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REVIEW: Dragonbane

Last month, I mentioned that, because of the extended absence of a player in my ongoing Dolmenwood campaign, one of the other players offered to run a short adventure using Free League's Dragonbane rules. Despite my own deficiencies as a player, I welcomed this, both as a nice break from my own weekly refereeing duties and because I'd actually wanted to give Dragonbane a proper playtest. I've had a copy of the game for about two years and it wasn't until now that an opportunity to actually make use of it arose.

We concluded our playtest earlier this week and, as I expected I would, I had a great time. Originally, my intention was to write a short follow-up to the post linked above, in which I offered some further thoughts about the game. However, as I did so, I soon realized that my “short follow-up” was rapidly turning into something closer to full-on review, The result is what you're reading now, though be warned that this will be a somewhat idiosyncratic review based largely on my own interests rather a more "general" assessment of the game.

Case in point: I come at Dragonbane from the perspective of someone who's played a lot of Dungeons & Dragons over the decades. And while it's never been my system of choice, I also have a deep respect for Chaosium’s Basic Role-Playing, upon which Dragonbane's Swedish-language predecessor, Drakar och Demoner, was based. Consequently, I approached Dragonbane with a great deal of curiosity. I was eager to see how it would blend its BRP heritage with a more streamlined framework. After several sessions, I can confidently say Dragonbane delivers a fun, engaging experience that bridges the gap between D&D’s broad fantasy and BRP’s more grounded, skill-driven mechanics.

As I said, Dragonbane is built on the bones of Basic Role-Playing, a system known for its granular, skill-based mechanics. Free League, however, has distilled this foundation into something far lighter and more approachable, swapping BRP’s percentile dice for a d20-based system that might feel more familiar to D&D players. Character creation is quick: choose a kin (human, elf, dwarf, or even anthropomorphic creatures like wolfkin or mallard), a profession (knight, mage, artisan, etc.), and assign points to skills. Unlike the sometimes-fiddly process of building a Call of Cthulhu or RuneQuest character, Dragonbane keeps things brisk, almost rivaling old-school D&D’s straightforwardness even while retaining BRP’s emphasis on skills over character classes.

The core mechanic – roll a d20 under your skill or attribute score – will probably feel like second nature to BRP veterans, but the system’s boons and banes (the advantage/disadvantage mechanic that seems to be in every RPG these days) simplify modifiers in a way that keeps play moving. Opposed rolls and critical successes/failures add further depth without being overwhelming. For a D&D player, the shift from class-and-level progression to skill-based improvement is definitely a change. Even so, Dragonbane never feels too alien, aided not just by its use of d20 rolls but also its reliance on familiar fantasy archetypes (knights, rogues, mages, etc.).

One of Dragonbane’s most distinctive mechanical features is its use of willpower points. These function as a limited but flexible resource that can be spent to fuel both heroic abilities and spells or to reroll a failed skill check. I liked how this gave players a choice during play: burn a willpower point now to avoid a blunder or save it for a special combat move or spell later. It adds a welcome layer of resource management without being overly complex. 

Dragonbane thus feels both flexible and grounded. It lacks the sprawling feat trees or subclass options of, say, WotC-era Dungeons & Dragons, but compensates with a system that rewards player ingenuity. For some BRP fans, it's possible the game might seem too pared down. Where are the hit locations or complex magic systems of RuneQuest? But, for someone like me, more accustomed to D&D’s approach to these things, the streamlined rules felt right, emphasizing speed of play over simulationist detail.

As I noted in my earlier post, combat is where Dragonbane really shines and, as someone who often finds RPG combat a functional but unexciting necessity, I was glad of it. The system strikes a nice balance between simplicity and tactical depth, offering a dynamic experience that rivals D&D’s ease of use while avoiding the slog of overly complex BRP combat.

Each round, players draw initiative cards (reshuffled every round for unpredictability) and can move and act, with heroic abilities or even weapon choices allowing for creative flourishes. The card-based initiative is very simple and straightforward. Players can trade initiative or act out of turn in certain situations, which I found helps to keep everyone engaged. Combat maneuvers like disarming, grappling, or shoving provide further tactical options without requiring constant reference to the rulebook. Mechanics like morale checks and weapon durability add yet more stakes and flavor. For example, a critical hit includes the possibility of increased damage, ignoring armor, or gaining an additional attack.

Another feature I appreciated is the way Dragonbane distinguishes between monsters and NPCs. While NPCs use the same mechanics as player characters, monsters do not roll to attack. Instead, they act according to randomly determined behavior tables, intended to simplify referee workload and to reinforce the idea that monsters are unpredictable forces of nature. It’s an interesting design choice, but I'm not yet certain whether it works as well as intended. I'd need to play more to see how well it holds up to repeated use.

Compared to D&D and its descendants, where combat can feel like a regular cycle of attack rolls and spell slots, Dragonbane combat feels more unpredictable. Hit point totals are fairly low, which keeps fights brisk and the risk of injury or equipment failure makes every combat potentially deadly. BRP players will recognize the system’s DNA, but Dragonbane trims the fat, avoiding much of the bookkeeping that can bog down RuneQuest battles. The result is a combat system that’s both approachable and exciting, encouraging clever play without relying on too many subsystems or edge cases.

Dragonbane doesn’t come with a very detailed campaign setting of its own. Instead, its implied setting is gritty but evocative and seemed to me to take some inspiration from fairy tales (an impression born no doubt of its artwork, done by Johan Egerkrans, who also provided illustrations for the explicitly fairy tale-inspired Vaesen). The profession options suggest a world where heroism is hard-won, not guaranteed. Magic is potent but rare and monsters feel dangerous. This tone aligns more, I think, with games like RuneQuest than Dungeons & Dragons as it's often played, though the game seems flexible enough to handle varying degrees of character skill and power.

Free League’s production quality is, as usual, stellar. The rulebook included with the boxed set is relatively concise (112 pages) yet comprehensive. The set also includes dice, cards, and a second, 116-page book containing eleven sample adventures that can be strung together to form a campaign, making it a complete package for new players. Compared to a lot of RPGs these days, Dragonbane feels leaner and more focused, while still offering enough material to fuel a campaign. BRP fans accustomed to Chaosium’s dense rulebooks might find Dragonbane’s comparative brevity a relief.

In the end, I came away from our Dragonbane playtest impressed, not just by the mechanics, but by how much fun I had. It reminded me that a well-designed game doesn't need to be complex to offer meaningful choices and satisfying play. As someone who usually sits behind the referee’s screen, it was a pleasure to be a player again, especially in a system that hit such a sweet spot between familiarity and innovation. I’m glad I finally got to give Dragonbane a try and I hope I have the chance to return to it again in the future.

REVIEW: Sun County

When RuneQuest burst upon the roleplaying game scene in 1978, it quickly became known for both its percentile-based skill system (which would later become the basis for Chaosium's house system, Basic Role-Playing) and its rich Bronze Age fantasy setting, Glorantha. Glorantha is steeped in mythology, both real and fictional, which not only distinguishes it from other fantasy RPG settings but has also made it one of my favorite imaginary settings of all time. 

Between 1979 and 1983, Chaosium released numerous superb supplements, many of them boxed sets, fleshing out Glorantha to the delectation of its growing legion of fans. Then, in 1984, Chaosium entered into a deal with wargames publisher, Avalon Hill, who'd publish a new edition of RuneQuest but stripped of Glorantha. Though the company reversed this decision later, its support for Glorantha was desultory at best, much to the disappointment of long-time devotees. 

I wasn't one of these devotees. I knew of RuneQuest, of course, but I was a diehard player of Dungeons & Dragons and indeed somewhat skeptical of RQ at the time. Consequently, I largely missed out on the game until the early 1990s, when Avalon Hill hired Ken Rolston to revitalize its version of the game. This he did through a renewed focus on Glorantha. His tenure kicked off a RuneQuest renaissance that gave birth to multiple excellent expansions of Glorantha, many of which are still regarded as classics. This was the period when I first fell in love with the setting, a love that has only grown in the three decades since. 

