Big Easy Noir

Deadlands: The Weird West, the alternate history Wild West/horror RPG published by Pinnacle Entertainment Group is so good that it merited an Origins Award—twice. First for the original RPG in 1997, and then again in 2007 for Deadlands: Reloaded, the latter employing the Savage Worlds RPG rules that were derived from Deadlands: The Great Rail Wars, the skirmish rules that were themselves derived from Deadlands: The Weird West. It has been subjected to a pair of sequel RPGs, both set in the far future. The first was Deadlands: Hell on Earth, published in 1998 and more recently re-released as Hell on Earth: Reloaded; the second was Deadlands: Lost Colony, published in 2002. More recently though, the Deadlands franchise received another entry that explored the future of a North America in which the old United States of America were divided by the Civil War, California was cracked into a maze, the mysterious ‘Ghost Rock’ literally fuelled an explosion of inventions, and magic was known and feared. This future is not one to come, but one that pushes the Deadlands: The Weird West setting forward by fifty-five years into something not a little familiar. That entry is Deadlands Noir.

Published in 2012 via Kickstarter, Deadlands Noir is a Savage Worlds setting that takes the Deadlands setting way down south and along the shadow framed streets of the Big Easy. As a setting, New Orleans is perfectly ripe with gaming possibilities—it has all the exoticism of a European city on American soil, it is the heart of the practice of Voodoo, its politics come as dirty as they can, corruption is a way of life, and it has the gentility of a Southern city.  Which is exactly what the New Orleans of Deadlands Noir is, for it lies south of the Mason-Dixie Line in the Confederate States of America. It is a city in which the dead do walk at night, as well as many nastier things in the shadows. Worse, it is 1935 and like the rest of the world, New Orleans is deep in the Depression. Making a dishonest living, let alone an honest one, is a real struggle. Nevertheless, there are mysteries to be uncovered, truths to be told, people to be conned and robbed, entertaining to be done—now that Prohibition is over (though some states and counties are still dry), and new devices to be patented. That is if you do not fall foul of the law—like the C.S.A.’s Texas Rangers and their campaign against magic or the city’s organised crime—such as the Sicilian Mafia, the Black Hand, or the Voodoo gang known as the Red sect…

Apart from the shift in time and tone—from 1880 to 1935, from Weird West Horror to Pulp Noir Horror, the obvious differences between Deadlands Reloaded and Deadlands Noir are its character options. Bootleggers, members of the clergy, con artists, dilettantes, doctors, entertainers, escorts, lawyers, parapsychologists, private investigators, reporters, vagabonds, and writers all point to a distinctly urban setting. The Arcane Backgrounds available are also different. Grifters are supreme swindlers, capable of conning arcane power from dark spirits, though not without daily indulging in a vice such as alcohol or dice. Houngans and Mambos practise strange rituals that pay tribute to the loa and in return, can create small miracles. Patent Scientists are inventors, constantly striving to create and sell new devices that will make their name and reputation, although they are unknowingly tapping into the otherworld for their inspiration. They are renowned not just for their creations, but for the delusions they typically suffer.

What is not available to play is Deadlands Reloaded’s Huckster, their having been hunted to near extinction by the Agency in the North and the Texas Rangers in the South. Grifters have taken up their legacy. Faith has been driven to an all-time low by the events of the Great War and the Depression, so preachers capable of casting true miracles are all but unknown. Mad Scientists are now Patent Scientists, whilst Indian Shamans are very rarely seen in cities like New Orleans and the practitioners of Eastern martial arts have gone underground. Similarly, two Arcane Backgrounds are rare in New Orleans—the Blessed and the Syker, but both are described in the Deadlands Noir Companion. (It should be noted that the latter volume has a higher page count and is more expensive than Deadlands Noir itself).

Other new Edges that Deadlands Noir adds to fit the setting include Comfortable, Veteran of the Concrete Jungle, Hitman, Sleuth, and Grit. New Hindrances include Corrupt, Grim Servant of Death, Night Terrors, Schmuck, and Smart Mouth. It should be noted that all characters start with the Poverty Hindrance to represent the economic difficulties of the Depression. Plus a character also needs to describe his worst nightmare.

One last option available is the Weird Edge, Harrowed. A member of the Harrowed is all but dead, having refused to give up on this mortal coil. What keeps a Harrowed from finally dying is the pact he enters with a demon from the Hunting Grounds to enable him to keep his body moving. The Harrowed has not only suffered in hell, he must constantly battle with demon for control of his body, is marked by the wound that killed him, must consume meat to heal, and can actually pickle himself with alcohol as a means to preserve his body. A Harrowed can use other Arcane Backgrounds, though not faith-based ones like Voodoo if the demon is in control…

Our sample character is such one Harrowed. Antony Delvecchio never wanted to get involved with the Black Hand, New Orleans’ mafia family, but when your father is a ‘made man’, you have little choice. Antony though, wanted to be something else—to be a writer. This was much against the wishes of his father, and whilst he had the support of his mother, he could not avoid being forced to study law at Tulane. Antony was a good student, but still wanted to party and that took him deep into New Orleans. It was on one of these off-campus jaunts that he came to the attention of the Red Sect, who saw in him an opportunity, one that might see him turned against their criminal rivals. Antony found himself drunkenly inducted into the worship of the loa. It was something that he fought hard to keep from his father, but he could not hide his decision to not practice the law after graduating, despite passing the bar. His father called him a wastrel and resolved to bring back into the family fold, but despite his mother’s attempts, relations with his father and the rest of the family broke down. Antony found himself cut off and penniless, struggling to make ends meet through his writing. Who exactly fired the shot and why, Antony does not know, but it might have been one his father’s button men or someone from the Red Sect because he proved to be not as useful as they had hoped. Right now Antony is looking for his killer while he supports himself from submissions to the Tombstone Epitaph about the outré side of life in the Big Easy.

Name: Antony Delvecchio Nationality: American 
Rank: Novice Occupation: Revenant Writer
Attributes: Agility d4, Smarts d6, Spirit d8, Strength d6, Vigor d6 
Skills: Driving d4, Fighting d4, Intimidation d8, Knowledge (Law) d6, Knowledge (Occult) d4, Notice d4, Perform (Writing) d6, Persuasion d6, Shooting d4, Voodoo d6 
Charisma: 0
Pace: 6; Parry: 4; Toughness: 5
Power Points: 10 Dominion: 0
Hindrances:  Night Terrors (Major), Obligation (Minor), Short Temper (Minor)
Edges: Arcane Background – Harrowed, Arcane Background – Harrowed, Talented
Harrowed Edge: Spook
Spells: healing, warrior’s gift

Mechanically, it no surprise that Deadlands Noir uses Pinnacle Entertainment Group’s latest edition of Savage Worlds. What this means is that Deadlands Noir is a Pulp action game as well as a Pulp Noir one, and to support the latter, rules are provided to handle detective work—both hitting the books and legwork, knockout blows, gaining a second wind in a fight, tailing a suspect, and social conflict and interaction. In particular, interrogations and using patter; the latter nicely underlining the genre convention that any good shamus should be able to talk his way out of trouble—at least sometimes.

