In the last blog I wrote about my  nostalgia for the 1990s iteration of Vampire: the Masquerade and how I was experimenting with using Matthew Skail's The Blood Hack to replicate V:tM's setting without its handfuls of d10s and burdensome lore.

Then one thing led to another, as it does, and before I knew it, I seemed to have penned a new Hack-inspired RPG trans-cloning V:tM as an OSR project. Hello, The Vampyre Hack.

I've written a lot (like here and here) about my admiration for Matthew Skail's Blood Hack, so I had to think carefully about adapting it into a Hack of my own. Firstly, I don't want to cut into the chap's revenues or appropriate his ideas as my own. His innovation of the Morality Usage Die that gets bigger as it exhausts, meaning it grows quickly while it's a feeble little d6 or d8 but slows down as it turns into a monstrous d12 or d20 - that's just genius. His system for Blood Magic is very elegant and treating Blood as a usage die rather than a point pool, well that's inspired too.

One point of view would be, given my love for the game and, in the words of Cogsworth:

On the other hand, there are things Blood Hack is crying out for. Matthew Skail's game takes clear inspiration from V:tM but heads off in a different direction. It's not about angst and politics, it's about kicking supernatural ass in the middle of the night. There are only four clans and they are broad templates rather than factions or institutions. The setting imagines loose cabals of vampires scrapping with other denizens of the shadows rather than city-wide conspiracies. There are lots of typos and some of the rules Matthew has himself imported from other Hack rpgs are rather undigested.

But the main reason is that I want to run a '90s-style Vampire campaign, but using a rules set inspired by the Blood Hack. So I want the classic array of Clans - ugly Nosferatu, aesthetic Toreador, lunatic Malkavians, wizardly Tremere, etc. - and I want Princes and Masquerade and Ghouls and Diablerie. 

This project started off as a Blood Hack expansion or supplement - just a few pages, really, saying "Here';s how you could port V:tM Clans into the Blood Hack." But once I started doing that all sorts of implications emerged and I found myself constructing something more like a brand new game.

Let me take you through it ...

The first Hack RPG I designed was a root-and-branch rethink of Wraith: the Oblivion, one of White Wolf's horror RPGs from the same stable as Vampire: the Masquerade. I never made my peace with Wraith, so the Ghost Hack was an opportunity to do Wraith as (I felt) it should have been done.

Among the new directions Ghost Hack took was making Wraiths vulnerable to iron and salt and I designed a scenario, Upon A Midnight Dreary, in which a team of ghost hunters secure a haunted house with strips of salt-encrusted tape along the walls and iron chains on doors. PC Ghosts find it difficult to move around unless they can influence the living to disrupt these barriers.

Matthew Skail similarly departs from the White Wolf playbook in Blood Hack: his vampires cast no reflections and don't even register on film, photographs or over telephone communication - rather like the wonderfully elusive vampires in the intense '90s UK TV series Ultraviolet.

Likewise, Skail's vampires are vulnerable to silver and holy symbols generally - the more so as their Morality Usage Die gets larger. Meanwhile, vampiric 'Disciplines' get dropped and, other than the starting build mandated by your Clan/Class, your vampire can be designed with any powers you want.

Following this logic, I could have taken the Vampyre Hack down the same path, breaking away from the World of Darkness tropes and exploring vampires from a wider folkloric perspective. But on this occasion, I was more interested in creating an OSR analogue for Vampire: the Masquerade - in effect, a way of playing 90s-style V:tM with d20s, classic 6 stats and character classes. 

Like I said, it's a retro-trans-clone.

Mark Rein-Hagen, the creator of Vampire: the Masquerade, has many talents, but not the least is his flair for evocative naming conventions. His undead secret society is the Camarilla (meaning a political clique, but with connotations of medieval Spanish cloisters) and vampiric cannibalism is Diablerie (a French word for mischief with heavy hints of Satanism). The vampire Clans Brujah (inspired by the Spanish for 'witch'), Gangrel (a Scots word for a vagrant) and Nosferatu (German for vampire) along with the fear-frenzy of Rötschreck (complete with unnecessary 'metal umlaut') show off his linguistic range, while the vampire ancients are Antediluvians and Methuselahs, highlighting Biblical erudition.

A clone RPG is going to feature 7 vampire lineages analogous to Rein-Hagen's Clans, vampiric cannibalism and an undead secret society. New names are important. No one wants "Generic Vampire Wizards" and "Arty Vampire Socialite Types."

In Vampyre Hack, there are 7 Tribes or 'les Tribus Éternelles,' so the best name for their ruling coalition is the Heptarchy - a delightful Greek word more commonly used to describe the 7 Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Dark Ages Britain. Sticking with Greek, vampiric cannibalism is Necrophagy, which is both horribly on-the-nose and slightly Shakespearean for 'eaters of the dead.'

Chorazin is a town cursed by Jesus in Matthew 11: 20-24. It's also referenced in M.R. James' unsettling vampire story Count Magnus (1904) where the Devil-worshipping Count makes a pilgrimage to the accursed town.  It seems a fine name for a cabal of medieval wizards who have turned themselves into vampires, hence La Tribu Chorazin or the Chorazinites.

Rein-Hagen seems to have invented 'Malkavian' out of his own head, but I went to Celtic folklore to find the Dullahan. In Ireland, the Dubhlachan isn't so much a vampire as a headless horseman but it can be a goblin or evil spirit.

It's hard to get anything to match, never mind replace, 'Nosferatu' as the name for a clan of hideous vampires. I drew on Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla (1872), where Karnstein is the lineage of the titular vampiress. It's also the name given to a trilogy of Hammer Horror films (1970-71) so its vampire pedigree is impeccable.

Valeria Messalina was the Emperor Claudius' 3rd wife. She had a reputation for promiscuity and cruelty and, after her grisly death, was sentenced to damnatio memoriae which means being erased from history. She is remembered today with notoriety: a 'Messalina' is a devious and sexually manipulative woman. La Tribu Messalina is my aesthetic sensualist vampyre lineage.

Rein-Hagen seems to have invented 'Ventrue' for his undead aristocrats. It connotes 'vein' or perhaps 'vain' as well as 'true' - unless, of course, it's meant to refer to the 19th century Italian scientist Giovanni Ventruri. I'm going with the former, which is why I chose La Tribu Sangral for my lordly undead family. Yes, 'Sangral' means holy grail but 'Sang Real' means royal blood: I think self-absorbed vampire nobles would relish both meanings.

Tokoloshe is a goblin or demon from Zulu folklore - I went looking for an African name for the Brujah-analogues precisely because that continent was so ill-served by White Wolf in the 1990s - the only explicitly African Clan developed for their game is one devoted to philosophical evil and corruption. La Tribu Tokoloshe has been recast from inveterate troublemakers to a lineage of undead warriors.

Vukodlak is a Slavic vampire/werewolf hybrid, so that's an ideal name for the shapeshifting, wilderness-haunting and werewolf-inspired Tribe (never mind that it was also the name of the Final Boss in 2000's Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption).

Vampyre Hack doesn't end up as an utter pastiche of V:tM, I'm glad to say. Some of the differences are the result of the Hack rules engine and a couple of Matthew Skail's distinctive innovations. For example, vampyres are made distinctive by their character class (i.e. Tribe) but after that they can learn any Blood Gifts they like and this includes Blood Gifts that qualify you to cast spells. Although Chorazin excels at Blood Magic, any vampyre can dabble in it.

Similarly, all vampyres take damage from sunlight, but those with a small Corruption Usage Die (renamed from Morality Die) only take ordinary damage and can stay active a few hours after sunrise or before sunset. As the Die gets bigger, sunlight starts to deal Grave Damage and you fall asleep at sunrise and don't wake up until after sunset. Similarly, holy symbols and consecrated ground start becoming a problem, but don't bother you while you are virtuous.

Likewise, virtuous vampyres only need to feed every two or three nights and just a drop of blood will do; more Corrupt vampires need to feed nightly.

Other differences are my own. In Rein-Hagen's Vampire: the Masquerade, any vampire can create a new vamp by feeding their blood to a corpse or use their blood to turn humans into tough but addicted henchmen called Ghouls. I thought it would be more interesting if these techniques weren't widely understood and have to be purchased as Blood Gifts - and duplicated using Blood Magic - with only the Sangrali getting to do so as an innate ability.

Other changes include making each vampyre Tribe have their own distinctive way of Frenzying, with the Messalines being enraptured by beauty whilst the Karnsteins are repulsed by their own reflections.

I've also introduced a Security Usage Die that represents how much protection or tolerance you have from the wider undead community. As the Die shrinks, your enemies get bolder and hitherto-neutral vampyres start to see you as a threat or an irritant. When it shrinks to zero, a threat manifests. I've got a nice table to prompt ideas - friends and loved ones get menaced, your Lair gets compromised, mooks turn up to fight you, ultimately you get Witch-Hunters or werewolf Lycans on your tail. Yes, it's a Wandering Monster mechanic by another name, but it helps promote the edgy, paranoid feel of a good Vampire RPG, especially as the Die shrinks when you fail CHA or INT tests around mortals or higher level vampyres. If you've drained a mortal (rather than just feeding on a drop of blood) then you can be 'flushed' and appear fully human - and of course the Messalines are 'flushed' most of the time as their class perk.

I created the game to run it myself - I was intending to do a straight V:tM chronicle and refer to everything by Rein-Hagen's names in play. But now that I've written it, I'm rather intrigued by the differences and want to GM this​ version of a vampire campaign, with Chorazin not Tremere and the Heptarchy not the Camarilla.

I wonder how much interest there is out there to do the same? I do feel that Rein-Hagen's wonderful imaginative creation, which was so provocative and teasing when it was first introduced to us in 1991, became congested, codified and overburdened by lore as the Nineties wore on. I want to go back to playing the game the way it felt when I first encountered it. The renaming and the new-but-familiar Hack engine helps me see the old game in a fresh romantic light. Like when the nerdy girl takes off her spectacles.

The other benefit of the Hack approach is that the game becomes a bit more pick-up-and-play. It was never terribly time consuming to create V:tM characters, but treating Clans as actual character classes accelerates things further without distorting the concept. I've added a set of tables in the Appendix that enable you to roll up your own Vampyre Scenarios, complete with the inevitable twists, betrayals and last act reveals. These might help those of you who like roleplaying without a GM!

Currently, you can find Vampyre Hack on drivethrurpg, but I struggle with that site's arrangements for creating and selling physical books, so for that you can get it on Amazon. 

And yes, I'll soon support it with an expansion, revisiting all those other Clans which (to my mind) were rather less successful additions to Vampire: the Masquerade and might benefit from a bit of reinterpretation.

I've been enjoying the expandable card game Vampire The Masquerade: Rivals. There will be a review to follow, but the immediate effect of the game on me and my fellow players has been to make us all want to play Vampire: the Masquerade RPG again!

Ah, V:tM, how do I love thee? Well, let's count the ways. 

V:tM appeared in 1991. I remember discovering it in Virgin Megastore, which (rather bravely) sold RPG products on the high street back then. I was at a bit of a crossroads at that time, recently graduated and married, uncertain about my career direction, having outgrown dungeons (or so I thought back then) and distanced from the RPG crowd I had known at school and university. I was on the edge of Moving On and consigning roleplaying to the category of Dumb Stuff I Did Back In The Day.

​That's when I saw her.

Such an intriguing cover: rose on a cobwebbed slab, bare title, no explanation. On the back cover, just this teasing testimony:

And that was it. That was all you got.

​So of course, I bought it, pulled off the shrinkwrap and settled down to read. And it took me on a rollercoaster: ancient lineages, cannibalistic politics, heady romance, bleak tragedy, punk edginess. No one could read that 1st edition rulebook and not be enchanted by the world it presented. Yes, in the future the World of Darkness that this game introduced would get overcrowded, over-explained and dubiously interpreted. The warning signs were here, with indulgent pieces of fiction introducing each chapter and check-me-out music quotes from rock bands with the right haircuts all over the place. But it was so fresh and innovative, who could care?

The things that V:tM introduced to popular culture can't be understated. If it didn't outright invent the tropes of undead crimelords and business moguls lording it over the neon-lit nights of modern cities from their skyrise lairs, or the immemorial war between vampires and werewolves, or younger vampires rebelling against their millennia-old sires, or the conspiracy that conceals the undead from humanity, or just different clans of vampires with different cultures and signature powers, well, it certainly presented the defining iteration of these concepts, that almost every movie and TV series picked up and ran with, going forward. 

And how nice it would be to go back to that source, back to what it felt like to play Vampire the way it was before they over-complicated things, before the silly one-trick Clans appeared and the Sabbat had its mystery torn away and all the other World Of Darkness games came out, resulting in campaigns where vampires adventured alongside mages and faeries and werewolves and everyone was really just a power-maxed superhero with 'Brooding' dialled up to 11.

All of which is to say that, once you get the bug to go back to play V:tM like it was in the Good Old Days, you get it bad.

Except for one thing. I really don't like the World of Darkness rules system.

I never did like the Great Handfuls of d10s approach, or the arbitrary constellations of Skills and Talents lined up alongside 9 Abilities in 3 tiers, or everything in dumb 5-dot progressions. I really disliked the way combat worked (slow and grindy but with little opportunity to act tactically). Several of the Disciplines were broken and never got fixed to my satisfaction. Yeah, I know, there's a new ruleset out there with special 'Blood Dice' but (i) I don't want to invest in a new version because what I want to play is the original game and (ii) RPGs with bespoke dice irritate me now. 

Where then does that leave me...

​Oh, look what we have here.

Matthew Skail's Blood Hack is on drivethrurpg

I've already covered what I like about Matthew Skail's Blood Hack and this little OSR-style Vampire game inspired me to create some similar games of my own: the Ghost Hack and the Magus Hack.

If I'm going to run a short campaign, set in the world of V:tM but using the Blood Hack's lovely rules (character classes! going up levels! 6 stats! hit points!!!), then some rules tweaks are needed to accommodate the familiar clans and V:tM's distinctive features.

If you're interested in such an adaptation, read on. You'll noticed that, in order to honour some of the interesting features of Blood Hack, I've taken a few liberties with the Clans - such as giving the Tremere an aversion to holy symbols (after all, they're a bunch of medieval wizards who damned themselves to attain immortality), representing Malkavians as possessing a very specific sort of derangement and making Ventrue unusual in being able to create ghouls without using magic. The idea that each Clan has its own specific sort of Frenzy and way of restoring its Frenzy Die appeals to me.