Currently, RuneQuest and Glorantha are undergoing what might well be called a second renaissance. Since the publication of RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha in 2018, Chaosium has released a steady stream of excellent new material for the game and its setting. Just as importantly, the company has made a lot of its older material available again in electronic and print-on-demand form, both through its own store and through DriveThruRPG. Its most recent classic re-release is Sun County, written by Michael O'Brien, with contributions from Rolston, Glorantha creator Greg Stafford, and others. 

Before discussing the contents of the book itself, I'd like to briefly comment on the 2024 remastering. The book's interior layout is clear and straightforward. It makes use of two columns and splashes of column – titles, headers and footers, tables, etc. It's been years since I saw the 1992 original, so I can't say if the use of color is new, but it's attractive nonetheless. There's a new foreword by Shannon Appelcline, which contextualizes Sun County within the larger history of RuneQuest (some of which I've mentioned above). As someone who enjoys learning about the history of the hobby, I love this sort of stuff and am glad it was included. 

Originally published in 1992, the 2024 re-release of Sun County is a 124-page sourcebook, packed with detailed setting material, rules expansions, and adventure scenarios. The first half of the book is dedicated to fleshing out the region of Sun County itself – its geography, culture, and history – while the second half presents a series of interconnected adventure that showcase different aspects of the rigid society of the Sun Dome Templars, a militant theocracy devoted to Yelmalio, Son of the Sun. As a setting, Sun County is one of isolationism and decline. The Sun Domers are a proud but stiflingly conservative people, desperately clinging to a past that has long since left them behind. Their deity, Yelmalio, is cold and indifferent sun and their stiff hierarchy, strict moral codes, and inflexible traditions make them an excellent counterpoint to the vibrant and increasingly chaotic world around them. Sun County leans into these themes, both in its descriptive text and in the several included scenarios.

From a presentation standpoint, Sun County stands out for its strong authorial voice. This is not an encyclopedic setting book filled with dispassionate information but rather a living, breathing culture, conveyed through in-character documents, legends, and anecdotes (as well as game mechanics). This has long been a hallmark of the better Gloranthan materials, but Sun County does it with a degree of clarity and usability that makes it, in my opinion, much more accessible than other books of this kind. The reader still needs to be already familiar with Glorantha, of course, but Sun County does a good job of explaining itself without too many references to other products.

The reader is treated to details about the cult of Yelmalio and related subcults, as well as the Sun Dome Temple itself, the seat of both religion and government within the County. Equally well detailed are its elite soldiers and citizen levies, which play significant roles here. A collection of random encounters and events serve both as sparks for adventures and to highlight unique aspects of Sun County, like the Yelmalian beadles who deal with unlicensed beggars or succubi who prey upon the sexually inhibited Sun Domers. These sorts of details flesh out the setting in straightforward, practical ways that I appreciate.

As I mentioned earlier, slightly more than half the book consists of adventures set in and around Sun County. Two of these pertain to a Harvest Festival in the town of Garhound, just beyond its borders. Garhound makes a great starting point for non-Yelmalian characters to visit the land of the Sun Domers. Another scenario affords characters the opportunity to become landowners in the County, while two further adventures concern the locating of lost artifacts associated with Yelmalio. There's also a collection of ideas for the Gamemaster to flesh out on his own. Taken together, these scenarios cover a lot of ground, though I do wish there'd been a few that dealt more directly with navigating the ins and outs of Sun County's often-strict society. 

The book features strong black-and-white illustrations by Merle Insinga and Roger Raupp (the latter of whom also did the cover) that reinforce the setting’s stark, sun-bleached aesthetic. The imagery depicts the militaristic and hierarchical nature of Sun County, though there are also plenty of pieces that highlight other sides of the setting, like the contests of the Harvest Festival and the hidden threats to the region. The maps, though functional, are generally not as evocative as those found in earlier, Chaosium era products like Pavis or Big Rubble, but they serve their purpose well enough.

Sun County is a great setting book. It captures something rarely seen in RPGs: a genuinely believable culture, shaped by its environment and history, filled with tensions that make it ripe for adventure. This is precisely the kind of supplement I like, where cultural and philosophical conflicts drive the action as much as physical threats. More than thirty years after its original release, Sun County holds up very well. Its portrayal of the Sun Domers is compelling but nuanced, like the best Gloranthan supplements, then or now. It makes a great addition to any campaign set in or near New Pavis and the River of Cradles. Sun County's main downsides are that it was written for RuneQuest's third (Avalon Hill) edition and, as such, its game statistics and the political situation depicted within it will need to be updated if used in conjunction with the current version of the game. That's a small criticism of what is otherwise an excellent and well-presented supplement. I hope its publication is a portent of more to come in this vein from Chaosium.

REVIEW: Wulfwald

A common early complaint about Dungeons & Dragons was that the game's three little brown books failed to provide much in the way of a cultural or social context for its "fantastic medieval wargames campaigns." Correcting this perceived shortcoming was part of the impetus behind the creation and publication of several early RPGs that appeared in OD&D's wake, most notably Empire of the Petal Throne, Chivalry & Sorcery, and even RuneQuest to some extent. All of these games (and others) place much greater emphasis on the ways that culture and society not only intersect with but can offer a justification for adventuring than Dungeons & Dragons did at the time or, in fact, has ever done. 

I was reminded of this when I started reading Wulfwald, Lee Reynoldson's superb roleplaying game set in a world inspired by the folklore and legends of pagan Anglo-Saxon England. I say "inspired by," because, as Reynoldson explains, "Wulfwald is not set on our Earth," but rather is set on "another world," where "the myth and magic that was superstition in Earth's history is a real, if rare, force." As a game, Wulfwald should be almost immediately familiar to anyone who's played D&D or one of its descendants – not merely in terms of its rules but also in terms of its play. All the usual activities you expect in Dungeons & Dragons, whether they be delving in the dark, fighting monsters, or looting treasure, are supported in Wulfwald, but are given a new and compelling context.

Before proceeding further, I'd like to elaborate briefly on Wulfwald's relationship with D&D and its rules. Wulfwald is not "complete" game in the sense of including all the rules you need to play yet another retro-clone of Dungeons & Dragons. Reynoldson assumes you already know what hit points, armor class, and saving throws are, for example. When these and other familiar concepts come up in the text, there's no explanation of them or how they work, except when Wulfwald offers a new take on them that deviates from the way anyone who's played D&D generally understands them. I don't see this as a problem, but it might be surprising or even off-putting to those used to the approach adopted by most other old school D&D-derived games. 

With that out of the way, let's move on to Wulfwald itself. The game comes in a thin, sturdy box, inside of which are five staplebound A5 booklets and a cloth(!) map depicting the land of Wulfwald, as drawn by the late, great Russ Nicholson. The booklets have a clean, simple layout that's easy on the eyes. The covers of each booklet features artwork by Katie Wakelin, while the interior art is done by Stefano Accordi. I like the cover art much better than the interior art, but all the illustrations evoke the dark, early medieval period in which the game is rooted. Nicholson's cartography, of course, is gorgeous and a joy simply to look at and wonder at its details.

The premise of Wulfwald is that all the characters are "wolfsheads," who are outsiders and outlaws who exist outside the law's protection. Their status means that anyone can harm or kill them without fear of retribution. To avoid this fate, the game assumes the characters have banded together in the service of a Thegn or warrior-lord and act as his service. In exchange for such service, the wolfsheads can expect gifts of beauty and value that reflect their newfound honor and status within the setting. This set-up is a clever way to recontextualize adventurers, making them simultaneously rough outsiders but also having a place, albeit an unusual one, in society. 