Beyond character creation and the new genre mechanics, Deadlands Noir supports its setting with an extensive description of the city and its neighbourhoods, from Tremé and the Lower Ninth to the French Quarter and the Garden District. Each of the descriptions of the city’s neighbourhoods is expanded upon in the GM’s section, itself some two thirds of the book. These descriptions include numerous individual locations and persons of note—many of the latter illustrated with images of those who pledged towards the Kickstarter for Deadlands Noir. (This does result in a lot of NPCs having beards which feels slightly out of keeping with the 1930s). What is mechanically interesting about descriptions of these neighbourhoods is that each is assigned a Fear Level, from normal and ordinary (Fear Level 0) to Deadlands (Fear Level 6). This is a measure of how weird each district is and how scared the inhabitants are of where they live. It also affects any Fear check that a character has to make whilst in the neighbour. One of the player characters’ aims in Deadlands Noir is to lower these Fear Levels, though this should not be obvious to the characters or their players, but rather should come about by their doing good—solving mysteries, rescuing dames, and so on.

The GM’s section also includes an explanation of the setting’s secrets, an array of its monsters and NPCs—major and minor; advice on running the game and handling mysteries. The latter is accompanied by a set of lists with which a GM can create a case with the roll of a few dice and some thought as to what clues might be found. These consist of five rolls to generate the Hook, the Event, the Perpetrator, the Motive, and the Evidence, with optional rolls for the Location and the Twist. Our sample Mystery begins with this set of rolls:

1. The Hook—Stranger
2. The Event—Kidnapping
3. The Perpetrator—Friend
4. The Motive—Political Gain
5. The Evidence—Testimonial
6. The Location—Riverside
7. The Twist—Dark Secret (Silent Patron)
   
   A woman comes to the player characters. She wants help that she cannot gain from the police. Her husband, the project commissioner for the James McKendrew Memorial Bridge, has been kidnapped and she has been given the characters’ names as being of those who might be able to help. The kidnappers want a package which they claim her husband has, but she knows nothing about it or where it is. (The truth of the matter is that her husband has been kidnapped by her boyfriend, who is also his business partner. What they are after is a recording of Mayor McKendrew accepting bribes in return for the position of project commissioner, but in reality, the kidnapper is in league with the Mayor in return for something else).

Deadlands Noir includes not only fourteen individual Savage Tales, each tied to one of the locations described earlier in the book. These follow a full campaign adventure—‘Red Harvest’. It begins with a missing woman, a large debt, and a big score, before going onto reveal at one of Deadlands Noir's big secrets. It is a solid affair, with room aplenty for the GM to insert individual Savage Tales of his own, or the ones included in the book.

Physically, Deadlands Noir is by contemporary standards, a slim hardback. It is done in full colour and illustrated throughout. The artwork is decent, though occasionally it slips into a cartoon-like style. The map of the city is slightly difficult to read in places, but the other maps in the book are clear and easy to read. One nice touch is how the sidebars are each framed against a strip of film that with their black-silver wash emphasises the book’s noir theme.

One obvious use for Deadlands Noir would be to unplug the ‘Deadlands’ element and in its place put the Cthulhu Mythos of Reality Blurs’ Realms of Cthulhu. The result would be a Pulpy mish-mash of genres, but it could certainly handle something akin to HBO’s Cast a Deadly Spell. That is one option of course, but with the ‘Deadlands’ element kept in, Deadlands Noir feels complete in and of itself, presenting a well-written continuation of Deadlands Reloaded without repeating itself—a problem that Deadlands has not always avoided in the past. Above all, Deadlands Noir is as enjoyable a genre mix of pulp horror with Film Noir as the original Deadlands was of Wild West and horror.

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The TALENT Campaign II

The popularity of genres wax and wane as time passes, and so it is that the superhero genre is no longer as popular as it once was. Certainly not popular to be supported with regular supplements, but one exception to that is GODLIKE: Superhero Roleplaying in a World on Fire, 1936-1946. Originally published in 2002, Arc Dreams' RPG is supported by various supplements including a full campaign in the form of Black Devils Brigade: The First Special Service Force and the Italian Campaign, 1943–1944. This is now followed by a companion mini-campaign, Combat Orders No. 4 - The Courtyard of Hell. What separates the two are the Apennine Mountains and their differing scopes.

As its title suggests, Black Devils Brigade concerns the whole of the Italian Campaign, including the battle for Anzio and the eventual drive on Rome. Geographically, it is set entirely on the western side of the Apennine Mountains. The Courtyard of Hell takes place on the eastern side of the Apennine on the Adriatic Coast, in just the one location, that of the port town of Ortona. Located on a steep-sided plateau and comprised of narrow streets lined with stone buildings, the town was the site of fierce street fighting between the defending Fallschirmjäger troops and the attacking Canadians in the final weeks of 1943 that Winston Churchill came to call the battle for the town, ‘Little Stalingrad’.

In The Courtyard of Hell as in GODLIKE, the player characters are Talents, members of the Allied forces who have been ‘blessed’ with an amazing ability such as controlling the blood flow of the wounded, being able to map out a location with a shout, or smash open the armour on a Tiger tank with a single punch! The player characters are soldiers first before being trained to use their Talent effectively in battle, but as more and more Talents manifest on the battlefield, there is not always the time or the chance for newly expressed Talents to receive this training before being thrown back into fray. This often means that they will be prepared to face the Übermenschen, the Nazi Talents who are part of the SS and who revel in their powers and the Aryan ideals of the ‘Super Race’. This will be an issue in The Courtyard of Hell as will be a Talent’s Will. It is his Will that fuels a Talent’s powers and his ability to cancel out another Talent’s powers that can be lost in a contest of Wills with an enemy Talent.

The Courtyard of Hell takes place in the last week of December, 1943. The soldiers of the 2nd Brigade, the Loyal Edmonton Regiment, the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada, and Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry have recently made a hard fought and bloody crossing of the Moro River and now need Talent support in taking Ortona. The battle is depicted in thirteen scenes that take place between December 20th and December 27th, as the Talents, being among the first Canadians to manifest as Talents, are thrown into support the assault on the town. This will see them leading the attack on Ortona’s outskirts before becoming embroiled in street fighting against troops of the 1st Fallschirmjäger Division. Intelligence reports that there are Übermenschen in the town, including at least one flyer. What is curious about these Übermenschen is that they are not members of the SS as are most Nazi Übermenschen, but have remained with the elite Fallschirmjäger troops rather than transferring to the SS as is expected of all Übermenschen. Technically then, these Übermenschen are members of the Luftwaffe!

In the seven days of the battle for Ortona, the Talents will support tanks, fight from one building to the next, move heavy artillery, and come to the rescue of their comrades and civilians alike. They will also find themselves fighting Übermenschen other than Fallschirmjäger as the intensity of the fighting increases and Übermenschen of the SS are brought into to support the German defence of the town. Throughout, the Talents will be shadowed by newsmen and photographers who are eager to report on the success and activities of Canada’s first Talents in battle.

Based on a real battle, with two of the battle’s actual participants being included in the seven pre-generated Canadian Talents, The Courtyard of Hell is a combat intensive affair. Designed to be played by between six and seven players, guidelines are included to help the GM adjust the difficulty of the scenario’s encounters so that they can be played by a smaller group. Further support comes in the form of descriptions of the weapons and vehicles used by both sides; guidelines for handling large battles as well as a means to quickly set up interesting encounters using the ‘One Roll Cityfight’ rules; full stats for both the Canadian and Fallschirmjäger troops; and some twenty-four fully detailed and described Übermenschen in addition to the six pre-generated Canadian Talents.

