The Air is Ours

It is 2045 and the biggest difference between the haves and have-nots is access to clean air. The air is so contaminated that everyone in the city must wear a filter mask fitted with daily does of ‘Hexi’, a compound derived from the Hemigraphis Exotica plant in order to breathe. Only the rich and powerful live their lives above the contamination which poisons the air and sits like fog, quite literally so in the city’s central megascrapers. Four MegaCorps control the city, holding monopolies on the manufacture and sale of respirator masks and industrial filters, agriculture including the growing and manufacturing of Hemigraphis Exotica, communication and media. Most of the inhabitants of the City live a downtrodden existence with little hope of advancement or improvement, yet there are those who resist the control of the MegaCorps over their lives. ‘Breatheless’ is a resistance group dedicated to removing this control over the lives of the masses, conducting acts of computer hacking, vandalism, and sabotage to both take back control and prevent further ecological damage from the production of Hemigraphis Exotica. Cells of ‘Breatheless’ operatives work in secret to avoid coming to the attention of the Stewards who police the city.

This is the set-up for White Sands: A Role-Playing Game the Fight for Clean Air, a game of ecological resistance set in the near future, published by Critical Kit Ltd, best known for Be Like A Crow – A Solo RPG and Aces Over the Adriatic: A Solo RPG. The Player Characters are Activists, newly activated members of Breatheless. An Activist is simply defined by six skills—Strength, Speed, Sneak, Shoot, Smarts, and Sway, plus an Area of Expertise. Examples of the latter include Hacker, Driver, Construction, Engineer, Gardener, and Accountant, but the player is free to create his own. Player Character creation is very simple. A player simply has to assign a set of dice types to the six skills, decide on an Area of Expertise, and then flesh out the Activist’s details, including a description of how his respirator mask is decorated and a ‘handle’ rather than an actual name—since they must never reveal their actual names.

Mechanically, White Sands is equally as simple. To have his Activist undertake an action, a player rolls the appropriate Skill die. On a result of one, the Activist fails and he suffers a knock in confidence, temporally reducing the size of the die type attached to the Skill. A result of two is failure without any complications; three indicates a success with a complication; four is a straightforward success; and five or more is a total success with potentially better outcomes. If the Activist has an appropriate Area of Expertise that applies or has the ‘Upper hand’ in this particular situation, then the player rolls two dice instead of one and selects the best result. Combat uses opposed dice rolls, the Strength Skill versus Speed Skill for melee combat, the Shoot Skill versus Speed Skill for ranged combat. Combat is fast and potentially deadly, an NPC or Activist having anywhere between two and nine Injury Points. An unarmed attack will inflict a single point of damage, whilst a melee weapon or a hit by a rubber bullet fired by a riot gun typically used by the Stewards both do two points of damage. The roleplaying game advises that a player create a replacement Activist given how deadly the combat system is. Overall, the rules to this roleplaying game are very simple such that specific outcomes are going to rely on narrative rather than mechanical outcome.

White Sands includes the scenario, ‘Havana Down’, which is intended to provide an introduction and single session’s worth of play. The Player Characters are newly activated Activists living in the former beach resort town of White Sands. They are asked to locate an Activist called Havana who has not been seen for a few days after successfully obtaining a keycard that give Breathless access to important MegaCorp facilities. The Activists must at least find the keycard if not Havana. It is not a complex investigation, but offers a decent mix of action and interaction, and if the players want to carry on beyond the scenario, hooks for possible further adventures.

Physically, White Sands is decently presented. It is actually very nicely illustrated such that you wish there was more to the setting than is given in the text. The book also comes with a location map for the scenario and a map of the city.

There are two ways in which White Sands can be used. One is as a one-shot, the Game Master running the included scenario, ‘Havana Down’. This makes it suitable for use at a convention. The other is as a more traditional roleplaying game, the Game Master running the included scenario, ‘Havana Down’, and then using it as the basis for a continuing campaign. That though requires more effort upon the part of the Game Master, since there is not a huge amount of detail to the poisoned future of White Sands, and she will need to develop more of the world upon which to build her campaign. Either way, White Sands: A Role-Playing Game the Fight for Clean Air feels like a low-budget television series on the Sci-Fi Channel from the nineties—playable, but leaving the reader to wonder what more there is to the world.

The Other OSR: Summer’s End and Other One-Page Adventures

A mountain infested with rival bandits, a tomb to a saint and a tree of swords on which hangs the saint’s sword, and a giant with stolen horn that can cause avalanches. A lake whose goddess gives swords to high kings, yet there has been no high king in an age, on whose shores stands a fortress commanded by a corrupt captain and manned by a soldiery whose swords have been stolen and who are preparing for mutiny, whilst a Gelatinous King lurks in the nearby forest. A patch of sea shrouded in fog and marked by four islands, one a ships’ graveyard, the second a pirate port, the third home to a sea serpent, and the fourth a tower of friendly and inquisitive liches, plus three pirate crews each with three parts of a treasure map! A desert ruled from a city drawn on skids by a giant across the sands hunted by a Crawling Citadel which slides forward one black monolith at a time. A swamp dotted with shipwrecks and infested with swamp zombies, and home to six witches feuding over which one of them should be ‘The Swamp Witch’. These are just some of the entries in Summer’s End and Other One-Page Adventures, an anthology of adventures for Knave, Second Edition, the Old School Renaissance-style microclone published by Questing Beast.

Summer’s End and Other One-Page Adventures contains a total of twelve different adventures, or rather adventure sites. In fact, technically, they are not one-page adventures, since each one encompasses two pages rather than one. They consist of six wilderness adventures and six dungeons, all independent of each other and each easily dropped into a Game Master’s own setting or just run as is. This applies to the six wilderness adventures especially, since each is a self-contained six-mile-wide hex, which means that if the Game Master has an appropriate spot on her campaign map and the surrounding terrain matches, she can simply drop one of the wilderness adventures onto that map. After that, as with the dungeons, all that Game Master has to do is sow some links and rumours into her wider setting and any one of the dozen entries is ready to be visited by the Player Characters.

All twelve entries in the anthology are written in the same style and laid out in the same fashion. The map—whether hex or dungeon—is placed at the centre. Then individual location descriptions are threaded around the map like a border with arrows to mark the particular locations. Sometimes there is an overview of the dungeon or hex, sometimes not. Those with summaries are easier to grasp than those without, but to be fair, none of the entries in the anthology are difficult to prepare. This is, of course, intentional, since Knave, Second Edition is intended to be played from off the page with a minimum of preparation. And really, a two-page spread does not require all that much in the way of preparation anyway.

Summer’s End and Other One-Page Adventures opens with a fairly basic wilderness hex. The eponymous ‘Summer’s End’ presents a mountain on which the tomb of a saint stands, whilst the sword he wielded is stuck into the nearby Tree of Swords. Rangers hunt the wilds for a group of bandits, which has split into two groups—one of warriors and one of alchemists, and a giant lurks in a ruined tower coveting the great horn he has discovered, which if he ever blew into, would cause an avalanche! It is simple and straightforward, with the Game Master only needing to add hooks such as bounties on the bandits’ heads, a pilgrimage to the saint’s tomb, and so on. Turn the page and the hexes get a lot more sophisticated. For example, ‘The Raiders of Wolfsea’ details a fog-shrouded archipelago of pirate infested islands, a ships’ graveyard strewn with gold watched over by screeching harpies, an island containing a tower of very happy and inquisitive liches, and a pirate port riven by the rivalry between three pirate collectives, each of whom possesses one part of treasure map. The waters are the Wolfsea are dangerous enough with just the pirates, but they are also hunted by Fog Wolves which prey on any ship and Tempest the sea serpent, who likes to disrupt the doings of pirates and harpies (and Player Characters) for his own amusement. ‘The Wizards of Sparrowkeep’ would have a bucolic feel to it, were it not for the fact that the area is home to four wizard’s towers, whose occupants all vie for the affection of the local witch who lives in the woods nearby. What each wizard does each day and what spells he learns each day is randomly determined, but it is all in pursuit of the witch and stopping the pursuit of his rivals and it is all disrupting life and work in the nearby town. The noble in charge of the area wants the petty feud to stop, each of the wizards wants to prove that his love is worthy of the witch, and the witch…? It is a great little set-up that lends itself to some fun portrayals of the NPCs by the Game Master and some good player-driven action.

