I Got The Altered Morphology Blues II

A decade ago, on January 12th, a plague struck the world. A flu-like plague which seemed resistant to the then available treatments. Fortunately nobody died, but eleven days later, on January 23rd, all of the symptoms vanished and everyone recovered. Only later did people realise the significance of what became known as ‘Ghost Flu’ as months later, sufferers began exhibiting powers and abilities only found in mankind’s wildest imaginings and biggest cinema screen franchise. The ability to fly, phase through walls, read the minds of others, control gravity, flatten or enhance the emotions of others, and read or even enter dreams. Literally, people had superpowers. This manifestation becomes known as the ‘Sudden Mutation Event’ or ‘SME’, and in the next ten years approximately one percent of the population will manifest SME. In response, there was no rash of costumed heroes or villains, though a few tried. The most photogenic of SME suffers became celebrities, sportsmen, television and film stars, or politicians, others found jobs related to their newly gained powers, for example, a firefighter who control flames or oxygen, a transmuter who could literally turn lead into (industrial) gold, or a healer who work as a medic or doctor, and the most popular sports found ways of incorporating them into their play. Some though turned to crime, and of course, there were criminals who exhibited SME, and whilst the Heightened as they became known were mostly assimilated into society, they could still be victims of crime and they were also victims of a prejudice all their very own. For example, the Neutral Parity League campaigns against ‘Chromes’ (from ‘Chromosome’) as the Heightened are nicknamed, often violently, whilst organisations like the Heightened Information Alliance campaigns for the protection of their rights. In general, the Heightened have become one of society’s accepted minorities and most just get on with their lives.

When one of the Heightened is involved in crime—whether as victim or perpetrator—the police will investigate and handle the matter just as they would any other crime. However, most big city police forces have established a unit to specifically deal with such cases. This is the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit (HCIU), staffed by Heightened members of the police force and tasked with investigating and solving SME related crimes, whether committed by or against SME sufferers. The HCIU also serves as a combination liaison/bulwark between the mutants and ordinary folk. The law has also adapted to take account of the prevalence of Heightened abilities. Thus investigative powers such as Observe Dreams and Read Minds require consent or a legal warrant, the use of X-Ray Vision ability must follow strict health and safety guidelines as its emits radiation and can cause cancer, the wrongful use of Impersonate is fraud, and several powers, including Radiation Projection, Invisibility, and Read Minds are deemed inherently dangerous. Such powers fall under Article 18 which regulates their use and may even see their users being monitored. The study of superpowers and SME expressives is known as Anamorphology, while members of the HCIU are trained in Forensic Anamorphology.

This is the set-up for Mutant City Blues, a super powered investigative roleplaying game, originally designed by Robin D. Laws and published by Pelgrane Press in 2009. It uses the author and publisher’s GUMSHOE System, designed to play investigative games which emphasise the interpretation of clues rather than their discovery, and which has been used with another genre in a number of roleplaying games from the publisher, including horror in The Esoterrorists, cosmic horror in Trail of Cthulhu, space opera in Ashen Stars, and time travel in Timewatch. In Mutant City Blues the other genre is the classic police procedural of Law & Order, Hill Street Blues, and NYPD Blue. The combination though is specific. The Player Characters are police officers with powers, not superheroes who are cops. So not DC Comics’ Gotham Central or the Special Crimes Unit from Superman’s hometown, Metropolis, or indeed, Wildstorm’s Top 10. This is very much not a ‘Four Colour’ superheroes setting. The action and the investigation of Mutant City Blues also takes place in a real city, whether New York or Toronto, or a city the Game Moderator is familiar with. Although Mutant City Blues has the feel of a setting that is North America, it would be easy to set a campaign elsewhere, and there are notes on adapting it to the United Kingdom.

To help the Game Moderator adapt Mutant City Blues to the city of her choice, the roleplaying game comes with a number of elements which mapped onto that city. This includes a future timeline which runs from the outbreak of Ghost Flu to the present day, a guide to the future city’s politics and leading figures, as well as its new institutes and businesses. First and foremost amongst them is The Quade Institute, the world’s foremost Anamorphological research centre, run by the renowned geneticist, Lucius Quade. The Quade Institute is also where members of the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit are trained in Forensic Anamorphology. A complete Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit is described, ready for the Player Characters to be slotted into. Lastly, there is a ready-to-play scenario, ‘Food Chain’, which introduces the history of the Mutant City Blues setting as well as providing a case for the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit to investigate.

In actuality that is the set-up for Mutant City Blues as published in 2009. In 2020, Pelgrane Press published a second edition, this time by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan and Robin D. Laws. Mutant City Blues still retains the same set-up and flexibility in terms of where it can be set, but it also introduces a number of changes, not least of which is a new scenario, ‘Blue on Blue’. The majority of these changes have been implemented to make the game faster and easier to both set up and play.

As with other GUMSHOE System games, Player Characters in Mutant City Blues are defined by various abilities, either Investigative or General. Investigative Abilities are further divided into Academic, Interpersonal, and Technical. As a superhero roleplaying game, Player Characters in Mutant City Blues also have superpowers or Mutant Powers, which are again split between Investigative and General Powers. What defines the split between Investigative and General Abilities and Powers is how they are used. In the first edition of Mutant City Blues both Investigative and General abilities are represented by ratings or pool of points. For Investigative abilities, if the Player Character has the ability, he can always use it to gain core clues during an investigation, and his player could always spend more points from the Investigative ability pool to gain more information. For General abilities, such as Health, Infiltration, and Preparedness, a player expends points from the relevant pool and uses them as a modifier to a die roll to beat a particular difficulty. This is on a six-sided die and a typical difficulty is four, but can go as high as four. In the second edition of Mutant City Blues, a Player Character still has pools of points for his General abilities, including mutant powers, but not for Investigative abilities and powers. Instead of ratings, a Player Character either has the Investigative ability or power, or he does not. During an investigation, a Player Character will always pick up a clue related to an Investigative ability. If a Player Character wants more information, he can Push.

The Push is the major rule change in the second edition of Mutant City Blues. Replacing ratings for Investigative abilities, a Push is primarily used to gain more information or overcome obstacles preventing progress in an investigation. For example, it might be used to speed up the investigative process, such as getting the results back from the laboratory quicker than usual for Forensic Anthropology or Ballistics, to add an expert in the field as a friend using Art History or Occult Studies, or even use Cop Talk to impress the media or a Player Character’s superiors. A Push can also be used to sidestep or lower the difficulty of a General ability test. However a Push is used, a player only has two to expend per session, and they cannot be saved between sessions.

To create a member of the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit, a player receives three pools of points to spend on his character. These are standard for both General abilities and Mutant Powers, but will vary for Investigative abilities, the value depending upon the number of players. To ease the creation process, the second edition of Mutant City Blues includes templates that model particular police departments, such as the Forensic Science Division, Gang and Narcotic, Robbery, and Special Weapons & Training. Each template has a cost in points, with any excess being used to purchase other Investigative abilities and purchase and increase General abilities.

