• Critique Navidad: Void 1680 AM

    Each holiday season, I review different modules, games or supplements as a thank you to the wider tabletop roleplaying game community. All of the work I review during Critique Navidad is either given to me by fans of the work or the authors themselves. This holiday season, I hope I can bring attention to a broader range of tabletop roleplaying game work than I usually would be able to, and find things that are new and exciting!

    Void 1680AM is a 30 page solo, playlist building game, by Ken Lowery. You take the role of a radio broadcaster, play music as you see fit, and talk to people who call in to talk to you. It can be played in a single session, or it might continue over multiple broadcasts.

    This game is a love letter to AM radio, a kind of radio that most people do not listen to anymore in a world of digital radio and streaming stations. The layout reflects this: Dirty, filled with what I assume are real electronic diagrams, written in type-written font inspired by electronics manuals from the 80s (or at least, that’s what they are to me). It’s simple, but effective. You’re not getting lost here.

    To play, you need some way to record your voice, some way to build playlists with, and some randomisers – cards and dice. The love of AM transmission communicated here just screams that the designer wants you to be plugging in cassettes and recording onto tape, while actually broadcasting this, but most of us will find more ease using our phone’s voice recorder and streaming our songs. You begin by choosing the theme of your radio station, where you broadcast from, and then you start programming. A single turn is a block of 3 songs and some chatter before or after; before it’s an introduction; after, you have a conversation with the caller, and then you start again.

    You choose your songs according to prompts that relate to the playing cards you draw; each block of songs, hence, has a place in a kind of emotional narrative, building with clubs, and crescendoing and then falling down to a conclusion with hearts. The prompts that accompany these playing cards – randomly drawn – are not particularly surprising, but they are well chosen. Who doesn’t have a song in response to the prompt “You’ve been out all night, and the sun is rising. What song reinvigorates you for the day?”.

    The trickest part of the game is the stranger’s calls. You determine the caller’s age, whether they’re calling about a song that just played, are requesting a song in the next block, or whether they just want to talk. For each potential caller, there is a list of potential subject they’re calling about, and you can choose from two options. I do love that if you choose to continue the stories of your callers over multiple broadcasts, you’re provided with additional prompts for a second, third, and fourth call in. The text says “talk about your conversation with them”, but this is the one part where I don’t like how this game works. I know it’s a solo game; but I want these callers to be someone else, or at least, I want to be stepping into their voices and playing out the conversation. That’s how radio works, right? Unexpected, challenging conversations. Of course, the designer recognises this: You’re invited to record a call in for other players, and there’s an archive of calls at their website (although I couldn’t find the location of this archive when I searched). I don’t know why you wouldn’t use this, if you have the opportunity to. It feels the correct way to play.

    This is a fascinating game. I like it a lot. I love that you can broadcast in on YouTube and on the designers real AM transmitter. I think the system is nice, for creating interesting, compelling playlists, and for creating compelling callers. I think that if I were doing this, and broadcasting, I’d want to be inviting guests so that it felt more like radio. The verisimilitude feels important to me. I don’t think it would be important to everyone: Building playlists is a fun way to play, as Ribbon Drive showed us over a decade ago. I love that this is using them in such a different way to Ribbon Drive, inspired by a different way of thinking about music. The modern internet guides us away from ephemerality, but I feel like perhaps the way to enjoy Void 1680AM would be to find a way to broadcast it, and let it disappear into the titular void. Then, the details matter less. The joy becomes in the choice of song, in more eclectic mixes, in wilder stories told by wilder callers. If you’re a music-lover, and you’re willing to put that little bit of effort in, or have an AM transmitter in your garage already, Void 1680AM seems like a no-brainer.

    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: We Three Shall Meet Again

    Each holiday season, I review different modules, games or supplements as a thank you to the wider tabletop roleplaying game community. All of the work I review during Critique Navidad is either given to me by fans of the work or the authors themselves. This holiday season, I hope I can bring attention to a broader range of tabletop roleplaying game work than I usually would be able to, and find things that are new and exciting!

    We Three Shall Meet Again is an asynchronous 41 page game by my friend Sam Dunnewold. In it, you and 2 other players will play witches, all trapped in the same body, communicating through the written word. You communicate in each your own separate journals, as well as on a physical bulletin board where you clip post-it-notes and index cards.

    You start the game together, in person. You first place your shared world-building to the bulletin board: Where do you live? What world are you living in? And then add any safety rules to the bulletin board. You make some decisions about your coven, describe yourself, and put it on the board too, and each a villager and a forest-dweller who lives in proximity to you. You do all this together, but scarcely speaking. Then, you decide together who cursed your coven, whose body you’re inhabiting, and whose home you live in.

    If you found that paragraph a little meandering; it reflects this first section of the book. I found this book challenging to read, in terms of it feels like a long list of things you are to do, and things you need to get. The game is guided by the book, and there are secrets in the back of the book that none should read until instructed. In this way, it’s part of the movement of book-play (as coined by Asa Donald of Spine), that to me includes games like Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast, Triangle Agency, and Spine. The meandering nature of the text is not bad, per se, but for me it makes it hard to get a sense of what has been done and what is to be done. I wonder if a game like this might be best a deck of tarot cards, given the theme, where each of these short paragraphs that run on from each other were each a numbered card, like the introduction to For The Queen.

