• Critique Navidad: Wulfwald

    This holiday season, I’m going to review a different module, game or supplement every day. I haven’t sought any of them out, they’ve been sent to me, so it’s all surprises, all the way. I haven’t planned or allocated time for this, so while I’m endeavouring to bring the same attention to these reviews, it might provide a challenge, but at least, I’ll be bringing attention to some cool stuff!

    Yowzers. Wulfwald is a 5 volume (totalling about 300 pages) game and setting by Lee Reynoldson, Paolo Greco, and Alison Killilea, with art by Francesco Accordi, Katie Wakelin and Russ Nicholson. The first words on the official Lost Pages site say “We went back to 1974, kidnapped Gary, and gave his game a proper setting.” to give an idea of the goals of this project, in which you play outcast adventurers now united under the order of a thegn, in order to exert his influence upon a world inspired by Saxon myth.

    The first volume covers character creation, advancement, and equipment. Basically, we have the three classes, with four variations, one for each kindred, making twelve classes in total. They each have three levels, a critical and fumble special effect, and starting equipment, with wizards having Gealdor for their magic. I love the elegance of these simple but unique classes, however I’m scarcely 37 pages in and the Old English terminology is a bit too much for me. Surely the Réðealing Wicce could have just been called a witch, especially given they put elf, dwarf and man in brackets in case the language isn’t clear? Anyway I love these classes, despite the frustrating naming conventions that will no doubt be ignored at the table. Equipment is broken down into the different kinfolk, which I think is neat and flavourful, and better than most equipment lists. While technically coinage did exist in the inspirational time period, the gamification feels clean in a way that’s unsatisfying to me — Wolves Upon the Coast did unreliable coinage in an interesting way, and I’d have liked to see that here, to reflect the time period a little better.

    The second volume concerns itself with magic, and details a bunch of unique magic systems. The runic magic here involves permanently inscribing a rune to give that person or object a permanent bonus; you can reclaim them, but only by destroying the thing that it’s inscribed on. Spell singing is nature magic, and can change shape, cause glamour, or manipulate the forest. Necromancy corrupts the user to summon the dead, either to aid them in battle, to fill their enemies with dread, or to assume the form of the dead. Witchcraft is a bargaining magic, where you sell parts of yourself for greater flexibility. These are all simple, flavourful as all get out, and just stellar magic systems even in their sinplicity. Great stuff. Magical items aren’t mundane here, they’re affixed to a a proper legend — two to three pages of it. Religions, however are mundane: No one has powers granted by their gods, but all believe in them.

    The third volume concerns running a campaign. It opens with nine kingdoms, their description of about a page, plus reaction encounters and some unique tables to cover specifics to those kingdoms (“What is the Shining One seeking?” or “Mission of the Westlund Seaxe spy”). I don’t love the long-hand descriptions — they’re long enough and don’t use highlighting for important information, so I find them hard to process — but the content is very good, usually setting up a very specific politic and inciting incident to drive your Wolfpack to action. This is basically the perfect balance between content and improvisation for me. There’s a big section on society, which for me is pretty dry and uninteresting, as the kind of people buying this book all know basically the gist of how this society worked. I love the Who hates whom at why? Section, though, which sets up the core conflicts within your kingdom quite clearly, although I feel some visualisations would be useful there. It does focus more on the PCs and who would hate them, rather than generally, which I don’t like, but it does provide principles useful for refereeing this world. The last section takes you through how to set up your campaign. It expects you to do a fair bit of legwork, although it walks you right through it which I appreciate it. I deeply wish they’d fully illustrated an example for at least 1 of the kingdoms, just so I wouldn’t have to develop my own, because I just don’t have the time. I appreciate the support, though, provided here. There’s just tons of advice here, and advice never goes astray. In an appendix here, also appear the rules for reaction rolls and combat order, as well as ability checks. An optional appendix! In the third volume! Oh, my heart sings at the priorities of this author! Great stuff! And the second appendix contains a starter adventure. I do not like this adventure at all: It’s written like something out of Dungeon Magazine in 1985, just a wall of text with no highlighting and too generous with its word count. A good starter adventure is invaluable, but good this is not. The third and fourth appendices contain mass combat and hireling rules, with a name generator which is appreciated.

    The fourth volume is a bestiary. My favourite thing about it is that many of these monsters are unique NPCs — giants and dragons and the like don’t come as a type. The types here aren’t your typical elfgame fare, either: Orcs here and frankenstein creatures of foul necromancy, for example. You can run a campaign with these monsters, it’s a stellar bestiary that puts its effort into the most interesting places. In terms of usability, there are two good appendices, one which provides a list of all stat blocks across this and the next volume, and one that summarises the combat statistics of them all for convenience. Useful stuff for running a game.

    The last volume is about people. Here you have the all of the kinfolk, a little about their cultures and a few types of them and their stat blocks for combat. There are also examples of important NPCs, focusing mainly on nobility, which says a lot about who you’re expected to be interacting with. It also doubles as a better explanation of society than came before, although you have to wade through a lot of specific societal roles to find out how Reeves interact with Ceorls or what not. It suffers again from the wall of text problem here, so I struggle to get through it.

    The preponderance of Old English terminology in Wulfwald is a sticking point for me, 5 books in. The problem is the reliance on the language as a substitute for actual world-building. You can see this in phrases like “…currency is based on the Seolfor Pund, the pound of silver. Usually in the form of an ingot, worth in modern terms about $7,000. Pounds are used for large expenses such as…” and the effect is that “I’m using pund to be exotic, see, I mean pound!”. I have to admit, the language got easier by the time I was maybe 3 volumes in (I stress, in the context that I studied Old English at a university level albeit some twenty years ago, so it’s not foreign to me at all), but that could also be because the world building drew me in. Because, eventually, it did.

    In terms of layout, it’s elegant, well spaced, and uses judicious decoration to good effect. There is little highlighting of any kind, which means on busy pages it’s tricky to identify important information; I wish there was more, as it makes for a monotonous page at times in addition to the navigation issues. Breaking the game into books is a clever information design move, and any issues that may have emerged from that have been foreseen and addressed. The art isn’t everywhere, but what’s there is very good, and fits well with the elegant layout. And I never get sick of the knot work used as decision throughout.

    Elephant in the room: Wolves Upon the Coast, the other big 6th century viking game, is right there. It’s a very different game, but hits many of the same notes. It’s a much gamier game — this might as well be FKR — and it comes with tons of exploratory content. This is more of a faction-focused game, although there’s room for more. If you want a narrative, actors stance, political game, with regular players every week tracking ongoing conference, go here. If you went something you can play pick up, or open table, with little need for follow through week-by-week, or you just hate prep, pick Wolves Upon the Coast.