‘The Alchemist’s Repose’ is the first of the dungeons in Summer’s End and Other One-Page Adventures and needs a little more preparation upon the part of the Game Master as the complex is patrolled and worked by a series of constructs which are programmed by simple punch cards. This gives it a slight Steampunk feel, but also a puzzle element as the Player Characters discover the punchcards and begin to work out how they are used. ‘The Lair of the Keymaster’ also has a puzzle element, this time consisting of locks and keys behind secret doors that the Player Characters need to find and open if they are to open a vault containing the Keymaster’s greatest secret, the schematics to the ‘Lock Absolute’. Which of course, any king or thief would be willing to pay handsomely to obtain (or steal) these plans. ‘Drums in the Deep’ is a mini-sewer crawl, home to a spider so high on hallucinogenic fungus his skin ripples in mesmerising colour, a mini-cult whose members paint themselves as skeletons, and want to summon the King of Nails, whilst a blind sewer squid lurks in the murky effluence that flows through the sewers. There are also three missing teenagers, which is why the Player Characters have descended into the sewer. This is a much simpler affair, easy to slip under any big town or city.

Some of the dungeons do defy description, such as ‘The Hollow Prince’, a temple complex dedicated to something named the ‘Hollow Prince’. Although there is a lot of lovely detail to the various rooms and consequences of the Player Characters’ actions, quite what is going on in the complex is never explained. Whilst it is fine to mystify the players and their characters, it is arguably not so fine as to leave the Game Master also mystified. Without some kind of hook—obvious or not, ‘The Hollow Prince’ is just that much harder to add to a game.

Physically, Summer’s End and Other One-Page Adventures is a good-looking book. The layout is clean and simple, the big bold maps for each of the adventures dominating every two-page spread and working like artwork as much as they do maps. The cartography varies in style throughout, but in general is very good, although the wilderness hexes are the better of maps.

Summer’s End and Other One-Page Adventures is great collection of adventures and locations, really stripped down to fit neatly into two pages, but still offering a lot of good game play and adventure right off those pages without needing to refer to anything else. In general, the wilderness hexes are better than the dungeons, offering more plot and story, and whilst they are written for use with Knave, Second Edition, the minimal nature of the stats and the minimal number of stats, means that there is hardly another retroclone or Dungeons & Dragons-style roleplaying game that Summer’s End and Other One-Page Adventures would not work with and work well with.

The Other OSR: Knave, Second Edition

There can be no doubt that Knave, Second Edition succeeds at two things. First, it is definitely the prettiest microclones you can buy, and certainly one of the prettiest Old School Renaissance-style roleplaying games you can buy. Second, it is one of the most accessible of microclones you can buy, and certainly one of the most accessible Old School Renaissance-style roleplaying games you can buy. It is pretty because it uses just the one artist and that gives it a look all of its very own. Peter Mullen’s artwork is excellent. It is accessible because the play style of Dungeons & Dragons is incredibly familiar and because the core rules take up two pages and because every aspect of the rules is neatly and concisely presented on a single page. The rules for Ability Checks and Character Creation together take up a single page; for handling Checks, a single page; Delving, a single page; Combat, a single page; and so on. The core of these are even presented in the inside and back covers for easy reference. Barely thirty of the eighty pages that make up Knave, Second Edition are dedicated to rules, and that is including the author’s own commentary, advice on play, and an example of play and maps that the Game Master can develop as her own adventure sites. The rest of the book consists of tables. Tables for signs, locations, structures, and place traits, tables for delve shifts, rooms, room details, and room themes, tables for mutations, delusions, disasters, and magic schools. Each of these tables has a hundred entries and each of these tables is designed for two elements of play. One of course, is preparation prior to running the game by the Game Master, the other is to generate content through emergent play, the book itself is slim enough, short enough to make it easy to use at the table.

Knave, Second Edition is a toolkit designed and published by the author of The Waking of Willowby Hall, the earlier Maze Rats, and host of the YouTube channel, Questing Beast, following a successful Kickstarter campaign. The toolkit begins with advice on the duties of both the Game Master and the Player. The tasks of the Game Master are to create locations to explore, flesh out the cast, let the players guide the action, keep the game moving, immerse the players, reveal the world, signpost danger, reward smart plans, and so on. The task of the player are to create and play a character, take initiative and ask questions in driving play forward, apply tactical infinity—that is, treat the world as if it was real and turn any and all aspects of it to his character’s advantage, scheme and fight dirty, but be prepared to die! It is really simple and direct advice, in keeping with the concision of Knave, Second Edition. The advice also fits the play style which has each Player Character as a “tomb-raiding, adventure-seeking ne’er-do-well who wields a spell book just as easily as a blade.” Some aspects of the Game Master’s role, certainly when it comes to the ‘Edit the Rules’ set down at the beginning of the book is expanded upon in the Designer’s Commentary at the end of the book.

A Player Character in Knave, Second Edition has the six standard attributes—Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma—of Dungeons & Dragons and other retroclones. Each is rated in value between one and ten, and each one has a specific role in play and is associated with a specific role, or Class, from Dungeons & Dragons. Strength is the Fighter ability and is used for melee combat checks and physical activity. Agility is the Thief ability and covers any action involving reflexes or dexterity. Constitution is the Adventurer ability and is used to resist poison and diseases, but also determines how many item slots a Player Character has and how much damage a Player Character can suffer before dying. Intelligence is the Magic-User ability and is used for cunning, lockpicking—surprisingly not Dexterity, and spell use. Wisdom is the Ranger ability and is used for ranged combat, perception, and willpower. Charisma is the Cleric ability and is used to determine initiative and persuasion. What this means is that there is some shifting of what traditional Dungeons & Dragons attributes do and are used for in Knave, Second Edition, and that in addition, every attribute is useful. In other words, there is no dump stat! In addition, a Player Character has one or two previous Careers which determine his extra equipment in addition to the standard items that every Player Character receives. If his Intelligence is high enough, he can have a random spell book as well.

Character creation is fast and easy. The player distributes three points between the six Attributes (or he can roll), rolls for Hit Points, and two Careers. He also receives some coins with which to buy arms and armour. What he does not do is pick a Race or Class. Knave, Second Edition does not use either. A player is free to decide upon the Race of his character, but there are no mechanical benefits to doing so. Instead of a Class, a player can can choose to have his character specialise in one of his Attributes and its associated role. So, for example, to play a Magic-User type, a player would put points into his character’s Intelligence Attribute so that he knows more spells and is better at casting them or to be a Ranger type, he would put points in the character’s Dexterity and Wisdom Attributes. Alternatively, a player does not have to have his character specialise and can mix and match roles. For example, he could increase his Intelligence to cast spells and his Strength to be a better warrior. Although a Player Character only starts with three points to assign to his Attributes, he will be given more as he goes up in Level.

Crispin Cromditch

Level 1

Careers: Cobbler/Cultist

Hit Points: 1

Armour: Gambeson (AP 1) Armour Class: 12

Helmet: None Shield: None

Weapon: dagger (d6)

Personality: Dogmatic

Goal: Serve the Needy

Mannerism: Slow Speech

Strength 1 Dexterity 1 Constitution 1

Intelligence 0 Wisdom 0 Charisma 0

Equipment: leather roll, fancy shoes, tacks, dagger, ritual robes, amulet, day’s rations, 50’ rope, gambeson

Mechanically, Knave, Second Edition calls for checks to be made against specific attributes on a twenty-sided die. The base difficulty is eleven and may be as high as twenty-one. In combat the difficulty number is the defender’s Armour Class, which is based on the number of Armour Pieces the defender is wearing. In comparison to other roleplaying games, including Dungeons & Dragons, Advantage and Disadvantage is not handled by rolling extra dice, but applying a flat ‘+5’ bonus or ‘-5’ penalty per modifying factor. Beyond this, checks are used sparingly. There are no Lore checks, the Player Characters will know common knowledge and the knowledge granted by their careers, but anything else is waiting to be discovered. Similarly, there are no Search checks, but finding hidden things is handled narratively and through Player Character action.

Initiative in combat is handled by an opposed Charisma check and if the player rolls twenty-one or more on the attack check, his character can perform a manoeuvre such as disarming, blinding, tripping, and so on. Sneak attacks always hit and bypasses Hit Points to Wounds, and power attacks do double damage, but break the weapon. Damage is taken from a defender’s Hit Points and then in the case of a Player Character, from his Inventory Slots, which effectively serve as wounds. As his Inventory Slots are filled, his capacity to carry objects is reduced and if they are all filled up, the Player Character is dead.

