Adventure to the MAX!

5:09 AM | Labels: , , , , , ,

Over the years the roleplaying hobby has thrown up a number of games specifically designed to be played by kids and in the process, actually introduce them to the hobby. Whether that is uncovering mysteries in PandaheadProductions’ Meddling Kids, exploring the magic of the woods and its denizens in Firefly Games’ Faery's Tale, adventuring in, beyond, and above the Atlantis of Third Eye Games’ Mermaid Adventures: An RPG of Undersea Fun, or protecting society from the dangers of big nature in Mouse Guard RPG from Archaia Studios Press, they invariably combine relatively simple mechanics with a setting that will spark the imagination of the younger, neophyte player. In each case, their aim is to help the parent who wants to introduce his child to his hobby and thus help the child who is curious about the fantastic adventures that he hears about, or sees, his parent playing. 

The latest RPG to aimed at kids is Adventure MAXIMUS!, a traditionally themed game published by Eden Studios, Inc. and set in a fantasy world. This can be the fantasy world of the Game Master or Maximus Master’s own devising, or can be the one lightly sketched out in the pages of Adventure MAXIMUS! This is the world of “Ex-Machina,” once known as Magisterica before the Reign of the Wise Wizard Kings ended. Following this apocalypse is a world in which mythical creatures roam the lands and both food and trees can talk. As much as the setting is traditionally themed in its fantasy, what sets it apart from others is a vein of light-hearted, if not slight silly humour, that runs through it. This shows in the setting, for example, there is a nation called The Take-Out Kingdom, in some of the actions that characters can take, each of which has a card of its own, and in several of the monsters that the adventurers will face. The presence of this light-hearted humour is intentional, as it is designed to engage the younger player’s imagination and to encourage him to think and engage with the world.

For the most part, the elements of the setting that the players and their characters interact with during play are represented by cards which are drawn from several decks. These include a Blue Race deck, a Green Class deck, an Orange Action deck, Purple Spell deck, a Red Item deck, a Black Monster deck, and a Gold Map deck. A character is comprised of a Blue Race card and a Green Class card, and will be equipped with cards from the Orange Action deck, the Purple Spell deck – if the character can cast spells, and the Red Item deck. The cards from the Black Monster and Gold Map decks are used to create adventures in conjunction with the game’s Adventure Sheet. (There are ten cards in the Green Class deck, eight in the Blue Race deck, ten in the Orange Action deck, thirteen in the Black Monster deck, eighteen in the Purple Spell deck, thirty-four in Red Item deck, and fifteen in the Gold Map deck.) In addition, Adventure MAXIMUS! uses its own “Maximus” dice as well as needing numerous tokens to represent Action Points, Damage Points, and Experience points. 

To create a character in Adventure MAXIMUS! a player draws three Blue Race and three Green Class cards, choosing one of each as his character’s Race and Class. Both provide special abilities whilst the Green Class card sets the number of Orange Action cards, RedEquipment cards, and Purple Spell cards – if a spellcaster, that the character can have. These are randomly drawn. The Adventure MAXIMUS! character sheet has specific places for all of these cards.


So for example, Louise creates her first character. She draws three Blue Race cards and gets Elf, Giantkin, and Food-kin. She chooses Giant-kin she wants to play a big fighting type and Giant-kin can use “Close Attacks” at “Far Range.” For her three Green Class cards she draws The Guard (a warrior who protects others), The Officer (a true warrior and leader of men), and The Sparklemancer (who is all about making friends). She decides to choose the latter, if only for the fact that not only is the idea of a Giant-kin running around in a gown and wielding a wand funny, but so is her Class Power, “Jazz Hands” which lets her dazzle her opponents with this dance move. Of course, this is a “Close Attack,” but since she is a Giant-kin, she can do “Close Attacks” at “Far Range” or “Jazz Hands from Afar”! The Sparklemancer also gives her Close Attack +1, Far Attack +2, one Action Card, three Equipment Cards, and three Spell Cards. For her Action Card, Louise chooses one which gives her “Double Flip!”, “The Naked Goblin!”, and “Lippy-Hippy-Shake!”. The first forces her enemies to lose an Action Point if they see her “Double Flip!” with her sword; the second gives her a +3 Scary bonus and if her enemies fail a Fear Test they must flee because of her big armour (or in her character’s case, her big gown as she is a Sparklemancer); and the third forces all of her enemies to dance as Louise actually gets up from the table and dances! These three actions cost her two, three, and three Action Points respectively.

For her spells, Louise receives “Banana Slips” (makes the floor slippery with the essence of banana peel), “Jared's Reducer!” (because she can shrink both herself and others, and sometimes she wants to be smaller), and “Feel the Heal!” (to make her friends feel better if they get hurt). For her equipment, Louise gets a pillow, a pot of super glue, and a length of rubber hose.

Louise the Sparklemancer
Weapon: Wand Armour: Gown
Attacks: Close A­ttack +1, Far A­ttack +2
Class Skills: Fast Talk +3, Notice +2, Crime +4
Willpower 2
Class Power
(1AP) Jazz Hands: +1 Willpower against one target's Willpower, if successful the target is Dazed for one round.
Race: Giant-kin
Giant-kin ability – Reach! You can use Close A­ttacks on things that are in Far range. Big, tough, and kind are words used to describe Giant-kin, but many prejudiced people will run in fear from you.
Action Card:
(2AP) Double Flip!: You can Dazzle your enemies with your sword play, they lose an Action Point if they can see your Double Flip!
(3AP) The Naked Goblin!: Your armour makes you look a lot bigger than you really are, you get a +3 Scary bonus. Enemies that can see you must make a Willpower test or flee in fear. Any enemies who win the test are immune to this effect for the rest of the encounter.
(3AP) Lippy-Hippy-Shake!: You have the uncanny ability to make your enemies dance when you dance. Get up from the game table and dance, enemies dance until you stop.
Spells: Banana Slips (1AP), Feel the Heal! (2AP+), Jared's Reducer! (4AP)
Equipment: Pillow, pot of super glue, rubber hose.

Adventure MAXIMUS! is designed to be an action orientated game. Once the action – or a “Courageous Situation” starts, whether that is getting into a fight, climbing a mountain, or entering a competition to bake a pie, then the Maximus Dice come out. What a character can do over the course of a single Round is determined by the number of Action Points he has, these being set by his Blue Race card. These are spent not only to undertake normal actions such as walking, running, looting, attacking, charging, using a skill, and so on, but also to undertake the options given on the character’s Orange Action cards and his Purple Spell cards – if he has any. A character can spend as few or as many Action Points as he likes and they always refresh from one Round to the next.

When it comes to skill rolls and other actions, a character rolls a number of Maximus dice equal to his skill. Each Maximus die is a six-sided die marked with three blank sides, one side with a single sword, a second with two crossed swords, and a third with a Maximus symbol. Each sword represents a success, so the crossed swords represent two successes. The Maximus symbol also represents two successes, plus it allows a character to roll another die and add its success to his total. As long as a player keeps rolling the Maximus symbol, he can keep rolling and adding successes. 