Unlike "normal" D&D, Wulfwald has only three levels, corresponding (more or less) to the veteran, hero, and superhero levels from Dave Arneson's Blackmoor campaign. However, there is a rules appendix that provides for a greater number of levels for those referees and players who prefer them. Characters belong to one of four kindreds: Eorðwerod (Men), Ælfcynn (Elves), Dweorgas (Dwarves), and Réðealingas (Outlanders). Each kindred has three unique classes, each belonging to one of three archetypes: warrior, skirmisher, and wizard. For example, Men have the Scildmægden (warrior), Sperebróga (skirmisher), and Scinnlæca (wizard), while Elves have the Wuduheald (warrior), Scytta (skirmisher), and Gealdor Sangere (wizard). All classes have their own advancement tables, as well as unique results for criticals and fumbles. Warriors also have an ability called "heroic effort," an unusual feat of arms that can be employed once an adventure.

An aspect of Wulfwald that could, I imagine, discourage some potential buyers is its regular use of Old English, complete with odd letters like æ or ð. Speaking as an old Tékumel hand, I know that a lot of people don't like words that require the use of a pronunciation guide to say properly. I can only say that Old English, once you know the rules, isn't all that difficult to pronounce. Moreover, its use in Wulfwald goes a long way toward investing the setting with a distinct flavor. In many cases, the text does provide alternate, contemporary words to use instead of the Old English ones for those who find the others a bit too flavorful, but I much prefer the Old English ones. Your mileage may vary.

Flavor is a big part of what separates Wulfwald from "standard" D&D, even if it makes use of all the expected elements of the game, like magic, monsters, and treasure. I've already noted that each of the character classes is distinctive. The same holds for the systems of magic some of them use. Wulfwald includes four different systems, from runic fateweaving and spell singing to the Forbidden Path and wicce cræft. Likewise, magic items are all unique items, each with its own history and powers. Monsters, too, include a fair number of unique beings, like the draca (dragons) and eotenas (giants).

"Unique" is a word I've used a lot in this review and with good reason. What sets Wulfwald apart from many old school fantasy products is that it's very specific in not just its inspirations but also in the way it's chosen to make use of them. While I'm on record for saying there's nothing wrong with vanilla fantasy, there's also, in my opinion, a distinct pleasure that comes from roleplaying according to the culture, customs, and beliefs of a particular society, whether real or imaginary. That's why my House of Worms campaign has been so enjoyable: the players get to be, if only for a little while, people who inhabit another world with its own rules and ways of looking at things. This is something Wulfwald does very well, too.

The game's five books cover character generation, magic (including magic items and religion), the setting of Wulfwald (including a sample scenario and skirmish battles), monsters, NPCs, and more. Taken together, they provide enough for the referee to kick off a campaign while still leaving lots of room for individual creativity. Wulfwald isn't Tékumel or Glorantha; there isn't an encyclopedia's worth of information to digest. Rather, the game's five books do a good job of painting a compelling big picture with plenty of room to add detail here or a splash of color there. It strikes a nice balance between too much and too little. In short, it inspires, which is exactly what I want out of a product like this.

If you're looking for a well presented new setting for your favorite D&D-alike that draws on real world folklore and history in a fun way, I'd highly recommend yout take a look at Wulfwald. It's one of the best things I've bought this year.

REVIEW: A True Relation of the Great Virginia Disastrum, 1633

A True Revelation of the Great Virginia Disastrum, 1633 (hereafter Disastrum) by Ezra Claverie may well be the definitive product for Lamentations of the Flame Princess. I say "may," because my assessment depends heavily on just you want out of an LotFP product. If what you're hoping for is a clever and, in the best sense of the word, modular adventure scenario you can easily drop into an ongoing old school fantasy campaign, Disastrum is probably not for you. If, on the other hand, you're looking for looking for an imaginative and well-presented event-based scenario/hexcrawl set in 17th century Virginia, then Disastrum is exactly what you need.

Consisting of three clothbound A5-sized hardcover volumes, Disastrum gives an LotFP referee almost everything he – or should I say she, in keeping with the game line's style guide? – needs to run a lengthy and challenging scenario set in and around the Virginia Colony in the midst of an immense spatiotemporal accident caused by castaways from the Fifth Dimension. This accident has deformed both space and time, warping the landscape and its inhabitants, as well as creating portals to alternate times and realities. 

Anyone with prior experience of LotFP will immediately recognize a trio of familiar elements in Disastrum: a 17th century locale (Virginia in 1633), an incursion by nonhuman "aliens" (the Fifth Dimensional castaways), and the unnatural consequences of their presence (the Warp). Taken together, these elements are the foundation of many (though by no means all) of LotFP's best-known adventures, so much so that I think it's become something of a joke among LotFP fans: "Oh, no! Yet another invasion of historical Earth by beings from another dimension and whose very presence poisons our world and fills me with dread!" I bring this up, because, while true to some extent, these elements can nevertheless can still be used to great effect and so they are in Disastrum. 

Volume I is entitled Jamestown and Environs. At 96 pages, it provides useful information needed by the referee to begin the adventure, including an overview of the events that led to the Disastrum and a timeline of the Virginia Colony, from its founding in 1607 to 1633, when the scenario begins. What sets this volume apart from others of its kind is how practical it all is. For example, five pages are devoted reasons why the characters may have come to Virginia, each of which offers a different frame for subsequent events. There's also an overview of Jamestown, its buildings, and inhabitants, along with random tables for generating colonists, news/rumors, Scriptural citations, plantations, native villages, and more.

Random tables play an important role in Disastrum, as one might well expect, since a large part of the scenario involves traveling through the wilderness of Virginia. Volume I describes the terrain of the region, both natural and unnatural. The latter includes the Warp, where the effects of the Fifth Dimensional Incursion are strongest. For each region, there are keyed encounters, described in Volume II, as well as "omens and oddities" of various sorts – strange objects in the sky, objects falling from the sky, and "disastrumous hazards," which is to say, bizarre phenomena resulting from the Warp, such as gravity bubbles or time speeding up or slowing down. 

Volume II, Lo! New Lands, is the biggest of the three books at 192 tables, describing all twenty keyed encounters in Virginia and twelve alternate worlds or realities accessible through the Eye of the Warp. The keyed encounters vary in both length and strangeness. Some, like the Escapees' Camp, consisting of indentured servants and slaves who've used the Disastrum as an opportunity to flee their masters, are relative simple and normal. Others, like the Speaking Swamp or Factory Fungus, are given great detail and are exceedingly weird – products of five-dimensional beings attempting to interact with a three-dimensional world and only partially succeeding. All of the encounters are compelling, whether simply by presenting the players with an aspect of 17th century colonial life or by challenging their wits against a consequence of the Warp.

Descriptions of the twelve alternate realities, called "spacetimes," take up about half of Volume II. Like the keyed locations, they vary in length and strangeness, though all are fairly strange. For example, there is the Post-Ant Empire, a spacetime ruled by biomechanical ants that displaced the dinosaurs. There's also the City of the Crawling Blood, an alternate London overrun with a strange sickness and the Wilder Wilderness, an alternate Virginia populated with megafauna, among many more. All but one of these is a side trek, a place of interest and danger but without any larger significance to the scenario. However, the Corpse City of the Western Gate, located in 18th century China, is ground zero for the cosmic event whose repercussions are felt more than a century earlier and a hemisphere away in Virginia. It's here that the scenario climaxes, one way or the other, as the character contend with extradimensional beings whose activities have the potential to doom the Earth and everyone on it.

Volume III, Prodigies, Monsters, and Index, is 128 pages long and, as its title suggests, focuses on the strange and unusual effects of the Disastrum. Thus we get more than 60 new monsters, most of them unique (as Raggi intended). Many can be encountered in and around the Virginia Colony, but others are the inhabitants of the various spacetimes to which the characters may travel. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Volume III presents random tables to enable the referee to create his own "new people," the name used to describe the fabricated three-dimensional bodies of five-dimensional beings and whose appearances and properties are quite surprising. It's all wildly imaginative and, as I said above, practical. With these three volumes, the referee has nearly everything he needs to run a memorable and demanding weird fantasy adventure.

