa and is designed to use a lot of the locations, materials, NPCs and information contained in the sourcebook section. It is designed primarily for native Tibetans, but one or two outsiders can still work in the parameters of the adventure. The adventure is a pretty typical one. Cultist pokes his nose where it is not meant to be. Cultist accidentally unleashes someone horrific with tentacles. Things die or go insane. Of course the adventure won’t unfold that way if the Investigators are successful. It’s a fairly straightforward adventure that pits the Investigators against one of the monsters deadly and dangerous creatures in the game (if they’re not lucky). If the players manage to discover exactly what the cult is up to and prevent them from awakening…something, then it’s a pretty low key adventure. Again, we have another short and fairly standard adventure. Indeed, “O’Sleeper!” could easily be placed outside of Tibet and still work properly without a minute amount of fine tuning by a Keeper. It’s not a bad adventure by any means, and it is well written, but like all the adventures in Secrets of Tibet, it’s not very memorable.

All in all, Secrets of Tibet is a really great release from Chaosium, which has struggled a bit in 2013 in terms of quality. The campaign guide is one of the best I’ve seen released for Call of Cthulhu and it’s the most informative read since the Mysteries of Ireland monograph. The adventures are the weakest part of the book, but you’re not really purchasing Secrets of Tibet for the adventures. Rather, you are buying it for the in-depth comprehensive look at a region that is still a bit mysterious to outsiders even in modern times. As you can pick up the PDF for under twelve dollars, I can strongly recommend the digital copy of Secrets of Tibet to any CoC fan who wants a highly informative campaign guide to read. It might not be a book you actually end up using with your players, but Secrets of Tibet is fun just to sit down, especially if you are even remotely interested in Tibet.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Secrets of Tibet
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Darkfast Classic Fantasy Advanced Classes: Ducks
Publisher: Okumarts Games
by Alexander L. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 04/11/2014 06:22:43

Originally published at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2014/04/11/tabletop-review-darkfast-classic-fantasy-advanced-classes-ducks-labyrinth-lord/

When you’re a reviewer, sometime a piece so weird comes up that you have to review it. In this case it is Ducks, a supplement for Labyrinth Lord by Okumarts Games. Labyrinth Lord isn’t a system that is known for its sense of humour, but the cover and description of Ducks was so hilariously odd that I had to see if the piece was a nice piece of levity for the system or if it actually was taking itself seriously. Well, thankfully this is meant to be a comic piece. However, once it is on your table you or your players can treat it as seriously as you want. After all, is a race of duck people really that different from Dragonborn, Lizardmen or Wolfweres? I’d say no. Anything is possibly in YOUR fantasy world.

For $2.50, you get two nine page PDFs – one for PCs and one for Macs. Each format also gets two ads for other Okumarts products. Now $2.50 might seem a bit pricey for a mere nine pages of content, especially when one of those pages is actually just the OGL. The highlight of the piece is the comical duck-person art by David Okum. It’s no Carl Barks or Don Rosa in quality, but the art kept making me thinking of a Disney/D&D mash-up, which is wonderfully bizarre.

The duck race appears to be an ancient curse brought upon by a cranky wizard, but it’s never said why or to whom. The duck race as a whole seems to take its cues from Donald Duck as they are cranky and awkward. Being ducks they have a harder time on land than on water (although not if they are wearing full plate armor obviously) and they get penalties to hiding their tracks and disguising themselves for obvious reasons. It is interesting to see that Ducks are also grumpy and unlucky as a race, making me wonder if the author did indeed pattern this after the Carl Barks version of Donald Duck. It really seems like it, as the credits thank Disney’s greatest creator ever. However, what do you do with a Gladstone Gander type duck, a Gyro Gearloose or even an Uncle Scrooge? Why not a playable Ranger class considering the importance of the Junior Woodchucks? There are multiple lost opportunities with the piece, although perhaps due to the size of the PDF rather than the imagination of the creator.

After a history and overview of the Duck race, readers are treated to both NPC stats for common ducks and also player progression stats/charts for playable Ducks, as well as four class options: Fighter, Magic-User, thief and Cleric. Ducks get a lot of restrictions especially in the fact they can only have d6s for Hit Dice and their terrible saving throws vs magic, but they also get a wide range of bonuses including the ability to 100% read magic, even if they are a non-magic-using class. The challenge and comic potential of playing a Duck character will be intriguing to some.

After looking over all the options, a Duck Cleric and Magic-User seem to be the best options due to their bonuses and hindrances involving magic. A Duck Thief is going to have challenges due to its appearance, waddling speed drawback and lack of disguise options. A Duck Fighter will be held back by the armor and weapon restrictions the race faces. Now this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t play a Duck Warrior if that is what you really want – just a heads up about the potential challenges these characters would face. Duck Clerics and Magic-Users are pretty much the same as any other races that has access to those classes, so they’d be the best to try using this class with in my opinion.

Overall, Ducks is a very interesting product. The piece is definitely presenting with its tongue in its cheek and the artwork is fabulous, but the piece is also written in such a way that the race can be taken quite seriously if you and your players choose too. It’s a cute idea that I am really glad I picked up. My two complaints are actually parallel to each other in that the piece is a bit pricey for what you get and that there is a lot of missed potential because of the brevity in the PDF. Still, that means we might see further supplements down the road, right?



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
Darkfast Classic Fantasy Advanced Classes: Ducks
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Creator Reply:
This excellent review brought up some great points and given me much to think about for future class books. I have added a set of eight paper minis to give more bang for the buck and link it with my other products. Thanks for the honest and insightful review Alexander! Make sure you download the file again for the minis.
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Accursed: Half-Light
Publisher: Star Anvil Studios
by Alexander L. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 04/11/2014 06:21:59

Originally published at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2014/04/11/tabletop-review-accursed-half-light-savage-worlds/

Half-Light is the latest adventure for the Accursed setting for Savage Worlds which was launched in late 2013. This short little two page adventure (the other pages are the cover and legal mumbo jumbo) can be used as a stand-alone adventure or can be used in conjunction with the plot-point campaign found in the core Accursed rulebook. I should point out that with only two pages, Half-Light is more a story seed than a true adventure, as the GM that runs this will have to put a lot of work into fleshing it out and making it playable. There are no stats or mechanics to be had save for a block for a single NPC. As such, purchasers need to know how to put together an adventure almost from scratch, so this wouldn’t be a good fit for an inexperienced GM. I should also point out that while the adventure is only $1.25, to properly run it with the Accursed setting, you’ll need the Accursed rulebook, the Savage Worlds core rulebook and the Savage Worlds Horror Companion. That’s going to get expensive. Because you need three full rulebooks just to run this two page adventure, people who aren’t already heavily invested in Savage Worlds should either look elsewhere or consider taking the 99.99% systemless story seed and converting it to mechanics they already own or know quite well.

The story of Half-Light revolves around the village of Whitetarn, which has been completely slaughtered. Not a single resident has been left standing nor a single drop of blood lies upon the ground. The characters are cajoled into investigating this gruesome genocide by a local priest named Father Dhugal (as opposed to Dougal from Father Ted. They are also aided in the investigation by a dhampir named Sevtlana, who is as talented as she is both brusque and unlikeable. Once the village of Whitetarn is reached, players and their characters must solve the mystery of the strange deaths littering the area. Clues involve a missing ancient tome, a sacrilegious offering of a priest’s corpse and a pretty complicated and insidious plot by a powerful monster.

The adventure is pretty straight-forward aside from one fairly obvious twists that players will figure out before it actually occurs. It’s a paint by numbers style adventure and so any experienced gamer will know what is coming. The question will be whether or not the character’s knowledge and the player’s knowledge will match up. Half-Light should take more than one or two play sessions to complete as much of the adventure consists of investigation or talking heads. There is a bit of combat to be had in Half-Light but how much depends on how cerebral the players are. There isn’t much substance to be had due to the thin plot and short length of the PDF, but enterprising GMs can pad the adventure out to be longer if needed. There’s also a nice map of the chapel players will spend a lot of time in, but it’s much too small to be of any use. The PDF really should have offered this as a full page piece that GMs could then print out and use. Oddly enough a bigger version of the chapel can be found and downloaded directly from the DRiveThruRPG.com link at the top. Why it isn’t included in the PDF proper is a real head scratcher.

Overall, Half-Light is a thumbs in the middle. It’s a decently written piece and at only a dollar, it’s not going to break anyone’s bank. However it’s extremely straightforward and uses the same basic plot we’ve seen in many an adventure across pretty much every system ever. As such, it’s really only fun in the hands of a GM who can truly flesh this out and/or when played by very inexperienced gamers who won’t see the plot progression coming a mile away. I was more than a little disappointed this wasn’t a more original affair, but what can you do? As such, I can really only recommend Half-Light for diehard Accursed completionists.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
Accursed: Half-Light
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Achtung! Cthulhu: 6th Edition Investigator's Guide
Publisher: Modiphius
by Alexander L. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 04/04/2014 07:10:37

Originally published at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2014/04/04/tabletop-review-achtung-cthulhu-investigators-guide-to-the-secret-war-call-of-cthulhu-savage-worlds/

When this first popped up I had to say I was compelled, not just by the fact that it’s Cthulhu, but also because it’s set during World War II which I’ve always had an ongoing interest in. This is the first part required to play Achtung! Cthulhu, the second part being the Keeper’s Guide which functions as the Gamemaster’s book if we were talking Dungeons and Dragons while this one would function as the Player’s Guide. This started life as a Kickstarter and I have to say the final results here are amazing. The idea of the Cthulhu mythos running side by side with the Nazi’s isn’t something we haven’t seen before. They’ve always been portrayed as being involved in some kind of cult rituals in a lot of different fiction over the years. My first real exposure to this was Raiders of the Lost Ark and more recently Hellboy which deals much closer with the Old Ones than just simply labeling it as an occult thing. But Achtung! Cthulhu goes a step further than that even, and while you won’t find a whole lot of information in the Investigator’s Guide about the Nazi side of the Secret War, most of that is reserved for the Keeper’s Guide, what you end up with in the Investigator’s Guide is a very detailed RPG that could easily be a World War II campaign without the Cthulhu mythos coming up at all. There’s a lot in here and I love the details.