    While this is a game that in theory would work very well online – it includes instructions to that effect – but I don’t actually think it goes far enough with its’ journaling element: I think it would pack more punch, were me and my fellow players all sharing the same journal, and perhaps the bulletin board were collage in the front or back of it, and handing it to each other when each we meet in person once a week or so. The game is supposed to take a few weeks, and it’s likely to take longer like this, but I feel like the implied pastoral setting sets itself in opposition to the digital world, and that leaning into the analog-ness of it all would only enhance your experience, even if it made an already slow game slower. It also adds a trust element – if you’re all sharing the same journal, and spending large amounts of time with that journal, do you break confidence? I feel this reflects the reality of living in the same bodies and spaces.

    Once you are cursed, you take turns living in the chosen witch’s body. When it’s your day to live, you read yesterdays‘ prompt, pursue and activity, and journal about it. Leave a brief bulletin board note (only 13 words~) and then write a new prompt for the player tomorrow. There is a prompt provided for the first day: It’s lovely, and sets the tone well. The activities are concrete moves you can make, there are only 4, and they involve you contributing to the bulletin board, breaking the curse, or doing something either magical or mundane that simply is what your character might choose to do. You add to the bulletin board when directed, but effectively if you meet someone new, learn something new about them, or gain a new item that the other witches might encounter on their days.

    While you sleep, you often dream, together with the other sleeping witch, or alone. There are a set of dreaming prompts for dreams together, and you can write whatever you wish if you dream alone. There is no clear instruction about what happens to these dreams: I’d probably paste them in my journal on receiving or finishing them.

    Your combined research into breaking the curse is hidden in a separate booklet, Research Results. You add the results of your research to the bulletin board, but cannot look further ahead. Honestly, these are the juicy, memorable things that are likely to happen and drive the story. I suppose they are related to the count of days in the front cover, although that wasn’t clear to me precisely how or when to use this count. Eventually you’ll break the curse and gather together in person again. You then share the answers to a few prompts – what happened that you were excited to share with your coven? What questions have you? And then you might resolve future threads together and narrate lasts moments.

    This is a lovely game, but it feels like there’s a fog between it and I that I have trouble seeing through. Its procedures are obscured to me, even reading directly. The links are not always clear. I think it’s intentionally so, but I nevertheless struggle with it. My personal difficulty is something I’ve described before, although I can’t remember if I coined a term: When I’m answering prompts, I need a strong foundation to draw from. The designer might provide me with a very concrete and vivid character, and then vague prompts, and I find that easy to work with. Or, I might have a more amorphous character, who then emerges through concrete and vivid prompts. Either of these work well for me. Here, I and my friends must create the setting, the characters, the non-player characters, and the plot, as well as the prompts themselves for each other. I, and many people I play with, would struggle with that lack of redundancy. There are so many ways to fail, and then your friend is left with a journal and no idea how to proceed.

    Thematically, though it’s really on point. The format itself has so much to say about fallible, disabled bodies. It has so much to say about relying on the people you live with for things that are essential. It has so much to say about the impacts of your actions not just on the people you live with, but on their relationships and loved ones. It has a quiet melancholy to it, that speaks deeply to those who rely deeply on others and their experience. In the aftermath of reading it, I feel like a witch, in a quiet, pastoral town, struggling with the relationships between my and my coven, while meeting the fae and mundane denizens around me, and trying to complete a ritual than might place me at odds with them, or fill them with fear. The writing fits that perfectly, even as it makes it harder for me to play. I feel like a different format of this game would be for me, or a future iteration, but I also think that there are a lot of people who could take this version of this unique, asynchronous game and produce something beautiful and memorable.

    If the idea of an asynchronous, personal game that has things to say about disability and relationships, that is likely to bring out feelings in you and your friends about those things, is appealing to you, and you’re willing to put a few weeks into it, I wouldn’t hesitate to pick up We Three Shall Meet Again.

    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: A Stranger’s Just a Friend

    Each holiday season, I review different modules, games or supplements as a thank you to the wider tabletop roleplaying game community. All of the work I review during Critique Navidad is either given to me by fans of the work or the authors themselves. This holiday season, I hope I can bring attention to a broader range of tabletop roleplaying game work than I usually would be able to, and find things that are new and exciting!

    A Stranger’s Just a Friend is a 38 page game for 2 players by Darling Demon Games. In it, you act out a romance between two men, one hired to assassinate the other. It’s an intensely queer and complex game with adult themes; even the cover is explicit, so fair warning in terms of content. I won’t be able to shy away from discussing adult content in this review.

    This game is as much about sex between queer men as it is about romance; it is a period piece so it covers religious persecution and transphobia, there is consent play, there is animal death in some scenes, and there is a supernatural horror element as well. This game is a lot, and this one will require the players to be comfortable and care about each other given the subject matter. I really appreciate the safety section that opens this book, as if you’re playing this game that’s really what you should be here for, and I am a strong believer that art, even if it’s not for me, should be unashamed about what it is. That said, this isn’t for me – I have friends who really enjoy explicit sexual content in their games, but I’m someone who prefers to pass these scenes behind a veil, while I’ll play romance games until the cows come home.

    Character creation is interesting and characterful. I love that the designer has strong opinions about who these characters are, but nevertheless leaves a lot of interesting space for the players to develop their own perspectives and unique traits. The writing here is universally interesting and awkwardly funny in precisely the way a queer period piece feels it should. You might “Lift a shoulder, dip your chin, and cast a glare that demands attention.“, or “Get more naked, more sweaty, or both.” Even the rules text is interesting and funny: “I’m sorry to hear that, Dullahan. At least you have your associates and employers to keep you sane!”. It’s good stuff. It’s fun to read, and I expect it would be fun to play together with a friend.