Spellcasting is not just done spell by spell, but spellbook by spellbook. A spellbook holds a single spell and takes up a single inventory slot. Spells are not taught, but found, so that a spellbook is a treasure all of its own. Spells are automatically cast, but their effects can be saved against to avoid them. The rulebook includes one hundred spells, each consisting of a short, one or two sentence description. There are some fun spells here, like Astral Prison which temporarily freezes the target in time and space; Catherine, which makes a woman dressed in blue appear and fulfil any polite, safe requests; and Shroud which makes the affected creatures invisible for as long as they hold their breath! In addition, there is a set of tables to create even more spells.

Divine magic is called Relic Magic and is granted by patrons, such as gods, spirits, and saints, through relics. Rather than finding a scroll with a divine blessing on it, a Player Character will visit a shrine to communicate with a patron whose favour he has, and be given both a relic and a quest. Fulfil the terms of the quest and the relic will be imbued with a Blessing which can be performed multiple times per day. Of course, a relic takes up an Inventory Slot just as a spellbook does. The various tables for magic, potions, and powers are intended to provide inspiration for what these blessings might be.

Beyond these basic rules and those for delving, Knave, Second Edition scales up to encompass travel and weather, really simple and easy rules for alchemy, buildings and warfare, and of course, monsters. The bestiary itself, is short, at thirty-five entries, but enough to get started. Their format is close to that of monsters in Dungeons & Dragons, so it is easy for the Game Master to import and adapt monsters from other sources. Outside of adventuring and delving, there are rules too for downtime. The latter includes carousing and gambling, but also career training for everything from carpenter and hunter to lawyer and assassin. The rare careers take a lot of time and are very expensive.

Knave, Second Edition is round out with an example of play—which probably should have been more up front—and the ‘Designer’s Commentary’. Here the designer explains the decisions he took in redesigning Knave for this new edition. His voice comes through here most obviously—the reader can imagine him actually saying all of this—and pleasingly, he acknowledges the inspirations for each of those decisions. There are some interesting choices made here and the ‘Designer’s Commentary’ brings Knave, Second Edition to a close with a personal touch. Lastly, there is a map of a dungeon and a wilderness area that the Game Master could develop into actual adventuring material.

Physically, Knave, Second Edition is very well presented, the layout done in ‘Command’ style so that everything needed for each aspect of the rules is presented concisely on the one page (two at most). This makes everything accessible and easy to grasp. The artwork is excellent.

From start to finish, Knave, Second Edition has been clearly designed for use and accessibility. The layout is great, the mechanics combine simplicity and brutal Old School Renaissance play with player choice, and the tables provide the Game Master with hundreds of prompts. Knave, Second Edition is the microclone’s microclone, a superb little roleplaying game and toolkit, perfect for playing fast and light in the Old School Renaissance.

The Clouds Above

The Earth’s skies above are lost in a sea of roiling grey clouds, lit by lightning storms, and boiling with pollution. The world’s skies have been hidden for as long as anyone can remember and no one can remember why. There are those who are brave enough to leap into the air and explore what is to be above the clouds, piloting aeroplanes or dirigibles, searching for treasures said to be found there. Some do return with such treasures, but others come with none, or driven mad from their experiences. This is the setting of What Lurks Above, a micro roleplaying game of pulp exploration and danger in a neo-Victorian post-apocalyptic setting. Published by Parable Games—best known for the horror roleplaying game, Shiver – Role-playing Tales in the Strange & the Unknown, it includes simple easy rules, including for both characters and vessels, and combat between them.

A Player Character in What Lurks Above has four stats—Fortitude, Courage, Intellect, and Agility. These are rated by die type. So, one has a six-sided, eight-sided, a ten-sided, and a twelve-sided die. It is as simple as that. He has a Vigour equal to his Fortitude die size.

The Cook
Fortitude d6 Courage d12 Intellect d10 Agility d6
Vigour 6

To have his character undertake an action, a player rolls the die for the appropriate stat and aims to roll high. The Skipper—as the Game Master is known—sets the difficulty by choosing a die type. The larger the die type, the greater the difficulty faced by the Player Character. If the player rolls higher, his character succeeds, but if the Skipper rolls higher, the character fails. The Vessel, whether an aeroplane or a dirigible, also has four stats, which again are assigned die types. The four stats are Hull Integrity, Engine Power, Radar Range, and Weapon Systems. Combat is also handled as opposed rolls, with the winner inflicting damage to the loser’s Vigour. Bare firsts inflict one point of damage, an antique sabre three points, a missile eight points, and so on. If a Player Character’s Vigour is reduced to zero, then they are dead. NPCs and bigger creatures can have higher Vigour values than the die types.

To power play, What Lurks Above offers a series of prompts in a set of tables. These consist of tables for ‘Discoveries’ and ‘Enemies’. Entries for the former include ‘A castle in the sky run by automata who continue to serve their long dead masters’ or ‘A basking shark with a city in its mouth’ and work as scenario hooks, whilst entries for the latter include a ‘Fog Brain’, a floating sphere of fleshy cloud with hanging moss tentacles, and a ‘Flock of Seagull Warriors’ with a penchant for everyone’s leftovers! The Skipper simply has to roll on both to have a prompt to get an adventure started.

Physically, What Lurks Above is a simple tri-fold pamphlet. It is surprisingly and decently illustrated and is an easy to pick up roleplaying game. Overall, What Lurks Above is a very bare bones game, but that allows room aplenty for the Skipper and her players to develop the world as they want.

The Other OSR: Welcome to Strangeville

Strangeville is a town like any other, which means that it is beset by monsters and robots and dinosaurs and aliens, and because the adults never believe in monsters and robots and dinosaurs and aliens until it is too late, the only standing between the monsters and robots and dinosaurs and aliens and Strangeville’s doom are the kids! Young teenagers on bikes or skateboards or even roller-skates with the curiosity to notice that something strange is going in where else, but Strangeville! Welcome to Strangeville then, an Old School Renaissance compatible roleplaying game based on Knave. Published by Doomed Wizard Games, it is obviously based also on the television series Stranger Things as well as Paper Girls, The Goonies, and just any adventure film or television series set in the eighties in which the kids are the heroes. Being based on Knave it offers fast-playing stripped down mechanics, whilst also suggesting collaborative worldbuilding between the players and the Game Master. What it does not do is provide anything in terms of spells or monsters beyond advice on how to adapt them to Welcome to Strangeville. Thus, the Game Master will need access to a bestiary and a source of spells of some kind. That said, the Old School Renaissance is not exactly short of those.

In Welcome to Strangeville, a Player Character has six abilities—Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma—each of which has a Check Bonus and a Save bonus. The Check Bonus ranges between one and six and is added to the die roll when a Player Character undertakes an action. The Save Bonus is equal to the Check Bonus plus ten, and it is what the Player Character rolls against when tyring withstand various dangers or effects. He has an Alignment, either Nark, Slacker, or Bogus. Nark indicates that the Player Character believes in the greater good rather than the individual, a Slacker cares more about himself, but can be roused to action, and if a character is Bogus, he is definitely selfish, if not downright evil. He has a number of Traits such as Age—between twelve and fourteen, Physique, Hair, Virtue, Vice, Speech, Parents, and Parent Occupation, and so on. He will also have some gear which will include either a bicycle, a skateboard, or a pair of roller-skates so that he can get around.

To create a character, a player rolls three six-sided dice for each ability and assigns the lowest rolled as the Check Bonus. He adds ten to the Check Bonus to get the Save Bonus for the ability. Having done this for each ability, selects an Alignment and rolls for Traits, Gear, and means of transport.

At thirteen Terrell Thompson is beginning to get big and broad, which has made him a pick for the high school football team. He tries to keep himself out of trouble, but as the new kid in the school—his mom having moved to Strangeville to work in the town pharmacy, together with his size, he feels he gets picked on when things go wrong. So, he is not always trusting, but when he does make friends, he stands by them.