    I did not expect to like Wulfwald as much as I did. It was a compelling read, smartly organised, and minimises rules in favour of supporting the world clearly and in some degree of complexity. I think it leans a little too hard on Old English terminology early in — nobody is going to say brádsweord when they can say broadsword, be real — but it comes good in later volumes. I think it could be better in terms of providing an example of campaign set up and some examples of play, but when my complaints are so minor, they aren’t a strong argument against anything. Honestly, unless you’re already heavily invested in the other big game that fits that bill, I don’t see any good reason not to pick Wulfwald up if you’re interested in a 6th century England themed game.

    Idle Cartulary

    Playful Void is a production of Idle Cartulary. If you liked this article, please consider liking, sharing, and subscribing to the Idle Digest Newsletter. If you want to support Idle Cartulary continuing to provide Bathtub Reviews, I Read Reviews, and Dungeon Regular, please consider a one-off donation or becoming a regular supporter of Idle Cartulary on Ko-fi.

  • Critique Navidad: Hwæt

    This holiday season, I’m going to review a different module, game or supplement every day. I haven’t sought any of them out, they’ve been sent to me, so it’s all surprises, all the way. I haven’t planned or allocated time for this, so while I’m endeavouring to bring the same attention to these reviews, it might provide a challenge, but at least, I’ll be bringing attention to some cool stuff!

    Hwæt is a 25 page solo game of battling monsters, inspired by the poem Beowulf, by Luke Simonds. In it, you fight until you die, and then your children fight to avenge you, in a cycle of violence unending until you choose to step away from that path.

    To play, you create a character — 4 stats, no other details — and set a scene of what that characters everyday life is like. Then you randomly select a problem that the monster is causing out of 6 possible problems, and the monster itself, out of 10 possible monsters.

    Then you battle. To do so, you choose your action, and roll 1d12, and the monster draws a card from deck, with its suit determining which action it takes, and compare your results to the matrix in the book. You are penalised for repeating the same action repeatedly. When one of you is reduced to 0 HP, you die. If you don’t die, you age, and if you do die, the next generation will attempt to fight that monster at advantage, and the cycle continues. You’ll notice a lot of different facing dice being used here, which I feel is a bit much. I feel like there’s little added from using a full set of polyhedrals here — we could just use 1, or we could just use a deck of cards, for an identical effect, and I wouldn’t have to check when to use what. But that’s the entirety of the game.

    It’s generously illustrated with public domain art, and filled with Beowulf quotations. There is nothing complex about the layout, although some aspects would benefit from additional flagging, for example the complexities in character creation get lost in the text, and could use more hierarchy or highlighting. But it’s serviceable, and certainly not hard to read or understand. But given the generous illustration, I do feel like this might be better as a set of pamphlets than the longer zine it is — I could keep my monster pamphlet in one hand, and the combat in the other, and not have to flick forward and backwards in the book, especially as it’s a very physical game, featuring many sided dice and a deck of cards.

    For me, despite the art, the quotations, and the fairly clear recognition of the structure of the story, it doesn’t feel as Beowulfy as, say, a game of Agon might. And that’s despite the presence of a bunch of really fun and interesting monsters. This is the second prompt-based TTRPG I’ve read this month for Critique Navidad after Dead After Dinner, and what I’m seeing is designers either have no desire or don’t know how to write consistently compelling prompts that ground their games in a specific reality, and instead they tend to be fairly generic. I think Hwæt suffers more, though, than the other two did, because for me Beowulf is not as strong a framework to improvise based upon: I’ve studied Beowulf, and I don’t know that I could bring my knowledge of it to bear to make a compelling story. Those quotes, that top every page? Instead, work them into the pre-battle prompts, add them to the interlude for more support there, and incorporate them into the battle matrix and the new character generation.

    Look, if I wanted to play a game of Beowulf, I feel like Agon is a better choice. But, you know what I can’t play solo? Agon. If you’re vibing old English literature, or reading Maria Headley’s translation, and you just have to play a solo game inspired by it, Hwæt is the game for you. But I wish this folded a bit more inspiration from the poem into the text and rules of the game, rather than rely primarily, quotes, art and my own knowledge to bring the vibes of Beowulf.

    Idle Cartulary

    Playful Void is a production of Idle Cartulary. If you liked this article, please consider liking, sharing, and subscribing to the Idle Digest Newsletter. If you want to support Idle Cartulary continuing to provide Bathtub Reviews, I Read Reviews, and Dungeon Regular, please consider a one-off donation or becoming a regular supporter of Idle Cartulary on Ko-fi.

  • Critique Navidad: The Curse Lingers

    This holiday season, I’m going to review a different module, game or supplement every day. I haven’t sought any of them out, they’ve been sent to me, so it’s all surprises, all the way. I haven’t planned or allocated time for this, so while I’m endeavouring to bring the same attention to these reviews, it might provide a challenge, but at least, I’ll be bringing attention to some cool stuff!

    The Curse Lingers is a 27 page role-playing game by Daniel Copper about beings in the far future visiting dangerous temples, places that generations have been told to stay away from. You delve into them, seeking to recover relics of the distant past.

    Honestly, I feel like I should lead with thematics here: The layout is clearly inspired by the Sandia report’s “Landscape of Thorns”, in electric yellow and black. It’s a Caltrop Core game, also drawing inspiration from the same report. Similarly, the front papers are inspired, clearly, by the field of nuclear semiotics. This is cool stuff. But while the layout choices and the simplicity of the system drew me in, the opening flavour text is a little off-putting, as I got confused as to what the game was actually going to consist.

    There are a few really unique mechanics hidden in this tiny game. One is that time is unimportant except where relative the Curse Gauge of the temple. Hence, when you do something, the temple’s curse gets worse. There’s a direct connection to player action and the progression of some kind of unknown doom. I love this: It’s the kind of extreme actualisation of what random encounters are supposed to represent that I adore, and I’m a little surprised we don’t see it more. When the gauge is filled (and, while it’s not stated, the player characters are irradiated), they begin to mutate, radically reducing their survival chances. This mutation level substitutes for hit points here, which means the fewer hit points you have, the more cool powers you have, until you die. This is a really satisfying curve. The mutations you gain are predictable, and related to your class, and the class descriptions make the majority of the ruleset. I could see players looking at their character sheet, realising they needed their 8+ mutation, and intentionally exposing themselves to further mutagen just to achieve their next goal, overshooting the mark, and then the game ending.

    To be clear, this is intended to be a micro-game, not complete in and of itself, and hence it’s hard to criticise it for what it’s missing, but I want a little more here, particularly I want more from the “how to make a temple” rules here. I don’t think I need much else, though. The last part of the book is an example temple, a fragment of city where automated cards fly past pavements filled only with ghosts. While brief, it’s weird and compelling, with a labyrinth, a relic that mixes religion with automated vehicles, and a busker who must be given a donation to be allowed to escape. This is a very cool micro-dungeon, but it left me wanting more.

