The Madness of Marlinko

Fever-Dreaming Marlinko – A City Adventure Supplement for Labyrinth Lord details a borderlands city where life takes a strange fever-dream cast, where confidence tricks and scams are an accepted way of life, where its each of four contradas—or quarters—worships one of the four gods (and pointedly ignores the fifth) entombed in the squat, black bulk of the Tomb of the Town Gods, and where adventurers can find respite, relaxation, rumours, and more from the wilderness beyond… It stands amidst the Greater Marlinko Canton in the world of Zěm—as detailed in What Ho, Frog Demons! – Further Adventures in Greater Marlinko Canton, not too far from the Slumbering Ursine Dunes, and from there, Misty Isles of the Eld. It is published by Hydra Collective LLC and is an Old School Renaissance setting supplement designed to be run using Goblinoid Games’ Labyrinth Lord. Of course, it can easily be adapted to the Retroclone of the Game Master’s choice.

As a city located in the Hill Cantons, a region described as, “A Slavic-myth inspired, acid fantasy world of Moorcockian extradimensional incursions and Vancian swindlers and petty bureaucrats.”, Marlinko matches much of that description. Both of its four contradas and their inhabitants have Slavic names and many of its monsters are drawn from Slavic legend. For example, one of the city’s leading socialites is Lady Szara, organiser of the annual Bathe in the Blood of your Servants charity ball, is secretly an ancient and evil strigoi—a Romanian version of the vampire—who it is suggested, should speak in the style of the actress, Zsa Zsa Gabor, only more sinister. She may even employ the Player Characters to locate certain magical gewgaws and knick-knacks, that is, if she simply does not decide to consume them... The Eld—essentially ‘space elves’ from another dimension with a distinctly Melnibonéan-like, decadent sensibility—slink secretly into the city, and the bureaucracy extends to unions, such as The Guild of Condottiere, Linkboys, Roustabouts, and Stevedores, a union for adventuring party hirelings, which really objects to scab hirelings! Numerous swindlers and scam artists are mentioned throughout the description of the city, and there is even a section on ‘Running Long and Short Cons’.

Intended to be regularly visited by Player Characters of Second and Third Levels, what Fever-Dreaming Marlinko – A City Adventure Supplement for Labyrinth Lord is not, is a traditional city supplement. There is no building-by-building description, no great history of the city, or great overview. Instead, it focuses on the pertinent details about four contradas and the things that can be found there and more importantly, can be interacted with by the Player Characters. Včelar is home to Marlinko’s wealthy, dominated by their great painted-plastered town-manses and famed for Jarek’s Manse and Tiger Pit where the perpetually name dropping and bragging owner has built a domed all-weather tiger pit in which he stages tiger wrestling! Obchodník is the city’s business district, where at Fraža’s Brokerhouse, the Player Characters might make purchases from the radically—for Marlinko, that is—honest and unfortunately terribly racist, Fraža the Curios Dealer, or pay for at fortune at The Serene Guild of Seers, Augurs, Runecasters, and Wainwrights—the clarity (at least) of any such fortune depending on the cost. Svině is home to Marlinko’s slums, but also many guilds, such as The Illustrious Workers of Wood or The Guild of Condotierre, Linkboys, Roustabouts and Stevedores’ Dome of Supernal Dealings, but also home to the Catacombs of St. Jack’s Church of the Blood Jesus, whose disturbingly bloody misinterpretations of Christianity has the potential to unleash murderous mayhem upon the city. Soudce is home to the city’s suburbs, their skyline dominated by the Onion Tower of the Checkered Mage, the home of the city’s resident arch-mage, František, a surprisingly level-headed wizard, who might pay well for certain items.

Each of the four contradas is accompanied by a table of random encounters, a mixture of the mundane, the silly, and the weird. For example, a group of flirts who if a Player Character parties with might wake up the next morning at his own shotgun wedding; Kytel the Duellist, a thoroughly bored swordmaster who will fight anyone to first blood; Old Slinky Panc, an escaped tiger, probably drugged and quite harmless, who Jarek the Nagsman would probably want returned—and returned unharmed; and a Hairless Hustler who will offer to sell the Player Characters two bars of surprisingly warm to the touch silver metal—and there is a reason that the Hairless Hustler lacks hair… These are all engaging encounters which make getting about the city memorable and interesting, some of them having the capacity to turn into interesting adventures depending upon the actions of the Player Characters.

Marlinko’s notables are described in some detail, but perhaps the best part of their descriptions are the suggestions on how to speak like them. The Game Master should have enormous fun portraying any one of them. In comparison, only two adventure sites are detailed in Fever-Dreaming Marlinko—‘Lady Szara’s Town-Manse’ and ‘Catacombs of the Church of the Blood Jesus’. Ultimately, they are both places to raid and ransack, home to respective evils present in the city, but not raid and ransack without reason. A Player Character might be kidnapped and find himself locked up in the catacombs first or the Player Characters all together might be hired to find a missing person, whilst Lady Szara could hire the Player Characters rather than give them cause to attack her and so have them visit her home. Of the two, ‘Lady Szara’s Town-Manse’ is the more interesting and the more thoughtful in its design, being an actual home rather than just another monster lair. It is also better mapped.