Going up levels likewise is rather different from the way advancement occurs in V:tM, so some assumptions have to be made about what justifies experienced PCs in gaining the powers of Elders and Ancients.

The biggest change is the addition of a new usage die, the Frenzy Die. You roll this when your vampire is exposed to fire, sunlight or blood (if you're starving) and, as usual with Hack RPGs, it gets a size smaller if you roll certain numbers: d6 shrinks to d4 and d4 disappears altogether. Normally, usage dice shrink like this when you roll 1-2, but the Frenzy Die shrinks if you roll the two highest numbers (e.g. 5-6 on a d6).

If the Frenzy Die shrinks, your vampire becomes temporarily deranged (attacking or running away). But here's the thing: each Clan now has its own Frenzy trigger and specific way of responding to that trigger. For example, Toreadors are triggered by beauty and respond by falling into rapt contemplation. Each Clan also has a Resting activity that restores the Frenzy Die to its original size. For example, Toreadors can spend an hour in unhurried contemplation of beautiful things: they don't fall into a rapture and instead refresh the Die. Brujah need half an hour of competitive activity, Tremere an hour of occult research, Gangrel some time being an animal.

​The problems pile up when your Frenzy Die drops to zero (i.e. a d4 exhausts and shrinks). From this point on, if a Frenzy is triggered, you roll your Morality Die instead and that's bad, because no one wants to be rolling their Morality Die in this game (as it exhausts, you lose your humanity).

To create vampires in the style of V:tM, ignore the Blood Hack rule that vampires do not create reflections. Instead of the four classes in BH, use the Clans below. Two new Dice are used with this ruleset.

The Frenzy Die

The Frenzy Die as a d6 and increases by one size at 4th, 7th, 9th and 10th level. The Frenzy Die permanently shrinks by one size the first time a vampire’s Morality Die grows to d10, d12 and d20; if this would shrink the Frenzy Die below d4, increase the Morality Die by one size instead.

The Frenzy Die is rolled under special circumstances for each Clan. However, all vampires must roll the Frenzy Die if they are exposed to fire or sunlight or if they are exposed to blood when their Blood Die is zero.

If the Frenzy Die rolls its highest two numbers, it exhausts (temporarily gets one size smaller) and the vampire is briefly deranged: if exposed to blood, they become ravening and must feed, attacking if necessary; exposure to fire/sunlight means they become craven and flee. 

The Frenzy Die is restored by a day’s rest. It is refreshed once per night if a vampire engages in a Clan-specific restful activity.

If the Frenzy Die is at zero, the vampire must instead make Morality rolls to resist Frenzy.

Frenzy rolls now replace WIS rolls required by your Morality Die.

The Wealth Die

When the vampire makes a purchase, that’s more than pocket change, roll the Wealth Die. A 1-2 means they make the purchase, but they’ve depleted their reserves. Special purchases might require 2 or 3 rolls. Losing the final d4 means they’re out of cash or credit.

At the end of any adventure where a character depleted their Wealth to zero, have them make a roll with their base Wealth Die. On a 1-2, their Wealth Die is treated as one size smaller for the next adventure.

You might create a non-standard PC, like a millionaire Nosferatu or a dead-broke Ventrue. A simple fix is to adjust the Hit Die size up or down one to increase or decrease the Wealth Die.

Clan Brujah are rebels and warriors, both in life and undeath. The Clan founders were philosophers who questioned the nature of society and reality and modern Brujah delight in conflict and change.
Starting HP: d10+4
HP Per Level: 1d10
Weapons & Armour: Any and all
Attack Damage: 1d8/1d6 unarmed
Frenzy: when insulted or frustrated, Brujah become ravening and attack with Advantage for a number of Moments equal to the Frenzy Die roll; rest by spending a half hour engaged in a competitive activity (sport, chess, debating, hunting, etc.).
Wealth Die: d6
Special Features: Gain +1 to their starting STR and DEX.
Brujah are effective warriors while Frenzying (as above) and benefit from Resilience of 3 in this state (in addition to any Resilience they possess normally).
Brujah are potent, regardless of their mortal strength. They possess Might of 1d6 at start.
Brujah are immensely intimidating. On a successful STR Test they can cause crowds of Mortals to part for them and make way. This enables them to run through crowds and also makes guards and sentries give way to them, but this test is at Disadvantage for guards who are Thralls.
Weakness: Brujah are prone to Frenzy and this occurs when the Frenzy Die rolls its highest three (rather than two) scores; e.g. 4, 5 or 6 on a d6 and 2, 3 or 4 on a d4.
Leveling Up: Roll to see if stats increase, roll twice for STR and DEX.

​The vampires of Clan Gangrel are shapeshifters who dwell in the wilds. They claim kinship with Roma travellers and some maintain (uneasy) truces with the feral Lupines.
Starting HP: d8+4
HP Per Level: 1d8
Weapons & Armour: Any, no heavy armour
Attack Damage: 1d8/1d6 unarmed
Frenzy: when in the presence of their totem animals; Gangrel revert to animal behaviour (and Totem Shape, if possible) for a number of Moments equal to the Frenzy Die roll; rest by spending half an hour in Totem Form engaged in ordinary animal behaviour (e.g. hunting, nesting, marking territory).
Wealth Die: d4
Special Features: Gain a +1 to their starting CON and WIS.
Gangrel roll all WIS tests with Advantage when hunting prey, following tracks, or
otherwise surviving in the wilderness.
Gangrel can change into a Totem Shape. This allows them to either turn into a small, fast animal (or one that can fly) such as black cat or bat, or they can take a large, deadly animal form such as a wolf or mountain lion. In a small form, they are fast. When in doubt, a small animal form can always move further than any other class. Initiative is rolled with Advantage, and they need one less move to get to a given range in combat. In deadly form they add +1 damage per level to their unarmed damage roll. They can transform into their Totem Shape once a night for free. Each subsequent transformation calls for a Blood Usage Die roll. Gangrel begin the game with a single small form and a single large form.
Gangrel are resilient and possess 3 points of Resilience at start.
Weakness: Every time a Gangrel Frenzies they grow an animal feature. The number of features is adding to any CHA Test that isn’t based on terror.
Leveling Up: Roll to see if stats increase, roll twice for CON and WIS.

Clan Malkavian are vampiric tricksters, prophets and fools. Their bloodline is blessed (or cursed) with madness.
Starting HP: d8+4
HP Per Level: 1d8
Weapons & Armour: any
Attack Damage: 1d8/1d6 unarmed
Frenzy: when a non-dominant persona takes over; Malkavians enter a Fugue state (wandering off, forgetting about the current activity, ignoring friends) for a number of Moments equal to the Frenzy Die roll (or an Hour if this is due to being OofA); rest includes spending an hour pursuing the interest or agenda of a non-dominant persona
Wealth Die: d6
Special Features: Gain a +1 to their starting WIS and INT.
Malkavians start play with the Lesser Dementation Blood Gift.
Each Malkavian has a divided personality, starting with 4 personas of which one is Dominant. At the start of each night, a randomly determined persona is in charge. You may choose to have the Dominant Persona in charge by passing a WIS test. If the PC is Out of Action (OofA) as a result of non-Killing Damage, they recover on 1d4 HP with no other penalty and a random persona takes charge (make a WIS test at Disadvantage to make the Dominant Persona in charge). While the Dominant Persona is in charge, you may invite any other Persona to take over (but not the other way round).
Personas may perceive themselves to be of different ages, races, genders and backgrounds but
share the same Stats and Blood Usage Die; they have their own Morality Die (when asleep, they obey the Morality Die of the Dominant Persona)
The personas are aware of each other and have access to (but don't necessarily take any interest in) each other's memories and experiences. If persona and physiology do not match (a young girl in the body of an old man), costume and make-up can make a persona convincing to onlookers on a successful INT test (at Disadvantage in extreme cases like an adult and a small child).
Blood Gifts are usable by all the personas. However, each persona other than the Dominant Persona has an extra Blood Gift of their own that the other personas do not.
At 4th level, gain 2 more personas (both with d6 Morality); you may change who the Dominant Persona is. All personas except the Dominant Persona gain an extra Greater Gift of their own.
At 8th level, gain 2 more personas (d6 Morality) and may change who the Dominant Persona is. All personas except the Dominant Persona gain an extra Elder Gift of their own.
Integrating Personas: A PC might be able to integrate two personas into a new combined persona that has access to the Gifts of both and uses a single Morality Die.
Weakness: Each persona has a trigger that causes it to take over – each trigger only occurs once per adventure.
Leveling Up: Roll to see if stats increase, roll twice for WIS and INT.

Dementation
Lesser Dementation: By talking to a victim and making a successful WIS Test, the Malkavian causes the victim to experience hallucinations for a number of Minutes equal to the WIS test roll. The Malkavian gains Advantage on any further actions against the victim and can usually feed on them without the victim realising what is happening. This is at Disadvantage when used against other vampires and does not work at all against Malkavians or vampires who are Frenzied.
Greater Dementation: By plumbing her own madness, a Malkavian can interpret patterns in the world that others miss. The Malkavian gains a clue that is appropriate to the adventure, such as the location of a vampire’s Haven or the identity of a traitor. The Malkavian must then make a Frenzy roll to see if a different persona takes over.
Elder Dementation: The Malkavian must make a Frenzy roll to broadcast their own madness, causing all Mortals and vampires in earshot to enter Frenzy: Mortals become psychotic while vampires act according to the Clan Frenzy.

The hideous Nosferatu are outcasts in vampire society, but their talent for secrecy makes them valuable as spies and information brokers. Despite their monstrous features, many are courteous and humane.
Starting HP: d10+4
HP Per Level: 1d10
Weapons & Armour: Any weapons, medium armour
Attack Damage: 1d8/1d6 unarmed
Frenzy: when confronted by their reflection or filmed image; Nosferatu become craven and for a number of Moments equal to the Frenzy Die roll; rest by spending an hour in the polite company of other Nosferatu (or civilised vampires who do not mind their appearance) – this time must be spent in unhurried conversation or leisure activity, like playing chess or reading books
Wealth Die: d4
Special Features: Gain +1 to their starting CON and WIS.
Nosferatu are resilient and start with 3 points of Resilience. They also start with Beast Voice.
Every Nosferatu enjoys the power of Shadowiness and becomes invisible if they stand still behind even the most minimal cover or in shadows. If they wish to move, they are still unnoticed if they succeed on a WIS test – but this is at Disadvantage if any onlooker has Supernatural Senses.
The humanity of Nosferatu means they start with a d4 Morality Die.
Weakness: Nosferatu are hideous; Mortals react with terror and either flee or attack and even other vampires are uncomfortable around them; CHA Tests that aren’t based on terror automatically fail against Mortals who behold Nosferatu and are at Disadvantage with vampires or with Mortals who cannot see the Nosferatu.
Leveling Up: Roll to see if stats increase, roll twice for CON and WIS.

The ancient Toreador Clan delight in humanity and use their immortality to savour beauty and pleasure. They can be patrons of the arts or else degenerates who seek beauty in suffering and death.
Starting HP: d6+4
HP Per Level: 1d6
Weapons & Armour: Any weapons, medium armour
Attack Damage: 1d6/1d4 unarmed
Frenzy: when they behold something beautiful, Toreador become entranced for a number of Moments equal to the Frenzy Die roll; rest by spending an hour contemplating beautiful things in an unhurried way (no need to roll)
Wealth Die: d8
Special Features: Gain +1 to their starting CHA and DEX.
Toreador roll CHA tests with Advantage when interacting with mortals. This means that even the more monstrous Toreador still possess some ability to interact normally with humans (Advantage cancels Disadvantage as usual).
Toreador can Mesmerize a target by glancing into their eyes. This requires a CHA
check and if successful, the target can do nothing but gaze at the Toreador so long as
they hold the gaze. The Toreador can use this to immediately feed on a victim without
another roll. If they use the delay to attack the target, they automatically gain
Initiative and they attack with Advantage.
When a Toreador feeds on a target during a passionate encounter, they gain 2 Blood
Usage Die steps for each one they take.
Weakness: Each Toreador must choose a type of Beauty they are susceptible to (art, music, sexuality, natural world, architecture, pain, death, etc.); when they Frenzy because of this sort of Beauty they are entranced for an hour.
Leveling Up: Roll to see if stats increase, roll twice for CHA and DEX.

​The Tremere is an order of wizards who became vampires through a magical ritual. Some time in the Middle Ages, they consumed a vampire Ancient, acquiring its powers and earning their status as a Clan.
Starting HP: d6+4
HP Per Level: 1d6
Weapons & Armour: Light weapons only, light armour only
Attack Damage: 1d6/1d4 unarmed
Frenzy: when presented with holy symbols; Tremere become craven and flee for a number of Moments equal to the Frenzy Die roll (most Tremere are vulnerable to the symbols of Christianity but some react to other religions); rest by studying magic (performing rituals, reading spell books, etc) for an hour
Wealth Die: d6
Special Features: Gain a +1 to their starting CHA and INT.
When casting Blood Rituals, a Tremere may use CHA or INT to determine whether they succeed at spell casting. Tremere can cast their level of rituals a night without a need for Blood Usage Die roll (so a sixth level Tremere could cast two level 3 rituals without spending any blood).
Roll with Advantage on INT to avoid the hostile effects of blood rituals.
Tremere begin the game with 1d6+2 levels worth of blood rituals known.
Weakness: Tremere are Thralls to their Clan and must make a CHA Test at Disadvantage to disobey the Clan’s rules or instructions.
Leveling Up: Roll to see if stats increase, roll twice for CHA and INT.

