Deadly Dinners

A woman sits at the dining table, the meal ready before her, a housewife and siren awaiting the arrival of her husband home, working late, or is he? Lovers, one poisoning the other to keep them even as they stray. Siblings, monsters all, confined by their father’s love and control until they have had enough and decided to ensure their escape by eating him. A nuclear family of loving cannibals whose predations have become too much and as the police closes in, enjoy one last meal of each other. A New Year’s Eve party at the end of 1999 when the world might end at the stroke of midnight and the ball drops, whilst visions of an alternate present haunt the party-goers. Mealtimes—dinner especially—can be times to celebrate, but sometimes they are performances of tension and despair, each course serving up another dish and another act that ratchets up the tension until it becomes unbearable and someone snaps. Seething. Shouting. Screaming. Raging. Worse. Thankfully, these are not scenes of everyday domestic distress, but of set-ups for—and from—the Suburban Consumption of the Monstrous.

Suburban Consumption of the Monstrous is an anthology of American freeform live action horror roleplaying games that use the themes of food and consumption to explore horror in suburban environments. Published by Pelgrane Press—better known for Trail of Cthulhu and 13th Age and similar roleplaying games—following a successful Kickstarter campaign, Suburban Consumption of the Monstrous is written and designed by Banana Chan and Sadia Bies, and contains a total of fourteen ‘Live Action Role Playing’ games or LARPs. These are not the traditional fantasy LARPS with multiple participants wielding foam weapons, but much smaller, more intimate affairs, that emphasise drama and tension. This is done via the set-up and then through character design and prompts. The players are free to interpret these prompts within the play, but these LARPS are designed to tell a particular story even if the outcome will vary from one playthrough to the next. The format and style is influenced by the Nordic style, but the fourteen here are classified as American freeform LARPS. All fourteen though, are reminiscent of murder mystery parties, each twisted into their own American horror story.

Suburban Consumption of the Monstrous opens with a short explanation of what LARPS, before delving into a discussion of calibration tools and setting expectations, essentially safety tools. Some of these are particular to LARPS, like ‘Tap and Scratch’, tap being used to indicate that a player wants to step out of a scene, ‘scratch’ to indicate that a player is enjoying a scene. Others, such as ‘Lines and Veils’ and the ‘X-Card’ will be familiar to standard tabletop roleplaying games. There are notes too on expectations for solo play, since some of the LARPs in the anthology are designed for one, and the experience of play can be made all the more intense because of the solitary situation. There is advice too for how to handle the debriefing following a solo LARP, necessary because being designed for one, there is no scope for post-play discussion with others as there is in a standard LARP with more participants.

The fourteen LARPs in Suburban Consumption of the Monstrous range widely in terms of length and number of participants. From one to as many as eight players, and from under an hour to no more than three. All follow the same format. This includes, obviously, the playing time and the number of players, but to this are listed content warnings, tone and media touchstones—inspirational reading and watching, calibration tools—safety tools to be observed for the particular LARP, and items needed. The latter typically begin with a dinner meal and a table, and can be as simple as print-outs of the LARP’s prompt cards and a mannequin, or as complex as an unusual ingredient, a washcloth, a bathtub, a cup of water, a coin, and a pair of pyjamas. Others require video recordings, particular room types, and more. Following some background there is always a guide to how the LARP will work, but beyond that, each of the LARPs will vary. Many include character and prompt cards that are required in order to play.

Suburban Consumption of the Monstrous opens with ‘A Housewife in Her Twenties’, a solo affair in which a housewife—who happens to be a siren—who goes through the steps of preparing to have her husband come home from work. Doing her make-up, dressing, and preparing and cooking the evening meal, before sitting down to eat—and all this is actually doing those things rather than describing acting them out as you would in a roleplaying game. Throughout there are prompts and questions as to how you react, and there is potential here for transgression, and it is intentionally designed to scritch and scratch and needle, both physically and emotionally. Similarly, ‘TV Dinner’ is very personal as the player, living alone, enjoys a takeout meal, and suddenly realises that someone in the television series he is watching is talking to him. This explores loneliness and what might change as a result of the interaction. All three of the solo LARPs here have the feel more of solo journalling games, although the LARP aspect calls for a physicality that most journalling games do not.

‘My Love, A Poison’ is designed for two players. It is about a relationship that is about to founder, one poisoning the other after discovering their infidelity. It is intimate, consensually so, the player poisoner lacing the victim’s food with an unusual flavour. There is no reveal in the sense that the poisoned participant is caught unaware, both players knowing from the starter who is the poisoner and the poisoned. ‘Goodbye Father’ is not dissimilar. It is for three players, all taking the roles of monstrous siblings who want to escape the constraints their father has placed on their lives and have jointly decided to kill and consume him. The tension and horror of knowing what is coming is ratchetted up by much of the play being done in silence, communication being done via notes or even texts, except when Father speaks, and ultimately when he is dead and they escape. Then they freely find their voices… ‘Love and Betrayal’ begins with three of its protagonists waking up to encounter a Personal Assistant hurrying to get them to rehearsals for scenes from a soap opera. As they do so, the Personal Assistant interrupts with notes from the ‘Director’ on how he wants them to perform, stuck to their scripts becoming increasingly revelatory with secrets about themselves rather than their characters in the soap opera. It is short and direct and very quickly the players will learn that their characters are in a seriously perilous situation. For more players—as many as six—is ‘What Lies Beneath’ is another family affair, which begins on a sombre note. One of their number, the youngest, recently died, and there are revelations about his death to be made by each of the other members of the family. The LARP requires a fair bit of set-up in terms of questions, both as a group and a player. There is a lot in this LARP that is unspoken, and that includes quite literally the ‘Unspoken’, an unacknowledged presence that literally lurks under the table. The ‘Unspoken’ is almost the LARP’s director, using certain actions to indicate that someone is lying, when to reveal secrets, and ultimately to replace one of the family. It is weird and requires quite a lot upon the part of the person playing the ‘Unspoken’.

Physically, Suburban Consumption of the Monstrous is a lovely book. It is well written, with clear and careful instructions and advice. The artwork is a colourful range of the weird and the disturbing, each piece pointing to the horrors to come in the LARPs that follow. Thankfully, the tooth motif on the dust jacket does not follow through into the pages of the anthology.

Inspired by films such as Get Out and Hereditary, television series like Hannibal and Sharp Objects, the French folk tale Bluebeard, and Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1944 play No Exit, Suburban Consumption of the Monstrous is a demanding set of horrifying situations, fraught with emotion and tension that preys upon the participants, whilst asking a lot of them in terms of commitment. Players new to LARPS, even mature players—which is what the anthology demands—may find that too much, even with the excellent advice on safety tools and running each one. Nevertheless, they likely benefit from the presence and guidance of more experienced players. Who, of course, will find a great deal to engage with and run here. In terms of physical set-up and commitment, the contents of Suburban Consumption of the Monstrous are less demanding, because they are all designed to be run at home.

Suburban Consumption of the Monstrous is an excellent anthology of LARPs that brings the horror of the family and its relationships to the perfect venue—at the dinner table—and keeps it at home.

—oOo—

Pelgrane Press will be at UK Games Expo which takes place on Friday, May 31st to Sunday June 2nd, 2024.

Solo Stakes

You wake. You are in a hospital bed. There is an IV in your arm and you are pretty sure you have been shot from the injury in your side. From the voices and the view from the window, you think you are in Hungary. You have no idea how you got here… Do you have amnesia? You can recall the sharp taste of blood, running through some woods, something swooping down at you and shrieking… Did you bite your tongue? Were you chased? And if so, by what, a bird? This is the set-up for ‘Never say Dead’, the first of three scenarios, which together form the basis of a mini-campaign for Night’s Black Agents: Solo Ops. Published by Pelgrane Press, this a campaign framework for Night’s Black Agents: the Vampire Spy Thriller RPG, the roleplaying game in which the Player Characters are ex-secret agents who have learned that their former employers are controlled by vampires and decide to take down the vampiric conspiracy before the vampires take them. Night’s Black Agents offers a range of tools which the Game Master, or Director, can design the vampire conspiracy and the vampire threat, from psychic alien leeches to the traditional children of Transylvania, and set the tone and style of the espionage, from the high octane of the James Bond franchise to the dry and mundane grittiness of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. What Night’s Black Agents: Solo Ops does is combine Night’s Black Agents with the GUMSHOE One-2-One System first seen in Cthulhu Confidential. This enables the Director to run and the player to experience the intensity and intrigue of an action-horror film.