    The Curse Lingers is a very cool twist on post-apocalyptic dungeon-crawling, but I think if I’m doing to revisit this kind of game, I’m probably going to go toward Eco Mofos that I reviewed earlier this month, simply because it has more depth and has an ecosystem in place, meaning I have to do less work. However, I’d love to see more modules written by Daniel Copper, just because the one that’s here is pretty cool and weird, and I could see a series of these nuclear semiotics inspired modules for a game like Eco Mofos getting a lot of attention. I’d definitely pick up modules based on this content. That said, if you’re interested in what I’ve described here, with some cool, multi-level thematic content, striking layout, and a cool dungeon for a one-shot, The Curse Lingers is a good choice.

    Idle Cartulary

    Playful Void is a production of Idle Cartulary. If you liked this article, please consider liking, sharing, and subscribing to the Idle Digest Newsletter. If you want to support Idle Cartulary continuing to provide Bathtub Reviews, I Read Reviews, and Dungeon Regular, please consider a one-off donation or becoming a regular supporter of Idle Cartulary on Ko-fi.

  • Critique Navidad: Trouble in Paradisa

    This holiday season, I’m going to review a different module, game or supplement every day. I haven’t sought any of them out, they’ve been sent to me, so it’s all surprises, all the way. I haven’t planned or allocated time for this, so while I’m endeavouring to bring the same attention to these reviews, it might provide a challenge, but at least, I’ll be bringing attention to some cool stuff!

    Trouble in Paradisa is a system neutral pamphlet module by W.F. Smith, based on the Paradisa line of Lego and made for the Summer Lego RPG jam. Honestly, a week into Critique Navidad, I’m grateful for a shorter offering, as just reading a 100+ page book a day is a hell of a challenge, let alone developing a meaningful critique of one. Smith is a friend of mine, but I never shy away from critiquing friends. In Trouble in Paradisa, there’s a murder at the Poolside Paradise Resort: Who did it?

    Really, this module is a single page, with 13 characters, 4 pieces of evidence, a brief for the player or players, and an explanation for the referee. The location descriptions are all pictures of the Lego set on which it was based — the characters and props all appear in these set images. In that sense, I wish it came with larger handouts of these images, as they’re an essential part of the investigation, but they’re pretty small in print. I’m sure there’s a dropped icecream in one of them, but at this resolution, I can’t find it.

    The implication in the brief is that this is an Agatha Christie set-up: You’re an investigator who by happenstance is in a quiet town with a dark underbelly when a murder occurs. By using implication, Smith avoids having to put a bunch of information into this pamphlet that normally would be considered required for a module like this. In pamphlet adventures — as I discussed in this week’s Bathtub Review, What Child is This? — you’re making a lot of decisions about what is important to this story and to what you consider the referee’s role: By using implication and focusing in characters, Smith is saying he cares about characters and that the referees role is about bringing those characters to life. Anyone who’s read Barkeep on the Borderlands probably wouldn’t be surprised by this conclusion. Although Smith didn’t write On People-centered Adventure Design, he subscribes to it.

    These characters, though, are all vapid bangers with excellent roleplay hooks and motives to kill, and it displays the absurdity of an Agatha Christie movie. I’d be inclined, though, because there’s so much going on, to give full information, and the issue there is that they wouldn’t give full information in a murder mystery. When something as minor as “Bree loves Ziggy the monkey” is a clue, I want to give full information. I guess the best approach to this is that, while they’ll lie through their teeth to protect themselves, you can assume the players know they’re lying, and you can assume they’ll turn on their friends to turn the attention of the detectives away from themselves.

    Between the 19 information sources, we have a huge amount of information to tease apart, and I think the biggest issue with the pamphlet form factor for this particular story is that the text is so dense, and the size is so restrictive, there’s no redundancy of information. So, if I decide to interview Tanner, the information on Tanner isn’t just in the Tanner section of the pamphlet, but also in the Poolside Paradise and the Who Done It? sections. The end result of this is that as the referee, I personally have trouble holding it all in my head. To run this, I’d need to prep by either drawing connections on the page like a corkboard in a movie, or taking notes so that I knew where to look at the right time in the narrative. I strongly suspect that simply moving relevant information to the character sections would shortcut this, but this would necessitate some repetition and then it wouldn’t fit in the form factor. Really, the form is the challenge here, rather than the mystery itself.

    The layout on this pamphlet is vibrant, all sunsets and blue seas, just like the Lego sets that inspired it. Sections are colour differentiated, and font choices are kept simple: Just the two, one resort-inspired display and the other a simple sans serif, evocative of the pamphlets left on your coffee table when you stay at a resort in that country near your own that you take advantage of the exchange rate to holiday in. The use of Lego for all illustrations works perfectly, even though you could change all the names and art and still have a serviceable pamphlet, the plastic-ness of the toys mirrors the superficiality of the characters in a nice way. I think you’d need to get some very cheesy stock photography or collage some 80s tropical resort advertisements to get the same aesthetic in the absence of the toys.

    Honestly, the ideal way to run this in my opinion is to actually put it on a giant corkboard, and perform next to it, which means the pamphlet format is largely unnecessary. Make the connections the centre of play. It’s complex enough, I think that the players will drown in information if they’re not given a way to track it: Witchburner has play aids for this, but they’re awfully dry because it’s pretending to be a dungeon crawl. This ain’t pretending, so you might as well lean into the absurdity of the genre.

    Trouble in Paradisa is a hell of a one-shot to run FKR, and perfect for a dress up night or a convention spot. It’s a melting pot, and an excellent murder mystery, after the style of Witchburner, one of my favourite modules. But it’s not suited to its format, and it needs a little more space for redundancy to make it more easily run. For a dollar though, Trouble in Paradisa a steal, if you’ve the confidence to run something sans rules.

    Idle Cartulary

    Playful Void is a production of Idle Cartulary. If you liked this article, please consider liking, sharing, and subscribing to the Idle Digest Newsletter. If you want to support Idle Cartulary continuing to provide Bathtub Reviews, I Read Reviews, and Dungeon Regular, please consider a one-off donation or becoming a regular supporter of Idle Cartulary on Ko-fi.

    ,

  • Dungeon Regular: Monsterquest

    A new episode of Dungeon Regular is available! It’s embedded below, on Spotify or in your favourite podcast app.