Beyond describing might be found in each contrada, Fever-Dreaming Marlinko details crime—sanctioned and unsanctioned crime—and punishment in the city, advice on running cons in the city, and buying and selling in the city—everything from War Ocelots and Radegast’s Dark ale to the Poignard of the Overworld and a campy, faux-barbarian meadhall. Emphasising Marlinko as a place to visit and unwind in its taverns and other entertainment establishments, Fever-Dreaming Marlinko includes a guide to carousing in the city and potential outcomes whichever contrada the Player Characters are visiting. There are even three locations for the Labyrinth Lord to expand as potential adventure sites, though of course, it would be nice to have had more ready-to-play adventure sites in the book.

However, as odd and as weird as the city of Marlinko is, it can get weirder. As with the other titles set in the Hill Cantons, Fever-Dreaming Marlinko has a Chaos Index, which tracks the ebb and flow of the weirdness in the city, much of it being driven by the actions of the Player Characters, including making trips back and forth to the Slumbering Ursine Dunes. This is indicative of the design of Fever-Dreaming Marlinko, that it is ideally meant to be played in tandem with Slumbering Ursine Dunes. As the weirdness factor grows, the cultists of the Church of the Blood Jesus might commit more, and bloodier murders, mass hallucinations might break out, hundreds participate in a group wedding, and more. The weirdness factor also affects the ‘News of the Day’, the rumours and truths which spread throughout the city.

Rounding out Fever-Dreaming Marlinko is a set of five appendices. The first is a bestiary which adds three monsters—the Robo-Dwarf, the Wobbly Giant, and the Cantonal Strigoi, whilst the second, a ‘Tiger Wrestling Mini-Game’, provides the rules for handling events at Jarek’s Manse and Tiger Pit, the only tiger-wrestling arena in town. It is definitely a dangerous pastime, but good luck to any Player Character who throws his hat into the ring! Two new Classes are detailed in the third appendix. The Mountebank is a Thief-subclass which has the Sleight-of-Hand skill for moving and switching out objects as part of a scam, can use Illusionist spells—though they can only be learned by swindling them out of actual Illusionists, and even temporarily raise their Charisma to eighteen! The other Class is the Robo-Dwarf, which is more of a strange mechanical variant upon the actual Dwarf Class. The last two appendices provide the Labyrinth Lord with a useful list of ‘Common NPC names and Nicknames’ and a pronunciation guide.

Physically, Fever-Dreaming Marlinko is generally well laid out, the writing is clear, and the artwork is excellent. It needs an edit in places, the real problem with the physical book is that it is not well organised, lacking an introduction which would help the Labyrinth Lord understand how the city functions as a game setting and the order in which the book’s contents come not always in the right place. Once the Labyrinth Lord has read through the book, it is relatively easy to grasp how the city works as a setting.

Apart from the less than useful organisation, there are really only one or two other issues with Fever-Dreaming Marlinko—both of which could cause offence. The first is that St. Jack’s Church of the Blood Jesus is a potentially offensive misinterpretation of Christianity, whilst the second is that one or two of the NPCs are described as fervent racists and that the Labyrinth Lord is expected to portray this in character. Now this does take place in a fantasy world, but that does not mean that neither a player nor the Labyrinth Lord cannot or should be necessarily comfortable about this. This is one aspect of the setting which will require a discussion between all of the players before play begins to see whether they are prepared to accept it or not as part of the setting. The likelihood is not and the Labyrinth Lord should be prepared to replace it with potentially less offensive character quirks or attitudes for the NPCs concerned.

Fever-Dreaming Marlinko is designed as campaign base, one which the Player Characters will return to again and again after exploring first the Slumbering Ursine Dunes, then the Misty Isles of the Eld, and from there, the wider world of Zěm as detailed in What Ho, Frog Demons! – Further Adventures in Greater Marlinko Canton. Although the Labyrinth Lord could use it in another setting, it does work best with those other books. And each time the Player Characters visit Marlinko, the Labyrinth Lord is given the means to make that visit memorable—with locations they might want to go to, random encounters which can become something more, rumours, and eventually weird things going on around them. There is no part of Marlinko as described which cannot be interacted with or does not add to the sense of oddness which pervades the city and which will probably be worse with every visit. Overall, Fever-Dreaming Marlinko – A City Adventure Supplement for Labyrinth Lord is a brilliantly written, incredibly gameable setting supplement which provides the Labyrinth Lord with an excellent toolkit to bring a fantastical city setting to life.

Batrachian Horrors & Tumorous Tubers

As the title suggests, What Ho, Frog Demons! – Further Adventures in Greater Marlinko Canton is a scenario set in the Hill Cantons, a region described as, “A Slavic-myth inspired, acid fantasy world of Moorcockian extradimensional incursions and Vancian swindlers and petty bureaucrats.” Previous releases—Slumbering Ursine Dunes and Misty Isles of the Eld—have focused on specific places in the region, not forgetting of course, Fever-Dreaming Marlinko, the city at the heart of the Cantons. Published by Hydra Collective LLC, What Ho, Frog Demons! expands greatly upon these specific adventure locations by presenting the wilderness which surrounds all of them, that is Marlinko Canton, as a bucolic yet weird, mini-hexcrawl, infested with neatly trimmed, but sleepy villages and hamlets inhabited by smiling rustic yokels who adamantly adhere to customs, practices, and beliefs that are probably weirder than the last settlement you passed through.