Whilst choosing Investigative and General abilities is relatively straightforward, selecting Investigative and General Powers is more involved. In standard superhero roleplaying games, a player is free to choose what powers he likes, in any combination, often to model particular superheroes from the comic books and films. Now that option is possible in Mutant City Blues, but that diverges from Mutant City Blues as written. Mutant powers in Mutant City Blues are clustered together genetically, so that if a Heightened has the Transmutation power, he is also likely to have the Disintegration, Phase, Touch, Reduce Temperature, and Ice Blast powers. He may also have the Wind Control, Healing, Radiation Projection, and Self-Detonation powers, but not Pain Immunity or Gravity Control. All this is mapped out on the Quade Diagram—as devised by the renowned geneticist, Lucius Quade of The Quade Institute—and in addition to using it to select powers during the character creation, the Quade Diagram serves as a forensic tool in the game. HCIU officers can use it to determine the powers used at a crime scene, as many of them leave some form of residue. It can determine the involvement of one Mutant if the residue is clustered, more if there are several clusters. The point here is that mutant powers are known quantities and do not vary, and in addition, where in the comics, a superhero will often tweak or adjust his powers from one issue to the next, this is very difficult to do in Mutant City Blues.

Our sample member of the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit is newly appointed Grace Bruckner who transferred across from Robbery where she specialised in art theft. She has become adept at identifying forgeries from merely touch alone. Her tendency towards Disassociation means she has few friends on the force, her colleagues seeing her as cold and unfriendly. This is despite the fact they know her genetics.

Detective Grace Bruckner, 1st Grade
General Abilities: Athletics 4, Composure 10, Driving 2, Filch 2, Health 10, Infiltration 4, Mechanics 2, Preparedness 5, Scuffling 5, Sense Trouble 5, Shooting 4, Surveillance 6
Investigative Abilities: Architecture, Art History, Bureaucracy, Bullshit Detector, Charm, Document Analysis, Evidence Collection, Fingerprinting, Forensic Accounting, Forensic Anthropology, Languages, Law, Negotiation, Photography, Research, Streetwise
Investigative Powers: Touch
General Powers: Disintegration 1, Healing 3, Phase 5, Transmutation 3
Defects: Disassociation

Certain powers and clusters, however, also have ‘Genetic Risk Factors’ associated with them. For example, Heightened with the Night Vision and Thermal Vision powers have tendency for Watcher Syndrome, whilst those with Telekinesis and Force Field, suffer from Sensory Overload. As she has both Phase and Disintegration, Detective Grace Bruckner can suffer from Disassociation, which means that she has a tendency to emotionally withdraw from people, and if the condition worsens, to see the world and her actions as unreal. Genetic Risk Factors need not come into play though, but it all depends upon the mode in which the gaming group has decided to play Mutant City Blues. The roleplaying game has two modes. In Safety Mode, Genetic Risk Factors are seen as potential risks to the Player Characters and may occasionally be topics of conversation, but in the main do not enter play except when they might affect Heightened criminals. In Gritty Mode, Genetic Risk Factors can express themselves in the members of the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit, and in play, are one source of Subplots.

Subplots are plots extra to the main investigation, the ‘B’ plot to the ‘A’ plot, and are typically personal or tied to another case. The players are encouraged to suggest them and the Game Moderator can add them, but in Gritty Mode they can also take the form of a personal Crisis which will affect a particular Player Character, and they can be triggered by the expression of a Genetic Risk Factor or an event which occurs in the line of duty. The latter can affect all police officers, not just members of the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit, but those triggered by a Genetic Risk Factor is specific to the Heightened. Mechanically, a Crisis requires a test and if failed, earns the Player Character a Stress Card. Similarly, if a Player Character exhausts the points from a power, but manages to refresh it by testing his Genetic Risk Factor (done against its resistance ability, which is different for each Genetic Risk Factor), he also gains a Stress Card due to the strain. Mutant City Blues lists over fifty, each with a tag like Addiction or Home Life, and Deactivation or Discard conditions, these being ways a Player Character effectively forestall the effects of a Stress Card or get rid of it completely. Should a Player Character acquire three or Stress Cards, then he is forced to quit or is fired from the force due to stress and his consequent actions.

Crises and Stress Cards are obviously storytelling and roleplaying tools, but they are also ways of enforcing the conventions of Mutant City Blues’ genre. In effect, Crises and Stress Cards are a way of handling a Player Character’s story arc over the course of a campaign. Just as in the television shows which inspire it, characters in Mutant City Blues leave, resign, take a new assignment, or are killed. Similarly, the use of the two modes—Safe and Gritty—model the two types of police procedural. Safe Mode represents a police procedural which focuses on the powers and the cases, and less on the personal and home lives of the Player Characters, whereas the grimmer Gritty Mode brings into play the personal and home lives of the Player Characters as well as the dangers of using their mutant powers. Of the two, the Gritty Mode more strongly enforces its genre than the Safe Mode. And this is in addition to the grind of dealing with the bureaucracy of the job, the Player Characters’ superiors, the media, and the criminals.

The two genres for Mutant City Blues—police procedural and superheroes—will be familiar to most, but not necessarily together. The roleplaying game’s authors provide plenty of advice to that end. The rules and advice cover collecting clues and using Pushes and their benefits, action at non-lethal, lethal, and superpowered levels, including combat, shootouts, chases, and more. There is a lengthy discussion of how the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit operates, including an orientation manual (with annotations from a member giving an explanation and opinion on how things are actually done), handling interrogations and court scenes, how the presence of the Heightened has changed the law, and running cases of the week and big plots. Plus there is a guide to the future world of Mutant City Blues, its politics, cultures, sports, and notable figures that the Game Moderator can map onto the city of her choice. Plus that mapping need not be onto a city in the near future, but could be the here and now, and there is advice for doing that too. The players are not left out here with advice on selecting their characters’ watch commander, using subplots, and suggesting some interview techniques, since after all, few of the players are going to be trained police officers. Lastly, there is an adventure, ‘Blue on Blue’ which does a good job of introducing the setting of Mutant City Blues and its various elements as they are affected by the Heightened, and takes the story of SME all the way back to the beginning. That said, it very much has the feel of a North American city and the Game Moderator will need to make some adjustments to set it elsewhere.

Throughout the pages of Mutant City Blues, there is another option discussed. That is instead of the Player Characters as members of the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit, they are Private Investigators. This gives the players and their characters greater flexibility in terms of how they approach investigations, as well as less responsibility and also less authority. However, they are still private citizens and they will need to be equally as careful, if not more so, in their use of their powers than members of the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit. Rather than the set-up and organisation provided by the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit, the players and their characters will need to work out the details of their agency ahead of time. The scenario, ‘Blue on Blue’ does have notes to enable it to be run using private investigators, but it is really written to be played using Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit officers.

Physically, for a book published in 2020,Mutant City Blues is surprisingly done in black and white. In some ways, that is thematic, and to be fair, it does not detract from the book in any way. In general, the artwork is excellent, the book is well written, and the layout clean and tidy, and best of all, easy to read.

If there are any issues with Mutant City Blues, it is in tone and setting. Some players may well find its strongly implied setting to be too North American, but the police procedural is very much a North American television staple, which for others it is that its superpowers are too low powered, to be not quite Four Colour enough. Yet even the roleplaying game’s Safe Mode is not Four Colour, although it is much closer than Gritty Mode, and after all, it is written to be a police procedural with superpowers, rather than it is a superpowered police procedural.

The GUMSHOE System was always designed to ease the process of playing investigative roleplaying games, but its iteration here in the second edition of Mutant City Blues has gone even further, switching from the previous edition’s pools of points to a simple binary yes/no for its Investigative abilities. Combined with the equally as simple Push mechanics and Mutant City Bluesmakes investigations even easier, shifting any prior complexity to the game’s action when General abilities—mundane and mutant come into play. And really, they are not that complex.