    Threshold of Evil – Dungeon Regular

    Dungeon Regular is a show about modules, adventures and dungeons. I’m Nova, also known as Idle Cartulary and I’m reading through Dungeon magazine, one module at a time, picking a few favourite things in that adventure module, and talking about them. On this episode I talk about Threshold of Evil, in Issue #10, March 1988! You can find my famous Bathtub Reviews at my blog, https://playfulvoid.game.blog/, you can buy my supplements for elfgames and Mothership at https://idlecartulary.itch.io/, check out my game Advanced Fantasy Dungeons at https://idlecartulary.itch.io/advanced-fantasy-dungeons and you can support Dungeon Regular on Ko-fi at https://ko-fi.com/idlecartulary.
    1. Threshold of Evil
    2. Secrets of the Towers
    3. Monsterquest
    4. They Also Serve
    5. The Artisan’s Tomb

    Playful Void is a production of Idle Cartulary. If you liked this article, please consider liking, sharing, and subscribing to the Idle Digest Newsletter. If you want to support Idle Cartulary continuing to provide Bathtub Reviews, I Read Reviews, and Dungeon Regular, please consider a one-off donation or becoming a regular supporter of Idle Cartulary on Ko-fi.

  • Critique Navidad: The Lost Bay

    This holiday season, I’m going to review a different module, game or supplement every day. I haven’t sought any of them out, they’ve been sent to me, so it’s all surprises, all the way. I haven’t planned or allocated time for this, so while I’m endeavouring to bring the same attention to these reviews, it might provide a challenge, but at least, I’ll be bringing attention to some cool stuff!

    The Lost Bay is a 90’s throwback, suburban horror game by Iko, with art by Evangeline Gallagher and maps by Strega Wolf van den Berg. The Appendix N for this is wild; it covers Lord of the Flies, Ring, Nightmare on Elm Street, and even Hotline Miami. I’m not entirely sure what to expect, here, in terms of vibes, but that cover is striking! I was offered a pre-release version for Critique Navidad, so this is the first review I’ve ever done still in google doc but it’s available for preorder now.

    Ok, I’m going to blitz through the basic rules. In this version, there are 6 classes (there will apparently be 10 in total), each of which has a unique passive power and two random active powers, what appears to be some kind of god or patron which is not explained but is definitely creepy (future me thinks these might be Living Saints, perhaps, as they get mention further into the book?), and a randomly generated way you got the weird. I like these classes (called “vibes”), because, growing up in the 90s, they’re 100% specific archetypes of kids in High School in my experience, made weird and supernaturally amplified. The character creation section ends with the fact that there’s a decent chance you won’t die, depending on how weird you are when you die (there’s a score, basically HP for magic). Instead, you arise as a ghost, or half-death, or as an evil twin, which are their own unique classes. The Lost Bay uses a dice pool of d6s, with results being a meaner version of the pool in Blades in the Dark. It doesn’t say anywhere that this is a Forged in the Dark game, but it uses the terms Action roll and Attribute, so it feels like it pulls some inspiration from there. I like the addition of spending an attribute point to force a success. We also have Saves in the Lost Bay, which are no different from an Action Role that I can see, except that the referee chooses when you roll. I’m not entirely sure that I see the need for Saves, given that mechanically they’re identical, and use the same Attributes as Action Rolls. There are some unique saves, though – Horror, Weird, and Heart – which work against those stats, which is an interesting twist, that I like, I could just do without the initial three, you know? Combat is quite concrete, with rounds, actions and moves, and causing Harm. The NPCs get a lot of kick here, both acting on their turns and being able to act on a PC’s rolling a complication. I’m a little surprised by the concreteness of the combat rules, which use range bands and have explosives rules. Given we’re talking young adults in 90’s suburbia, I never anticipated needing grenade rules? Now that I’m here, I’m wondering how much this was also inspired by, perhaps, that season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer with the secret government agency and the Frankenstein monster? After this we hit classification and difficulty, ways to customise your gaming sessions. You can choose Slasher, Gross-out, Chiller, or Eerie, and a range of difficulty from “I’m too young to die” where PCs don’t sustain critical damage and have extra hearts, to “Nightmare” where you start much weaker in terms of powers. We also explicitly use point-crawling (called “wandering”) as our method of movement around the Lost Bay.

    I think the classification and difficulty levels are a neat idea to throw in as optional rules, but when I read that it clicked into place why I wasn’t vibing the rules up until that point: There’s no strong aesthetic or drive behind the rules, and they feel shoehorned in, especially after opening with a set of 9 really strong classes with some stellar horror vibes. But there’s a huge contrast between those classes and the rules that follow. Those rules feel like they’re a mix between modern D&D-like rule sets and Blades in the Dark, which is entirely a different kind of setting and system than what I’m anticipating this being. I’ll keep digging in, but for me at the moment, while these are perfectly serviceable rules, I’m surprised that they’re not more bespoke for the subject matter.

    From here we veer into world-building and setting material, which I’m interested in because The Lost Bay is named for a specific place. A Faceless God rules in the Lost Bay, and its’ church is spreading, while Living Saints roam offering their wisdom and weirdness, although they are often indistinguishable from mortals. This is such a compelling, weird concept for a setting. I want to know what makes the Lost Bay (the place) so special, I want to interact with these saints, I want to fight the Faceless God. It’s bringing strong Call of Cthulhu vibes, but also with a dash of Control or SCP Foundation aesthetics. I love the weird suburban ur-Catholicism that is this interpretation of suburban Gothic, I love that there are explicitly no cops or firemen here, no one to turn to. It’s just you. This setting is just so good for me, and Iko really nails the pitch in just a few paragraphs. This is just a detour, though, and we’re straight back into rules, but let’s focus on setting for now: The back half of the book is almost entirely description of the Lost Bay, which is honestly all bangers, although it’s still under construction. Now, while I say it’s all bangers, what I mean is that what we have here is all weird districts, filled with clear iconography, factions and NPCs, both detailed and more general locations that are easily improvised (the Water Reservoir, vs. a Gas Station for example), random events, and encounters with varying options for modification. It’s really good stuff, and when it’s completed it’ll be a hell of a resource. And, if I look across to the Quickstart, a different, shorter version of the manuscript, there’s a map of the Lost Bay, which is exactly what I want from this.

    The manuscript finishes with an “expanded” Urban Legend, which is the Lost Bay name for an adventure. This thing is pretty cool, actually. In the Hollow Hitchhiker, a man is killed in a car accident and comes back with a bottomless hunger for death each year. Only you can placate his pain and guilt and end the destruction! In this, you explore the point crawl map for Omens, and eventually your investigation leads to the Hollow Hitchhiker. Omens work a bit like the Doom Clock in Liminal Horror — they mean that the game progresses even when the players choose to be passive, it just won’t go well for them. The PCs quickly become the victims in a slasher horror scenario, while trying to figure out what’s wrong. NPCs have moves, pulling terminology from Apocalypse World which works well here. Character descriptions are evocative and really useful for roleplay. There is good refereeing advice, as well, which I always appreciate. Oh, and there are horror flamingoes, which you’ve just got to love. There are even a few optional NPCs to introduce if you need one. All in all, if this is the model that the modules for the Lost Bay will follow (and allegedly there will be a book released filled with Urban Legends, as well as a Lost Bay Jam for further Urban Legends), it’s a pretty high bar.