Disastrum is exceptionally well done. It's the Masks of Nyarlathotep of Lamentations of the Flame Princess, in that it takes all the usual ingredients of a LotFP adventure and sharpens and heightens them to such a high degree that, after playing this long, open-ended scenario, you'll feel as if you've done LotFP. There will undoubtedly be excellent LotFP adventures in the future, but Disastrum has, for me. crystallized the game's essence and unique take on fantasy in a way that will be hard to top. Thats not say it's perfect. The scenario has a lot of moving parts that put a lot of weight on the referee's shoulders, even with all the random tables and examples provided. In addition, the standard edition lacks the foldout hex maps included with the deluxe slipcase edition. The hex maps aren't absolutely necessary, but I imagine most referee's would find them useful. Likewise, all editions (with the exception of the PDF version) are pricey, which might be an impediment to some prospective purchasers.

In the end, none of these mild criticisms should be held against A True Relation of the Great Virginia Disastrum, 1633, which is as close to a definitive LotFP product as you're likely to get. It's imaginative, well-written, and well-made and, despite its length, I found myself reading it almost compulsively. The combination of a nicely realized historical setting and fantastically weird encounters and situations seemed, to me, to be a near-perfect fulfillment of what Lamentations of the Flame Princess has, in recent years, striven to be. It's truly excellent. My only regret is that I don't presently have a place in my gaming schedule to run this adventure. I hope others who buy and read it will be more fortunate than I.

REVIEW: Knave (Second Edition)

By the mid-1990s, I'd had regular access to the Internet for a number of years and it was great. Forums and websites dedicated to RPGs of every kind were available at the click of a mouse button, offering all manner of interesting and useful content. While most of this content was dedicated to existing roleplaying games, some of it offered up new roleplaying games – the original creations of enthusiastic designers who recognized that they could use the Internet to get their own games to a vastly larger audience than would have ever been possible in the pre-digital age.

While Marcus Rowland's scientific romance RPG, Forgotten Futures is, for me, one of the best examples of these 1990s Internet-distributed games, I think it's fair to say that Steffan O'Sullivan's FUDGE is the most well-known and influential. I first became aware of FUDGE through a dear friend of mine, who felt that its loose, freeform mechanics provided would-be game designers the tools they needed to achieve their goals. At the time, he and I were hoping to put together our own science fiction RPG and so we took a lot of interest in FUDGE, whose "legal notice" was an early example of an open gaming license of the sort that would later propel the d20 System to prominence.

I found myself thinking about FUDGE recently as I read through the second edition of Ben Milton's Knave. Billed as "an exploration-driven fantasy RPG and worldbuilding toolkit, inspired by the best elements of the Old-School D&D movement.," Knave seemed, to my aged eyes, to have a lot in common with FUDGE. Whether one views that comparison as a good thing or a bad thing will, I think, determine your opinion of Knave. Before delving more deeply into this, though, I should explain that, prior to reading this new edition of the game, I wasn't all that familiar with Knave. Aside from Mörk Borg and Electric Bastionland, my knowledge of "ultra-light" RPGs was fairly limited and that no doubt colors what I have to say in this review.

The second edition of Knave is an 80-page digest-sized hardcover book available in both standard and premium formats, the main difference between the two (aside from price) being the cover design. Speaking of presentation, I should note that all of the book's artwork comes courtesy of Peter Mullen, whose artwork is well known (and loved) in the old school community. Their presence is quite welcome, since Knave's layout is otherwise simple and unpretentious, which, while a boon to clarity, tends toward the monotonous, especially in the many sections devoted to random tables. The book also includes a couple of two-page maps by Kyle Latino, which don't connect directly to anything in the text, so they serve more or less as artwork, too. 

As a set of rules, Knave is short and quite simple – so short that summaries of nearly everything needed to play fit on the four "pages" inside the front and back covers. I've seen plenty of other RPGs attempt to do this, but Knave is the first I can recall that succeeds. Indeed, I'm pretty sure it'd be possible to run the game using just these four pages and nothing else. That's no small feat, though, as I've already stated, it's only possible because the rules are short and simple. Most actions in Knave – called checks – are handled by a d20 roll modified by a character's appropriate ability score and any relevant modifiers and then compared against a target number (usually 16). Understand this basic mechanic and you understand Knave, with nearly everything else being an embellishment.

In his designer's commentary at the back of the book, Milton explains that he created Knave as "a hack of Basic D&D that [he] created for an after-school gaming club for 5th graders" and his "goal was to streamline and rationalize the rules so that players could learn the rules and create characters in just a few minutes and jump right into playing." Consequently, Knave's rules, while similar to those of D&D, differ from them in a number of respects. For example, there are still the usual six ability score, but they range in score 0–10 rather than 3–18. Further, the use of some of the abilities differs from their usual D&D association, such as Wisdom being used to modify ranged attacks and Constitution playing a role in encumbrance.

Combined with the lack of character classes, Knave thus occupies an odd middle ground for longtime D&D players between the familiar and the unfamiliar. Fortunately, the rules are so uncomplicated that I don't imagine any of the game's deviations from "standard" old school conventions should prove an impediment to a veteran's ability to pick them up. Meanwhile, a complete neophyte, who knows little or nothing about D&D, would probably find them fairly intuitive, which seems to have been the goal. In the aforementioned designer's commentary – one of my favorite sections of the book – Milton regularly uses words like "straightforward," "quick," and "easy" to explain the thought process behind Knave's rules. 

This philosophy suffuses the game, where everything associated with dungeon delving and wilderness travel – the core activities of old school Dungeons & Dragons – is pared down to quick, reasonably easy to use and understand procedures, with lots of room for individual expansion and experimentation. Combat, for instance, includes the possibility of initiating "maneuvers," like disarming or stunning, that is self-admittedly inspired by the "mighty deeds of arms" from Dungeon Crawl Classics, but without the same mechanical complexity. Magic, whether in the form of spells or relics, is similarly open-ended, with plenty of scope for creativity in their execution. This approach holds for most of the activities associated with classic play, like leveling up, encounters, and even equipment.

This open-ended toolkit approach might be off-putting to some, especially those looking for a more "full bodied" fantasy roleplaying game – but that's not what Knave is or was intended to be. Certainly, you could play Knave "straight" and have a satisfying experience with it. However, it's pretty clear from the way the game is written and presented that Milton expects that the rules of Knave will mutate and change with regular play, as each group adds to and subtracts from what he has put on offer in the rulebook. "Altering rules and writing your own is a time-honored part of the hobby," as he explains in Knave's introduction.

An important key to understanding Knave, I think, is that, in addition to its simple, concise mechanics, the rulebook also contains numerous random tables throughout its pages, all of them with 100 results. These tables cover careers to wizard names to disasters and more. Like everything else in Knave, they're laconic and intended to serve as jumping off points for one's imagination rather than the final word. More than that, they're clearly intended to be used in play, when the player or referee needs to come up something quickly. As a big fan of random tables and the effect they can have on play, I applaud the inclusion of these tables, as I know firsthand just how useful they can be. 

In the end, Knave is a pleasant surprise. Reading it made me think more seriously about the relationship between the complexities of rules and play, as well as my own preferences with regard to each of them. While I'm not completely sold on some of Knave's mechanical deviations from classic play, like the lack of classes, I nevertheless appreciate the way Milton's own choices made me ponder what I like and why, which I think will strengthen my own design work in the future. I also appreciate that, while Knave made think about such matters, its primary purpose is not philosophy but rather presenting "a framework that makes playing old-school RPGs straightforward, intuitive, easy to prep, and easy to run" – a laudable goal at which I believe it succeeded.

REVIEW: The Lair of the Brain Eaters

The first few years of the Old School Renaissance were marked by a renewed appreciation not just of early roleplaying games but also of the pulp fantasy stories that inspired them. This was the time when Appendix N of Gary Gygax's AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide became a frequent topic of discussion on blogs and forums, much to the satisfaction of those of us who felt a strong injection of sword-and-sorcery was the perfect antidote to what we felt was an increasingly video-gamified hobby (remember: this coincided with the release of D&D Fourth Edition) that had lost sight of its literary roots.

