A Shared Fate

The truth is that generic RPGs are not exactly interesting to review. They lack flavour, they lack the substance of a background that is usually the reason to buy into a RPG, and mechanics are never the most enticing thing to write or read about. Well, okay, but what you are reviewing when it comes to the generic RPG is its tone, the type of game it supports, and of course, its mechanics. So Steve Jackson Games’ GURPS is a mechanically detailed game with a realistic tone whereas Savage Worlds from Pinnacle Entertainment Group is broader in terms of tone and mechanics that particularly supports pulp action. Both are traditional RPGs in that they require a GM who creates the world and serves as the gatekeeper through which the players act and learn about the world. So what then of FATE Core, a more recent generic RPG?

Published by Evil Hat Games, FATE came to prominence in 2006 with the publication of the pulp action RPG, Spirit of the Century. It is a storytelling style RPG in which the player characters are competent and capable, and above all lead dramatic lives. The default game—other FATE-powered RPGs with their own settings do not necessarily require this—involves shared world building duties between the players and the GM. This is part of character generation, done through the creation of Aspects, the equivalent in FATE of advantages and disadvantages. Play is similarly collaborative, as players and GM alike can invoke and compel everyone’s Aspects to bring drama to the game. Above all, the task of both GM and players alike is to “make everyone around look awesome.”

The latest iteration of the game, the ENNIE Award-winning FATE Core was funded via Kickstarter and comes as a handsome digest-sized hardback. It is well-written, the content is clear and easy to understand, and it is engagingly illustrated. The illustrations primarily consist of kung-fu cyber-gorillas, magic cops, and the trio of characters—Landon (swordsman and ‘Discipline of the Ivory Shroud’), Cynere (‘An honorable thief with a fast blade’), and Zird the Arcane (‘Wizard for Hire’)—that together with their setting form the basis of the examples throughout the book. 

In honour of this artwork, our sample character is a combination of the magic cop and the kung-fu gorilla. Archibald  ‘Mourning Archie’ Maugham is a cop with the New Orleans police department, in a world where there is magic and there are intelligent gorillas and monkeys. 

Archibald  ‘Mourning Archie’ Maugham
High Concept (Aspect): Magic-Monkey on a Mission
Trouble (Aspect): Monkey in a man’s world
Aspects: Manners maketh the monkey, Should a monkey meddle in magic?, An eye for the ladies
Stunts: A good gorilla is hard to keep down, A gorilla’s grip, Just the facts, ma’am
Skills: Physique (Great +4); Investigate, Contacts (Good +3); Fight, Magic, Notice (Fair +2); Athletics, Rapport, Shoot, Will (Average +1)
Physical Stress (Physique): 1 2 3 4
Mental Stress (Will): 1 2 3
Refresh Rate: 3 Fate Points: 3

As can be seen by this example, characters are defined by their Aspects, Skills, and Stunts. Aspects describe elements of a character and to work effectively, they need to be double-edged, that is, each should be both an advantage or a disadvantage. For example, the Aspect ‘An eye for the ladies’ could be used as an Advantage to spot a particular woman in a crowd or a bonus to seduction attempts, but as a Disadvantage, it would mean that the character would be easily distracted in female company. In play, an Aspect is Invoked by the player to gain an advantageous bonus or a reroll, but Compelled to trigger its disadvantageous elements. It costs a player a Fate point to Invoke an Aspect, but he will gain a Fate point if the Aspect is Compelled. (A Compel can be resisted by a player, but this costs him a Fate point).

So for example, Archie is chasing Flyss the dip, a well-known pickpocket who frequents high class joints. With a flash of his badge he gets into the Cat’s Pajamas, a nightspot where Flyss is sometimes seen. He scans the crowd and will use his Notice skill of +2 (Fair) to spot the miscreant, but the GM knows that Flyss knows how to work the crowd and sets the difficulty at +3 (Good). This is not an easy roll, so Archie’s player Invokes one of his Aspects—‘An eye for the ladies’—to gain a +2 on the roll.

Conversely, instead of Archie’s player Invoking ‘An eye for the ladies’, the GM could Compel the Aspect. Were this to happen, Archie would charge into the Cat’s Pajamas and get distracted by the other pretty ladies in the joint so he fails to see Flyss slip out of the back door. In this, ‘An eye for the ladies’ has worked as a disadvantage, so why would Archie’s player let this happen? Well, for two reasons. First, because it earns Archie a Fate point, and second, because it is interesting and it contributes towards the drama.