    It’s an awfully tactile game; messy and sensual. You play with coloured stones, candles, and a block of chocolate. You start the game playing in alternating soliloquys, holding your chocolate over a candle’s flame and then filling an opaque bag with pebbles according to the results of the dice roll. When your chocolate is melted – your fingers sticky and likely thoroughly licked – you begin playing duets instead. You choose your soliloquys, but the stones you drew determine your duets. The result of a duet my cause a return to soliloquy, but the game ends if either one character dies or if they choose to be together. You can choose to play on even if this occurs, but I’m not really sure precisely what this might mean narratively.

    Each scene – both soliloquy and duet – are quite detailed and complex, often 2-3 pages long. Your read through your scene, answer questions, you may roll dice, make decisions, narrate what occurs. It feels like a bit like a long drift from a Firebrands game, in a good way. There’s a great variance between the scenes, but the sex of it all is quite unavoidable. I don’t feel like there’s a long story here – we only have 5 soliloquys, and they feel less replayable than you’d expect, because of the choices you’re expected to make in them. I don’t feel like you’ll be moving to and from phases often, unless chocolate melts far faster than I expect it does (it might – I haven’t playtested melting chocolate over a candle). I do love how the scenes are broad in their topic though. There are shopping scenes, but also hunting scenes, as well as sex scenes. It’s violent and mundane and sexual. It feels very concrete and real, despite it also drifting into metaphysical and mythical at times. I love that at least the duet scenes, as they can’t be controlled, are going to lead to vastly different outcomes.

    I find it hard to judge whether A Stranger’s Just a Friend is a good game, because it feels as if by design it’s supposed to be a little vague and abstract. It veers into cosmic horror, in a way, which is appropriate I think to the way it’s exploring queer themes. One of the player characters may never have existed; that isn’t even the one that is a mythical construct. Is it about romance, or is it about fantasy? Or is there some kind of mystical element to the world beyond the obvious? It’s really not clear. The art style and layout is clearly tongue in cheek, as is befitting such an explicit text. The layout and lack of page numbers make it a little messy. But even as someone who isn’t interested in explicit sex in TTRPGs, I find the text and the ritual of the game extremely compelling. I want to want to play this game. I think, with the right friend and the right level of comfort between the two of us, it would make a very memorable night, although potentially a risky one, filled with emotion.

    A Stranger’s Just a Friend is a game you should pick up if you’re interested in sex in TTRPGs, and have someone else you want to spend a night with expressing your love for queer sex and cosmic horror together, and if you’re the kind of player who, as my friend Sam Dunnewold phrases it, is into “Emotional skydiving”. It’s deeply compelling, but also the kind of game that might be entirely outside many players comfort zone. I love that TTRPGs as an art form can contain such a multitude of kinds, and I’m very glad A Stranger’s Just a Friend exists, with it’s weird, messy, sensual tactility that reminds me so much of sex, and with it’s explicit, cosmic horror that is so symbolic of queer experience. It reminds me that roleplaying games are for everyone, even if every roleplaying game isn’t for me in particular. By this point in the review, you know whether or not A Stranger is Just a Friend is for you. If it is, I hope you check it out. I’d love to hear how it goes.

    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: Fear and Panic

    Each holiday season, I review different modules, games or supplements as a thank you to the wider tabletop roleplaying game community. All of the work I review during Critique Navidad is either given to me by fans of the work or the authors themselves. This holiday season, I hope I can bring attention to a broader range of tabletop roleplaying game work than I usually would be able to, and find things that are new and exciting!

    Fear and Panic is a 43 page horror game by Lyme, who previously brought us the excellent Dawn of the Orcs, with art by Roxanne B, Roque Romero, Strega Wolf, and Chaoclypse.

    Fear and Panic is a game that resolves the player characters actions primarily. The basic rules here are to roll a d100, lower than a skill to succeed. You also roll to gain fear when your character is scared, which you then you can spend to panic and gain bonuses. There are 7 ways to panic, each providing a different bonus. What’s the downside? Whenever you roll fear you may gain a scar, which changes your character in a tangible way, with mechanical as well as non-mechanical impacts. From there, the game delves into situations, advice on how to run horror, and finally some concrete examples of NPCs and categories of NPCs. This is all pretty solid.

    Fear and Horror is one of those games that attempts to streamline what makes a certain category of game fun, when the classics of that genre are a little heavier than I appreciate. The skills selection here really feel like the target here is Call of Cthulhu, and a huge chunk of the back of the book is advice on how to convert adventure paths or modules to Fear and Panic from these systems with large module ecosystems. I really like this style of game – I have written a bunch of games that at least incorporate the same impulse. The issue, though, is that this desire to exist in relationship to these other systems and ecosystems means that it has no real character of its own. I can’t love Fear and Horror, because it is a lens I view other peoples’ work through, a tool to get things to my table I wouldn’t otherwise because I don’t like the system they’re looking for.