In previous releases for Godlike, the design of the Übermenschen and the Allied Talents has been somewhat underwhelming, perhaps even unimaginative. Admittedly, it is not easy to come up with interesting Talent concepts, let alone create them on the limited number of points available during character creation. With over thirty presented in the pages of The Courtyard of Hell, there is a surprisingly degree of invention on show.

Physically, The Courtyard of Hell is generally well presented. In places it needs another edit and in places the text has faded to the point of near illegibility. The maps are also hard to read in places, primarily because of the difficulty of depicting the necessary detail in grayscale rather than colour. Otherwise, The Courtyard of Hell is decently illustrated.

The Courtyard of Hell is much more focused and much shorter affair than Black Devils Brigade, though the possibility of soldiers from the First Special Service Force being sent over the Apennines to fight in the battle for Ortona is discussed. It could thus be used as an extension to the campaign presented in Black Devils Brigade: The First Special Service Force and the Italian Campaign, 1943–1944, but even if not, it should offer several sessions of challenging combat. Well-researched, solidly-presented, Combat Orders No. 4 - The Courtyard of Hell presents the opportunity for the players to explore a heroically tough if little known battle of World War Two.

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The Lion After The Serpent

If you were wondering what had become of The Day After Ragnarok, the 2009 Savage Worlds setting created and written by Ken Hite and published by Atomic Overmind Press, then you are not alone. The award-winning post-WW2, post-apocalypse, post-Ragnarok campaign setting, which has since been adapted for use with Hero Games’ Hero Sixth Edition and more recently for use with Evil Hat Games’ Fate Core, has not received the support that it truly deserves. Ideally, that would be a Plot Point campaign, but in the meantime, the setting has been supported with a half dozen ‘One-Sheet’ adventures and three entries in the Serpent Scales: Fragments From The World After The Serpentfall series. To date, these have visited the rise of the Klan in Serpent Scales #1: The New Konfederacy; examined the STEN Gun in Serpent Scales #2: (Happiness is a) Sten Gun; and even gone ashore in Serpent Scales #3: Return to Monster Island. Now there is a fourth entry in the series, one which comes with a little bit of history of its own.

Available for Savage Worlds and Fate Core, Issue #4 in the Serpent Scales: Fragments From The World After The Serpentfall series is The Lion in Fimbulwinter: Sweden After the Serpentfall. It began life as a Ken Hite authored contribution to the Swedish gaming magazine FENIX for its ‘post-holocaust’ issue, and after all, there is no post-holocaust setting like The Day After Ragnarok. Atomic Overmind Press has taken Hite’s original article and developed it into this fourth entry in the Serpent Scales series. It describes the events in the July 1945 Serpent Fall as they fell upon Sweden, taking them up to the current situation in Sweden in 1948.

Of all the countries of Scandinavia, Sweden is the only one to survive nearly intact. To the west, Denmark and Norway took the brunt of the tsunami that flowed east and west in the wake of Jörmungandr’s atomic-fire induced plummet to earth. Sweden could not avoid the earthquakes or the torrential rain that followed, but despite hundreds of thousands that died, Sweden survived as a nation, although a politically unstable one. Placed east of the Serpent Curtain, Sweden is almost but not quite a client state of Moscow, which cannot be said of its neighbours – Norway and Denmark are both People’s Republics garrisoned by Soviet troops, whilst Stalin incorporated Finland into the USSR directly as the Karelo-Finnish SSR. At home, Sweden remains a monarchy although King Gustav VI Adolf or ‘Comrade G’ was forced to retreat from public life by a Communist government that has since been replaced by a left wing alliance that avoids making radical decisions that might break the government and force external intervention…

Meanwhile, the king’s son, Crown Prince Gustav Adolf, has decamped to the once-German island of Heligoland in the North Sea with much of the Swedish Navy and air force, and declared himself the Royal Governor of Heligoland. It has become a major staging post for ships of the British Royal Navy and for refugees getting out of Soviet occupied Germany – whatever their ‘former’ political allegiances. The British Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6, supports anti-Communist activities in Sweden, the country serving as the perfect jumping off point to get spies through the Serpent Curtain and back out again. This activity includes research into the oldest runic symbols in Europe; the very ones that the Ahnenerbe scholars are said to have used to summon the Midgard Serpent! Monsters are everywhere, just like the rest of the world, whether that be sinuous serpents newly returned to Sweden’s lakes or the trolls and even more fearsome troll wives that do the bidding of their Frost Giant masters.

Just ten pages long, The Lion in Fimbulwinter is a 2.42 Mb, black and white PDF. It not includes a succinctly written, but nevertheless rich description of a country that is rarely visited in gaming. This presents a fraught nation, desperately trying to rebuild following the Serpentfall whilst staving off the seemingly inevitable Soviet annexation. Although it maintains the high quality in terms of content – content that should spark ideas aplenty for the GM – seen in previous The Day After Ragnarok titles, barring a somewhat silly final scenario seed, what The Lion in Fimbulwinter really lacks is ‘the Top Five’ lists begun in The Day After Ragnarock – such as Top Five Places To Stomp Nazis and Top Five Secret Bases. That said, it is a shorter piece than other titles in the series.

What Serpent Scales #4: The Lion in Fimbulwinter – Sweden presents is the Berlin of the post-Ragnarok world. Which is a little odd given that Hite has already described the city of Tehran, as detailed in his Tehran – Nest of Spies, as being Berlin’s equivalent in The Day After Ragnarok setting, it being the closest non-Soviet capital with an accessible border to the Soviet Union. Perhaps the Berlin of the North of the post-Ragnarok world? If there is a thematic similarity, then the flavour and the tone of The Lion in Fimbulwinter are very different, not as exotic, much dryer, even starker, and colder than Tehran – Nest of Spies. 

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Heavy Metal Chanbara

Two decades ago the last Empress of the Bright Empire vanished, possibly spirited away by the darkness that literally spread from the coronation gift presented to her by her uncle, the Witch-King. The Empress' Honour Guard stepped forward to govern the regions of the empire in her stead, but as the darkness spread so it seemed did a madness… It warped the land of Konoyo and isolated her peoples, disrupted the social order, and drove each ruling member of the Honour Guard, now calling themselves the Lord Generals to push for their territories’ independence. New technologies, once the province of the Onji-Kaji, the craftsmen of the gods, further weakened the social order. The Witch-King had already commanded Kikai, the machines known as war-walkers in battle, but engineers developed black powder and from there, bombs and grenades, repeating pistols and rifles, placing great firepower within the ownership of the peasant and noble alike. In the Age of the Akigara, that of the Empty Throne, there is opportunity aplenty for samurai and scholar, noble and peasant, ronin and ninja, kensei and kikai driver, onmyoji and yakuza alike to make a name for himself, even as the world seems to be turned upside down…

This is the setting for Iron Dynasty: Way of the Ronin, an RPG published by Reality Blurs, Inc. Employing the Savage Worlds rules published by Pinnacle Entertainment Group, it promises “Oriental Action! Savage Style” and ‘heavy metal chanbara’, something that the slightly cinematic mechanics of Savage Worlds can deliver. It combines Japanese style fantasy with its myth as well as a fantasy take upon a classic element of Japanese anime – mecha. It offers numerable character options – Artisan, Ashigaru, Bandit, Bodyguard, Entertainer, Kensei, Ninja, Noble, Priest, Ronin, Scholar, and Yakuza will be familiar to most gamers. New to Iron Dynasty are the ganso, masters of machinery; kikai driver, war walker pilot; makoto, chosen by the kami; onmyoji, capable drawing and commanding the energies from the around them; and yamabushi, mountain warriors who have come down from remote temples. 