Night’s Black Agents: Solo Ops is more than just the set-up for a trilogy of scenarios. It provides the rules for the GUMSHOE One-2-One System—adjusted to fit the setting of Night’s Black Agents—and the means for the Director to create her own. Just like Night’s Black Agents and the GUMSHOE System, an Agent in Night’s Black Agents: Solo Ops and the GUMSHOE One-2-One System has two types of Abilities—Investigative Abilities and General Abilities. Investigative Abilities, such as Cryptography and Negotiation, are used to gain information. If the Investigator has the Investigative Ability, he receives the information or the clue. General Abilities, like Driving and Sense Trouble, are more traditional in that their use requires dice to be rolled and a test passed to determine success or failure. Night’s Black Agents: Solo Ops then deviates from this in order to account for the fact that there is only the one Investigator rather than many as in Night’s Black Agents. With multiple players, all of the Investigative Abilities would be accounted across the Investigators. Not so in Night’s Black Agents: Solo Ops. So, when an Agent lacks an Investigative Ability, he can instead turn to an NPC or source for help as a Contact. A Contact can be written into a scenario, but an Agent can convert an NPC into a Contact or a player can create one during play. In Night’s Black Agents, Investigative Abilities have pools of points which can be spent to gain extra clues about a situation, but in Night’s Black Agents, the Agent has Pushes, which the player can spend to gain the extra information or a benefit. This applies to any Investigative Ability and could be used to gain the Agent extra information using the Interrogation Investigative Ability, gain greater insight into a suspect using the Detect Bullshit Investigative Ability, and so on. An Agent begins a scenario with three Pushes and can earn more through play.

In Night’s Black Agents, General Abilities also have pools of points, which are then expended to modify dice rolls for tests. In Night’s Black Agents: Solo Ops, General Abilities have two six-sided dice, which are also rolled on Tests. Tests are rolled when there is the possibility of failure in a situation, such as getting past a doorman to break into a suspect’s office or fleeing from the inhuman monster found in said suspect’s office, and are divided into two types. In either case, the player rolls the dice one at a time and totals their values. This is important because some Tests can be overcome with the roll of the one die rather than two dice. The Challenge is the more complex and more interesting of the two.

A Challenge gives three results—‘Advance’, ‘Hold’, and ‘Setback’. The ‘Advance’ is the equivalent of ‘Yes, and…’ and indicates a successful attempt with an extra benefit. This benefit is called an Edge and can prove useful later in the investigation. In addition, if the Challenge was overcome with the roll of a single die, then the Investigator is rewarded with an additional Push. The ‘Setback’ is the equivalent of ‘No, and…’ and indicates a failed attempt with an added Problem that will hamper the investigation. The ‘Hold’ lies somewhere in between with the Investigator no better or worse off, and also without an Edge or a Problem. It is also possible for the Investigator to suffer an Extra Problem in order to gain an additional die to roll in the hope of gaining an ‘Advance’. A player can gain extra dice for a Challenge by accepting an Extra Problem or having his Agent perform a Stunt, which uses dice from another General Ability. This requires a little explanation of how it works and it depletes the use of that General Ability until the Agent effectively rests. Effectively, what a Challenge does is codify a set of narrative outcomes that can help or hinder an Agent, whilst still pushing the narrative of the scenario forward.

In comparison, a Quick Test requires a simple roll to gain an ‘Advance’ result. The structure of Night’s Black Agents: Solo Ops and its scenarios presents Challenges in clear test boxes, and both Edges and Problems as essentially cards that are given to the player to add to his Agent. Fights, chases, infiltrating a base, and so on, are all handled as Challenges. Night’s Black Agents: Solo Ops is action-orientated, so there is the possibility of an Agent getting killed. The consequences differ greatly between Night’s Black Agents and Night’s Black Agents: Solo Ops. In Night’s Black Agents, the death of an Agent can easily be replaced whereas in Night’s Black Agents: Solo Ops, the death means the end of the investigation and the scenario, so whilst fights are dangerous, they are not lethal—and that applies to the NPCs or vampires as much as the Agent. The Agent can suffer debilitating injury or loss, but can recover through the ‘Take Time to Recover’ action. Similarly, the antagonist, whether mundane or monstrous, is not killed, but suffers a loss that will benefit the Agent in some way, represented by an Edge. However, this only applies in the early scenes of a scenario, and as a scenario progresses, fights and confrontations become increasingly deadly.

An Agent also has Mastery Edges which are attached to specific General Abilities. These reflect both the Agent’s intensive training and experience, but also how capable the Agent is in terms of the cinematic genre of Night’s Black Agents: Solo Ops. They typically provide a one-time effect which ignores the rules in a particular situation or grant a bonus to the dice rolls on a Challenge. For example, ‘The Nick of Time’ is a Preparedness Edge that enables an Agent to have done something retroactively that helps him in his current situation, such as planting a bomb, bribing a custom official, reconnoitring an avenue of escape, and so forth, whereas ‘Intuition’ for the Sense Trouble General Ability grants an extra die on a Challenge. An Agent begins play with three Edges and discards them after use.

As in action films, there are consequences to an Agent’s activities. These are tracked by three cumulative factors. Heat is gained for public fights or explosions, people getting hurt, and committing criminal acts, and as it rises, it can trigger Problems that affect an Agent’s progress or actual Challenges. Injury represents physical impairment, whilst Shadow determines how aware the supernatural threat is of the Agent. It is gained by encountering supernatural entities, attracting their attention, thwarting their conspiracies, and recalling previous encounters with vampires. The latter is important for the Agent for the three scenarios in Night’s Black Agents: Solo Ops, since she begins play suffering from amnesia. Shadow will also Problems to an Agent’s progress, but can be lost by killing vampires or fleeing to another city, or suppressed by using garlic or crossing running water. Both Heat and Shadow can also trigger another effect, and that is Blowback. This can be a repercussion, retaliation, or unintended consequences of an Agent’s actions and is typically framed as a Blowback scene that the Director inserts into the narrative.

In Night’s Black Agents, an Agent has the Stability General Ability, which is used to measure an Agent’s ability to withstand the supernatural abilities of the vampires he will face, as well as those of the other monsters that he might encounter—demons, ghosts, and ghouls, as well as Renfields. In Night’s Black Agents: Solo Ops, the Agent instead has the Cool General Ability. This is used to overcome stressful situations and resist the compulsions that a vampire might place upon an Agent. Mechanically, it will use Challenges in most situations and poor results will trigger problems for the Agent. Many of the powers and effects that a vampire can have on an Agent are modelled through Problems.

For the player, Night’s Black Agents: Solo Ops presents a good explanation of how an Agent is presented, how the rules work, and on how to play. This includes details on tradecraft and notably, the ‘Bucharest Rules’. These are akin to the ‘Moscow Rules’ that guided Cold War operations in Eastern European and they are similar, but given a suitably vampiric twist for Night’s Black Agents: Solo Ops. They emphasise that although the situation is dangerous and that the Agent can die, he can win, that he needs to be proactive, he should follow the money and use HUMINT, build networks of contacts and allies, and always know where the exit is. This is supported by several factors. First, that the play is more about interpreting the clues found rather than the finding of them (and that if unsure of where to go next, looking for more clues is always a good choice), and second, that the Player Character, the Agent, is the hero of the story. This is contrasted by the fact that Night’s Black Agents: Solo Ops literally pulls the safety net out from under the player. No longer can he rely upon his fellow players and their Agents for advice or help. Barring contacts and allies within the game, the player and his Agent is on his own. That is a scary situation for the player—in addition to his Agent facing vampires—and the player is being asked to be proactive from the start of a scenario to the end. In other words, he is always in the spotlight.

For the Director, Night’s Black Agents: Solo Ops explains how the rules work and gives advice on how to run the game. This applies not just to the three scenarios in Night’s Black Agents: Solo Ops, but also in general as the advice includes a guide to creating and designing vampires, conspiracies, scenes, Challenges, Problems, and more for her own scenarios. This includes a full range of sample Challenges. Night’s Black Agents: Solo Ops still employs the ‘Conspyramid’, the pyramid structure used to map out the vampire conspiracy, with the vampire leaders of the conspiracy sitting atop both the structure and the organisation and the base containing the outer edges of the conspiracy. However, here it is much narrower, reflecting the tighter focus upon the single Agent and his investigation in Night’s Black Agents: Solo Ops. The advice throughout the section for the Director is fulsome.