Designed for a group of four to seven player characters of between Second and Fourth Level, What Ho, Frog Demons! is written for use with Goblinoid Games’ Labyrinth Lord, but of course is easily adaptable to the Old School Renaissance retroclone of your choice. It details a region roughly twenty-eight by forty-eight miles, with some fourteen fixed sites of interest; thirty-six random encounters encompassing ‘Road Riff-Raff and Other Personages’, ‘Creatures Fell and Less Fell’, and ‘Sites of the Weird’; ‘Rumours, Hearsay, and Gossip of the Rankest Sort’ and ‘Weighty Conversation’; a pair of Adventure Sites; and a bestiary and a ‘Bucolic Village Generator’. Together this gives the Labyrinth Lord the means to run the journey between adventure locations like Slumbering Ursine Dunes, Misty Isles of the Eld, and the two described within the pages of What Ho, Frog Demons!, as well as a hexcrawl-style campaign fuelled by rumours and random encounters.

Of course, What Ho, Frog Demons! can be run in multiple different ways, whether as a standalone wilderness region or as source of scenarios, encounters, rumours, and monsters to be taken apart and added to a Labyrinth Lord’s existing campaign. Really though, it is designed to be combined with Slumbering Ursine Dunes, Misty Isles of the Eld, and Fever-Dreaming Marlinko to give the Labyrinth Lord a campaign for low to mid-Level characters set in the Hill Cantons. There are numerous links to all three locations in the pages of What Ho, Frog Demons!, primarily in the rumours and conversations it gives to help the Labyrinth Lord present engaging NPCs and give hooks for her player characters to follow up. At the heart of What Ho, Frog Demons! though—and what several of the hooks point to, are its two adventure sites.

The first adventure site is ‘The Frog Demon Temple’, what the author call a ‘Saturday Night Specials’, a small dungeon designed to be played between larger, longer adventures. Running to just eleven locations, this is a damp, foetid, batrachian hell hole sitting awfully close to a Hot Hell and which suggests further dangers to be found lurking under the Hill Cantons and which is probably too tough a dungeon to throw at characters of the lower Level range that What Ho, Frog Demons! is written for. 

Where ‘The Frog Demon Temple’ is likely to offer one or two sessions’ worth of play—less if the player characters realise that it is just too tough and decide to make a run for it, the second adventure site presents a much longer, more traditional scenario in the vein of Slumbering Ursine Dunes and Misty Isles of the Eld. ‘Beets for the Beet God’ takes place in the village of Ctryri Ctvrt where rumour has it that a local farmer has dug up a giant beet—or beetroot—allegedly marked with a strange, face-like blemish. Other hooks are given to get the player characters there, but whatever the reason for their visiting, it really is not too far for them to go from anywhere in the Marlinko Canton. What the party will find is yet another sleepy village, one full of nicely drawn NPCs, each with their own motivations which will change over the course of the adventures. The player characters are free to wander as they wish, interact with the NPCs as they wish, and in doing so, they will discover the weirdness at the heart of the adventure. There is the possibility that they will stop the weirdness early on, but player characters being player characters…

The primary similarities between Slumbering Ursine Dunes and Misty Isles of the Eld and ‘Beets for the Beet God’ are structural. All three are ‘pointcrawl’ adventures—consisting of connected adventure nodes rather than a hex grid of locations and wilderness spaced in between—but where Slumbering Ursine Dunes and Misty Isles of the Eld are regional in size, ‘Beets for the Beet God’ is limited to just Ctryri Ctvrt and its manor house. All three use an index—or clock—to track the progress of elements or forces at the heart of the scenario. In the previous two scenarios, this was a ‘Chaos Index’, which tracked the response of those elements or forces to the player characters’ actions, but here it is an ‘Infection Index’ which tracks the progress of its threat if the player characters decline to act. Ultimately, if they decline to act, the threat escalates into one that infect the whole of the Marlinko Canton… and beyond.

‘Beets for the Beet God’ is the highlight of What Ho, Frog Demons! It is a delightfully playful satire upon the conspiracy/zombie infection genres, but one that perfectly suits the bucolic weirdness that runs throughout Marlinko Canton.

Physically, What Ho, Frog Demons! is a well-presented book. It is profusely illustrated, not quite as archly styled as Misty Isles of the Eld, but nevertheless weird, rife with rustic insularity and bucolic resentment, and involving lots of frog demons. Many of the latter verge on the adorable, possessing an almost Muppet-like cuteness, but others are twisted and freaky, infusing the canton with batrachian horror. The cartography is also good and the writing is engaging and enjoyable.