​Clan Ventrue are aristocrats and rulers, both in life and undeath. The Clan founded the Camarilla and masterminded the Masquerade.
Starting HP: d6+4
HP Per Level: 1d6
Weapons & Armour: Medium weapons only, medium armour only
Attack Damage: 1d8/1d6 unarmed
Frenzy: when disrespected or ignored; Ventrue are compelled to rant about their pedigree, ancestry, accomplishments and/or influence for a number of Moments equal to the Frenzy Die roll; rest by spending an hour contemplating symbols of their ranks (ancestral home, coats of arms, portraits, stock portfolios, genealogies or even the company of their Mortal descendants)
Wealth Die: d10
Special Features: Gain +1 to their starting STR and CHA.
Ventrue roll all CHA tests with Advantage when interacting with other vampires.
Once per hour, a Ventrue may drink a swallow of blood and heal themselves of 1d8
points of damage.
The blood of a Ventrue turns Mortals into addicted Thralls: when they feed a Blood Usage roll worth of blood, the mortal will obey any commands the vampire gives them for the next month. Mortal NPCs gain a HD while under the effect of this. This does not work on Mortals who are already Thralls.
Weakness: Ventrue can only drink Blood from Mortals with a specific characteristic (e.g. one sex, racial type, distinctive features, occupation or ancestry)
Leveling Up: Roll to see if stats increase, roll twice for STR and CHA.

​Generations
Generations are not a feature of the BH rules but are important in the V:tM setting. It’s not necessary to record a vampire’s exact generation, just the Generational Division they belong to.

In place of acquiring a Lesser Blood Gift, a vampire PC can declare themselves to be of Potent Blood, making it possible for them to advance to the next Generational Division when they reach 4th level; in place of a Greater Blood Gift, they can be of Elder Blood and are allowed to advance to 7th level when the time comes; instead of taking an Elder Gift, they can claim Ancient Blood and unlock the possibility of advancing to 10th level. The in-game explanation for this could involve discovering more about your true vampire heritage, secret diablerie or receiving blood donations from a more powerful sponsor.

Diablerie allows a vampire PC to go up one level and, if this would take the PC up to a new Generational Division, no Blood Gift needs to be sacrificed.

Ghouls, Thralls, Sires, Blood Bonds and Diablerie

In BH, ‘ghouls’ are Thralls (ghouls) created through Blood Rites. However, Ventrue vampires can create Thralls even without a Ritual. The GM might allow other vampires to acquire a Lesser Blood Gift that enables them to do this too.

In V:tM any vampire can ‘embrace’ a person to create a new vampire. BH doesn’t specify how vampires are created. This ruleset treats embracing a new vampire as something that must be learned rather than an innate vampiric ability. The Embrace is a Lesser Blood Gift that turns a bloodless and recently deceased Mortal into a vampire, through the automatic exhausting of the sire’s Blood Usage Die. The Rite of Damnation is a 2nd level Blood Ritual that is used by the Tremere to create a vampire.

The Blood Bond is an enduring enslavement that occurs after consuming another vampire’s blood for the third time. In BH terms, the enslaved Thrall must make a CHA test at Disadvantage to act against their master’s wishes or interests (or pass a CHA test with Advantage to make a NPC Thrall act in this way) and it is absolutely impossible for the Thrall to attack or use powers against the Master.

Diablerie is consuming a helpless (or OofA) vampire. This requires a series of STR tests; each success reduces the victim’s Blood Usage Die by one step. Once the Blood Usage Die is zero, a final test at Disadvantage is required to consume the victim’s essence; if successful the victim is destroyed and the consumer goes up a level – assuming that the victim was from an earlier Generational Division.

My indie RPG The Hedgerow Hack has been a modest success - more than modest, really, since it has been picked up by Osprey Games and I've just submitted the MS for a much more innovative and expansive game based on The Hedgerow Hack's quirky legendarium. More news on that in due course! For now, here is a scenario for the original Hedgerow Hack, with a Christmas flavour, pitting mystical Briar Knights against two very unpleasant versions of Santa Claus.

There's a lovely physical edition of The Hedgerow Hack but drivethrurpg has a perfectly decent PDF for next to no money at all. If you prefer, you can try this scenario with any Black Hack related system and it lends itself well to OSR retroclones like Labyrinth Lord or Blueholme - or my own The Magus Hack. 

This Christmas scenario features the conflict between two Old Gods: King Christmas and his monstrous older brother Lord Yule. When the Puritans ban Christmas during the Age of Plagues, this interrupts a yearly celebration at a Legendary Location that used to empower King Christmas, leading to his defeat by Lord Yule. Enraged, King Christmas enters the Mortal Ages to punish humans, but finds himself bereft of his power and strength. He is arrested by agents of the Witch Harrow and taken to a witches’ prison for breaking the ban on Christmas activities. Lord Yule also enters the Mortal Ages, growing stronger on the mayhem he and his Winter Goblins create.

King Christmas is a majestic giant over 8 feet tall, with the head and claws of a lion and a silver mane. He wears a long robe of deep green and a hood lined with ermine. He embodies medieval monarchy: proud, bombastic and haughty – although events in this story will change his character. He draws power from the gifts left for him at sacred sites like Hollin Howe (Act II) or left on hearths overnight. He is unaffected by Cold Iron but completely disempowered by the Dolour.

Lord Yule serves the Dark, so if the Malignity Die ever exhausts, he appears to assault the PCs.

Charlie is a 12-year-old boy from 19th century London, brought back through time by Peterkin, a Gypcean boy with a magical talent for traveling the Hedge. Charlie’s parents are in debtors prison, so he lives at a lodging house run by a friend of his family and works to pay rent. He carries his dearest possession: a letter from his parents expressing a confident faith they will be released and will spend Christmas together. Charlie is a brave and curious boy but at the start of the adventure he has been abducted by Dixon’s Deserters (Act II). Charlie will not be killed during this adventure: he has 4hp but if he is reduced to 0 he is simply captured or runs away and becomes lost.

As usual the Briar Knights are summoned by the Light and sent through the Hedge. This is like walking a narrow hedge maze with wintry branches hemming the Briar Knights in on both sides. At clearings in the maze, there are mysterious visions that set out their mission.

The Briar Knights arrive in the Age of Fable in a realm called Winterfae. It’s a snowy wonderland of pines, majestic frozen waterfalls, gleaming icicles and sudden blizzards. Over the treetops can be seen Christmas Castle, but once the PCs arrive there they will find the castle in ruins, with signs of a violent siege that ended with the collapse of its gate. The Malignity Rating is 2 (d10).

King Christmas’ Craft Elfs toiled in his workshops, turning gifts from his mortal devotees into weapons for his war against Lord Yule. The workshops now stand empty, but PCs might discover 1d4 partially-made magical Treasures.

Some Craft Elfs remain in hiding in the workshops; they are less vicious than the Winter Goblins but still inclined to treat Briar Knights as invading enemies.

1d4+1 Craft Elfs: HD 1, 4hp, d4(2)dmg, AP1: create traps
​
Craft Elfs create traps out of any junk to hand and at the start of an encounter every opponent must test WIS or DEX to avoid a trap:

1. A cage imprisons the character until they pass a STR test vs 2d4 HD
2. A missile strikes the character causing 1d8 (4) dmg
3. The character is tripped, losing an attack and taking double damage on the first round
4. The character is encumbered, attacking every other round
5. The character is blinded, attacking at -4
6. An irritant affects the character, who takes 1dmg every round until combat ends

If defeated, Craft Elfs turn into mannequins of holly and mistletoe. If captured or parlayed with, they can reveal the same information as the Winter Goblins, but also that they have no love for their King, who enslaved them in ages past. King Christmas lost his power recently when mortals stopped offering gifts to him, which allowed Lord Yule to gain the upper hand. The King went to exact revenge on the mortals who betrayed him and many Craft Elfs fled with him.

One Elf named Rimenose remains perversely loyal to King Christmas (“he was a cruel master, but he was fair!”) and will accompany the Briar Knights if they offer to find the King. He could fashion on partially-made Treasure into a working one (roll randomly) that can be brought to any Age where King Christmas is present.

​King Christmas’ throne room has been looted by Goblins but the ice throne remains untouched. Any Fae character sitting on it will see a vision of the mortal boy Charlie in the company of dangerous looking soldiers (Act II, Dixon’s Deserters), of Lord Yule dancing on the rooftops of a town and King Christmas imprisoned in a dungeon (Act III).

The highest turret contains a portal to the Mortal Ages: a tapestry depicting a winter glade of holly trees. If examined closely, snow falls and shadows lengthen in the scene and characters stepping into it appear as woven images in the clearing.

The portal is defended by 1d4+1 Winter Goblins awaiting Lord Yule’s return but if the PCs have befriended Rimenose he could negotiate safe passage.

Briar Knights arrive at a Legendary Location: Hollin Howe (MW). This is the bare summit of a hill, ringed by holly trees. The Portal to Winterfae appears as a column of swirling snowflakes, even on a clear day.

A path leads to Yeavering Farm; footprints in the snow show traffic coming from Aster’s Camp. Monstrous hoof-prints in the snow head off in the direction of The Copper Kettle Inn.

Travelling through the woods risks encounters with more Winter Goblins or Fugitive Elfs; encountering Dixon’s Deserters is a mandatory encounter. The Malignity Rating in the woods is 1 (d12) going up to 3 (d10) by night.

If Rimenose accompanies the Briar Knights, he will cloak himself in a Glamour that makes him seem like an ugly human urchin - but this is dispelled by Cold Iron or the Witch-Harrow's Dolorous Word.

These creatures are gathering human captives for Lord Yule to feast on. This band of 2d4 Winter Goblins keeps Henry Yeavering and his son John in chains. If freed, they will take their rescuers to Yeavering Farm to be reunited with their family.

This group of 2d4 Elfs have gone rather mad with their sudden freedom and enjoy playing vicious pranks on mortals. They have a magical ability to craft almost anything from pine cones, icicles and snow and use this to lay elaborate traps (ice cages, exploding pine cones, avalanches, skewering icicles). If Briar Knights survive their traps, the Elfs flee, but if the PCs brought Rimenose with them they might be able to parlay.
​
The Elfs believe that King Christmas has been captured and that Lord Yule has gone mad with rage and perhaps grief.

The Deserters are crafty enough to ambush PCs and demand they surrender, robbing them of weapons and food. Fighting the Deserters is a dangerous undertaking, but events take a course that might spare cautious PCs from doing this. On the night they make camp it is Lt Chester’s turn to give a gift, but he refuses, dismissing Christmas gift-giving as a silly old superstition. He and Dixon nearly come to blows but are interrupted when the camp is attacked by Winter Goblins. In the melee, the Deserters are wiped out and Charlie escapes into the snowstorm.

At the GM’s discretion, Dixon himself survives; moved by guilt, he joins the PCs if they will help him recover Charlie safely.

Aster is the leader of a clan of Gypceans whose wagons are camped in the woods. The Aster leads them in the exchange of gifts every night, so the Winter Goblins leave them alone.

The clan is angry with one of their younger members: a boy named Peterkin who has the magical gift to pass through the Hedge. Peterkin returned recently with a playmate: a boy from a future century named Charlie. Aster was furious that the Laws of the Light were broken this way but is also aware that Charlie would not be able to pass through the Hedge if he did not have a Destiny in this Age.

A few nights ago, a group of bedraggled soldiers arrived in the camp, robbed the community of food and black powder and abducted the boy Charlie.

Aster offers hospitality to Briar Knights. His forge can turn incomplete artefacts from Winterfae into working Treasures (roll randomly). All he asks for in return is that the PCs find Charlie and protect him. He knows that the family at Yeavering Farm are in danger as are any guests at the Copper Kettle Inn. Aster has a kinsman in Thornyford, a farrier named Ralfe who can offer a hiding place in the town.

Margaret Yeavering lives at the farm with her father-in-law Cecil and her daughter Anne. The household is under nightly attack by Winter Goblins who have already abducted Margaret’s husband Henry and son John.
The family will beg for the PCs to protect them. During the night there will be 1d4 assaults by 2d4 Winter Goblins.

If the PCs can fight off one assault, the GM can choose for Old Cecil to insist the family put aside their Puritan religion and celebrate Christmas “in the old style” by hanging a holy wreath, singing carols and exchanging gifts. This will immediately end the goblin attacks. Old Cecil remembers the festival to King Christmas that used to be held up on Hollin Howe. He can sing a medieval carol about King Christmas (Elder Lore MW).

In the morning a troop of 2d4 Hexenhammers arrives, led by a Snoop named Harrison Pry. If Pry finds evidence of ‘pagan’ (i.e. Catholic) Christmas celebrations, he will have the family arrested and brought to Thornyford to face trial. If not, he will reveal that a giant man in fur robes has been arrested for witchcraft (“He was going around demanding Christmas gifts!”) and Briar Knights will recognise the description of King Christmas.

This old medieval inn serves travellers on the road to Thornyford. It is under siege by Winter Goblins by day and Lord Yule himself comes here at night.

Briar Knights approaching the inn will see lights inside, but then a huge host of 6d10 Winter Goblins emerges from the woods to chase them towards the inn. One of the occupants throws open a door and shouts ‘Get inside, quick!’

The defenders are:

By night, Lord Yule and his Winter Goblins dance on the rooftops, break into houses and abduct the helpless inhabitants: Malignity is 5 (d8). These depredations are also blamed on ‘witches.’

If the PCs did not rescue Charlie, they will hear gossip about him: the Witchfinders have arrested a strange ‘witch boy’ and taken him to the Hexen House. If Charlie is accompanying the PCs, he will be separated during an encounter, arrested and taken to the Hexen House.

Briar Knights might find sanctuary at the workshop of the farrier Ralfe, a cousin of Aster the Gypcean. Once they have been in Thornyford long enough to get an impression of the place and locate the Hexen House, the Witch Harrow goes on the offensive, sending a small army of Hexenhammers out onto the night time streets to battle the Goblins. This is an opportunity for the PCs to enter the relatively undefended Hexen House.

The Hexen House (Dolour 8/d4) contains only 1d4 Hexenhammers and prisoners in cells. There is a chapel at the back, where Charlie has been left to study the Bible; rescuing him is easy if the Hexenhammers can be chased away, tricked or overcome.

King Christmas is chained up in the cellar. He is still a giant, but badly weakened: his class have been clipped, much of his mane has been plucked and his robes are filthy. He will greet rescuers with a deep bass rumble: 

The final showdown between King Christmas and a 10HD Lord Yule takes place on the streets and rooftops of Thornyford. Briar Knights can assist by encouraging the townsfolk to exchange Christmas gifts. 