Stunts provide advantages or bonuses under certain circumstances, usually to skills. Skills simply provide a bonus to skill rolls, there being a limited number of broad skills in the game. Where a character lacks a skill, he simply has it at Mediocre or +0.

Mechanically, whenever a player wants to undertake an action, he selects a skill and rolls four Fudge dice—FATE having originally been derived from the Fudge RPG mechanics—special six-sided dice, each of which has two faces marked with a ‘+’ symbol, two faces marked with a ‘–’ symbol, and two faces left blank. The ‘+’ and ‘–’ symbols cancel each out and the blank faces add nothing, so the results range simply between +4 and –4. The result is added to the player’s skill, aim being to beat a target set by the GM, an Average target being +1, a Fair target being +2, and so on, the targets matching the skill values in terms of progression. Should a player’s result match the target, then he succeeds at a cost; if the result is one or two points or shifts above the target, he simply succeeds; and if the result is three or more  shifts, he succeeds with style. In combat, shifts usually represent damage inflicted upon a target, but should a character succeed with style, then he can place a temporary Aspect in play, that can either be used once and then it is lost, or used once for free with subsequent uses requiring a Fate point to be expended.

For example, Archie has finally tracked down Flyss to her apartment, only to find that it is alight and burning furiously. He charges in to get his quarry out, only to discover that Flyss does not live alone. Now he not only has to rescue her, but also her roommates! As the building collapses around him, Archie’s player makes a Physique check against a difficulty of +2 (Fair) to hold up a support long enough for the girls to get out. He rolls ‘+’, ‘+’, ‘+’, and ‘–’ for a total of +3, which when added to his Physique gives a result of +7, which when compared to the target grants Archer five shifts! Archie’s player gets to set up two advantages at a cost of two shifts each. First, he buys ‘No-one gutsier than a gorilla’, essentially a temporary reputation, but second, he buys ‘I pulled your ass from the fire’, which he plans to Invoke when he interrogates Flyss.

Aspects like this can be set up on locations, objects, on NPCs, and on player characters, and then during play both the players and the GM can interact with them, Invoking and Compelling as necessary. Similarly, the GM can design and create places, people, and things all with the simple use of Aspects that get to the core of anything that he designs and creates, and again these can be Invoked or Compelled as part of FATE Core collaborative play. This collaborative element of the game begins before character creation, indeed it starts with the players sitting down with the GM and working together to create the world in which they want to play. This includes the genre, the campaign name, issues for the characters to face and deal with, and then locations and NPCs. From this the players can get an idea of their characters’ place in the world and what each wants to do before character generation. This in part is also collaborative, the players tying some of their character’s Aspects into previous experiences with each other. Should the players and GM know what they want, then it would be quite possible to create a world, characters, and the basis for a campaign just by sitting round the table and talking.

Further, Aspects are mutable. They can change as a game progresses and its events affect each of the players. Typically they come after a Milestone has been reached in a campaign, perhaps revealing thwarting the plot of a campaign’s villain, the greater the Milestone, the more that a player can change about his character. So for example, over the course of a campaign, Archie’s relationship with Flyss goes from cop and snitch to cop and contact to gorilla and girl, so perhaps the Aspect, ‘An eye for the ladies’ might become something like, ‘A girl for the gorilla’. In general though, FATE Core involves little in the way of character progression, skill improvement in particular, being slow and steady. The focus in FATE Core is the play and the drama, not gaining Experience Points, but a great touch is that alongside discussing player character progression, FATE Core looks at world progression, the idea being that both should go hand-in-hand. When you think about it, this is obvious, but it makes sense in as dramatic an RPG as FATE, that it should be an explicit point.

Mechanically, FATE Core is straightforward and not particularly complex—especially for the players. For the GM it is a slightly more complex game, but again not overly so. There is solid discussion of the mechanics and their nuts and bolts, of creating and running scenarios, and of designing and creating ‘Extras’, the elements that support a game, whether that is magic, cyberware, vehicles, and so on. This discussion of the rules and the mechanics is also supported by a discussion of how to run the game, but what it comes down to is a simple question, “What matters in this scene?” Answering this question should be dramatic and interesting—and it should have scope for equally dramatic and interesting failure.