Character creation is a simple process, adhering to the given rules for Savage Worlds. A player purchases dice levels to assign to his character’s Attributes and Skills, selects his Defining Interests and Languages as well as Edges (advantages). If he wants more Attributes, Skills, or Edges, he selects Hindrances (disadvantages). All characters are human, so all characters receive a free Edge. The process is easy, but this being a Savage Worlds setting, the best way to create a character is to select a character type and any associated Edges and work backwards to ensure that the character qualifies. (It should be pointed out that this is common of many RPGs, but is particularly so of Savage Worlds because the Edges define a character so). So for example, the Geisha requires a character to be female and have Smarts d6 and Persuade d6, whereas Close Fighting requires Novice, Agility d8, and Fighting d8. 

Our first sample character is closest to what most people would think fits the Chanbara genre. She is a Ronin, an honourless swordswoman forced to take up her father’s katana after he is killed in a border skirmish that became an invasion from a rival region. Rather than be captured by the invaders, Tsutaro fled and has been wandering the land ever since.

Tsutaro, Ronin
Attributes: Agility d8, Smarts d6, Spirit d6, Strength d6, Vigor d4
Skills: Fighting d10, Climbing d6, Notice d6, Persuade d6, Stealth d6, Survival d4, Tracking d4
Defining Interests/Languages: Classical Literature, Etiquette, Folklore 
Charisma: +1
Pace: 6; Parry: 7; Toughness: 5
Hindrances: All Thumbs (Minor), Hero (Major), Loyal (Minor)
Edges: High Born, Quick, Signature Moves (Katana)
Gear: Katana (Str+d8)

In supporting both roles traditional to the chanbara genre and newly presented to this setting, Iron Dynasty introduces innumerable Edges as well as a few Hindrances. Many of these are combat related, for example, ‘Arrow Cutting’ enables a character to block missile weapons, ‘Empty Hands’ makes a character’s unarmed attacks deadlier, whilst ‘Shadow Arts’ grants a bonus to tricks when using the interplay between light and dark. The latter of course is perfect for ninja characters. Others also support the traditional elements necessary to a Japan-like RPG setting, such as ‘Geisha’, ‘Disgraced/Dishonourable’, and ‘Cultured’. Many of the new Edges support aspects particular to the setting, including Arcane Background (Ganso), which enables a Ganso to craft wondrous devices capable of simulating the effects of Powers such as armour, bolt, fly, healing, and stun. In addition to selecting more Powers to emulate, a Ganso could select other Edges and take Craft Device to grant a bonus to one of his Attributes or Gadget to simulate another Edge. For example, the Ambidextrous Edge could be simulated with a Gadget called ‘A Two-Handed Approach’, the character being free to name the device as he wishes. Plus a character can lend his devices to the other player characters.

Both Arcane Background (Makoto) and Arcane Background (Onmyojio) are supported in similar fashion with further Edges that enhance their effects. Where those effects are primarily external, those for Ki Control are internal as the character exerts control over his own life energy. These include armour, boost trait, deflection amongst others, and again, there are further Edges that enhance the core Edge. Unlike Edges like Arcane Background (Ganso), Arcane Background (Makoto), and Arcane Background (Onmyojio), the Ki Control Edge is not an Arcane Background and cannot be combined with an Arcane Background. That said, the Sensei (or GM) can allow a character to select the Ki Control Edge after character creation as a result of play. Combining the Ki Control Edge with other Edges, for example, with ‘Shadow Arts’ to make an interesting Ninja or ‘Signature Moves (Katana)’ to create a Wuxia style samurai.

Our sample Ganso is a peasant miner who discovered his ability to work with machines after helping the mine’s engineer. He dreams of building his own kikai, but so far he has only managed to build a rope launching device that allows him to climb up and down and because the rope can be stiffened, to launch himself into the air. The rope can also be launched to entangle others. 

Bachida, Peasant Engineer
Attributes: Agility d4, Smarts d8, Spirit d6, Strength d6, Vigor d6
Skills: Climbing d4, Fighting d4, Gearcraft d8, Notice d8, Repair d8, Persuade d4, Shooting d4, Survival d4
Defining Interests/Languages: Lantern Making, Kikai Lore, Mining
Charisma: -2
Pace: 6; Parry: 4; Toughness: 5
Hindrances: Clueless (Major), Combat Novice (Minor), Low Born (Minor) 
Edges: Apprentice Engineer, Arcane Background (Ganso), Student of the Way
Powers: entangle, fly
Gear: Katana (Str+d8)

Characters are supported by setting appropriate Defining Interests, as well as a nicely done and nicely illustrated armoury. New rules allow existing skills to be used in new ways – Intimidation as Interrogation and Persuasion as Seduction, for example, whilst Reputation rules provide a means of measuring character standing and progression within the setting. Within the setting it replaces the Honour System that was broken when so many noble houses collapsed and many of those remaining used the new technology to make themselves independent. A character’s Reputation starts at zero and can go down to -100 and up to +100. There are benefits to be gained, not all of them positive, as a character alters his Reputation. Despite the loss of the Honour System, the Caste System persists. Rules for Duelling also work in conjunction with the Reputation rules and they work whatever form of duelling the character engages in – swordsmanship, firearms, or other…

For the most the rules and character generation in Iron Dynasty are well done. One issue is that character generation does not tie characters into the setting as well as it should. Each player is expected to select a home province for his character. It would have been nice if there had been small mechanical benefit to help a player make this selection. One obvious omission from amongst the numerous Edges and options is that of Legendary Edges. What this means is that progression for the characters is limited and they cannot be truly heroic within the setting, at least not mechanically. Another issue is that it is all too easy to be overwhelmed by these options, but the rulebook handily suggests the roles that a party in Iron Dynasty should fulfil – Healer, Infiltrator, Talker, Thinker, and Warrior. 

For the Sensei, Iron Dynasty gives a more detailed examination of Konoyo and its nine provinces. This includes places of interest and whispers and rumours. There is also a guide to creating monsters and the corrupted – men who have been tainted by mad kami or the land itself. This is in addition to the bestiary, but idea here is that the true threats and enemies faced by the player characters should be truly unique. Along with the very useful set of Plot Generation tables, the Sensei is given not just one, but seven Campaign Frameworks that in turn deal with different aspects of the setting. Just because the author can, the first of these is a ‘Heroes of the People’ style campaign entitled ‘The Seven, Oh, Y'Know…’, in which our heroes help defend a village against ever more dangerous foes… Rounding out the book is a description of three of the setting’s legendary Kakai and descriptions of various mystical artefacts.

Physically, Iron Dynasty: Way of the Ronin is well presented and nicely illustrated. The setting of Konoyo feels underwritten though and it does not help that the book itself could have been better organised. The issue is that the author does not pitch the book and the setting as clearly and successfully as he could have done. It needed to be more up front about what the book and the setting is about. Nevertheless, once the reader gets into the book the setting, at least in terms of character options and the adventuring possibilities as presented in the Campaign Frameworks, more than make up for the lack of a pitch upfront. 