These tasks can be accomplished by magic, CHA or WIS tests or just by roleplaying. The Dolour Rating is 0 unless the GM makes a task more difficult by introducing a pesky Snoop like Harrison Pry or interfering Demagogue like Jonah Thanks-Be-To-God.

Once each PC has facilitated one Christmas Gift, King Christmas triumphs, casting Lord Yule down and binding him in the chains he formerly wore.

King Christmas drags his brother back to Winterfae and imprisons him. He then renounces his old title: henceforth he will not be a king, but simply Father Christmas and he will not demand gifts, but give them. He replaces his lion face with a human one and his mane with a silver beard. He summons his Elfs, saying, “Come in and know me better, lads!”

He frees his Elfs and invites them to work with him instead of for him, crafting toys instead of weapons. His first gift is to bestow one of his Treasures upon a PC, who can take it to any Age.

The Briar Knights will wish the young Charles Dickens a Merry Christmas before departing.

The last blog outlined a plan to launch into Greg Gillespie's epic Barrowmaze megadungeon, but using the rules for '90s indie RPG Forge: Out of Chaos.

Forge character creation is a bit more involved than D&D, but not too much so. There are six Stats on 2d6 and each has a decimal value as well, rolled on a d10. Anything between 4.5 and 8.9 is in the 'normal, no modifier' range. My players excel at rolling really badly at Stats. Fortunately, skills and races will offset bad rolls slightly.

We wanted to avoid the 'psychotic gorilla' tropes about Ghantu, so Ng-Johnann is a landowner. He lives in a dilapidated mansion near Helix and owns the Stone Circle. In my twist on BM's setting, this site is sacred to Grom, the damned war god and creator of Ghantu and other monsterfolk. Grom's religion has been suppressed by the new Church of Enigwa in Helix and Ng-Johann has fallen on hard times. Adventuring might pay to repair his leaking roof (1000gp). By the way, the Ng-prefix is a Ghantu honorific, like 'Mister' or 'Sir.'

We decided to play Jher-em as Edwardian English gentlemen, like something from Wind in the Willows or Jeeves and Wooster, but with their distinctive phlegmy wheeze. "What-ho, cousin!" is their usual greeting, as well as "Tip-top, old chap!" and "Tally-ho!"

I'm playing Kithsara as immensely cultured and rather cerebral creatures, but Tshu'a is in conflict between the civilised behaviours he learned in servitude and the barbaric impulses from his upbringing in the swamp. He also has to keep his magical talents hidden from the Church of Enigwa. It's been a long time since they burned a wizard, but if they start up again with anyone, it'll be someone like Tshu'a.

The town crier announces that young Krothos Ironguard hasn't returned yet from a foray into Barrowmaze. Ollis Blackfell wants to downplay the seriousness of the situation since the young prince often takes off with his friends to hunt or debauch. Nevertheless, a reward of 250gp is offered for his quick and safe return.

The only other adventuring party in town is Bertrand's Brigands and they're nursing wounds after a run-in with Renata's Robbers at the Old Bridge. Our heroes meet up at the Brazen Strumpet and decide to beat the rush by hiking out to the Barrowmoor first thing in the morning.

After a bit of mound-mapping, the heroes find the Great Barrow, but icy mists close around them and out of the murk stumble two undead warriors. Tshu'a strikes down one, but it reassembles itself instantly wherepon the other seizes the panicking Ghantu by the throat.

Tshu'a uses his Ice Bolt spell to free Johann, who abandons his two-handed sword and flees. A second Ice Bolt demolishes the first undead, but the second corpse advances and Tshu'a is out of spell points. Everyone flees into the Great Barrow: Johann falls down the pit and knocks himself out and the other two hide from the prowling undead before descending to help the Ghantu recover with binding kits and healing roots.

After this brush with death, the party become super-careful and cautious. They map corridors and get their bearings before trying other doors. They set off a trap, loot some alcoves and hide when more wandering monsters pass by. They venture quite deep into Barrowmaze and find a magic weapon - hallelujah! - and when some Zombies march up they run away - right into the maw of a Mevoshk.

A Mevoshk is a Forge monster I substituted for a comparable enemy in the dungeon. Mevoshks are fast and their venom paralyses; you suffocate within ten minutes unless a Brye Leaf is applied to the wound. Odwood is bitten immediately and starts to succumb to the venom.

Another TPK looms, but Tshu'a pulls out the Vigoshian Herb he bought in town. It gives a temporary boost of Spell Points, but a permanent drain on your Intellect Stat. Tshu'a uses the SPTS to fuel Ice Bolts and then Johann chops the thing's head off with his big sword.

The fight was observed by a band of hideous Mongrelmen who rejoice in the Mevoshk's death. Though paralysed, Odwood communicates telepathically with them. They want to retrieve their jewels from the monster's hoard, but offer Brye Leafs to save Odwood's life and they hand over some nice (but not the best) gems in gratitude for slaying the monster before they scuttle off.

The players decide to beat a retreat, but the Zombies are still blocking the way out. Tshu'a decides to burn those remaining SPTS on his Big Second Level Spell: Spark Shower. And boy, does that make a difference or what! The Zombies frazzle and the players escape ... but alas, no sign of Krothos Ironguard.

Everyone was thrilled with this old school dungeon crawl and his keen to return!

The Barrowmaze itself is intensely atmospheric: silent, dripping, cold, eerie. There's a tempo to things, with very frequent wandering monster checks and extra ones occasioned by any sort of noise. The players are pondering how opening doors can be made, if not quieter, then at least quicker. The dread of making noise grew as the evening advanced.

So did the dread of staying too long in Barrowmaze and being caught on the Moors after sunset. After all, if you can meet Coffer Corpses in broad daylight, what abominations will you run into by night?!?

Helix will take longer to make an impression, but some features established themselves as distinctive: the town crier, the expectation that adventuring parties will descend on the village as the Spring arrives, Ollis Blackfell as a sinister vizier, Bertrand's Brigands as (friendly, for now) rivals. The Forge setting manifested itself as the Church of Enigwa spying on people for signs of magic use.

The players were delighted with the energy Forge brought to the tired tropes of dungeoncrawling. Forge has an action economy rather different from D&D/Labyrinth Lord. PCs are tougher, more resilient and more capable that 1st level D&D characters. There are resources to track and decisions to make about their use: do you apply binding kits to wounds? when is a good time to stop and repair armour? should you push your luck by using enhancing herbs? should you conserve your SPTS or burn them in a dramatic burst of eldritch power?

In terms of character development, Forge doesn't have XP. Your main advancement is through getting money to improve armour and equipment, better herbs, more binding kits; mages need spell components or back-ups in case they risk 'pumping' their spells and it goes a bit wrong.

Nonetheless, we realised that skill advancement is going to be painfully slow at this rate. This led to ongoing house rule tweaks. There's nothing wrong with Forge's slow advancement, but the characters do need to keep pace with D&D characters if they are not to be overwhelmed deeper into the dungeon. Essentially, beginning Forge characters function like 2nd level D&D characters in terms of resilience and combat odds - but they gain much less as they advance and advancement is slow. A Forge PC with Magic at level 2 is maybe equivalent to a 3rd or 4th level MU in D&D. A warrior with Long Sword 3 hasn't significantly advanced from their starting build, whereas in D&D a 3rd level Fighter is markedly better. 

What's interesting about this for me is that, where Forge gets noticed at all, reviewers like to condemn it as a D&D pastiche that brings nothing new to the dungeoncrawling experience (for example, here on BGG). Our experience so far is that this isn't true. Forge's little innovations add up to a gaming experience that feels very different from D&D.

We'll iron out the creases as we go. But for now, we're delighted with the drama, mysteries and sense of dank, chill menace that Barrowmaze exudes and Forge is measuring up very well as an alternative rules set to old school D&D.

A challenge has been laid down! We're going to delve into Barrowmaze. But we're not using AD&D or Labyrinth Lord or even sleek little White Box FMAG, oh no. No, we're going to use our beloved fantasy heartbreaker Forge: Out of Chaos (see blogs passim, or here).

Barrowmaze is a megadungeon, published in 2011 by Greg Gillespie, who has built a career out of designing, publishing and running college courses on these vast dungeons. With over 600 detailed rooms, the Barrowmaze dungeon is designed to be the sort of thing you walk into as 1st level noobs and walk (or crawl) out of again, months or even years later, as high level heroes. It's an entire campaign in one dungeon complex, plus its equally well detailed environs.

Barrowmaze has an interesting structure, because it doesn't descend deeper into the earth through levels of increasing toughness, hostility and reward. Instead, the vast underground complex sits below a surface level Barrowmoor where the landscape is dotted with 70 barrow mounds. Each of these is a stand-alone mini or micro dungeon and a half dozen of them are access points for the Barrowmaze below. As you travel further into the Moor, the barrows get nastier and more lucrative to raid and the Maze below features more awesome monsters and treasures.

In theory it's possible for lucky and reckless novice adventurers to proceed directly to the further extent of the Moor and discover an access point to the most perilous part of the Maze, where the Big Bad Evil Guy(s) are waiting.

But we won't be doing that now, will we guys.

​Guys?

If you've followed this blog, you'll have come across my advocacy of this late-'90s indie RPG before. It's part of a stable of indie products that emerged in the dark days before Print On Demand and which collectively represented a sort of proto-OSR movement, celebrating dungeon bashing even as the hobby was moving in moody, exotic and cerebral directions in the wake of games like Vampire: The Masquerade and D&D projects like Planescape.

Forge can be criticised for being derivative of D&D in the areas where it isn't innovating. But that's a good thing if it means that Forge's combat system, magic and adventuring assumptions map quite nicely onto the 1st Edition D&D/Labyrinth Lord rules undergirding Barrowmaze. I've even got a Forge/D&D monster converter on this website.

Where Forge does diverge from D&D is in its setting: a world where the gods are all dead or exiled, there are only two types of 'cleric' and there are several unusual options for PC races (or is it species? well, you know what I mean!).

Forge​ gives us fairly conventional Elves and Dwarves and its Sprites are essentially Halflings with magical empathy powers. Gigantic one-eyed Ghantu and pig-faced Higmoni fill the orc/half-orc slot. Berserkers are goliaths (but Forge predates their appearance in 3.5ed D&D).

Next up, the oddballs. The sun-fearing albino Dunnar have innate magic detection, but look creepy and shuffle awkwardly. Then there are the animal-inspired lineages. The weasel Jher-em have prehensile tails and terrible asthma. The scaly Kithsara are innately magical. Bird-person Merikii are ambidextrous but, alas, cannot fly.

Helix is the village on the edge of Barrowmoor that is the jumping off point for adventurers. Its name is odd, but probably suits the vaguely SF Forge better than the trad fantasy D&D.

Author Greg Gillespie is very fond of exploring religious allegiances and conflicts in his settings, notably between the New Gods of civilisation and the Old Gods of the wilderness and the earth. An important deity is Nergal, the death god murdered by his demonic sons and whose cult built the vast funerary complex of Barrowmaze. Helix has a new shrine to St Ygg, one of the civilised gods of light and law, but many locals still venerate Herne the wilderness god at a nearby stone circle.

Forge also has a 'dead' death god - Necros - and two more gods who are literally in Hell, but all the other gods have been banished by the wrathful (but strangely distracted) supreme being Enigwa. I've got a detailed analysis of Forge's unusual mythopoesis here. 

It's straightforward to treat Nergal as Necros, which makes the Barrowmaze a site that pre-dates the God's War, from a time before Necros turned to utter villainy.

St Ygg has clear corollary with Forge's Berethenu, the god of Law and Justice with magical healing magic and a mission to exterminate Undead - who is currently burning in Hell.

But it might be more interesting to link St Ygg instead with the worship of Enigwa the Supreme Being. Enigwa's religion could best be described as Deism: the belief in an all-powerful and moral creator who does not answer prayers, grant revelations or intervene in the world he has made. In Forge​'s world, this sort of religion would promote Humanism, education, self-reliance and philanthropy.

​We know that Enigwa forbade teaching magic to mortals; author Mark Kibbe's other books describe the Church of Enigwa persecuting mages. This makes sense if the Church of Enigwa is promoting science, reason and community enterprise over superstition, magic and individual glory. A very worthy religion indeed and one you could imagine running a small school and infirmary in Helix. No healing magic from Brother Othar and his acolytes though - but presumably high levels of medical expertise. 

Who or what then is being worshipped over at the stone circle three miles outside town? It makes sense that Grom the (also Hell-bound) war god might have been someone the villagers turned to for defence before the Church of Enigwa turned up. Perhaps Brother Othar drove out the Grom Warriors who lorded it over this place, but villagers are still inclined to call on Grom when some undead horror shambles out of Barrowmoor. Education and Humanism are lovely things, but sometimes you need a  sword reeking of hot blood.

In a setting like this, virtuous Berethenu Knights must keep a low profile and perform their healing magic discretely. Valeron the Elf is likely to be such a one. Perhaps the Church of Enigwa looks the other way if Berethenu Knights donate their charitable tithes to the local school and infirmary. But if a Pagan Mage draws attention to herself with public magic use, Brother Othar will petition Lord Ironguard have that Pagan fined, put in the stocks or even gaoled in Ironguard Motte. Actually, he'll petition the Jher-em vizier Ollis Blackfell (why make him Jher-em? well Ollis is described as "a weasel-looking fellow").

I think I'll turn the local magic-user Mazzahs the Magnificent into a Kithsara Enchanter. My take on these lizardfolk is that their cold bloodedness makes them philosophical and scholarly by nature. Mazzahs teaches occasional classes at the school in return for being left alone to practise Enchantment - but he can't afford to advertise his magic too loudly.

I finally got to play Dragon Warriors​.

You're thinking, "Wasn't that a Nintendo console game?"  Well, yes, it was, but I'm talking about the British RPG from the 1980s.

Dragon Warriors was created by Dave Morris and Oliver Johnson in 1985, slipping in just at the end of the 'Old School' era of roleplaying games. DW bucked a number of trends. For one thing, it was a simple rules system, only marginally more fiddly than the BECMI Dungeons & Dragons rules that offered a stripped down alternative to AD&D and are so beloved of OSR purists today. This, at a time when RPG design was tending towards complexity, with systems like Rolemaster and Harnmaster offering (to my mind, excessive) realism through a plethora of tables.