Half of Night’s Black Agents: Solo Ops is dedicated to its three scenarios. The protagonist for these is Leyla Khan, an ex-MI6 officer who has been a thrall of the vampires of the vampires for several years at the start of the first scenario. Not only will she have to confront her former masters, but she will also have to deal with the consequences of her own half-remembered past and its own monstrous activities. The antagonists are vampires, Linea Dracula, descended from Vlad Tepes and surprisingly ‘vanilla’ in terms of their design and abilities. This, though, works for an action-horror like that of the three scenarios in Night’s Black Agents: Solo Ops because it does not complicate the story or the antagonists. Plus, there is plenty of scope for the Director to modify them if she so chooses. That said, the Director could easily ignore the vampire aspect of Night’s Black Agents: Solo Ops and create scenarios focusing on more traditional espionage stories and they could be as tense and as exciting, though not necessarily as horrifying.

The mini campaign opens in classic The Bourne Identity style in ‘Never Say Dead’. Leyla Khan is in hospital with no memory of how she got there and very quickly she receives a message that someone is coming for her. ‘Never Say Dead’ is about escape, discovering the first hints of the vampiric conspiracy that Leyla has been enthralled in for the past few years and a conspiracy within the vampiric conspiracy, and perhaps arm herself to take the conspiracies down. Having escaped Hungary in ‘Never Say Dead’, Leyla Khan begins to do what she is trained to do and that is follow the money. In ‘No Grave For Traitors’ this leads her to Spain where she gets caught up in a drug war and from there follows a courier to London and an auction for a number of odd antiquities, and ultimately to their strange origins in Transylvania. Although there is plenty of action, there is more of an emphasis on investigation in this second scenario. The third scenario, ‘The Deniable Woman’, Leyla is given a mission by her former employer, MI6, to look for a missing agent in Moscow who has his own preoccupations. The investigation leads in another direction away from the central conspiracy, though it is tangentially connected. All three scenarios are very good, being tense, fraught affairs with a mix of exciting action scenes and tight interactions. Some of the scenarios are truly memorable and consequently, definitely not worth spoiling. All three are part of the same conspiracy involving Leyla Khan, but together, they do not form a beginning, a middle, and an end. They are definitely a beginning, perhaps with a middle, but leaving the end for the Director to create.

All three scenarios in Night’s Black Agents: Solo Ops are well organised. They include a backstory and an overview of the objectives that Leyla will be aiming to attain—even though she may not be aware of them at the beginning of a scenario, entry vectors for Leyla, a flowchart of the scenes, its cast, and then the various scenes with their associated Challenges and Problems and Edges to be gained through play. Each scenario’s range of Problems and Edges is given after the end of the scenario. Each scenario ends with a discussion of its aftermath and possible Blowback scenes and consequences. ‘No Grave For Traitors’ and ‘The Deniable Woman’ also add starting problems which the player can choose from as a consequence of her ongoing story and confrontation with her past.

One aspect of Night’s Black Agents: Solo Ops—and also of Cthulhu Confidential—is that the GUMSHOE One-2-One System and having a single player and a single Game Master, is that it can be played online just as easily as it can face-to-face. Playing online means losing a certain degree of interaction between the players and the Game Master, both because of the technology and the loss of visual cues that act as a buffer, but Night’s Black Agents: Solo Ops and GUMSHOE One-2-One System ameliorates that because its focus is always on the one player and the one Game Master and their focus is on each other.

As good as it is very much all about Leyla Khan and it does leave her story hanging, unfinished. There are rules for a player to create his own Agent, but that really, is the focus of missions created by the Director rather than those in the book. It is possible for the three missions to be played using a player-created Agent, but this will require some adjustment upon the part of the Director. The three scenarios in Night’s Black Agents: Solo Ops are really the start of a campaign, rather than a complete one. Essentially, it is up to the Director to create the next parts of the campaign. She is given all of the tools and advice to do that, but at the same time, it is disappointing not to be able to pick up where ‘The Deniable Woman’ left off and quickly find out what happens next. There is another scenario for Leyla Khan, ‘The Best of Intentions’, but that is all so far. There can be no doubt that a sequel to Night’s Black Agents: Solo Ops, bringing her story to a close would be more than welcome.

Physically, Night’s Black Agents: Solo Ops is very well presented and written, and the artwork is decent. The book itself is a pleasure to read.

In comparison to the earlier Cthulhu Confidential, Night’s Black Agents: Solo Ops is a much tighter, more focused affair. This is due to it being focused on the one protagonist and the one antagonist, essentially, the single Agent and vampires. This also has the consequence of making Leyla Khan’s story more personal for the player and more involving. The result is that Night’s Black Agents: Solo Ops provides a great playing experience, tense and exciting, telling the player to, “Buckle up, you’re in the spotlight now and your fate truly is in your hands” all in readiness to make his Agent the star of their own action-horror film.

Terror for Two Again

Even Death Can Die is an anthology of scenarios for Cthulhu Confidential, the GUMSHOE One-2-One System version for Trail of Cthulhu, the roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror. Published by Pelgrane Press, Cthulhu Confidential is designed to be played head-to-head, with the player and his Investigator delving into a mystery, the Game Master helping to facilitate this and tell the story of the Investigator’s efforts. In addition to the new rules and a guide to Cthulhu Mythos and Cosmic Horror for beginners, Cthulhu Confidential also included three scenarios that were the highlight of the book. Each includes a different protagonist and is by a different author, and each brought noir horror and a different code of honour to a different city in the thirties and forties. The three Investigators are Dexter ‘Dex’ Raymond, a Private Investigator in Los Angeles, 1937, obviously inspired by works of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammet; Vivian Sinclair, an investigative journalist and lady detective in thirties New York, inspired by Kerry Greenwood and Dorothy L. Sayers; and Langston Montgomery Wright, an African American invalided veteran Private Investigator in Washington D.C. towards the end of World War II, inspired by Walter Mosely and Chester Himes. These are created and written by Robin D. Laws for Dexter ‘Dex’ Raymond, Ruth Tillman for Vivian Sinclair, and Chris Spivey for Langston Montgomery Wright, and in each case, the authors also address the social and cultural aspects of their settings. This is where Even Death Can Die picks up.

Even Death Can Die consists of not one, but nine scenarios. Three for each of the three investigators. Over the course of the nonet, the Investigators will get thrown across time and space, back into their memories, and confront some familiar creatures and entities of the Mythos, get involved in local and national politics, and more. Each of the three scenarios for each Investigator is designed to be played as their first investigation or as sequels to the scenarios in Cthulhu Confidential for their respective Investigators. Thus, ‘The Fathomless Sleep’ in Los Angeles as Dexter ‘Dex’ Raymond, ‘Fatal Frequencies’ in New York as Vivian Sinclair, and ‘Capitol Colour’ Washington DC as Langston Montgomery Wright. All nine are complete with their own protagonists, settings, and Problems and Edges, and all the player has to do as part of his preparation is ensure that the Investigator for the scenario being played has a Problem that will make the Investigation all the more personally difficult. This can be a new one from the scenario, or the one carried over from the investigations in Cthulhu Confidential. In addition, throughout the anthology there are sections marked as ‘Handle With Care’, which are entirely optional, but which highlight a social situation or attitude that was unfortunately prevalent during the period when the individual scenarios are set.

Even Death Can Die does not waste any time in getting down to business. Following a quick explanation, it opens with ‘One For the Money’, the first of three scenarios for Langston Montgomery Wright, set in and around Washington DC. It opens with him being hired—in a menacing manner—by Rhino Jones, a local gangster, to find out who and why some attacked and killed his men just as they were conducting a robbery on a truck. This gets the anthology off to a great start as our protagonist attempts to locate the bodies of those killed, possible survivors, and whatever it was that was in the back of the truck. The scenario not so much veers into the Pulp genre as leans into it with its combination of corrupt businessmen and politicians, gangsters and the Mob, Nazi spies, and what those in the know hope is a war-winning secret weapon prototype. It all feels just a bit like a combination of The Rocketeer and ‘From Beyond’, made all the more woozy when the device gets turned on and sends everyone’s senses for a loop.