Inspired by two genres—police procedural and superheroes—Mutant City Blues still remains underpowered for handling either separately, but merged together, the result is an appealing combination of familiar genres that are consequently easy to roleplay. And that is made even easier by the streamlining of the GUMSHOE System and the cleaner presentation in this new edition. Mutant City Blues does what it says on the badge, present police procedural and investigative roleplaying in a near future that is almost like our own world, and make it accessible and engaging. The combination is very specific, but there can be no doubt that Mutant City Blues does it very well.

An Orphic Odyssey

The Persephone Extraction is another campaign for one of the best RPGs—certainly the finest espionage and finest espionage/horror RPG—of 2012, Night’s Black Agents: the Vampire Spy Thriller RPG. Written by Ken Hite and published by Pelgrane Press, the roleplaying game casts the player characters as ex-secret agents who have learned that their former employers are controlled by vampires and decide to take down the vampiric conspiracy before the vampires take them. As much a toolkit as an RPG, it gives everything that the Director needs to design and create his game, allowing him to design the vampire conspiracy and the vampire threat, from psychic alien leeches to the traditional children of Transylvania, and set the tone and style of espionage, from the high octane of the James Bond franchise to the dry and mundane grittiness of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Essentially, Night’s Black Agents is your ‘Schweizer Offiziersmesser’ of vampires and espionage.

As with both Night’s Black Agents itself and The Zalozhniy Quartet, the roleplaying game’s first campaign, The Persephone Extraction is a toolkit. It presents another five, high octane scenarios in the vein of The Bourne Identity and its sequels—extending all the way up to the Bond series of films—that can be run more or less in any order. Actually, much like The Zalozhniy Quartet, it is really the middle scenarios which can be run in any order with the beginning scenario run first and the ending scenario run last. Unlike The Zalozhniy Quartet, there is no discussion of the type of vampires that can be used in The Persephone Extraction—supernatural, damned, alien, or mutant in nature—as they are definitely of a supernatural and damned nature. Similarly, it does not give any guidance as to what psychological (and action) Mode—Burn, Dust, Mirror, or (High) Stakes Mode—to run The Persephone Extraction in. The tone of the scenarios though would suggest somewhere between Mirror Mode, the genre’s “wilderness of mirrors” world of shifting allegiances and hidden agendas as exemplified by the best of John Le Carré’s fiction, and the (High) Stakes Mode patriotism of the novels of both Tom Clancy and Ian Fleming. From staging the defence of a secret base in Siberia to an aerial drop onto an extremely isolated Greek monastery, The Persephone Extraction certainly involves a lot of high action, but is leavened by interesting moral choices deep into the campaign and plenty of infiltration—both physical and digital—missions, including deep into legend…

Of course, The Persephone Extraction involves a plot about an ancient vampiric conspiracy, one it combines with a modern conspiracy of bioterrorism, but at its heart is a rich vein of Greek mythology, specifically that of Orphic Traditions. These draw from the legends of Orpheus descending into the Underworld where the Souls of the dead lie. And if you are not thinking about the vampiric possibilities of untold numbers of Souls wanting to return to the world of the living, even if that means coming back as one of the blood sucking undead, then perhaps you are running low on sanguinary sustenance yourself? Yet The Persephone Extraction involves not one conspiracy, but multiple conspiracies in a weirdly contemporary parallel to British politics, and in order to unravel it, the agents will find themselves in Paris first and Greece last, but before they get there, they will have travelled to Barcelona, Moscow and points further east, and Istanbul, though not necessarily in that order…

The campaign opens with Emma Marlow’s ‘The Persephone Extraction’ which takes place in Paris. The Agents are drawn to the city when they learn that someone is using their identities and covers, but to what end? It quickly becomes apparent that they are being set up and clues point to a biological research laboratory in the city and one particular researcher. Who is using the Agents and what do they want from the biological research laboratory and the researcher? This sets up the campaign as the Agents are put on the researcher’s trail after an assassination attempt on her life and she goes on the run. The trail will lead into the laboratory where research into Cold War viruses is conducted as well as deep underground—an aspect that will occur again and again throughout the campaign—and into Paris’ famous catacombs. The involvement of the Agents in what looks like some kind of bioterrorism plot also brings down a great deal of Heat upon them and this will hound throughout the campaign. This means that the Agents will need to make some effort to reduce this Heat as they continue their investigative efforts from country to country, lest the authorities catch up with them.

If ‘The Persephone Extraction’ takes the Agents into the underworld, financial clues point to Barcelona and ‘The Pale Agenda’ by Bill White. This is the shortest of the five scenarios in The Persephone Extraction, involving the world of high finance and more hints that there appears to be more than one conspiracy involved in the plot revolving around the research at the laboratory in Paris. This is the first chance for the Agents to really harm one conspiracy or another, but importantly, learn where the Cold War era viruses came from. This is from Soviet Era Russia and in Will Plant’s ‘Sleeping Giants’, the Agents track the source first to Moscow and then up into the Arctic Circle in an underground facility near a closed city. The latter is a holdover from the Soviet Era, but of course, it is a new era and the workers are no longer working at the mercy of the KGB, but instead live and work in a company town and their employer cares about profit rather than ideology. ‘Sleeping Giants’ has some nicely creepy moments, but then, this is a vampiric campaign, and it also has some fun James Bond moments as it turns up the heat by having the Agents direct the defences of the facility against attack. The advice on handling the defence against the assault is nicely done. By now it should be obvious that the vampires are desperate to obtain this virus.

Heather Albano’s ‘Clean-Heeled Achilles’ is where the campaign gets weird. A combination of missing people and possible archaeological malfeasance sends the Agents to Istanbul, where a monastery stands on the coast guarded by private security behind barbed wire. For Agents and players alike, this is where the mythological aspects of the campaign are at their most prominent as the Agents really descend into the Underworld. Getting in is not easy, but getting out is going to be a real challenge as the Agents confront countless restless souls. This is the weirdest, possibly creepiest sequence in the campaign—and quite possibly in Night’s Black Agents—as the Agents find themselves replicating myth in what is essentially an Ancient Greek Orphic heroquest. As part of this the Agents re-enact the heroic figures of Orphic myth and the Director is given advice on assigning these unknowing roles depending upon each Agent’s backstory, Drives, Solaces, and so on. This exacerbates the unworldly nature of the descent and the return, but it would have been good to see these roles foreshadowed much earlier in the campaign.

Lastly, ‘The People of Ash’ by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan brings the campaign to a close in Greece as the conspiracy’s rich and elite gather to bring its plans to fruition. The finale of the James Bond movie, For Your Eyes Only, comes to mind as the Agents conduct an assault on the vampire’s ancient eyrie. The campaign should ideally end with a bang and ultimately, the Agents may succeed in defeating the greater conspiracy, but not the whole conspiracy. Defeating the greater evil will be enough to save the world, but ultimately it may still leave an evil in place. A ‘lesser’ evil, but an evil nonetheless…

As with previous campaigns for Night’s Black Agents, the middle three scenarios are designed to be played in any order, there being clues from one scenario to another, but the smoother path will be in the order as they appear in the book. Similarly all five scenarios are written such that they can be run as standalone adventures, but really this would be to ignore the greater conspiracy and the greater story that would come with them being played in order. This would be particularly obvious in ‘Clean-Heeled Achilles’ because its emulation of myth would lack the context of the previous episodes, and similarly, playing it early in the campaign may mean that the context has not yet developed enough to quite give it the impact it should.