DW's other distinguishing feature was its format: published by Corgi books in the classic 178mm x 110mm trade paperback size. This meant the game was delivered to you in a modular sequence. The first book, Dragon Warriors, introduced core rules with Knights and Barbarians as PCs. If you wanted magic, you needed Way of Wizardry for Sorcerers and Mystics. The Elven Crystals provided linked scenarios, Out of the Shadows added Assassin PCs, The Power of Darkness added Elementalists and The Lands of Legend developed the campaign setting (a world called Legend) and Warlock PCs.

The books retailed at £1.75 back then, which was cheap compared to other games normally priced at £10-12 . But then again, other '80s RPGs tended to come in a box, with a starter scenario or screen, and to acquire all of DW you would need to spend £9.50, so perhaps it wasn't such a saving. On the other hand a young gamer could acquire Dragon Warriors gradually, in pocket money sized instalments, rather than needing to wait until Christmas or a birthday for the substantial gift of a £10 game. (If you want to translate into today's money, multiply mid-'80s prices by three.)

The paperback format probably made sense to Corgi, because the Fighting Fantasy game books were still printing money for Puffin Books and Corgi adopted a similar look with Dragon Warriors, hoping for some crossover purchases.

It was not to be. Dragon Warriors won warm praise from critics and gathered a devoted fan base, but it never secured a place at the top gaming table. There were many reasons. It was quirky British at a time when American culture dazzled. It was conventional fantasy at a time when interest was rising in SF, horror and book/film tie-ins. It was simple when complexity was fashionable. Changes in print technology would soon make RPG rule books into glossy hardback artefacts resembling coffee table talking points and DW's paperback format came to look childish and naff by comparison (but is beloved by collectors now for that very reason).

Dragon Warriors and the '90s competition. 'Game over, man!'

I never played DW when it first appeared. I was starting university and moved past Fighting Fantasy and pocket money sized instalments didn't appeal the way it would have done a couple of years earlier. But I noticed it, especially the adverts that promoted DW's authentic medieval and faerie themes.

I remember being particularly drawn to an advert for the game that promised a RPG setting in which Elves were not cosy woodland party-goers, but alien entities who have no souls!​

DW was rescued from oblivion by Mongoose back in 2009, who brought the six paperbacks together as a single volume. When that lapsed, DW was rescued again by Serpent King Games and their edition, as well as many more supplements and scenarios, can be bought at drivethrurpg.

I'll try not to!

The important stats are Attack, Defence, Magic Attack and Defence, Stealth, Perception and Evasion. These are dictated by your character class and (slightly) modified by extreme score in Strength, Reflexes, etc. (but not Looks, obviously.) Hit Points are rolled with a modifier based on your class, with Barbarians getting the most Hit Points, as is only right and proper.

The basic mechanism is to roll a d20 and score under your stat. If it's a conflict, you deduct your opponent's Defence or Magical Defence from your stat. If it's a ranged attack, instead of deducting Defense you get a penalty based on their range, size and speed.  A 1 always hits. That's it.

Well, not quite. Weapons do a fixed amount of damage, like 4 for a dagger or 6 for a morning star. This is modified for very high/low Strength (but not Looks!). You then roll to bypass armour. Each weapon has its own Armour Bypass Die (a d4 for a dagger, a d6 for a morning star) and you have to roll it and match or exceed the armour rating (4 for full mail, 5 for plate armour) otherwise you do no damage at all. On top of that, a shield gives a simple 1 in 6 change of negating all the damage.

This means you end up imitating D&D by rolling a d20 'to hit' then a weapon die, but the weapon die is really a second 'to hit' roll versus armour. Fixed damage takes some of the unfairness out of dicey mechanics, but it does make combat somewhat predictable. Heavily armoured PCs have a definite edge over monsters. The combat feels a bit clunky and unresponsive to dramatic improvisation, but it captures the brutal tone of medieval melee and it gives armour the right sort of value.

There are Spell Lists and some of the spells are quite distinctive. Magic using characters can cast any spell (no Spell Books, which is disappointing) but have to spend Magic Points (MP), which recharge once a day. Mystics are a bit different; instead of MP they have a push-your-luck mechanic which can result in losing all magical power for the rest of the day. 

There are a few fiddly details. Some rolls are made with 2d10 instead of a d20, which additional penalises low scores and further rewards having high scores. I can't quite see the point of this.

In a nutshell: It's a fairly boilerplate RPG rules set with a heavy focus on fighting, no social mechanics to speak of and a fairly gritty feel to it. Character classes are prescriptive but are nicely locked into the medieval setting. You get to choose skills at higher levels, but otherwise characters of the same class are as undifferentiated as D&D - perhaps more so, because draping yourself in goofy magic items is less of a thing for DW​.

DW's biggest draw is its world and the tone created by that setting. The world is called Legend. 

Legend has more than a passing resemblance to 13th century Europe, with Ellesland (NW corner) having a kingdom called Albion - where (with the patriotic perspective we expect) the campaign is assumed to start. From there, PCs can explore such exotic and threatening places as Chaubrette (France), Algandy (Spain), the New Selentine (i.e. Holy Roman) Empire and on south and east to caliphates, sultanates and emirates and Mungoda, which is plainly Africa. I'm sure Edward Said would have turned in his grave, if he wasn't alive and well at the time, having published Orientalism just a few years earlier, denouncing this sort of other-ing and fetishizing of African and Middle Eastern culture.

Once we've had the mandatory cringe at all this eurocentric bias and cultural appropriation, let's put this in a RPG perspective. Dragon Warriors was in good company. Gary Gygax ran his original D&D campaign in a fantasy world that was a map of North America with the names changed. Expert D&D, published just a couple of years before DW, introduced the Known World setting, later named Mystara; this spawned a set of gazetteers in the late 1980s, most of which explicitly modelled fantasy realms on historical civilisations - for example, Ken Rolston's The Emirates of Ylaruam  (1987) bundles the Islamic Middle East into a single fantasy realm.

At around about the same time, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay was developing the Old World setting, which pastiched Michael Moorcock, H P Lovecraft and Renaissance Europe into a distinctive fantasy world.

​(And of course, 1996 George R R Martin published Game of Thrones​.)

It's to DW's credit that it treats Legend as more than a gauzy historical backdrop, but rather expects players to lean in to its culture and cultural conflicts. Knights are expected to live by the feudal code and Barbarians and Elementalists are explicitly the warriors and mages of the northern and eastern expanses. The scenarios go out of their way to illustrate medieval norms and assumptions about class, nationhood, honour and the supernatural.

Faerie is another feature of this setting and DW strives to evoke a numinous and threatening feel for the Fae: beautiful but alien, feared, fickle, otherworldly, uncanny. Very different from the humdrum Elves of D&D and Warhammer, but not unlike the Others/White Walkers of Game of Thrones. 

No, I don't think so.

There's an introductory scenario in the revised rulebook called The Darkness Before Dawn which I ran with a group of friends. It's a fine scenario, illustrating feudal duties, community tensions and faerie malevolence. Everybody enjoyed themselves. But the session illustrated both the strengths and shortcomings of Dragon Warriors as a rules set.

Character creation is quick but rather unsatisfying. Put simply, you are your character class. The background tables prompt you to deviate only slightly from the medieval stereotype (our PC Knight was the son of an ink maker and must have been knighted as a mercenary). Combat is similarly clunky - not laborious or longwinded or fiddly, just lacking in drama. The magic system is solid and might have seemed very fresh and rational compared to the lottery that is D&D, but again lacks colourful moments. Judged as a OSR product, DW feels as if its moment has passed.

A good comparison might be that other 'fantasy heartbreaker' that I love: Forge Out of Chaos (see blogs passim).

Forge and DW offer a similar departure from old school D&D without questioning its core assumptions. They both retain the 3d6 characteristics and the roll-a-d20-to-hit combat system. But Forge has more interesting quirks, like weapons notching, time out to repair armour, harmful side effects from spells and a distinction between damage done to armour and damage done to its wearer.

The crucial problem with DW is that the stuff that makes it so distinctive - the twilit, Celtic-themed Faerie vibe - isn't part of the rule set at all. The PCs aren't faerie themed - they don't have mystical geisa binding them to tragic dooms, they can't go into warp spasms, they don't have Fae heritage or the second sight, you can't roll to be the seventh son of a seventh son. The magic system is sturdy but generic: there are no faerie themed spells, you can't tap ley lines, open portals at standing stones, commune with river goddesses or learn someone's True Name.

All of which adds up to this proposition: I explore the world of Legend and DW's excellent scenarios without having to use the Dragon Warriors rules set, because the rules set is no necessary part of what makes the setting and the scenarios so good. If I wanted to emphasis gritty combat and white-knuckle survivalism, I'd use Forge: Out of Chaos; if I wanted to retain the simplicity and the sense of being ordinary mooks in a big bad world, I'd go with Warlock!. If I just wanted to tell wild fairy tales in a romantic medieval setting, I'd use Blueholme or another D&D retroclone.

Warlock! and Blueholme are available at drivethrurpg (click the images) but Forge can only be found in (vintage) physical editions at the moment - albeit inexpensive ones

Maybe I am. I can certainly see why people who discovered Dragon Warriors in the '80s stayed loyal - and I can see why DW might be an exciting discovery for someone delving into RPG products of decades past. It's probably the best of the 'lost' RPGs of that era and, if it were categorised as one of Ron Edwards' 'fantasy heartbreakers' then it is an exceptional one.

I'm judging DW from my own perspective, of course. If I run a fantasy RPG, it will always be in a historical setting or one inspired by a historical era. Faerie is a big influence on my imagination and I represent Faerie in my games very much as Dave Morris & Oliver Johnson advocate in Dragon Warriors. I prefer low-key fantasy RPGs where wounds, trauma, supplies and the like all matter.

And because of this, I'm disappointed to find Dragon Warriors isn't offering me anything except exhortations to roleplay in the way I already do, in a world very like one I would create myself, and a rules set that has no distinctive advantages over other OSR or fantasy heartbreaker games I already own,.

In other words, by the time I finally got round to reading Dragon Warriors, it was too late. The moment has passed. The passion isn't going to ignite. We're in the friendzone, DW and I.

But you, Dear Reader, maybe you're different. Maybe you've never done a fantasy RPG in a historically inspired setting. Maybe this Faerie theme thing is new to you. Maybe you're wanting to try one of these 'old school' RPGs and don't know which of the many out there to begin with.

I reckon, if two out of the three above apply to you, then Dragon Warriors will blow your mind. I think it would have blown mine if I'd discovered it back when I was 18: with her moody Celtic beauty and quirky medieval style, Dragon Warriors is the one that got away.

At the start of September this year, an old friend died, suddenly and tragically. Not the least of David's many talents, accomplishments and (dare I say it) obsessions was a prodigious collection of board games and roleplaying games. One of these games made its way to me, still in its shrink-wrap from its 2012 Kickstarter campaign. In honour of Dave and deferring to his excellent judgement of games, we unwrapped it and started to play.

The game is DEMOCRACY: MAJORITY RULES, designed by Mark Rein-Hagen and published by Make Believe Games (BGG link). It's a blend of area control and negotiation, themed around American politics. It caught our imagination, but it also inspired me to use it in a RPG context - this post is part game review and part RPG brainstorming. But first the review.

Democracy: Majority Rules (D:MR) is one of those Kickstarter disaster stories. It arrived from the creative mind of Mark Rein-Hagen, a man with a sage-like reputation as the designer of Ars Magica and later Vampire: the Masquerade and the World of Darkness that grew out of that game. Rein-Hagen's name is enough to draw a crowd to anything he endorses, never mind creates. D:MR was Rein-Hagen's first project after a career break from gaming and offered something very high-minded: an experience that would combine roleplaying as the wheelers and dealers in the American political machine with game mechanics for passing laws and forming coalitions and expansions that would adapt this premise into other contexts, like the Arab Spring, the French Revolution or the end of the Roman Republic. Moreover, the game seemed to offer a penetrating insight into the nature of politics itself. Who wouldn't love a game like that?

If you have tears, shed them now. The project foundered. Rein-Hagen suffered ill health but also managed to alienate backers and his production team, the game got lost in warehouses for two years then finally made it out to gaming tables long after goodwill and excitement had expired, minus a few of the promised stretch goal extras.

There's a lot of harsh language for this game on the message boards, but that just reflects sky-high expectations. The game itself, now that it can be seen for what it is, is a lean but gripping experience that never outstays its welcome on the table. No, it's not the 'Great American Board Game'; it's not an innovative new roleplaying game; it's not a penetrating insight into the nature of politics itself. But it's good. 

Pick your political position: Tradition, Change, Regulation, Liberty or Centrism. These will make a difference to who gets punished and who benefits when Laws are passed later.

The modular board represents seven factions vying for power: Justice, Bureaucracy, Money, Media, Voters, Activists and Lawmakers. Players allocate their supporters (cubes) to these factions and the person with the most supporters on a faction acquires its power card. The first clever touch is that, for each faction, players can form coalitions to deny the power card to the person with the simple majority; if a coalition does this, it must agree on which member to award the power to. Coalitions are fluid: you might be in coalition with a rival on Bureaucracy but opposing them on Activists and this might change from turn to turn.

Next you get to promote your supporters, which means putting cubes on the arrows that will shuttle them over to adjacent factions. Of course, this upsets the delicate coalitions. You can only assign one cube to each arrow, but the person controlling Voters can break this rule. Once it's all done, the person controlling Media can break a scandal, sending some cubes back to their original faction.

There's some pretty intense manoeuvring at this stage. Some of the factions are especially desirable as they let you place more supporter cubes (e.g. Activists, Voters, Media) and some give you extra influence tokens you will spend later (especially Lawmakers and Bureaucracy). Others have neat powers.

In addition to the powers you get from controlling factions, there is the President and the Maverick. The President is awarded by the player with the most supporters spread across Voters and Media - but they cannot award the Presidency to themselves. The Maverick goes to the player who is coming last in terms of points and powers.

All of this is to set up the main stage of the game. The Lawmaker chooses two Law cards and the President chooses a third card from the Law card discard pile. Then everyone votes on whether to pass these laws or strike them down.