If ‘One For the Money’ is a just a bit bonkers, then for Langston Montgomery Wright ‘The Shadow Over Washington’ gets weird. He is hired to investigate why a young engineering student, placed in a sanatorium by his parents on medical grounds, is not getting better and does not appear to be receiving the treatment he should. Surprisingly, getting to the patient and to the doctor treating him is relatively easy, but only in following up on another private investigator’s enquiries does look like there are others suffering from the same problem as the student. Langston Montgomery Wright finds himself on bloody trail that leads to a strange youth movement, even stranger doings at Washington National Airport, and then an utterly weird situation in which he is both someone else and somewhere else. Similar situations have been depicted in many a scenario of Lovecraftian investigative horror, but always to NPCs. Here the author makes it both personal and desperate and it will probably the standout scene for the scenario.

If ‘One For the Money’ is bonkers and ‘The Shadow Over Washington’ weird, the third scenario for Langston Montgomery Wright gets horribly personal, delving back in his own terrible memories and those of others, depicting the terrible racism of their respective pasts. In ‘Preacher Man Blues’, Langston Montgomery Wright is hired by a number of different denomination churches to investigate a traveling fire and brimstone preacher who has come to the capitol. They want him gone because he is attracting their congregations and the police want him gone—at the very least—because he is disturbing the peace. This is a nasty scenario with some shocking scenes (with more shocking content in the optional descriptions), plus a very chilling interview with J. Edgar Hoover that results in our private investigator having the full weight of the law upon his back. Fortunately, the shocking scenes are handled with care and the cultural aspects of Langston Montgomery Wright’s own community portrayed with sensitivity. Which really does make the horror of ‘Preacher Man Blues’ that much worse…

‘The Howling Fog’ shifts the action to New York in the first of the three scenarios for investigative journalist Vivian Sinclair. An undercover investigation into the city’s mob run clipjoints where the male clientele are fleeced for as much money as possible turns nasty when the boss, a Made Man, is found dead on the street with his head all bent out of shape. As the mobsters begin to circle each other, Vivian Sinclair widens her investigation to include Harlem’s famous Cotton Club, but the investigation will ultimately lead back where she started. There is a pleasing contrast in interreacting and roleplaying with the women who work in the clipjoints and the increasingly wary members of the mob in the scenario, and as a whole, the scenario also contrasts with the previous three in being a much smaller scale investigation. It is also much grubbier and sleazier as you would expect given its setting and subject matter.

Labour relations are the subject of Vivian Sinclair’s next investigation in ‘Ex Astoria’. Reporting on a riot between striking labourers working on a big tunnelling project under New York and scab labour brought, reveals that the labour dispute is not without substance. The labourers, many of whom suffer from the bends due to rapid changes in pressure working underground are suffering from other injuries and a strange wasting disease following a badly handled demolition in the tunnel and exposure to an acidic fluid. Investigation means getting into the site itself and there Vivian Sinclair will discover the source of the corrosive liquid and a malign influence, which if not contained, will result in an environmental disaster for New York. The scenario has a neat epilogue which foreshadows a great event in the city in 1939—the World Fair—and it would be interesting to see a sequel to ‘Ex Astoria’ set at that event.

Vivian Sinclair gets some time off—or at least, she almost does—in her third and final scenario in the anthology. In ‘Boundary Waters’, she accepts an invitation to a benefit gala aboard a gambling ship out in international waters off New York, hosted by her third cousin, society heiress Tabitha ‘Tabby’ Sinclair. However, Vivian Sinclair has got wind that ship is doing more than just hosting booze, dice, and dancing parties, it is regularly making a diversion to offshore Long Island, where it locks the passengers in their cabins because of the weather and even has passengers who do not play the tables. What could the Buena Vida being doing in international waters off new York in 1938? The scenario balances dealing with Tabitha and her charity event, the private investigator hired by Tabitha’s father to keep a watch on her, a murder, and the odd activity of several illegal aliens aboard ship. It is a really good mix and having it set aboard ship—sadly without any deckplans—serves to keep everything shipshape and Bristol fashion and the investigation focused. If things do not go her way, there is a potentially nasty ending for Vivian Sinclair, but otherwise this is a nicely done period piece made all the more sparky by the presence of a noted literary wit.

The last trilogy of scenarios begins in traditional fashion when a widow walks into the offices of Dexter ‘Dex’ Raymond and asks him to confirm that the death of her husband in a car accident was not a suicide, which is what the insurance company suspects. ‘The House Up in the Hills’ looks at first to be an ordinary case, but when the private investigator visits the house of the husband’s new client, it begins to look stranger. The house itself is not only strange, but the background to its original architect took a tragic turn with a suicide attempt—as when explained by the architect from the high security cell of the psychiatric ward that is his home now—the house itself wanted to kill itself! Further investigation points toward the client’s friends and colleagues, who together once formed a sorcerous coven. Are any of them still practicing is a question that Dexter ‘Dex’ Raymond will have to answer as he suffers attacks by swarms of rats and illusions. The scenario—the only one in the anthology to include the traditional handouts of Lovecraftian investigative roleplaying—crosses elements of The Dreams in the Witch House with Rats in the Walls, but has potential to end as a weird whodunnit.

Film props are the MacGuffin in ‘High Voltage Kill’, the second scenario for Dexter ‘Dex’ Raymond in the anthology. Inspired by the film He Walked by Night and the true crime case which inspired that, the private investigator is hired to locate several key set pieces from 1931’s Frankenstein, all with an electrical theme, and all recently stolen him in a stick-up robbery. The clues all point to a desperate crook, who will stop at nothing to achieve his aims and who somehow is connected to some ordinary folks turned strangely unstoppable killers. This is the most complex of the nine scenarios in terms of its scene timing and the Game Master will have a good grasp of the options provided. More Science Fiction horror than eldritch horror, ‘High Voltage Kill’ is also the most combative scenario in the anthology.

The final scenario in Even Death Can Die is also the third of Dexter ‘Dex’ Raymond’s three cases. In ‘Skin and Teeth’, gangsters hire him to do them a favour: find out exactly what it is that a maid found under a bed of a hotel that they own. What she found looks like the completely flensed skin of a human male! From this gruesome start, connecting one crook to another, points to the involvement of a former city councillor whom the last crook is definite about said former city councillor being an imposter. He is also absolutely definite about wanting the names of board members at the city’s Department of Water and Power, likely connected to an environmental disaster about ten years before. Much like ‘The House Up in the Hills’ before it, ‘Skin and Teeth’ involves interviewing multiple persons before Dexter ‘Dex’ Raymond can locate and confront the ancient forces behind the bloody skin bag left behind, who can be found deep under the city, in a temple to an alien god. As with the scenarios before it, ‘Skin and Teeth’ is a rich and meaty investigation.

Physically, Even Death Can Die is as crisply presented a black and white book as was Cthulhu Confidential. It needs a slight edit in places, but is well written and engaging. It is very lightly illustrated and there are relatively few maps in the scenarios. The Game Master will definitely need to refer to Cthulhu Confidential for details of the three cities where the anthology’s scenarios are set.

One of the great features of Cthulhu Confidential with its use of the GUMSHOE One-2-One System, is that it makes Lovecraftian investigative horror a much more intense and personal experience in terms of both the investigative process and the horror itself. This feature is undoubtedly upheld in this anthology. The result is that Even Death Can Die makes both its horror and its roleplaying much more personal, as well as challenging because the player is on his own, and thus more intimate, and it does so with great set of scenarios, all strongly grounded in their time and place. Cthulhu Confidential, the combination of the background to Trail of Cthulhu with the GUMSHOE One-2-One System, is very well served with Even Death Can Die.

Terror for Two

The aim of Cthulhu Confidential is to take a player and a Game Master “down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honour—by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world.” And it is specifically a player and a Game Master, for Cthulhu Confidential is designed to be played head-to-head, with the player and his Investigator delving into a mystery, the Game Master helping to facilitate this and tell the story of the Investigator’s efforts. Published by Pelgrane Press, Cthulhu Confidential is set in the same world as the publisher’s Trail of Cthulhu, the roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror, but with major changes—most of them mechanical. This is to facilitate the change from the clue-orientated nature of Trail of Cthulhu using the GUMSHOE System and for several Investigators to the single player and single Game Master and the GUMSHOE One-2-One System. In addition to including the new rules, Cthulhu Confidential includes a guide for the Game Master to create her own GUMSHOE One-2-One System scenarios, a guide to Cthulhu Mythos and Cosmic Horror for beginners, and three scenarios. These are the highlight of Cthulhu Confidential, each with a different protagonist and by a different author, and each bringing noir horror and a different code of honour to another city in the thirties and forties.