Terrell Thompson
Level: One

Strength Check +3/Save Bonus 13
Dexterity Check +3/Save Bonus 13
Constitution Check +4/Save Bonus 14
Intelligence Check +2/Save Bonus 12
Wisdom Check +3/Save Bonus 13
Charisma Check +1/Save Bonus 11

Hit Points 8

TRAITS
Age: 13 Gender: Male
Physique: Towering Face: Wide Skin: Perfect Hair: Dreadlocks Clothing: Torn
Virtue: Loyal Vice: Prejudiced
Speech: Breathy
Misfortunes: Suspected
Parents: Widowed Mother Parent’s Occupation: Pharmacist
Alignment: Slacker

GEAR
Swiss Army Knife, lantern & oil, caltrops, perfume, skateboard

Mechanically, Welcome to Strangeville is straightforward. To have his teenager undertake an action, a player rolls a twenty-sided die, adds the appropriate ability check and if the result is fifteen or more, he succeeds. The target may vary—primarily in combat because the target is likely to have a different value for its Dexterity Save, but otherwise, Welcome to Strangeville uses the standard Advantage and Disadvantage mechanic. Strength is used for physical actions, melee combat, and extra damage, Dexterity for speed and reflexes, Constitution to resist diseases and poisons, Intelligence for anything involving concentration and precision, including tinkering with machinery or picking pockets, Wisdom for perception and ranged attacks, and Charisma whenever a character interacts with someone else. Thus, there are some minor changes in how the abilities in comparison to more traditional Old School Renaissance retroclones.

Combat uses the same mechanics, with the defender’s Save acting as the target. This can be to inflict damage, and Welcome to Strangeville suggests that firearms be extremely be hard to hold of as the Player Characters are teenagers, or it can be stunts such as disarming an opponent or knocking them over. Most weapons inflict a four- or six-sided die in terms of damage, whilst rifles and shotguns do more. When a Player Character’s Hit Points are reduced to zero, he is unconscious and if they are reduced to his Constitution Check as a negative value, he is dead, that is if he has a Constitution Check of +2 and his Hit Pits are reduced to -2, he is dead. Critical hits occur if the player rolls a twenty and a fumble occurs if he rolls a one.

Other rules are quick and easy. Stunts on bicycles, skateboards, and so on, require a Dexterity check, it is possible to subdue an opponent, and a Player Character has a number of item slots equal to his Constitution Save. There are narrative elements too. For example, Group Advantage can be gained for everyone’s next action two or more Player Characters declare a collective action and their players narrate how a previous incident helps them with this one, but the primary narrative element to Welcome to Strangeville comes in the set-up when the players and the Game Master work together to create and describe the town of Strangeville. During Session Zero, each player also creates a handful of rumours and urban legends about places in the town, monsters that lurk, houses said to be haunted, serial killers believed to stalk, and so on. The Game Master takes these and deicides which are true and which are false, using as many or as few as she likes to both establish a sense of mystery and weirdness about Strangeville, whilst also using some as the basis for adventures. Beyond this, the advice for the Game Master is fairly brief, primarily focusing on how to adapt and use monsters and spells from other sources, noting that a spell takes a slot in a Player Character’s inventory.

Physically, Welcome to Strangeville is a bit scruffy in places and the artwork does vary in quality. It is clearly written and anyone with any experience of the Old School Renaissance will grasp how it works with ease. The cover though, is good.

Although it uses the stripped back mechanics of Knave, what Welcome to Strangeville is not, is an introductory roleplaying game. It is not written as such, and is more aimed at the experienced Game Master who can develop the ideas suggested by her players during their Session Zero. Given that it does have to rely on other Old School Renaissance sourcebooks for its content, Welcome to Strangeville is underwritten in comparison to other roleplaying games in its genres and a group looking for a more rounded treatment of the ‘kids in peril’ genre may want to look elsewhere. However, for a group that prefers Old School Renaissance and is prepared to put the development work in to create their own setting and the Game Master their ‘kids in peril’ adventures, Welcome to Strangeville is a succinct little choice.

Micro RPG IV: To Elfland and Back

The forest stands on the edge of the village fields or not far from the town walls, but it is somewhere to be feared. For under that canopy there is dappled light at best, darkness at worst, and something lurks there, ready to prey on the peasantry and add one more misery to their lives. And now, as if to justify those fears, something has been stolen. A child, or a coin purse, or a lover. In response the peasants have banded together and the bravest of them all will journey deep into the forest in order to retrieve the stolen item from the thieves that hide amongst the trees—the fae! This is the set-up for To Elfland and Back, a minimalist storytelling roleplaying game published by Planar Compass, best known for the fanzine of the same name, which takes Old School Essentials, the retroclone from Necrotic Gnome out onto the Astral Plane and beyond. To Elfland and Back is about as simple as it gets—a motivation for the players and their characters, character creation in four steps, fast mechanics, and a set of encounters that will develop through play. It can be played through in a single session, requires no more than a pair of six-sided dice, and offers a reasonable degree of replay value.

Player Character creation in To Elfland and Back is very light. All a player does is roll for a Job, chooses three or possessions, rolls for a Personality, and names the character. It should be noted that there just six Personalities, and it is a good thing that the game does not use a seven-sided dice or the Personality of ‘Doc’ would be added, because the six listed are all named after the Dwarves from Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarves!

Matilde
Job: Tailor
Personality: Grumpy
Possessions: Needle, thread, thimble

Mechanically, To Elfland and Back is quick and easy. To have his character undertake an action, a player does a Challenge roll and rolls a six-sided die, consulting the Challenge Roll table for the outcome. One is a ‘Failure’, two to three is a ‘Success with negative consequences’, four and five indicate a ‘Success’, and six is a ‘Success with fantastic results’. Essentially, what you have here is the equivalent of ‘No’, ‘Yes, but…’, ‘Yes’, and ‘Yes and…’ results, and whatever the result the referee will describe the outcome. In addition, a Challenge roll can be made with Advantage or Disadvantage, the player rolling two six-sided dice and using the best result if at an Advantage or the worst if at a Disadvantage. The most obvious means of gaining Advantage will be from the Player Character’s Job, whilst the most obvious means of gaining Disadvantage is due to the Player Character’s Personality, though of course, other situations and causes will come up in play. Beyond that, the complexity of play—if any—comes from narrating the outcomes.

For the Referee there little in the way of advice, but rather a set of tables for generating various aspects of the story to be told, starting with what was stolen and where it was taken. After that, there are tables for encounters along the way, what fae can be encountered and what they might be riding, locations along the way, fae food and drink, and magic items that might be found in the fae lands. There is a table for what the fae might want in return for giving the purloined item back and lastly, because this is a fairy tale, the final table is a coda—how long have the Player Characters been gone?

Physically, To Elfland and Back is beautifully illustrated with a range of artwork, most notably medieval and Victorian pieces, as if it were an illuminated manuscript that was actually a Victorian collection of fairy tales. The writing is succinct.

Written for Fae Jam 2020, To Elfland and Back is at its most mechanical, a sparse set of tables with nothing in the way of advice or background. However, those tables are prompts that set the game up, enabling the Game Master to prepare a session quickly and easily beforehand or run a session straight from the rolls at the table. The latter makes To Elfland and Back a highly portable, low preparation game, making it great for a convention game or a pick-up game. In terms of background, this is a fairy tale roleplaying game and fairy tales are some of the earliest stories we are told as children, so most players are going to be familiar with the genre. In terms of play, To Elfland and Back is demanding in that it is relying on elements of storytelling more than mechanics, asking Game Master and player to create much of the world they go along, based upon the prompts taken form the game’s tables. Of which, there are enough to run To Elfland and Back more than a few times for the same group.

Overall, To Elfland and Back is a pleasing combination of simplicity and familiarity that is both easy to run and easy to play, and all with a genre and setting that needs no explanation.

Escape from Ixx

It opens with a disaster as the ship is caught up in the Eternal Storm and driven onto the rocks of the tropical island. As the vessel sinks and the survivors are harassed by hungry, hungry amphibious horrors, the survivors must find their way ashore and onto the strangest island amidst the tropical sea. Atop its high cliffs they can see across their new home. It is covered in thick jungle, the land pierced by sharp crags, stretching down to soggy swamp, and then to a coastline pockmarked with cave mouths. Even as the survivors make their way to safety of Wrecktown, the wreckers are coming the other way to pick over the wreckage of the ship. All too quickly, the survivors discover that there is no straightforward way off the island and they will have to search for a means far and wide across its strangeness. As they search, the survivors will encounter dinosaurs, mutants, things not of this world, weirdness, and more. This is the Isle of Ixx and the survivors are trapped until they can find a way off the island.