At its most basic, as a player rolls a single success on the Maximus dice, then his character succeeds at the desired action. Some skills require a player to roll two or more successes to achieve his desired aim. For example, the First Aid needs two successes to be rolled if a character wants to restore healed one dot on his or another character’s Health Track. Opposed skill rolls require one participant to roll more success than the others if he is achieve his desired aim. 

Combat though, is kept even simpler. Initiative is determined by the highest number of successes as you would expect, but only in the first round. In subsequent rounds, initiative order actually passes to the left, so that the player who acts first moves round the table rather than being randomly determined. Simple and for the most part a fair means of handling it, although there is nothing to stop the players rolling for initiative each round as is traditional. Actual combat is a matter of rolling the Maximus dice and rolling as many successes as possible. Armour negates these successes, so whatever gets through is taken as damage to the defender’s Health.


In keeping with the light nature of the rules, the advice for the Maximus Master is kept quick and simple. First and foremost, it adheres to a simple rule that applies to the Maximus Master as much as it does to the players – “Have FUN!” Second, that he should keep the game going by saying “Yes, and…” to all of the impossibly inventive ideas that his players might come up with. For example, heroes have tracked down the thief who stole the Frog God’s favourite jewelled eye and are racing after them along a steep path down the side of a mountain. Louise the Sparklemancer tells her Maximus Master that she wants to cast Banana Slips to make Barry the Burglar lose his footing. Of course, her Maximus Master says, “Yes,” and then describes how Barry the Burglar not only loses his footing, but also loses hold of the stolen jewel which goes flying through the air only to land on the gas bag of the aerial steamship that was passing below…! 

In addition, preparing an adventure is made all the easier for the Maximus Master with the inclusion of the “Who-What-Where-How Adventure Creation System.” By following its simple step-by-step instructions in conjunction with the Black Monster and Gold Map decks, plus some input from the players in form of names and descriptive words – or if preparing the adventure ahead of time these can come from the rulebook’s “Courageous Maxi-Libs List” – the Maximus Master can create a whole adventure. First, he draws a Boss Monster card from the Black Monster deck and equips him with Action, Item, and Spell cards as necessary. This is the “Who” or villain of the “Who-What-Where-How Adventure Creation System,” whilst another Red Item card is the “What” and a Yellow Map card forms the “Where.” Together these elements form the Climax Map of the adventure. These steps need to be repeated two more times to create two more Adventure Maps that the player characters must travel through in order to get to the Climax Map, although neither of the Monsters faced in these Adventure Maps will be Boss Monsters. 

The Maximus Master also needs to fill out the following statement using the players’ suggestions or the “Courageous Maxi-Libs”: “A message has been delivered to your Adventure Call Box. ‘________’ has asked for your help! ‘________’ has the ‘________’, you must travel to the ‘________’ in the “________.’ Bring back the ‘________’ and you will be rewarded!” So for example, “A message has been delivered to your Adventure Call Box. The Wizard Of Zoz has asked for your help! Sweet & Sour and Sweet & Spicy!* have the Clean Underpants, you must travel to the ruins in the Forest of Doors. Bring back the Clean Underpants and you will be rewarded!” In order to get through to the Forest of Doors, the player characters will have to travel through Teddy Bear Junction and then to Gum Drop Falls. 

* Twin chicken chunks from the Take-Out Kingdom that were just born bad. 

What is so good about the “Who-What-Where-How Adventure Creation System” is not just the ease and speed with which the Maximus Master can create an adventure, but also the fact that it can be picked up and used by the very players that the game is written to be run for. In other words, kids can run this as much as adults can. In combination with the card-driven means of creating characters, the “Who-What-Where-How Adventure Creation System” gives Adventure MAXIMUS! a strong capacity for "Pick Up and Play." Not necessarily such that the game can be played straight out of the box – though the RPG is easy to learn in terms of its mechanics, but the preparation time for an adventure is mere minutes rather than the hours it might be with other RPGs. Just as it is for character creation. 

Adventure MAXIMUS! could be run as a fairly straight forward fantasy RPG, but that would be to ignore its potentially rich vein of humour and silliness. This shows more in the decks of cards that support the game – the Black Monster deck, the Purple Spell deck, the Yellow Map deck, and the Red Item deck than the Blue Race deck and the Green Class deck. In fact, with just the one humorous or silly option in each of the latter two decks – the Sparklemancer in the Green Class deck and the Food-kin in the Blue Race deck – the game feels disappointingly traditional in terms of what characters it offers the players to play. In fact, the choices can be best described as “fantasy vanilla” and it would have been nice if some other choices had been included, preferably ones that matched the game’s humour. Yet once past the Blue Race deck and the Green Class deck and the options and choices for the Maximus Master are a lot more varied and mine much more of the vein of silliness. Whether that is the Bunny Mummy!* from the Black Monster deck, the Foothills of Fungus** from the Yellow Map deck, or the Bunny Borough Bow*** from the Red Item deck, they all show that Adventure MAXIMUS! is intended to be anything than wholly serious in its feel and style. 

* My favourite monster! 
** Actual hill-sized feet upon which grows fungi!!
*** Also known as the Velveteen Wackit because an arrow fired from it never inflicts damage, but anyone hit is turned into a bunny!!! 

Physically, Adventure MAXIMUS! is neatly presented in full colour. In its current form it does need another edit, but it has two more pressing problems. The first is that it fails to state up front what it is, not what a roleplaying game is, but what Adventure MAXIMUS! is and how it is intended to work. It becomes apparent after reading through the whole of the short rule book, but this seems at odds with the “pick up, get playing” intent of the design. The other issue is that there is not enough background, though that said, this lack allows plenty of room for the Maximus Master and his players to create as they go. A lesser issue would be that there might not be enough cards for long term play, though there is nothing to stop anyone from creating their own cards. 

As much as the origins of Adventure MAXIMUS! as a fantasy RPG lie in Dungeons & Dragons, its tone and feel have a more contemporary source – contemporary television animation. It recognises that it is silly, but it embraces this aspect in a joyous fashion whilst referencing this, that, and the other in postmodern “reference anything and everything” fashion. Adventure MAXIMUS! is not necessarily the Adventure Time RPG and certainly is not based on the Cartoon Network Studios animated series of the same name, but it is not impossible to suggest it as an inspiration. The combination of the two in Adventure MAXIMUS! results in an RPG that can be played as a traditional fantasy RPG akin to Dungeons & Dragons, but by design is much lighter in tone, with a setting and means of adventure creation that allows room aplenty for player input and player imagination.

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On Her Majesty's Adventurous Service

2:05 PM | Labels: , , , , ,

How do you like your Victoriana roleplaying? As with most historically set RPGs, those set during the reign of Queen Victoria bring other elements to the table. For example, Pinnacle Entertainment Group’s Deadlands brings horror to the Wild West, Cthulhu by Gaslight from Chasoium, Inc. brings Lovecraftian investigative horror and the horrors of H.P. Lovecraft’s fiction to the 1890s, and CubicleSeven Entertainment’s Victoriana brings magic and other elements normally associated with the fantasy genre to the 1860s. So the question is, what does the newest RPG to draw up a chair at the roleplaying table of your gentlemen’s club, Leagues of Adventure: A Rip-Roaring Setting of Exploration and Derring Do in the Late Victorian Age!, bring to Victorian era?