This is the backdrop against which many of the earliest D&D retro-clones – emulations of earlier editions – appeared, including Lamentations of the Flame Princess. Calling itself a "weird fantasy role-playing game," LotFP took seriously the goal of bringing more pulp fantasy-inspired content into fantasy gaming, especially in its adventures, which quickly gained a reputation for being, by turns, imaginative, grotesque, challenging, deadly, and prurient – among many other extravagant adjectives. 

However, as LotFP's creator, James Raggi, found his strange Muse, its adventures moved away from generic pulp fantasy scenarios of the sort one might have found in Weird Tales during the Golden Age of the pulps and toward a weirder, even more brutal version of Earth's 17th century. This new focus on historical fantasy helped LotFP distinguish itself from its fellow retro-clones, but it also, I think, narrowed its appeal somewhat, since most fantasy gamers, old school or otherwise, are looking for adventures they can easily drop into campaign settings other than Earth during the 1600s.

While I am a big fan of LotFP's pivot to historical fantasy, I miss the ahistorical strangeness of stuff like Death Frost Doom, Hammers of the God, or The Monolith from Beyond Space and Time. Consequently, when I learned about D.M. Ritzlin's The Lair of the Brain Eaters, I was intrigued. Unlike most recent LotFP releases, this adventure didn't seem to be set in the 17th century. Rather, it seemed more like something from Robert E. Howard's Hyborian Age or perhaps Clark Ashton Smith's Hyperborea – a lurid, necromantic pulp fantasy scenario of the kind we haven't seen for LotFP in a while.

That should come as no surprise. Ritzlin is the proprietor of DMR Books, a small press dedicated "fantasy, horror, and adventure fiction in the traditions Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, and other classic writers of the pulp era." Indeed, The Lair of the Brain Eaters shares its title with a short story Ritzlin wrote for the collection, Necromancy in Nilztiria. According to the author, some of the story's details have been changed (and "a great many more have been added"), so this adventure is less directly adapted and more inspired by its source. Even so, it's quite unusual by the standards of contemporary Lamentations of the Flame Princess.

The adventure concerns a cult dedicated to the consumption of human brains. Called the Yoinog – supposedly an ancient term meaning "knowledge seekers" – the cult serves the necromancer Obb Nyreb, furnishing him with a fresh supply of corpses as he attempts to unravel the mysteries of Veshakul-a, the goddess of death. Nyreb and the Yoinog have established themselves in a network of caves beneath a graveyard of the city of Desazu. Unfortunately, in their zeal for graverobbing, the cult has drawn attention to their master's activities, thereby providing an opening for the player characters to involve themselves in the adventure.

The Lair of the Brain Eaters is short and to the point. The cult's cave network consists of only twenty keyed areas, with Nyreb's chambers occupying an additional nine. Most of them are described briefly, with little in the way of extraneous detail. Do not, however, mistake its comparatively spartan descriptions for a sparseness of ideas – quite the contrary. The florid prose of many adventures is often chalked up to the designer's desire to be a writer of fiction. Here, the opposite is the case: the text's concision signals that its designer is already a skilled fictioneer and understands well that less can be more.

For example, this is part of the description of a "bottomless pit": "This pit is not really bottomless, but it amused Obb Nyreb to tell the Yoinog it was, and they never doubt him." Elsewhere, a kitchen is described thusly: "Grimy pots, pans, and plates litter the floor. A cauldron large enough to contain a man sits in the center of the room, while smaller ones dangle from the ceiling." Speaking as someone whose personal style tends toward the aureate, I admire Ritzlin's ability to convey description, vital information, and mood through so few words. This approach also makes the descriptions easy to use at a glance, which is very helpful in play.

Designed for character levels 1–3, The Lair of the Brain Eaters is challenging. There are a lot of Yoinog within the caves, as well as other creatures, such as the apelike Skullfaces and mutant rats (some of which breathe fire – yes, it's a bit silly, but so what?). Fortunately, the caves contain lots of opportunities for the characters to act stealthily or otherwise use the environment to their advantage. In addition, there's a captive within who, if freed, can aid the characters in navigating the place. These factors, combined with some clever tricks and obstacles, creates a memorable locale for both exploration and combat. 

The Lair of the Brain Eaters is an inventive, evocative, and unpretentious "meat and potatoes" adventure that I'd like to see more of – from Lamentations of the Flame Princess or any other publisher. I think it'd be an especially great fit for anyone playing North Wind's Hyperborea RPG, but it'd work just as well with any other fantasy game that draws inspiration from the pulps. I really enjoyed this one.

REVIEW: Basic Roleplaying Universal Game Engine

When it comes to venerable roleplaying game systems, the percentile skill-driven one first introduced in 1978's RuneQuest is unquestionably one of the most enduring and influential. Two years later, Chaosium released it as a separate 16-page booklet entitled Basic Role-Playing, which it then used as the foundation upon which to build many other classic RPGs, from Call of Cthulhu to Stormbringer to Worlds of Wonder. In the years since, many other games published by Chaosium and other companies have either directly made use of these rules or have been inspired by them. Like D&D's class-and-level system or the point-buy system of Champions, there can be no question that BRP is a mainstay of the hobby.

Consequently, I was not at all surprised when Chaosium announced last year that a new edition of the game system would be released and released under the Open RPG Creative (ORC) License so that third parties could freely produce their own RPGs using this time-honored system. Of course, this latest iteration of Basic Roleplaying – take note of the disappearance of the hyphen – is a lot beefier than its original iteration. Weighing in at 256 pages, this latest version of the game is, in some ways, a bit more like GURPS in that it offers a large menu of rules options to choose from in creating one's own skill-driven RPG. This is a toolkit and not every tool is needed for every BRP-based game or campaign. 

Despite the wide array of options available, drawn from an array of sources, the fundamentals of BRP remain largely the same since their first appearance more than four decades ago. Characters possess seven characteristics – Strength, Constitution, Size, Intelligence, Power, Dexterity, and Charisma – and a number of points with which to purchase skills. However, how those scores are generated, how many skills points are available, and so on are subject to multiple options. There are even optional characteristics, like Education, that a referee can choose to use if he so desires. The skill list, too, is customizable, as are the "powers" available to characters, like magic, mutations, or psychic abilities. This level of customization sets the tone for the entire book, hence my earlier reference to GURPS.

It's important to point out, though, that Basic Roleplaying includes lots of examples and advice throughout, in order both to illustrate the range of options and the pros and cons of making use of them. This is important, I think, because the book is dense and I can easily imagine that its density might be off-putting to newcomers. Even with all of the examples and advice, this probably isn't an easy book for inexperienced roleplayers to digest. There's a lot within its 256 pages and, while clearly written, even I found myself frequently flipping back and forth between sections to make sense of what I'd just read. I don't mean this as a damning criticism, but it's a reality nonetheless.

Ultimately, this is a danger all "universal" game systems must face. In an effort to include rules and procedures for anything that might come up in genres of games as different as fantasy and science fiction or modern-day and ancient world, the page count will inevitably rise. This is especially true for a game system like Basic Roleplaying, whose overall philosophy tends toward simulation, especially with regards to actions like combat. When one takes into account all the options available for nearly everything – including options that simplify the rules – the end result is undeniably ponderous. 

Again, I say this not as a criticism but rather as an observation. Anyone who's played more than one BRP-based game knows how much they can differ from one another, in terms not just of content and focus but also in terms of complexity. Combat in RuneQuest, for example, is vastly more complicated than in Call of Cthulhu, never mind Pendragon. Yet, all three RPGs share unmistakable similarities that make it easier to pick up and play one if you already know how to play another, despite their differences. Basic Roleplaying provides rules, options, and guidance for building games as distinct as these and many more. I was genuinely amazed by the range of alternatives presented in this book, which is indeed a great strength. With this book, a referee would have no need for any others in constructing the BRP RPG to suit him and his players.