The elements that Iron Dynasty introduces to feudal Japan may prove to be unpalatable to the purist, the player or GM that does not want their Far East to be quite as fantastical as that presented in Iron Dynasty: Way of the Ronin. Nevertheless, what the rules do is provide for some great character concepts and the means to play them as well as foes and stories that the Sensei can present to the players and their characters. The result is that Iron Dynasty: Way of the Ronin is a very playable fantastical version of chanbara Japan.

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On Her Majesty's Adventurous Service

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lieutenant Henry Rathwell

Archetype: Pilot Motivation: Duty

Style: 2 Health: 4

Primary Attributes

Body: 2          Charisma: 2

Dexterity: 3   Intelligence: 4

Strength: 2    Willpower: 2

Secondary Attributes

Size: 0            Initiative: 7

Move: 4          Defense: 5

Perception: 6 Stun: 2

Skills/Base/Levels/Rating/Average

Anthropology 4/0/4/2

Athletics 3/1/4/2

Bureaucracy 4/1/5/2+

Craft (Electrics) 4/0/4/2

Craft (Mechanics) 4/0/4/2

Diplomacy 2/1/3/1+

            Leadership 2/2/4/2

Empathy 4/1/5/2+

Expeditions 4/1/5/2+

Firearms 3/1/4/2/1

Gunnery 4/1/5/2+

Linguistics 4/0/4/2

Pilot (Aerial) 3/3/6/3+

Science (Physics) 4/1/5/2+

Survival 4/3/7/3+

            Navigation 4/4/8/4+

Talents

Direction Sense

Resources

Rank – Lieutenant

Flaw

Honest

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Once in No-Man's Land

Call of Cthulhu has visited the Great War before, most notably with the scenario, No-Man’s Land, as has Trail of Cthulhu
 with the recent Flying Coffins and the scenario, "Not So Quiet" from the anthology Out of Time. Yet neither has approached this period in as interactive a fashion as in Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land. This is a computer RPG which uses Call of Cthulhu for its mechanics under license from Chaosium, Inc.and is available for several platforms, including Android, iOS, and Windows, so can be run on your computer, your smartphone, or your tablet. The latter though, is the game’s natural home. That said, The Wasted Land has taken a while to get to the Android platform and be debugged, which has delayed my getting to write this review.

Anyway, as much as Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land employs the mechanics of Call of Cthulhu, it is not a true RPG. Not in the sense of a pen and paper RPG such as Call of Cthulhu, nor in the sense of a computer RPG. Rather it is a skirmish combat game, one that is Action Point driven and turn-based, much in the same mode as the classic computer games, Laser Squad and X-Com. The game has the player control up to six characters, and on each turn, the player will expend each character’s Action Points to move that character and have him attack his opponents – with an option for taking time to aim at his opponents – as well as to heal and even psychoanalyse his allies!

The setting is the Western Front in 1915. As related in his diaries, a British squad under Captain Hill must defend against a German attack that grows stranger and stranger. Not just ordinary German soldiers, but cult fanatics and zombies too! Fortunately, Professor Brightmeer, a Miskatonic University scholar on attachment to British Military Intelligence is on hand to inform Captain Hill and his men that a German occultist has turned to more outré means to bring about victory for the Kaiser! So begins the desperate search for the means to stop this dastardly villain, which will take the squad out of the trenches and into No-Man’s Land, before going underground over the course of eleven missions. Along the way they will avoid things as ordinary as poison gas and barbed wire, and things as otherworldly as spiders from Leng and giant walking tentacle plants.

Most of the eleven missions involve holding off the Hun, either to defend a location or to get to a location. This has the characters dodging from cover to cover, searching for strongpoints where they can heal, researching documents, and more. For the most part, the missions are very linear, often with one safe path through the mission zone. Even when the characters have to enter patches of poison gas, they can be equipped with gas masks.

In between missions, characters are taken through two upgrade steps. The first sees their stats and skills improved. It is here that the mechanics of Call of Cthulhu are at their most obvious, though in a slimmed down fashion that focuses on those numbers necessary for combat. Skills, rated on a percentile skill, are arms and equipment, along with the First Aid Skill to heal the sick and the Psychoanalysis Skill to heal the mentally disturbed. Stats are rated on a 3 to 18 scale, and are improved to one of two ends. The first is to increase the number of Action Points that a character has in combat, whilst the second is to increase a character’s Sanity and thus his ability to withstand mental shocks.

A Sample Character: Captain Hill

The second upgrade step deals with equipment. Here a character can upgrade from his trusty Lee-Enfield rifle to a Hotchkiss M1914 heavy machine gun or a Winchester Model 1912 pump-action shotgun. There is a small armoury of weapons available, both guns and melee weapons, as well as gasmasks, armour, and even homing pigeons which will deliver requests for artillery support. Medical kits are also available as are books derived from the works of Freud that will help restore a character’s Sanity, whilst it is possible in later missions for characters to learn spells, although casting these greatly deplete the Sanity of the caster.

The mechanics of Call of Cthulhu also show within a mission. First in the use of the skills, though you see no percentile dice being rolled, and second, in the Sanity mechanic. Sanity is lost when attacking and being attacked by forces of the Mythos, and when too much is lost, a character can be paralysed with fear, sent catatonic, or even sent manic! The latter is incredibly taxing on the body, the sufferer usually ending up dead, but whilst manic, a character becomes a force of nature, able to charge the enemy and deal out damage aplenty.

The redoubtable Sid Brown alerts Captain Hill as to the imminent danger!

Whilst game play is simple, it is actually quite challenging in places, the final mission overly so, and it might take a restart or two to really get into the game. It does not help that game play is hampered by slightly clunky controls that sometimes will have you stabbing a stubby finger at the screen of your tablet in frustration. Another often annoying factor is that the missions tend to be very linear in nature – “Go there!”, “Do that!”, “Now exit over there!” – such that there is not a great deal of variety in terms of play. This is exacerbated by the fact that a lot the spells do not become available until last quarter of the game, limiting the option of creating variations upon the gun toting characters that dominate game play.

Inspired by the events of Lovecraft’s Herbert West: Reanimator, the game’s treatment of the Mythos is more pulp than purist as it mixes a number of Mythos entities together and its game play is all combat. Where The Wasted Land shines is in its detail and its atmosphere. Although a little anachronistic in places (easily portable machine guns in 1915?), all of the characters are well defined, and the battlefields feel suitably ‘gone to hell,’ literally a wasted land. The animation is good too – there is something quite unnerving to see a Dark Young lumbering towards your squad as they attempt to blast it to bits before their sanity is blown too. Overall, Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land is an engaging electronic treatment of Lovecraftian horror worthy of your time and a sequel.

By the way, perhaps Red Wasp Design and Modiphius Press should get together. A World War II Lovecraftian horror game for your tablet would make a great sequel.

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If you ain't got that...

An alternative title to Agents of S.W.I.N.G. from Postmortem Studios might be The Avengers RPG – and by that we do not mean the American comic series, but rather the iconic British television series, The Avengers, in which the umbrella swinging, bowler hatted John Steed investigated an array of Cold War, criminal, science fictional, and supernatural threats with a pretty and capable assistant by his side. Similarly, an alternative title to Agents of S.W.I.N.G. from Postmortem Studios might be the I.TC. TV RPG. For those of you not in the know, I.T.C. was a British television company headed by Lew Grade that during the 1960s and 1970s produced some of the United Kingdom’s most iconic television series and sold them worldwide. The Saint, Danger Man, The Prisoner, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, Department S, The Persuaders! , The Champions, and Jason King to name but a few. What these series had in common, including The Avengers, was their genre and the fact that they were “Cool.” Their genre was that of the “Adventure Series” or “Spy-Fi” and their Coolness was borne not just of the fact that they were good shows, but also that they were British and the 1960s, Britishness was cool and London was swinging…!