    Fear and Panic is clever, and it does the job it’s designed to do. I’d honestly choose Fear and Panic over Liminal Horror as a horror game, particularly if I was going to run something that wasn’t written for Liminal Horror. But unlike Liminal Horror, it doesn’t have much of a personality of itself, and so I find it hard to get excited about it. It feels a bit like the weaker first editions of Cairn and Knave, which felt like experiments, but then came the stronger, more flavourful and specific second editions. That said, the elegant part of Fear and Panic is on the cover: Fear is the key to survival, and the loop of fear and panic here is likely to make basically every horror module better, in my opinion. If you’re looking for a streamlined, universal-ish system to run horror classics in that you’ve heard so much about, I think Fear and Panic is the game for you. If you’re looking for your horror game, though, something with a personality and ecosystem of its’ own, you might have to pray for a second edition. I’d love to see it.

    Idle Cartulary

    P.S. In the few weeks since publication, Lyme has published a module for Fear and Panic – No Easy Man to Kill, featuring Rasputin! Check it out!

    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.

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  • Critique Navidad: Moon Rings

    Each holiday season, I review different modules, games or supplements as a thank you to the wider tabletop roleplaying game community. All of the work I review during Critique Navidad is either given to me by fans of the work or the authors themselves. This holiday season, I hope I can bring attention to a broader range of tabletop roleplaying game work than I usually would be able to, and find things that are new and exciting!

    Moon Rings is a 57 page solo game by Chris Schneztler with art and layout by Tyson Whiting, where you play a witch who ventures into a deadly labyrinth to end the reign of a cursed moon.

    I’ll start with layout. This is a striking game, with a bold black and red palette, strong visual aids and striking digital art, and it uses clever visual inversions and turnarounds to keep the layout interesting even when the pattern is mostly words and more words. Each page is 2 column in landscape, with a low word to page ratio for an easy read, and whats more all versions of a single rank of card are on a front/back spread, so it should be easy to navigate. It’s really good stuff, although it doesn’t quite scream “brave witch venturing into a labyrinth” in the way I wish it would – it feels extremely modern a layout.

    I’ve played a game based on the Carta system before – Tea and Toadstools. The basic gist is that you generate a grid of cards, and move around the grid, experiencing prompts that drive your journaling experience. In Moon Rings, the grid represents a labyrinth, and as you explore it, you’re finding Moon Rings to complete your ritual, and the events are affecting your blood, which will kill you if you go over 20 or are reduced to 0. When you encounter something, you have to roll higher or lower than the card number on a 12-sided die (under if it’s 6 or lower, higher if it’s 7 or higher). You get a chance to roll again, but each time you’ll suffer a worse penalty, such as losing a finger and hence not being able to hold as many rings. You can also use magic to change the outcome of an encounter, but you have a limited number of uses. The game ends when you have 5 moon rings and reach the ritual site, which is the Ace of Hearts.

    The bulk of the game are the prompts for each playing card, as well as what occurs when you succeed or fail at the roll. I’m kind of mixed on these prompts – they’re really surprisingly prescriptive, which makes it feel as if this is a game of wandering through a portion of a very intentionally constructed dungeon. I had expected more evocative, vaguer prompts, but it’s stuff like this: “You come across a marble wellspring overflowing with replenishing mana. It enticed you. A pack of moon goblins splash and fight in the cool liquid.” One nice touch is that the ritual you’ll complete is randomly generated from the first 5 moon rings you complete. I’m not sure how much replay value this game will have, but that personalisation is nice and thoughtful. The problem with this prescriptive approach, for me, this leaves me with very little to actually journal, particularly when the game is quite prescriptive in terms of its’ outcomes mechanically. But were this a dungeon, I’d like these locations! For me, then, Moon Rings feels like it’s a success as a solo dungeon crawl, but less so as a journaling game, because it feels like I want a little more space for my imagination to run wild if I’m trying to journal.

    As a solo dungeon crawler? This is honestly a blast. I like the goals, I like the descriptions. Played without the journaling, it will feel a little more mechanical, and reminds me of Cavern Shuffle, a solitaire dungeon crawler that I keep in my bag at all times to play if I’m waiting at a cafe or whatever. The main reason I’d bring Cavern Shuffle rather than Moon Rings is because Moon Rings is a print and play booklet and not a deck of cards. There are, in fact, Moon Rings playing cards – but they don’t contain all the information in the booklet. I’m certain you could fit the entire text of these locations onto a Tarot-sized card. If that was the approach, rather than to have a book and a deck of playing cards, I think this would be more likely to get play for me.

    Moon Rings is a good game. It’s a very good looking game. For me though, it doesn’t make me want to journal, it makes me want to explore. And for that, I want it to be in a different format – not a booklet or a pdf, but a deck of cards. I haven’t tried playing this on playingcards.io, but I suspect that would be the best way to experience the game as it stands, the way I respond to it. But it feels like a bring with you everywhere kind of game, not a sit at my computer and play kind of game. That said, if you bounce of more evocative, vaguer prompts, this more prescriptive approach might be exactly what you need to get into journaling games, and Moon Rings is interesting, compelling, and appealing to spend a few hours with. Moon Rings might be precisely the journaling game for you.

    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.

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  • Critique Navidad: Vengeance California

    Each holiday season, I review different modules, games or supplements as a thank you to the wider tabletop roleplaying game community. All of the work I review during Critique Navidad is either given to me by fans of the work or the authors themselves. This holiday season, I hope I can bring attention to a broader range of tabletop roleplaying game work than I usually would be able to, and find things that are new and exciting!