This is the set-up for Isle of Ixx, a roleplaying game and mini-campaign, that is in part Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ The Land That Time Forgot, H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness, the television series Lost, and S3 Expedition to Barrier Peaks for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition. Written and drawn by Skullfungus and published by Games Omnivorous, it is a sandbox of varying environments and mysteries, which uses Into the Odd as its mechanics. What this means is that the players can create their Survivors in a few minutes and this combined with the starting mini-adventure that gets the Survivors off their ship and onto the island, means that the Game Master can be running the campaign in the first session. The campaign is relatively short, primarily player driven and often deadly, meaning that not every Survivor is necessarily going to get off the island. Survivors are easy to replace and bring into play though given the speed of their creation.

A Survivor—or Player Character—in Isle of Ixx is lightly defined. He has three Abilities: Might, Move, and Mind, which range in value between three and eighteen. He also has a six-sided die’s worth of HP, or Hit Protection, rather than Hit Points, a Starter Package, potentially a Companion, and some coins. To create a Survivor, a player rolls three six-sided dice each for the Abilities and one die for the Hit Protection. Then by cross-referencing the value of the Hit Protection with the Survivor’s highest Ability, he receives a Starter Package. A Survivor with either low Hit Protection or a low Ability will receive a more powerful Starter Package, including an Arcanum, whilst a Survivor with a high Ability or Hit Protection, will receive a more mundane Starter Package. Thus, a Survivor with six Hit Protection and a high Ability of twelve would start play with a spiked bat, some warpaint, and a jug of moonshine, whereas if the Survivor’s highest Ability is nine and he only has two Hit Protection, he begins play with a rapier, a flintlock gun, breastplate, an alien idol, and an extra Speciality. A Speciality is a perk or skill, such ‘Land Crab’, which grants +1 armour bonus whilst on land, and ‘Smuggler’, the ability to hide things. The feel of Isle of Ixx—much like Into the Odd—has the feel of Dickensian weird science fantasy, but here combined with weird tropical fantasy.

Ermengarde Baritch
Might 8 Move 10 Mind 15
Hit Protection 3

Speciality: Dirty Fighter

Starter Package: Mancatcher (d6), Net, Bait, Rat in a Small Cage

Mechanically, if a Survivor wants to undertake an action, his player rolls a twenty-sided die against the appropriate Ability, aiming to equal to or under to pass. Initiative in combat is managed with a Move save if needed. Combat is equally as simple. A player rolls the die for the weapon used to determine how much damage is inflicted. The target’s armour is subtracted from this and the remainder is subtracted from first his Hit Protection and then his Might. This necessitates a Might Save and the possibility that the Explorer will be unable to act. Should a character lose all of his Might, he dies. It takes only a Short Rest to recover lost Hit Protection, but a Long Rest lasting a week to recover lost Ability points. Saves against Mind are used for several things, maintaining morale of course, but also in a pinch, maintaining civil discourse with others, and more interestingly, to sometimes use the Profane Powers.

The Isle of Ixx is described region by region and the adventures the Survivors can have there. Lowlands Adventures describes the Devil’s Reef, Wrecktown where the Survivors are likely to find a base of operations, and the Hermit’s Spire where Milliam the Hermit spends his days tending to the plants and meditating in the chrome tower. In High Jungle Adventures, the Survivors might come across a nest of Terrorbeaks, delve into the Overgrown Spire broken open by vines, or explore the ancient cities of the Pale Ruins or the Charred Ruins. The Great Swamp Adventures hide further signs of ancient technology, whilst the Ocean Adventures is home to numerous caves in which can be found shipwrecks, a colony of the fish-like Drowned Ones worshipping their cyclopean god, and more. All of these adventure locations are described in succinct detail, and each of the various regions is further supported by a table of events and a bestiary of Humans, Drowned Ones, and Mutants as well as Terror Lizards—both carnivorous and herbivorous, terrors aquatic and airborne, violent vegetation, and more. There is scope too, for the Game Master to add her own content, the roleplaying game including five numbered, but otherwise blank maps for her to fully describe and populate, perhaps using the quartet of spark tables intended to inspire her imagination.

Physically, the Isle of Ixx is a lovely little book. Clothbound and compact, it is profusely illustrated in a bold cartoon style that captures the often-eldritch strangeness of the island, from the roaring terror lizard on the front cover to the cartography of each and every adventure site, in a way that cannot be described as anything other than cute. Another nice touch is that the various sections of the book are colour coded according to regions—not always adjacent to each other—marked on the main map. It makes for easy reference back and forth.

Isle of Ixx takes the concept of the microclone—as typified by Knave, Into the Odd, and Mausritter—and extends it into presenting not just a miniature, stripped down roleplaying game complete in a few pages, but also a complete roleplaying setting and campaign. Together setting and campaign set up the situation, provide mysteries and weirdness to be found, and give an objective for the Survivors to achieve and all in a few pages more. Isle of Ixx physically feels like the perfect campaign to own and hold in the hand, let alone play, yet is a superlative example of succinct design, not just in terms of its physicality, but also its descriptive content and its roleplaying possibilities.

Return to the Odd

Bastion stands as the world’s largest city, an industrial powerhouse whose factories pour out guns, chemicals, manufactured goods, and even newspapers that ships carry from the city’s wharfs. Citizens flock to the city for work—the factories chew up their employees almost as much as they take them on! Expeditions leave the city travelling far and wide, many returning with tales of places weird, wonderful, and worrisome, often too far to even map given the size of the world. Yet there are wonders and secrets to found closer to home. The Underground lies beneath Bastion, at first the sewers, then tunnels, and caves below, full of long-lost secrets and ancient vaults. Cultists plot the return of their strange masters, unions counter plot even as they try to protect workers’ rights, and the mill bosses squeeze more and more out of there employees heedless of the religious fervour that undo their industrial empire. Scattered and across these cities and the darkness below are the Arcana, devices from ages past that grant fantastic powers, from pieces of jewellery to almost unmoveable statuary. There are men and women who search for these Arcana, knowing they can make a name for themselves, make themselves rich, if they can find the rights ones and find a buyer. They are Explorers.

This is the setting for Into the Odd Remastered, an Old School Renaissance rules light microclone originally published in 2014 that has been beautifully redesigned and re-laid out and published by Free League Publishing following a successful Kickstarter campaign. It promises fast character creation, minimalist rules, strange things to encounter and be found, a complete hexcrawl and dungeon, and quite possibly the most fun set of tables available for any roleplaying game. However, it is very light in terms of setting, combining elements of cosmic horror, heavy industrial squalor, weirdness and wonder in the ruins of the past—above and below ground. Into the Odd Remastered is both a precursor to the author’s Electric Bastionland and an expanded version of the original, primarily in terms of supporting content.

An Explorer—or Player Character—in Into the Odd Remastered is lightly defined. He has three Abilities: Strength, Dexterity, and Willpower, which range in value between three and eighteen. He also a six-sided die’s worth of HP, or Hit Protection, rather than Hit Points, a Starter Package, potentially a Companion, and some silver shillings. To create an Explorer, a player rolls three six-sided dice each for the Abilities and one die for the Hit Protection. Then by cross-referencing the value of the Hit Protection with the Explorer’s highest Ability, he receives a Starter Package. An Explorer with either low Hit Protection or a low Ability will receive a more powerful Starter Package, including an Arcanum, whilst an Explorer with a high Ability or Hit Protection, will receive a more mundane Starter Package. Thus, an Explorer with six Hit Protection and a high Ability of twelve would start play with a Maul, a Dagger, and a length of chain, whereas if the Explorer’s highest Ability is nine and he only has two Hit Protection, he begins play with a Musket, a Sword (d6), a Flashbang, and the ability to ‘Sense nearby Arcana’. The process is incredibly simple and incredibly fast—two minutes if that!