The Law cards are quite witty. Each defines a faction (e.g. Voters) or a specific player (e.g. Tradition or whoever is the President) which benefits if the Law is passed and one who is penalised. Lots of bargaining and horse trading ensues, then each side bids their influence tokens to get the Law passed or see it discarded. Some powers apply here, such as Money who can double the value of the influence they invest or Maverick who can freeze out one opponent with underhand or unexpected tricks.

The rules suggest players get into role here and make little speeches before each vote. In fact, optional rules suggest following all sorts of procedures using faux parliamentary language. The game comes with a wooden gavel that one player uses to end one phase and move things along to the next.

The Law cards matter because, if you are the beneficiary of a Law that gets passed, you add two supporter cubes to the board, but if you are penalised, you remove two cubes; the person who invested the most influence tokens gets to keep the card. If the Law is struck down, the card gets discarded and no one is affected. Regardless of the Law passing or being struck down, everyone on the 'winning' side of the vote claims a victory point.

Once all this is over with, you move on to organising your coalitions, reassigning the Power cards to their new owners, then gathering a new load of influence tokens and adding a new set of cubes to the board, based on the Factions you're in charge of. If you didn't use your Faction's Power in the last turn, you can claim an extra victory point for that too.

Rinse and repeat. You play through 5 turns of this then check to see who has won. Add up your victory points and claim extra ones for having the most cubes on the board or in particular factions.

Except, wait. There's a clever catch. Several Law cards are keyed as UPRISING or ORDER. If there are more UPRISING cards than ORDER cards in players' possession at the end, then mobs take to the streets: no one's accumulated victory points count and everything is decided by cubes on the board. In other words, an amazing leveller for the players who lost their votes or used up their powers during the game.

Once you get to grips with its quirks, you can zip through D:MR in an hour; if it lasts longer, it's because you're enjoying the wheeling and the dealing. And so you should!  There are lots of reversals of fortune, volte faces, promises made but not fulfilled, cruel betrayals and even a bit of steadfast loyalty. You can play as a two-faced bastard or a pillar of decency or a bit of both: it's up to you.

Despite all the shenanigans, the victory engine is quite simple. You will probably win if you have the most cubes on the board. Declining to use your powers to rack up extra victory points is an uncertain endeavour, because, if your rivals pass a bunch of UNREST Laws in the final turn, everything you saved up is now worthless. All the more reason to persuade the other people with lots of victory points (i.e. your main rivals) to vote those crazy Laws down!

Another reason for not neglecting the board amidst all the voting and the speeches is that it has a distinctive structure. You can't place a supporter cube directly into Lawmakers, but you can promote a cube there from anywhere else. Justice and Activists are both 'dead ends' and once you promote supporters out of Bureaucracy and into Money, it's hard to make them return (well, I mean, would you give up money for a clerical job?). Activists can become Lawmakers but it doesn't work the other way round. All of which means you can end up with your cubes 'trapped' in Factions you don't care much about, unable to get them over to the ones you do. Unless, of course, you can persuade Activists to use their special Power on your behalf.

It's a shame this game imploded the way it did. It's not the Messiah, but it is a delightfully naughty boy. It makes some sweetly parodic points about politics and finds a way to balance Euro-style cube placement with across-the-table arguing and pleading. If you want to throw in an element of roleplay, you can, but it's not essential.

Reading what was planned for D:MR makes me even more sorrowful. An 'Uprising' Expansion was going to focus on military coups, tribal loyalties and street protests. Further expansions were set to vary the Factions, Powers and Laws to simulate political crises of the past, like the 1964 Civil Rights movement or the 1989 Prague uprising - or the trial of Socrates in 399 BC. But it was not to be, alas alas ....

A lot of backers hoped (and Rein-Hagen perhaps intended) that D:MR would be a game-changing elevation of roleplaying and board games into a new ludic form. Well, it didn't turn out to be that. But the game still has applications for roleplaying. Hear me out!​

One of the pleasing aspects of RPGs is the supervenient political intrigue that shapes ground-level encounters and events that PCs experience.​ Usually, the GM concocts this shadowy narrative - or perhaps rolls on tables to generate the twists and turns of political convulsions. 

Or maybe you prefer to roleplay this meta-plot. Players set aside their normal PCs and the GM assigns them the roles of warlords, spymasters, diplomats and chancellors at some sort of Big Fantasy Committee Meeting or Embassy Grand Ball. Everyone roleplays an agenda, makes deals, concocts schemes, grants permission for for the commission of unspecified outrages ... and the GM makes notes of all that's said and then puts it into action over the next few months of the campaign.

That's fine - in fact, with the right players, theatrical props and GM preparation, it's better than fine, it's superb. But it doesn't suit everyone and it can backfire - or simply fail to deliver the sort of information the GM is looking for to plan the campaign ahead.

So, how about using Democracy: Majority Rules to replace this?

Imagine you're running a game like Vampire: the Masquerade where the PCs are street level vamps but the great events of the city are shaped by the power struggles of the centuries-old vampires known as the Primogen. Here's what you do. Set up a game of Democracy but use factions like these:

Instead of political positions like Liberty or Tradition, choose a Vampire Clan (four from Ventrue, Toreador, Tremere, etc. plus one like Gangrel or Malkavian to be the Centrists). The cubes represent your agents, spies, ghouls and minions.

The GM will have to create a deck of Event Cards to replace the Law Cards. These are themed around possible plot developments in the campaign to come, with a Clan/Faction that stands to benefit and one that will be punished. Instead of Uprising v Order, you have Jyhad v Masquerade, with too many Jyhad cards in play meaning the Undead have been exposed.

Or maybe 'Recruit Sabbat Allies' gets struck down. In this case the Sabbat aren't going to turn up during the campaign - although the PCs might be sent to make such overtures by their Gangrel or Tremere masters, only to find themselves opposed by the Brujah and Toreadors ... because those are the Clans who successfully voted these event down.

It's pretty easy to come up with a couple of dozen event cards like this: Release Plague Rats Into The Sewers (Nosferatu vs The Rack), Assassinate the Mayor (Money vs Mortal Politics), Sire A Celebrity (Elysium vs Media), Breach Masquerade (Media vs Elders), Blood Hunt (Elders vs Anarchs) and Secret Diablerie (Anarchs vs Elysium) all spring to mind as well as Clan-specific plot threads like Build A Blood Golem (Tremere vs Elders), Vampire Ball (Toreador vs Elysium), Methuselah Awakens (Ventrue vs Anarchs) and Lupine Attack (Gangrel vs Brujah).

If you keep a record of who voted for what and how the different Factions changed hands during the game, you've got the main intrigues of your Vampire: the Masquerade chronicle all mapped out, right there.

It works for other RPGs too, but especially the political-faction ones like Ars Magica or Band of Blades. It would be fun to build a Call of Cthulhu campaign this way, playing D:MR with Great Old Ones instead of political positions (Nyarlathotep as the Centrist, of course) and Factions replacing Activists with Cultists, Bureaucracy with the Great Race of Yith and Lawmaking with the Miskatonic University.

It would work for a D&D campaign, replacing the political positions with the cardinal Alignments (and their fantasy religion representatives) and the Factions with the Thieves Guild instead of Media, Mage College instead of Voters, Mercenary Leagues instead of Activists, Dwarvish mines instead of Money, City Watch instead of Bureacracy and Elven Rangers instead of Justice, perhaps with the King's Council, the Lich Lord or the Drow Conspiracy replacing Lawmakers.

Play the game, then play the RPG campaign it generated. How cool is that?

My good friend Swamp Goblin and I have decided to put out a series of video reviews focusing on the RPG products that inspired us. Here's our first; my video production skills are pretty basic, but they're only going to get better.

AD&D module N1: Against the Cult of the Reptile God came out in 1982. It was written by Douglas Niles, a former English teacher who bashed this out in 4 weeks: it was his first assignment as a designer for TSR. Niles went on to design other RPGs, like Star Frontiers: Knight Hawks and Top Secret: SI, had a big hand in creating Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms and authored a ton of novels. 

Reptile God is fondly remembered - and deservedly so - and a particular delight is the way it subverts the expectations of 'Golden Age' or Gygaxian D&D. In the early template, the village acts as a base for the PCs to raid a nearby dungeon. This gets its definitive outing in 1979's T1: The Village of Hommlet. Sure, there are dramas in Hommlet: you can go around gathering clues, you can recruit NPCs to your party, there are a pair of evil dudes who will spy on you for the nearby Temple of Elemental Evil, there are sectarian tensions between Druidists and Cuthbertites. But Hommlet is fundamentally static and benign and it's up to the PCs to make things happen there - or not, as they choose.

You can see the influence of Hommlet on Niles' design of Orlane. There are rectangular houses on neat patches connected by public roads and screened by attractive trees. It looks like no medieval town ever; rather, it's a sort of idealised American frontier settlement, somewhere north of Walton Mountain and south of Avonlea, not far from St Petersburg, Missouri.

I mention in the video that an interest in what lies beneath the surface of small town American life has a long pedigree in American literature. I forgot to mention the link cited by Stephen King himself: Grace Metalious' 1956 novel Peyton Place which explores lust, incest and murder in a sleepy New England town. It's the close resemblance of Homlett and Orlane to idealised American communities - rather than actual medieval ones - which drives home the themes of corruption and secret conspiracy so effectively. 

Niles builds on Gygax's wholesome template in several ways. For a start, he's a better writer and each location is introduced with snappy read-aloud captions that establish more than the size and shape of the property.

Attentive players will pick up on tell-tale details of chaos and neglect that indicate (often, but not always) the influence of the Reptile Cult.

Niles takes the implied drama of Hommlet and makes his setting fully dynamic. Over a period of days, the Cult will abduct and brainwash the free-willed villagers, in a particular order. This is a community that changes while the PCs are here and if they do nothing at all they will still notice events going on.

Niles is sometimes credited with introducing a more investigative, less combat-orientated approach to D&D. Sandy Peterson's Call of Cthulhu RPG came out the previous year (1981) and it's hard not to see the thematic links here - although Niles would have had his work cut out to read and digest Call of Cthulhu and then bash out this Cthulhu-esque module in the time available, so it is perhaps a coincidence.

Another possible coincidence is that 1981 saw the release of the first British AD&D module, U1: The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, by Dave J. Browne with Don Turnbull.

Saltmarsh surely beats Reptile God to the punch when it comes to delivering an investigative AD&D adventure. I'm not sure whether Niles would have been aware of the material being created by TSR (UK) and - again - the time frame doesn't leave much scope for a direct influence. But in any event, Niles' Orlane differs from Saltmarsh in fundamental ways. For a start, Saltmarsh isn't mapped or detailed: it gets a pretty lightweight description:

Moreover, the whole point of Module U1 is [SPOILERS] that, despite all appearances, there isn't actually anything supernatural going on - whereas in Orlane, despite the superficial prosperity, there is an occult menace at work.

U1: Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh is not an adventure I've ever loved. It feels anticlimactic to me, far too invested in atmosphere and not enough drama and, despite all the investigation and clue-finding, it ends up with a massive fight that can easily overwhelm a low-level PC party (the NPC magic-user has a Sleep​ spell, ferchrissakes). The secret is not particularly sinister - or even particularly secretive. One thing you cannot accuse Saltmarsh of, though, is being too American. It's all fog, brine, fishy smells and a general sense of murkiness. The later scenarios in the U-series bring in reptile-people (Lizard Men, Sahuagin) and their cults, but there's a complex and realistic political situation unfolding: they're not just 'monsters.'

Meanwhile, N1: Against the Cult of the Reptile God picked up critical plaudits, but never spawned a sequel. The N-series turned out to be N-for-Novice: a string of modules supposedly designed for starting characters, not a series developing the region of Orlane, the Rushmoors and the fallout from the destruction of the Cult. The next N-module came along in 1984 and Carl Smith's N2: The Forest Oracle is (not entirely unfairly) pilloried as the worst TSR module ever. In particular, it's condemned for its sloppy and ineffective writing - which only throws Douglas Niles' strengths as a designer into sharper relief.

In the video review, Swamp Goblin and I discuss different ways that N1 could develop after the destruction of the Cult. Maybe Module alt-N2: Revenge of the Goddess Merikka, is something I'll have to write myself ...

In the meantime, our next deep dive review will be the oh-so-problematic Module X1: The Isle of Dread.

Before I talk about the Warpstar! RPG by Greg Saunders, I want to take a long route around.

I'm a Star Wars kid. I was 10 when Star Wars premiered in the UK and went to see it on my 11th birthday. I was blown away. Obviously, I had to own the action miniatures, a cardboard Death Star, the board game, the comics and a collection of those strange cards you bought with bubblegum (which I detested).

I'd been groomed for Star Wars by the UK comic 2000AD which had appeared earlier in 1977 and thrilled me with dinosaur hunting time-travellers, Dan Dare and, of course, Judge Dredd. The 2000AD Summer Special had heralded the arrival of Star Wars with a centre splash page that conveyed no idea of who the hero was or who the baddies were (Jawas, perhaps?) but the mysterious images pierced my soul with their distinctive blend of space romance.

The 1977 2000AD Summer Special: the caption for Han Solo and Chewbacca reads 'Luke Skywalker takes a break with one of his friends.'

After that, I loved Sci Fi.

I'd loved Science Fiction before, of course. I adored Doctor Who and the Tomorrow People on TV and was an avid fan of Space 1999: the distinctive Eagle spaceships from that show were a treasure childhood toy along with an Interceptor from the earlier Gerry Anderson show, U.F.O.. 

Doctor Who acquired a, err, charming new companion in 1977, but Tomorrow People had the haunting and enigmatic opening sequence and a stranger and more provocative concept.

But Star Wars involved a sort of commitment to glorious starscapes, roiling planetary surfaces, lasers in the darkness and gleaming battle armour.

​The odd thing is that, within a year of watching Star Wars for the first time, I was playing D&D. Roleplaying quickly dovetailed back into science fiction, with the Gamma World RPG and Traveller in its iconic black box.

Age cannot wither her: there will probably never be a RPG set this ... beautiful

Yet science fiction roleplaying just never captured my imagination. Gamma World was a lark with its gun-wielding mutant bunnies, but it just wasn't serious the way D&D could be. What about Traveller? Well, I certainly tried it. Who couldn't love the sleek modernism of the three-book box set, the cool black-and-red iconography, the tantalising mayday from Free Trader Beowulf ... Traveller: Science-Fiction Adventure in the Far Future was clearly a serious game set in a serious universe. I spent merry hours rolling up planets and populating my own sector maps. 