Leagues of Adventure is published by Triple Ace Games, the British publisher best known for a number of RPG settings that make use of Pinnacle Entertainment Group’s Savage Worlds rules such as Necropolis, Hellfrost, and Sundered Skies. Rather than employ the Savage Worlds rules, Leagues of Adventure makes use of the Ubiquity System. First seen in ExileStudio’s Hollow Earth Expedition, and since used in Greymalkin Design’spost-apocalyptic fantasy, Desolation, and the German version of Space 1889 from Uhrwerk Verlag, the Ubiquity System has also been previously used by Triple Ace Games’ own award-winning All For One: Régime Diabolique. What the Ubiquity System brings to Leagues of Adventure is a fluid, action orientated set of mechanics that supports a Pulp style of play.

What Leagues of Adventure brings to Victorian era roleplaying is a sense of adventure and mystery. It is specifically set during an age of great exploration in which the boundaries of the known world are only just beginning to be pushed back and many secrets are being revealed. As much as it is set during the history of the period, it draws heavily from the fiction of the period, so that Sherlock Holmes and Doctor John Watson are as much real as Brigadier General Sir Harry Paget Flashman, VC, Phileas Fogg, and Abaham van Helsing. As adventurers or globetrotters, the player characters will travel to the far corners of the Earth, exploring the unknown, making great discoveries, and uncovering mysteries, whether these are the strange Gill Men reputed to live in the Black Lagoon at the head of the Amazon, another plot to overthrow the monarchy in Ruritania, or a rash of stranglings in Shanghai!

Every globetrotter or player character is a member of a “League,” an exclusive or secret—or not so secret—society, such as The Alpine Club, the Epicurean Society, or The Temporal Society. These are the “Leagues” of the game’s title — as much as the multitudes of adventures it also suggests, with each League providing contacts, resources, and patrons that will call on the globetrotters just as the globetrotters can call upon the aid of their Leagues. For the most part, the various Leagues possess a friendly rivalry with each other where their interests conflict, but there exist villainous Leagues whose aims are far from honourable or enlightened. The Thuggee is one such villainous League, as is The Immortals Club, whose members seek ever greater power and the means to keep it for themselves.

Character creation is matter of choosing one of the provided archetypes – Big Game Hunter, Consulting Detective, Diligent Correspondent, Explorer, Crackpot Antiquarian, Pioneering Aviatrix, and Temporal Scientist – each of which is presented in full colour, or assigning a number of sets of points. Fifteen points between six attributes and another fifteen points to skills before selecting a Talent such as Knockout Blow or Well-Educated or a Resource like an Artifact or Rank, and a Flaw such as Flea-Infested or Thrill-Seeker. Another fifteen points are spent to customise the character. A character also needs a Motivation and he also starts the game with a Style Point, the Ubiquity System’sequivalent of hero or luck points.

For the most part, this is standard character creation under the Ubiquity System. To this Leagues of Adventures adds a tweak or two. The first of these are “Zero Level” skills, of which a globetrotter receives four. Two to account for his background and another connected with the League that he belongs to. Truth be told, they do not add all that much to the game, but just enough to add a little depth to each globetrotter.

Our sample character is Lieutenant Henry Rathwell, a member of her Imperial Majesty’s fledging Air Corps. An excellent navigator, he transferred from the Royal Navy because he suffers from sea sickness. Currently he is on detached duty and is willing to join an expedition that needs a good pilot or navigator.

Lieutenant Henry Rathwell
Archetype: Pilot Motivation: Duty
Style: 2 Health: 4
Primary Attributes
Body: 2          Charisma: 2
Dexterity: 3   Intelligence: 4
Strength: 2    Willpower: 2
Secondary Attributes
Size: 0            Initiative: 7
Move: 4          Defense: 5
Perception: 6 Stun: 2
Skills/Base/Levels/Rating/Average
Anthropology 4/0/4/2
Athletics 3/1/4/2
Bureaucracy 4/1/5/2+
Craft (Electrics) 4/0/4/2
Craft (Mechanics) 4/0/4/2
Diplomacy 2/1/3/1+
            Leadership 2/2/4/2
Empathy 4/1/5/2+
Expeditions 4/1/5/2+
Firearms 3/1/4/2/1
Gunnery 4/1/5/2+
Linguistics 4/0/4/2
Pilot (Aerial) 3/3/6/3+
Science (Physics) 4/1/5/2+
Survival 4/3/7/3+
            Navigation 4/4/8/4+
Talents
Direction Sense
Resources
Rank – Lieutenant
Flaw
Honest


When it comes to the Ubiquity System, it is all a matter of the number of successes rolled. A task’s Difficulty determines the minimum number of successes that have to be rolled for someone to achieve it. Even results equal successes, so any type of die can be used with Leagues of Adventure and the Ubiquity System. Any successes rolled above that improve the result. The rules also allow a character to “Take the Average,” meaning that if the average number of successes that he would roll is equal to, or greater than a task’s Difficulty, then the player does not have to roll. In addition, every player character has Style Points, which are spent to add bonus dice, boost the level of some Talents, and reduce damage. They are gained for pursuing a character’s Motivation and playing to his Flaw, for being heroic and being in character, as well as for out of game actions, such as writing gaming reports, hosting the game, and so on.

What is interesting about Leagues of Adventure is that although it has little in the way of background – the various Leagues, both fictional and historical, along with the various fictional characters mentioned are the extent of its background, it comes with plenty of setting material. The bulk of this comes in the form of an extensive gazetteer that takes the GM around the world in fifty-six pages. Continuing the game’s mix of the fictional with the historical Victoriana, once it has the “ordinary” descriptions of the continents and their constituent countries out of the way, it joyously as many fantastic places, both real and fictional as it can. So it describes the Grand Duchy of Fenwick, the Diogenes Club, King Solomon’s Mines, El Dorado, the Lost World, the Plateau of Leng, and Ruritania as much as it does the Black Museum, the Rookeries, Great Zimbabwe, Timbuktu, Machu Picchu, Ponape, and the Great Wall of China. In fact, it almost seems as if the author cannot wait to get the descriptions of the ordinary places out of the way so that he can concentrate on Leagues of Adventure’s fantastic locations. Further, all of these locations—places already crying out to be visited by the player characters—are accompanied by at least one adventure, usually more than one. All told, this gazetteer of the fantastic is accompanied by over one-hundred-and-thirty adventure seeds!

In addition, Leagues of Adventure comes with a bestiary with which to populate these locations. Again, they include a mix of the fictional and the real, from Amazon Warriors, Giant Apes, Kraken, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Doctor Moreau, and Professor James Moriarty to the Officious Bureaucrat, the French Foreign Legion soldier, the camel, the hippopotamus, and the tiger. Plus guidelines so that the GM can create Villainous Leagues with which to oppose his players and their globetrotters.