    While I can see the logic in the organisation, in the format I’m reading it it doesn’t work for me. We dip in and out of rules and setting material, where I think a lot of this would be better off side by side on the same page — and the name-dropping of the Explorer’s Template early on suggests that the final version may look like that. Overall, I hesitate to judge the Lost Bay, because I’m reading it in a pre-release, pre-layout version, and layout and information design goes a long way towards making sense of a rule set. I can make judgements, though, based on the Quickstart, which is laid out, and while the Quickstart layout is very flashy and looks good, I’m not sure that if the final product follows the same conventions, it’ll be a compelling longer-form read or run. But the art in the Quickstart by Evangeline Gallagher, is absolutely fantastic. I can’t praise it enough for bringing the aethetics. More of that art, especially the way it creatively uses the pages, is very exciting.

    One thing is certain: There are areas in the Lost Bay which sing, namely the classes, the setting information, and the expanded Urban Legend at the end. These make me want to run it. But in this pre-release version, the rules feel patchy and ill-suited to the story being told. It’s notable, I think, that the Quickstart doesn’t contain the combat rules: It means that probably a bunch of the people who’ve played this didn’t play the combat by the book, and that’s a major part of what I bounced off in the rules. I can see a little more sense in the high-end explosives in the context of the invisible undead hitchhiker in the module, and the deadliness of the combat also makes sense in that context, but I’m not convinced that I would enjoy being that fragile in play.

    I’ll withhold judgement for the Lost Bay, because what’s good here is very, very good. I want to run a campaign in the Lost Bay. I love the underlying story behind it all. But, while admittedly the manuscript I’m reading is incomplete, I want this to be His Majesty the Worm but for urban horror, potentially my forever game, and I want more information on what’s going on and what this Faceless God is doing. That’s not what the manuscript I’m reading is going for, sadly. But, given the strength of the module included, I could definitely see that this book, in combination with the Urban Legends book and the jam, would result in a lot of very fun play, for most any table, especially when considering the included tools for refining your experience. If you’re interested in this kind of setting, or those kind of adventure, The Lost Bay is definitely worth a look-in, particularly given the strength of what’s here.

    Idle Cartulary

    Playful Void is a production of Idle Cartulary. If you liked this article, please consider liking, sharing, and subscribing to the Idle Digest Newsletter. If you want to support Idle Cartulary continuing to provide Bathtub Reviews, I Read Reviews, and Dungeon Regular, please consider a one-off donation or becoming a regular supporter of Idle Cartulary on Ko-fi.

  • Critique Navidad: Into the Blind

    This holiday season, I’m going to review a different module, game or supplement every day. I haven’t sought any of them out, they’ve been sent to me, so it’s all surprises, all the way. I haven’t planned or allocated time for this, so while I’m endeavouring to bring the same attention to these reviews, it might provide a challenge, but at least, I’ll be bringing attention to some cool stuff!

    Into the Blind is a 28 page game Rooted in Trophy by Riley Daniels. It attempts to do for Mothership what Trophy Gold in my mind fails to do for B/X. I find Trophy as a framework incredibly compelling, to the point where my home game is a Trophy hack called Guilders, so I’m pretty keen to see what Riley’s done here. The free rules specifically were what were offered for Critique Navidad, although I’m assured full rules are coming.

    One of the things about Trophy is that its principle-forward, and is frank about it. Into the Blind acts similarly, opening with principles that define the working-class horror of Mothership: You’re exploited labour, surrounded by broken and outdated machinery, facing the horrors of the unknown. Principles (labelled “advice”) also forefront the player’s and referee’s sections. They’re not mind-blowing, but are solid and keep things simple — simpler in fact than Trophy does. Which is a good thing.

    If you’ve played Trophy Dark or Gold, the actual rules won’t be too much of a surprise. You don’t hack something to ignore its structure. Some superficial changes are made for the sake of theme, like Decay directly replacing Ruin, cred replacing gold, and scout rolls replacing hunt rolls. There is elegance here though, particularly in the way it’s presented: the original Trophy books were disasters of information design, just absolute messes, and Into the Blind is crisp, clear, and provides the information where you need it. A great example is the layout of combat, which was incomprehensible in Trophy Gold and described by a player as “more confusing than Pathfinder 2”, but is very clear here, and the “consequences” section which clarifies all the possible negative outcomes of all roles in one simple set of paragraphs.

    It has its own twists, though: Escalation, for example, means that if your situation doesn’t have downtime, you never remove the Dark Dice in your hand, The basic rules are punishing enough, but this addition is so mean that it will encourage the kind of play that is slow and cautious until the moment that everything hits the fan, all the while bringing meaning to moments of respite. Really great stuff, in a tiny rule.

    Another twist is how combat has changed to reflect gun fighting. Here, burning ammo can give you nigh infinite dice, at the cost of losing that advantage further down the track. This, like the escalation rule, encourages a scrounging, searching style of play, as ammunition becomes essential for survival. It feels very heavily inspired by videogames like Alien: Isolation. Preparing for combat is also different: You are trying to make it vulnerable to attack, reduce its will to fight, or harm it indirectly: Much more direct solutions that lend itself better to the reactive gameplay of Trophy, that was never reflected well by its endurance rules. These don’t just impact endurance, but can instead impact resistance — armour — meaning that fights are harder, but also that you can target your decision making.

    The referee section here is brief and elegant, because it’s implied (although it doesn’t actually state this) that’s it’s really intended to be run with Mothership modules. So the “excursion” section (terrible name, sorry, my six year old goes on excursions), is one page of procedures and 6 pieces of advice. The most important part of this by emphasis, is the introduction of the excursion: Here Daniels is telling us that the freelancers are supposed to be driving the play, because the effort is in setting up their goals and the “brief” so to speak, rather than carefully constructing a set of rings or whatever your version of Trophy contrives to reimagine a dungeon as. On one hand, I love this. It’s especially for me to run the things I want in a framework I enjoy. But also, I wonder if it’s not quite enough for a standalone: Mothership has a whole book dedicated to running the same content.

    Oof, this is hard. The minimalism here is either very, very clever, or it’s lazy, and I’m not sure. An example is escalation: There’s no discussion of respite at all, but also, that’s something that will drive play entirely diegetically, so maybe it’s best left unsaid? These new rules are elegant, and drive gameplay through natural consequences. I wonder, though, that a description of the designers intent — a commentary section — would behoove this text. This could probably be worked into the examples of play, but it’s not in there right now.