    Vengeance California is a 49 page game by Houskull, where you revenge murder in 60’s California. It’s inspired by movies like Kill Bill, John Wick, and the Professional. This is refereed game for 3 or more players, played in a single session, with no prep.

    Your only stat here is Rage, which can be high, medium or low, and how angry you are affects your 2 main rolls in an inverse manner: High Rage, harder safety checks, but lower risky checks, and visa versa. You roll up to 3 dice according to your prep and character, and then choose risk or safe depending on whether the action is dangerous or not. When you fail a risk check, take a wound, enough wounds and you die, causing everyone’s rage to go up. Nice, simple basics.

    Now, we introduce Lines, a pleasingly cinematic mechanic: Player characters can say a line at any time to affect basically anything. Examples: “I know a guy”, or “It’s just a scratch”, or “I’m too old for this.” Well, actually, not the last one: This is a neat mechanic, but because this mechanic feels the need for balance, only the listed moves are “allowed” — these all come with a consequence. There are 8 official Lines, and I don’t feel like that’s enough, but I do think that the generic “complication” cost should cover you for improvising new lines, and I’d encourage this if I ran it. Honestly, this is the place for a mechanic like Devils Bargains — “hey, everyone, what’s the consequence of this line?”, if a complication doesn’t make sense. Complications are great, though: There are 6, randomly rolled, and each have 6 steps of rising and falling escalation. This mechanic is frankly genius for a game intended for a one-shot or a limited campaign. It brings a really elegant narrative flow to the game that reflective of the cause and effect of the movies that inspired it.

    Character creation is fine, and thematic. I like the character sheets — basically all the important info is there. The player and referee advice is good, but I can’t imagine anyone reading it for a one shot realistically — if it were condensed and put on the character sheet and directors reference it might see use. It comes with a bunch of references a though, which is great!

    The back half of the book is world building — and this slaps. There’s a map, factions, a phone book to help improvise fronts and the like, a bunch of inciting incidents and odd jobs, items and a non-player character generator. The non-player character generator is the weak link: I’d rather a list of them, just like the phone book and factions. These are mostly intended as prompts: This isn’t a sandbox of Santa Vista, they’re things for the referee to respond with and use in scenes. So the generator feels out of place here.

    There are a few gaps though: I don’t know why the characters would take odd jobs, for one — detours for coin or favour seem to suck momentum from the game, but that’s a minor. More importantly, I don’t see a mechanism for ending the game or pacing it — it ends when the players get revenge. The referee is supposed to pace the game, but I really could see this ending prematurely aha being unsatisfying, or running long and losing momentum.

    I find Vengeance California interesting in how it blurs the line between narrative driven and action driven play. You can see a lot of the choices have OSR roots, and this really clashes with the cinematic, narrative choices. But, this also fits: John Wick looks at the environment and responds, he doesn’t do what works for the story. The world reacts to him. John has a magic coin? He needs a mystical criminal sect to trade it to. This is the logic Vengeance California follows.

    Layout is clear, bold, uses space and colour well. Art is in something like crayon or oil pastel, and while I like it and how it is balanced with the layout choices, I don’t think it’s reminiscent of the source material and it would be better if it were. There’s good reference material for in person and online play. Nice.

    Vengeance California is a really good little one-shot game. It’s low prep, but it requires some decent improvisational chops from the referee, and I think the aids could improve a little, especially the NPCs, but also in terms of suggested connections, to ease the imbalance in cognitive load. The design choices are honestly great, and there’s a neat mechanical tension that would be fun to explore. If you’re happy being a referee who takes a heavy improvisational load, and would love a cinematic, violent one-shot or short campaign, Vengeance California is a great game for you.

    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: Othership

    Each holiday season, I review different modules, games or supplements as a thank you to the wider tabletop roleplaying game community. All of the work I review during Critique Navidad is either given to me by fans of the work or the authors themselves. This holiday season, I hope I can bring attention to a broader range of tabletop roleplaying game work than I usually would be able to, and find things that are new and exciting!

    Othership is a single page, 2-sided game by Christopher John Eggett, where 1 side is the rules for a game of space horror, and the other side is a module called Belly of the Beast.

    Let’s start with layout, because you can tell it’s intended to be important: This is designed to double-hotdog fold into a tiny, 8 page zine which includes the character sheet. It manages to be bold and evocative while still being minimalist as it must be. I like it, you can fit it into your pocket.

    This is explicitly a minimalist take on Mothership, and hence features many similar concepts: Professions, stress, etc., just in 2% of the word count. That word count brings problems: You’re gonna have to add your own rules, as it implies when it mentions androids. That said, it’s (very) broadly compatible with Mothership, so if you think Mothership is too much, and you have an improvisational style, this will suit your style.

    Belly of the Beast is an 9 area space hulk to explore. It riffs on Alien directly, and otherwise would be right at home in Mothership. It’s not highly interactive, but it’s meant to set scenes for being chased by the alien that pursues you. I like it alot — I’ve said before I’m a massive fan of a predator-centric random encounter table, I did something similar in Hell on Rev-X in fact.

    This is a pocket-sized game to keep in your bag to play whenever you want. It won’t take long, it’s designed for 2 players, and it is truly familiar to fans of the genre. Othership is genuinely great for the specific use case of “meet someone who wants to play a space horror game with whatever I have to hand”. Honestly, this belongs in a series of other classic trope based modules so you can have a little deck of pamphlets to play based on a random acquaintances preference. You could definitely play other Mothership modules with it, but I think its strength is its form factor.