01The whole book is laid out like you’re reading the case files of an investigator or a military brief. Artwork that’s on a page will be framed like it’s an actual photograph that’s been paper clipped to the pages you’re looking at. The pages look rough and like they’re laid out on a corkboard or rough desk from the period. The titles are set up to look like they were punched onto the page by a type-writer but they opted to give the main text you read a far more readable font, thankfully. When you are presented with a table or stat block, it’s done up like it was formatted on a large index card and hastily taped into place but is still legible. The look and feel is heavily tailored to look like it comes from the time period Acthung! Cthulhu is set in and if I wasn’t just looking at this as a PDF, the book alone would be amazing. Added to that, only 4 pages of the book are ads giving you a full 141 pages of content minus the covers, a splash page, several pages of thanks for the backers of the kickstarter and the index.

Achtung! Chtulhu is actually set-up to work with two different game systems, Savage Worlds Deluxe and Call of Cthulhu, 6th Edition. There are 4 chapters, 2 each dedicated to character creation specific to each system. You end up with 49 pages in Chapters 5 and 6 that are designed specifically for character creation in Call of Cthulhu and only 18 pages in Chapter 7 dedicated to Savage Worlds. That isn’t to say you can’t use some of the ideas in either, but if you’re only planning on running one rule set you’re going to end up with some wasted pages here. The nice part is that they’re full of content and sparing on a lot of stat blocks. Other than those three specific chapters, the rest of the book doesn’t bother separating everything out but will include a brief set of stats to apply to either game with text in differing colors to distinguish which game system gets what text and they’ve done a great job making sure it’s never confusing as to what goes with which.

02Chapter 1, titled Welcome to the Secret War, goes on for a short six pages to give an overview of the real-world events leading up to World War II as well as some of the bigger events through the war up to April 1945 which isn’t the actual end of the war, but who’s to say with the Secret War going on things won’t end differently? Germany was desperate at the end after all. There are mentions of two supplements coming at this point in the book as well, the Achtung! Cthulhu: Assault on the Mountains of Madness campaign and the Achtung! Cthulhu: Bye Bye Baby supplement. It’s really just a little blurb but it’s something beyond both books to look for if you’re enjoying these, which I really do love. The overview is pretty well done and actually reminded me of a film I hadn’t seen yet which I ended up watching shortly after going through the book for a few more ideas. Chapter 2, Keep the Home Fires Burning, goes on for ten pages and goes really in depth with what life was like during the period, both in Europe and in America. There are lots of tips on what was acutally available for food, what kinds of jobs for non-military people were available, mob ties, and even what kinds of entertainment were out there from music to films. When I mentioned details earlier and playing this as a straight World War II RPG even without the Cthulhu mythos, this is what I was talking about. It’s pretty well researched and helps set the tone perfectly. Chapter 3, Home Sweet Home, is a twelve page chapter that re-visits the chronology from Chapter 1, but goes into more specifics with it and details different events for Britain, titled Dear Old Blighty, France, titled The Not-So-Belle Epoque, and the United States titled Mom & Apple Pie. With the chronology is a bit more on life during the time and specific adventures you might go on if your part of the Secret War starts there and what you may end up doing. This is equally as well-researched as Chapter 2 and can really help with painting the picture for players and gamemasters alike with what life was like during the war.

Chapter 4, In the Service of One’s Country, goes in depth for 13 pages on France’s, Britain’s, Germany’s and the United States Militaries and breakdowns of their intelligence groups. There are some pretty good blurbs here on the different aspects of each and it touches on the French Resistance as well as several civilian actions taken during the war in Britain. It’s a decent overview of the different branches and what they do but doesn’t go too terribly in-depth into any of them. Chapter 5, Your Country Needs You!, gives the player the Call of Cthulhu character creation rules for creating your investigator for Achtung! Cthulhu. This is part one of Call of Cthulhu character creation and weighs in at a hefty 37 pages. That’s not to say that you won’t get anything out of this if you’re playing with Savage Worlds rules however as there is a lot of nice detail on military characters and other aspects of the war, but it’s definitely geared stat-wise for Cthulhu. Chapter 6, Getting Your Hands Dirty, is part two of Call of Cthulhu character creation that delves into updating skills since technology from the twenties and the world don’t quite mesh with the forties and the second World War all that well so you get 9 pages of updated skills for Call of Cthulhu which really won’t help you with Savage Worlds. Chapter 7, The Savage Practice of War, is the character creation section for Savage Worlds and weighs in at 18 pages. Savage Worlds is a fairly versatile game system already so it really doesn’t need all the extra pages Call of Cthulhu had to have for updates, and there is some crossover from what’s presented in Chapter 5, but tailored more for the one game system.

03Chapter 8, The Tools of the Trade, is what it sounds like, equipment. This chapter is 15 pages of equipment summaries and then stat blocks for both game systems that Achtung! Cthulhu is designed for. They delve into the different gear that each country was using, clothing options, and a variety of other weapons or technology that you might find at the time. Chapter 9, Quick-Play Guide, is almost a waste of 3 pages. All it really does is list all the pages and chapters you can find character creation rules in Call of Cthulhu and Savage Worlds. While it may prove useful, I can almost guarantee having the rulebook for either game will do the same thing, but this might speed it up a little bit. Chapter 10, Suggested Resources, is 4 pages of lists of films, books, television shows and games that might help get the flavor of World War II and the occult usage down. It’s a pretty decent list, but if you’re not looking for lists, well there you go. After that you’ve got the Kickstarter Backer thank-you’s which without them we wouldn’t have this book to review and use, a map of Europe and the borders when the war was going on, the index, and character sheets for both game systems.

Overall, there’s a ton of content in this book. It’s a phenomenal resource even if you’re not going to use it to run Achtung! Cthulhu as intended. I’m tempted to just run a spy or war campaign set in World War II just with this and see how it goes. It’s really well done and just reading through it gave me plenty of ideas for my own campaigns. I highly recommend this one as it’s very much worth the price for what you’re getting out of it. The artwork looks great, the layout is easy to read and look up, and you can use this in two different game systems right off the bat, both of which have either quick start rules for playing or offer an entirely free version of the rules to play with. Keep an eye out for my review of the Keeper’s Guide as that’s next on my list.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Achtung! Cthulhu: 6th Edition Investigator's Guide
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Injecting the Weird
Publisher: Monte Cook Games
by Alexander L. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 03/31/2014 06:27:06

Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2014/03/31/tabletop-review-injecting-the-weird-numenera/

From the title, I assumed that Injecting the Weird would actually be a crossover of sorts with Monte Cook Games’ upcoming release The Strange, similar to how In Strange Aeons was a guide on how to add Lovecratian moods and themes to your Ninth World experience. Perhaps by giving ciphers or creatures from that game. Instead, Injecting the Weird is a lot like In Strange Aeons, but “the weird” in this case is literally strange and bizarre happenings and how the Ninth World should be super saturated with them. Now, if you’re like me, your Ninth World is pretty weird, as you have probably used “it’s a billion years in the future – plausibility and physics go right out the window” for the sake of giving your players something truly strange to discover. Maybe you have given them a cipher that, when pressed, shoots out a wad of slime that coalesces into a 14 foot high gummy bear that screams when you take a bite out of it. Maybe characters have run into a life that resembles a giant jawbone, except it is hovering fifteen feet in the air and no force on earth can lower or raise its altitude. Maybe they have found a village where all of the homes are made of a substance that appears to be fluorescent blue cottage cheese, yet it is durable enough to withstand lightning strikes and monster attacks. All of these things are WEIRD, and yet, if you read the core Numenera rulebook, none of these things should ruin the suspension of disbelief for players, because the Ninth World is all about things that are wondrous and unexplainable. It is a game of discovery and imagination first and foremost after all.

However, weirdness is far more than strange unexplainable phenomenon and lifeforms that just happen to go on in the Ninth World around the PCs. It needs to be more than just throwing strange things at your players for the sake of strange, and it certainly has to be more treating Numenera like a futuristic dungeon crawl hack and slash experience. This is where Injecting the Weird comes in, as Monte Cook gives us a twenty-two page PDF on how to fill your Numenera campaign with weirdness and how to do so in a way that makes your campaign better as well as stranger.

For Monte, weird is defined in the same way some politicians used to define pornography – you know it when you see it. Weird things are those that fill you with a sense of wonder. How does that exist? WHY does it exist? Weirdness should make your players curious and want to learn more, even if they know full well that they can’t. Weird is also relative. In a game like Shadowrun, a Fairlight Excalibur deck is far from weird, but drop one of those into Numenera and the PCs will probably poke and prod at it, having no idea what it is for, especially from the first base GM description.

After defining what weird is, the next section talks about when you should explain the weird, such as when it is pivotal to an adventure. After all, if the goal of the adventure is to discover (and stop) what is causing giant hail in the shape of flounder to ravage a countryside and decimate the crops of a region, then you do have to explain the weird to some degree. However, there are far more times when defining it can ruin the effect, so as a GM, you have to know when to give a full reveal and when to just let it fascinate or creep out the PCs. After that, we are given a short piece on “The Point of the Weird,” which gives explanation and justification for WHY the Ninth World is so bizarre. The answer, of course, is that we are a billion years in the future and eight full civilizations have come and gone, some so alien that we can’t even conceive of them, and all we have left of their existence are bizarre doodads and residuals we simply can’t explain or understand. What made sense to them doesn’t to us, and probably vice versa. Hence, weirdness is now everywhere. There’s a great summation in the piece that highlights just how incomprehensible some things will be to the PCs. “Could a Neanderthal understand how and why you’re reading this Glimmer right now?” Said Neanderthal should be just and confused and fascinated by the concept of a PDF in the same way players should be with all sorts of strange things that litter the Ninth World.