In addition, it is easy to take FATE Core and use its mechanics to adapt the game, setting, film, book, or television series of your choice. Evil Hate Games has already done this with its The Dresden Files Roleplaying Game, but the simplicity of the game’s skills and the adaptability of its Aspects and stunts make this mechanically easy. 

Now this is all great, and FATE Core is a very readable set of rules, but FATE has a problem. It is not a fault intrinsic to FATE itself, but rather with what FATE is—a storytelling RPG. Arguably, every RPG involves storytelling, but FATE Core focuses on it in particular by shifting narrative control. For a quarter of a century, the RPG has followed the model mentioned at the beginning of the review, that is, a GM or DM serving as the gatekeeper for the world through which the player characters learn about and interact with said world. Coming out of the Indie School movement, FATE Core takes ‘aspects’ of the narrative away from the GM and hands them to the players and their characters. This can be seen at first in the collaborative process of creating the world, but shows most obviously in the use and application of Aspects. It further shows in the move away from the ‘yes/no’ binary mechanics of older non-narrative games, to mechanics where the mechanics not only give the ‘success/failure’ binary results, but also the results ‘succeed, but with consequences’ and ‘fail interestingly’. This is a shift in both play style and thinking. It takes adjustment.

In no way is this problem insurmountable and in no way is it an impediment to playing FATE. It is certainly not the fault of FATE itself, but of decades an ingrained play style, and for the players it is a matter of adjusting to thinking about how their characters interact with the world. It helps that FATE Core is well written and gives plenty of examples. It helps that FATE requires a GM, that it is not a wholly GM-less, narrative storytelling game, the distinction being that someone is still in charge, presenting the world, but that someone is someone the players interact with rather than work through. It helps even further that Evil Hat Games makes available FATE Accelerated, a much condensed, but still very playable version of the rules for the pocket-friendly sum of $5. Arguably worth each player having a copy.

At the beginning of the review, I stated that the generic RPG is all about its tone, the type of of game it supports, and its mechanics. FATE Core is light in tone, though like most generic RPGs the tone can be made much darker, depending upon the genre. Mechanically, FATE Core is definitely light and broad rather than detailed, veering towards the cinematic in style. The detail in FATE Core though is in the drama that comes out of its play with the use of Aspects. Its combination of a GM and narrative play elements, primarily its Aspects,that enable player input, arguably place FATE Core in between the traditional RPG and the GMless, narrative storytelling RPG, making it a highly accessible bridge between the two.

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Steampunk Soldiery Spotter's Guide

After the Great Meteor Shower of 1862, the world would never be the same. For the meteorites contained a substance that turned out to be an incredible energy source—Hephaestium. Its discovery and refinement would lead to unprecedented technological development and innovation, each of the Great Powers harnessing both Hephaestium and the technological advances to their own ends. In particular, to protecting their empires! Thus Great Britain enhanced its railway network with the Ulster Bridge and Shetland Run, built the first circumnavigation cruisers, and of course, strengthened her Royal Navy. Bismark fielded first Prussia’s and then Germany’s new armoured Sturmtruppen and Kaiser-class armoured infantry in a lightening series of wars that saw him cow Denmark and then in turn defeat each of the little Germanic kingdoms, princedoms, duchies, and so on. While her domestic armies were often mutinous, France had great success in her colonies, for example, the Peugeot-built steam-powered exoskeleton-equipped Foreign Legion units lived up to their ‘March or die!’ motto in driving the Chinese out of Indochina in a counterattack that would be followed by an invasion of China in 1876. Russia experimented with both the chemical properties of Hephaestium and submarines, the Ottoman Empire with automatons derived from German designs, the Austro-Hungarian Empire lured Nicolai Tesla back to develop a variety of Hephaestium-powered electro-weapons, while Italy, with no access to the precious meteorite, became Europe’s rogue state. Its intelligence services have stolen blue prints and prototypes, sabotaged others, and kidnapped scientists—they may be perfidious, but they are extremely capable. Perhaps the most radically changed country is the USA where at the height of its Civil War, General Lee’s land ironclads forced back the Union forces and held them to a stalemate until hostilities ceased in 1869. Thus North America has remained divided between the USA, the Confederate States of America, and Canada ever since…