In terms of advice for the GM, Leagues of Adventure dispenses relatively little, assuming that the prospective GM is not new to the hobby. Perhaps the most telling advice comes in the form of setting the style that the GM and his players want for their game, essentially by determining the game’s Action Level. The options include “Gritty” like The Man Who Would Be King, “Adventurous” like Around the World in Eighty Days, “Pulp Adventure” such as the Indiana Jones movies, and “Cinematic Reality” like the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Each sets the number of Style Points and their effect that the players get to use during the game, from the all Style Point free of the “Gritty” Action Level up to the double Style Points of “Cinematic Reality.”

Apart from the rules for setting the Action Level, the major mechanical addition to Leagues of Adventure is the rules for invention. Supported by numerous examples, these are a really easy set of rules to use, and support the creation of fantastic devices and vehicles in the game, whether that is by a gadgeteering player character or a nefarious villain with a penchant for dastardly devices. As written and as evidenced in the examples, these rules are not intended to cover the Steampunk genre, but rather the type of devices drawn from the fictions of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. That said, these rules would cover the Steampunk genre with relatively little difficulty.

Physically, Leagues of Adventure is nicely put together and pleasingly illustrated. If the book lacks anything it is maps that match the detailed contents of the gazetteer, but this should not held against Leagues of Adventure. Finding maps, or indeed, further details of any one of the locations described in the book is hardly a challenge given access to the Internet. One might quibble at the lack of a pre-written scenario in the pages of Leagues of Adventure, but given that the book is written with the GM who has some experience in mind and the fact that it comes with as many adventure seeds as it does, this is less of an issue than it be with any other RPG. In addition, the QuickStart Rules in the form of Plateau of the Ape Men & The Dragons of London are available from the publisher’s website and they come with two scenarios.

So what does Leagues of Adventure bring to Victorian era roleplaying? In a word, ACTION! Well, actually “action and adventure,” for this is far from being a deep or introspective game – and there is nothing wrong that. To an extent it is something of toolkit, allowing the GM to adjust slightly the tool of action that he wants to present, but with the supplements available from the publisher’s website, such as the Globetrotters’ Guide to Weird Science and the Globetrotters’ Guide to Gothic Horror, the scope of both the game and the GM’s toolkit expands further. There is nothing to stop a GM from running games which focus on those elements just from Leagues of Adventure, but the Globetrotters’ Guide to…series support them better.

Beyond the game’s ACTION!, Leagues of Adventure exudes a sense of wonder and fascination that the possibilities of the unknown in the late Victorian era – whether real or imaginary – present to the GM and players alike. There is certain joy and excitement, almost exuberance in the presentation of Leagues of Adventure’ssetting, which it matches well with a set of rules that support its action and adventure. 

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Empire City Fears

3:48 AM | Labels: , , , , ,


New York stands tall in Call of Cthulhu canon. Not only are numerous scenarios set there, such as “Dead Man Stomp” from the Call of Cthulhurulebook, but the city forms the backdrop for the opening sequences of three classic campaigns – Day of the Beast, Masks of Nyarlathotep, and Beyond the Mountains of Madness and for the whole of the modern campaign, Unseen Masters. Of course it has its sourcebook in the form of Secrets of New York, but even the invariably Pelgrane Press’ anglophile Trail of Cthulhu has its own anthology of New York set scenarios in the form of Arkham Detective Tales Extended Edition. The city has of course been visited in Lovecraft’s fiction, most notably in his “The Horror at Red Hook,” a short story that has itself been revisited three times by Lovecraftian investigative horror roleplaying. The city, coming into its ascendancy in the 1920s, stands equally tall in our collective imagination with its melange of cultures old and new, its drive to conquer the financial world as well as the sky itself with its monumental skyscrapers, and its vibrancy. It is this rich and heady, not so say hedonistic mix that has presented fertile ground for Lovecraftian investigative horror roleplaying in the past and does so again with the fifth release from Miskatonic River Press, Tales of the Sleepless City.

The release of Tales of the Sleepless City gets 2013 off to a great start in terms of printed titles for Call of Cthulhu and not just because it was actually released in the same week as Atomic Age Cthulhu from Chaosium,Inc. (A review of that will follow soon). Rather it gets 2013 off to a great start both because it is simply a good book and because it comes as a more than welcome relief – not to say a curative tonic – after the low plumbed with the release of Chaosium, Inc.’s Terror from the Skies late last year. Marking Miskatonic River Press’ third anthology, Tales of the Sleepless City brings together six scenarios that explore life as it is lived in the city of New York in the Roaring Twenties.

Behind Paul Carrick’s dream-like cover, what strikes you first about Tales of the Sleepless City is how good the book looks. It is neat and tidy with various elements – side bars and hand outs, artwork and maps – judiciously placed to break up the text. In particular, the choice of typefaces perfectly evokes the period in which the contents of the book are set, while the use of the single interior artist further gives the book a cohesive feel, with many of the illustrations capturing some singularly nasty moments in the scenarios. Similarly, the use of the same map of New York again and again, each annotated with the different locations for each scenario also adds to book’s singular look. It is interesting to note that the map for each scenario includes its subtitle on the map. Lastly, each of the anthology’s hand outs, courtesy of the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society, is a beautiful piece of work that should help immerse the players further into of each the anthology’s scenarios.

The collection opens with Dan Harms’ “To Awaken What Never Sleeps”, which literally brings New York alive. It does call for the use of experienced investigators who have some knowledge of the Cthulhu Mythos, though this is as much for effect as it is for the actual knowledge. Steeped in the recent history of the city, it draws upon the works of both Fritz Leiber and H.P. Lovecraft to present antagonists who are literally opposed to its thrusting modernity. Beginning on a very specific date in 1928, it starts with a bang and goes on to infuse the very fabric of the metropolis with an unnerving sense of unease. Initially this is a difficult scenario to get into and the scenario also seems to take on elements of the Dreamlands before coming back to reality. Nevertheless, there are some nice set pieces that move it along and get the investigation moving along into a bruising finale.

The second scenario is both a much more traditional and a more familiar affair. Inspired by the craze for all things Ancient Egyptian that followed the 1922 opening of Tutankhamen’s tomb – and also by certain urban legends – “The Terror from the Museum” by Brian Sammons is another tale of “revenge from beyond the grave.” This mania is brought to New York in decidedly grisly fashion as the consequences of a recent visit to Egypt comes back to bite a number of academics. It feeds into a heady, movie-like mix that combines xenophobia, a particularly pulp villain, and a certain Mythos artefact that makes its second appearance here. At its worst, this scenario could be a morass of clichés, but fortunately, the author lifts “The Terror from the Museum” above the clichés and leaves the Keeper with an interesting paradox as to the nature and status of the aforementioned artefact.

If “To Awaken What Never Sleeps” literally brings New York alive, then C. Michael Hurst’s “The Fishers of Men” brings it to life by taking player and Keeper alike into the vibrant hotbed that is Harlem. The death of Doctor Harold Bejoujou, a local religious leader and noted manufacturer of the tonic ‘Dr. Harry’s Enlightenment’, brings the investigators to his funeral and an interview with his wife who believes that he did not commit suicide as the police believe. Getting the investigators involved in this scenario will not be easy, both because of the subject of race and the somewhat closed nature of the scenario. A mixed race group of investigators would go some way to alleviate this problem. Once involved though, they find themselves mixed up in community politics and strange magic. Its climax feels absurdly theatrical, but overall, this feels like a well-judged treatment of Harlem.