Hattie Tuggery
Strength 8 Dexterity 10 Willpower 15
Hit Protection 3
Starter Package: Club (d6), Ether, Crowbar, Flute

Mechanically, if an Explorer wants to undertake an action, his player rolls a twenty-sided die against the appropriate Ability, aiming to equal to or under to pass. Initiative in combat is handled with a Dexterity save if needed. Combat is equally as simple. A player rolls the die for the weapon used to determine how much might damage be inflicted. The target’s armour is subtracted from this and the remainder is subtracted from first his Hit Protection and then his Strength. This necessitates a Strength Save and the possibility that the Explorer will be unable to act. Should a character lose all of his Strength, he dies. It takes only a Short Rest to recover lost Hit Protection, but a Long Rest lasting a week to recover lost Ability points. Saves against Willpower are used for several things, maintaining morale of course, but also in a pinch, maintaining civil discourse with others, and more interestingly, to manipulate the powers of Arcana.

Arcana are the motivating force of Into the Odd Remastered and are categorised into three types. Base Arcana are ‘Powers You Cannot Understand’, Greater Arcana are ‘Powers You Can Barely Control’, and Legendary Arcana are ‘Powers You Shouldn’t Control’, but any Arcanum does one specific thing and does it well. For example, a Soul Chain is a base Arcana which forces a Dexterity Save on a target lest he loses points of Will and gives away a glimpse of his current desire; the Book of Despair is a Greater Arcana that fills a floor area with tentacles that grab and constrain unless a Strength Save is made; and a Space Cube is a Legendary Arcana which transports the user and a companion to a location they have been to before. Some one hundred or so Arcana are detailed in Into the Odd Remastered, but there is scope for the Referee to create yet more and there is advice in the book on how they woke and should be handled.

Other advice for the Referee covers understanding how the game is played, handling obstacles, tricks, and hazards, monsters and encounters, money and treasure—including options for the Explorers to invest in enterprises and war, and how to award Experience Levels based on Expeditions completed. They are thus awarded on a narrative basis. Beyond Novice, there are only five Experience Levels and each gains an Explorer Increased Hit Protection and the possibility of an increased Ability. Notable of these is that hazards and traps can invariably be spotted unless an Explorer is running, locked doors can always be picked, and so on. Saves or rolls are required in these cases where there is a time factor involved or the course of action an Explorer is about to take might trigger the trap. In effect, this places the agency with the player and his Explorer and takes into account that when exploring, the Explorer is by nature being careful. Several sample hazards are provided as well as sample monsters. This is all accompanied by a lengthy example of play to help both player and Referee get the feel of how Into the Odd Remastered plays.

However, Into the Odd Remastered is not necessarily a forgiving system. Combat in particular, is deadly as every attack succeeds and what matters is the amount of damage rolled. So, hirelings or playing with multiple characters might be an option if a group wants to avoid a total party kill. That said, it does favour the players and their Explorers when it comes to the exploration and the discovery of obstacles and traps. Here in Into the Odd Remastered, the Explorers choose to engage with obstacles and traps and risk the consequences of doing so, rather than having such obstacles and traps sprung upon them as is the norm in other roleplaying games. Nevertheless, the unforgiving nature of its mechanics and play means that Into the Odd Remastered may initially have the feel of a Character Funnel as in Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game and Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, with its set-up of multiple Zero Level characters per player.

In terms of setting, Into the Odd Remastered gives its various locations—the city of Bastion, the Underground, Deep Country and other cities, and beyond civilisation to the Golden Lands and Polar Ocean little more description than a paragraph each. In this it does not expand upon what was in the first edition of the roleplaying game, and is in some ways its biggest disappointment. The Referee is definitely left wanting more flavour and detail about Bastion and the wider world. Some of that though, is covered in the ‘Oddpendium’ a set of tables at the rear of the book for name generation, occupations, abilities, manner, connections, and important little life events, all for quick NPC generation. Others generate city locations, routes, locations, weird creatures, cults, borough decisions and the reaction to the mob of this and anything else, whether or not a thing is an arcanum, and more. There are options for different character groups such as Mutants from the Underground and Simple Folk from the Deep Country unused to city ways, and alternative Starter Packages. These table are pointers, elements that the Referee can use to develop the world of Bastion and beyond around the Explorers.

In between the rules and advice for the Referee and the ‘Oddpendium’, Into the Odd Remastered details three locations as play environments. These are the scum-encrusted fishing town of Hopesend Port, the Last Port of the North; a dungeon, The Iron Coral, which lies off the coast off Hopesend Port; and the hexcrawl, The Fallen Marsh, the soggy stretch of coast which lies between them. Now these are presented in the order of The Iron Coral, The Fallen Marsh, and Hopesend Port, which feels counter-intuitive if the trio is run as a campaign, with the Explorers starting out from Hopesend and then travelling through The Fallen Marsh to The Iron Coral. That said, the inclusion of The Iron Coral first essentially means that it is good for getting straight into play as it can be run with very little preparation upon the part of the Referee.

This new edition of Into the Odd expands upon the original dungeon, The Iron Coral, adding depth and detail, but still presented in a succinct series of bullet points. There is plenty of detail packed into this strange, often random complex of rooms. Expanding out from this is The Fallen Marsh and then a point of civilisation, Hopesend Port, providing all together a complete hexcrawl campaign driven by exploration and rumour. As good as this is, it still leaves Bastion itself untapped and unexplored and even with the tools of the ‘Oddpendium’, a great deal of effort upon the part of the Referee will be needed if she is to do something with the greatest city in the world and actually bring it into play.

Physically, Into the Odd Remastered is as lovely a book as you would imagine given that Free League Publishing is releasing it and Johan Nohr—best known as the ‘Artpunk’ designer of Mörk Borg—did the graphic design. The result is a genuine remastering, elegant often subtle, but always hinting at a clash between the baroque and a lost modernity. The writing itself is succinct and always to the point, although that succinctness does not always help the Referee as it should. Primarily this means that as minimalist as Into the Odd Remastered is, it is not really suited to be played or run by anyone without some experience of doing either.

There is an undoubtable elegance to the highly economic combination of Into the Odd Remastered’s minimalism and its new presentation. Both the rules and the setting of Bastion are very light and very much open to interpretation by both players and the Referee, yet arguably, Into the Odd Remastered all but leaves the city itself and much of the setting begging be to be expanded upon and explored. Room perhaps for a city and underground book for the setting of Bastion? In comparison, Electric Bastionland, the sequel to Into the Odd, is far better at its implicit world building. Yet in comparison to other microclones, Into the Odd Remastered does present somewhere to start playing with The Iron Coral and its associated hexcrawl.

Ultimately, Into the Odd Remastered is a lovely re-representation of a world that is accessible and all but instantly playable mechanically, but remains strange and elusive, oddly Dickensian and technologically fantastical, in terms of setting, and that is by design.

The Other OSR—DURF

DURF: An Adventure Game For Brave Adventurers is a rules-light dungeon-fantasy roleplaying game in the vein of games like Knave, Troika!, and Into the Odd. In fact, it is inspired by and draws from those roleplaying games in terms of its design. For example, it uses an Inventory Slot mechanic for both the equipment carried by the Player Characters and the casting of magic from Knave, and employs the three attributes, deadly combat, and absence of Classes commonly found in the lighter micro-clone designs emanating from the Old School Renaissance. The result is a generically light, retroclone-derived roleplaying game which emphasises the risky nature of combat, simplicity of rules and play, and the need for preparation prior to setting out on an expedition, whilst also adhering to reduced bookkeeping, quick character generation, and a simple advantage system. DURF is also intended to be hackable and purchasers are encouraged to alter and adapt as is their wont.

DURF includes rules for creating Player Characters, straightforward rules for handling most situations, opposed rolls, and combat, spells and spellcasting, NPCs and monsters, and magical items. Where possible, individual elements of the rules are kept to just a single page, and even when placed across two pages, the rules and their supporting content—for example, spellcasting and the spells themselves—are constrained to a page each. It makes everything all very accessible. There is no adventure in the core rules, but given that DURF is a rules-light dungeon-fantasy roleplaying game and Old School Renaissance adjacent, finding a ready source of dungeons and adventures should not be too difficult.

A Player Character in DURF has three attributes, Strength, Dexterity, and Willpower, initially rated between one and three. They can go as high as eight. A Player Character also begins play with one Hit Die, which is rolled to determine if wounds suffered are fatal. He also has a number of Inventory Slots, and begins play with two Supplies, which can be swapped with common dungeoneering equipment during play, a dagger, three random Belongings, and some gold. A Player Character can be created in mere minutes.