All five scenarios are well organised, with clear explanations of the spine of each episode, the connections between the scenarios, the various NPCs, and quick and dirty briefings on each of the cities where the scenarios are set. Similarly, the set-up for the campaign is decently done with explanations of the campaign’s plots, conspiracies, conspyramid—the diagram of the conspiracy’s overall organisation, and also a Vampyramid. The latter employs mechanics from the supplement Double Tap to track the blowback and fallout of the Agents’ actions as they investigate the conspiracy. This models the conspiracy’s reactions to the Agents and as much as it makes them organic rather than static, it does add one more thing for the Director to keep track of throughout the game. Lastly, there are the vampires of the conspiracy itself, a seeming series of contradictions—arthritic and old, but breathtakingly fast; pale and spindly, but inhumanly strong; and fearful of death, but have long forgotten being alive. Similarly, they are at their weakest when insubstantial, but all but invulnerable and at their strongest when solid, but then at their most vulnerable.

Lastly, The Persephone Extraction comes with six pre-generated Agents, one of which will require some further details that the others have already figured in. They include a range of nationalities and covers, and can be easily personalised by the players. Physically, The Persephone Extraction feels somewhat rushed. The editing is not as tight as it could be and there is text missing in places. The artwork is not always of the highest quality either and in comparison to other Pelgrane Press titles, it does not feel quite as assured.

Ultimately, The Persephone Extraction is not quite the toolkit that The Zalozhniy Quartet is, for it very much feels more like a traditional, linear campaign. This should not be held against it, because The Persephone Extraction is a solid affair which draws from an unexpected source which the authors have developed into an exciting and genuinely surprising campaign.

A Disorderly Foursome

The Zalozhniy Quartet is the first set of scenarios for one of the best RPGs—certainly the finest espionage and finest espionage/horror RPG—of 2012, Night’s Black Agents: the Vampire Spy Thriller RPG. Written by Ken Hite and published by Pelgrane Press, the roleplaying game casts the player characters as ex-secret agents who have learned that their former employers are controlled by vampires and decide to take down the vampiric conspiracy before the vampires take them. As much a toolkit as an RPG, it gives everything that the Director needs to design and create his game, allowing him to design the vampire conspiracy and the vampire threat, from psychic alien leeches to the traditional children of Transylvania, and set the tone and style of the espionage, from the high octane of the James Bond franchise to the dry and mundane grittiness of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Essentially, Night’s Black Agents is your ‘Schweizer Offiziersmesser’ of vampires and espionage.

The Zalozhniy Quartet is, much like Night’s Black Agents itself, a toolkit. At its heart are four, high octane scenarios in the vein of The Bourne Identity and its sequels—extending all the way up to the Bond series of films—that can be run in any order and can be adjusted to whatever type of campaign or vampire that the Director is already running. So that is either Burn, Dust, Mirror, or (High) Stakes Mode, with vampires at the heart of the conspiracy either being supernatural, damned, alien, or mutant in nature. That said, the almost alchemical nature of some The Zalozhniy Quartet’s MacGuffins means that some types vampire are better suited than others, in particular, the supernatural or damned types. This enables the four scenarios to be added to the Director’s own campaign with relative ease. Although the tone and drive are all high action and a nod to modern espionage films, the underlying plot is dryer, more measured and restrained, inspired more by the works of authors John Le Carre and Eric Ambler, and this is apparent in some of the scenarios more than others. This combination also reflects the way in which the campaign was written—Gareth Ryder Hanrahan developing and writing from a story design worthy of a Suppressed Transmission by Night’s Black Agents’ author, Kenneth Hite.

The Zalozhniy Quartet starts in quick fashion with an explanation of the conspiracy, its aims, its origins, its participants, and its vampires. The conspiracy is an attempt to take control of one the global levers of economic and thus political power; its origins lie in the post-colonial division of the Middle East and the meddling of an infamous traitor; its participants are the Lisky Bratva, a major Russian mafiya brotherhood; and whatever their exact nature—supernatural, damned, alien, or mutant, as decided by the Director—the vampires have an odd time signature. The latter are the Zalozhniye of the title which actually refers to the number of scenarios in the book, rather than the number of vampires. Rest assured, there are more than just Zalozhniye in The Zalozhniy Quartet. All of this is set up with history, stats for the various NPCs, separate diagrams showing the connections between the NPCs and the arms of the organisation, and so on. 

In addition, The Zalozhniy Quartet includes a sextet of pre-generated player characters. As with other pre-generated player characters in scenarios for the Gumshoe System, these will require some adjustment upon the part of the players—assigning further points, establishing connections and levels of Trust between each other, and so on. Each also comes with a short background, although this is separate from the character sheets. Maps are provided for each of the five main cities that the player characters will visit over the course of the campaign, but not for any of the individual locations that they will visit.

The Zalozhniy Quartet opens in Bourne-style with ‘The Zalozhniy Sanction’. The player characters are employed by independent contractor, Donald Caroll*, to infiltrate a warehouse in Odessa believed to be one more stop on a gun-smuggling operation shifting stolen weapons out of Baghdad and into Europe. This will be their first encounter with both the Lisky Bratva and the Zalozhniye and it will go horribly wrong for both them and their employer. With the Lisky Bratva and the Zalozhniye in hot pursuit, the player characters are forced to go on the run. Their employer will be able to impart the location of his safehouse in Vienna—fortunately considered neutral ground by the espionage world—before he is caught, but getting out of Odessa and across Eastern Europe is challenge in itself even before taking into account the mafiya and the vampires on their tail.

* Man from U.N.C.L.E. fans may just want to change his name to Leo.

There are easy routes out of Odessa, but they are likely to be watched, so the player characters will probably take the scenic route and that means going via some of Eastern Europe’s weirder non-tourist spots. Primarily an extended escape and chase sequence interrupted by border crossings—recognised and unrecognised—‘The Zalozhniy Sanction’ also provides opportunities for the player characters to investigate and disrupt some Lisky Bratva operations along the way before they reach Vienna. These are almost mini-scenarios in themselves, one consisting of a fun attempt to disrupt a sporting event, another uncovering a foul Zalozhniye research site.

Once the player characters reach Vienna, there is a radical shift in tone and adventure type with ‘Out of the House of Ashes’. It is a classic Cold War scenario a la John le Carre, an extraction mission in which the player characters need to get Arkady Shevlenko, a retired KGB general, out of the city before he can give them the information he wants. He also represents the first link into the conspiracy’s origins, and so the Listky Bratva want him as do the CIA, though for different reasons. All the while, the FSB wants to stop them all… This played out against the backdrop of international diplomacy and a economic conference. Where ‘The Zalozhniy Sanction’ is all action, ‘Out of the House of Ashes’ is mostly intrigue and betrayal and counter-betrayal, with the possibility of the player characters needing to make multiple attempts to get Arkady Shevlenko out of the city safely.

The Zalozhniy Quartet again switches to another city, another tone, and another mission type for the third scenario, ‘The Boxmen’. The city is Zurich, the tone a little slicker a la Mission Impossible or Ocean’s 11, and the mission is a classic heist. Of course, it has the capacity to go wrong in the mode of Reservoir Dogs. By now the player characters will have learned that the Lisky Bratva is planning to buy a bank in the city, the same bank that they want to get into themselves to locate one of The Zalozhniy Quartet’s various MacGuffins. So this is very much a matter of casing the joint, gathering intelligence on the bank’s current owners—a family whose members cannot all agree on on the sale, and so on. This is complicated by a rival gang of thieves, the notoriously robust response of the authorities to any threat to its banking industry, and of course, the Lisky Bratva absolutely wanting the sale to go through… This is a much more restrained scenario than either ‘The Zalozhniy Sanction’ or ‘Out of the House of Ashes’, even in its action scenes, but again expect another shift in tone and style for the last part of the campaign.