This is the background against which the forgotten British artist, Miles Vandercroft travelled the sketching and painting the soldiery of the age. This artwork has been rediscovered and brought together in a handsome book published by Osprey Books under its Osprey Adventures line, Steampunk Soldiers: Uniforms & Weapons from the Age of Steam. It purports to be a guide to the vivid and striking uniforms worn by the armies and the steam-powered weaponry and equipment fielded by these armies in the years between the fall of the meteors and the Great War of the Worlds. The descriptions of these uniforms, the arms and armour, and the units and the battles they fought, do much to capture some of the period’s pageantry and both honour and dishonour!

Of course, Steampunk Soldiers: Uniforms & Weapons from the Age of Steam is anything but this. It is not a pictorial guide to the past, but a past that never was. A Steampunk Age of fantastic invention, intrigue, and warfare that is captured in this collection of gorgeous colour plates each accompanied by an intriguing description. For example, where did the 24th Regiment of Foot disappear to from Portsmouth in 1886? What brought Austria and France to war in which the French 6th Engineers used steam-powered drills to break into the supposedly impregnable Austrian castle of Hochosterwitz? There are hints and mentions of events like this throughout the book.

In places the authors have their tongues firmly ensconced in cheeks. For example, the be-kilted Highlander Battlesuits worn by the members of The Black Watch not only comes with a claymore sword, but automatic bagpipes that play Scotland the Brave! One interesting aside about the artwork in Steampunk Soldiers is that it has a certain familiarity to it. Many of the art is posed in a similar fashion to pieces used in a range of other Osprey Books.

There is an undoubted pleasure to be had in reading through the pages of Steampunk Soldiers, but its intriguing nature irks as much as it delights. For the reader is very much left wanting more; if not necessarily more images and more descriptions, but very much more background, more backstory, more detail. The implied background of this new Age of Steam begs for a second book, one with more explicit history. For what Steampunk Soldiers begs for is something that can be gamed—either as roleplaying or a wargaming setting. Naturally, there is nothing to stop a gamer from building such a setting from the material and background included, but it will take no little effort. (Of course, it is a pity that no suggestions are given as what games might be used to this end, but that would break conceit at the heart of Steampunk Soldiers.)

Ultimately, this is one book whose content is something that you want to a read a little more about. Easy to dip into and peruse for ideas, Steampunk Soldiers: Uniforms & Weapons from the Age of Steam is a charming and engaging book that begs for a sequel or more information.

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Your Vampire Primer

There are some people who contend that the United Nations is fighting a secret war on sovereignty and democracy in its pursuit of a ‘one world government’. This is not true. It is fighting a secret war, not against sovereignty and democracy, but a threat insidious and hidden that preys upon humanity–vampires. The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) fields ‘Special Action Units’ (SAUs) dedicated to the study, location, and eradication of vampires. Armed with automatic shotguns and assault rifles that fire blessed and consecrated rounds of wood, silver, and graphite, and wearing armour incised with religious iconography and inscriptions, once these teams have a target, they are sent out aboard ‘black helicopters’ to strike at the horridly implacable creatures that are vampires.

This is the set-up for Vampires: A Hunter’s Guide, published by Osprey Books as part of its Osprey Adventures line. Best known for its its military history books, each diligently researched and meticulously illustrated with period photographs and fully painted colour plates, entries in the Osprey Adventures series goes beyond the facts to meld it with fiction. The result is a sourcebook of ideas for a gamer’s current game or a background for a whole new game. All a gamer needs to do is add the rules of his choice. The series has already looked at The Nazi Occult and given us Zombies: A Hunter’s Guide–amongst others... 

Vampires: A Hunter’s Guide most resembles Zombies: A Hunter’s Guide, being an examination of several types of vampire, their creation, their feeding and hunting habits, their relationship to humanity, and humanity’s response to each of these horrors. It does these for five continents–Europe, North America, Africa, Asia, and South America. In doing so, it focuses upon five types of vampire–the Strigoi, the Asanbosam and the Obayifo, the Jiangshi, and the Chupacabra. Of course, the various chapters are nicely illustrated with pieces of period art, photographs of various artifacts, and full colour artwork.