From there we get fourteen pages of d100 tables. Yes, sixty-three percent of this five dollar PDF is little more than random tables, leaving only seven pages of actual content. I can’t deny that this makes Injecting the Weird overpriced for what you get, as seven random tables whose topics range from “A Weird (But Not Particularly Dangerous) Creature” to “A Weird NPC” aren’t what I want, need or look for in a Numenera supplement, but that’s probably because I have spent two and a half decades playing/running games like Shadowrun, Call of Cthulhu, Chill, Paranoia, Cyberpunk, SLA Industries, Spelljammer, Planescape and HoL, so I’m pretty familiar with the concept of weird. However, that isn’t true for all gamers. For some, this might be their first RPG (I know it is for one of my friend’s little girls) and for others, they might be hardwired to roll-playing over role-playing and thus haven’t focused on the creative, imaginative or descriptive side of RPGs. For others, they might only have run published adventures, so crafting something bizarre might be outside their forte. For these, and many other, gamers, the seven random charts included in Injecting the Weird are going to be very helpful. It’s hand-holding to give those gamers less experienced in weirdness hundreds of examples of exactly what this piece is all about. So just because I have always gravitated towards extremely weird games doesn’t mean these random tables aren’t useful or a good tool to help fledgling GMs learn how to infuse a game with weirdness – they just aren’t useful to me. If, however, you’re a gamer who is struggling with the concept of throwing strange and unexplainable things into your Numenera game, these tables are probably worth the five dollar admission price alone.

The last five pages of Injecting the Weird are mechanics and rules to help provide more weirdness in Numenera characters from the getgo. You have a new descriptor called “Weird,” where a character gets +2 to their Intellect pool, a distinct physical quirk (maybe a fin on their head or fourteen eyes) and training in Numenera knowledge, at the expense of social interactions all being a step higher on the difficulty scale. There is a new focus called “Masters Insects” which is pretty self-explanatory. The tier powers in this one are pretty fun (and sometimes creepy) and it might be worth investing in, especially if you want to play a were-walking stick or something. Admit it, that’s weird! You also have a new focus option in “Sees Beyond,” which is a really interesting focus. It opens itself (and thus the PC) to a lot of potential GM intrusion, but it’s also a focus that can let the GM help guide players towards what they are looking for or steer them towards the direction an adventure needs to go. As you can imagine, Sees Beyond gives a character the ability to visualize different spectrums, see things that are invisible or out of phase with our reality and so on. It’s a very cool focus and one that I think will see a lot of use, especially with NPCs by certain DMs. Sees Beyond will probably become the equivalent of the Divination magic sphere for Numenera.

All in all, this is another great first party release for Numenera by Monte Cooke Games. I was expecting something totally different, but the end result is still a wonderful release that offers something to gamers of all experience and skill levels. Some gamers will probably balk at the fact that Injecting the Weird is almost two thirds random tables, and I can’t fault them for that. After all, that wasn’t what I wanted either. Those same tables that may push away some gamers will actually draw in others – especially those with less experience designing their own world, and especially those not used to running a game whose fuel is strangeness. So while Injecting the Weird isn’t for everyone, it is a well-designed supplement for Numenera and one I can easily recommend.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
Injecting the Weird
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Fighting Fire - Ernie Gygax Benefit Adventure
Publisher: Creative Mountain Games
by Alexander L. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 03/25/2014 06:17:17

Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2014/03/25/tabletop-review-fighting-fire-ernie-gygax-benefit-adventure/

Ernest Gary Gygax Junior did not have a good 2013. At the beginning of the year his home and many of his worldly possessions burned down. Since then, his brother Luke has set up the Ernie Gygax Fire Relief Trust Fund so that gamers around the world can help him out. After all he and his family have done for the industry, it’s not a surprise that companies are donating profits or making outright contributions to the fund. Case in point: Creative Mountain Games. CMG is donating a third of all profits from Fighting Fire to the fire relief fund, which is pretty nice. So by purchasing this, you get a nice adventure, keep a small indie publisher going and help Ernie Gygax get back on his feet. Wins all around!

Fighting Fire is a system neutral adventure. This means there are no stats or mechanics. You are just given the story, a list of major characters and antagonists, and from there, the DM has to flesh things out. On one hand, this means you can use Fighting Fire with any fantasy based system, from Dungeon Crawl Classics to Castles & Crusades. Since it is a Gygax tribute, you’re probably better off thematically with one of the earlier versions of Dungeons & Dragons. Regardless of which system you choose, the fact remains you can play Fighting Fire without being locked in to a specific set of mechanics or rules. On the other hand, system neutral adventures require a lot of work from the DM. You’ll have to look up stats for monsters (or design them outright), craft maps of locations and more. If you purchase published adventures because you lack the patience, skill or time to make your own, you probably won’t get much out of Fighting Fire.

Fighting Fire has a somewhat comedic look. It does try to make light of the events that hit Ernie Gygax by turning them into the basis of a fantasy adventure. I’m sure some people may not be comfortable with, say, Ernesto Magnifico, a mighty wizard, who had his tower of solitude burned to the ground, along with many a mystical artifact. That might strike a little too close to home. For others, it is a wink and a nod to real life and an attempt to find something good at the heart of a tragedy. Whichever side you yourself fall on, the fact remains, the intent of Fighting Fire is a good one.

Fighting Fire takes place in the town of Gamington, a neutral town where many a heroic battle is fought. Sides with an itch or need to conflict come to Gamington, not to do battle with swords or spells, but with dice, miniatures and rulebooks. Yes, the treaties of Gamington have allowed surrounding countries to settle their disputes through tabletop war games rather than conventional methods that typically cost a lot of money and cause a lot of death. Until now, the use of tabletop gaming to settle disputes has served the countries surrounding Gamington, but with an outright attack on Ernesto’s tower, fingers are pointing and faith in the tabletop way of settling disputes is badly shaken. After all, if someone attacks the great Ernesto with fire, who is to say a full on assault of a country is not next?

This is, of course, where the PCs come into play. Due to the length of the adventure and the challenges it contains, they should be medium to high level characters. The PCs will have to make their way through a lot of encounters to find the culprit. There are a few false endings too, because right as you THINK you are at the climactic battle with the big bad, you learn there is actually someone else pulling the strings. As such, the adventure can go on for several sessions. It could even make up an entire campaign depending on how well the characters come to like Gamington and get to know its residents. There is a LOT of detail to Fighting Fire, with information on multiple local businesses, the most important residents, and detailed descriptions of the surrounding areas. I’m surprised at how much content was crammed into these thirty-four pages.

Of course, it all comes down to whether or not Fighting Fire is an adventure worth investing in. The truth of the matter is that, as the DM, you will make or break this piece. As a system neutral affair, your DM really has to be meticulous and willing to do a lot more work than you normally would see in a published adventure. This is especially true with Fighting Fire because of the sheer amount of content provided in it. It is as long, if not longer than most adventures with stat blocks and system mechanics written in, so while you’re getting a mini campaign of sorts, the DM will probably spend more time tailoring this than actually running it for his or her friends. Another good example is that there are four maps crammed onto a single page in the back of the adventure. Most DMs will want to probably redraw the maps onto a single page so that they can have more detail and room for notes. In the hands of a less experienced DM, this adventure will probably flop, simply because Fighting Fire is more of an overview or collection of story/encounter seeds rather than the hand holding process a lot of system based adventures are. Even if you don’t ever play Fighting Fire, it is a fun read, and it’s supporting a worthy cause, so you may want to consider purchasing it just for that reason.

Overall, Fighting Fire isn’t for everyone, and certainly not for people who are relatively new to gaming, as it will be a hard adventure to make work and there won’t be the emotional/historical ties to the product. Older gamers however, especially those well versed in Tactical Studies Rules era gaming, will more than likely get a kick out of Fighting Fire.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
Fighting Fire - Ernie Gygax Benefit Adventure
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Dungeon Crawl Classics #81: The One Who Watches From Below
Publisher: Goodman Games
by Alexander L. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 03/21/2014 06:27:30

Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2014/03/21/tabletop-review-dungeon-crawl-classics-81-the-one-who-watches-from-below/

So, a little back story on this one before we begin. Back on Free RPG Day 2012, Goodman Games gave us an excellent set of two adventures if you were lucky enough to snatch one up. In the back was a partially done map and a contest. You could finish up the map, write an adventure and send your piece in to Goodman Games. The winner would get a cool thousand dollars and eventually see their adventure in print. Well, The One Who Watches From below was the winner. Generally contest adventures aren’t top tier releases because they are tied to a theme or something else that limits full-on creativity, but I’m happy to say that The One Who Watches From Below is an incredible adventure that is well worth investing in.

Frist up, let’s talk about that amazing cover art by Doug Kovacs. Man is it as gorgeous as sit is super creepy. That is one ominous piece and the art alone makes you want to purchase the adventure just to find out what it is about. Then the next page of the piece is a full piece of art. It’s a well drawn spooky dungeon, but your eyes will almost instantly go to the middle of the page where you will see a pair of eyes looking back at you. The eyes are surrounded by a set of dotted lines and instructions telling you to cut them out for use with the adventure. Curiouser and curiouser! This one two punch of a great art and cryptic instructions should be enough to convince any gamer to give this adventure a try. You look at the cover and this first page and any OSR gamer worth their salt just wants to know what ELSE waits them in this adventure. I will say that due to the cutting out aspect of these eyes, the PDF may be the better way to go. That way you can print out multiple copies of the eyes and not ruin your original purchase.