‘Treason in the Blood’ brings The Zalozhniy Quartet to climax by piling on the action and upping the number of supernatural threats the player characters will face, much in the style of a James Bond movie. Taking them from Baghdad to Beirut to Riyadh, with possible diversion to Cyprus, it includes encounters with the fallout from conspiracy plot’s originators, fearsome monsters—some worse than the Zalozhniye, and of course, the inevitable, one last betrayal…

The Zalozhniy Quartet is thoroughly detailed throughout, such that it is a little overwhelming in places, especially with the number of NPCs that the Director needs to keep track of in some of the scenarios. Any one of the four will take multiple sessions to play through, but the advice and options given are never less than helpful. Whilst the most obvious order in which to play the four scenarios is in the order given—‘The Zalozhniy Sanction’, ‘Out of the House of Ashes’, ‘The Boxmen’, and ‘Treason in the Blood’—they are designed to be played in any order and to that end, links from the other three scenarios are listed at the beginning of each scenario to help the Director run one scenario after another as seamlessly as possible. They also serve as a useful recap.

Although clever, the structure of The Zalozhniy Quartet gives rise to two issues. The first is that, obviously, it does not form a ‘Conspyramid’, the interconnected pyramid structure which the player characters will work their way around and up as they investigate the entwining of vampires, governments, and organisations in order to uncover the bloodsucking conspiracy. This is intended as the classic structure for a Night’s Black Agents campaign, so it is somewhat disappointing not to see it supported in what is really the first set of scenarios released for the horror-espionage roleplaying game. Now that said, the Director can use The Zalozhniy Quartet as is—that is, as a campaign consisting of four, reasonably lengthy and interconnected scenarios, but she can instead take them and slot them into the ‘Conspyramid’ she has created as her own campaign. Then she can forge links of varying strength between these four scenarios and the other nodes in her ‘Conspyramid’. With strong links, The Zalozhniy Quartet becomes an integral part of the Director’s ‘Conspyramid’, but with weaker links, The Zalozhniy Quartet becomes a conspiracy within a ‘Conspyramid’.

The other issue is with the campaign’s climax—or rather with four of them. Each of the four scenarios in The Zalozhniy Quartet has its own climax—or capstone as they are called here—as expected, but depending upon the order in which they are played, the last capstone in the final scenario is upgraded to the campaign’s climax. The problem is that they feel like the finales to scenarios rather than a campaign, and really only the climax to the final scenario, ‘Treason in the Blood’, fully matches the intended scope.

Physically, The Zalozhniy Quartet is well written, fantastically presented and organised, and comes with very helpful staging advice aplenty. It is lightly illustrated, but the black and white artwork is decent. Although there are decent maps of the cities involved in the campaign, what the campaign lacks are maps of individual locations. For the most part, the Director can find or create maps of her own when running The Zalozhniy Quartet, as the descriptions of said locations are sufficiently detailed, but there are locations, such as the bank in ‘The Boxmen’ and the archival storage facilities in ‘Treason in the Blood’ which could have benefited from being supported by their own maps. 

So The Zalozhniy Quartet is not the massive ‘Conspyramid’ campaign that Night’s Black Agents deserves, but that does not mean that it does not present a superbly well realised conspiracy and threat to the future of the world and the means for the player characters to thwart the plot, if not take the conspiracy down. The shifts in tone and adventure type from one scenario to the next are a refreshing change of pace, present opportunities for different player characters to shine, and pleasing encompass a range of espionage styles. Overall, whether as a standalone or a plug-in to the Director’s own campaign, The Zalozhniy Quartet is epic in scope, a gloriously grand affair which showcases how to write and run a horror-espionage campaign.

The ‘I Got The Altered Morphology Blues’ Trio

Despite there being being some well-known and highly-acclaimed comic book series about the policing of superheroes—including Alan Moore’s Top 10, Brian Michael Bendis’ Powers, and Ed Brubaker and Greg Rucka’s Gotham Central—it is surprising that few superhero roleplaying games have explored the subgenre. One notable exception is Mutant City Blues, superpowered roleplaying game written by Robin D. Laws and published by Pelgrane Press in 2008, and powered by the GUMSHOE System.

Mutant City Blues posits a near future in which following the outbreak of ‘Ghost Flu’, approximately 1% of the population exhibits ‘Sudden Mutation Event’ (SME) and subsequently manifests strange and wondrous powers and abilities. Most of these individuals go on to lead normal lives, some of course, become celebrities and politicians, whilst others turn to crime. In response, most big city police forces establish a Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit (HCIU) or similar department, staffed by the super powered and tasked to investigate and solve SME related crimes, whether committed by or against SME sufferers. The HCIU also serves as a combination liaison/bulwark between these mutants and ordinary folk, both civilians and fellow police officers. The result is a roleplaying game which more an investigative Police Procedural—such as NYPD Blue or C.S.I.—with and about powers rather than a ‘Four Colour’ affair. Sadly, Mutant City Blues received just the one supplement in print, Hard Helix. There is though, another scenario anthology, one which only appeared in PDF.

Brief Cases presents a trilogy of cases to add a Mutant City Blues campaign or a change of pace—with some adjustment—in another superhero campaign. All three cases involve plenty of investigation, just about the right amount of combat, and lots of roleplaying. None of the three scenarios should take more than a good session or two and would work as single cases or scenarios to slip in between longer investigations.

The trilogy opens with ‘Shoulder to Shoulder’ and the chance discovery of a bomb-making workshop. Closer investigation reveals a plot against an anti-mutant rally. This cleverly puts the loyalties of the characters and the members of the HCIU to test as they have to protect someone who hides their anti-mutant prejudice under a veneer of respectability and concern. This is Adria Dawson, a former celebrity chef, who is now the motherly face of Families First and passive anti-mutant prejudice. Mutant opposition to her means that there are plenty of suspects and opportunities for the player characters to keep the peace and handle the press. The scenario though calls for solid forensic skills and good use of the Quade Diagram, the means of selecting powers for characters and NPCs alike and of HCIU officers determining what powers are used at a crime scene. The Game Master has some fun NPCs to portray and there is a nicely constructed clue trail for the players and their characters to follow in what is a really enjoyable investigation that in 2018 has some parallels with the prevailing social climate.

The second scenario, ‘Blastback’, starts with an interesting premise, a mutant-only gym and sets a murder there. Playing upon the concept of the Danger Room from the X-Men comics, the Danger Room is a gym where mutants go to practise and exercise their powers and now one of its customers has been killed, stabbed to death by a knife machine despite his having the Blade Immunity power. This is more of a labyrinthine investigation, delving back into the history of both the gym and mutant culture. Getting to one NPC is a bit awkward and could have been better handled as he important clues to pass on, and although lengthy, the investigation is not as satisfying as ‘Shoulder to Shoulder’. The climax is more challenging though, involving organised crime and illegal mutant fights. This is should not be a problem for player characters with combat related skills, but for a group with more investigative skills the final scenes will need police backup and that may not be quite as satisfying an ending.

The third scenario, ‘The Kids Aren’t Alright’, takes the investigators back to school when a lawyer falls out of the sky and lands on a car in the local high school’s carpark. It looks like there might be an unidentified mutant in the school, either a student or a teacher. There are plenty of suspects, some of whom are hiding their powers, some of whom they are not. Good interview and interpersonal skills are required to identify suspects and further leads despite a red herring or two, and as the investigators close in on the culprits there are some nicely paced action scenes. Unlike the previous two scenarios, the investigators will be dealing with more mutants than just the one or two perpetrators and as they stick together, getting them to crack is a bit more difficult. The scenario comes to a bit of a clichéd ending, but the consequences to the player characters’ investigation are interesting and have gaming potential in themselves, especially if the HCIU decides to do an outreach programme.