As a physical object, Basic Roleplaying is impressive, too. I own the hardcover version, which is sturdy and well-bound, with thick, parchment-like paper. The book is nicely illustrated with full-color art throughout. The layout is clear but dense, with the text being quite small in places (praise Lhankor Mhy for progressive lenses!). I haven't seen the PDF version, so I can't speak to its quality, but I cannot imagine it's much different. Since almost the entirety of its text has been released under the ORC License, you can take a look at its System Reference Document to see exactly what the book contains. If you do so, I think you'll understand what I mean about its density. At the same time, I'm very glad I own a physical copy of the book, but then I'm an old man who hates reading electronic documents, particularly long and complex ones like this book.

All that said, Basic Roleplaying is an excellent resource for anyone interested in using BRP for their own campaigns, regardless of the setting or genre. I highly recommend it.

REVIEW: How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox

There were two great obsessions at the dawn of the Old School Renaissance: megadungeons and sandboxes. Each was a distinctive element of many of the foundational roleplaying game campaigns of the 1970s, like Blackmoor, Greyhawk, and Tékumel. Their rediscovery and promotion are among the lasting impacts of the OSR – so much so that both massive dungeons and open-ended hexcrawls are now permanent fixtures of the even wider RPG scene. 

Of the two, I'd say that megadungeons are probably the better understood and more commonly used, thanks in no small part to the many examples of them now available in print. Furthermore, a megadungeon is, in many ways, just a scaled-up version of a dungeon and almost everyone who's ever played a fantasy RPG, whether tabletop or electronic, knows what a dungeon is like and how it's constructed. However, sandboxes are, in my experience, both less common and less well understood. There are no doubt many reasons for this, but a big one, I think, is they require more preparation beforehand by the referee and preparation of a less formulaic sort than what's employed when designing a dungeon, regardless of its size.

Fortunately for those of us who enjoy fantasy sandboxes – my ongoing House of Worms campaign, for example, is something of a sandbox – there are resources out there to aid in their creation. The very best of them has long been Rob Conley's twenty-four part series on "How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox," whose first post appeared in the far-off time of September 2009. It's a terrific collection of blog posts, filled with good ideas and wisdom drawn from years of refereeing sandbox campaigns. I long ago bookmarked many of the posts and refer to them often in my own work, such as designing the Eshkom District for Secrets of sha-Arthan. If you've never read these posts before, I highly recommend you do so.

An equally good – maybe better – option would be to purchase How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox, 180-page compilation of Conley's blog posts, rewritten and expanded with examples, maps, and artwork, available in PDF, softcover, or hardcover formats. In the book's introduction, Conley provides both a nice overview of what a sandbox campaign is and his own reasons for enjoying them:

One of my favorite things to do with Tabletop RPGs is to create interesting places with interesting situations and then let the players trash the setting in pursuit of adventure.

That certainly encapsulates much of the fun my players and I have had with my House of Worms campaign. He goes on:

My focus is not to create any type of narrative. Rather, I focus on helping my players experience living their characters' lives while adventuring. It's called a sandbox campaign because like in life, the players are free to do anything their characters can do within the campaign setting.

This wide-open world with unlimited choices can be very challenging as a Game Master/Referee. The key to dealing with this challenge is organization. A systematic approach is needed to break down the enormous task of dealing with an entire world. Organized into bite-size chunks that one can do in the time they have for a hobby.

Once again, I think Conley has done a fine job here of distilling the essence and unique pleasures of a sandbox campaign, while also recognizing that creating and maintaining such a campaign is not always easy, hence the need for a guide such as this one. 

With that out of the way, he first describes and then elaborates upon thirty-three distinct steps in the process of designing a fantasy sandbox, from creating the map to placing settlements and lairs to choosing a "home base" for a new campaign. It's all presented clearly and methodically, so that it's easy for even a neophyte to follow. Best of all, Conley includes lots of examples throughout, drawn from his own experience of making fantasy sandboxes. Indeed, I'd go so far as to say that these examples are among my favorite parts of How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox. They not only serve as illustrations of design principles, but they also give some insight into Conley's own gaming past, which I found delightful and inspiring.

Throughout the text, the Isle of Pyade serves as the main example of how to implement the thirty-three steps to creating a fantasy sandbox setting. I found this very useful, because it's eminently practical and concrete rather than merely theoretical. If you follow the steps through, one by one, you'll see Pyade grow out of a blank hex map into a fully-fleshed out and complete location. Whether you're a novice or an old hand at this sort of thing, you'll learn a lot from the example of Pyade.

By the conclusion of How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox, the Isle of Pyade is now ready to use. However, many of its details – maps, NPCs, encounter tables, etc. – are scattered across its 180 pages, making it less suitable for use as a reference. Should you wish to make use of Pyade yourself, a better option might be the separate The Isle of Pyade book (available in electronic, softcover, and hardcover format), which takes all the relevant details and consolidates them in one place for greater coherence and ease of use. There's also some additional content in the form of artwork and color reproductions of the original maps Conley made in the late 1980s. If you're fan of RPG "archeology" as I am, this only adds to the value of The Isle of Pyade.

How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox is a very good book, one I am very happy to own and one I am certain I'll refer to and make use of in the years to come. In addition to all the thoughtful insights and clear instructions Conley provides, he "shows his work," which is to say, he lays bare how he works and why, right down to including very useful appendices of resources, hexmapping guidelines, travel and encounter rules, and information about the process behind creating Blackmarsh, his earlier published sandbox setting. Aside from some minor quibbles about editing, I have only praise to offer about this book. If you have even the slightest interest in creating and refereeing a sandbox campaign, consider picking up a copy. You won't regret it.

REVIEW: A Folklore Bestiary (Volume 1)

An aspect of Dungeons & Dragons – and, by extension, all fantasy roleplaying games – that I find equally fascinating and frustrating is the way that it adopts and adapts the mythology and folklore of the real world in order to provide fodder for new spells, magic items, and (especially) monsters. I find it fascinating, because of how wide a net Dave Arneson, Gary Gygax, and those followed in their footsteps cast in establishing the canon of D&D. For example, how many of us reading this had ever heard of the tarrasque before seeing it in the pages of the Monster Manual II? On the other hand, I find it frustrating, because of how far D&D often deviates from its legendary source material. Again, consider the tarrasque, which bears very little resemblance to its Provençal inspiration.

It's for this reason that I was very excited by the release of A Folklore Bestiary by the Merry Mushmen, perhaps best known for their "adventure gaming bric-a-brac," Knock! "Inspired by folk tales and superstitions," according to its front cover, the Bestiary is a collection of almost forty creatures drawn primarily, but not exclusively, from European legends for use with Old School Essentials and other similar RPGs. With its focus on offering less well-known folkloric monsters as adversaries, allies, and enigmas for fantasy gaming, the Bestiary is a monster book seemingly written with my own peculiar tastes in mind.

With ten different authors credited, no two entries are exactly the same in terms of presentation. In general, though, each entry begins with the creature's name (including a phonetic pronunciation) and place of origin, followed by a short piece of in-setting fiction, like an excerpt from a journal or a transcript of an interrogation. The fiction is largely flavor text, setting the scene for what ordinary people might know or believe about a given creature. After that, there's an Old School Essentials write-up for the monster, sometimes accompanied by random tables useful to the referee, like rumors, motivations, and similar details. All entries also include a collection of adventure hooks involving the creature. Some include full scenarios, featuring a keyed map. Rounding out the entries is a full-page, full-color illustration (and some smaller sketches) by Letty Wilson, whose slightly whimsical artwork some of you might already know from Dolmenwood. 

A Folklore Bestiary is a 160-page A5 hardcover that is cleanly and attractively laid out. Compared to, say, Knock!, whose layout some have found cluttered to the point of illegibility at times, the Bestiary is much more conservative, though still distinctive. It's the kind of book that's equally useful as a reference and as reading material that one can flip through for inspiration. This could be off-putting to the more curmudgeonly among old school fans, since there's a lot more in each entry than the monster's game statistics and a basic description of its habitat and behavior. This is a book filled with creatures that live in a larger world and have connections to that world, potentially leading to much more compelling and even meaningful encounters.