What Ho, Frog Demons! is something of a contrast to the previous two adventures, Slumbering Ursine Dunes and Misty Isles of the Eld. With their use of the ‘Pointcrawl’, both are tightly focused in their design to enable the Labyrinth Lord and her players to concentrate on adventuring rather than having to travel. So it feels a little odd to have what is a hexcrawl rather than a Pointcrawl for the Hill Cantons, but What Ho, Frog Demons! – Further Adventures in Greater Marlinko Canton brings the Marlinko Canton to quiet life with its parochial oddities and bucolic weirdness that together hide the horrors that lie in the garden shed and in the earth below.

Down these weird streets...

Hydra Collective LLC is best known for its weird and wonderful fantasy ‘pointcrawl’ adventures such as Slumbering Ursine Dunes and Misty Isles of the Eld, but Weird Adventures presents a different fantastical setting, a Strange New World influenced by Raymond Chandler and Robert Chambers, E. Gary Gygax and H.P. Lovecraft, Fritz Leiber and Dashiell Hammett, amongst others. It presents a world close our own in the 1930s, an America worn down by depression and isolated following a Great War twenty years before, and an America in which technology is booming and crime is rife. Yet this is a world in which the Ancients were real and knew great magics, greater than the magics of today. In the modern era, magic is commonplace and put to ends both good and evil. This is a Pulp setting which combines Noir and Fantasy, but despite the fact that Weird Adventures is an Old School Renaissance title, it is not written for any specific Old School Renaissance roleplaying game. So for example, whilst magic is described as following two separate paths—the academic and scientific approach of  thaumaturgy versus the intuitive nature of mysticism—what this means mechanically is left up to the Game Master to decide. Similarly, the Old Time Religion accepts the use of folk magic, whereas the Oecumenical Hierarchate only accepts the study and use of the divine theurgy in certain religious orders, and again, it is up to the Game Master to decide what this means. In fact, the only real use of game mechanics is in the supplement’s bestiary, which really supports the utility factor to Weird Adventures.

The setting for Weird Adventures is the New World of Zephyria, divided into two continents, Septentrion to the north, Asciana to the south. Septentrion is dominated by The Union with countries of Borea and Zingaro to the north and south respectively. Long before colonists from the nations of Ealderde and populated the continent, the Ancients—perhaps from lost, fabled Meropis—arrived bringing the Black Folk with them. The Ancients, thought to be giants, their descendants said to be the Hill-Billy Giants now found in the Smaragdine Mountains, were displaced by the arrival of the people now known as the Natives, who were in turn displaced by the Ealderish colonists. Immigrants from the Far East, known as Yianese have also settled in The Union’s major cities. Currently, the nations of Ealderde are struggling to recover from the effects of the Great War in which acidic fog, artillery shells filled with alchemical solutions, zeppelins armed with rays of fire, cold, and fear flew over battlelines and cities, and constructions that look like children’s toys struck at midnight. The Union has distanced itself from Ealderish affairs as an economic downturn spreads worldwide and drought and over-farming have caused a dust bowl in the elemental fields.

Weird Adventures does touch upon some of the other countries of Zephyria. Notably, Zingaro to the south of The Union and Freedonia, a land of perpetual revolution and civil where the people venerate the Barren Madonna, Our Lady of the Grave, ‘Sainted Mother Death’, a saint unrecognised elsewhere by the Oecumenical Hierarchate. The primary icons in Zingaro are the Crystal Skulls each of which possesses a strange power. The overall description of Zingaro runs only to three pages—leaving the reader to want more—and the lands of Borea to the north and Asciana to the far south are given a similar treatment. The bulk of the content in Weird Adventures can roughly be divided in two. The first half, entitled ‘On the Weird Road’ in a prescient nod to Kerouac’s On the Road, is devoted to The Union, from the city of New Lludd in the northeast to New Ylourgne in the south on the Zingaran Gulf and from Phratropolis in the east to San Tiburon in the west on the Tranquil Ocean coast via Lake City in the midwest. Each of the eleven areas is accompanied by descriptions—but not stats—of various individuals, aspects, and things associated with the regions. So, for the Smaragdine Mountains, there is a discussion of the Bootleg Alchemicals the region is famous for; of the holy swords the great families of New Lludd pass down to their paladin sons and daughters who hunt monsters in the name of the Old Time Religion; and ten rumours about the Red Dwarf, the besuited ill omen who invites people to tea in a red velvet room in the city of Motoron.

The other half explores the City of Empire, or The City, and its forty or so districts, plus the Five Baronies of Empire Island, Shancks, Rookend, Marquesa, and Lichmond, though they are not as well detailed as Empire Island, the heart of The City  is. The City is a constant mix of the mundane and the weird, whether that is the mysterious ethnic enclave of Little Carcosa and its exotic markets and street festival, and Grimalkin Village, home to thaumaturgical dilettantes, free thinkers, and lots of cats. These are lovely touches of the Lovecraftian, as are the Ghouls of Undertown, mostly reviled for their dietary habits. Elsewhere, The City is beset by more obvious horror, such as Mister Scratch—who has offices on the sixty-sixth floor of a downtown skyscraper and who might have connections with the Hell Syndicate—seen about town with the rich and the poor, offering favours and tidbits in return for something else much later on… From time to time individuals are possessed by the Lord of the Cleaver, an obscure ‘eikone’ or personification of a concept, and driven to maniacally kill in bloody fashion. Other strange elements of The City include an elusive phantom automat which never appears in the same place twice and which dispenses odd, but useful things as well as the usual coffee and sandwiches; the exterminators of the Municipal Department of Animal and Pest Control who have to clean out the tunnels—or is that the dungeons?—beneath The City; and the sorry lives of The City’s vampires, more addicts than predators…