“The Tenement” by Oscar Rios takes the investigators to the heart of a very New York problem – the slum tenements and slum landlords of Hell’s Kitchen. The investigators are hired by a well-meaning lawyer to prove a case against a slum landlord, Mister Edmund Grey. This involves their having to living in one of his buildings, the Buckley Arms, and persuading the much put upon tenants to give statements as to their ill treatment and the conditions in the building. This involves lots of dog work upon the part of the investigators as try and persuade their new, and often, recalcitrant neighbours. These NPCs are lightly drawn, but are no less interesting, so the Keeper should have roleplaying each and every one of them. As they gather evidence, Mister Grey becomes aware of the investigators’ efforts, the conditions in the tenement seem to worsen even as he sends in his muscle to coerce them. The climax to this well-written affair is shockingly deadly, so the investigators will need to follow up every lead if they are to be forewarned and thus have any chance of survival.

Mikael Hedberg’s “A Night at the Opera” is a grand treatment of a subject familiar to Call of Cthulhu, the performance of Massa di Requiem per Shuggay, and indeed, it is a grandiose affair. The investigators receive tickets for the inaugural performance of a new opera at the Metropolitan Opera House, a performance that will also be attended by the rich and famous, such as Zelda Fitzgerald and John D. Rockefeller, JR. As the evening progresses – the events of the scenario literally playing out over the course of just a few hours – the observant investigators will begin to notice strange events occurring, and as the ones to have seen them, it is up to them to prevent the full ramifications of the opera being performed coming to fruition. Although it could be said that the scenario is too linear, there is much for the investigators to do within the confines of the Metropolitan Opera House and it is only a short scenario anyway. Indeed, this is a race to save not just everyone at the performance, but also the whole of New York all played out in one single evening, one single session.

Rounding out Tales of the Sleepless City is the oddly titled “Értóng hé Kūqì de Mǔqīn” or “The Child and the Weeping Mother”, co-authored by Tom Lynch and Scott David Aniolowski. Like the earlier “The Fishers of Men”, this scenario takes place in one of New York’s communities, but Chinatown rather than Harlem. The investigators are asked by a local family to find its missing daughter. Yet both father and mother have something to hide and the investigators’ progress will be hampered by the intransigence of the tiny community and the criminal politics, if they tread carefully, both allies and informants can be found. As with the earlier “The Terror from the Museum”, this is a pulpy treatment of the exotic, though one with a nod towards the Wuxia genre rather than the horror movies from Universal Pictures.

Coming to the end of Tales of the Sleepless City, it is far from easy to find fault with its contents. Such faults as there are can only be described as minor. It could be argued that the layout is too busy in places, but to be fair, everything about the layout evokes the Jazz Age in which its six scenarios are set. In places the tone of scenarios feels uneven – more so with “The Terror from the Museum” and “The Fishers of Men”, but these are minor marks against what is otherwise a solid selection of scenarios.

With Tales of the Sleepless City, Miskatonic River Press continues its sure-footed treatment of the Mythos in Call of Cthulhu – five books on and the publisher has yet to put foot wrong in its support for the game. There is not a poor scenario amongst the six in this anthology, such that it would seem unreasonable to highlight any one of them over another, but it would not be unreasonable to say that the second three scenarios are more interesting than the first three. At its worst, Tales of the Sleepless City provides a solid set of playable scenarios that present some fine shocks and scares; at its best, Tales of the Sleepless City does not tell what New York was like in the Roaring Twenties for Call of Cthulhu, but actually shows you what it was like.

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Sin & Sanity

12:45 PM | Labels: , , , ,


Before you get to the review you need to know something. I am listed in the credits in the book that I am reviewing and I am an editor for its publisher, Sixtystone Press. I tell you this because I do not want you to think I am being unprofessional in reviewing a book that in some small way I worked on. You see, I originally wrote the review after I was asked to simply read through the manuscript and give my opinion on it. At that time, there was no point in my publishing the review as the book was a long way from publication. That was in August, 2011 and the best part of a year before Sixtystone Press asked me to be its editor. In the meantime, very little of the book has been changed from what I originally saw, and what has been changed amounts to just little things. For example, a weapon was changed from one make and model to another – and that on the basis of my being part of the peer review group and then editor on another Sixtystone Press title, Investigator Weapons, Volume Two, but at its heart, this is the review that I wrote in August, 2011.


–oOo– 

Published by Sixtystone Press, Nameless Cults Volume One: Lost in the Lights – A Call of Cthulhu sourcebook of cult horror is a scenario and sourcebook for Call of Cthulhu set in the modern day. It is the first volume in the publisher’s ‘Neue Unaussprechliche Kulte’, a series detailing modern day cults that are ready to run for any Keeper of Arcane Lore. As a contemporary set scenario and sourcebook, it is not written for use with Chaosium’s Cthulhu Now, as that book is at best obsolete, but it does include notes so that it be can run as part of a Delta Green campaign using the sourcebooks from Pagan Publishing.

What strikes you first about Lost in the Lights is its use of colour. It is surprising to note that in over thirty years of published Call of Cthulhu titles that not one of them has ever been published in full colour. Now there have been titles which include colour plates and titles that used spot colour, but none have used full colour. At least not for Call of Cthulhu books published in English, until now that is. Lost in the Lights makes use of full colour, in particular in its very modern hand outs which include a mobile telephone screen and television screen shots, but for the most part it employs spot colour and does so with a vibrant pink and an equally vivacious purple throughout the book. The effect is startling and certainly gives it feel that matches the contents of Lost in the Lights.

The reason why that vibrancy matches the contents of Lost in the Lights is because its scenario, “Invisible Sun”, is set in Las Vegas and a literary Las Vegas at that. The scenario presents a very contemporary investigation into a cult that is also fully described in the pages of Lost in the Lights, as well as “A Brief Discussion of Other Las Vegas Weirdness.” This is a mere introduction to the setting rather than a full guide to Sin City and its environs, but it is more than enough to intrigue the Keeper. The cult described in Lost in the Lights is the Keepers of the Primal Song, whose members worship the Lesser Outer God, of Shabbith-Ka. First appearing in “What Goes Around, Comes Around,” in Issue #8/9 of PaganPublishing’s The Unspeakable Oath (later reprinted in Pagan Publishing’s The Resurrected Vol. 3: Out of the Vault), the cult here is expanded to present its goals, origins, and practices from antiquity until the here and now. What marks the Keepers of the Primal Song as a cult of singular note – held for a very long time – is the fact that the cult is wholly insular, wholly introverted, and has no plans on world domination. This makes for a very different cult, one that possesses a horrible machismo in the way in which its members worship Shabbith-ka – such that you have to feel sorry for any investigators exposed to it – and as seen in “Invisible Sun,” also makes for a very different threat and a very different type of investigation.

“Invisible Sun” is a lengthy scenario that draws heavily from contemporary pop culture. The scenario and the investigation begins with a missing girl – Angelique Adams who ran away to be star. She never made it, not did she make it home from Las Vegas, sending a text message in which she said she had been trying to escape from some “cult wackos”! Now her father wants the investigators to find her and bring her home, or if that proves impossible, bring anyone responsible for harming her to justice.