The One Who Watches From Below is designed for six to eight Level 1 characters. It’s a very Lovecraftian entry with names of otherworldly beings like Shigazilnizthrub (along with a cameo from old Wizard Whateleley) and other monsters that will drive a man insane as assuredly as it will rend their flesh. This is definitely a very challenging adventure for the neophyte characters and some PCs will definitely meet a gruesome end in this one. The adventure is also a very long one for a DCC affair. There are three full page maps in the back of the book, each one is a work of art. The text suggests that you can streamline this adventure to one four hour session, but more than likely it will play out over several meetings with your gaming troupe. That’s a great value for the price point when you think about it. The first map also contains Handout A, which is another reason to go PDF over dead tree for this adventure, as you can cut it out without ruining the gorgeous maps. I always say that DCC has the best maps in the industry and The One Who Watches From Below only adds to that sentiment. They’re almost worth the cover price of this adventure alone just so show how stylish a map can be while still retaining its function.

The PCs have made their way, for whatever reason (greed, curiosity, a need for fame, outright stupidity) to the Cave of Secrets. Beneath the cave lies the temple of a god long forgotten by the world, but still both active and malicious. Within the cave awaits a lot of treasure, some horrific monsters and a very strange curse that will stymie both players and their characters alike. The Judge is advised to be exceptionally strict with the rules of the curse, and I concur. It will be frustrating at first, but the curse (which without spoilers, involves those eyes I mentioned you needed to cut out earlier) can be a lot of fun to play out. It really tests a player’s role-playing ability and ensures that The One Who Watches From Below will be a highly memorable affair for all who play it. I can’t say too much more without some huge spoilers, but rest assured, as strange as the requests the DM will make of the PCs are, it is well worth it in the end. This also highlights how outside the box Dungeon Crawl Classics is compared to most other fantasy games, as you’d never see an adventure this weird in Pathfinder or for modern D&D.

You’ll have four levels of locations to traverse. The first is the Cave of Secrets itself. The second is simply known as The Temple. The third is called The Brood Pit and the final is simply the Under-Temple. Now you won’t find a lot of combat in the first two levels, but what battles there are can be quite intense. Death by angry books is a distinct possibility, for example. The further into the adventure you get, the more powerful (and frequently occuring) the monsters are, with the final battle being SNK End Boss bad, to put things in video game terms. It’s far more powerful than the players and expect a pretty high death toll, even for a DCC adventure. While fans of other games might be a bit put off by this climactic encounter, longtime DCC gamers are pretty used to characters dying in horrific ways and this will just be part of the fun for them. Still, because of how overpowered the end battle is, The One Who Watches From Below probably isn’t the best choice for someone’s first ever DCC adventure. A little too much culture shock, you know. For people like myself who play through a lot of published DCC adventures (both first and third party), I really loved the final fateful showdown and I think the same will go for other diehard fans of the system. The Primordial Titan with haunt your nightmares. That’s all I can really say because I want you to experience the sheer horror for yourself.

Overall, Goodman Games has released another fantastic must-buy adventure for Dungeon Crawl Classics. Between this and Intrigue at the Court of Chaos, the first party DCC releases have been extremely impressive. It’s going to be hard to keep up this level of quality but by all means I’m excited to see Goodman Games try. Usually adventure contest winners can be pretty terrible like Chaosium’s recent Horror Stories From the Red Room. The One Who Watches From Below however is one of the better adventures I’ve reviewed this year and hopefully we’ll see more DCC pieces penned by Mr. Jobe Bittman in the future. Congratulations not just to Job for winning, but for DCC fans everywhere for getting the chance to add this adventure to their collection!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Dungeon Crawl Classics #81: The One Who Watches From Below
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Adventure Quarterly #5 (PFRPG)
Publisher: Rite Publishing
by Alexander L. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 03/19/2014 08:11:59

Originally published at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2014/03/19/tabletop-review-adventure-quarterly-issue-5-pathfinder/

Although the days of high quality monthly tabletop RPG magazine have long since passed, we do seem to be having a nice resurgence of quarterly magazines with top notch content…even if the magazines aren’t actually coming out every three months. We’ve got The Unspeakable Oath and Gygax Magazine for example, but TUO hasn’t come out since August and Gygax #4 is a few weeks late. Hell, it’s been almost a year since The Savage Insider had its last issue.

Which of course brings me to Adventure Quarterly #5, the product we are reviewing today. It too has had almost a year since it’s last issue (technically nine months), which is a bit surprising because Rite Publishing is perhaps the best company in regards to Pathfinder licensed products in terms of getting things out on time. Pathways, RP’s monthly free magazine, is as close to clockwork as this industry gets. Plus it’s the closest thing we have to Dungeon magazine anymore, as it is nothing but adventures. So was it worth the wait? Well, yes and no.

First, let’s talk my big problem with the piece, and that’s pricing. As much as I have enjoyed previous issues of AQ, the thing is too overpriced, especially compared to other quarterly gaming magazines. The cost of just the PDF version of a single issue of AQ is the same cost as a physical AND digital two pack of The Unspeakable Oath, which may not be 100% adventures, but does tend to be a superior product, writing-wise. Same too with Gygax Magazine. It is also of the highest quality and it’s only five bucks for the digital version and only $8.95 for the physical. So why the higher price tag for AQ? Well, a few reasons. The first is that it is Pathfinder and Pathfinder products do tend to be a bit higher priced than other RPGs. The second is that AQ is in full colour where the others I have mentioned are mostly in black and white. Finally, at least in my experience in this industry, it’s more expensive to pay someone to write an adventure than it is to write an article about some facet of gaming. While all of these things help to explain part of why Adventure Quarterly is price so much higher than other quarterly tabletop mags, it doesn’t explain all of it. Honestly, the fact I could buy digital copies of both TUO and Gygax for the cost of just one issue of AQ is enough to make me lean towards not recommending the magazine on just a price basis. However if you only play Pathfinder, the fact that this is your only Dungeon equivalent means you are pretty much stuck with this and the high cost each issue comes with.

Of course, cost doesn’t matter much if something is of high quality. You should, theoretically, get what you pay for after all. So if the adventures in AQ #5 were amazing, that could have offset the price tag issues I have with the magazine. Let’s take a look at each one.

Our first adventure is The Ruins Perilous Level 3 – The Sensodrome. This is a continuation from previous AQ issues where the goal was to release one level of the dungeon per issue. This is a great idea on paper, but it doesn’t work quite well in reality. After all, the high cost of the magazine, tracking down back issues (you’re better off going through DriveThruRPG.com for those) and the long time between issues makes The Rune Perilous series not very conductive for actual play. If this was a monthly magazine it would be one thing, but it’s quite another to have to wait a minimum of three months per dungeon crawl level. The PCs are essentially stuck. No, this adventure would be better off collected as one piece and sold separately, or in a monthly magazine. Now this is not the fault of the adventure itself, but it doesn’t prevent most gamers from getting any use out of it.

Besides these issues, The Sensodrome is simply a generic dungeon crawl experience. It favors roll-playing over role-playing and is little more than a hack and slash affair. While this is not necessarily a bad thing, it’s not necessarily an experience a lot of gamers want. Granted, Pathfinder or D&D gamers are more apt to enjoy this sort of thing than say, World of Darkness or Call of Cthulhu players, but it does still mean that the audience for a piece like this is limited by the nature of the adventure style and doubly or even triply so by the release date of each level.

Now all of these negatives aside, The Sensodrome is a finely crafted sixteen room dungeon crawl designed for 3rd Level characters. It could use a bit of an introduction which would allow DMs to run this as a one-shot one level piece instead of waiting to combine all the Ruins Perlious levels, but that is true about any dungeon released in stages. You will also need several other books to run the wandering monster table as monsters are pulled from all sorts of other locations like The Tome of Horrors Complete, The Book of Monster Templates and so on, but the core adventure has all the stats you need to play the adventure without any additional purchases, which is a big plus. There are some fun and challenging encounters for PCs on this level and it’s pretty free with the experience so characters should level up AT LEAST once in this piece. I enjoyed the layout, the monsters and the obvious creativity in this one. It’s just too bad there are some many other negatives weighing this down. That said, I am really looking forward to Rite Publishing putting together a collected Ruins Perilous piece (if it ever gets finished) as that will be a top notch dungeon when all is said and done.

Our second adventure in this collection is The Legacy of the Fishermage, which is for four to five 9th Level characters or a party of six 8th Level characters. This is a really fun and long (for a magazine based release) adventure. It’s also a bit silly. I’ll admit the “Salmon of Wisdom” that is highlighted in the adventure made me think of “The Fur-Bearing Trout” from Earthworm Jim. I should also point out that this is almost the polar opposite from The Sensodrome, which is nice as you get two well-designed pieces that together highlight how diverse Pathfinder adventures can be.

The adventures revolves around a sage’s repeated misadventures in trying to catch the Salmon of Wisdom and his bad luck with apprentices. This time the sage is long dead, but the salmon has two new hunters in the form of an Ogre and a disgruntled changeling. The PCs become involves after saving a dwarven priest and learning about the legend (there are several other hooks to get the characters into the adventure). There are a lot of riddles to solve, locations to visit, monsters to vanquish and of course, a magic fish with the wisdom of the universe to find. I also really liked the subtle bits of humour in this adventure. The climactic encounter with the Salmon of Wisdom is quite amusing, for example. The end prize is a nice bonus to which ever character(s) get it and this is really one of the better Pathfinder adventures I’ve seen published in 2014 so far. It might not be a seller by itself, but it is the crown jewel of this issue.