In Agents of S.W.I.N.G., you get to be cool, suave, and sophisticated, working as an agent for S.W.I.N.G. – “Supreme World Intelligence Network Group,” an international espionage and counter-espionage organisation that deals with threats to world peace and security above, beyond, and below the global obsession with the West versus East of the Cold War. Just like The Avengers, the agents will be investigating an array of threats and mysteries, but Agents of S.W.I.N.G. has the capacity to push further at the envelope of its genres in a number of ways. First, it draws upon the equally as cool action films of the period, most notably the James Bond films, thus moving more towards the “Spy Fi” genre. Second, it follows both the Adventure Series and I.T.C.’s output out of the 1960s and into the grimmer, more cynical decade of the 1970s, best typified by series such as The Sweeney and The Professionals, so shifting towards the crime genre. Third, it can shift towards the supernatural and the outré with series such as Doctor Who and Sapphire & Steel, neither of are necessarily produced or distributed by, but are nevertheless both Adventure Series and thus not only part of the genre, but also cool. Fourth, it can do the Science Fiction Adventure Serial such as Thunderbirds or Joe 90.

If this seems like a lot of genres for Agents of S.W.I.N.G. to encompass, it probably is, but its actual genre is not many but one – the Adventure Series – and that genre can include elements of many other genres. It is up to the game’s GM or Control to decide how far he wants to go with any one genre with his Agents of S.W.I.N.G. game.

For its mechanics, Agents of S.W.I.N.G. uses the FATE 3 engine. First seen in Evil Hat Production’s superb pulp action RPG, Spirit of the Century, the Fate system is a Fudge variant, one in which Fate Points play a major role. Just as in many other RPGs they can be spent to gain a bonus to a roll, but here they have a greater versatility. Like many “Indie” style games, a player can spend them to create and bring small elements into the game, what is known as “dramatic editing,” but under the Fate system, Fate Points can do a whole lot more. They can be spent to invoke a character Aspect and bring it into play, to tag another character or location related Aspect to bring it into play, to power a Stunt, or to make a Declaration, adding some small element to the story. The Fate system also ditches traditional attributes, instead defining characters by Skills, Aspects, and Stunts. It plays fast and easy – the player rolls two six-sided dice, each of a different colour, and deducts one from the other to a number from +5 down to -5. This number is added to any bonuses derived from Skills, Aspects, or Stunts to try and beat a target number, or to roll higher than an opponent in a contested roll. In a contested roll, the amount by which one side beats the other determines the amount of damage or Stress inflicted, whether Physical, Composure (mental), or Social Stress.

Sometimes though, a player will need a third die – a “SWING die.” Whenever a player rolls well, he earns one of these dice and gets to keep it in front of him. Later on in the game, the player can choose to use his “Swing die” to substitute the negative or the positive die in order to get a better result.

For example, the S.W.I.N.G. agents want to get a pass from an enemy agent, Gustav Zimmerman, which would give them access to a high security laboratory. They have followed Zimmerman to a masque ball where Claudia Romanov will engage the agent on the dance floor and attempt to distract him whilst slipping the pass out of his pocket. Control decides that this will be an opposed roll against Zimmerman’s Mental rating of +2. Claudia’s player decides to use her skill of +3 (Solid) Sleight of Hand and spends a Fate point to trigger Bump and Grind Aspect. Control agrees and allows her a +2 bonus to her roll. Control rolls +3 and -6 to get a total modifier of -3, which reduces Zimmerman’s +2 Mental down to -1 Bent. This gives an excellent target for Claudia to beat and her player’s roll of +6 and -3 gives a modifier of +3, which when added to her current Sleight of Hand skill gives a total result of +8 or Atsonishing. Since this is 3 higher than the target, Control awards Claudia a Swing Die to use later. Control also rules that Zimmerman was so oblivious that he will be delayed getting to the laboratory himself whilst he looks for it!

Characters are defined by their Skills, Stunts, and Aspects. Skills are areas in which a character is trained in, his knowledge and expertise; his Stunts are related to his Skills and grant a character small bonuses or permissions within the game; while Aspects define the character in some way, such as “You won’t break me” or “Champagne Charlie” and are the more interactive elements within the game. Sample skills might be +1 (Cool) Guns or +4 (Neat) Science, while possible typical stunts include abilities like Architect of Death and Hide in Plain Sight or possessions such as Custom Ride gives you a favoured vehicle that you have added a gadget to (tied to the Drive skill). Most Stunts do not require the expenditure of Fate Points, but those that do are slightly more powerful. A Fate Point can be spent to Invoke one of a character’s Aspects and so gain a bonus, but if Compelled by Control and brought into play, so developing complications and driving the story along, then the character earns a Fate Point. Lastly, Aspects belonging to another character, or to an object, place, or a scene can be Tagged by another character, again by paying out Fate Points. When choosing Aspects for a character, the designer’s advice is that they should never be boring and it should always be possible to view an Aspect in both a positive and a negative light. Otherwise, a character cannot participate in the game’s Fate Point economy – bring negative Aspects into the game and letting it act as a story hook, gets a character more Fate Points to spend in his favour.

At its most basic, character creation is simply a matter of choosing Skills, Stunts, and Aspects. A quick method of creating characters is provided, but of course, the game wants a little more than that from its players, asking them to create a simple background and tying Aspects to their character’s Section (the department that they work for in S.W.I.N.G.), past, and cover identity before being given a free choice of another five. A player has twenty points to assign to Skills, these ranging from +1 (Cool) and +2 (Hip) up to +7 (Far Out) and +8 (Out of Sight); four Stunts to choose; and lastly some equipment to take. It should be made clear that although Agents of S.W.I.N.G. gives detailed lists of Skills and Stunts, players are expected to create their Aspects, tying them into their agents’ concepts.

The first of our two sample characters is based on a character that I originally played in a friend’s James Bond 007 RPG campaign. She is of an impoverished White Russian noble family, who followed her father into his elicit trade of theft and burglary, stealing from the rich to support the family. She worked the high society scene around the world before being caught by a S.W.I.N.G. agent into whose room she had broken. Now she commits burglary as a S.W.I.N.G. agent herself.

Name: Claudia Romanov
Concept: Reformed Jewel Thief
Section: Section 10 – Acquisition
Cover: High Flying Photographer

Section: “In and Out Without a Trace”
Past: Nobility in Reduced Circumstances
Cover: “My camera gets me in everywhere…”
Aspects: “Looks can be deceiving…”, Takes a thief to catch a thief, Like good Russian vodka, Always dressed the part, “I did complete finishing school”
Skills: +5 (Groovy) Burglary; +3 (Solid) Sleight of Hand, Stealth; +2 (Hip) Academics (French, Russian), Photography, Social Standing; +1 (Cool) Contacts, Deceit, Fists
Stunts: Acrobatics, Bump and Grind, Network of Contacts, Unruffled

Stress
Physical Stress OOOOO Composure OOOOO Social OOOOOOO

Our second example character is based upon a friend of mine who happens to be a fan of the Adventure Series genre and uses elements of characters that he has played in the past. Doctor Exton was kidnapped whilst working in Nepal and when he returned, found that he had developed strange abilities. These were detected by other members of Section 8 who recruited him into S.W.I.N.G.