The investigation plunges the investigators into the strange and seedy world of Las Vegas and beyond. It throws them up against a horribly modern environmental hazard as well as into a facedown with the ultimate sinner in Sin City. He is a late sixties teeny-bopper heartthrob who just happens to own a casino, and as a casino owner, is very respectable and law abiding. Which throws up a very interesting challenge for the investigators – doing anything that investigators, or indeed player characters, would normally do in a Call of Cthulhu scenarios, will bring them to the attention of the casino security and thus to the LVPD. Therefore, the investigators will need to be a whole lot more circumspect than normal if they go looking for ways to get into limited access areas, carrying concealed firearms, questioning staff members, and so on. Which makes getting anywhere with the investigation in “Invisible Sun” much more of a challenge than is the norm. The author discusses numerous means of the investigators circumventing, though his inclination, and that of the scenario and literary Las Vegas, is to run this as a caper, even a heist movie. Various options cover the type of caper that the players might come up with for their investigators, the simplest of them being quite technical, the easiest being the most kitsch and perhaps the most fun to roleplay. Preferably with the investigators dressed as Elvis…

“Invisible Sun” then, is a very kitsch affair. It is also veers into the psychedelic for a potentially very nasty encounter that draws from one of H.P. Lovecraft’s better filmed short stories. If there is an issue with “Invisible Sun”, then it is this kitschy nature. Some of it is unavoidable. The scenario is set in Las Vegas after all, a town hardly known for its austerity. The easiest means of conducting the investigation is for both Keeper and players alike is to embrace the kitsch and the camp, and use it to their best advantage. Further, for all of the gaudy extravagance of Sin City, the Las Vegas of “Invisible Sun” is a filmic or televisual one, the author suggesting further kitsch elements that can be drawn from both mediums.

Once past the kitsch, Lost in the Lights is perhaps one of the most challenging scenarios to be published in some years. Challenging because it sets the normal mode of investigation in a Call of Cthulhu scenario very up against the modern world, its technologies and in particular, its approach to security, post-September 11th, 2001. This requires careful handling by the Keeper and careful detective work on the part of the players and their investigators.

Lost in the Lights is rounded out with four appendices. The first of these covers recommended viewing, listening, and reading, the movies listed certainly being useful given how central a role that the caper that plays in “Invisible Sun;” while the second lists all of the character write-ups, maps, and hand outs. The third provides a guide to weird Las Vegas, covering everything from Area 51 and the Atomic Testing Range to the Liberace Museum and urban legends of the area. It is not extensive, but it does give a good starting point for further research. This being a modern-set scenario, the first question that many a Call of Cthulhu Keeper will ask, “Can I use ‘Invisible Sun’ with Delta Green?” Pleasingly, the last of the volume’s appendices deals with this very question, addressing it scene by scene.

Behind its gaudy cover – which actually makes sense once you have read the book, but might put the initial viewer off – Lost in the Lights is an eye-catching book. In addition to its use of colour, the layout is clean and thoughtful, and the maps all well done. The hand outs are all well-chosen and designed, with a Wikipedia entry in particular giving the book a pleasingly contemporary touch.

It has been no little wait for this book to be released, just as it has been no little wait for the author, Jeffrey Moeller to deliver on the promise he gave us with the Monograph, The Primal State. I wait to see what he creates next with great interest… In the meantime, what he and Sixtystone Press present us with in Nameless Cults Volume One: Lost in the Lights – A Call of Cthulhu sourcebook of cult horror is a consistently challenging scenario for Keeper and players alike. It combines an interesting cult and an entertaining scenario that focuses on interaction and investigation in a highly contemporary setting.

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Back to Africa

12:21 PM | Labels: , , , , , ,


Railway-themed board games, or Train Games as they are known, such as the 18XX series, Age of Steam, Railways of the World, Empire Builder, and so on, are all about their maps. Many of the expansions for these games come in the form of maps as the terrain presented on each board presents the players with challenges anew when it comes to making connections between each map’s destinations. Ticket to Ride is something of a latecomer to the concept, its publisher, Days of Wonder, having preferred to put out new core games like Ticket to Ride: Europe and Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries that stand alone rather than new boards that expand upon one of the core games. So the Ticket to Ride Map Collection series has been something of a breath of fresh air.

To date, Days of Wonder has published three volumes of the Ticket to Ride Map Collection. The first, Ticket to Ride Map Collection vol. 1:Team Asia and Legendary Asia added mountains as a new terrain and expanded the number of possible players from five to six players with a team play element. The second, Ticket to Ride Map Collection vol. 2: India and Switzerlandreprinted the Switzerland board from its original release in 2007 together with a new board for India that advanced the series’ timeline into the Edwardian age. Late in 2012 these were joined by the third and latest in the series, Ticket to Ride Map Collection vol. 3: The Heart of Africa.

As with the other titles in the series, Ticket to Ride Map Collection vol. 3: The Heart of Africa requires a base set to play, either Ticket to Ride or Ticket to Ride: Europe. Unlike other titles in the series, Ticket to Ride Map Collection vol. 3: The Heart of Africa only includes the one new map board and set of rules rather than two. So in comparison, it has to do the work of two new boards to be interesting, let alone challenging. The good news is that The Heart of Africa is challenging…

Ticket to Ride Map Collection vol. 3: The Heart of Africaconsists of the new map board, forty-eight Destination Tickets, forty-five Terrain Cards, a new type of card, plus the twelve-page rules booklet, which includes the expansion’s rules in ten different languages. The map itself does not depict the whole of Africa, but rather the South and the West of the continent as far North as Nigeria in the West and Sudan in the East. Thus it does not include North Africa nor does it include the Horn of Africa. As with the Switzerland map, The Heart of Africa map includes destinations that are countries rather towns or cities. These are limited in number though, consisting of Nigeria, Tchad, and Sudan on the map’s northern edge. These destinations are reflected in the game’s Destination Tickets.

Physically, The Heart of Africa map reflects the Ticket to Ride line’s chronological progression. The original board game is set in the 1890s whereas the India map from Ticket to Ride Map Collection vol. 2: India and Switzerland is set in the Edwardian period. The Heart of Africa map is placed in the 1920s, as reflected in the artwork with its motorcar and its biplane. Elsewhere, the art on the map has a dry, dusty feel apart from the rich illustrations accorded to the country destinations depicted at the northern edge of the board.

Most Ticket to Ride maps reflect the type of terrain they depict in the routes that the players have to claim in order to fulfil their Destination Tickets. Thus, on the Switzerland map from Ticket to Ride Map Collection vol. 2: India and Switzerland, there are a lot of mountain routes that the player must claim if he has to connect to any of the destinations in the South of the country or over the border in Italy. Similarly, the map of Scandinavia from Ticket to Ride Nordic Countries has a lot ferry routes reflecting the difficulty of reaching certain destinations and the fact that the Baltic Sea divides the various countries on the map. The map in Ticket to Ride Map Collection vol. 3: The Heart of Africa does reflect the type of terrain it depicts in the type of routes available. Indeed, besides the standard type of route, there is only one other incidence of another type of route on the map, that of the ferry route to Madagascar.



