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!
Xeno is a trifold pamphlet game (so, 1 page) by Caligaes where the players play aliens dispatched to achieve missions on earth, and the referee plays their human enemies.
Xeno has a traditional resolution structure, tweaked with a little alien weirdness (3d4 is your basic dice roll!). The real flavour is that there are four types of alien, and four different objectives, with four different human nemeses. It’s some neat, serviceable rules, but the big problem with pamphlet games is that you have to compromise on something, as I spoke about in depth in my most recent reviews of What Child is This? and Trouble in Paradisa. You have to make compromises for the sake of space, and my overwhelming sense as time goes on is that the compromises made to make this pamphlet as opposed to a short zine are rarely to the benefit of the game itself. In the case of Xeno, the compromise comes in the form of lack of support for actual missions, and for me, a forever referee, that’s nigh unforgivable. A lot of games rely on genre familiarity to get you over the jump of lack of support. But the truth is, I have only one reference for the genre that Xeno occupies, and that’s the (excellent) video game Carrion. And what I do not have any memory of in Carrion is the level design. I don’t think I could satisfyingly run Xeno, sadly, based on this pamphlet. A game with such a fun, unique premise needs more support in terms of missions than four paragraphs of general ideas.
Xeno attempts to overcome this barrier m in two ways. The first is the Victimary, a second trifold pamphlet that details the anti-alien military unit, Z-Com, and brings a bunch of new nemesis and victims to the table, as well as vulnerabilities for the Xenos. The Victimary is good. I don’t have much else to say. It deserves to be a part of the core. The second is Hens & Chicks, an introductory module. This one is thirty six a5 pages. Look at this map!
Caligaes, you should be writing modules. And Hens & Chicks is a hell of a module. In it, you’re breaking into a Z-Com facility, where humans are experimenting with Xeno genetics. It’s Carrion: The Module! It’s full of good refereeing advice, the art is stellar, and there is a lot going on. Not only is a lot going on, but the layout is wild, bringing strong Mork Börg vibes, and diverging wildly from the aesthetics of the two pamphlets. That layout isn’t immensely navigable, however, and given the weirdness and unfamiliarity of the perspective of the module, that’s a fairly significant problem for me. But irregardless, it’s wild to me that this is bonus content: This should be core.
That’s the problem with these two expansions to me, especially when packaged with the core, is that…well, they’re the game, really. Hens and Chicks should’ve been the headline, front ended with both sets of rules, and supported with an appendix or final chapter that talked about how to turn it into a campaign if you choose. As is, the core pamphlet is incomplete, and if you’re anything like me, you might just disregard the other “additional” content not realising it’s really essential content to the experience.
The other thought to me is one of missed opportunity: In Hull Breach, which is 2 years old now, Mothership got a set of alien-forward rules: Manhunt. I think Xeno’s aliens are more interesting and unique than the ones in Manhunt, but it raises the question of why, when then best part of Xeno is the bonus module hidden in the downloads list, why it wasn’t just developed for Manhunt. I feel like it would get so much more mileage and far more eyeballs on. It’s sad that something this interesting can get lost, simply because of a missed pitch.
Because, while Xeno is incomplete on its own, and a cursory glance will likely make you look straight past it, in combination with the Victimary and Hens & Chicks, it’s a strong contender for a novelty multi shot. If it was reformatted, it would be a hell of a lot stronger, but really, I think it would benefit from a a re-release and adaptation to Mothership, so some cool, alien ideas can reach a wider audience.
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 Cog That Remains is a 28 page solo journaling game by Seamus Conneely, about being a mechanic that maintains mecha in a Gundam-y world.
This is a Wretched & Alone game, so you’ve got tokens, dice, a deck of cards and a jenga tower, which in basically every Wretched & Alone game is way too much for me; a grab-bag of props that feels like you couldn’t make up your mind. In this it feels perfect, reflecting the way a mechanics’ workshop is messy. For me, this is a goldilocks concept for the system. That’s nice for me, because now I can say “I don’t like Wretched & Alone games, because they have too much going on, except for the Cog That Remains”. For those not familiar, in this case the jenga tower is the mecha, and when it falls your pilot is killed in battle. On a mission, you roll a die, which determines how many cards you draw from a standard deck of cards, and those cards determine the prompts for your journal entries, and if it makes sense, instruct you to pull from your tower, bringing you closer to the end of the game. When your pilot dies: Write a eulogy. Get a new pilot. Play again.