Name: Doctor Simon Exton
Concept: Psychic Doctor
Section: Section 8 – Uncanny Affairs
Cover: Consultant Toxicologist

Section: “I know your body, I know your mind”
Past: It was a strange holiday
Cover: Let me through, I’m a Doctor!
Aspects: “My, that does look painful”, It’s just a scratch, Sardonic Wit, I have just the thing for that in my bag, I sense that there is more to this
Skills: +6 (Fab) Science; +4 (Neat) Academics; +3 (Solid) Fists; +2 (Hip) Empathy, Intimidation; +1 (Cool) Contacts, Mysteries, Resolve
Stunts: Cold Read, Developed Immunities, Psychic Telepathy, Sixth Sense

Stress
Physical Stress OOOOO Composure OOOOOO Social OOOOO

The setting and genre is supported with rules for equipment and gadgets, organisations, a year by year breakdown of events of the setting’s timeframe – the 1960s and 1970s, along with some notes on Superscience! and the Supernatural. If Control wants to push his game in either of those latter two directions, he might find the guidance somewhat light. Then again, both usually figure as elements within the Adventure Series genre rather than serve as its mainstay or focus. Further, the primary genre for Agents of S.W.I.N.G. is “Spy-Fi.”

Advice for Control on running Agents of S.W.I.N.G. is well done, but essentially boils down to keep the game light, keep it moving, and take your cues from the players and their agents. Agents of S.W.I.N.G. do not come with a scenario as such. Instead it includes a detailed outline that can be used as scenario, all but ready to play.

Perhaps where its Adventure Series genre is best displayed in Agents of S.W.I.N.G. is in its chapter of SWINGers. Or rather, its chapter of some thirty or so S.W.I.N.G. agents, each of them drawn from the various television series that are the inspiration for the RPG. If you know your I.T.C. and other series, then there will be certain pleasure in recognising who Cobalt and Iron, John Chain, Agent Crimson Saul Metford, Andrew Bowie and Richard Foyle, Jackson Queen, and John Swan are, and which television series that they come from. That said, there is no explicitly given use for these characters, whether as sample player agents or NPCs. The given sample “Villainous Schemers,” which include a Chinese criminal organisation, an extremist Left wing revolutionary movement, and a American neo-Nazi movement, are of more immediate and useful use, providing something iniquitous for the player agents to investigate and interdict.

Physically, Agents of S.W.I.N.G. comes as a three-hundred-and-fifty-six page black and white digest sized book. The layout is done as if from a series of report files, illustrated with silhouettes of ladies in various action poses, sometimes armed, sometimes not, but either way, reminiscent of the opening film credits of the James Bond series. The only other artwork in the book is the illustrations of the sample characters. Unfortunately, whilst Agents of S.W.I.N.G. is readable, both layout of the book and its editing are at best wanting. Some of the book could have been better organised, and whilst the choice of fount, Courier New, is perfectly in keeping with the book’s genre, its size is too large, often leading to ragged paragraphs because the column width is too short. As to the editing, the book just needed another polish, preferably from another pair of eyes than those of the author’s.

There is one last issue with Agents of S.W.I.N.G. and that is Mike Myers. Much like a game of Pendragon threatens to tip into absurdity a la the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, a game of Agents of S.W.I.N.G. can easily lurch into a parody of its genre, the Austin Powers trilogy of films. Given the title of the RPG, there is certain inevitability to this, but it is certainly within the purview of both the players and Control to rein any such tendencies to “schwing” that way in their Agents of S.W.I.N.G..

Being a “Spy-Fi” or Adventure Series RPG, Agents of S.W.I.N.G. is anything other than a serious treatment of the espionage genre. Agents of S.W.I.N.G. is not Ron Edwards’ SPIONE: STORY NOW in Cold War Berlin or even Crafty Games’ SpyCraft, but is rather a light, almost coy take upon the espionage genre, whilst also serving as a toolkit to do other light, almost fantastical genres. So for example, whilst Agents of S.W.I.N.G. will do The Avengers or even The Man from U.N.C.L.E. with a wink, a tip of the bowler hat, and even a cocked eyebrow, with a little effort upon the part of Control, it would also do Thunderbirds, U.F.O. , or even The Six Million Dollar Man. Overall, despite lacking something of the flair its genre calls for in terms of its production value Agents of S.W.I.N.G. is a pleasingly light version of the FATE engine that demands just enough from the players to do its genre justice.

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Brains, Bullets, & Sanity

Guns. Guns. Guns. They are a gamer’s best friend. When it comes to roleplaying in any historical period from the nineteenth century onwards, in the contemporary here and now, or some way into the future, one of the common questions a roleplayer will find himself asking is, “Can I have a gun?” followed by, “What is the coolest gun that I can have?” Never more so than in Call of Cthulhu, a game in which, if set in its classic period of the 1920s, has fewer limitations upon gun ownership and use than there are today. Of course, when it comes to Call of Cthulhu, guns are really only a sort of psychological crutch. Yes, they and the bullets that they fire will work against those insane enough to worship the creatures and entities that lie just beyond the true nature of reality, and it is possible that some of the lesser creatures that the player characters might encounter as part of their investigations, might be susceptible to a case or two of high velocity, hot leading poisoning, but not all. And certainly not the utterly alien, utterly incomprehensible “gods” that threaten to return to our world again.

Still, players do like their player characters to have their guns. Even if it is have one last bullet with which to apply an emergency trepanation so as to save their characters from madness. Which leaves the Keeper with a tiny headache – though not one caused by the emergency trepanation. Rather it is this. The Call of Cthulhu rulebook does not go into a great of depth when it comes to firearms. To be fair, it is not its focus, and when the game’s publisher has addressed the subject, it has all too often, been in a piecemeal fashion. Indeed, the only single supplement devoted to the use of firearms in Call of Cthulhu is Pagan Publishing’s The Weapons Compendium, and that has been out of print for almost two decades. Further, when firearms do appear in scenarios, supplements, and campaigns, they are often glossed over, mentioned by calibre and thus by damage type, rather than make or model. Now some Keepers will argue that such details do not matter. That firearms do not matter. Which is an admirable point of view, and one that could not be more wrong. Firearms do matter because they matter to the investigators. If they matter to the investigators, then the futility of their reliance upon them can be demonstrated in the game. They also matter because if detailed correctly and handled correctly, not only can this futility be demonstrated more readily, their presence can add verisimilitude to a game.

The answer to this omission for Call of Cthulhu comes courtesy of the first release from British publisher, Sixtystone Press Limited. Investigator Weapons, Volume 1: The 1920s & 1930s is written by, Hans-Christian Vortisch, who as a firearms expert has authored Cthulhu – Waffen-Handbuch, the only other firearms supplement available for Call of Cthulhu, but unfortunately only available in German, as well as GURPS High-Tech, GURPS Martial Arts: Fairbairn Close Combat Systems, and GURPS Tactical Shooting for Steve Jackson Games. It carries the subtitle, “the Complete guide to Bean-shooters, choppers, gats, heaters, mohsakas, pieces, rods and roscoes” and describes and gives game statistics for some twenty-five handguns, nine rifles, eight shotguns, two submachine guns, two machine guns, and their variants, as well as explosives, flamethrowers, and grenades. It contains not just these weapons, but also expanded rules for their use, expanded background that examines how to obtain them and the legal aspects of doing so, and in purely game terms, suggests the guns that not only each Occupation would typically wield, but also those that cultists might arms themselves with, continent by continent.