So if The Heart of Africa map does not reflect the difficulty of its terrain in the types of routes it depicts, then how does it do it? It does so by grouping the route colours according to terrain type. So rather than distribute route colours across the map, here they are grouped – orange, red, and yellow for Desert and Savannah routes; blue, green, and purple for Forest and Jungle routes; and black, grey, and white for Cliff and Mountain routes. These groups are organised geographically, with the Forest and Jungle routes across the middle of the map, the Desert and Savannah routes to North and South of this, and the Cliff and Mountain routes to the North and the East.

This grouping has a strong influence on play. First, it will have players scrabbling for Train Cards of the same colour if they want to make connections through the terrain types. The map has multiple incidences of routes of one colour being connected to a destination out of which leads a route of the same colour. This is only exacerbated by the lack of double routes in the interior of the map – all of its double routes are located along the coast of the continent. The map also has very few grey routes that can be claimed using any colour Train Cards. Second, it will be obvious to the other players what terrain group a player a wants to claim a route from the colour of the Train cards he is drawing.

The Terrain Cards specifically work with the route groupings and so come in three types – Desert and Savannah, Forest and Jungle, and Cliff and Mountain. When a player claims a route he can also play a Terrain Card (or two Terrain Cards if the route is longer) that matches the colour of the route to double the value of the points scored for the route. He must have as many Terrain Cards of that terrain grouping as any other player – this is known because they have to be kept face up on the table where everyone can see them. Alternatively, Locomotive or Wild Train Cards can be used instead of Terrain Cards. Once played, Terrain Cards and Wild Cards are discarded.

Game set up is little different to that of other Ticket to Ride games. Each player receives his forty-five trains and four Train Cards as usual. He also receives four Destination Tickets, of which he must keep two, and a single, random Terrain Card. Two Terrain Cards are placed face up as well as the usual Train Cards. When a player decides to draw cards during his turn, he can choose to draw Terrain Cards as well, so either two Train Cards or two Terrain Cards, or one of each. Once drawn, a player’s Terrain Cards are placed face up so that everyone can see them.

Both the need to have Terrain Cards and the need to have as many Terrain Cards as another player adds the need to make more decisions in the game. Drawing more Terrain Cards gives the potential for a player to outscore his rivals, though this may come at the cost of drawing Train Cards and expending them to claim routes. Or should a player ignore the Terrain Cards and grab routes before anyone else does rather wait to score double points. In addition, a player can draw more Terrain Cards in order to have as many as his fellow players or more as a means to stop them scoring double with their Terrain Cards. In other words, the Terrain Cards can be used as means to block other players.

Over the course of the Ticket to Ride line, the distribution of the routes across the various map boards have got tighter and tighter and thus more competitive. The India map from the previous expansion, Ticket to Ride Map Collection vol. 2: India and Switzerland being the most recent evidence of that. With The Heart of Africa, the map is equally as tight and competitive if not more so because of the lack of the double routes and the grouping of the route colours. The tight nature and competitive play of the Ticket to Ride Map Collection vol. 3: The Heart of Africa map is enhanced by the use of the Terrain Cards making this the most challenging version of Ticket to Ride yet.

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Call of Cthulhu Classics I

9:32 AM | Labels: , , , , , ,


From one week to the next, Reviews from R’lyeh writes reviews of new games and supplements with an emphasis on Call of Cthulhu and other games of Lovecraftian investigative horror. This series concentrates on Call of Cthulhu and other games of Lovecraftian investigative horror, but not those recently released, but those of the past. There have been innumerable titles published over the years and this is an opportunity to appraise them anew, often decades after they were first released.

The series begins with perhaps one of the most important scenarios ever published for Call of Cthulhu. For it is important to note that without Trail of the Loathsome Slime, Chaosium might never have published Cthulhu Now, and that without Cthulhu Now, Pagan Publishing, might never have published Delta Green. The genesis of Trail of the Loathsome Slime though, began with author Marcus L. Rowland, now best known for his RPGs, Forgotten Futures and Diana: Warrior Princess. During the 1980s he was known as a prolific contributor to the British roleplaying magazine, White Dwarf, writing numerous scenarios and articles, many of which still stand up to scrutiny a quarter of a century later. White Dwarf had started in 1979, but it would be four years before it would provide any support for Call of Cthulhu, a roleplaying game which by then was two years old. That first support would be “Cthulhu Now! - Call of Cthulhu in the 1980s”, which appeared in White Dwarf #42 (June 1983), followed by “Cthulhu Now! - Part 2: Mini-Scenario outlines for Call of Cthulhu in the 1980s” in the next issue. The first part focused on skills and weapons, whilst the second outlined Dial 'H' for Horror, Trail of the Loathsome Slime, and Cthulhu Now! as mini-scenarios.

Marcus L. Rowland’s two-part series set the tentacles of the Call of Cthulhu community aflailing. For as a roleplaying game, Call of Cthulhu was then a historical piece. It was set in the Roaring Twenties, the same period when most of H.P. Lovecraft’s fiction was written. The idea that it could be set in periods other than that of the 1920s and especially one that the readers of White Dwarf – myself included, White Dwarf #42being my first purchased issue – were intimately familiar was a revelation. The popularity and the feedback on the series was enough to get Games Workshop to ask Rowland to write a scenario for publication based on the material he had published in White Dwarf. The result was Trail of the Loathsome Slime, a scenario published for contemporary Call of Cthulhu in 1985 that would prefigure Chaosium’s Cthulhu Now by two years.

The scenario primarily takes place in the South Atlantic in late 1983, early 1984, not long after the conclusion of the Falklands Conflict, but it begins in London. The investigators are contacted by Russell Corey, an American clairvoyant and investigator of the occult and the mysterious, although not necessarily of the Mythos. He has revelations that he wishes to share, but by the time that the investigators make the agreed upon appointment, Corey is dead and the police have the building cordoned off. Getting into Corey’s flat to find out what he wanted to share is the scenario’s first challenge.

If the investigators are successful, then they learn that Corey believed that the disappearance just before the Falklands Conflict, of the Delta Pioneer, a research vessel belonging to the British Bird Preservation Society is connected to the activities of a Satanist who was executed in 1927. Corey’s researches had revealed that the Satanist was on Griffon Island in the early 1920s, the very island where the Epsilon Pioneer, the sister ship to the Delta Pioneer, is headed in the New Year. Located in the British Antarctic Zone, Griffon Island is home to the Lesser Barbed Penguin, the population of which was reduced by an oil spill the decade before and the recovery of which, the British Bird Preservation Society monitors annually.