Of course, this is also potentially a drawback. Because nearly all of these monsters are drawn from real world mythologies (a standout exception being Lord Dunsany's gnoles), they might not fit into a generic fantasy world as easily. For example, the dybbuk has strong associations with Jewish legends, while Jack-in-Irons is similarly associated with medieval Yorkshire. These associations are a big part of the appeal of the monsters described herein, grounding them in "reality" in a way that is often missing from standard fantasy monsters like goblins, zombies, and even dragons. Yet, they also make it mean that, unless a game is set in the real world, they might need to be stripped of some of their specificity, which could, in turn, genericize them, which would be a shame. Thinking about this now, I can't help but wonder if Gygax and company faced a similar conundrum in creating D&D's well-known menagerie.

Despite that minor point of concern, A Folklore Bestiary is a delightful product, filled with excellent and, above all, unusual new monsters to include in your fantasy roleplaying game campaign. It's also a good reminder that, even a half-century later, there's still plenty of myths and legends that have yet to be tapped for RPGs. Judging by the fact that this book is called "Volume 1," I can only assume that the Merry Mushmen have plans to produce more. If so, I very much look forward to seeing what strange new creatures they'll include.

REVIEW: Terror in the Streets

Allow me to say once again, as I always do, that I am a huge fan of historical fantasy. From what I can tell, my fondness for it is unusual, both among RPG players and among RPG writers and broadly for the same reason: the perception that it's hard to get right – especially when there are legions of know-it-all armchair historians out there positively salivating at the possibility of uttering the dread incantation Ackchyually the moment they detect even the slightest deviation from the historical record. Consequently, I don't blame anyone who chooses to shy away from venturing anywhere near real world history in their RPG sessions or products.

Nevertheless, I remain deeply grateful to publishers like Lamentations of the Flame Princess and writers like Kelvin Green for their willingness to sate my peculiar tastes for fantastic adventures set in this world's historical past. Terror in the Streets – no, I won't be using the acronym – is a clever, well-presented and, above all, fun example of just how you can use real world history as a backdrop for a fantasy RPG adventure without either getting too bogged down in pointless minutiae or giving that history its proper due. It's not perfect by any means, but Terror in the Streets is very good.

Before proceeding to the meat of this review, I should add that there are, in fact, two different versions of Terror in the Street. The first (and the one I'm reviewing in this post) is a 96-page A5 hardcover book featuring a cover painting by Yannick Bouchard. The second version, entitled Big Terror in the Streets – no, just no – is a boxed set that features a lot of additional goodies, like a map of the city of Paris in 1630, player handouts, cardboard cut-outs, and a large yellow six-sided Unrest Die (for tracking the progress of civil unrest), in addition to an additional book, the 48-page Huguenauts and Other Distractions. Unfortunately, I don't believe Big Terror in the Streets is available in any form any longer, though there may still be copies of it floating around in secondary markets. That's a shame, since Huguenauts and Other Distractions has much to recommend it and indeed provides worthwhile fodder for anyone who continues to worry that historical fantasy is hard to get right. (If I find that the book is available, I'll do a review of it as well.)

Terror in the Streets is a murder mystery set in early 17th century Paris – "Jack the Ripper, but 250 years early," as the author describes it in his introduction. There's a serial killer of children loose in the city and it's up to the player characters to stop him. Just how and indeed why they might do so is an open question, one of many ways that Terror in the Streets might be called a "sandbox" adventure. Other than a timeline that dictates when and where the killer strikes (along with other key events), the course of the adventure is largely determined by the choices of the player characters, as they investigate, interact with NPCs, and deal with random encounters. 

This is, in my opinion, the only way to structure a murder mystery adventure without resorting to a more heavy-handed approach. Yes, this structure carries with it the risk that the characters might get lost in the weeds, wasting too much time on red herrings – of which there are quite a few in Terror in the Streets – and other irrelevant complications. However, the advantage of this more open-ended structure is that it's much more forgiving to the referee trying to keep track of all the moving parts that make up the scenario. Plus, the timeline, which exists independently of character actions, serves as a useful way to nudge their attention back toward more pressing matters. And there are even guidelines for what might happen if the characters fail to stop the killer, which is quite refreshing.

While the murder mystery scenario is a genuinely compelling one that nicely leverages multiple aspects of real world history, like the tensions between political and religious factions within Paris, it's not the only appealing thing about Terror in the Streets. Equally interesting in my opinion is its presentation of 17th century Paris – its districts, landmarks, taxi service companies, encounters, and, above all, unique NPCs – in effect a mini-gazetteer of the city. Taken together, these elements give the referee everything he needs to keep the characters engaged while in Paris, not just for this adventure but for others as well. It's nicely done and, reading through it, I found myself wishing that LotFP produced more material like this in the future.  

The only aspect of Terror in the Streets that might be considered a flaw is Green's humor-laden conversational style of writing. This is not a book whose author takes himself or the material too seriously. Consequently, there are asides, digressions, and meta-commentary scattered throughout, usually to good effect. Green is quite open about his inspirations and the shortcomings/limitations of the adventure, which is genuinely refreshing and indeed helpful. However, there are also occasional moments of goofiness and sly winks at the reader, like a mad wizard with wild hair and a beard named Alain de la Mare. These don't necessarily detract from the scenario, but I can easily some players and referees finding them off-putting, particularly those who prefer their historical fantasies straight. For myself, I found most of these elements amusing and felt they nicely demonstrated that there's no reason a historical scenario need be unduly solemn.

In the end, though, this is a small thing and Terror in the Streets is one of the best things Kelvin Green has written for LotFP to date. It's also one of the best historical fantasy adventures I've read in quite some time. Reading it, I was left with a small sense of disappointment that I am not refereeing a game where I could easily make use of it. Terror in the Streets is a well written, well presented scenario that is probably a lot of fun to play. I can think of no better compliment.

REVIEW: Hyperborea

When I first read Astonishing Swords & Sorcerers of Hyperborea, two things about it greatly impressed me. Most significant was that this roleplaying game of "swords, sorcery, and weird fantasy" demonstrated an obvious love for the pulp fantasies of Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, and Clark Ashton Smith. Equally obvious was its love for Gygaxian AD&D. The latter should have come as no surprise, given designer Jeff Talanian's stint as Gygax's protégé and amanuensis for the uncompleted Castle Zagyg project. Still, both these qualities endeared AS&SH – an infelicitous acronym of there ever was one – to me. 

In the more than a decade since its initial release in 2012, the game has found a place for itself among fans of old school Dungeons & Dragons and its descendants, particularly among those, like myself, whose tastes tend toward the pulpy end of the fantasy spectrum. A second edition of the game was released in 2017 in the form of a single hardcover book. The new edition added some new material to the contents of its original boxed rulebooks, as well as new art and layout. Unfortunately, the second edition rulebook was over 600 pages in length and very unwieldy to use, either in play or as a reference volume. On the other hand, the many adventures published to support the new edition were both excellent and evocative of Weird Tales-inspired fantasy.

2022 saw the appearance of a third edition of the game, this time in the form of two, smaller hardcover volumes – a Player's Manual and a Referee's Manual, each around 300 pages long. In addition to their much more convenient size, these new volumes contain even more art than the two previous editions, as well as a cleaner layout and organization. The game also acquired a new title with this edition – Hyperborea. The combined effect of all these changes is, in my opinion, the best-looking and easiest-to-use edition of the game to date. 

As pleased and impressed as I am by the visual improvements of the third edition, its actual content is not significantly changed from second edition. Aside from combat, which is much simplified, most of the changes are quite small, small enough that I, as a casual player of the game over the last decade, had to dig around online to notice most of them. There are also new additions to the selections of monsters, spells, and magic items, not to mention playable human races. When combined with all aforementioned esthetic changes, I think this is more than sufficient justification for a new edition, but whether it's enough for any individual to replace their existing copy of second edition with it is for each person to decide himself. By design, none of the changes or additions make, say, adventures written with 3e in mind incompatible with previous ones, so there is no necessity in "upgrading."