    If you find yourself in a position where running a game spontaneously with a single other player is likely, this is the game for you. If you’re looking for simpler Mothership this might be for you as well, but it depends on your angle — this is unabashedly OSR in its minimalism, but Into the Blind which I reviewed last year is a competitor in the space that takes a more narrative approach, so I’d check that out as well, as they’re both pretty cool in different ways. Othership is precisely what it says on the label, and I’d love to see more capsules that adopt the same form factor, or try to tackle the same use case in a similar micro-capsule-game kind of way.

    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.

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  • Bathtub Review: The Moss Mother’s Maze

    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.

    The Moss Mother’s Maze is a 31 page module for A Dungeon Game by Chris Bissette. In it, you delve through a beautifully described landscape and encounter horrible creatures.

    We open with an introduction to the landscape and the village itself. Bissette writes floridly and beautifully here, in their meandering style, and it works. I don’t love the intentionally vague village — I can sub in my own village without permission, but half-describing a village is in the middle ground where it’s hard to fold into an existing village , but also I can’t just drop it in whole. The notable residents are well-described and each have a hook leading deeper into the titular maze, however the combination of Bissette’s meandering style and lack of highlighting means I’ll have to come at this with a pen to make it easy to run.

    The maze itself is a maze. In terms of design wisdom, it breaks a lot of rules. It’s endlessly looped and filled with dead ends, it’s not uncommon to have 3-5 entrances which is usually not the done thing. It is numbered top right to bottom left despite your starting in the center (likely a reason the hyperlinked map exists). The “boss” is only 4 rooms from the entrance, and the odds of the party stumbling straight there are actually pretty high — about 10% by available choices, which feels like a mistake, but could be intentional as finding that early will drive players towards the vault. Accessing the vault is difficult, though. It’s supposed to be like this, because it’s a maze, but mapping for the party would be very challenging (and this is explicitly what it recommends you let the party do), and it I think designing a maze that is enjoyable to actually play in is a hell of a task.

    I love the random encounters here, which are split into 2 columns — you always encounter the first column first, and then the second is the real encounter, in the next room. Very nice work, for a maze, which will fill the players with appropriate paranoia and mess with their mapping. The Moss Mother here is presented to me as a slasher, hunting the players throughout the maze, which is a dynamic I really, really like in modules, rather than leaving her in aforementioned room waiting.

    The keying itself is gorgeous, as usual, and I like that the exits typically have sensory descriptions to aid in decision-making. It’s all compelling, but often contextless and filled with forsaken easter eggs — for example, the Nightdarts are a monster you might encounter, with a tragic backstory that the players will never find out, and it’s not clear what in the maze actually caused the horror to occur. What caused the infection driving the nameless man in 18 to fight the Moss Mother? Is it the “fungal spores”? If so why do they not affect the player characters in the same way? Why is there a bed in 22? These questions don’t need to be answered, but having an answer rather than a random assortment of rooms to tour would make the maze more compelling as a whole. Rooms are mostly isolated with few connections, although some of the traps can be repurposed against your foes, most notably the titular Moss Mother. Some of the traps aren’t clear, though: Where do you end up if you’re trapped in Passage 1? And some questions are raised by the text itself: For example, where is the spear in 21 from if the vault is empty except for a certain substance? Overall, the maze itself presents as not fully thought through, or at least a more florid version of the classic “throw a bunch of unrelated rooms in order” dungeon.

    In terms of art and layout, Bissette has been vocal regarding the high cost of art and how it impacts the price of modules and games. Accordingly, The Moss Mother’s Maze contains a total of 3 pieces of art (plus the cover) and 3 maps. These art pieces are pretty striking feature pieces, but the maps are workmanlike. The layout is simple; rooms are always kept to a single page, headings are clear but highlighting is non-existent, even the tables lack zebra striping for ease of scanning. One benefit is that time not spent on layout or art was spent on hyperlinking — everything is linked here, which is a huge boon to someone running digitally, although it’s far less accessible in print. I am not opposed to minimal art products, at all, but I feel like resigning modules to a visual design that feels like it was put together using Microsoft Word templates is a mistake. We can have beautiful, art free, and easy to read modules — it’s not a zero sum game.

    The Moss Mothers Maze, then, is a gorgeously describe but perhaps not fully thought full dungeon. I think it serves best as a funnel, to be honest — you’ll die a lot getting to the vault, and then you’re likely to die retreating from the vault. If you or your players want cohesiveness — if you want to solve puzzles or think about why things are happening or expect to learn lore — this is not going to be at all satisfying. If you’re looking for a beer and pretzels type dungeon, one to occupy your players for a few weeks, kill a bunch of characters, and shock with a bunch of horrible, well described situations, the Moss Mother’s Maze will be an absolute pleasure.

    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.

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  • Critique Navidad: This Mortal Coil

    Each holiday season, I review different modules, games or supplements as a thank you to the wider tabletop roleplaying game community. All of the work I review during Critique Navidad is either given to me by fans of the work or the authors themselves. This holiday season, I hope I can bring attention to a broader range of tabletop roleplaying game work than I usually would be able to, and find things that are new and exciting!