Dirk the Dice

Strength 2
Dexterity 3
Willpower 1

Slots 12
Supplies 2
Gold 90
Spells: Drain Life
Belongings: Dagger, Light armour, Tonic of Health


Mechanically, DURF uses a simple roll of a twenty-sided die whenever a player wants his character to act. An appropriate attribute is added to the result and if the result is fifteen or more, then the Player Character succeeds. Opposed rolls are simply determined by the highest result. Instead of Advantage and Disadvantage mechanics of rolling extra twenty-sided dice, DURF uses Buffs and Breaks, rolls of six-sided dice. Individual Buffs and Breaks cancel each other out, but if a Player Character has one or more Buffs, only the highest is counted and added to the player’s roll, whilst if the Player Character has one or more Breaks, only the highest is counted, but is subtracted from the player’s roll. Buffs can be gained from any number of factors, but a Player Character can gain a Buff by Pushing himself. The downside is that the Player Character takes Stress and this fills an Inventory Slot. This can only be done when a Player Character has an empty Inventory Slot.

Combat is fast and employs opposed rolls. This is Strength versus Strength in mêlée combat and Dexterity versus Dexterity in ranged combat. The winner inflicts damage equal to the weapon he wields. Armour reduces this damage, but is damaged in the process. A roll of twenty is a critical hit and inflicts double damage, whilst a roll of one means the weapon is worn and inflicts less damage until repaired. Any damage left over is suffered as Wounds. When this happens, the player rolls his character’s Hit Die or Hit Dice and if the result is less than or equal to the number of Wounds currently suffered, then the character dies. Whenever a Player Character acquires a new Level, his Hit Dice also increase by one, and consequently increase chances of his survival.


Spellcasting in DURF is available to any Player Character. If a Player Character knows or learns a spell, he can cast it. This requires a roll against his Willpower and causes Stress, further filling the Player Character’s Inventory Slots. A roll of one indicates a Blunder, the accompanying table giving a number of entertaining options, including gaining twenty pounds (potentially weight or gold) or a small gnome turning up, ringing a bell as he shames the Player Characters. Accompanying the rules is a selection of twenty spells, which include the familiar such as Levitate, Charm, and Turn Undead, but also the more interesting, like Grasp of Yahzahar which enables the caster to grab his opponents and pin them with shadowy hands.

Rounding out DURF is a guide to creating NPCs, hiring Hirelings—probably a necessity given the deadliness of the mechanics and game play, rules for converting monsters from the Old School Renaissance, and some sample NPCs/monsters, like the Echo Gecko, Dragon, and Eelfolk. The Game Master will definitely need to adapt or create some more. Lastly, there is a selection of magical items and rules for their use.

What distinguishes DURF is its Inventory and Slot management rules combined with the Stress mechanics. DURF is likely to become a roleplaying of resource management as each player manages what his character can carry and then, if he can cast spells, how far he is willing to exhaust himself, gain Stress, and literally choose between what he can carry and what he can cast. This is not new, having been seen elsewhere in the Old School Renaissance, but DURF is a roleplaying game whose designer admits his influences. In roleplaying game designed to be one of purely ‘dungeon-fantasy’, they are notable though.

Physically, DURF is cleanly, tidily laid out. The roleplaying game is well written, easy to read, and quick to learn. It is lightly illustrated in a comic style.

If DURF is missing anything, it is a scenario. Not necessarily to see how the game is played, since the rules are very light and easy to understand. Nor is it to see what the world of DURF is like, since there is no world implied, since DURF is meant to be a rules-light dungeon-fantasy roleplaying game and we know what such a world is like from Dungeons & Dragons and its numerous iterations. Rather, the point of having a scenario or dungeon in DURF is to get to the point where the Game Master can start running DURF and her players can start playing it. DURF is obviously designed so that it takes minutes to create a Player Character, so why not make it minutes to start play after that?

Overall, DURF: An Adventure Game For Brave Adventurers is what you want in a micro-clone. Rules light, quick to play, deadly where it counts, and open to tinkering and development if the Game Master wants too.

—oOo—

Lair of the Gobbler: A Dungeon for Low Hit Dice Adventurers (1-2 HD) is the first official adventure for DURF. It is not part of the core rulebook, but is available to download. It details an eight-room dungeon location in a hill in the Barrenmoot Swamps, which the Player Characters will discover is where a missing chef is being held. The complex has a muddy, sodden feel to it, its locations nicely detailed and flavoursome. As per DURF’s remit, it is very easy to prepare and the Game Master should be able to run through it in a session or two.

Micro RPG IIIc: Blades & Spells IV

Lâminas & Feitiços or Blades & Spells is a minimalist fantasy roleplaying game from South America. In fact, Blades & Spells is another Bronze Age, Swords & Sorcery minimalist fantasy roleplaying game done in pamphlet form from Brazil. In actuality, Blades & Spells is a series of pamphlets, building from the core rules pamphlet to add optional rules, character archetypes, spells, a setting and its gods, and more, giving it the feel of a ‘plug and play’ toolkit. The Storyteller and her players can play using just the core rules, but beyond that, they are free to choose the pamphlets they want to use and just game with those, ignoring the others. So what is Blades & Spells? It describes itself as “…[A] simple, objective and dynamic minimalist RPG game where the Storyteller challenges the Player and not the character sheet.” It is written to pay homage to the classic Sword & Sorcery literature, uses the Basic Universal System—or ‘B.U.S.’—a simple set of mechanics using two six-sided dice, and in play is intended to challenge the player and his decisions rather than have the player rely upon what is written upon his character sheet. Which, being a minimalist roleplaying game, is not much. So although it eschews what the designer describes as the ‘classic restrictions’ of Class, Race, and Level, and it is very much not a Retroclone, there is no denying that Blades & Spells leans into the Old School Renaissance sensibilities.

Blades & Spells: An agile, objective and dynamic minimalist RPG provides the core rules to the roleplaying game. They are a simple, straightforward set of mechanics, emphasising a deadly world of adventure in which the heroes wield both weapons and magic. Beyond the core rules, Blades & Spells is fully supported with a series of optional pamphlets which expand upon its basics and turn it into a fully rounded roleplaying game. All together these might be seen as  the equivalent of a ‘Blades & Spells Companion’, although they just as easily could be combined into the one publication, including the setting supplements of Blades & Spells: The Land of Aaman and Blades & Spells: The Lands Beyond. To date, Blades & Spells has been mostly focused on the Player Character and the Game Master, but that changes with the Blades & Spells – Dark Pack.

The Blades & Spells – Dark Pack contains not one, but three pamphlets. All three focus on the villains, providing them in turn with archetypes, dark spells, and even grotesque spells. They provide the means for the Game Master to assign basic descriptors and abilities to the villains in her campaign, as well as their henchmen and their mostly loyal lieutenants. Not just that, they offer over fifty new spells, dark and shadowy, bloody and aberrant. Together, these enable the Game Master to quickly create the basics of any vile enemy or other NPC, and if a spellcaster, equip them with a raft of horrid spells that embody their malicious and cruel natures. Alternatively, and for a very alternative campaign, there is nothing to stop a playing group from creating and playing a band of villainous Player Characters with dark designs upon the setting that the Game Master has created.

In the core rules, the Blades & Spells: Characters Archetypes/Compendium of Magic does two things. First, it expands upon each Player Character’s Focus. This is his occupation or something that he is good at, either Fighter, Mystic, Intellectual, Support, or Specialist. The supplement divides some twenty-nine archetypes into these five categories with a simple thumbnail description. The second thing is provide spells for the roleplaying game. Blades & Spells – Dark Pack provides both of these, but more like an evil, villainous twin—or rather its set of evil, villainous triplets that Blades & Spells never knew it had.

Blades & Spells: Dark Archetypes gives twenty-five archetypes, five for each category. Some of these fall within typical roleplaying archetypes, like the Assassin or the Burglar for the Specialist, whilst Support Archetypes such as Armourer, a weapons and equipment engineer, and the Mender, are not necessarily dark in themselves, but rather that their clientele likely consists of characters who make use of the other archetypes in this supplement. Those other archetypes are definitely ‘dark’ though. For example, the Bloody Blade is a loyal servant to the gods, handing out their justice as instructed by the voices of the cursed weapon you wield on their behalf; the Parasite has taken possession of the character and grants extraordinary powers, but takes control of the character’s mind; the Fallen Noble has been reduced to near penury, but will do anything to restore his fortunes; the Thug is a bodyguard or muscle for a gang, ready to solve a problem using physical means; and a Shadow Sorcerer can shape darkness and command the things within it. Like all three supplements in Blades & Spells – Dark Pack, this does carry an advisory warning and archetypes like the Bloody Blade which suggests the player roll on the Insanity Table and the Drug Mage which manufactures and uses potions and drugs and uses the Optional Rules for ‘Poison, Drunkenness, or Insanity’ all support the necessity of those advisory. Tables for both can be found in Blades & Spells: Optional Rules.