Rounding out Weird Adventures is ‘Weird Menaces’, a short, nicely themed bestiary. It is here that the only game stats appear in the otherwise systemless supplement to detail Black Blizzards, para-elemental dust storms; Living Houses and Ghost Towns; Murder Ballads which induce homicidality; Pink Elephants, astral invaders which cause the inebriated to hurt themselves; and the Reds, agents of an underground civilisation which want to stamp out all free thought and individuality. Many of these monsters are huge fun and really fit the setting.

Physically, Weird Adventures is a nicely presented book, decently illustrated and written in an engaging style. Some of the best illustrations are actually for adverts, such as those for Djinn Cigarettes and the classified adverts at the back. One thing that very much lets the setting book down is the lack of an index. Finding anything without it is a real challenge. 

The question is, what could you do with Weird Adventures? The most obvious is to take it as is, find an Old School Renaissance roleplaying game of your choice, find some suitable firearm rules, and away you go. It is entirely up to the Game Master and her players whether or not to add the traditional races of Dungeons & Dragons, but there is room enough to add any or all of them. Yet the setting of Zephyria and The City are so rules-lite that Weird Adventures could easily be adapted so that they can be run with a variety of other roleplaying games. Combine Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition with Pulp Cthulhu: Two-fisted Action and Adventure Against the Mythos and The Grand Grimoire of Cthulhu Mythos Magic, and what you have with the Lovcraftian elements in Weird Adventures is something akin to Cast A Deadly Spell.  Alternatively turn up the action and use it as a precursor to Goodman Games’ Xcrawl; turn it down for more scholary adventures with Night Owl Workshop’s Raiders of the Lost Artifacts: Original Edition Rules for Fantastic Archaeological Adventures; unplug the cyberware from Catalyst Game Labs’ Shadowrun roleplaying game and just use the races and magic; or simply take your pick of Steve Jackson Games’ GURPS books, starting with GURPS Basic Set: Characters and Campaigns plus GURPS Fantasy and GURPS Magic. Then again simply combine the Fantasy AGE RPG with the Modern AGE RPG, both from Green Ronin. 

One thing that any of these rules systems would provide is suggestions as to what to play. This is something that Weird Adventures does not do and as a supplement is very much a sourcebook for the Game Master rather than the player. It is also a pulp fantasy/horror supplement, so one aspect of Old School Renaissance fantasy it does not address is Tolkienesque fantasy, so there are no Elves, Dwarves, or Halflings in the New World of Zephyria. Their inclusion would probably change the setting in radical ways, but it would be interesting to what the ramifications would be. Were Weird Adventures to have a sequel or a companion, perhaps their inclusion, as well as those of suggested roles or Classes for the player characters. Certainly, a sequel would explain the effect of the illegal alchemical bootlegs or the powers and abilities of The City’s urban druids are, rather than leaving it up to the Game Master to decide and develop.

If you were looking for a pulp setting, then Weird Adventures is a fantastic choice, one which is easily adapted to the rule system of the Game Master’s choice. It is thoroughly impressive, not just in the level and richness of its detail, but also in the pulp, pulp, and pulp—fantasy, horror, and weird—it injects into the setting to bring the new World New of Zephyria, The Union, and The City to life. 

Moorcockian Meanderings

One of the factions with an interest in the Slumbering Ursine Dunes are the Eld—essentially ‘space elves’ from another dimension with a distinctly Melnibonéan-like, decadent sensibility—who cross the sea channel between their home in the Misty Isles to reach the Slumbering Ursine Dunes, which just lie off the Persimmon Sea and there claim to their long lost Golden Barge. Perhaps having encountered them in the Slumbering Ursine Dunes, the player characters now have the opportunity to follow the Eld—whom the scenario describe as being “Lawful Evil space elves with a taste for bizarre bureaucracy, biomancy, and (David) Bowie.”—back to their home, perhaps because they have a map or they have been hired by a patron such as the shark-like Ondrj the Reaver. This is the set-up for Misty Isles of the Eld, the second part of a trilogy of supplements and adventures published by Hydra Collective LLC for use with Labyrinth Lord. The other parts of the trilogy are Slumbering Ursine Dunes and Fever-Dreaming Marlinko, with all three being set in the Hill Cantons, a setting described as, “A Slavic-myth inspired, acid fantasy world of Moorcockian extradimensional incursions and Vancian swindlers and petty bureaucrats.”