    This Mortal Coil is a 140 page roleplaying game by David Garrett with art by Zach Vaupen, Its compatible with Liminal Horror. In it, you play a space traveler seeking eternal life and raising an army of undead thralls by harvesting aliens. This is ostensibly Liminal Horror, but separating it from the core line is sensible, because here you’re effectively playing the enemy in any other Liminal Horror module — this is filled with body horror, cosmic horror, and morally indefensible choices.

    Right off the bat here, I’m seeing some conflict with the choice of an OSR chassis and the themes. I don’t feel like necromancers should work together! 5his is a pitch issue (“necromancer in space!” is a great mashup), and more up front legwork needs to be made to frame the pitch so that my expectations are either redefined or clarified. Here’s my understanding of the pitch: “This is set 3000 years into the future, in a distant star system. I’m not sure what happened in the intervening millennia, but there’s a heaven and a hell, and unless your funeral is on point, the forces of hell will animate your corpse as at least a zombie bit potentially a more powerful evil undead being, driven to devour all life. So, the companies that control all are funerary companies. And recently, a constellation appeared in the sky that made it possible to see and possibly control the forces of hell — and this is how you and your companions hope to avoid death.” That slaps, right? The pitch is technically right, but a half-decent summary of what’s actually going on skips the strange disjoint between pitch and system.

    Next up comes character creation: You choose one of the backgrounds, and randomly generate your character from that page. It’s neat, although it’s still unclear on why you were suddenly “offered the chance for eternal life” — is this just the existence of the new constellation? Half way through the character creation chapter we get a hint of who offered you the chance: Each of you have a unique voice that speaks to you. But I’m still just guessing — my theory remains unconfirmed. Anyway, containing items and histories like “Never bring a gun to a proton cannon fight.” and “You sought to inhale the divine spores of the Mycelial Belt” these are pretty flavourful backgrounds with a good dose of humour. The whole game is filled with clever, fun writing, and that might just be enough for you to want to bring it to the table. The many random tables are really excellent: An adverse effect of hyperspace travel might be “Your name has changed, though all memories and records of it have changed along with it.”, or your interfering in the negaverse might cause “Your chest collapses, leaving a gaping void in the middle of your torso. You feel like you are suffocating, but you no longer need to breathe.”.

    Your power in This Mortal Coil is souls, and that’s the driving force of play — to be more powerful, more people have to trade you their soul willingly (although it’s not clear if they then have to die before you can use it). This is a really compelling drive for the players to interact with the world actively, which I adore. There’s a direct relationship between fallout that fills your inventory and the number of thralls you can have — this is neat, as the more damaged your character is, the more powerful a necromancer they are. If you get 12 souls and all your ingredients, you get to be immortal, which is basically the core loop of the game. The game implies that the loop continues after you gain immortality, although I’m not sure what will drive play past that point, and I don’t get any clues.

    While there is a lot of generic referee advice here, my favourite stuff are the specifics — we get a bunch of brokers to help guide the players to their ingredients, for example, and a character generator for NPCs willing to trade their souls to the players. We also get a flavourful bestiary of undead, and a flavourful list of items. These are all pretty cool. One regular issue with these capsule OSR games is the repetition of the rules — there are a lot of rules here, covering magic, space travel, crews and more. It’s comprehensive, but I really would’ve preferred a less is more approach — I get confused with what type of game this is intended to be, because the rules cover every outcome. Survival space horror and necromancy devils bargaining don’t feel like they belong in the same game with the same characters, to me? I struggle with the lack of support in the stranger mash ups here.

    In terms of layout, this one is sparse, flavourful, and easy to read and navigate. I don’t love Zach Vaupen’s art for this particular game — I’d love to have had a more concrete suggestion for what the world looks like. Art really helps picture worlds, when they’re a little different, and this one is a very unusual mash up — and as I alluded to earlier, I struggle with the mash ups already. But it’s solid art in and of itself and you might prefer having the less concrete art yourself, to let your imagination go wild.

    This Mortal Coil is a really interesting mash up, sort of Mothership meets Liminal Horror with an emphasis on negotiation. If you enjoy the Liminal Horror chassis, there are a lot of changes and you may be excited to add them into your game, if you wanted to take your investigators into space or have them turn coat. But when push comes to shove if the idea of an OSR style game that puts the spotlight on persuading NPCs to sell you their souls and having a cohort of undead minions as henchmen, you already know should check This Mortal Coil out immediately.

    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: Oubliette (n.) 0 & 1

    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.

    Oubliette is a serial megadungeon for B/X, written and with interior illustrations by Casey Garske. As it stands, the 0 and 1st issues have been released, and I’m looking at those 2 releases. In it (so far, at least), you’re trapped in a town on a rock in an endless grey void, and the only way out is by using raven statues to teleport into a deadly, endless dungeon. I bought this one on Drive Thru RPG.

    Oubliette (n.) 0 is only 12 pages long, and covers the campaign rules and the village of Oubliville where the party will spend their downtime. The Rules: The Oubliette appears to be some kind of hellish afterlife, where you can collect Obols for more power. Raven statues act as fast-travel points that might reach deeper into the Oubliette or might return you to Oubliville. These two additions (as well as the additions of a supply die and equipment slots), effectively gamify this megadungeon, something I’ve been interested in in the past. There’s not much to it, but what’s there has a purpose. Oubliville is effectively 9 locations, their character, each with a specific purpose. Again, very videogamey, but in a neat way. A bunch of these introduce collectibles that need to be brought back to Oubliville — tomes and ingredients for potions, and the others all serve specific purposes. Obols being expended for all of these things as well as for experience, means that tough choices abound in the Oubliette. Overall, the rules included here are great, and make me excited to dig into Oubliette proper. Oubliette (n.) #0 is free, so if you’re not sure about this project, I’d look at this, and see if it guides your decision either way.