Cthulhu Confidential assumes that the Game Master and player alike are familiar with both roleplaying and the cosmic horror of H.P. Lovecraft’s fiction. There are introductions to both in the book, but they are not its starting point. Similarly, there is a set of Starter Notes for the experienced GUMSHOE System Game Master in the appendix, but again this is not the starting point in Cthulhu Confidential. This the nature of the Investigator and the investigative process for one. Just like Trail of Cthulhu and the GUMSHOE System, an Investigator in Cthulhu Confidential and the GUMSHOE One-2-One System has two types of Abilities—Investigative Abilities and General Abilities. Investigative Abilities, such as Assess Honesty and Research, are used to gain information. If the Investigator has the Investigative Ability, he receives the information or the clue. General Abilities, like Driving and Shadowing, are more traditional in that their use requires dice to be rolled and a test passed to determine success or failure. Cthulhu Confidential then deviates from this in order to account for the fact that there is only the one Investigator rather than many as in Trail of Cthulhu. With multiple players, all of the Investigative Abilities would be accounted across the Investigators. Not so in Cthulhu Confidential. So, when an Investigator lacks an Investigative Ability, he can instead turn to an NPC or source for help. In Trail of Cthulhu, Investigative Abilities have pools of points which can be spent to gain extra clues about a situation, but in Cthulhu Confidential, the Investigator has Pushes, which the player can spend to gain the extra information or a benefit. This applies to any Investigative Ability and could be used to spring the Investigator from jail on a bogus arrest using the Law Investigative Ability, persuade the doorman at a suspect’s office that you have not been asking about his whereabouts, and so on. An Investigator begins a scenario with four Pushes and can earn more through play.

In Trail of Cthulhu, General Abilities also have pools of points, which are then expended to modify dice rolls for tests. In Cthulhu Confidential, General Abilities have one or two six-sided dice, which are also rolled on Tests. Tests are rolled when there is the possibility of failure in a situation, such as getting past a doorman to break into a suspect’s office or fleeing from the inhuman monster found in said suspect’s office, and are divided into two types. In either case, the player rolls the dice—if his Investigator has more than one—one at a time and totals their values. This is important because some Tests can be overcome with the roll of the one die rather than two dice. The Challenge is the more complex and more interesting of the two.

A Challenge gives three results—‘Advance’, ‘Hold’, and ‘Setback’. The ‘Advance’ is the equivalent of ‘Yes, and…’ and indicates a successful attempt with an extra benefit. This benefit is called an Edge and can prove useful later in the investigation. In addition, if the Challenge was overcome with the roll of a single die, then the Investigator is rewarded with an additional Push. The ‘Setback’ is the equivalent of ‘No, and…’ and indicates a failed attempt with an added Problem that will hamper the investigation. The ‘Hold’ lies somewhere in between with the Investigator no better or worse off, and also without an Edge or a Problem. It is also possible for the Investigator to suffer an Extra Problem in order to gain an additional die to roll in the hope of gaining an ‘Advance’.

For example, Dexter ‘Dex’ Raymond, the Private Investigator presented as the first protagonist in Cthulhu Confidential has been hired by the wife of Lorenzo Calderone, nightclub owner and suspected mob associate. She wants a divorce and suspects her husband of cooking the books to reduce her settlement and alimony. She does not think that the real account books are kept at home or the nightclub, but at the office of her husband’s lawyer, Crispin Grimes. To get those books, Raymond needs to get past the doorman and into the office. So, the Challenge could look like this:

COOKED BOOKS
Stealth
Advance 6+: You get past the doorman and into Grimes’ office where you find the account books. No one knows the books are missing and when they find out, who took them. Earn Edge: ‘Crooked Books.’
Hold 3-5: The doorman does his rounds just as you are about to break in and you are not going to get past him now.
Setback 2 or less: You initially get past the doorman, but just as you are about to get into Grimes’ office, he spots on his rounds. Triggers Challenge ‘Flee the Building.’
Extra Problem: ‘There was this one guy poking around…’

EDGE: ‘Crooked Books.’ You got the account books Mrs Calderone wanted, so case settled. But if you keep a copy yourself, it could keep her husband or his lawyer off your back.
PROBLEM: ‘There was this one guy poking around…’ The theft puts Lorenzo Calderone and Crispin Grimes on edge. A Push is needed to successfully use any Interpersonal skill with both.

In comparison, a Quick Test requires to simple roll to gain an ‘Advance’ result. The structure of Cthulhu Confidential and its scenarios presents Challenges as clear, black boxes of test and both Edges and Problems as essentially cards that are given to the player to add to his Investigator. Fights and both Horror and Madness, key elements of the two genres for Cthulhu Confidential—noir detective stories and Cosmic Horror—are handled as Challenges, typically using the Fighting General Ability for combat and the Stability General Ability when confronted with something horrifying. This is another place where Cthulhu Confidential differs from the multiplayer Trail of Cthulhu, because in Trail of Cthulhu, the Investigators can afford to lose one of their number, whether from a fight or madness, and such a loss is easily replaced. Not so in Cthulhu Confidential. Here a loss means the end of the investigation and the scenario, so whilst fights are dangerous, they are not lethal—and that applies to the NPCs or monsters as much as the Investigator. The investigator can suffer debilitating injury or loss, but can recover through the ‘Take Time to Recover’ action. Similarly, the antagonist, whether mundane or monstrous, is not killed, but suffers a loss that will benefit the Investigator in some way, represented by an Edge. Encounters or confrontations with horror work in the same fashion, although a ‘Setback’ will penalise the Investigator with a ‘Mythos Shock’ Problem. These cannot always be countered with the ‘Take Time to Recover’ action and instead require an Edge capable of countering a ‘Mythos Shock’ Problem. This is not to say that the Investigator cannot die or be sent mad, but this does not happen mid-story. Instead, it can become all too much at the end. This is especially so if the Investigator is left with a ‘Mythos Shock’ Problem or two or more that he has been unable to deal with in the course of the investigation. The remaining Problem cards will affect the narration of the investigation’s outcome and ending, typically in downbeat fashion to fit the twin genres of Cthulhu Confidential. If the Investigator survives, his player can retain these Problems to carry over into the next scenario—some he has to and some he can choose—and they will continue to influence the Investigator’s efforts until addressed. Even at the start of the first scenario, an Investigator has an ongoing problem, although the player is typically given a choice as to what that problem is.

For the Game Master there is advice on running the GUMSHOE One-2-One System. This covers guiding the player (gently) and avoiding the sticking points common to mystery and investigation scenarios, taking into account the nature of its single player and Investigator play style. This includes advice on running both sources and challenges and there is similar treatment on creating scenarios, building Challenges, and designing Edges. This is backed up with numerous examples which the Game Master can use for inspiration as well as model for her own scenarios. The appendix for Cthulhu Confidential includes a Rules Quick Reference, a Handout for New Roleplayers, lists of sources for all three protagonists, a guide to solving cases, sample Player Characters from other GUMSHOE System roleplaying games in the GUMSHOE One-2-One System format, such as an Ordo Veritas Agent from The Esoterrorists and a Mutant Cop from Mutant City Blues, and a set of generic Edges.

Two thirds of Cthulhu Confidential is dedicated to its three investigations and their protagonists, settings, and Problems and Edges. The three Investigators are Dexter ‘Dex’ Raymond, a Private Investigator in Los Angeles, 1937, obviously inspired by works of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammet; Vivian Sinclair, an investigative journalist and lady detective in thirties New York, inspired by Kerry Greenwood and Dorothy L. Sayers; and Langston Montgomery Wright, an African American invalided veteran Private Investigator in Washington D.C. towards the end of World War II, inspired by Walter Mosely and Chester Himes. Each Investigator is accompanied by detailed descriptions of his or her sources and exceptionally good write-ups of their respective cities—Los Angeles, New York, and Washington, D.C. The write-ups are so good, they are better than the actual supplements dedicated to those cities previously published for Lovecraftian investigative roleplaying, and in the case of Washington, D.C., the definitive guide Lovecraftian investigative roleplaying, since no sourcebook has been published for the city, let alone an actual scenario. In addition, all three authors—Robin D. Laws for Dexter ‘Dex’ Raymond, Ruth Tillman for Vivian Sinclair, and Chris Spivey for Langston Montgomery Wright—address the social and cultural aspects of their settings. So, there are discussions of whether Dexter ‘Dex’ Raymond should be a ‘straight white guy’ or not; of Vivian Sinclair’s bisexuality and how to handle violence against women; of handling the racist attitudes that Langston Montgomery Wright will face. The advice is excellent throughout, being inclusive and helpful.