Although written as part of the Hill Cantons setting, Misty Isles of the Eld is sufficiently isolated and self-contained enough that it can be placed almost anywhere in the Labyrinth Lord’s campaign setting. Designed for roughly four or five player characters of Third and Fourth Level, Misty Isles of the Eld is, like Slumbering Ursine Dunes before it, another ‘pointcrawl’ adventure rather than a hexcrawl. This depicts a region as a series of connected nodes rather than hex grid of locations and wilderness spaced in between. This makes travel in a sense more direct and avoids the problem of having an adventuring party wandering endlessly in the wilderness trying to find specific locations. Now where in Slumbering Ursine Dunes this turned the map of its region into something representational rather than exact and topographical, much like the map of the London Underground, on the island of the Misty Isles of the Eld, it is exact and topographical. This is because the layout of isle and the barriers which separate locations are pure artifice—giant meat-fed grubs arranged as ridges to suit the whims of the island’s current occupiers—and so arranged to be exact.

The clue to the nature of the Misty Isles lies in the phrase, “…arranged to be exact”, for it primarily consists of a once bucolic island occupied by the fey which has been suppressed and arranged into a fog-enshrouded, sterile, salt-white pocket hell by the intrusion of another dimension. This is Cold Hell, and from it sashay the Eld, tall and thin humanoids with elongated skulls and delicate fingers ready to impose their hierarchies on the island—and then perhaps beyond. As well as arranging the island’s topography with the purple and green-ribbed grub-ridges, the Eld have built a private party complex, a great monument which floats in the sky, a plantation house, an empty Pagoda City, and a vat complex where bodies are broken down and turned into fuel—body and soul. These last four sites make up the equivalent of dungeons Misty Isles of the Eld.

As soon as the player characters step onto the island, they will be exposed to the weirdness of the Eld. Not just the gigantic ridge-grubs with mouth-openings into which human slaves shovel half rotted flesh, but also flesh-blobs cleaning up some unsightly accident or carrying out an execution, Eld patrols leading vatmen bread as trackers, white apes unleashed to gain some exercise, a faerie forest left as a Schadenfreude Arena, and much, much more. As soon as the player characters begin interacting with the Eld, they live up to their Lawful (Evil) alignment and they react. The Eld Defence Plan is literally written into Misty Isles of the Eld with the island’s Eld Command Structure, led by Sub-Colonel Zogg, raising the Alert Level to deal with the intruders after they are first encountered by a patrol, have visited one of the island’s major locations or murdered an important Eld, and disrupted activities at one or more the facilities on the island. Eld Command will first increase the number of patrols before actively hunting the intruders. This is not the only sign of their progress, as the Chaos Index introduced in Slumbering Ursine Dunes and Fever-Dreaming Marlinko is in Misty Isles of the Eld inverted into the Anti-Chaos Index which tracks the consequences of the player characters’ actions, ideally to reverse the Eld influence on the isles and so return them to their former state.

There is a strangeness to every one of the eighteen locations on the Misty Isles, but the four ‘dungeons’ are unlikely to be anything like the player characters have ever encountered before. Rather than dungeons, they are complexes—work complexes, military complexes, factory complexes, and pleasure complexes—built using Eld superscience and magic. None of these complexes are particularly large, but all four are rife with weird detail and flavour.

In addition to describing the various locations and encounters to be found on the island, Misty Isles of the Eld comes with four appendices. These include a bestiary of the weird and wondrous creatures and creations the Eld brought with them from Bonegrinders and Cerebral Boreworms to Vat-Giants to Vatmen; a new Class, the Psychonaut; complete descriptions of the Eld artefacts to be found in the Misty Isles—weapons, tools, and miscellaneous; and reprints of the book’s various maps. The new Class is the Psychonaut, which treats Psionics as a combination of mutations and permanent spell-like powers, each with a limited number of uses per day. These include Aptitude Accelerant, which enables a Psychonaut to raise an attribute temporarily to 18 once per day, Biting Quip which enables him to deliver a comment barbed enough to drive the victim into a catatonic state, and Retrovlution, which drives its victims back down the evolutionary ladder. This all comes at the cost of several deformations, such as rooster clawed feet or a secondary brain. The Psychonaut is primarily a Class for the Eld, but perhaps a player character might develop these powers if exposed to the wrong—or the right—mutagens.

The Eld Artefacts give the player characters something to pick up and play with. All a player has to do is make a roll against his character’s Intelligence, the number of six-sided dice to be rolled depending on the complexity of the item. Once understood, their use can be taught to other characters of sufficient intelligence. There is the danger though that the devices will break in the learning attempt… This is a pleasingly simple way of handling fantasy characters meeting technology a la Metamorphosis Alpha or Gamma World.

Physically, Misty Isles of the Eld is well presented with stylish artwork and cartography which capture the studied oddness of the Eld. There is however, a lot going on in the scenario and the Labyrinth Lord will need to give it a careful read-through to understand how the different parts mesh together. Certainly, a better overview could have been provided rather than having to put these different parts together as you read through the book.

There have numerous scenarios for Dungeons & Dragons-style games in which the player characters encounter advanced technology, most obviously in S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks for use with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition, but in Misty Isles of the Eld, the player characters get to encounter both that technology and its wielders—and they are no fools. This means that the player characters will be faced with the challenge of strange magic and intelligent foes in addition to the dangers of exploration. This is in addition to the arch-weirdness and horror which permeates the scenario and really only makes it suitable for adult players.