I complained in earlier reviews of prompt-based games during Critique Navidad (Dead After Dinner and Hwæt!) that they don’t give me enough world-building and meat to want to play them. The prompts are often intended to be sparks, but are so vague as to not spark anything in me. This is a huge contrast to the more traditional games I’ve reviewed for Critique Navidad, which have leant hard into worldbuilding and lore. The first set of prompts in the Cog That Remains are pretty anaemic — these are the ones that help you create your mechanic — where they are the perfect moment to make them dynamic and evocative and help you build your very specific world. This reliance on my prior knowledge of Gundam is a huge flaw here and reliance on prior knowledge of genre is a huge flaw in prompt-driven games in general. Think about the specificity of Fiasco: The structure and mechanics beget the genre, not the fact that I’ve seen a Cohen Brothers movie. The card prompts are better, but still generic: They should be written like a Gundam episode, they should feature characters and impacts, in my opinion.
I think there’s a huge amount of unfulfilled potential in the “Veteran mechanic” section for campaign play, too, as your player gets wearier and wiser, to speak about the hopelessness of war, and to speak to the subtext in Gundam around how pilots are disposable resources and are often child soldiers. There’s something to be said in that context of aging past your dying peers, or the dynamics between mechanics who live until old age and the pilots who die young. But nothing here leans into those themes. To some degree it speaks to the increasing disposability of indie TTRPGs in the age of itch.io, where someone with resources can make a beautiful, complete product in a few weeks, but when it takes only a few weeks, the deeper consideration of the meaning of the text just isn’t there. Are we making products, here, or art? I think we should be making art, and to do that a little more introspection is required.
All of that said, you know what’s cool? Mecha. You know what’s fun? Pretending to a mecha mechanic, a new perspective on the genre. The mechanics (of the game, that is) here are spot on for the messiness of patching up a giant robot, the tower is analogous to a giant robot in a more literal, physical way than in other games of the same ilk. The Cog That Remains is a pretty cool game if you’re willing to bring your own deep knowledge of Mobile Suit Gundam to the party.
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.
Stalls of the Blood Queen is a 5 page module for Mausritter by the prolific Matthew Morris with art by Alex Demaceno in trifold format, to match the Mausritter house style to some degree. It’s a location-based module, where you investigate a stable that has been colonised by a vampire bat queen and her followers. It’s obviously intended as an homage to Diogo Nogueira’s Halls of the Blood King, but honestly it has the potential to be more than just a one-off joke.
Stalls of the Blood Queen is a 7 location dungeon with a very small town and surrounds. When I say 7, 1 of those is repeated 10 times. The town probably doesn’t need to be there: It’s an excuse for a rumours table, with no characters attached to it, and the rumours aren’t juicy or sharp, and neither provide reasons to explore the stable, reflect the locals in interesting ways, or provide or preference interesting options once you’re in the dungeon. I quite like, however, the innocuous encounters that effectively serve as foreshadowing of what is to come when you enter the barn. These are my favourite kind of random encounters, and if you’re going to only have a few, you should in my opinion make them omen-like foreshadowing rather than pointless combats.
The blurb on the back cover, I think, is intended to double as the role of the village, providing a hook and hard framing the events and the why the player characters want to go into this barn at all. Because of the order that you read it in, though, it doesn’t quite work as intended. I’m reading digitally, but even if I had this zine in my hands, I don’t ever read the back page immediately before reading the module itself, and I might skip it altogether; it’s something I use when I buy a book. This doesn’t encourage you to consider it differently through it’s layout, although I think it could by framing it differently (or even by simply titling it). One other way to do this is to make it more explicitly a hard frame: Have it in the voice of the mayor of Willownest, for example, or framed as a conversation, rather than have it fit the expected format of a blurb. A clever idea when it comes to maximising page use in a small package, but not well executed, in the same way that the back cover inclusion of a token for “blood sucked” is neat, except I’d have to cut out half of the “Silver items” table to use it (in the module’s defence, it comes with a separate sheet of cut-out tokens in digital).
If you were running this in a densely populated hex crawl —which is the intent — the unique creatures here would be stellar, giving you interesting opportunities have emergent interactions with the hexes around them and wanderers into this hex, because they have drives like “a good meal”, and “collect servants”. I’d rather be given a little more juice there, “a good meal, cold blooded or feathered” for example would be better, but it has potential for non-combat interaction: The players characters may not be the meal or the servant, and they’re likely to be friends, allies or innocents. It’s part of the “Adventure Continues Jam“, which populates a hex crawl on a collaborative community basis, but due to the nature of that jam, you can’t really predict what other contributors are going to make, so you can’t write responsive or interactive content. This was the issue with the previous Mausritter collaborative project, Tomb of a Thousand Doors. Lots of good content, but no connectivity. Given the lack of connectivity, in isolation, though, the creatures in Stalls of the Blood Queen are all combat only creatures, which doesn’t in my opinion or experience lean into Mausritter’s strengths. I’d want at least one example of a fun interaction to be present in the module, ideally.