    One proper miss, I think, is the lack of explanation of cred. These rules are incomplete without some explanation of how cred works, and it’s something that really should be here, as it appears to be a critical part of what drives play, from the examples of play and from the combat and scout roll rules. Something like Employment Contracts would be perfect for both the themes here and would fit neatly into the looser, talk-focused mechanics here. But this is a rare miss in an otherwise elegant little ruleset.

    I appreciate that the layout here gives the examples of play pride of place, but I think that the effort to keep the layout succinct — which benefits the rules explanations — means that this really wants to be a three column layout on a wider format page, because squeezing the sidebar rules and the examples of play into one space is a little too much at times. Intelligently, they use the font and decoration to differentiate these different sidebar uses effectively, but it’s still crowded. Overall, the layout it is effective — it feels futuristic and corporate, damaged in places, highlights and headings are legible and the text is navigable. Fonts are kept to a maximum of 4 to a page, so they never overwhelm, and except for the crowded sidebars, white space is very generously apportioned. I like how there are icons assigned to the rolls, for example, and to other places in the rules, but aside from being repeated in the character sheet, they aren’t really used as effectively as they could be. I wonder if the example of play could use them to signal phases or uses, for example. I love the few unique splash layouts. Even though they’re not flashy in the Johan Nohr sense of the word, the fact that the Losing Yourself page is inverted (only section breaks have this visual feature until this point) really brings home the importance the text is communicating. The character sheet I mentioned earlier deserves a moment though: It fits all the player principles and the rules onto it elegantly, without being crowded. I like it a lot.

    Overall, the free edition of Into the Blind is a hell of a start, but it doesn’t quite stick the landing. There are a few pieces of really clever design, that build the world and feel genre specific in really elegant ways. But there are a few missing pieces, that simply shouldn’t be missing, and there’s no clear discussion of how to take a Mothership module and actually play in it. The blurb says the full version will have a campaign framework, conversion guide, optional rules and procedures, tools to flesh out your own setting and create adventures, and a starter adventure, plus more character options, so it seems like what’s missing is coming — but for now it feels like a game that’s for an audience who knows half the rules. Luckily, I am that audience who knows the other half of the rules, and I’m fairly certain I’d prefer to run a Mothership module in this than in the core Mothership rules, so I’ll wait with bated breath for the final version, and hope it irons out the links. For free right now until the full release, Into the Blind feels like a no brainer, even with its missing pieces.

    Idle Cartulary

    Playful Void is a production of Idle Cartulary. If you liked this article, please consider liking, sharing, and subscribing to the Idle Digest Newsletter. If you want to support Idle Cartulary continuing to provide Bathtub Reviews, I Read Reviews, and Dungeon Regular, please consider a one-off donation or becoming a regular supporter of Idle Cartulary on Ko-fi.

    ,

  • Bathtub Review: What Child Is This?

    Bathtub Reviews are an excuse for me to read modules a little more closely. I’m doing them to critique a wide range of modules from the perspective of my own table and to learn for my own module design. They’re stream of consciousness and unedited critiques. I’m writing them on my phone in the bath.

    What Child Is This? is a 2 page module by Nate Treme for 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons. It’s one of my favourite pamphlet adventures to play in the holidays, so I thought I’d interrupt my regular programming (and Critique Navidad) for a holiday Bathtub Review!

    On page 1: The 5th edition stat block of the God-baby. All who hear it cry must care for it; animals adore it. I love the 5th-edition-ness of statting up a baby for combat, but this baby’s powers are largely a stone around the neck of the party as they carry out their goal.

    Their goal is to carry it across page 2, a 20-hex crawl with 6 keyed hexes. You start in the village of Holluck, and are aiming for city of Cortezia, which you can follow the road to in just 4 random and 1 mandatory encounter. This is the main issue with the module, to be honest — there’s not many reasons to stray off the path. I’d add some — I’d scrap the mandatory ambush and make that a blockade of soldiers from the evil King Bazbet hoping to kill the child, and hence driving the PCs off course. There are 21 random encounters on the third page. Most of these are great, and the biggest disappointment running this is that you’ll never encounter enough of them. The main reason you want to drive people off the road, is because they need to find the minidungeon on page 4: It’s not part of the “plot” or the critical path of the module, but it’s a whole quarter of it.

    Nate Treme’s simple but effective art is convincingly child-like, which suits the lightheartedness of the module well. The layout is very simple but effective, clearly intended to be a bifold. The nature of a short module is that it’s going to be a bit crowded, though. It’s useable, though.

    It’s interesting to look at this excellent micro-module as a lens through which to look at the challenges that face designers of them, and how we might overcome them. There are a few challenges here: You can’t provide complexity for puzzles enough in the space, so it’s perfect for a concept that is focused on vibes like this one. You need to rely on existing stat blocks in your core books, because stat blocks take up space. But, you need to connect things together in an interesting way. I think this third area is where What Child Is Born falls down, even though I’ve run it a few times and really like it.

    If I were to redesign this, what I’d do is place a Mines of Moria style decision in front of the player characters — you can take a trip through the dungeon, a short cut to avoid foes that know you’re coming, or you can face the empire or try to avoid them. By doing this, you keep agency with the players, without preventing them from encountering all the cool stuff — it’s just 4 pages, you want to use as much of it as possible! I’d probably also key the space more closely, because by doing so you can move the random encounters into set spaces, and hence the plethora of demon encounters suddenly become a third faction seeking the baby. If we take these random encounters and seed them, we get far more interactivity, rather than just a series of encounters. All of this is very doable with just the encounters already there, I think, in fact it’s subtraction rather than addition (aside from naming a faction or two, and having that chat at the outset about choosing your route).

    Anyway! What Child Is This is an excellent holiday one-shot, it’s cheap, and it’s written for 5th edition so it’ll work for basically everything. What are your favourite holiday modules?

    Idle Cartulary

    Playful Void is a production of Idle Cartulary. If you liked this article, please consider liking, sharing, and subscribing to the Idle Digest Newsletter. If you want to support Idle Cartulary continuing to provide Bathtub Reviews, I Read Reviews, and Dungeon Regular, please consider a one-off donation or becoming a regular supporter of Idle Cartulary on Ko-fi.

  • Critique Navidad: Eco Mofos

    This holiday season, I’m going to review a different module, game or supplement every day. I haven’t sought any of them out, they’ve been sent to me, so it’s all surprises, all the way. I haven’t planned or allocated time for this, so while I’m endeavouring to bring the same attention to these reviews, it might provide a challenge, but at least, I’ll be bringing attention to some cool stuff!

    Eco Mofos is a 170 page game by David Blandy, with art by Daniel Locke. It’s based on Into the Odd and Cairn, and claims “rules-lite gameplay, procedural no-prep adventures, and psychedelic future explosion” in an ecopunk ruin-delving survival game. I backed the Kickstarter, but I haven’t actually looked at the game itself until it was offered for Critique Navidad.