The third adventure in Adventure Quarterly, Issue 5 is Paradox and it’s for 18th Level characters. It’s very combat intensive and it is designed to be a Campaign Ending Event. I’m really not a fan of some random adventure being the way a campaign ends. Something like that should really be cooked up by the DM to tie up loose ends and provide closure. Instead this adventure hits on all sorts of things that tend to be red flags, warning a DM and player that there is a bad adventure ahoy. It has time travel (which tends to do far more harm than good to a game unless you are playing a game specifically about time travel), a magical McGuffin that threatens all of reality, a really work story hook that sort of railroads the players into the adventure even if they don’t find it interesting, and monsters that seem to be thrown in simply for the sake of combat than any real story cohesion. It’s a pretty weak adventure in all respects, but then, writing any adventure for characters of this level is a pretty daunting task and while I found this to be very lackluster and trite with robotic lions armed with chainguns and the like, I’m sure someone will get a kick out of this. Unfortunately I’m the one reviewing it and this adventure was supersaturated with all of my personal Pathfinder pet peeves. How is that for alliteration?

Our fourth and final adventure is actually a short encounter segment entitled, Sleep, Interrupted. This is a fun really short piece that can be inserted into any adventure, published or homebrew, and it happens when the PCs are settling down for a much needed sleep. It’s a spooky little piece involving ghost orcs who died in the cavern the PCs are resting in. Sleep, Interrupted is nothing fancy but it’s a good battle and potentially provides some fine treasure. The encounter is scalable between CR 6 and 9 and so there is some flexibility to be had. Nice job for a short piece.

So those are our four adventure pieces, but wait –there’s more! We have a two and a half page article by the lord and master of Rite Publishing himself, Steven Russell. Like the first piece in AQ#5 this article, entitled, “Wide-Open Sandboxing Part II,” is a continuation from the previous issue. However unlike The Runes Perilous, this article works as a stand-alone. It’s basically advice on how to come up with memorable NPCs quickly. Steven suggested cribbing from various trusted sources like lists of names, stat a block similar to what you are looking for instead of designing it out yourself, and taking personalities from existing characters and modifying them slightly instead of doing copious amounts of work like pages of background text for a character LARP style. The advice is sound, especially if you are an inexperienced DM or adventure designer as it really does speed the process up. Long-time DMs may turn up their nose at the advice because they want to do all the work themselves, even for a character who might not even show up in the adventure based on the choices the PCs make. You know what? That’s okay. Steven isn’t presenting this advice as a way you SHOULD do things, but as an option to make your life easier. The article is worth reading even if you have no intention of taking it to heart.

So all in all, Adventure Quarterly isn’t too bad. There is one adventure I’d give a thumb’s up to, one I’d give a thumb’s down to, a decent encounter, an adventure segment that is well designed but falters by being a quarterly installment piece and an interesting article. While the price point is far too exorbitant for what you get, especially compared to other quarterly gaming magazines, devout Pathfinder fans will find one truly solid adventure in the mix and that might be worth the price tag. Everyone else though might as well hold out for the next issue or a price drop, if they get it at all. Adventure Quarterly has a lot of potential and it’s nicely done, but in the end, you just aren’t getting your money’s worth – at least with this issue.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
Adventure Quarterly #5 (PFRPG)
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The Dread Shard
Publisher: GRAmel
by Alexander L. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 03/19/2014 06:13:25

Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2014/03/19/tabletop-review-beasts-barbarians-the-dread-shard-savage-worlds/

Beast & Barbarians is a campaign setting for Savage Worlds, so know that you’ll need the core books (DriveThruRPG has a great bundle for those that are interested) in addition to the core Savage Worlds book. Of course this means that even though The Dread Shard is priced very reasonably at only $1.99, the actual price tag for playing it is going to be a lot higher – about fifty dollars when all is said and done without some sort of deal going. The adventure also makes use of the optional Tattered Banners supplement, which adds even more to the eventual overall cost of playing this two dollar adventure. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t invest in B&B – just a warning that you need more than a single book to play this adventure.

The Dread Shard takes place during a great celebration in the city of Dalaxium. Governor Lucius has figured out how to harness the power of a meteorite known as the Dread Shard and has hosted this party as a precursor to the revelation he will be unveiling. Unfortunately, the Dread Shard is appropriately named as the party is actually a doublecross and the entire town is basically put to the torch by the evil Valk. There is a lot of death and betrayal in this one and at times it felt like Vince Russo from late 90s WCW was writing this with all the attempts at NPCs swerving each other. Although a bit trite in this regard, it does put the players in a very unusual situation. After all, there is now way they can defeat several hundred Valk warriors as they lay siege to Dalaxium, so PCs have to decide on their course of action, be it trying to escape the carnage or finding some way to shut down the onslaught. There isn’t a happy ending for this adventure and certainly not for the citizens of Dalaxium, so this adventure is probably best played by people who don’t treat RPGs as something to “win.”

The Dread Shard goes into a lot of detail (well, as much as sixteen pages can anyway) about the festival, games one might take part in there and also some detailed notes on prominent NPCs the players can encounter or befriend. A fourth of the adventure consists of character stat blocks and another four are the sights and sounds of the festival. That’s half your page count right there! If you really want to make The Dread Shard feel impactful, have the players use Dalaxium for their home base for several adventures or even play an entire session or two just around the games and people as the festival. That way, when the carnage begins, the players (and their characters) will feel it all the more. It won’t be just some generic location where the players are for this session, but a place they care about and friends being put to the sword.

A note of caution is that The Dread Shard assumes you are extremely familiar with Beast & Barbarians, along with its particular vernacular and terminology. There is no attempt to explain anything about the setting or B&B specific jargon, so this adventure is not something you can pick up and just play if you only have the core Savage Worlds book. If you don’t have any of the B&B core books, you will be totally and utterly lost, which is a shame, as the adventure is quite nicely done otherwise.

Basically, if you are a big time fans of the Beasts & Barbarians setting for Savage Worlds, you’ll want to get this adventure. It’s extremely detailed for the brief page length, it’s quite cheap and it’s a pretty unique adventure to experience. For everyone else though, you’ll want to pass since you’ll need to invest heavily in the campaign setting and the core rulebooks from Pinnacle to make heads or tails of this piece. If you do pick this up, remember that the quality of the adventure is determined by how detailed you make the festival, as well as how tied to Dalaxium the PCs are. If you rush this thing or play The Dread Shard as just an adventure of the week, it will be a lackluster and forgettable experience. If you take the time to really make the city come to live, its fall will be all the more impactful and important to both the characters and the people playing them.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
The Dread Shard
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Forbidden Lore (2e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Alexander L. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 03/17/2014 08:48:52

Originally published at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2014/03/17/tabletop-review-ravenloft-forbidden-lore-advanced-dungeons-dragons-second-edition/

I’m really glad to see Forbidden Lore up on DNDclassics.com, as I wasn’t sure how they were going to pull this off. You see, the original Forbidden Lore boxed set from 1992 had items that wouldn’t necessarily work in a PDF format. You had an entire deck of Tarroka Cards (Ravenloft tarot cards) and a set of special dice for Romani inspired games. Obviously, these wouldn’t be included in their original form for a PDF version of the set. For those that want the original physical version, you can still pick it up on Ebay or Amazon for around forty bucks. However, for only ten dollars, DNDclassics is offering this electronic version, complete with print and play versions of the Tarroka cards, a shrunk down map, and the core five booklets that make up Forbidden Lore. Now, print and play is always buyer beware to me, because a lot of people think these products are a lot easier to pull off than they really are. If you’re new to the concept, know that you’re going to need a lot of ink, a printer that can handle card stock paper, to be very handy with scissors and have a lot of patience. Even then, your end product probably won’t be as good as the original set that came with Forbidden Lore back in 1992. If this sounds at all daunting to you, you might be better off getting one of the physical copies, as the cost for the print and play products in addition to this PDF purchase might set you back more than the price tag you will find from third party sellers.

So what is in Forbidden Lore? Well, it is primarily five 32-page booklets that further flesh out the Dark Domain. Let’s take a look at each book in alphabetical order.

Cryptic Allegiances: the Secret Societies of Ravenloft. This book covers six secret societies from across the Dark Domain, along with a two page introduction on what secret societies are. The Dark Delvers are a Lovecraft inspired group searching for something called the Hated Mother, which they believe is the source of creation. The Kargat are the secret police of the lich Azalin, which is made up of werewolves, vampires and other creatures of the night. In turn, they have a secret society of regular mortals called the Kargatane, who are essentially dupes seeking immortality without the price tag of undeath. The Ildi’thaan seek the Thirteen Texts of Thaan, which they believe will wrest control of Bluetspur from the hideous alien grasp of the Mind Flayers. The texts are also supposed to be able to unlock powerful psionic powers in anyone who reads them. The Ata-Bestaal are mortals who want to become animals, for they believe is it a simpler and purer way of life, free from the horrors Man inflicts upon itself. Unfortunately, these are not some happy druid fans, but people who think becoming a mongrelman from G’Henna or being inflicted with lycanthropy is a good thing. Suckers. Next up we have Adam’s Children, which is completely comprised of flesh golems seeking to become a race unto themselves, like dwarves or elves. Finally, we have the Keepers of the Black Feather, which number 150 strong. Their goal – to destroy Strahd Von Zarovich himself. This group is the only good aligned secret society in the collection, and it consists of mortals and wereravens.

Dark Recesses: Peering into the Depths of Madness. This is kind of a catch-all book. You have some errata and clarification for The Complete Psionics Handbook, which is an odd thing to find here. From there, you have a look at psionics in Ravenloft, along with some power changes that occur when a psionicist enters the Dark Domain. This is about half the book. Next up is a look at Madness Checks, which is a longer lasting (permanent) addition to the Fear and Horror checks. This is basically a D&D version of Call of Cthulhu‘s sanity rolls. You also get a look at sanitariums in Ravenloft and other ways madness can be cured. Finally, this book contains an appendix for Dark Sun characters and races from Athas. This is worth reading if you plan on bringing a Thri-Kreen or Half-Giant into Ravenloft. It also points out a Defiler is essentially doomed to constant Powers Checks and Templars lose their abilities entirely unless pledged to a domain lord. Eek. You’re also given a new domain pulled from Athas to help Dark Sun characters adapt to Ravenloft.