Yes, and not just sector maps, but rolling up animals and random encounter tables for those planets, then rolling up all sorts of retired Marines and cashiered Naval Officers ...

Notoriously, the process of rolling up a Traveller character could result in dying during background history. 

Traveller invites you to create a 40- or 50-something PC who has already had a proper career in the military or in politics but then decides, in a ludicrous mid-life crisis, to go gallivanting round the universe getting into hare-brained scrapes with a bunch of strangers. As a roleplaying proposition, I found it a bit of a stretch back in my teens. Now that I'm the same age as those characters, it's no clearer to me what Traveller PCs think they're up to.

So, I rarely played Traveller and when I did, the results were underwhelming. Traveller just never seemed to catch fire. There wasn't, for me, a story that was dying to be told and needing Traveller as its idiom. There was just a lot of aimless wandering in space ... heists ... bounties ... patrons in space bars ... the cost of repairing ships ... Twilight's Peak (1980) was a striking scenario but I just couldn't sell it to my players because, well, I wasn't sold on it myself despite Andy Slack's glowing review in White Dwarf #24 ('This is how Traveller should be. Buy it.').

Back to the dungeon I went and never really looked back at SF RPGs.

Part of it was just maturity. Traveller isn't as easy for teenagers to switch on to as D&D. In a fantasy RPG there are standard tropes: you arrive in a village, you go to the inn, some ageing peasant tells you of strange goings on at the ruined keep and the disappearance of the miller's daughter, off you go to clean the site out of kobolds and rescue the maiden.

OK, you could substitute 'planet' for village and 'spaceport bar' for tavern and, I suppose, a 'disused orbital space station' and a 'missing corporate CEO' (female, if you insist). But immediately , questions intrude. What sort of planet? What sort of spaceport? What exactly is this orbital facility? Which corporation? Why isn't anyone else dealing with this?

You might say that answering those questions is precisely what makes for designing a good adventure - and you'd be right. But my problems were closer to home. D&D offered easy access because everyone knows what a medieval village, tavern and ruined keep would be like - but everything needs thinking about in a SF RPG and nothing can be assumed. Or so it seemed to me at the time.

In any event, Traveller seemed to set a high entry bar in terms of conceptualising and preparing the scenario, while not offering particularly clear hooks.

You see, Traveller was basically the Nineteen Seventies In Space - and a rather banal, suburban take on the Seventies at that. Traveller didn't have laser swords, space wizards, godlike AIs or matter transport beams, let alone smart drugs, cyber-enhancement or netrunning. There was a sort of austerity to Traveller: computers were big box-y things, laser pistols were inferior to conventional slug-throwers in most contexts, the PCs were middle aged, psionics were rare, aliens scarce. When Traveller's official setting introduced the Aslan lion-people and Vargr dog-people, they were hardly compelling.

Gentle reader, you might be tearing your hair out. Why didn't I just add those things in if I wanted them so badly? Of course, I could have. But I think I was as enthralled to Traveller's severe aesthetic as I was repelled by it. The game seemed to demand to be taken on its own high-minded terms. It would seem ... somehow, I know not how ... clumsy to foist lightsabres, transmat beams and cybermen onto Traveller. It would have been indelicate. Jejeune. I was too much a roleplaying snob to let myself have fun.

A friend has reminded me that West End Games did a fantastic Star Wars RPG back in the '80s. I remember playing it, now that my memory is jogged. I owned the d20 Star Wars and Star Trek RPGs way back when as well. But ... I don't know. I've never really cared for tie-in games. I'm not bothered about the Dune, Blade Runner or Firefly RPGs either. Maybe it's my snobbery again, but I wanted a RPG that enabled me to create something like Star Wars or Firefly - without roleplaying in the official universe of those franchises. For whatever weird reason, I've been looking for a SF RPG that would make me want to create my own science fiction, not inhabit someone else's.

My rehabilitation in SF RPG was a long time coming. I contrived to miss out on the genuinely up-to-date SF RPGs of the 1980s (Cyberpunk, SLA Industries) or the loony SF mash-ups of the '90s (Rifts, TORG). I somehow managed to avoid Star Frontiers, which offered actual D&D in space and would surely have disabused me of the hurtful notion that SF roleplaying had to be particularly clever or sophisticated.

'The Playable One' seemed like a direct dig at maths-heavy Traveller. There's a lovely retrospective of Star Frontiers but by 1980 I'd been scared off by Traveller and stuck to my fantasy furrow.

I never really looked at SF RPGs again until quite recently, when the OSR trend for adapting original D&D led me first to White Box, then White Box spin-offs like Eldritch Tales (last post) then to James M Spahn's White Star.

White Star comes as a perfectly-serviceable basic rules and an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink Galaxy Edition (which you might as well go for if you're getting the PDF since the digital versions cost the same).

White Star is a beautifully-presented adaptation of White Box style D&D into a SF idiom. It is also completely shameless about porting in Star Knights with their laser swords, alien brutes, computer-hacking cyphers, cyborg, superheroes, mechas and a host of other stereotypes to create a broad palette you can pick and choose from. I really wish I'd found something like this in my '80s teens.

If White Star has a problem, it's perhaps that it's too broad. With every science fiction and science fantasy trope on offer, it risks losing the idiosyncracy that intrigued me in Traveller: the offer to roleplay in a highly distinctive universe. With White Star, the problem isn't all the stuff you have to add in; it's the stuff you have to take out.

During the first Lockdown there was an opportunity to roleplay with friends via Zoom and we tried out Lady Blackbird by Jon Harper: it's a free mini-RPG and you can find it here. We also played another of Harper's games, the excellent Blades In The Dark. Blades has a sister product called Scum & Villainy and I sourced a copy of that in my newfound enthusiasm for space romance.

Lady Blackbird is a 15-page RPG with a set of pre-generated characters who start off as prisoners on board the imperial cruiser Hand of Sorrow. The rag-tag group have to escape and get back to their ship, the Owl. The group includes a space princess fleeing an arranged marriage, her bodyguard, a romantic space captain and his quirky crew. The universe is the 'Wild Blue' (shattered worlds around a dimming star), with breathable space, space squids, space goblins, space magic. It plays out like a Saturday morning matinee. It's steampunk Star Wars. It's great.

Blades in the Dark is a bigger project, but Scum & Villainy grounds its wide-open RPG system in a manageable small corner of space called the Procyon Sector: four out-of-the-way solar systems linked by interstellar gates but somewhat cut off from the vast galactic empire. Here's a setting with space mystics, alien AIs, sci-fi religions, glamorous guilds of space-thieves, very much space fantasy. So, Star Wars again (as the title alludes).

John Harper has certainly won me back to SF RPGs, but of a distinctive genre: space romance. His trick is to set the action in a very localised part of a very particular sort of SF universe: one with a lot of the accoutrements of fantasy roleplaying. The catch is, you really need 5 players to run Lady Blackbird (and it's a one-shot); Scum & Villainy is designed for campaign play, but it's quite demanding.

Recently I came across Greg Saunders' fantasy RPG Warlock! (reviewed here) and was impressed by its artfully minimalist rules and striking tone. I quickly discovered that Warlock! has a sister product: SF RPG Warpstar! (see what they did there? both games begin with war-! and end with -!). Could this be the game that properly lures me back to SF?

Warpstar! is very much Warlock! re-skinned for SF. You have just two stats (Stamina and Luck) and a set of 32 skills you add to a d20 roll, trying to hit 20+ or just beat your opponent. These skills start at 4, 5 or 6 but five of them are career-specific and you have 10 extra points to split between them, to a maximum of 10 or 12. Some are generic skills (spot, Stealth), some familiar from the fantasy game (Short Blade, sleight of Hand) and some are new to the SF setting (Astronav, Ship's Gunner, Zero-G, etc). One, Warp Focus, lets you do 'magic.'

The 24 careers cover the spectrum of SF tropes. Some are professions (Bounty Hunter, Diplomat and I suppose Pirate and Gambler) but others are more like archetypes (Street Kid, Rebel) and one, Warp-Touched, is a space wizard. As well as boosted skills, each career comes with a couple of tables to roll (or choose) your background and quirky details of your motivations, past escapades, enemies made and reputation earned. As with Warlock!, there is a ton of imagination in these tables, which accomplish more world-building than an entire chapter of setting, and a slightly seedy tone that Greg Saunders delights in.

Characters can use experience to switch careers, broadening their repertoires, and gain access to Advanced Careers if they want to push their skills into the teens.

In a variation on the Warlock! template, everybody starts with a randomly-rolled Talent, to give PCs a little more heroic oompf than the down-at-heel misfits of Warlock! ever enjoyed.

Combat is a standard skill test, but hand-to-hand combat involves an opposed roll, trying to roll higher than your opponent. The risk of launching an attack but coming away as the one who takes the damage should make players cautious about resorting to violence. Once Stamina hits zero, you roll for lasting Criticals, the worst of which kill you outright. With PCs boasting Stamina scores in the teens or low 20s and weapons doing damage ranging from a d6 (knives, etc) to 2d6+4 (pulse guns), you can afford to get hit once. but after that you consider retreating, which carries no penalty. The intention is that combat usually goes to first blood, then NPCs (and wise PCs) back off and try a different approach. Stamina is regained rapidly - you get half of it back after a brief rest, all of it after a long rest.

Magic enters the game because of the Warp Space that ships use to cross interstellar distances. This isn't the clean and clinical hyperspace of Star Wars; no, it's the chaos-realm of Warhammer 40K and anyone exposed to it risks being mutated, but one such mutation is the acquisition of spell-like powers called Glyphs. As with Warlock!, spells/glyphs are physical things that an aspiring magus has to hunt down, bargain for or steal from other practitioners.

The main addition to the game is the addition of space ships and ship combat. It's assumed each PC group gets their own space ship and you can roll or choose from a set of 6, each with a distinctive design and aesthetic: from the elegant D'Aubigny Envoy Cruiser to the tough, fast but unfashionable Kilos Star Hauler.

Spaceship combat is handled just like personal combat. Ships have Stamina (called Structure), armour, built-in weapons that deal damage in a similar range to (but great scale than) personal weapons. It's a clean, intuitive system that once again encourages brief skirmishes then running away once someone takes damage.

The setting is a vast Galactic Empire known as the Chorus. This is ruled by fractious noble houses who, in a clear nod to Dune, achieve an almost-immortality through using the space-drug Cadence, the source of which is known only to the supreme Autarch. Other factions include the military Hegemony, the unscrupulous Merchant Combine and the arcane Warp Consortium whose possession of weird technology makes them, in effect, a guild of sorcerers. A bestiary includes some oddball aliens, some of which (the Fruiting Dead and Borg-alike Nodes) imply cosmic horror, but many of which seem to delight in upsetting expectations, such as the troll-like Jondo who are actually placid and philosophical or the hideous dog-monster Borrs who are actually deeply cultured. Warp Entities allow for the inclusion of space dragons, space vampires and space demon-gods, according to taste.

Yes. Warpstar! is quick, clean and intuitive - as you'd expect from an adaptation of an already-solid game like Warlock!. The setting is highly serviceable while being vague enough to customise. The character careers offer lots of hints for your first few scenarios. Nobody dies in character generation.

Some features are 'baked in' to the rules. There's space-magic, for example. You could prise it out, I suppose, or recast it as psionics if you are allergic to fantasy in your SF (although references to Warp mutations run all through the rules and setting). The combat system, as noted, does tend to impose a cautious, scaredy-bully style of play, where antagonists shoot or stab each other once, then down their weapons and negotiate. The skill system means that PCs tend to succeed between a third to half the time, which is a bit low for a truly swashbuckling game, a bit high for gritty techno-realism.

But I like these baked-in features. They give the game some character that seemed to be missing in White Star, for example.

I could see myself using Warpstar! to scratch the itch for SF one-shots - or to adapt Traveller scenarios (such as used to feature in White Dwarf of old) into a slightly more space operatic idiom. I've also acquired the Omoron sourcebook, which is a Warpstar! detailed setting: a peculiar star cluster that's a bit like the Procyon Sector in Scum & Villainy. It features a couple of scenarios, but I'll not mention them until I've run them on my gaming group.

Omoron (and several other sourcebooks for Warpstar!) is available from drivethrurpg

The only criticism I can make of Warpstar! is the price. The rules are available as PDF and hardback. The PDF is £9 which isn't exactly cheap, but you're getting a solid game and a lot of setting ideas for your money. The hardback is a stonking £33. Why so expensive? Well, it's because this is the premium colour price point. Is there a lot of colour in the rules? No, barely any - but Greg Saunders explains "the premium colour option has been chosen for the print version as it represents a much better quality of paper with an improved look and feel."

I bit the bullet and invested in a physical edition because I find it hard to use PDF rules sets in play; I can attest that the paper is very good quality, the book looks clean and clear and, well, very SF, so that's a big tick for Artistic Standards. But it has to be said the book really doesn't need this treatment, especially as the art style throughout aims for the same scuzzy 1980s-fanzine vibe that informed Warlock!  I mean, it looks great, but it would marry very nicely with coarser paper and lower resolution. You can't help wishing there was a nice cheap non-premium edition, or even better a non-premium softback. If you could buy a physical copy of Warpstar! for, say, £10-15, I'd cheerfully treat my group to 'players copies' to build commitment and speed up character creation. 

Warpstar! hits my sweet spot. It delivers space romance (which I think is my preferred genre, rather than Hard SF) with a simple but distinctive rules set. It's got theme and imagination running through it. It posits player characters who are quirky and distinctive, but of less-than-heroic stature. It will hit the gaming table a few times over the next few months. I'll review the Omoron campaign book when it does.

Back in the early-1980s, White Dwarf became the premier magazine for the roleplaying hobby. In America, Dragon reigned supreme in its support for D&D, but White Dwarf covered the whole hobby (more or less) and was unequalled for the quality of its journalism and contributions. There really were some fantastic scenarios for D&D and Runequest in particular, a brilliant column by Andy Slack supporting Traveller, a bestiary feature that inspired most of the AD&D Fiend Folio and great articles on campaign design generally.

My favourite issue of White Dwarf (24) and the Fiend Folio, a sequel to the AD&D Monster Manual containing a mixture of monsters from TSR modules and the pages of White Dwarf.