    In terms of what the rules consist of, this is a blogosphere- informed NSR ruleset, that walks through the basics of play based on a bunch of contemporary sources. It lays this out in a smart, principles-forward way, that differentiates itself well in terms of tone. Because of this, its basis will be familiar to anyone who’s read recent games in the the D&D unlike cluster of games. Features worth mentioning: Character creation is a randomly created affair, featuring 36 backgrounds with associated key-items, which are designed to lure the characters into dangerous locations. It has an optional advancement system, with a risk vs. reward basis, which is fun to engage with and not to, as you wish. Luck is a burnable resource as well as a stat. Combat gives generous leeway in avoiding death, fitting the hopeful themes. Cover rules for gunfights are simple. A standout feature is the random crafting rules, which manage to feel like Breath of the Wild’s crafting music sounds like — I want to steal and adapt this to every future game I play. Very elegant and joyful. As befits a game about scavenging, there are 10 pages of random treasure tables, with some cute surprises befitting the retro ecopunk stylings.

    In general, the best thing about Eco Mofos is also somewhat underwhelming to say, but: Whenever I thought about something I thought it needed, it was there, somewhere, when I looked for it: A bestiary, mass combat, faction rules, downtime events that change the world, specific NPCs, an NPC generator, solo rules, job rules if you’re stuck for something to do next. It provides a bunch of support, so that you really can, as a referee, just play the damned thing, so long as you know the book back to front, without having to do any work. That’s huge praise coming from me, but so often my complaint about games that I read is that they leave design work for me to do, rather than just let me play. And, for me at least, I do my own design work: When I’m at the table, I’m there to play, not design a game loosely based on someone else’s game.

    The most interesting way Eco Mofos innovates, though is through the use of burdens, which are emotional debts with specific ways to diffuse them. That in and of itself isn’t interesting — there’s been plenty written of using inventory in alternative ways — but the way Eco Mofos uses them is interesting, because basically it serves as a currency for using most of the background’s powers. For moderate powers, you can “risk a burden”, or test luck to see if you take one. And for major powers, you can just take a burden for immediate effect. As a simple way to implement currency for power use, make it feel fair between classes, and give a small mechanical crunch to an otherwise simple rules system, this is elegant and I really, really like it. You’re balancing burdens with inventory, and more than three burdens causes the deprived condition, and removing your burdens takes specific action that often serves to draw you deeper into the drama of the adventure — such as “take pity on an adversary” or “unleash your anger on the world”. Cleverly, most of these have multiple options to remove them, which give you character-specific choices to make at any time. I’m really impressed with this mechanic which on initial note didn’t seem to matter at all.

    The magic system here is a fun and unique take, and provides a huge amount of flavour to a game that up until that point is a kind of 90’s post-apocalypse pastiche. Here, the magic is something released by the earth in response to humanities abuse of the biosphere, and it’s the cause of the gamma-world-esque adaptations that exist in Eco Mofos. It is found in orbs and shards of shimmering material, and can be absorbed and manipulated to cast spells. There’s an associated misfire system that has flavours of Dungeon Crawl Classics (well, it’s a little closer to that of Shadowdark, but they’re both in Dungeon Crawl Classic’s shadow in my opinion), but also of Gamma World, and it has associated visions that feel a combination between Pariah and the psychic maelstrom of Apocalypse World. There are 6 pages of spells, and they are an interesting blend of Gamma World and classic old school spells. This melange of influences is pretty unique and the main hook for me in terms of this world; I was a little underwhelmed until I got to this, and now I’m leaning forward to see how it feels in play. This makes me go back to re-read the 36 classes, because most of the low-HP choices are spell focused, and they leverage these rules in ways that wasn’t apparent on the first read: The Oracle, for example, has very concrete possibilities in the context of the Vision rules, and the Pyromancer can use orbs in a way unique to all the classes.

    One of Eco Mofo’s major selling points is that it can be run with absolutely no prep. The final third of the book is entirely devoted to the systems around generating content on the fly. How do these hold up? They took a while for me to grasp the basic procedures, because there are (kind of) three, depending on the scale of travel, but basically they take Marcia’s Bite-sized Dungeons, and turn them into a random spatial generation procedure — neat! The set of 12 maps are keyed, and those keys mean different things for each scale of travel, so basically they represent weeks of travel at one scale, or minutes at a smaller scale. This is complemented by absolutely boatloads of tables to help with generating what these spaces contain: Weather, day and night encounters, locations, lair generation, random encounters, characters, etc. This is very strong procedural stuff, and playing with it for 15 minutes came up with some entertaining stuff. Colour me impressed. Is it realistic for me, though, to use this on the go? I think I’d get the procedure itself down pat after a few sessions, sure, but the preponderance of tables here is a lot to manage, and it’s the one area of the book where the layout makes navigation challenging, due to the lack of strong headings and section separation here. My first thought was that this must exist in automated form, given I knew that Eco Mofos achieved a bunch of stretch goals on it’s crowdfunding campaign, but I can’t find anywhere that this has been automated. I think that if I were to use this procedure as the core of my campaign, I’d need to get some automation happening to handle the pages and pages of tables, or the on-the-spot aspect just won’t work.

    The visual style created by the team of Blandy and Locke is absolutely fire. Stellar visualisations, comic-book interludes and post-apocalyptic vistas pepper the pages of this book. The basic layout stylishly adapts the Explorer Template to good effect, with clear headings and spacing, and flags section headings for easy navigation. For my eye, reading digitally, I think monotype is overused, but there’s smart use of spacing to overcome the issues with the typography choice, making it far less straining than it could be. Font choices don’t change much on a single page, maxing out on maybe 6 subtle variations. Generous white spaces are balanced with regular spot art, making a very spacious layout feel cosy rather than sparse. It’s good stuff, for most of the book, although in places you lose the navigability, particularly the sections where you’re generating locations where the heading choices which are a really visually appealing choice elsewhere get lost in the business of the table layouts — sadly a place where it’s really important to be able to flick through quickly.

    I talked about one of the defining features of old school style games being that they are in need of an ecosystem, and here Blandy has really leant in. I’ve reviewed two modules that were commissioned as post of the Kickstarter here, but there are an additional four listed — pretty cool to be honest, for such a new system. In combination with the “procedural no prep” procedures, you’ve got a decent amount of play here, and to be honest, I reckon there’d be mileage in some kind of “Eco-twisted Classics Jam” like Liminal Horror did, adapting classic modules and tales to Eco Mofos, especially given they’ve developed a decent house style. There’s potential here for this to become a strong community for sci-fantasy adventures, just like Liminal Horror has excelled at in the modern horror space.