Blades & Spells: Dark Spells details over thirty dark and nasty spells, with themes of necromancy, shadow manipulation, and more. In the case of necromancy and shadow manipulation, these neatly tie into the Necromancer and Shadow Sorcerer  Archetypes given in Blades & Spells: Dark Archetypes. For example, Rigor Mortis causes the touched victim to suffer convulsions and their nerves to become painfully paralysed, as well as taking on the appearance and feel of a dead body, whilst Bone Weapon summons a temporary weapon from the ground that inflicts poison damage and can harm both material and immaterial beings. Cloak of Shadows shrouds the caster in living darkness and makes him undetectable in shadow or at night, whilst Umbral Binding sends his shadow stretching unnaturally out to touch the shadows of others and in doing so, temporarily paralyses them. Not every spell follows either them, such as Cauterize, which makes the caster’s hands as hot as red-hot iron, or Parasite Weapon which summons a mutated parasitic worm from the underworld which mutates into a weapon and defends the caster, but demands to eat the flesh of the still living, but defeated opponents. This a great range of spells for darker games or darker characters or villains, including a few more inventive entries. These are nasty spells that the players are likely to hate the villain—if not the Game Master—when he casts them at their characters.

Both Blades & Spells: Dark Archetypes and Blades & Spells: Dark Spells carried content advisory warnings, but of the three pamphlets in Blades & Spells: Dark Pack, it is Blades & Spells: Grotesque Spells that deserves it the most. The thirty or so spells it describes are all vile, unpleasant concepts. So be warned. They involve a great of manipulation of the flesh. For example, Decomposition forces the flesh of the touched victim to rot at a rapid rate through gangrene and then death; Cursed Cure first heals wounds and then turns the flesh cancerous and tumorous; and Flesh Armour forces muscle to strengthen and thicken until it is cable of protecting against injury. One can actually be useful, the unfortunately named Relink Members enables large cuts to heal and lost limbs to be reattached. The rest though are all foul, disgusting affairs, likely to be highly memorable when cast by a villain the Game Master’s campaign.

Physically, the three pamphlets in Blades & Spells: Dark Pack are fine. Their layout is clean and tidy, and all three titles are easy to read, though a slight edit would not have gone amiss. The artwork on the front page of each is good too.

Blades & Spells: Dark Pack is optional. Some of the ideas and things—especially the spells—in its three pamphlets are not going to be suitable for every campaign or even what every player wants to include or encounter.  As a potential source of character ideas and spells—especially the spells—for the villain or henchman in the Game Master’s campaign, Blades & Spells: Dark Pack is good for most Swords & Sorcery settings.

Micro RPG IIIb: Blades & Spells III

Lâminas & Feitiços or Blades & Spells is a minimalist fantasy roleplaying game from South America. In fact, Blades & Spells is another Bronze Age, Swords & Sorcery minimalist fantasy roleplaying game done in pamphlet form from Brazil. In actuality, Blades & Spells is a series of pamphlets, building from the core rules pamphlet to add optional rules, character archetypes, spells, a setting and its gods, and more, giving it the feel of a ‘plug and play’ toolkit. The Storyteller and her players can play using just the core rules, but beyond that, they are free to choose the pamphlets they want to use and just game with those, ignoring the others. So what is Blades & Spells? It describes itself as “…[A] simple, objective and dynamic minimalist RPG game where the Storyteller challenges the Player and not the character sheet.” It is written to pay homage to the classic Sword & Sorcery literature, uses the Basic Universal System—or ‘B.U.S.’—a simple set of mechanics using two six-sided dice, and in play is intended to challenge the player and his decisions rather than have the player rely upon what is written upon his character sheet. Which, being a minimalist roleplaying game, is not much. So although it eschews what the designer describes as the ‘classic restrictions’ of Class, Race, and Level, and it is very much not a Retroclone, there is no denying that Blades & Spells leans into the Old School Renaissance sensibilities.

Blades & Spells: An agile, objective and dynamic minimalist RPG provides the core rules to the roleplaying game. They are a simple, straightforward set of mechanics, emphasising a deadly world of adventure in which the heroes wield both weapons and magic. Beyond the core rules, Blades & Spells is fully supported with a series of optional pamphlets which expand upon its basics and turn it into a fully rounded roleplaying game. All together these might be seen as  the equivalent of a ‘Blades & Spells Companion’, although they just as easily could be combined into the one publication. In terms of setting, Blades & Spells only goes so far in stating that the default is the Bronze Age and hinting that this setting might be in the Middle East—or at least a fantasy version of it.

Blades & Spells: The Land of Aaman describes this setting. ‘The Land of Aaman’ is roughly analogous to ancient Mesopotamia in the lands between the Euphrates and the Tigris. The rivers here are the Numadai and Thaar, the lands between them a plateau dotted by ruins of societies past, including ragged ziggurats and complexes below them populated by aberrations and filled with treasures to be plundered. These are believed to be all that is left of great and glorious civilisations once ruled by demi-gods, washed away it is said in the sacred texts, by a cataclysmic flood. The plateau is home to eight city-states. These are described as being fairly similar, most of their tightly packed buildings being constructed of mud bricks and each city being dominated by a large ziggurat temple, a palace, and an arena where bloody gladiator bouts are staged to placate the masses. What separates the city-states are their reputations and the god that each holds to be supreme. For example, Aruk was once the seat to a mighty dynasty of kings, but has declined as the squabbles and intrigues of its nobility have grown, whilst the people of Aqeron, the largest city-state, worship Amurak, the sun god to the near exclusion of all other gods. 

Blades & Spells: The Land of Aaman does describe the ‘Lands Beyond’, but not in great detail. It mentions that the Numadai and Thaar flow into the Gulf of the Qoros Sea, that various primitive tribes inhabit the Gemini Delta, and that Amazon warriors raid the peoples of the plateau for both plunder and slaves. Also mentioned is Khmet, a great pharaonic kingdom that sits on the banks of a mighty river that divides a wide desert.

Blades & Spells: The Lands Beyond goes into further detail than The Land of Aaman does, in turn, describing Kandar’s Range, the Kingdom of Khmet, and the Middle Sea. In most cases, it is easy to determine what their real-world analogies are. Thus, the Kingdom of Khmet is Ancient Egypt, straddling the great Gonn river and wealthy enough to erect huge pyramidal temples and monuments, whilst Kandar’s Range is all but impassable Himalayas, home to a forbidden monastery on the frigid plateau of Daru, where veiled monks worship in secret. The slopes of the mountains are renowned for rare and wonderful herbs that grown in their soil. These include the trance and vison-inducing lotus as well as the Lo’Ra herb, sought by many arcanists wanting to use it in their rituals. Far to the south-east of the plateau is the kingdom of Hindra, rich in spices, ivory domes, fakirs, and mystics, and thus roughly analogous to India. The supplement also details the nations along the Middle Sea which separates the Kingdom of Khmet from its nearest neighbours as well as those along the Sea Qoros into which the Numadai and Thaar flow. This includes the Amazons of Xendria.

As overviews of a setting, both Blades & Spells: The Land of Aaman and Blades & Spells: The Lands Beyond are fine. As useful descriptions of a campaign setting, they are anything but. Between the two them there simply is not enough playable content and not enough for the Game Master to really work with and create adventures from. There are no maps in either supplement, and that is less of an issue than perhaps possible scenario hooks or a little more detail that might have made them stand out a little and thus been more useful for the Game Master.

Physically, both Blades & Spells: The Land of Aaman and Blades & Spells: The Lands Beyond are fine. The layout is clean and tidy, and both titles are easy to read.

Blades & Spells: The Land of Aaman and Blades & Spells: The Lands Beyond together do provide context and setting for the Blades & Spells: An agile, objective and dynamic minimalist RPG if not the detail. They are at best a starting point for the Blades & Spells Game Master—and that is likely the point, but it does not prevent the reader from wishing that there was a little detail to make the land of Aaman stand out.