Physically, Brief Cases comes as a thirty-four page, black and white, 5.41 Mb PDF with a good full colour cover. The internal illustrations are few in number and do not always quite fit the scenario. There are no maps, but then none of the scenarios have scenes and locations which are not familiar from television cop shows. Of course, that just makes each of the scenes in the trilogy of scenarios easy to frame. The writing is clear and the scenarios are easy to understand throughout bar the awkwardness of the investigators getting to one NPC in ‘Blastback’.

As an addition to a Mutant City Blues campaign, then the trilogy of scenarios presented in Brief Cases is thoroughly useful. All three are good scenarios and enjoyable investigations which may also be a useful source of ideas for other superhero roleplaying games.

HeroQuest in Glorantha

HeroQuest Glorantha reunites Glorantha—the Bronze Age setting in which the player characters aspired to join the great religious cults of the Lightbringers and other gods and become heroes in the war to come against the invading Lunar Empire, with HeroQuest—the narrative, drama driven roleplaying system first seen in Hero Wars. Published in 2000 by Issaries, Inc., Hero Wars would be developed into HeroQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha into 2003, with a third edition, simply called HeroQuest, being released in by Moon Design Publications in 2009. This version of HeroQuest presented the rules as a generic set of mechanics with relatively little reference to Glorantha.

Published in 2015, HeroQuest Glorantha integrates the mechanics of the third edition of HeroQuest with the setting of Glorantha to present a roleplaying game in which the faithful worshippers of the Lightbringers and other gods and demi-gods in the area known as Dragon Pass campaign against the occupying forces from the Lunar Empire to the north. The Lunar Empire is regarded as aberrant because it worships Chaos and because it wants bring all lands under the glare of the Red Moon. Whilst it is possible to play Lunar characters—and play them as the heroes rather than the villains—this is not focus of player characters in HeroQuest Glorantha. Rather, the player characters are of heroes to be in the uprising against the Lunar Empire, who in worshiping the gods are allowed to wield part of the power granted to the gods by the Runes, the underlying elements of the universe. Each Rune grants power over a particular aspect of the universe—Air and Fire, Movement and Truth, Man and Spirit, Luck and Mastery, and so on—to bring about great effects and power great changes and so help achieve their objectives. In doing so, they will come to embody the very gods themselves!

HeroQuest Glorantha is supported by the narrativist, storytelling driven mechanics of HeroQuest created by Robin D. Laws, under which the possible outcomes of any action—sneaking past the palace guard, seducing the governor's daughter, rifling the governor’s safe, persuading the governor to support your cause, and so on—are explicitly framed and set before any dice are rolled. Both the player undertaking the action and the Game Master will be rolling the dice. The player will be rolling against one of his character’s abilities, which can be an ability, his homeland or culture, an object, an occupation, a relationship, a Rune, and so on. Each ability is a rated by a number between one and twenty. For example, The Gift of Tongues 17, Esrolian 16, The Glittering Eye 13, Gruff Farmer 17, Loyal to the Chief 18, Air 19, and so on.

Although the Game Master might be rolling against similar abilities for an NPC—especially if he is an important NPC that the Game Master has created—the likelihood is that he will be rolling against a Difficulty Level representing an obstacle or abstract force, for example, a great height that needs scaling, a community’s unwillingness to go to war, or a raiding party from a rival tribe. The value of the Difficulty Level is determined not by some pre-set value, but by the needs of the story and whether it is dramatically appropriate for the character to succeed or fail at that point. The Difficulty Level begins at a base of fourteen and will rise as a campaign proceeds, but will constantly be adjusted up or down according to the needs of the story.

The GM and player will each roll a twenty-sided die and compare the results to their respective abilities, results of twenty being a fumble and one being a critical success. In some contests, a simple success/failure outcome will suffice. 

For example, Farnan, son of Venharl, is a Sartar rebel who has sworn vengeance against Hurbios Crestfallen, a Lunar commander with a reputation for the harsh treatment of the Sartarite peoples under his control, including Farnan’s parents. Farnan has heard rumours that Hurbios is hiding in a nearby villa until he can make his escape north. Farnan decides that he wants to get into the villa and find out if the rumours are true. The GM decides that it would be easy for Farnan to get into the villa, the dramatic challenge should be whether he gets noticed or not. He decides to set the Difficulty Level at moderate or equal to the current base, which is 14. They frame the contest that if Farnan succeeds, he enters the villa unnoticed and finds Hurbios, but if he fails, Farnan will be found by some guards before finding Hurbios. Farnan’s player decides that he will use Farnan’s ability of Clan Huntsmen 17. The GM rolls 15 and fails, but Farnan rolls 12 and succeeds. This enough for Farnan to get into the villa and locate the rooms where his quarry is hiding. 

For other contests, though, it will be important to know what the margin of success will be—Marginal, Minor, Major, or Complete Victory. So, in the previous example, Farnan’s Success would be compared to the GM’s Failure to give a margin of success of Minor Victory. This would be narrated as Farnan succeeding, but noting that the guards will find signs of his entry into the villa. Just not yet though…

One of the aspects of HeroQuest is that it is scalable, so ability ratings can go above twenty. This is expressed as degrees of Mastery or W—the W representing both the Mastery Rune and the ability rating above twenty. So 3W is the equivalent of 23. Masteries are important, because along with Hero Points, they can be used to affect, or ‘bump’, the results of a die roll up or down—bump up to improve a die roll and bump down to weaken an opponent’s die roll. This can be done with Masteries or Hero Points. 

Continuing the previous example, Farnan, son of Venharl has sneaked into a villa where the man he has sworn vengeance against for killing his parents, Hurbios Crestfallen, is hiding. Farnan confronts Hurbios and Farnan’s player declares that he will attempt to capture Hurbios and bring him before the tribe for judgement. Looking over Farnan’s abilities, his player can see that he has Air Rune 1W and Sartarite Rebel Warrior 3W, having fought several battles against the Lunar invaders. The GM knows that capturing the killer of his parents and bringing him before the tribe would be a major achievement for Farnan. Therefore, the Difficulty Level should be dramatically appropriate. The GM sets the Difficulty Level for capturing Hurbios at a Hard resistance, which is equal to the base +6. Since the base is currently fourteen, this sets the Target Number at twenty. Both Farnan’s player and the Game Master rolls a twenty-sided die. As Farnan has a Mastery of 3W in Sartarite Rebel Warrior, his player is rolling against 3. He rolls 2, which is a Success. The GM rolls for Hurbios and gets a 19. This is under 20 and is also a Success. Because Hurbios has the higher roll and both contestants have the same level of success, Hurbios would win, but Farnan’s Mastery grants him an advantage. Farnan has 3W and Hurbios has 20, so Farnan has one level Mastery over Hurbios, which enables his player to bump Farnan’s Success up to a Critical Success. Comparing Farnan’s Critical Success versus Hurbios’ Success gives the result of a Minor Victory. The Game Master Farnan gets the stakes as framed—defeating his opponent—and no more. (Had the outcome given a better Margin of Victory, Farnan might have been able to force a confession from Hurbios at spear point.) Farnan’s player narrates how Farnan confronts his parents’ killer, shouting that the Lunars have lost in Sartar and demanding that Hurbios Crestfallen give himself up. The Lunar soldier at first refuses, but he cannot defend himself against the flurry of blows that Farnan delivers before they drive him to the floor. 