Then each Investigator has his or her own scenario. As Dexter ‘Dex’ Raymond, the player will investigate ‘The Fathomless Sleep’. Fast-living society girl Helen Deakin has fallen into catatonia and her smouldering sister wants to know how this happened in this classic, hardboiled tale of blackmail and dirty money with a dollop of weird mysticism. In ‘Fatal Frequencies’, Vivian Sinclair helps out Sadie Cane, whose fiancé, George Preston, disappeared three days after a murder in his apartment block. What has George got himself messed up in? Langston Montgomery Wright investigates another disappearance, that of Lynette Miller, a riveter, in ‘Capitol Colour’. Last time her father saw her, she had a new job, secret, but highly paid. Where has she gone and what does her disappearance have to do with the war effort? All three scenarios are excellent, detailed and involving, and should keep the player and his Investigator intrigued and enthralled to the end.

Physically, Cthulhu Confidential is a crisply presented black and white book. It needs a slight edit in places, but is well written and engaging. It is not extensively illustrated, but what artwork there is, is not only good, but also captures the shades of grey in the three North American cities and both the protagonists and antagonists the supplement depicts. The use of period maps and other illustrations also enforces each setting’s sense of place.

Cthulhu Confidential provides an intense roleplaying experience. It has elements of classic solo play because of its set-up, especially in the structure of its Challenge mechanics and the Edges and Problems gained through play, but the intensity comes from working with the Game Master and interacting with the NPCs she depicts and doing so alone, pushing the player to rely upon himself and his Investigator’s Abilities rather than having to work with other players and their Investigators. Of course, the involvement of the Game Master means there is more flexibility and scope to adapt when investigating a mystery than there would be in a solo adventure. The end result is that Cthulhu Confidential provides an enthralling and engaging means of play and a one-on-one experience that pushes Lovecraftian investigative roleplay closer to its cinematic and literary influences and models.

[Free RPG Day 2023] Losing Face

Now in its sixteenth year, Free RPG Day for 2023 took place on Saturday, June 24th. As per usual, Free RPG Day consisted of an array of new and interesting little releases, which are traditionally tasters for forthcoming games to be released at GenCon the following August, but others are support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera or a quick-start. Thanks to the generosity of David Salisbury of Fan Boy 3, Fil Baldowski at All Rolled Up, and others, Reviews from R’lyeh was able to get hold of many of the titles released for Free RPG Day, both in the USA and elsewhere.

—oOo—

Losing Face is a quick-start and adventure for Swords of the Serpentine, the swords and sorcery roleplaying game using the GUMSHOE System. Published by Pelgrane Press, this is a roleplaying game of daring heroism, sly politics, and bloody savagery, set in a fantasy city full of skullduggery and death, inspired by the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser and Thieves’ World stories. Since, it uses the GUMSHOE System, Swords of the Serpentine is an investigation-orientated roleplaying game, which means that if a Hero has points in a particular Investigative Ability, he will always be able to find clues related to the ability, and if he has points in that ability, can gain further clues, and then it is up to the players to interpret the clue or clues found to push the story along. Alongside that though, it mixes in social and physical combat so that the Heroes can defeat their opponents through wit, guile, and intimidation as well as with a blade, and sorcery powerful and easy enough to tear a tower apart, if the sorcerer is prepared to accept the corruption to both his body and soul. Losing Face presents the rules for Swords of the Serpentine sufficient enough to play through the scenario, a five-scene mystery which has scope for expansion by the Game Master and for plenty of input by the players, and six pre-generated Heroes ready to be played as part of the scenario.

A Hero in Losing Face and thus Swords of the Serpentine is defined by his Investigative Abilities and their associated pools of points, General Abilities, Allegiances, and Corruption. Investigative Abilities, such as Charm, Vigilance, Forgotten Lore, and Skulduggery, enable a Hero to find clues related to the ability and when spending points from their associated pools, to gain bonuses of various types. This includes increasing the amount of damage inflicted, increase the effectiveness of a General Ability, gain temporary Armour or Grit, create a unique special effect, and more. Investigative Abilities are divided between four categories or roles—Sentinel (a cross between a private investigator and a ghost hunter, because they can sometimes see ghosts), Sorcerer, Thief, and Warrior—and a Hero can rating in any of the Investigative Abilities across the four categories or roles, or specialise in one or two. Allegiances are with factions within the city, like the Ancient Nobility or The Guild of Architects and Canal-Watchers, and can be spent like Investigative Abilities. General Abilities require a six-sided die to be rolled and a player can expend points from the General Ability pool to improve the roll. Typically, the target for this roll is three or four, and for each three points the roll exceeds the target, the attack can affect an extra target. A result of five or more higher than the target indicates an attack is a critical and inflicts an extra die’s worth of damage. Attacks use Warfare, Sway, or Sorcery depending on whether they are physical, social, or sorcerous. These three can also be used to perform Manoeuvres, which do not inflict damage, but do have an effect, like disarming a foe, persuading them, and more.

Corruption represents a Player Character’s capacity to perform sorcery. Points from its pool can be spent to cast powerful spells, but expending Corruption like this triggers a Health check. Whether this fails or succeeds, it causes Corruption, either ‘Internalised’ or ‘Externalised’. If Internalised, it changes something physical about the Player Character, but if ‘Externalised’, it can affect the other Player Characters’ morale or sickens and pollutes the reality in the immediate area. Overall, there is a lot of flexibility to how the players describe their Heroes’ using their Investigative Abilities and General Abilities, and so on.

‘Losing Face’ is the eponymous scenario in the quick-start. It takes place in the constantly sinking city of Eversink where funerary statuary ensures the deceased persons’ place in heaven, but if broken, their spirit is broken or flung out of heaven. Unfortunately, the statues are everywhere and breaking them is both a sin and a crime. The scenario begins with a contact or patron bring them the body of a woman who is all but lifeless, and left without a face! Who is she and how did she end up like this? Numerous clues are provided as to what and who she is. Plus, who did this to her and why? The antagonist of the scenario does indeed have a grand plan, and determining what that is and stopping it will challenge the Player Characters. It is a really good piece of investigative fantasy that should take a session or two to play through and in the process show of the investigative process of Swords of the Serpentine.

Losing Face also includes six pre-generated characters. These include an ageless warrior, a retired church prophet, an under-acolyte in training, a likeable thief, a disinherited noble sorcerer, and an intimidating inquisitor or sentinel. These are slimmed down versions of the full character sheets, but more than adequate for the scenario.

Physically, Losing Face is speedily presented. It rushes through the rules for Swords of the Serpentine in six pages, including quick reference tables for difficulty numbers, sorcery, health, and morale. These are quite handy, as the rules will need careful study to comprehend as there is fair number of options in the terms of ways that the players can spend their characters’ Investigative Ability and General Ability points.

Losing Face is a good introduction to Swords of the Serpentine. The rules are presented in handy, if speedy fashion, and once the players grasp how they work, they provide scope for improvising details and aspects about their Heroes and bringing dynamic action—whether physical, social, or sorcerous—into play. This is packaged with an engaging scenario which again allows scope for some improvisation whilst still having plenty of meaty investigation to get involved in.