All things must come to an end and as White Dwarf moved into its 50s (in 1984) there was a perceptible dip in the imaginative temperature. Don't get me wrong: there were still some cracking scenarios to be published and most issues had a solid article or two, but it stopped being groundbreaking. The RPG companies were getting into gear supporting their own products with increasingly thoughtful modules and campaign settings. There was just less for a magazine like White Dwarf to do. Perhaps also, less consensus in the hobby over who it was primarily for. Ultimately, White Dwarf would turn into a showcase for Games Workshop's own products, but that was still a few years down the line. There was life in the old dog yet.

One promising sign of continuing relevancy was a trend for scenarios for a new RPG: Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu, now a mighty industry behemoth but then a quirky outlier in the gaming constellation, pitching a roleplaying experience of dread, futility and, ultimately, madness and death in the world of H P Lovecraft's distinctive American Gothic.

The original Call Of Cthulhu RPG (the best cover too) and the White Dwarf issue that reviewed it - along with an excerpt from Ian Bailey's review

This opened the floodgates for White Dwarf contributors to submit a range of Call of Cthulhu material, including Cthulhu in space (The Last Log, by Jon Sutherland, Steve Williams and Tim Hall, from issue 56 in 1984) as well as Cthulhu in rural 1930s England (The Watchers of Walberswick by Jon Sutherland, from issue 50 in 1984) and Cthulhu in British Mandate Palestine (The Bleeding Stone of Iphtah by Steve Williams and Jon Sutherland, from issue 60 in 1984) . You'll notice Sutherland's name recurring? He was quite prolific in 1984!

These early scenarios are typical for White Dwarf: they are concise but erudite, with a close attention to period and setting; they are thoughtful affairs, far removed from the pulpy excesses of Chaosium's own globetrotting campaign packs (like the epic Masks of Nyarlathotep, also from 1984 and closer in tone to a Bond movie than a Lovecraft story - a really good Bond movie spliced with Indiana Jones but pretty far from Lovecraft's cerebral interests). I suppose Jon Sutherland's efforts were attempts to take Call Of Cthulhu by the horns and deliver a narrative experience that feels like it really could be a horror short story by Lovecraft himself: very low-key but also, whatever their ostensible setting, very British.

All this preamble is the context for me blowing the dust off White Dwarf #60 to run Sutherland's The Bleeding Stone of Iphtah on a group of three players over two evening sessions. Why pick this scenario? Well, it was used as the final scenario in the 1984 Games Day official Call of Cthulhu Competition and the introduction boasts that it provides "an interesting one-off session or addition to an existing campaign" - which sounds ideal for my needs.

Next, the question of which rules set to use? That might sound odd, but post-CoC rules have proliferated recently and my respect for Sandy Peterson's imaginative achievement with Call of Cthulhu is only matched by my distaste for CoC's rules themselves, which are Chaosium's Basic Roleplaying system, with the addition of a diminishing Sanity (SAN) stat that spirals down to nothing as the Elder Nasties emerge. Lots of skills expressed as percentages, professions defined by skills and a lumbering combat system that manages to simultaneously make player characters too flimsy (any Mythos monster will squish them) and too tough (you have to shoot or stab someone several times before they fall down).

The two contenders to replace CoC are Paul Baldowski's The Cthulhu Hack and Joseph D Salvador's Eldritch Tales.

You can find both on drivethrurpg, but Cthulhu Hack is also available from the nice people at Zatu

I've written about Baldowski's Cthulhu Hack before and, like most Hack games, it's great for pick-up-and-play. There are only two problems. One is that it tends more towards the pulpy action-adventure side of the CoC congregation and the other thing is that its Hack-derived mechanics don't greatly resemble classic CoC at all; both are problems for adapting the reserved tone and low-key assumptions of Sutherland's CoC scenarios.

No, Salvador's game is the one I choose for this. For those who don't know it, it bills itself as Lovecraftian White Box Roleplaying. This means it takes the bare rules and conventions of Original D&D, especially the iteration known as White Box: Fantastic Medieval Adventure Game by Charlie Mason. Now, I fell in love with White Box when I attempted a long D&D-style campaign during 2020's Lockdown, so I'm excited by this.

Mason's White Box is free (FREE!) on drivethruprg but a physical copy is stupidly cheap on Amazon too

Eldritch Tales is a beautifully presented indie RPG product with evocative (and pleasingly amateur-style) art, fantastic layout, a delightful overview of the Lovecraftian milieu and careful explication of the (essentially simple) rules. Only the presence of a much-needed index would complete my bliss! The game invites you to create characters by rolling 3d6 for the classic six characteristics (Strength, Dexterity, Wisdom, etc.). Non-combat 'Feats' are attempted by rolling a d6 and you succeed on a 6 if your relevant characteristic is low (6 or less), on a 5-6 with ordinary characteristics and on a 4-6 of your relevant characteristic is 15+. Having a particular skill either adds +1 or +2 to the roll or lets you roll twice, choosing the best score - or sometimes both. So much better than faffing around with percentage dice.

There are four character classes: Antiquarians, Combatants, Opportunists and Socialites. Within your broad class, you also roll or choose an Occupation that might give you particular skills, funds or possessions. Your Character Class gives you a d6 Hit points at first level (d6+1 for those hardy Combatants). Most weapons do a d6 damage (d6-1 for a thrown knife, d6+2 for a shotgun). Yes, every exchange of violence is potentially life-ending, especially as going up a level usually adds just +1 to your Hit Points. The levels only go up to 6th by the way. I think if your investigator gets to 6th level (with usually 3d6+1 HP), you should interpret that as the universe telling you not to push your luck any further.

Insanity is a score that goes up during nerve-wracking encounters. If it ever gets to the level of half your Wisdom you gain a permanent insanity and if it ever matches your Wisdom you become a gibbering NPC. There are short-term shocks for people who fumble their Insanity saving throws (roughly 10% of the time) or gain 3 Insanity in one go (not that uncommon either once gibbous entities come calling).

Two nice features of Eldritch Tales are the tables to roll up your Contacts (you have quite a few of these) and the table to roll up your Character Relationships. There are 20 of these suggestions, ranging from 'You are in love with another character (or their spouse or sibling)' through to 'You and another character witnessed something astounding.' These are so helpful for turning a bunch of numbers on paper into a team of investigators ready to risk life and sanity to investigate eldritch mysteries together.

Past that point, Eldritch Tales is old-skool D&D: you roll saving throws and roll to hit Armour Class, there are familiar spells and monsters from the Mythos, you gain experience points from defeating the monsters or solving mysteries, you go up levels. 

The scenario kicks off in Jerusalem in the 1920s, a time when the Palestine Mandate was overseen by the British Empire. It's a fantastic setting to launch any story - so good in fact that Kenneth Branagh (clearly also a fan of '80s White Dwarf) stole the idea to begin his recent film of Murder On The Orient Express.

The PCs are Percy Goodfeather, a Gentleman Socialite who is searching for his vanished sister Darcy. He brings with him his university friend Howard Harris, an Australian Occultist Antiquarian: the two bonded when another friend disappeared, never to be seen again, during one of Howie's rituals in the college rooms. Percy's largesse helps fund Howie's growing drug addiction. They have been brought to Palestine by Joe Birdwell, an Opportunist Outdoorsman who knows the region and its peoples. Birdwell is secretly in love with Darcy Goodfeather, but he knew her as Dahlila de Gul, a torch singer and medium; he was an enthusiastic participant in her demimonde orgies until her strange disappearance. He has tracked her to Jerusalem, but not told Percy of his sister's double life.

The scenario starts with the PCs browsing a museum in Jerusalem when they are approached by a shifty Turkish gentleman named Lakey who wants them to take on a job for his boss, a businessman named Lotto who owns the Domino Club and is obsessed with antiquities. This is a run-of-the-mill CoC plot hook and the two NPCs are a delightful hommage to Peter Lorre's Ugarte and Sydney Greenstreet's Ferrari from Casablanca (1942).

Except that being led by the hand by a bunch of NPCs to a patron who explains why they have to go to a dig site in the Judean Mountains and chivvy along an archaeologist called Foster who has promised to bring back treasures for Lotto but has so far turned up nothing ... well, that's a slow start my friends.

So instead we have Joe Birdwell see Darcy pass by in the street - and he jumps out of the window to give chase. Darcy is being stalked by dangerous looking Bedouins but when Joe reaches her she reacts without recognition. One of the Bedouins fires a gun at Darcy, but Joe is hit and Darcy takes off in a car while the street erupts in confusion. Percy and Howie arrive to find an Arab doctor treating Joe and warning them that the Bedouins were tribesmen or a cult called Pachalim (made up name but it'll fly) and very dangerous customers.

The PCs are supposed to take the job from Lotto and journey to the dig site at Iphtah, but my ad libbed side plot has taken over the story. Joe goes to find out more about the Pachalim from a contact - an Arab businesswoman nicknamed 'the Ibis' (for her pronounced nose). This vociferous widow with her melodramatic flights of insulting rhetoric quickly becomes one of my most beloved NPCs! Joe parries and feints and handles her beautifully and ends up shadowing a pair of Pachalim goons as they invade the seedy guest house where Darcy is staying. Joe gets knocked out when he tries to intervene but, waking as a prisoner of the Pachalim, learns that they are trying to stop 'the Forgotten' (almansiayn) from carrying out a ritual. Yup, they're the good guys. Joe is released, doped up with hashish, and stumbles home to the Domino Club.

Percy and Howie have been pulling their own contacts, find out a lot about Foster and discover that the local gangs that Lakey buys drugs from have acquired new weapons in the form of Rot spells that do horrific things to their victims.

When the three PCs visit Darcy's guesthouse the next morning, they find Darcy has moved on, but one of the Pachalim is there, dead from a Rot spell, and clues point to Iphtah where Prof. Foster is digging. Yes, this is me trying to re-direct things because this side plot has taken up the evening and we haven't even arrived at the location of the actual scenario.

The main scenario takes place at the dig site at Iphtah, where Prof. Foster is going mad. The Professor is using opium to keep the Yithians out of his head, but he's run out of drugs and thinks that Lakey (his supplier) is holding out on him. The PCs get to snoop around the site, spy on the erratic Foster and realise strange things are afoot, but this is a programmed scenario where the PCs have to be onlookers to certain events and no amount of roleplaying or researching will speed them up.

In the middle of the night, Foster murders Lakey to get at the drugs, then overdoses himself. The PCs manage to stop the truck escaping with Lakey's corpse by shooting out a tyre. They are left at the dig site with no Lakey, no Professor but a mysterious red stone - the Bleeding Stone of Iphtah.

This is where it gets creepy, because a bunch of Dimensional Shamblers show up if anyone tries to remove the Stone from the site without performing the ritual.

I hide the Shambles in an eerie dust cloud (for extra creeps) and use them as silent sentinels who murder the Arab labourers to establish their monster bona fides but otherwise leave the PCs to explore.  

There's a buried shrine to be found and opened and the Stone has to be 'bled' inside a pit to power up the ritual and then ... err .. and then ... ah, well, that's about it really. The PCs are free to leave.

Perhaps suspecting that things could turn out rather anticlimactic, Jon Sutherland suggests a raid by snooping Bedouins and I've already set up the Pachalim for exactly this sort of work. The PCs end up stuck in the shrine with the Pachalim outside with rifles in a tense standoff. Then Howie the Antipodean Antiquarian leads the charge, shoots the Pachalim sheikh dead, but is riddled with bullets himself. Percy and Joe shoot their way to safety and the Shamblers disembowel the fleeing Pachalim.

​Percy and Joe get to leave the site, supervised by the silent Shamblers.

And that's, kind of, where it ends. The scenario doesn't make it clear just how the ending is supposed to go down. My players decide to return the Stone to Lotto and continue their pursuit of Darcy. They are unaware of the role they have played in facilitating the arrival of the Yithians by performing the ritual.

The Bleeding Stone of Iphtah is a rather slight affair. In fact, all of Jon Sutherland's 1984 scenarios are oddly muted. I think they were written in deliberate contrast to the gangbusters style of American CoC material, to be atmospheric, unsettling and cryptic, rather than kinetic, deadly and cosmic in scope. In all of them, the Mythos is a marginal force, largely operating off stage. The PCs spend most of their time exploring a realistic but evocative location, then at the very end there's a Mythos intrusion.

The central problem is that there's no way for the PCs to understand the significance of what's been going on or their role in it. Now, in an ongoing campaign this is acceptable - further down the line, the PCs might uncover information which casts a revelatory light on the goings-on at Iphtah and realise that, by performing the ritual, they brought the Yithian-apocalypse a dread step closer. They might then understand why Foster was taking drugs and why the Shamblers appeared to stop them leaving with an un-bled Stone.

But as things stand, there's no way to learn any of this - and this was a scenario, you will recall, billed as "an interesting one-off session or addition to an existing campaign."  One wonders what the contestants at Games Day '84 made of it.

I know some people will retort that Lovecraftian roleplaying is supposed to be mysterious and it's a good thing, not a bad thing, if a scenario leaves players puzzled and disquieted. Yes, that's true, I suppose, but my taste is more for a scenario that places the players in positions of at least partial knowledge. Too much of Iphtah​ was meaningful only for the GM, even with my improvisations.

But these are minor gripes and I should perhaps essay another Sutherland scenario - perhaps the well-received Watchers At Walberswick​ - before forming a judgement on his output.

Eldritch Tales served us very well and is now my go-to RPG rules set for Coc material. I was pretty generous in handing out experience points for roleplaying (and why not? the roleplaying was stellar!) and of the two characters who survived, Percy reached second level (losing some Insanity and gaining that precious extra Hit Point) with Joe just missing his level-up.

I'd love to dust off a larger campaign pack - perhaps Shadows of Yog-Sothoth - to run using Eldritch Tales. However, I became very aware of how flimsy Eldritch Tales PCs are compared to CoC: every gunshot or knife wound is potentially lethal. Perhaps swashbuckling Cthulhu Hack would be a better fit for those pulp-y Chaosium campaigns?

But for the studious and low-key Call Of Cthulhu scenarios that White Dwarf and Jon Sutherland were publishing in the mid-1980s, Eldritch Tales is ideal.