Players of Gygaxian AD&D will immediately find Hyperborea familiar – six attributes, a plethora of classes and sub-classes (22 in all!), nine alignments, multiple lists of spells, etc. It's a big, baroque stew of often idiosyncratic but flavorful options, but it's never overwhelming. In large part that's because of Talanian's presentation of the material, but it helps, too, that Hyperborea is much more clearly a cohesive ruleset than a sometimes-contradictory hodgepodge built up over time, which only makes sense, given that Hyperborea came out decades after AD&D. Consequently, I consider Hyperborea the best modern restatement of AD&D. 

Of course, the real joy of Hyperborea is not its rules, however solid they are. Where it most stands out is setting. The titular Land Beyond the North Wind is a flat, hexagonal plane that was once a component of "Old Earth" and the source of many of its myths and legends. Inhabited by the peoples of many ancient cultures – Amazons, Atlanteans, Kelts, Kimmerians, Norse, Picts, and more – Hyperborea is a adventuresome, horror-tinged sandbox in which to set all manner of pulp fantasy adventures. If you read about it in story by REH, HPL, or CAS, you can easily set it in Hyperborea. The setting is sketched out with just enough detail that the referee isn't left entirely to his own devices, but neither is he hamstrung. Think of the original World of Greyhawk folio and you have a good idea of the level of detail I'm talking about.

If I have a complaint about Hyperborea compared to its predecessors, it's that the setting map is now presented in a softcover Atlas of Hyperborea, which is sold separately. Previous editions, including the second edition hardcover, included a very nice, fold-out map of the lost continent; the Atlas chops up that map into smaller (and much less usable, in my opinion) portions. It's a shame, because Glynn Seal's map of Hyperborea is lovely and deserves better.  

Hyperborea is a product of real passion and dedication, both to the legacy of Gary Gygax and to the imaginations of the greatest writers of Weird Tales. It's a good example of what can be accomplished by a designer with a singular vision and a dedication to seeing it realized. Certainly, Hyperborea is not a fantasy roleplaying for everyone. Its focus and authorial voice are distinctive, even a little out of step with what some may want. But if what you're looking for is a florid, flavorful take on pulp fantasy that nevertheless hews closely to the outlines of Gygaxian AD&D, you're in for a treat.

REVIEW: Black Sword Hack

During the nearly eight years this blog was inactive, I wasn't paying nearly as much attention to the wider old school roleplaying scene as I previously had been. Consequently, quite a number of releases, trends, and fads within this sphere completely passed me by. One of these was The Black Hack, a streamlined class-and-level RPG by David Black, whose first edition appeared in 2016. For a time, I am given to understand, The Black Hack and its design principles were much favored, leading to a proliferation of "Hacks" – Bluehack (for Holmes D&D), The Rad-Hack (Gamma World, etc.), Cthulhu Hack (Call of Cthulhu), even The Petal Hack (Empire of the Petal Throne), among many, many more.

Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with any of this. Gamers are as prone to enthusiasms as the next person and I try not to begrudge anyone else their preferences, even if I don't share them. Still, I can't deny that the intensity of the ardor for The Black Hack put me off looking into it for some time. What can I say: I'm prone to contrariness. When I finally did read The Black Hack for myself, I found it more agreeable than I expected, despite my dislike of certain aspects of its design. That's not knock against it, of course; I generally dislike certain aspects of most games' designs. That's more or less the nature of the beast.

That's why Black Sword Hack took me by surprise. I didn't even know it existed until it showed up in my mailbox one day as a complimentary copy sent to me by its publisher, The Merry Mushmen (best known for Knock!). Written by Alexandre "Kobayashi" Jeanette, Black Sword Hack is, in his words, "a dark fantasy roleplaying game inspired (but not limited to) the works of R.E. Howard, Michael Moorcock, Karl Edward Wagner's Kane series, Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar and Jack Vance's Dying Earth books." Being a fan of all those writers and their pulp fantasies, that description certainly got my attention, as did the eye-catching artwork by Goran Gligović, which can be found throughout the full-color, 112-page, A5-sized, hardcover book.

The core rules of Black Sword Hack are simple. A turn is an abstract measure of time, during which time a player character may act. During a time, a character can typically take two actions, such as movement and combat. All actions are resolved by making an attribute test. The goal of a test is to roll under a character's appropriate attribute score with a d20. A roll of 1 is always a critical success, while a roll of 20 is always a critical failure. I must admit that the lower-is-better d20 roll takes some getting used to, since it runs counter to decades of experience as a player of roleplaying games, but otherwise the rules of Black Sword Hack are straightforward.

The game retains the "Usage die" from The Black Hack, but with a twist. For those unfamiliar with it, the Usage die is a way to keep track of resources that have limited quantities, like rations or arrows. Whenever a resource is used, the die is rolled and, if the result is 1 or 2, the die "degrades" to the next die type (e.g. d8 becomes d6) until d4 is reached and 1 or 2 is rolled, at which point the resource is completely depleted. Black Sword Hack does not employ the Usage die for concrete resources, but only for abstract ones, like influence, debts, etc. Further, there is the Doom die, a type of Usage die that represents "the attention of Law and Chaos" on the characters. It's rolled whenever the character critically fails and under certain other specific conditions. Once the Doom die is depleted, the character makes all his tests and damage rolls with Disadvantage (i.e. rolling two dice and taking the lowest result).

While the D&D pedigree of Black Sword Hack (and The Black Hack on which it is based) is readily apparent (STR, DEX, CON, etc.), the game is class-less, placing greater emphasis on a character's origin (barbarian, civilized, or decadent) and background (berserker, diplomat, assassin, etc.). This provides a looser mechanical framework for characters, in keeping with the wide range of possible dark fantasy settings the referee might create (more on this in a bit). Characters can also acquire "gifts" – powers of Balance, Chaos, or Law – in addition to sorcery, faerie ties, twisted science, and runic weapons. As characters gain experience, they accrue more abilities and hit points, but a high-level Black Sword Hack character is much less robust than a D&D character of similar level. Consequently, combat is much more fraught with danger, which makes sense, given its literary inspirations.

Where Black Sword Hack really shines, though, is its world building tools. Approximately half the book is devoted to the referee – more if you include its sample bestiary. The game assumes the referee will create his own setting, one dominated by the struggle between Law and Chaos, as in Moorcock and Anderson's fantasies. There are tables and examples to aid him in deciding on the nature of the struggle and how it manifests in the setting, along numerous adventure seeds, two adventure, and the sketch of an entire city. There's even a sketch of a setting, complete with a map, to show one way to make use of the world building tools.

A conceit of the referee section is that any setting the referee designs will inevitably include certain stock locales – Forbidden City, Amber Enclave, Merchant League, Northern Raiders, etc. These are not just tropes from dark fantasy fiction but perhaps also eternal archetypes that reappear throughout the multiverse. Creating a setting for Black Sword Hack involves drawing a map and placing all these locales onto it somewhere and then fleshing out the details through play and the judicious use of random tables provided in the book. It's a clever approach and one that genuinely helps guide the referee in a useful way. The same goes, I think, with the bestiary, which includes plenty of archetypal enemies – demons, cannibals, serpent people – to spark the imagination, while still providing the tools needed to create unique and original antagonists.

If Black Sword Hack has a flaw, it's its looseness. Some players and referees may find its relative lack of concern for considering every possibility, whether in the rules or its myriad settings, disappointing. If you prefer something more defined, even concrete, you're better off with other options. Black Sword Hack revels in its light, almost freeform, rules and malleable setting elements and that won't be to everyone's taste. But as someone who's come to realize that my own preferences tend toward simple, flexible rules with lots of room for filling in the details as I go, this is right up my alley. When I get around to running that Stormbringer campaign of my dreams, there's no question in my mind that I'll be using Black Sword Hack. Perhaps others will like it too.

Black Sword Hack is available directly from the Merry Mushmen website in either print or PDF form.