An Elvish Endeavour

Long ago, at the beginning of the 13th Age, war raged between the Elves and the Dwarves. The Elf Queen commanded the magic of the wild and the fey capable of defeating her people’s enemy, but could not truly control it. Liris, a nature goddess, voluntarily underwent a ritual to contain this magic by binding her into a vault. The ritual was a success and it bound both the magic and the three elven districts—Greenwood, Darkwood, and Lightwood—to the Elf Queen’s own Thronewood. With the magic, the Elf Queen helped withstand the Dwarven assault and as time passed, the relationship between the Elves and the Dwarves eased and they became allies. Yet the power which Liris helped contain and control and so save the Elves corrupted her and drove her to attempt escape and wreak revenge upon those she blamed for her imprisonment—even though it had been voluntary upon her part. The Elf Queen and her greatest spellcasters from all three districts offered a Key up to perform a great ritual which would ensure that the vault imprisoning Liris would remain closed. Then the Keys were returned to their respective districts and placed in three mystical towers, hidden from those who did not know the means or routes to find them. More recently, the Elf Queen senses that the ritual keeping the vault containing Liris is weakening and needs to be performed again. For that, she needs the three Keys from each of the three districts, but relationships between the Elf Queen and the three districts were not they once were and many of those who readily knew the locations of the three towers have long since died. As the magical bindings on Liris’ vault weaken, her dark influence is being felt across the Thronewood and beyond as shadows and sorrow deepen. With her strength dedicated to withstanding Liris’ influence and preparing for the forthcoming ritual, the Elf Queen needs agents she can trust to find the three mystical towers, assail their heights (or depths), and return in time for her to perform the ritual which will save her kingdom.

This is the set-up for Elven Towers, an adventure for the Champion Tier for 13th Age, the roleplaying game from Pelgrane Press which combines the best elements of both Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition and Dungeons & Dragons, Fourth Edition to give high action combat, strong narrative ties, and exciting play. The adventure requires access to both 13 True Ways and the 13th Age Bestiary to play and mostly obviously, will hook in Player Characters with Icon relationships with the Elf Queen or her allies. Options though are suggested for involving Player Characters with other Icon relationships, even ones so adverse to the Elf Queen that they would be prepared to betray both her and the efforts of their fellow adventurers should the need arise! Several ways of handling the interaction of the Player Characters with Court of Stars are offered, each of varying complexity or detail. The simplest is to run it as a group test, but alternatively, the Player Characters can attend the court and get involved in its activities and events, fully interacting with the various courtiers and hangers-on. There are plenty of NPCs detailed here as well as some nice means of handling the effects of Liris’ growing influence and the Player Characters being unsuccessful in their interactions with the Court of Stars. This includes increasing the amount of time it takes to get information, temporary penalties to saving throws, and temporarily delaying the increase of the Escalation Die in combat.

Once the Player Characters have worked out where the three Keys are located, they can set out to each of the locations. Consisting of the Tower of Memory in Greenwood, the Tower of Dreams in the Darkwood, and the Tower of Fate in the Lightwood, they can be tackled in any order, but they all adhere to the same format—a montage travel scene followed by three or four encounters between the Court of Stars and each tower, and each tower consists of four encounters before a finale. The encounters, inside the tower or outside of the tower, are essentially big set pieces, each different, but themed along the lines of the region the Player Characters are travelling through and the tower they are trying to reach. The format provides room for the Game Master to insert encounters of her own, if thematically appropriate, but to fair, the given encounters will be challenge enough. The Tower of Memory and the Greenwood are home to the Wood Elves and are forest-themed with the Tower of Memory being a giant tree. The Tower of Dreams and the Darkwood are home to the Dark Elves—or Drow depending upon the Game Master’s campaign—and the Tower of Dreams may be entered via a tree, but is actually in a spire protruding down into the Underworld. Many of its encounters veer between dreams and nightmares. The Tower of Fate is in the Lightwood and is home to the High Elves, with the Tower of the fate ascending to the Overworld. Many of the encounters in the Lightwood and the Tower of Fate relate to oracles, fate, and destiny.

The design of the scenarios as a series of big set pieces, means that the author gets to be inventive. For example, in the Tower of Memory, the Player Characters have to race across a rope bridge high above the forest floor, the missing slats of the rope bridge hidden by illusion, harassed by a Pixie knight and a Drunken Sprite Swarm; on the way the Tower of Dreams in the Darkwood, an ambush involves a Player Character being dragging back and forth behind an enraged wild boar and then back again after confronting equally enraged Owlbears, the whole encounter threatening to collapse into chaos; and a surprisingly creepy encounter in the Tower of Fate in the Lightwood in a cave of birthing pools left over from the Elves’ first creation of the Orcs a very long time ago, that should really resonate with any Half-Orc Player Character or Player Character with Icon Relationships with the Orc. The final encounter atop each tower always includes facing agents of one or more of the other Icons and there are stats and suggestions on how to tailor the forces of each Icon to each encounter. This allows the wider involvement of the Player Characters’ Icon Relationships, including both those with Icons who oppose the Elf Queen and those who might have interest in limiting or disrupting her power and influence.

Not all of the encounters in Elven Towers involve combat, though most of them do or will result in combat. Answering riddles or sharing secrets are a common feature, and is making trades. The sharing of secrets involves a roleplaying upon the part of the players, whilst riddles some deductive reasoning, though rules are given for skill checks and rolling dice for those players adverse to riddles. Trades will often see the Player Characters give up minor magical items, Revives, even Icon Relationship rolls—temporally!—and more. All of the encounters include advice on staging them and if necessarily, scaling them up to make a tougher battle.

Finally, the Player Characters will return to the Court of Stars with the three Keys—or not. The Player Characters may not necessarily gain all three Keys to Liris’ vault and the fewer Keys they have, the more difficult and dangerous the ritual that Elf Queen has to perform, becomes. The Player Characters get invited to a big party before the ritual to celebrate their success in obtaining the Keys and an even bigger party if the ritual is a success. The Player Characters are, of course, invited—or is that expected?—to help defend the ritual, which leads to a big boss, end of adventure-level fight. There is scope here too, for the Player Characters to betray the Elf Queen, if that is what their Icon Relationships demand. How that plays out is down to the Game Master, but if the betrayal succeeds, or the ritual as a whole fails, there could actually be a change in one of the Icons! However, if the ritual succeeds, there are rewards aplenty, including powerful magical items, the Elf Queen’s favour—which mostly means she will use them as her agents again, no matter what their Icon Relationships are, and even gaining or improving an Icon Relationship with the Elf Queen.

Physically, Elven Towers is well presented. The artwork is excellent and individual encounters are all easy to use and reference. However, some of the maps are a little dark and murky; the text requires a slight edit in places (one monster inflicts over three hundred points of damage, when it should be just over thirty); and an index would have helped. There are lists with page numbers for all of the monsters.

Elven Towers is an adventure that the Game Master will want to run if she has an Elf amongst her Player Characters or a Player Character with a strong Icon Relationship with the Elf Queen. The adventure is harder to run without either of these, but once involved in the adventure, Elven Towers is an entertaining, often exciting affair, with plenty of opportunities for roleplaying alongside the big, sometimes bigger, fights. Elven Towersis a grand quest in traditional fantasy and fantasy roleplaying style, well designed and executed with plenty of variation that reveals some of the secrets and nature of the Elf Queen and her realm.

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Pelgrane Press will be at UK Games Expo

from Friday 2nd to Sunday 4th, 2023.

Monster Metropolis

Drakkenhall: City of Monsters takes you right into the home of one member of the thirteen Icons of the Dragon Empire of the 13th Age—the Blue, a Blue Dragon also known as the Blue Sorceress. Once it was the city of Highrock, which protected the Midland Sea and the empire from invasion, but four centuries ago it was invaded and reduced to ruins. So, it remained until one hundred years ago, when the Blue Dragon took the city for herself and rebuilt half it, making it a haven within the empire for all of the monsters who would not normally be allowed to reside within other cities. Even as she allows the Goblin Market—famous for its deals, steals, and buyer’s remorse—to operate within the walls of Drakkenhall, an Ogre Mage to head her secret police, and numerous cults to practice their dark faiths in their profane temples—yet denying access to the city by any Orc, the Blue Sorceress serves as the Imperial Governor of Drakkenhall under geas from the Emperor and the Archmage. The question is, has the power of the Blue been constrained within the limits of Drakkenhall by making her part of the Dragon Empire’s hierarchy, or is this part of the Blue Dragon’s plan to subvert the empire from within? Ultimately, this is not question that the supplement will answer, but like other supplements in the line, it is one that is explored and multiple answers suggested.