Nova Arcanum: The Necromancies of Strahd Von Zarovich. This book is a collection of new spells, magical items and the like for Ravenloft. Although it’s supposedly a tome by Strahd, there are Priesty/Clerical bits in here as well. The book also gives Ravenloft adaptations for spells from The Tome of Magic, along with its own twists on mage variants like Wild Mages, Elementalists, and so on.

Oaths of Evil: An Account of the Roads to Darkness. This book is an in-depth and detailed look at curses in Ravenloft along with a wide array of cursed objects. All of this was covered in the multiple versions of the core Ravenloft product, but this book is for the DMs that really want to focus on this concept.

The Waking Dream: Harbingers, Portents and Omens of the Vistani. This book simply talks about how to use the Tarokka deck, what each card means and so on. It also includes rules for the Dlkesha dice that are not included with the PDF version of this collection. You can print off the “stickers” though, although it takes a lot of work to make these work in a PDF format. At least you now have an unlimited supply, unlike with the boxed set, where there was no way to get extras. This book is really interesting, but only a fraction of players ever really used the Tarokka deck, as you really had to tailor an adventure around it rather than just let it come into play by happenstance.

So there you go – a quick overview of the five books in Forbidden Lore. To be honest, unless you are a Ravenloft completionist like myself, this isn’t a “must have” set by any means. Nova Arcanum is the only one DMs across the board will make use out of. Everything else is pretty niche and will only appeal to a slice of Ravenloft gamers, and even less will actually make use of them. The whole package is a pretty good deal for ten bucks though, and it’s one I can recommend to longtime fans of the campaign setting, if not to everyone. It’s great to see this once again available to all gamers, but I do wish there was a Print on Demand version for the Tarokka Deck for gamers that aren’t very good with the print and play option.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
Forbidden Lore (2e)
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Scenic Dunnsmouth
Publisher: Lamentations of the Flame Princess
by Alexander L. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 03/14/2014 07:32:32

Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2014/03/14/tabletop-review-scenic-dunnsmouth-lamentations-of-the-flame-princess/

Some published adventures are more fun for the DM than for the players. Now I don’t mean adventures where the DM actively tries to murder all the PCs and has fun running the game for everyone else. I mean the type of published adventures that turn planning the adventure into a game. Usually these type of adventures involve some sort of random generation so that the DM and players can reuse the same product and get a different experience each time. The first of these adventures that I can recall is the classic In Search of the Unknown by Mike Carr for Basic Dungeons & Dragons way back in 1979. There’s something special about that adventure if you’ve ever run it, although it’s fairly generic if you’ve ever just played it.

Which brings me to Scenic Dunnsmouth for Lamentations of the Flame Princess. Like In Search of the Unknown, a good portion of the adventure is generated randomly although everything else about the two are completely different. In Search of the Unknown is your basic hack and slash dungeon crawl and all that randomizes are the monsters in different locations. Scenic Dunnsmouth is a mash-up of D&D and Call of Cthulhu in the same way the name is a mashup of two popular Lovecraftian locations: Innsmouth and Dunwich. The end result is a very weird and creepy location for the PCs to explore, which will harbor at least one, but possibly two or more other secrets to uncover. Dunnsmouth is in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by the one-two punch of mountains and seemingly endless swamp. The residents are similar to the stereotypical backwoods inbred rednecks, but obviously not all is what it seems here.

You’ll find no maps or the like in Scenic Dunnsmouth. After all, the DM has to randomly generate the town, meaning he or she will have to make their own maps and layouts based on the way the generation occurs. To make the town you’ll need a deck of playing cards and fourteen dice. To be specific you’ll need 10 d6s, a d4, a d8 and two d12s, each of which has to be a different colour (the text suggest red and black, but they don’t have to be. You just need to be able to tell them apart). You’ll need a sheet of paper, with the size of the paper determining the boundaries of the location and then you let your dice fly Make sure to roll them all on the center of the sheet and let them fall where they may. The text says nothing about what to do if a die rolls off the paper and/or surface area. I would assume re-rolling, but I suppose you could count that die as non-existent for determining your Scenic Dunnsmouth if you choose. Each die represents a different important location in the town and the number than lands right side up determines a specific factor about it. After you roll the dice, you take your deck of playing cards and draw a card for each d6 (and possible d12) location. What you draw determines yet another factor for the location. As you can see this whole process is extremely random, providing a DM with an adventure it can reuse numerous times, while wielding extremely different results and layouts – even for gamers that have already played through the adventure before! That’s very cool. As I said earlier, the whole process of seeing what kind of town you’ve created is a lot of fun for the DM as you look up the results and see the town come to life before your eyes.

The actual content of Scenic Dunnsmouth ends up being mostly background text and rules for how to generate your town. There are some sample towns to look at too if you can’t quite get the hang of what you are supposed to do here. After the town is generated, you look up the results for each die such as locations, buildings, layout and townsfolk and it is then up to the DM to tie everything together into a cohesive package. All this means that while Scenic Dunnsmouth is fun for any DM, it takes a somewhat experience and organized one to run this thing efficiently. Taking notes on what you have created is a VERY good idea.

So after you’ve created your town, what is left? Well, you need to create a solid hook to get your players to travel to Dunnsmouth. The text gives you some ideas, but you might have a few ideas of your own which would get the PCs in your troupe to travel to such a remote and inaccessible location. Once there they might discover a strange mystical artifact that warps time and space. They might also find a loathsome cult and/or a town full of mutants. There is even a strong chance a PC or two might join the cult willingly based on what happens in your playthrough. For players, it’s a pretty standard but creepy adventure for low level characters. There’s some hack and slash potential, but it’s mostly Call of Cthulhu style detective work where the PCs discover what is so ominous about this location and what they can do, if anything, to stop it. The town and potential plot points are enough to keep your characters in Dunnsmouth for several play sessions, if not longer. Heck, getting to and from Dunnsmouth could be an adventure in and of themselves.

I really had a blast with Scenic Dunnsmouth. It’s a great idea and while it’s still definitely an adventure that is probably more fun or memorable of an experience for the DM than the players, everyone involved will still have a great time with this adventure – as long as they’re not looking for a straight up dungeon crawl. This is a great adventure to bring fans of games like World of Darkness or Call of Cthulhu over to LoTFP or various D&D retroclones, showing that fantasy games can be just as much about role-playing as they are roll-playing. Scenic Dunnsmouth is one of the best thought out and designed adventures I’ve seen this year. I was thoroughly impressed by the level of background detail given to every little thing in the town. The adventure things of everything, from a wide array of townsfolk to encounter to even what happens if you don’t use the deck of playing cards correctly. Personally I love some of the occurrences that happen when you leave the instructions and/or Jokers in as it’s hilariously bizarre –even for this adventure. I can’t recommend this adventure highly enough. Even if you don’t normally pick up Lamentations of the Flame Princess products, Scenic Dunnsmouth is well worth the cover price just to see how well made the adventure is from cover to cover.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Scenic Dunnsmouth
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The Many Deaths of Edward Bigsby
Publisher: YSDC
by Alexander L. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 03/11/2014 06:26:25

Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2014/03/11/tabletop-review-the-many-deaths-of-edward-bigsby-trail-of-cthulhu/

For those not in the know, Yog-Sothoth.com is one of the best pages on the Internet for all things related to Call of Cthulhu gaming. This includes other systems, like Cthulhu Dark, Trail of Cthulhu, Cthuhutech and anything else Mythos related. What you might not know is that, slowly but surely, YSDC has been releasing gaming materials of their own. Almost a year ago, they released a systemless supplement known as The Archeologist’s Handbook. I reviewed it in June of last year and found it enjoyable, but a bit pricey for what you got. YSDC’s newest release is an actual licensed product this time around, and it’s for Pelgrane Press’ Trail of Cthulhu rather than Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu, which was an unexpected choice. I’m happy to say that the adventure is one of the better ToC products I’ve reviewed, and that you’ll definitely get your money’s worth. There are a few oddities about the release, but nothing that should detract from your enjoyment of the adventure.

Let’s talk about those (minor) oddities first. First, the piece devotes three pages to the Open Game License from Wizards of the Coast. I found this really odd, since Trail of Cthulhu uses the GUMSHOE system. There’s nothing in it resembling D&D 3.0/3.5. I went through my other Trail of Cthulhu first and third party releases, as well as issues of The Unspeakable Oath with ToC adventures, but none of them have the D&D OGL in them. So I’m not sure why YSDC did this, aside from covering all the bases JUST IN CASE. This strangeness is simply peculiar and worth noting, if only simply because like the adventure itself, it’s just plain weird. It’s also so that you don’t pick this up and think GUMSHOE is a d20 product or that you somehow confuse this with the d20 version of Call of Cthulhu.

The other oddity is that The Many Deaths of Edward Bigsby does not contain any original art. They are all public domain pieces. Usually commissioned art accounts for a decent chunk of the price tag of an adventure. So without any original art, the $6.95 price tag attached to The Many Deaths of Edward Bigsby is a bit high, especially compared to other Cthulhu based PDFs. Most Trail of Cthulhu adventures that are around the same price have original art and a much higher page count, so you could easily go elsewhere and get more for your buck/quid, but that money wouldn’t go towards keeping YSDC running in addition to giving you a fun set of gaming sessions with your friends. So yes, some people might be turned off by the inflated price and/or the lack of original art, but in the end, quality is king, and since The Many Deaths of Edward Bigbsy is one of the better ToC adventures out there, it’s worth picking up if you’re a fan of the system.