Of course, the investigators have to obtain berths aboard the Epsilon Pioneer, either as part of the British Bird Preservation Society’s scientific survey team or as member of the ship’s complement. This is the scenario’s second challenge. If they are successful, the trip south is uneventful, whereas the arrival at the island is! Something sends everyone aboard the ship into a murderous frenzy, and in the chaos, the ship is grounded on the island’s rocky shore. Once the survivors are ashore what worries them most is not the fact that they are temporarily stranded on an island with thousands upon thousands of birds, but the fact that island has been scoured of all life except for a few scared looking penguins…

To support Trail of the Loathsome Slime, several new skills are reprinted from White Dwarf #42 – including the use of Phone Phreaking, which certainly dates the affair. The scenario’s maps and plans are very clear, and the three hand outs are nicely done, one reflecting the computer technology of the time. That said, another hand out, that of a pamphlet from the British Bird Preservation Society about its work on Griffon Island would have been a nice addition. There would have been space as some of the hand outs and maps take more space than they really need to. In addition, the scenario does include notes on converting it to the 1920s, essentially transforming it into a much simpler scenario with little in the way of technology for the investigators to rely upon. It should also surprise no one that it also has the feel of a period piece, as evidenced in particular by the description of the computer technology, let alone some of the minor events that occur because of where the scenario is primarily set.

For the most part, Trail of the Loathsome Slime is an action orientated affair, whether that involves breaking into Corey’s cordoned off flat, fighting off the frenzied crew and passengers of the Epsilon Pioneer, or facing down the true danger to be found on Griffon Island, with relatively little in the way of investigation. The challenges it presents in the early parts of the scenario suffer from having too few solutions, at least as written, and as consequence, a Keeper might be forced to hand waving those obstacles should the players roll badly. Also, it is perhaps too straight forward a scenario and feels very much like an early effort upon the part of an author whose later work would show more depth, more detail, and more sophistication. “Draw the Blinds on Yesterday” (White Dwarf #63) and “Curse of the Bone” (White Dwarf #86) are both highly regarded examples of Rowland’s later scenarios and showcase Rowland's writing to better effect.

At its heart, Trail of the Loathsome Slime still has the feel of a magazine scenario. Which is no surprise given its origins as an outline in White Dwarf #43. It thus feels underwritten more than anything else, but a Keeper today would no problem expanding upon the scenario given wealth of research material he would have at his fingertips. Nevertheless, Trail of the Loathsome Slime is certainly not without its charms, and of course, there is the matter of the title and in that, Trail of the Loathsome Slime is simply joyous in its use of a bad pun.

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Monster Filler Thriller

4:20 PM | Labels: , , , , ,

Being a city planner in Tokyo must be a thankless task. After all, every few months, the city and its infrastructure gets stomped, disintegrated with blasts of radioactive breath, pulverised with claws and tails, and otherwise converted from town planner’s big dream of city life into dusty piles of rubble. The culprits are Kaiju – big monsters, of which Godzilla is the most famous. Of course, all this is beneath of the notice of the monsters – well, they are big monsters – as King of Tokyo proves.

This is a light dice and resource management game in which between two and six Kaiju battle each other to be the one and only “King of Tokyo.” They include a big ape – “The King”, a giant humanoid crab – “Kraken”, a large lizard – “Gigazaur”, a colossal alien robot – “Alienoid”, an ernormous draconic robot – “Meka Dragon”, and a lapine “Cyber-Bunny”. Suitable for players aged eight and up, the game is quick to teach, looks good, and plays in half an hour or so.

Designed by Richard Garfield – the designer of Magic the Gathering and RoboRally – and published by Iello Games, King of Tokyo consists of a card and a standee for each of the Kaiju; a set of eight custom dice; sixty-six Power Cards; a pile of Power Cubes; plus a board and the rulebook. The latter represents the city of Tokyo and is marked with two spaces, one labelled Tokyo City, the other Tokyo Bay. The space labelled Tokyo Bay only comes into play when there are five or more players. The Kaiju boards are marked with two dials, one for Victory Points, the other for the Kaiju’s Health. The Power Cards grant a Kaiju special powers or bonuses, some of which are discarded after use, whilst others are permanent. Sample permanent powers include Fire Breathing” which lets a Kaiju blast his neighbours with fire each time he inflicts damage, whilst “Giant Brain” allows a Kaiju to reroll the dice four times instead of three. Sample discard powers include “Frenzy” which lets a Kaiju take another turn immediately after his current one, whilst he gains two Victory Points and heals three damage taken with “Nuclear Power Station.” Each Power Card has a cost which is paid in Power Cubes. Some of these Power Cards possess corresponding tokens indicating their use.

At the heart of the game are the dice. There are six of these, in black marked with a lurid green with the numbers one through three, plus a heart, a lightning bolt, and a claw. In addition to these six standard dice, there are another two dice, these in lurid green, but marked in black with the same numbers and symbols. These green dice become available when a Kaiju purchases certain cards.

On his turn a Kaiju rolls the six standard dice. He can roll each die a further two times if he does not like the result, but must keep the rolls after that. For every set of three of the same number, a Kaiju gains Victory Points – more if he rolls sets with more of the same number of them. For each Claw rolled, a Kaiju inflicts a point of Damage; for each Heart rolled he heals a point of his Health; and for each Lightning Bolt, he gains a Power Cube. Power Cubes can be spent to purchase Power Cards.

How a Kaiju inflicts Damage on his fellow Kaiju is where King of Tokyo gets interesting. A Kaiju outside of Tokyo can attack and inflict Damage on the Kaiju who is in Tokyo, but the Kaiju who is in Tokyo can attack and inflict Damage on the Kaiju who are not in Tokyo. Thus the Kaiju who is in Tokyo is likely to be attacked again and again – and worse, he cannot heal himself through the use of dice. So what then, is the advantage of remaining in Tokyo? A Kaiju gains Victory Points by being in Tokyo, but he can leave any time that he takes Damage, his attacker taking his place in Tokyo.

King of Tokyo is won either by amassing twenty Victory Points or being the last Kaiju standing.

Essentially, King of Tokyo is especially luck based, and at first glance appears to involve very little in the way of tactics or decision making. True, there is little in the way of a tactical element to the game – does a Kaiju attack or not? The game does involve more in the way of decision making though, and it all comes down to the dice rolls and whether or not a Kaiju can roll the symbols on the dice that he wants, or as the game proceeds… needs. During the opening stage of the game, a Kaiju will want to inflict as many Claws as he can to inflict as much Damage as possible on his fellow Kaiju, to gain as many Victory Points as possible, and to gain sufficient Power Cubes to gain those all-important Power Cards. As the game progresses and a Kaiju suffers Damage, then he will want to roll Hearts in order to regain Health. Of course, this is what a Kaiju might want to roll on the dice, what he actually rolls and decides to keep is another matter…

King of Tokyo is a simple, throwaway filler of a game. It is easy to learn and play, and it is a fun family game with an obviously joyous love of its theme that shines through in its components and “beat ‘em up” style of play. As much as will enjoy that theme, more serious gamers will quickly become aware of the game’s flaws. First, as much as it is a game designed for between two and six kaiju, it plays poorly with two and it really only plays well when there are four or more involved. Second, the game always comes down to a battle between two Kaiju as it is a knock-out game. Once a Kaiju has been knocked out, he cannot re-join the game and so has to wait for the game to end with nothing to do except cheer for one Kaiju or another. Third, the powers on the Power Cards are far from balanced, and since this is a luck-based game, getting the right combination of Power Cards can make a Kaiju nigh unstoppable…

Ultimately, whether you like King of Tokyo comes down to whether or not you like the theme enough to compensate for the luck factor. If so, then the game is fun, it is easy to teach, and a joyously silly filler thriller.

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