Drakkenhall: City of Monsters is a supplement for 13th Age, the roleplaying game from Pelgrane Press which combines the best elements of both Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition and Dungeons & Dragons, Fourth Edition to give high action combat, strong narrative ties, and exciting play. Designed for adventurer and champion-tier campaigns, it explores the various different aspects of a city infested by monsters, run by monsters, and constraining monsters. It is both radically law-abiding and radically criminal, fastidiously good mannered and rudely brutal, a half city built on the shattered remains of an old city, the ruins hiding dungeons and secrets which stretch from the former city walls into the depths of the city harbour waters. Alongside this, ordinary folk of the Dragon Empire get by and know how live alongside the turbulent nature of the city’s other, often unpleasant or difficult inhabitants, and in between New Rat City which provides a safe, if expensive underground route into Drakkenhall, the docks of Saltside where the lowlifes encountered are likely to be tourists as much as other visitors, and the Goblin Market, where getting fleeced is just part of doing business, there are points of goodness and light. The most notable of which is Pleasantville, an old Highrock city block in the rubblehood run by the Halfling, Uncle Papa Brother Knuckles, which is clean and minty fresh, covered in flowers and vines, and even has a supply of good drinking water, as well as the Scales enclave, a place of business barely tolerated by the Blue despite its normality, but such places are far and few between, and very much at odds with the rest of the city.

Drakkenhall: City of Monsters is not a conventional city guide in that it does not explore the city as a whole. Rather, it focuses on particular aspects of the city, with each chapter written by a different author, but it begins with an overview of its power brokers and pawns. It starts by highlighting the huge divide between the manors and estates of the wealthy and the surrounding shantytown ruins, little details such as the city’s odd status and high criminality making food supply and trade highly irregular, that many inhabitants of the city have to swear an oath of fealty to the Blue Sorceress, and instead of having a rat problem, Drakkenhall has an ooze problem! It divides its manors and estates—its ‘Estates of Significance’—between ‘Estates of Decadence’ and ‘Blood Houses’, connecting them to cults, demonic salons of science and discovery, fashion trends, and best of all, a social season with Enchanted Dance Cards each of which tracks the holder’s points with each of the Three. Suggestions are included too for the other Icons, but primarily it is with the Black, Blue, and Red Dragons, and the bearer can possibly earn one-time relationships with each one of them. There are even Fashionista Oozes which accompany their owners to parties and often react badly to fashions and styles their owners hold in poor regard and mechanical barber-surgeons like the Cut Monkey and the Amputation Mechanoid, which partially fill the void left by the lack of ready healing in the city. There are rules too for prosthetic limbs, so if a Player Character needs healing, the party had best keep a healing spell or two in reserve lest one of the automatons comes cutting… Much like the rest of Drakkenhall: City of Monsters, this opening chapter explores various aspects of the city, but in places, such the ‘Estates of Significance’, it leaves the specifics up the Game Master, and so in comparison, there are elements of the chapter that are not as interesting as the rest of the supplement.

‘Welcome to the Rubblehood’ hits some of the highlights of Drakkenhall’s ruins, for example, Hobtown, the fortified compound where the Jagged Company, a Hobgoblin mercenary unit drills daily, or the Float Royale, a pirate haven which floats just offshore, where the best beverages in the city can be found and the worst magical items in the empire go to be lost, whilst the bay itself is protected by a sleepy Dragon Turtle, who just happens to have a tame Kaiju-Shark at its beck and call. Every entry, as with the rest of the book is accompanied by a numerous adventure hooks and links to the Icons. There are more of the latter here than in other chapters, there being thirteen per Icon. ‘The Docks of Drakkenhall’ begins where the previous chapter left off at the shore’s edge, Saltside, the docks that are very much everyone’s idea of what dockside dives should be. There are Drakkenhall touches though, like the Dybbuk Inns, where guests get drugged of a night, their bodies possessed and put to some nefarious task, only to wake up with a terrible headache, but none the wiser or the Drowned District, an underwater remanent of Highrock just off  the coast, where the ghosts of the district’s former inhabitants, known as Lamenters, silently wail on the seabed, when they are not marching on the shore, likely with the aid of the Liche King. Accompanying these are quick and dirty rules for sea travel in the Dragon Empire, essentially handling them as travel montages as per the 13th Age Game Master’s Screen & Resource, whilst the Isles of Doom in the Midland Sea, Omen, which constantly spawns living dungeons that attack ships, and Necropolis, home to a massive army raised by the Liche King to threaten local shipping, are worthy of chapters of their own.

‘The Goblin Market’ is the standout chapter in Drakkenhall: City of Monsters. It describes the structure of the market from its outer Stalls to the deepest sections of Rock Bottom via the Underways; its own argot, a Goblinoid gang cant; and scam after scam, starting with all trades having to be in the market’s Blue Imp coins rather than Imperial coins, meaning currencies have to be exchanged, and then planting items on customers and claiming them to be stolen, drugging unsuspecting tourists and not only relieving them of their valuables, but delivering them ready to fight in the Fighting Pits, escalating a spilled drink into a demand for satisfaction which can only be settled in the fighting pit, and even demanding visitor’s fingers—especially if they are an Elf (such sweet meat)—as compensation for intruding on gang territory. Parts of the Goblin Market shift, but mostly it remains in Rubble City, run by the feudal mafia-like Organisation of goblinoid gangs, the most notable of which are the Rippers who operate the Double Draught speakeasy. This complete with gambling pits, a stage where even the most famous of the Dragon Empire’s entertainers have performed, impromptu blood brawls are set up, and a Halfling chef—so the food is good. Located in the depths of Rock Bottom, the Double Draught is going to be somewhere that the Player Characters are going to have to work to get to and get into, but once there, there are plenty of adventure hooks and ongoing plots to keep them coming back.

Drakkenhall: City of Monsters includes lots and lots of adventure hooks, but one thing it lacks until ‘Smash and Grab’ is a sense of an overarching plot that might keep the Player Characters in the city and crossing back and forth from one location to another. What ‘Smash and Grab’ suggests is a big scavenger hunt, leading to a treasure hunt. The ‘Society of Monster Archaeologists Searching for Hoards’—or ‘SMASH’—a secret society whose members possess a degree of immunity in a city of criminals. This is because members have a reputation for being tough, even mad, having delved into the deepest, darkest, most dangerous parts of Drakkenhall and the former Highrock in search of treasure and returned. Can the Player Characters join? Of course, they can! They just have to find the headquarters first, which is a hunt in itself, then when they have, they have to prove themselves worthy. This provides reasons for longer term play in Drakkenhall as well suggestions as to where to look for treasure worthy of SMASH. There are ideas too, for the Player Character who has SMASH as part of his Background during character creation.

Penultimately, Drakkenhall: City of Monsters presents some ideas as to why exactly, the Blue does not allow Orcs into the city. None of the four options are simple, but all four of them point to the deviousness of the Blue Sorceress. They are useful if the party includes an Orc Player Character. Lastly, there are stats for the Blue Dragon as the Blue Sorceress, though whether this is who she is, is open to conjecture…

Physically, Drakkenhall: City of Monsters is well written. However, the map of the city is not particularly detailed, so not as useful as it could have been, and the artwork does vary in quality. 

As written, Drakkenhall: City of Monsters does not feel like a coherent book. There is no overview which might pull all of the book’s content and city description together and its treatment of the city is scattershot. That though is by design. Drakkenhall is far from a cohesive city, raucous and rowdy, lawless until someone steps out of line, order of a sought being maintained by fear, dread oaths of fealty, and the Blue Sorceress’ secret police and Kobold force of the Glinting Legionnaires. The result is that a Player Character is never going to quite get a true grasp of what the city is like and how it really works, and even if he did, there is no knowing quite what would be different if he left and came back. The Game Master is supported with plenty of new threats, a handful of new magical items, and too many adventure ideas and hooks and more to mention, so that each time a Player Character comes back there will be a new scam he has not run into, a new plot to get tied up in, and more. It also means that from one visit to the next, the Game Master never has to keep all of the city in mind, but can rather focus on particular locations and how the Icons might be involved. There are elements which Game Master will need to develop, but with half a city reduced to rubble, there are plenty of places to put them.

Ultimately, Drakkenhall: City of Monsters is a criminally chaotic—to a point—and an evilly entertaining city to visit for a 13th Age campaign. Probably more than once. However, full of malevolent magics and would be marauding monsters, with a government lamentably legitimate, and almost everyone ready to swindle almost everyone else, Drakkenhall: City of Monsters is probably not somewhere to stay for long.