    Oubliette (n.) 1 covers the first level of the dungeon, and packs 31 rooms into less than 20 pages. This runs a little differently: There are sewers linking most of the rooms if you choose to venture down there, and you don’t roll regular random encounters, but rather only when you enter an encounter room or “linger too long“. The event roll is loaded, and consists up to 12 unique random encounters, some of which are related to specific locations (as good random encounters should be). There are also environmental encounter tables (“gutteral voices from room 11“) as well as a level lockdown where you can be instantly locked up. Good stuff, pulling from popular OSR blogosphere innovations. The room descriptions also pull from Anne Hunter’s Landmark, Hidden, Secret in their keying, just as many other OSR authors such as Miranda Elkins, Yochai Gal and myself all do. I’d prefer the bestiary at the back have clearer descriptions, and potentially behaviours or goals. There are collectibles here — an ingredient and a tome, although I think the ingredient is unclear enough in the description that you might get players picking random stuff off the shelves — Yex the Apothecary might be a better source for something like the trading sequence in the Ruins of Castle Gygar to help with direction here. The room descriptions are terse, but rely quite heavily on hyperdiegesis. I’m not sure if Garske has deep lore planned for this megadungeon, but certainly I’d like to know as someone running this if there’s going to be, as the implications might grow in the absence of any canon here — I had similar struggles with episodic megadungeon, Through Ultan’s Door.

    However, I struggled with some aspects. I cannot grasp the sewer layout at all: “Below the main floor of the dungeon is a sewer […] Dashed lines in the sewer indicate higher dry ground. The tunnels of the sewer pass beneath the upper rooms in straight lines[…]” Looking at the main map, I can see dashed lines, but otherwise I just don’t follow. I think this may be an issue with using Dungeon Scrawl as a mapping tool — maybe some lines are running beneath the main level, but it’s not at all clear. Certainly I could map out the sewer rooms (19 to 21, 25 and 27 at a glance) and figure out what they could connect to. This would be easily fixed though, simply by shading the lower sewer level or hand-drawing this map, which isn’t particularly complex. I recently read Cryo-Siq, which used a method of mapping which allowed for connections like sewers between rooms by using a secondary keying code (i.e. 13A might indicate all the As are connected). Something like this would work far better for me. I want more information for a lot of this stuff.

    One interesting little impact of some of the keying choices is that the Oubliette feels like it might be some kind of time loop, with the players continuously turning up in a room with a jailer recently killed in it, for example. The dungeon also has no restocking method — given the author appears to be familiar with the OSR broadly, and given the keying choices, this also feels intentional, perhaps that the recurring monsters are supposed to be reborn each time you re-enter the Oubliette. Is it supposed to be a grim, violent, Groundhog-day like jail? It’s not clear. The mystery in this dungeon is plenty intriguing, but the lack of, for example, any information on what the Ghostly Preacher might preach, and things like it, concern me. It appears the Warden is chaining the Duke, and that the Duke guards the exit from the Oubliette, but that too isn’t clear. It might be that things will be revealed in future issues (certainly, at least, the Eagle Talisman doesn’t appear in issue #1), and I like that the exit is here on the first level, as it creates a pleasing loop, particularly if the Eagle Talisman is far deeper, but it’s disappointing that the tome titled “On the Nature of the Oubliette” gives you special magical powers, but no revelation about the nature of the Oubliette. Now, I am making these judgements based on an incomplete dungeon — more issues I’m assured will follow — but perhaps these zines would benefit from some kind of reassurance regarding what will follow and what the referee is expected to improvise herself, because because as it is it leaves me in a limbo where I’m not sure what’s planned and whether I’m undermining it and hence my players’ decisionmaking.

    Oubliette (n.) 0 and 1 are both illustrated by hand, and are laid out in Google Docs. The layout suffers accordingly — I think you could do more with Google Docs, but Garske appears to be more interested in just getting this out there, which is super valid for a megadungeon project. I think the big thing I’d change, though, is some variable spacing, as I struggle to read the individual room entries, in the context of the only paragraph breaks being the ones between rooms.

    There are a bunch of criticisms here, but I’d like to point out that many of them are similar to the criticisms I posed towards another incomplete megadungeon, Through Ultan’s Door, over a year ago. This suggests these criticisms are one of experiencing an incomplete part of a whole, and perhaps not a valid criticism of that whole once it exists. But, alas, it does not exist as yet. What Oubliette at this stage is, is a very compelling first floor or so of a megadungeon, filled with mystery, written tersely and with great flavour, with suggested house rules that are reminiscent of videogames. At this stage, it conjures the impression that this megadungeon is a hell of some kind, either a time loop or some kind of purgatory that you’re all trapped in along with these characters that may or may not regenerate each time you enter. But I’m not sure if those impressions are me reading too deeply into what’s here, or intent of the author. Irregardless, while I’d wait to run Oubliette, what is here so far is an incredibly compelling start to megadungeon, that I’ll be keeping a close eye on as future issues release. If you’re looking for a megadungeon that’ll kindle your imagination, Oubliette (n.) is the megadungeon for you.

    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.

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