At its heart, HeroQuest is a simple enough system and its core mechanic covers physical actions, tests of knowledge, social interaction between player character and NPCs, as well as combat. Mechanically, the rules do get more complex with group and extended tests, both used in key, dramatically appropriate scenes. These might include negotiation between an Issaries merchant and a Praxian tribal chief for trading rights, a major clash between Sartarite militia and an uppity Trollkin raiding party, or participating in a heroquest to both prove your worthiness to your god and to reinforce the validity of his mythology. For the most part though, simple contests are used unless it is dramatically appropriate, in climatic confrontation, for example.

Further mechanics define the creation and handling of communities in HeroQuest Glorantha. This can be a tribe, kingdom, temple, mercenary company, clan, guild, and so on, and represents the organisation that the heroes belong to or have ties to. Each community possesses five types of resource—wealth, communication, morale, war, and magic—that the heroes can draw upon, but other times bolster and support. At other times, they are great sources of roleplaying. As is the guide to heroquesting, in some ways the eponymous point of the game in which the heroes journey into myth and after facing a number of great challenges and tests, bring back magic of the Gods Age, the period before Time was imposed on the world.

HeroQuest Glorantha supports and explains these mechanics with some very nicely done examples, many of them drawn from the ongoing backstory of the HeroQuest period as detailed in Prince of Sartar. These examples also show how HeroQuest can handle certain situations and scales, so there is not only a negotiation, but also political manoeuvring on a city scale, a heroquest, and a military battle. These examples are also entertaining as well as showcasing how the rules work.

In comparison to HeroQuest, advice for the GM in HeroQuest Glorantha is actually quite light. Primarily, this consists of advice on handling conflicts and action in a dramatic effect, especially with a view to climatic resolution, and structuring scenarios and campaigns to that end using a pass/fail cycle. This is a chain of dramatic obstacles that the characters will have to overcome in the course of an adventure, with passes giving the heroes an advantage in facing the next obstacle and then again, with failures giving them a disadvantage and then. Ultimately, the chain of failures will be overcome and the player characters will be able to build back up with passes. There is also a good section on gaming in Glorantha and creating adventures that includes a scenario outline or two, but most of the advice pertains to HeroQuest rather than Glorantha specifically. Much of this advice is explored at greater length in HeroQuest—which is worth referencing for that reason—but ultimately, the advice for the GM (and sometimes the players) in HeroQuest Glorantha comes down to ‘Five Principles of Gaming’, one each from the luminaries of Chaosium, Greg Stafford, Sandy Petersen, Jeff Richard, Neil Robinson, and Rick Meints. In fact, there is very little in HeroQuest Glorantha that the players should not know because as players they will benefit from knowing the rules and because their characters will know about the world of Glorantha.

To create a Hero in HeroQuest Glorantha—and it is a Hero rather than a character—a player assigns a number of values to various keywords and abilities. These begin with a distinguishing characteristic and an occupational keyword before adding a cultural keyword, determining the hero’s community, adding some flaws, and so on. Three of them are the Runes which reflect the hero’s personality, how he does magic, the god he worships and the cult e belongs to. Some of these keywords can be ‘Breakout’ abilities, specialised abilities keyed off a broader ability. Whilst mechanically it is an easy enough process, conceptually, it is more challenging because of its freeform nature. That said, the process is helped by examination of the possible Cultural, Community, and Occupational Keywords, Runes and how they reflect a character’s personality, abilities, flaws, and so on. At each step, it presents one more aspect of the setting and how it relates to a character, so drawing the player and the character into Glorantha and preparing both for play. The process is helped by several examples of character generation, again drawn from Prince of Sartar.

Hero: Heidrik of Prax, Appraising Merchant
Runes
Trade Rune 2W
        Gift of Tongues +1
Movement Rune 1W
        Maps show the way +1
Air Rune 13

Keywords & Abilities

Merchant 2W
        Read & Write +1
        The Value of Everything +1

Heortling Culture 13

Distinguishing Characteristic
        Fair Minded 17

Reluctant Praxian Militiaman 13

Remaining Points: 2

As to Glorantha itself, a large amount of HeroQuest Glorantha is dedicated to the setting, specifically that of Dragon Pass during the period of the Lunar invasion and the Sartarite uprising. It starts off with an overview of Glorantha before explaining the nature of the various types of Runes—elemental, power, form, and condition—before delving into the geography and history of Dragon Pass. The importance of the Runes comes into play with a lengthy examination of magic and cults in Glorantha. The discussion looks at three types of magic—Spirit, Rune, and Sorcery, but tends to favour the first two, although it possible to play a Sorcerer. It is here that the importance of the Runes and Cults comes to the fore, an importance that cannot be underestimated since much of a hero’s fate and beliefs are strongly tied to both. Six allied cults—Ernalda, Issaries, Humakt, Lankor Mhy, Orlanth, and Waha—are presented in detail, examining in turn each cult’s Runes, its mythos and history, how it is organized, what it likes and dislikes, who its enemies are, the requirements to be a lay member, an initiate, a devotee, and so on, as well as the feats commonly associated with the cult. These feats replicate a god’s mythic deed, for example, ‘The Thunderer’, associated with Orlanth via the Air rune brings thunder and gales with each step as the devotee literally channels Orlanth.

A notable inclusion alongside the discussion of the six allied cults is that of Lunar magic employed by the Lunar Cults such as the Seven Mothers cult. It is reviled outside of the Lunar Provinces because of its willingness to use the powers of Chaos—the powers of entropy and the void. This enables the Game Master to present the enemy on a footing equal to that of the player characters, in both mechanical and narrative terms. It also allows a player to create a Lunar player character should he so desire and should a campaign allow for it, but both Lunar magic and Seven Mothers Cult are more complex than the other magical and cultic options presented in HeroQuest Glorantha. They are probably best played by more experienced players rather than someone coming to Glorantha for the first time.

Rounding out HeroQuest Glorantha is a short bestiary which covers the creatures of the setting, Dragon Pass in particular. These are primarily the Elder Races—the Aldryami (Elves), Dragonewts (Draconic Lizardmen), Mostali (Dwarves), and Uz or Men of Darkness (Trolls), but a number of the Lesser Elder Races and other creatures are also mentioned. The former include Baboons, Ducks, and Tusk Riders, the latter dinosaurs and dragons. None of these have stats since how the Game Master uses them is as obstacles that the player characters can overcome. Unfortunately, the level of detail accorded to each is light, so creating more interesting obstacles and NPCs will be a challenge for the Game Master.
The appendices cover goods, a glossary, a bibliography, amongst other things.

Physically, by contemporary standards, HeroQuest Glorantha is a slim rulebook. Its layout is clean and tidy if plain, but this is leavened by some lovely pieces of artwork, many of them in full colour, that help bring Glorantha and Dragon Pass to life, including several pages taken from Prince of Sartar. Initially, the book feels a bit ponderous, but it quickly settles down into a readable fashion. Physically—and conceptually—there is one aspect of HeroQuest Glorantha that does irk and that is the line on the back-cover blurb which states that “Glorantha is the most elegant, original, and imaginative fantasy setting since Middle Earth.” It is not that Glorantha is not elegant, is not original, is not imaginative. There is nothing wrong with these terms or with the description. Rather that it should be amended to “Glorantha is one of the most elegant, original, and imaginative fantasy settings since Middle Earth.” just as “Tékumel: The World of the Petal Throne is one of the most elegant, original, and imaginative fantasy settings since Middle Earth.” is also a reasonable claim.