Misty Isles of the Eld is one-part penetration by Moorcockian Science Fantasy from beyond, one-part extradimensional Melnibonéan-like space elves wanting to impose order, and one-part dazzle white home furnishings of the early seventies combined with Soviet-era brutalist monument design. This is a genuinely unique combination and the fact that the author manages to pull it off, marks the Misty Isles of the Eld as a singularly impressive scenario.

A Literal Sandbox

Taking its cue its title, if not its cue, from Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, Slumbering Ursine Dunes is a mini-sandbox style setting designed for characters of between Second and Fourth Level for use with Goblinoid Games’ Labyrinth Lord. Published by the Hydra Collective LLC following a successful Kickstarter campaign, it is the first part of a trilogy of supplements which continue with Fever-Dreaming Marlinko and Misty Isles of the Eld and set in the Hill Cantons, a setting described as, “A Slavic-myth inspired, acid fantasy world of Moorcockian extradimensional incursions and Vancian swindlers and petty bureaucrats.” Much of this is true—Slumbering Ursine Dunes lacks the swindlers and the petty bureaucrats—but the setting is infused with Slavic myth and penetrated by Moorcockian Science Fantasy from beyond, and it is Vancian in its baroque feeling of age and the sometimes-retiring nature of the setting.

Although a sandbox setting which the player characters are free to wander where they will, Slumbering Ursine Dunes is not a hexcrawl, but a ‘pointcrawl’. This depicts a region as a series of connected nodes rather than hex grid of locations and wilderness spaced in between. This makes travel in a sense more direct and avoids the problem of having an adventuring party wandering endlessly in the wilderness trying to find specific locations. It turns the map of the region depicted in Slumbering Ursine Dunes into something representational rather than exact and topographical, much like the map of the London Underground. Cleverly though, the concept of nodes and distinct travel routes is supported by the topography of the setting itself. The Slumbering Ursine Dunes consists of a mass of huge dunes of scarlet sand, each dune all but insurmountable, so that the easiest way through the dunes is by the existing routes between and along their bases. That said, the number of points—and thus encounters—in this pointcrawl are quite small at just twenty-five and for any adventurers, getting across the Slumbering Ursine Dunes should take no more than a morning at most—in either direction.

The Slumbering Ursine Dunes are sudden plateau, some three-hundred-and-fifty feet high, that jut out of the landscape on the coast of the Persimmon Sea opposite the Misty Isles. They are known for the scarlet colour of their sand and for the annual pilgrimage of the soldier-bears who serve the hirsute and ursine godling, Medved, who rules over the plateau. The plateau is rumoured to be a place of great strangeness, whether it is the green pearls which carry the souls of evil men or the magical wheat fields where succour and sustenance is granted. The only access to the plateau is from the stairs that lead up from the settlement at Kugelberg—there is certainly none to be had from the coastal side. Two points of interest stand on the coastal side though: The Golden Barge and the Glittering Tower. To reach them, any adventurers will have to trek across the Slumbering Ursine Dunes, for the waters are not safe around the coast and there are no beaches.

Once atop the plateau, the player characters will encounter an array of the weird and the wonderful. There are War Bears and Centaur toll keepers, a hermit living in a Zardoz-like head, a magic rye field, and a reservoir which holds the remaining floodwaters of the last Great Deluge. This reservoir is home to a trio of crooning willow-like Rusalkas who like to drown their men and a band of Giant Beavers whose duty it is to maintain the dam, just as it has been for their forefathers before them. Their lair is in the dam and contains not just an aquarium, but also a gift shop! This is in addition to the encounters that the player characters are likely to have with the forces and representatives of the four factions vying for control of the Slumbering Ursine Dunes. They include Joromir the Old Smith, a tired warrior, who along with his family and friends wants little to change atop the plateau; Medved the Master, an old and tired god who commands War Bears, Centaurs, and Cave Dwarfs and who wants to be rid of the Eld and Ondrj; the Eld, extradimensional Melnibonéan-like elves wanting to reclaim the Golden Barge and who hate Medved the Master; and Ondrj the Reaver, cousin to Medved the Master and Wereshark who leads a band of pirates in a orgy of violence and hatred. Each of these NPCs is mapped onto the Alignment Lawful/Chaotic-Good/Evil axis, so that Joromir the Old Smith is Lawful Good, Medved the Master is Chaotic Good, the Eld are Lawful Evil, and Ondrj the Reaver is Chaotic Evil. Time is taken to describe how each of these NPCs talks and acts and will react to the player characters. For example, Ondrj the Reaver is described as being all politeness and sharp toothed smiles, but actually constraining his natural inclination to just kill the party, and even if the adventurers are working for him, there is a thirty percent chance that he will give in and try to kill them anyway. These are fantastic pointers and so helpful for the Dungeon Master.