So let’s talk content. The Many Deaths of Edward Bigsby tells you what you need to know just in the title. Poor Mr. Bigsby, a friend of an acquaintance, has come to the Investigators for help. Why, exactly, you don’t know, as he dies horribly in front of your eyes as he tries to tell you what exactly is going on. As players will discover while they try to unravel the mystery, this is only the first time they will see Mr. Bigbsy meet his demise. As the story unfolds, players will explore 1930s Soho (London, not New York) and run afoul of a Chinese triad, a Bohemian group, some potentially perplexed police, a slightly evil wizard and a few green doors that appear to be the root of the problem. If players are really unlucky or bad at solving adventures like this, they just might run into Yog-Sototh itself… which never ends well for anyone involved.

The adventure is a fun, open-ended piece of detective work. The scenes presented might not play out in the order they are provided in the adventure, but that’s based mostly on the direction the Investigators decide to go. The adventure is also unique in that things can get quite comical (in a cosmic horror sort of way) once duplicates of the late Mister Bigsby (and potentially other characters as well) start turning up. One could easily run this adventure as either a straight forward, grim, weird tale, or as a farcical comedy of errors, especially when duplicates encounter each other with unexpected results. I think this is the first Trail of Cthulhu adventure I’ve encountered where the potential for (purposeful) comedy is this high. Again, though, it’s all in how your Keeper runs the piece, so don’t go into this adventure expecting the equivalent of a Warner Bros cartoon. However, if you are a Keeper and your players seem sick of the usual grimdark Mythos pieces, running this with a decent amount of comedy could keep The Many Deaths of Edward Bigsby fresh rather than stale.

I also liked that there are several different ways the adventure could end, depending on how thorough the Investigators were in the adventure. If they fly through things, they’ll find the core adventure really “easy” in terms of lack of chances to die or go insane, but the end scene being quite hard to deal with. Conversely, if players are extremely careful, checking every little detail about a scene and the like, the end scene is pretty straightforward and simple. It’s kind of a reward for player diligence. I should also point out that players will need access to the Elder Sign in order to really get through this adventure. If these are new characters, or the adventure is being used as a one-shot, the adventure will be EXTREMELY hard if they do not come across how to make this symbol in the adventure. The text gives a way for Investigators to come across one, but because of this issue, The Many Deaths of Edward Bigsby might be best left with more experienced characters. Unless, of course, you’re up for an extremely uphill battle for the Investigators. Not having the Elder Sign doesn’t make the adventure impossible to get through, but it does make it pretty hard.

I have to say I really enjoyed The Many Deaths of Edward Bigsby. The adventure was pretty unique, the core problem that players had to solve was an original and entertaining one, and as I’ve said, the adventure works equally well as a comedy piece as it does one of unexplainable horror beyond human comprehension stories. We tried it both ways and players had a blast with it – even those that aren’t a fan of the GUMSHOE system. The adventure offers a really entertaining cast of NPCs for the Investigators to interact with, and this is a great first start for YSDC and Innsmouth House Press with regards to releasing licensed adventures. I’m really excited to see what they put out next.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
The Many Deaths of Edward Bigsby
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Forgive Us
Publisher: Lamentations of the Flame Princess
by Alexander L. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 03/11/2014 06:21:59

Originally published at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2014/03/11/tabletop-review-forgive-us-lamentations-of-the-flame-princess/

Forgive Us is a collection of three adventures for Lamentations of the Flame Princess. There is one fully fleshed out adventure with a map in Forgive Us, while the other two are more like story threads than true adventures, since the DM will have to flesh them out fully in order to make them playable. All three adventures are really well done, though, and are pretty memorable affairs. Even if you don’t normally play Lamentations of the Flame Princess, you still should consider picking this up, as the adventures are fully playable with many a Dungeons & Dragons retro clone, and your purchase even gives you a second PDF which gives conversion stats so that Dungeons & Dragons 3.0/3.5 and Pathfinder fans can take part in the experience. That’s a really nice touch that allows Forgive Us to reach a much wider audience. Who knows, it might even help convert some of those Paizo and WotC holdouts to peer deeper into the madness that is LotFP. I should also point out that all three adventures take place in England during the year 1625. Of course, it is a fictional England, since there will be magic users, cursed artifacts and the like, but if you don’t like using our reality as the basis of a role-playing game, you can always change the location to some generic fantasy world. It won’t have the same effect mind you, but it will shut up the person who absolutely has to play an elf in every game you run. It’s also worth mentioning that, while all three adventures take place in the same year and same general vicinity of the world, they are NOT connected. Each one is designed to stand-alone, but an enterprising DM could connect the three with a little bit of effort into a mini-campaign.

Our first adventure, Forgive Us, bears the same name as the collection, and it is the only adventure to be fully fleshed out. You get full stats, maps of locations and randomizing tables, and it takes up thirty-five of the fifty pages in this collection. The adventure is a definite tribute to The Thing (the John Carpenter movie) and players will no doubt figure that out around the climax of the adventure, when they encounter the horrible monstrosities waiting to convert or kill them. Forgive Us also works best with characters under 4th Level. This way, no one has access to Cure Disease. If characters have ready access to this spell, the adventure loses a lot of its tension and terror since the entire experience revolves around a disease transforming people into hideous thingies. Make sure your players can suffer from the potential affliction that awaits them – otherwise, this can easily turn into a run of the mill dungeon crawl, and Forgive Us is too cool of an adventure to be relegated to such a fate.

In Forgive Us, the PCs will be tasked with one of several reasons to enter a full city block of Norwich that appears to have gone both silent and empty. As players root around the area, they will discover creepy mutants, a hideous disease and the failed machinations of a guild and the horror that it has caused. There’s not a lot of combat until the very end of this piece, with Forgive Us really relying on the DM’s ability to describe what the players see and creating an atmosphere of foreboding doom. The end result is an adventure that will feel more like a Call of Cthulhu piece, where characters are playing detectives more than monster slayers. Well, at least until the climax, when the adventure feels more like Alien. In the end, the PCs will have some tough calls to make, and the potential for a full TPK is high… although it might be by the player’s own hands rather than the monsters if the adventure goes “right.” All in all, a truly great experience from the core plotline to the wonderful art littering this piece.

The second adventure in this collection is In Heaven, Everything is Fine. The author states it’s a bit of a Silent Hill meets The Colour From Out of Space mash-up. I definitely see the later, but not the former. It’s hard to describe this adventure without massive spoilers, and it really is something best left experienced rather than read about. Suffice it to say, the adventure’s concept is an exceptional one, but as it is more a story thread or adventure seed, a good DM needs to really flesh this out before presenting it to players. In the hands of a good DM, it will be a very memorable adventure, but in the hands of a bad one, it will come off lame or just annoy players.

Characters of ANY level can experience In Heaven, Everything is Fine and still be challenged. There’s a spooky ghost, a tower that can be modified to whatever players (or player characters) want it to be, a bit of sleuthing to be had and a climax that revolves around a morale puzzle which could cause some temporary in-fighting with the party. Of course, most of all, the adventure really shakes up what the players consider to be reality. At best, you’ll have created a spooky little adventure that can go multiple sessions, but at worst, more sensitive players that treat RPGs as something “to win” may get pretty pissed off at the DM by the time everything is done.

Our final adventure in this collection is Death and Taxes. It’s meant to be a straight forward one session experience, and works great as a first adventure for a new party or even new players. A close friend of the PCs has died, his daughter has disappeared and a group of tax collectors are accusing the late man of theft. Players have to figure out how all these things tie together while also stopping the servants of the Conqueror Worm. It’s a short but fun piece, and if you have people who have new done a tabletop RPG but have shown interest, Death and Taxes might be a good choice to help them get their feet wet with.

Overall, I really enjoyed the Forgive Us collection. You get three very interesting adventures and some fun cartoony yet horrific artwork. This collection is definitely worth the current sticker price attached to it, and it serves as a great introduction to the mood and themes LotFP likes to present to its audience.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Forgive Us
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Spelljammer: Adventures in Space (2e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Alexander L. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 03/07/2014 08:48:51

Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2014/03/07/tabletop-review-spelljammer-adventures-in-space-advanced-dungeons-dragons-second-edition/

Wow. I can’t express how happy I am to have the Spelljammer: Adventures in Space boxed set once again available to the public. Sure it’s in PDF form instead of in a fun box, but you can’t lose the maps and ship handouts with a digital copy like twelve year old me did with the physical version. Spelljammer is just such a fun and fantastic idea and along with Planescape and Ravenloft, it remains one of my three big campaign settings for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and is a big part of why 2e is my favorite version of D&D.

Spelljammer somehow manages to change everything you know about D&D while still holding true to the mechanics and core ideas of the game. Through it, you can have a wonderful blend of sci-fi filtered through a high fantasy lens along with the ability to travel from say Oerth to Krynn and then on to Toril. It’s really a wonderful idea and in fact, one started by Gary Gygax himself with Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. After all this earlier OD&D adventure had characters entering a sci-fi location with strange aliens and technological marvels a plenty. What Spelljammer did was simply flesh out the sci-fi aspects of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons while still making them work with wizardry and iron age combat. Spelljammer is the setting where Beholders and Mind Flayers were given complete ecologies, histories and homeworld. It’s the setting where the tinker gnomes of Dragonlance were given a serious look. It’s where Lizardmen were first treated as a playable PC race. It’s the setting that gave us Giffs, Neogi, my beloved Rastipedes and of course GIANT SPACE HAMSTERS. I could go on for hours about everything that makes Spelljammer so entertaining, but suffice to say, the fact that you are getting the full boxed set for only $9.99 makes this not only a must buy, but perhaps the biggest bargain on DNDclassics.com

Spelljammer: Adventures in Space gives you two core books. You get The Concordance of Arcane Space and Lorebook of the Void. The original physical boxed set also came with eleven handouts and four maps. These are now included with The Concordance of Arcane Space‘s PDF. Everything looks as crisp, clear and colorful as with the original print copies and it’s easy to read all of these on either computers or e-readers like a Kindle Fire. Now, the maps and handouts are only the size of a regular page now that they are in PDF form, but that’s a minor kibble at best.