What issues there are with HeroQuest Glorantha, are really only minor. The most obvious one is that it is very much a humancentric roleplaying game, both in terms of what you can play and what the NPCs will be. This is understandable because it ties the player characters into the magic and the cults, but some players will be disappointed that they cannot play Aldryami or Mostali, for example. Likewise, the Game Master’s options in terms of foes are limited by the lack of means for fleshing them out and detailing such creatures beyond obstacles. Another issue is the lack of information about Glorantha and Dragon Pass. What there is though, is broad in nature and does at least provide a more than serviceable introduction to the setting, especially when coupled with the background about the cults and the gods, but the reader cannot escape the feeling that there is much, much more to know and learn about the setting. Of course, HeroQuest Glorantha cannot equal the gargantuan and definitive The Guide to Glorantha, but there is no easy next step to learn more. This is not to say that there are no supplements for HeroQuest Glorantha. Both Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes and Pavis: Gateway to Adventure are available and are possible next steps, but they are both lengthy, daunting tomes. Hopefully, the release of The Coming Storm: The Red Cow, Volume 1 will serve as that next step, especially in support of the forthcoming The Eleven Lights campaign. Lastly, as a ‘Culture’ game, a roleplaying game where a player character’s background, upbringing, and attitudes play as much a role as his personality, HeroQuest Glorantha could have been stronger, especially in terms of providing the cues and attitudes for the cultures offered in its pages.

The HeroQuest rules are a solid set of narrative mechanics which given their origins have always felt as if they should be tied to Glorantha and in HeroQuest Glorantha, they are. Of course, HeroQuest included a chapter on Glorantha, but in HeroQuest Glorantha, the setting benefits from the greater space given to it, whilst the mechanics benefit from being applied to the one setting and from being supported by the numerous applied and well-executed examples. Best of all are the presentations of Glorantha’s Runes and cults, the latter in particular providing an accessible means of stepping into the Glorantha and its background. Above all, HeroQuest Glorantha brings together everything that a game set in Glorantha needs to get started, especially in terms of the cults—something that Glorantha has not always benefited from—and does so in one well written book.

—oOo—

With much thanks to Ian Cooper, Tim Ellis, and Dan Happens for their advice and input on this review.

The 'I Got The Altered Morphology Blues' Quartet

The RPG, Mutant City Blues posits a near future in which following the outbreak of ‘Ghost Flu’, approximately 1% of the population exhibits ‘Sudden Mutation Event’ (SME) and subsequently manifests strange and wondrous powers and abilities. Most of these individuals go on to lead normal lives, some of course, become celebrities and politicians, whilst others turn to crime. In response, most big city police forces establish a Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit (HCIU) or similar department, staffed by the super powered and tasked to investigate and solve SME related crimes, whether committed by or against SME sufferers. The HCIU also serves as a combination liaison/bulwark between these mutants and ordinary folk, both civilians and fellow police officers. Written by Robin D. Laws and published by Pelgrane Press in 2008, and powered by the GUMSHOE System, Mutant City Blues was not a superhero RPG in the traditional sense, but rather an investigative Police Procedural—such as NYPD Blue or C.S.I.—with and about powers rather than a ‘Four Colour’ affair. Sadly, Mutant City Blues received just the one supplement, Hard Helix.

Hard Helix is an anthology of four scenarios for use with Mutant City Blues designed to follow on from both the setting and the scenario in the core book and involve the player characters, members of the city’s Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit, in the politics of SME and the city. The collection opens with ‘The Hard Helix’. This throws them into the political deep end when they have to investigate the death of Sidney Dorris just before he is to speak at a conference on Anamorphological Research, this the study of the morphology of those who expressed SME—like the investigators. Dorris is a controversial figure because of his radical theories about SME and he was set to announce a new theory at the conference. So suspects include Lucius Quade, the father of Anamorphology as well as members of the anti-mutant and mutant rights movements. This is a good opening scenario that calls for the characters to use their Investigative Abilities more than their superpowers. It also brings them further to the attention of the leading figures in both SME politics and research—and they may be useful contacts to have in the long term.

Where ‘The Hard Helix’ is primarily an investigative ‘murder mystery’ affair, ‘The Vanishers’ is a more physical scenario and involves more traditional crime. A jewellery robbery proves to be hiding something more, but getting to this means playing through a couple of fun scenes, including one straight out of an 80s action cop movie! The clues here reveal that old organised crime is up to its old tricks, but is making it new by mixing it up with new super-powered crime. The cops not only have the opportunity to use their powers in this scenario, they also have the chance to go undercover and this means double roleplaying for the players! The GM does not miss out on the roleplaying though as he is given a fun mix of NPCs to portray in ‘The Vanishers’. These NPCs are a whole lot tougher though and ‘The Vanishers’ is a dangerous investigation.

In the wake of an anti-mutant riot in Helixtown—home to the majority of the city’s enhanced activities—the HCIU is called in to investigate a death. There seems to be nothing out of the ordinary about the victim—he was not part of riot, nor is he a mutant. So why exactly was he killed and who did it? Investigation points to a gang member gone rogue, but why is the Street Interdiction Task Force, a team set up to take down the city’s drug gangs, warning the investigators off? This is the set up for ‘Super Squad’, a grimmer scenario in which the investigators have to investigate fellow police officers. This is much harder and grittier scenario than the previous two because as much as the player characters’ suspicions are raised by the Street Interdiction Task Force, its members seem to be in the good graces of their bosses. This may result in the scenario being a scenario being an exercise in frustration, but this is perfectly in keeping with the type of investigation it handling, ending as it does in a big shoot out as the bad guys make their escape.

The last scenario is ‘Cell Division’. It opens with a bit of comedy and small mutant crime before switching to the big time—mutant supremacists mount a terrorist attack at a tourist site in the city. They are fanatical to the point of suicide, but there seems little to go on until the Mutant Revolutionary Front claims responsibility for the attack. Its announcement also promises further attacks, which causes panic and uncertainty across the city. This combined with political pressure leads to a fun scene for the player characters where they have to calm the public under the questions of a television show host! After this comes the second attack, a major scene in the scenario and one drawn from a similar real world event. The fanaticism of the antagonists in this scenario makes this the most challenging scenario in the anthology and whatever the outcome, relationships between mutants and the public are likely to altered forever…

Physically, Hard Helix is well written and decently presented with some excellent greyscale artwork. Each of the four scenarios comes with a full list of the NPCs involved and included at the end of the book is a summary of the Clues and their values to be found in each of its four scenarios.

One problem with Hard Helix is the setting, or at least the implied setting. This is a city where the police are armed and the criminals have access to heavy firearms. What this means is that these scenarios are easier to place in some cities than others, for example, in the United Kingdom. Of course, Mutant City Blues and these four scenarios are set in the future, so policing could have changed… Perhaps in response to SME?

Hard Helix presents four scenarios that showcase the type of investigations and police stories that can be run in Mutant City Blues. ‘Hard Helix’ is a classic murder mystery, ‘The Vanishers’ feels like an 80s action movie, and both ‘Super Squad’ and ‘Cell Division’ are grittier scenarios of the 90s and 00s. All four involve mutants and superpowers to one degree or another, but at same time they also involve subjects for police investigation—the Mob, the Police themselves, terrorists, and so on. So there is the sense of progression through the themes and elements of genre mash-up that is Mutant City Blues. Ultimately, whilst Hard Helix is a fun quartet, it seems a shame that it was also the last support for Mutant City Blues, itself a fun and engaging twist upon superheroes and the real world.