It is specifically written for use with Call of Cthulhu, Sixth Edition, and makes use of the 1920s Investigator’s Companion, the 1990s Handbook, and both the Keeper’s Companion and Keeper’s Companion 2 as well as various other supplements and sourcebooks. That said, this book is compatible with any version of Call of Cthulhu and with any Basic Role Play driven RPG.

Before I continue with the review, it should be pointed out that my name is listed in the credits. My contribution to the book was as part of a Peer Review group that read and reviewed each part of the book as it was written. That said, my influence over and input into this volume bar working through my Call of Cthulhu library in the name of research is minimal, enough such that I am comfortable in reviewing it.

Investigator Weapons, Volume 1: The 1920s & 1930s comes as a one-hundred-and-thirty-two page, 19.06 Mb PDF done in black and white with a colour cover. Chris Huth’s cover feels a little too cartoon-like, but it nevertheless captures the desperate flavour and feel of a Call of Cthulhu shoot out. Inside, the book is cleanly laid out and suitably illustrated with a range of photographs and period adverts. If there is an issue with the writing, it is that it is a little stilted in places, but to be fair, the author’s English is infinitely superior to either my Danish or my German. Nevertheless, the rules write-ups for each weapon and each variant are very clear and easy to read, and avoid any problems that could come with listing one similar firearm after another. A nice touch is that the weapons listed on the contents page are linked directly to their actual entries, so the reader can go straight to them with a simple click.

Every gun is presented in a standard format. Accompanied by an illustration and appropriate quote, each firearm is given a full write-up that covers everything from its history and list of users to its dimensions and suitability as an investigator’s weapon of choice. In addition, a simple guide to using the gun is given along with a discussion of the major variants and a list of films in which it can be seen being used. Each firearm and variant is accorded one stat. A line below this gives the weapon’s appropriate Skill, Base Chance, Damage, Base Range, Rate of Fire, Capacity, Hit Points, and Malfunction. As mentioned above, these lines are very easy to read, even when there are multiple variants, such as the seventeen given for the Mauser Gewehr 98 or the eighteen for the Mauser C96.

As to the guns themselves, the entries include the familiar, from the Colt Government (M1911) and Mauser C96 to the Colt M1918 BAR and Holland & Holland Royal Double (the so-called “elephant gun”) via the Enfield SMLE Mk III and the Auto-Ordnance Model 1921 Thompson. They also include the less familiar Colt Vest Pocket, Nambu Shiki, Remington MK III, Riverside Arms Model 315, and Bergmann M.P.18,I. Call of Cthulhu player favourites are also listed, for example, the Webley-Fosbery Automatic revolver also so beloved of fans of The Maltese Falcon, whilst other more obscure entries, such as the Lebman Machine Pistol, a fully automatic version of the Colt Government (M1911) deserve to become a player favourite.

The mix of firearms listed means that a Keeper should be able to easily arm the antagonists in his scenario wherever they happen to be encountered, whether that be Germany or Canada. This is intentional, not just in terms of actual global geography, but also in terms of Call of Cthulhu’s geography. The USA figures strongly here, since most of the scenarios for the game are set there, but Call of Cthulhu also happens to take the investigators to the United Kingdom, Australia, India, China, Africa, and numerous points elsewhere. In this way, it also supports the various points of call that the typical Call of Cthulhu campaign, such as the Complete Masks of Nyarlathotep, takes its investigators to. Besides the actual guns themselves, this aspect of the supplement is expanded upon with a lengthy section devoted to firearms and the law, detailing weapons permits and how to obtain a gun in various countries, the pitfalls of travelling with a gun, the exchange rates for various currencies in 1925, as well as actually giving the addresses of various major gun dealers from San Francisco to Shanghai and all points in between – in both directions! What this brings to the fore is the fact that buying and obtaining a firearm can actually be very simple or quite difficult, depending upon the desired firearm.

Dotted around all of the weapon entries are separate sections that detail new skills like Craft (Gunsmith) and Demolitions, describe the National Rifle Association in the 1920s – which it turns out, was a very handy place to learn Martial Arts (!), body armour, weapon lights, sound suppressors, and more. Besides all of the background detail, the Investigator Weapons, Volume 1: The 1920s & 1930s addresses the rules for their use in Call of Cthulhu. Primarily these are with a series of optional rules that cover skill competencies, concealment, quick draw, called shots, and automatic fire, as well as rules for shooting under various environmental conditions. All in cases, these rules are clear and simple, and supported with examples.

First though, the author addresses the confusing, frightening, and often deadly nature of gunfights. There are some radical suggestions here, most notably the rules for an investigator being surprised when fired upon from ambush, the likelihood that an investigator will simply fire as many shots as possible in the confusion of a gunfight, and imposing Sanity checks upon an investigator when he shoots someone. These are not unreasonable suggestions. After all, they add to the realism of the game, divorcing it from the concept of the Hollywood shootout, and they add another element of horror to the game.

So far, the Investigator Weapons, Volume 1: The 1920s & 1930s has been useful for both player and Keeper, but the Keeper also receives a section all of his very own. This addresses how guns can be brought to bear on the Mythos and their effects on its creatures and entities, which to be honest, can be best summed up as “woeful.” It suggests that some Mythos creatures should be able to dodge, just as the investigators can, and that any kind of aimed shooting at any Mythos entity, should involve a Sanity check. That is, if the investigator has not made one already. It also looks at how other types of ammunition might affect these beings and how certain types of magic might be applied to firearms. This option though, is really for a more Pulp style game.

Rounding out the supplement is a full set of tables that list every weapon and variant in the game. These are followed by summaries of its new rules and a new investigator sheet specifically designed for use in combat. These also come separately when the PDF version of the book is purchased.

It should be noted that although the Investigator Weapons, Volume 1: The 1920s & 1930s is written with Call of Cthulhu in mind, when divorced of the mechanics, the supplement’s descriptive and background detail should be useful for any RPG set in the period. This of course, includes other games of Lovecraftian investigative horror, such as Realms of Cthulhu, Trail of Cthulhu, or Cthulhu Hero. Perhaps, there is a possibility in there being a version of this supplement for each of these rules?

A perennial problem when it comes to running Call of Cthulhu is how exactly the rules for firearms work. Not that they do not work, but rather that players disagree how they should work. Much of it born of the fact that they have experience themselves with guns, but that is not necessarily the experience of their investigators. Investigator Weapons, Volume 1: The 1920s & 1930s addresses this problem, adding realism and detail in how Call of Cthulhu is played when it comes to guns and in the process adding flavour too. It does so in an immensely readable and informative fashion, and its contents are not only a ready resource for Call of Cthulhu players and Keepers alike, they are also useful for Call of Cthulhu writers and editors too. Whilst not every Keeper’s Call of Cthulhu campaign necessarily focuses on this aspect of the game, without a doubt, Investigator Weapons, Volume 1: The 1920s & 1930s is the definitive sourcebook when it comes to classic Call of Cthulhu and firearms.

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