The book you should read first is The Concordance of Arcane Space as it gives you the introduction to Spelljammer. Here you get an overview of the setting and what to expect from it. This is where terms like Wildspace, Phlogiston Spheres and other Spelljammer specific jargon gets explained for the very first time. Even if you never play a Spelljammer campaign, the explanation for everything is just so fascinating, fun and imaginative, that you’ll enjoy reading it. I can’t believe how fresh this feels even twenty five years later. Rules for air quality, gravity, temperature and time are all things that you’ll find in The Concordance of Arcane Space – mechanics you’d never need or even think of for other campaign settings.

Although most of the playable new races are found in The Complete Spacefarer’s Handbook, you will find rules for Lizardmen PCs here. You’ll also find some very important rules for playing a Cleric in Spelljammer and how it can be quite hard to gain spells outside of you God’s sphere of influence. Conjuring and Summoning spells also take on different characteristics. Fire however may have the biggest impediment. This means a lot of common spells and especially healing magic take on a new twist, causing players to think different about what kind of a character to make and the tactics they will use.

Of course, what would Spelljammer be without rules for how to buy and/or build your own ship? That’s all in here too. Of course, building a ship is extremely expensive and you have to maintain a crew to boot. This means Spelljammer is an excellent way for long running characters to use that hard gained loot that is just sitting around somewhere. You’ll also find rules for ship on ship combat, saving throws for all sorts of potential hull materials, crew based morale checks and interplanetary travel.

The last thing we’ll look at in The Concordance of Arcane Space is “The Rock of Brawl,” which gives DMs and players alike their first playable Spelljammer location, complete with story seeds, a cast of memorable characters. There is a lot of great stuff here and the map still looks great. The map does have one minor problem with it though. In coverting it from an oversized map from the boxed set into a standard PDF page, the words “The Lesser Market” and “Dungeon” are warped and blurry. There’s also a red dotted line going through the entire map towards the top. A minor quibble, but one purists might grumble over.

Now let’s talk The Lorebook of the Void. This second book in the “boxed” set is also a lot of fun. The first chapter in the book gives DMs a lot of ideas and suggestions for running a campaign in space as well as one that flitters between worlds. You are also given a glossary of terms and a fun ideas on making alien versions of common D&D creatures. One great example is the Beholder bartender who has a Detect Lie eye instead of the Death Ray one. This lets it be an effective bartender and patrons don’t have to worry about being killed instantly. They do have to worry about disintegration or petrification if they don’t pay their tab however…

Chapter Two is all about Spelljammer vessels. You’re given a whole host of crafts along with their stats. These are common spacefaring vessels and should help DMs running a Spelljammer campaign immensely. The Gnomish Sidewheeler and Neogi Mindspider are amongst my favorites. Chapter Three is entitled “Spacefarers” and it talks about the culture of various D&D races in space. You get a really nice look at all the PC and NPC races common to the game, regardless of setting and how alien versions might be different from established worlds. Goblins, Ogres, Giants, Centaur, Dragons and even Undead have their own listings here. Of note are the entries for Mind Flayers and Beholder, as this is the book and setting that really defined both as a species instead of just creepy looking antagonists. Lycanthropes too have a long and highly detailed section in this chapter – for obvious reasons. The chapter then ends with Monstrous Compendium entries for a lot of creatures, all of which are tremendously entertaining and worth using. Chapter Four is “Known Spheres” and it talks about the core D&D worlds: Krynn, Toril and Oerth, along with important planets or moons within their sphere. That, my friends, is the entire book.

So yes, you’re getting all this plus maps and handouts for under ten bucks. It’s a terrific deal and one any D&D fan can make great use of. Even if you don’t play Second Edition AD&D, the ideas, mechanics and creatures presented here can be applied to any version of the game with a little effort and the end result will be well worth it. Out of everything on DNDclassics.com so far, this is by far my favorite offering (so far) and with a little luck, it will be yours too. Now, let’s see those Ravenloft and Planescape boxed sets on the site as well, am I right?



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Spelljammer: Adventures in Space (2e)
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Dark Ages: Darkening Sky
Publisher: Onyx Path Publishing
by Alexander L. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 02/26/2014 06:23:12

Originally published by: http://diehardgamefan.com/2014/02/26/tabletop-review-dark-ages-darkening-sky-classic-world-of-darkness/

It’s been nearly a month since Dark Ages: Darkening Sky was released, but I wanted to sit on the review in hopes of an errata being published as there were a lot of typographical, grammatical and editorial errors in the original PDF. Thankfully, on 2/24, the edited/revised PDF was released. The piece now flows a lot better.

Darkening Sky is actually an idea bandied about the White Wolf offices for more than a decade. It takes one central theme, that of an eclipse in 1230 Anno Domini. Each of the five adventures is stand-alone, meaning they are not connected to each other in any shape or form, and trying to turn the five into some sort of campaign is implausible and would probably drive any enterprising Storyteller mad as they all take place at roughly the same time in very different parts of Europe and the Middle East. Each adventure in Darkening Sky is tailored towards a specific Dark Ages game. You have Fae, Inquisitor, Mage Vampire andWerewolf. This is a pretty neat idea on paper, although in truth most Dark Ages players only play one or two of the five settings (at most), meaning a lot of the content is just wasted paper (at worst) or something interesting to read (at best), right?

Well, not so fast. A big idea behind Darkening Sky is that although each adventure is geared for a specific facet of the Dark Ages World of Darkness line, that each one could be retooled for use with one of the other setting. So in theory, a Storyteller could take the Fae story and with a bit of adjusting, turn it into an adventure for Inquisitor or transform the Mage story into a piece for Vampire. Each adventure gives some rough ideas on how to do the changeover, but they are far too brief (only a paragraph) and are geared towards people that not only already own all five settings, but are extremely familiar with them. Even if you are pretty well versed in all five Dark Ages titles, you are really going to have you work cut out to convert these adventures from one setting to another. It’s a LOT of work – I can’t stress that enough. As such, the vast majority of Storytellers won’t be able to use the piece the way it was originally intended, which is a shame as it was one of the big selling points of Darkening Sky – at least to me.

I should also point out that none of the five adventures are fully fleshed out affairs that cover how the adventure should go from beginning to end. If you’re used to adventures written in the D&D, Dungeon Crawl Classics or the Shadowrun Missions style, you may be disappointed as Darkening Sky doesn’t even pretend to hold your hand. Again, this means Darkening Sky is not for the novice Storyteller. That said, the adventures contained in Darkening Sky are done similar to Shadowrun collections ala Hazard Pay in that you are given loose guidelines for how each adventure is supposed to flow, but you also have a lot of leeway to fill in the blanks and make the piece your own. Some gamers will view this as leaving the purchaser to do the bulk of the work, while others will appreciate the creativity and freedom this style of adventure writing provides. Just don’t go in expecting the usual structure you find in other recent Classic World of Darkness adventures like Skinner or Dust to Dust. For those wanting a lot of stats and mechanics, each adventure does through you a slight bone. Some characters are fully detailed with stats, while others are not. You also get in depth descriptions of locations and even some new powers. You get a whole bunch of gifts for Stargazer and Uktena Garou for the Dark Ages, for example. Vampire fans will be happy to see more combo Discipline powers too. Still, it is a bit disappointing to see how light these adventures are on the things most people purchase adventures for. You really are getting mostly a framework for which to craft your own adventures around.

Each of the five adventures varies wildly in both plot and quality. Werewolf gets a fairly generic “defend the Caern against Black Spiral Dancers” plot mixed in with a Mongol invasion. The Fae adventure dealing with Changlings turned into humans by way of Christian baptism and how they will be used both politically and as a blunt weapon by one faction against another. Inquisitor gets the best adventure in the set and it’s actually three short adventures in one. Each leg of the adventure takes the PCs to a different part of Italy where monsters have been revealed for what they are. Werewolves, vampires, and the like can no longer hide their true nature and they are as disturbed by this revelation as the humans they live amongst! Vampire gets a bunch of tropes like scheming Lasombra and crazy Baali thrown together for their piece in this collection. Finally, Mage has a really interesting story where the PCs are hired by Frederick II, who wishes to have a conversation with God. This is the most fully fleshed out adventure and it could easily become an entire Chronicle in the hands of a good Storyteller. Being the World of Darkness, horrible things happen along the way and the end result is not what anyone expected…or wanted.

I really liked the adventures for Mage and Inquisitor and they are the primary reasons to pick up Darkening Sky. Werewolf and Vampire are trope heavy and pretty generic, but they are decent written and my biggest complaint is simply that the writers played it safe instead of trying something original or inventive. Fae‘s adventure is just extremely boring and dull. So two good adventures, two mediocre adventures and one thumb’s down. That’s a pretty decent mix. I don’t know if most Dark Ages fans will get their money’s worth out of Darkening Sky simply because they will only play one or two of these adventures at most and only the Mage and Inquisitor ones are really worth picking this collection up for. In the end, Darkening Sky was a really lofty idea that fell short of all the goals it set for itself. I can see why this languished for so long in development purgatory. Like a lot of video games hit with years of delays and setbacks, this probably was best left dormant like a Methuselah in torpor. What’s here is decent, but by no means great, or even good. I just really couldn’t get into this collection, and found it mostly disappointing or dull. The best bits about the collection are the art (although the cover is a bit strange) and the opening short fiction. Perhaps the fact the original developer and writer admits in the foreword that he has all but forgotten the original ideas and content this piece was meant to have back in 2003 was a good sign that Darkening Sky was indeed a bad omen…but for itself.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
Dark Ages: Darkening Sky
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