The dungeon itself, is flavourful and interesting, its descriptions are beautiful (“Scratching of claws reverberates from the recesses above, dark ledges hide what stalks”), but the reliance on the real-world structure of a stable causes problems. Given it’s a dilapidated stable, I’d probably prefer if it leant into that dilapidation, to make it less linear and more interesting a space to explore. As is, because of the central aisle, it isn’t looped in a way that’s interesting, or that you can explore in alternative ways like “climb” or “sneak” without diverging from the apparent intent in a way that likely won’t be satisfying. In a module that feels quite hostile, I’d love to see more support for ways other than combat to solve these encounters.
Layout and art-wise, this is good stuff. It feels very Mork Börg, with its striking pink-and-burgundy palette and its colour shifted art. Alex Demasceco’s art is gorgeous, and there’s a lot of it — 2 or more items per page. The layout is very legible, with striking but strong headings, simple font choices that don’t crowd the eye, and smart use of white space despite the density of text and the page count. My only criticism is that the isometric map is not functional at all — it might as well not be there in its current form, as you can’t actually see ways around the map. In a different map format, perhaps the issues I have around the design of the dungeon would not be present.
Honestly, thematically, I don’t know how we haven’t had any previous bat-themed Mausritter modules, given that bats are effectively sky mice. There’s a really neat line here drawn between the mouse-born cultists, who wish to sprout wings and “ascend to bathood”, who are effectively the Renfeilds to the Blood Queen’s Dracula, the fruit bats themselves, who have begun the process of ascension, and are the “Dracula’s wife” equivalents (although in this case, less seductive), and the vampire bats themselves, fully “sired” bats. It’s at once incredibly obvious, but also very elegant and I love it. It’s a kind of simple puzzle, that once the players figure it out, will make them realise the system made sense all along, and will make them anticipate what comes next.
In this way, it’s kind of begging for a sequel, and this one location isn’t quite enough. You want, when you’re using theme in this elegant way, to carry it forward, and then subvert it, see where you can take these analogies and where you can manipulate them in interesting ways. This is where the Ravenloft urge came from (regardless of how you feel about the end result 40 years later), and I honestly think it’s pretty exciting to consider what a Mausritter demiplane of dread might look like, if you leant into these thematic directions and then started to subvert and surprise your players with what you find. This is a far more interesting direction for Matthew Morris to take this, in my opinion.
This obviation of complexity feels like a symptom of the eternal striving for brevity that is characteristic of the Mausritter line and community. This is such a cool concept, and a very cool module, but it’s begging for more exploration. I think most Mausritter authors would respond to this with something along the lines of “It provides a chance for the referee to make the module their own”, but I have two objections to that response: Firstly, I purchase modules primarily so that I don’t have to do this, because I work, have 2 children, and have a long-term chronic illness, all of which make doing extensive prep challenging. It’s the value proposition of a module for me, that I don’t have to make it my own, that’s something I do by choice. But secondly, and more importantly, I consider module design to some degree an art, and I think that art benefits from its’ creators digging deeper and expanding on their work in ways that are interesting and thematic. The fact that I see so many people doing this is heartening, and it’s how I can keep up reading modules still, coming up on my 100th Bathtub Review. Now, there’s absolutely a place for a one-off, location based module; and there’s a place for these community driven projects like Tomb of a Thousand Doors and Hull Breach that I think are exploring a fascinating and important direction for our hobby. It’s just that Stalls of the Blood Queen, specifically, is clever twists the themes of Mausritter in interesting ways, and would benefit from letting the mind and creative eye wander and explore those themes more thoroughly, rather than regarding itself as a one-off joke module.
Stalls of the Blood Queen is a banger of a little Mausritter module, which, like most of my recent Mausritter reviews, requires a fair bit of improvisation on behalf of the referee. Usually, they’re punchy enough that I’d throw them on the table for use with my kids anyway — Stalls of the Blood Queen might be a bit too gory for my kids ages, though, so it’s unlikely to see play at my table. If you play Mausritter with an adult table, though, this is a striking change, it’s gorgeous, and it’s interesting. More than anything else, though, I’d love to see Matthew Morris and Alex Demasceno work together to expand this into a Ravenloft-esque Mausritter hexcrawl (“Ritterloft”, you can have that one Matthew Morris, if you’d like), because as a starting point, this is really compelling starting point to a unique take on Mausritter. If a one-off horror location appeals to you, or you don’t mind writing your own Ritterloft, Stalls of the Blood Queen is an excellent choice.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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Playful Void 