    I’m surprisingly impressed by Eco Mofos, to be honest. As I started with the modules, I, while not being disappointed, didn’t realise how strong this book would be. There’s some excellent crafting and magic systems here that really colour the game, huge numbers of useful random tables, some innovative rules, and a lot of support for running the game built right into the core book, even if I think it needs some digital tools because of their depth. Add to that a burgeoning module ecosystem, and if you’re interested in playing a hopeful post-apocalyptic old school game, this is a damned strong contender. You get me those digital tools, and I think this might be my first choice, and there are a lot of options out there right now. If Blandy can keep up the momentum on third-party module development, Eco Mofos will be here to stay, I suspect.

    Idle Cartulary

    Playful Void is a production of Idle Cartulary. If you liked this article, please consider liking, sharing, and subscribing to the Idle Digest Newsletter. If you want to support Idle Cartulary continuing to provide Bathtub Reviews, I Read Reviews, and Dungeon Regular, please consider a one-off donation or becoming a regular supporter of Idle Cartulary on Ko-fi.

    , ,

  • Critique Navidad: Dawn of the Orcs

    This holiday season, I’m going to review a different module, game or supplement every day. I haven’t sought any of them out, they’ve been sent to me, so it’s all surprises, all the way. I haven’t planned or allocated time for this, so while I’m endeavouring to bring the same attention to these reviews, it might provide a challenge, but at least, I’ll be bringing attention to some cool stuff!

    Dawn of the Orcs is a 29 page GM-less game by Lyme and Plasmophage. In it, you play a coalition of (evil?) wizards building armies of genetically modified creatures (orcs) to together save your homeland from attack. It’s the first offer a I’ve had for Critique Navidad that has a live crowdfunding campaign going, and admittedly it was already on my radar — if this review compels you, go check it out!

    Dawn of the Orcs is played on a series of worksheets called the Chronicle of the Orcs, while you pass the main book between each other to narrate each chapter. I love this structure — I’ve spoken before of how I loved the episodic, semi-predetermined season in the Adventures of Gonan, and this has a similar structure, with unique play sheets for different chapters, and hence an overall narrative arc. The main criticism I hear with this kind of structure I see is a lack of replayability, but I’m not even a little convinced this is a real concern: No two 5e tables games of Horde of the Dragon Queen are the same, so why would we assume that one tables’ second play would be the same? Irregardless, there’s a solution provided here: A bunch of more difficult, replacement chapters, that mean your future plays of the game will come out completely different, at least twice with no repetitions, although there are a lot more combinations possible.

    The other exciting thing about this structure is that rules are rolled out as they are needed. Each chapter doesn’t quite consist a minigame, as they are chronological, but small tweaks to the rules and new introductions occur in a way that feels organic and reflective of the world as it evolves. Now, it’s hard to talk about latter chapters without spoiling things, which the rules say is fine, but that’s not my choice to make for you. Suffice to say, it gets really interesting by the end, and develops the story in an interesting and compelling direction, exploring the themes thoroughly and well. I really like that your orcs slowly develop customs over time, gaining their own identity, although I’d like for those customs to be a little more supported, perhaps through an optional table of suggestions. I love the changes that can happen to your orcs over the years (“shifts” and “warps”). I love that they develop beliefs about the world. The orcs become pretty rapidly a character in and of themselves, designed by a committee of petty powermongers.

    I played through this solo (because I could and I got really excited and also I read it on a Saturday so I had time), but playing through solo is only part of the experience: This game is mainly, I when played in a larger group, a parlour larp. While each member of the Council of Sages wants to win the war, they all have ulterior motives, implied preferences in terms of what they want the orcs to turn out like, and so a huge part of the game is the discussion between arrogant wizards who don’t want to compromise, and secret alliances and betrayals. The very fun framework that informs and surrounds this discussion is a lot of fun, and super solid and well thought out, but it’s only half of the game.

    That framework, while about perfect in my opinion, might be too slight for some tastes, though: You pick a pair of scores to use as your strategy, and that combination can never be used again. Then you roll against a difficulty score specific to your chapter. That’s it. It’s enough, in my opinion, because the juice of this isn’t the battle, but rather the council and the changing nature of the orcs themselves. But I can imagine people wanting a bit more board game in their TTRPG in this particular spot. It would be fun, to be honest, to have a little board game, but I think it would distract from the real juice of the game.

    Briefly, the layout and art is genuinely great here. There is so much art — custom banners on most chapters, every page has something unique. It’s well spaced, and clearly labelled. It’s chronological, so being scannable isn’t a concern here, except in the alternate chapters at the end — these could be clearer, to be honest, just because you’ll be clicking a little more to and fro. The play sheets are clear and perfect, and come form-fillable. I don’t have much criticism however the smart information design shortcuts a lot of need for complex layout decisions. When I talk about game design, layout and information design all bring one and the same, this is what I mean.

    If you love having a story slowly unfold before your eyes, if you love playing the rich and powerful bickering in desperation but still manipulating for their own goals, and if you love emergent world building, Dawn of the Orcs is a shockingly unique and excellent game. What it’s not is a wargame, and nor is it a reverse dungeon crawler: This is a parlour larp with TTRPG set dressing, in the best possible tradition of games like Seco Creek Vigilance Committee. If anything in this review made your orc-ears prick up, I’d get on the train before it leaves the station.

    Idle Cartulary

    Playful Void is a production of Idle Cartulary. If you liked this article, please consider liking, sharing, and subscribing to the Idle Digest Newsletter. If you want to support Idle Cartulary continuing to provide Bathtub Reviews, I Read Reviews, and Dungeon Regular, please consider a one-off donation or becoming a regular supporter of Idle Cartulary on Ko-fi.

Want to support Playful Void or Bathtub Reviews? Donate to or join my Ko-fi!

I use affiliate links where I can, to keep reviewing sustainable! Please click them if you’re considering buying something I’ve reviewed! Want to know more?

Have a module, adventure or supplement you’d like me to review? Read my review policy here, and then email me at idle dot cartulary at gmail dot com, or direct message me on Discord!

Recent Posts

Threshold of Evil – Dungeon Regular

Dungeon Regular is a show about modules, adventures and dungeons. I’m Nova, also known as Idle Cartulary and I’m reading through Dungeon magazine, one module at a time, picking a few favourite things in that adventure module, and talking about them. On this episode I talk about Threshold of Evil, in Issue #10, March 1988! You can find my famous Bathtub Reviews at my blog, https://playfulvoid.game.blog/, you can buy my supplements for elfgames and Mothership at https://idlecartulary.itch.io/, check out my game Advanced Fantasy Dungeons at https://idlecartulary.itch.io/advanced-fantasy-dungeons and you can support Dungeon Regular on Ko-fi at https://ko-fi.com/idlecartulary.
  1. Threshold of Evil
  2. Secrets of the Towers
  3. Monsterquest
  4. They Also Serve
  5. The Artisan’s Tomb

Categories

Archives

January 2026
M T W T F S S
 1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
262728293031  

Recent Posts