The Golden Barge and the Glittering Tower serve as the dungeons for the Slumbering Ursine Dunes. The Golden Barge, long lost to the Eld, is more a space barge than a nautical barge and a strange combination of ancient alien and organic technology and mediaeval pleasure barge. The primary danger aboard the barge are the Ghul, organically grown servants and guards whose numbers will refresh over the course of a few days. The creepiest feature of the Golden Barge will be its furniture, human peasantry bent and shellacked into tables and chairs, but perhaps the most memorable will be the two-headed giant vulture with tumour-chest-tentacles atop a broken tower and the four-armed White Ape waiting at the top of the stairs to the control, complete with a supply of barrels…

In comparison, the Glittering Tower, home to Medved the Master, is not as interesting. It is more dungeon-like than the Golden Barge, but where that is quite sparse in its furnishings and fittings, the Glittering Tower is baroque, cluttered, and very much lived in. It is full of gewgaws and odds and ends and also of the Eld trying to oust Medved, who in turn would like to drive them out of his home. Unfortunately, the Glittering Tower is not functioning as well as it once did and so the demi-god needs help. Perhaps the player characters can help? As well as employment, there are plenty of opportunity to look the tower, even if that loot is just a little weird, and similarly, there is opportunity aplenty for the Dungeon Master to slip interesting items into all of this clutter.

The descriptions of the locations and the NPCs take up roughly two thirds of the book, the remainder consisting of an optional mechanic and various appendices. The optional mechanic is a ‘Chaos Event Index’, Like many a sandbox, the Slumbering Ursine Dunes exist more or less on a fulcrum, awaiting agents of change and of course, those agents of change are the player characters. Their influence, their actions, even their very presence are enough to upset the apple cart and throw the balance of the region into chaos. To that end, the ‘Chaos Event Index’ turns that up a notch or two, with the player characters’ mere presence combined with their actions and the actions of the factions serving to drive the index up and increase the chaos and the weirdness. Initially this might be for blood rain to fall, but monsters might attack, demi-gods appear, and so on. As this escalates, it pushes the setting further and further into the weird.

The appendices include a bestiary, a list of new spells, two new Classes, and a list of hirelings. The bestiary provides stats and write-ups for the new monsters—the Cave Dwarf, the War Bear, the Anti-Cantonal Eld, the Ghuls, and so on. Several monsters, such as the Grue and the Pelgrane are directly drawn from Jack Vance’s Dying Earth novels, whilst the two new spells, Kazimir’s Resplendent Couture and Summon and Bind Sandestin, are utterly Vancian. The Cave Dwarf and the War Bear are also given as playable races, in the Race as Class format of Labyrinth Lord. The Cave Dwarf is essentially a Neanderthal Dwarf, whilst the War Bears are fighters with a love of polearms. What is interesting about both Classes is that neither are initially available to the players, instead available only as NPCs. The Dungeon Master has the option to ‘unlock’ them though, perhaps after a player character has died. Lastly, the lists of hirelings provide a fun set of NPCs for the Dungeon Master to roleplay as they accompany the player characters.

Physically, Slumbering Ursine Dunes is well written—certainly the author has a lot of fun getting obvious and not so obvious references into the setting and there is plenty of good descriptive content to help the Dungeon Master run the adventure. It is also very nicely illustrated. In fact, the artwork, if only in greyscale, is excellent. Yet the book is not well organised, with tables often spread over two pages making them awkward to use. The dungeon maps, those of the Golden Barge and the Glittering Tower, are placed too far away from their text descriptions for easy use. The maps of both locations are also bland and somewhat disappointing. As is the lack of an index, but the book is relatively short, so this is not as much of a problem as it could have been.

If there is a problem with Slumbering Ursine Dunes, it is the lack of a hook. There are no suggestions as to how or why the player characters should or want to come to the mini-region and quite possibly no reason for them to stay unless they ally themselves with one of the factions. There is plenty for them to do and explore once they do, but without this motivation…? The Dungeon Master will need to create some hooks and suggestions perhaps to provide this. If there is a second problem it is that the outcome of the player characters’ actions on the mini-region are not really explored. What happens if they do one action and not another is very much left up to the Dungeon Master to decide.

One of the big advantages of Slumbering Ursine Dunes is that it is so small and it is so self-contained that it can be dropped into many other settings. With its ancient Hyberborean links, one option would be North Wind Adventures’ Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea: A Roleplaying Game of Swords, Sorcery, and Wierd Fantasy, but doubtless any Dungeon Master will be able to find a good home for this mini-region.

Overall, Slumbering Ursine Dunes packs a lot of adventure into its pages. The ‘pointcrawl’ works very well here as a means for handling wilderness travel and thus a means for handling a Dungeon Master’s first wilderness type adventure. Where it fails is in getting the adventurers onto the plateau—or at least in giving them a reason for getting on to it—and this lacking undermines the scenario’s design as a Dungeon Master’s first wilderness adventure. More experienced Dungeon Masters will doubtless be able to come up with motivations and reasons where a less experienced Dungeon Master may not be able to. Once there though and once they have reasons to be there, both the Dungeon Master and players will get to enjoy the weird and wonderful, evocatively described and detailed setting that is Slumbering Ursine Dunes, get involved in its politics, make some truly singular friends, and have some interesting encounters.