It begins with the Strigoi in Europe and a raid on a nest during the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s, before delving into the history and types of the Strigoi. They are closest in type to the vampire of the modern era, typified by Bram Stoker’s Dracula, but other types exist in the Balkans and beyond. The Strigoi of course feeds on blood, is capable of transforming themselves into bats or wolves, and possess a certain sexual allure. The Papacy was the first organisation to recognise the ‘satanic’ threat and attempt to deal with it, such that many of the creatures took the opportunity to flee to the New World. Here the only rivals they had were each other, for North America had no vampiric tradition, and so they hid themselves and through wise investments, managed to protect themselves with great wealth. This makes them extremely difficult to track down and identify–it can take years of careful work by the FBI before an SAU can strike.

Less familiar will be the Asanbosam and the Obayifo, the vampiric creatures native to modern day Ghana and the historical Ashanti Empire. The Asanbosam is an arboreal bat-like hunter that reaches down from the trees for its prey, which is driven to mankind when they enter and then cut down the forest. In response, vampire hunters would train to enter the canopy, armed with short, gold-tipped spears and knives, and often protected by the juju or magic of the Marabout. Where the Asanbosam feeds on blood and flesh, the Obayifo, a spirit vampire, feeds off negative empathic energy. There is the possibility that the Obayifo are capable of controlling the Asanbosam, but where the Asanbosam seems confined to the diminishing forests, the Obayifo seems to have spread beyond Ghana’s borders.

Conversely, the Jiangshi will be familiar to devotees of Hong Kong cinema. The ‘stiff corpsed’ hopping vampire takes decades to form after it was improperly buried and grows tougher, stronger, and develops a more potent breath over time. It is an empathic vampire that can track its prey by their breathing. Again a group trained to deal with the threat, this time of the monks of the Shaolin Temple, who would use their martial arts skills and meditative calming techniques to prepare themselves against the Jiangshi. Lastly Taoist magic is used to still the vampires so that they can be led away for a proper burial. Of course, with founding of Chinese communities around the world, there are innumerable cities where the knowledge and ability to deal with a Jiangshi has been lost.

The last vampire detailed in Vampires: A Hunter’s Guide is the Chupacabra, a large bat-like creature that in recent years has spread out of the cenotes found across the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico into the great cities of North America with their extensive subterranean infrastructure. In rural areas the dreaded ‘goat sucker’ is known to feed on large livestock, but in built up urban areas, the primary prey is humanity–particularly its dregs.

In addition to these five or so vampires, various other types are also discussed. For example, other types of Strigoi include the Balkan/Czech Pijavica which preys upon former family members and the Polish Vjesci which can be recognised by the caul its head. Similarly, the Dhampir human/vampire hybrids, hated by their parents, are said to have found a home with some SAUs. As much as Vampires: A Hunter’s Guide discusses its monsters, it is small details such as this and the fact that SAUs work with FBI forensics and behavioral analysts that provide hooks upon which to hang the role of SAU members or support staff, for example in creating a roleplaying campaign.

Unfortunately, a GM will need to extract such details if he wants to use them for his game. In a traditional Osprey Books title there will be colour plates depicting what an SAU operative wears and is equipped with, accompanied by suitable descriptions. Sadly, this is not included. Equally as disappointing is the lack of a bibliography in Vampires: A Hunter’s Guide. Where Zombies: A Hunter’s Guide had a short if imperfect section entitled ‘Further Reading, Watching, and Gaming’, but this is absent in Vampires: A Hunter’s Guide. There are some very obvious inspirations for many of the vampires presented in its pages–for example, the movie Encounters of the Spooky Kind for the Jiangshi and the ‘El Mundo Gira’ episode of The X-Files for the Chupacabra. Others like the Asanbosam will be more difficult to provide inspiration for, but it would certainly help the reader with his further research. Similarly, a list of games would help in applying the content of  Vampires: A Hunter’s Guide. Obviously, Pelgrane Press’ Night’s Black Agents is the go-to RPG for fighting vampires, but Pinnacle Entertainment Group’s Savage Worlds, White Wolf Inc.’s Hunter: the Vigil, Evil Hat Publishing's FATE Core, and even the recently released Cryptworld from Goblinoid Games would all work.

Vampires: A Hunter’s Guide is readable and a decent source of material to apply to the vampire hunting game of your choice. The lack of application to that end–no bibliography and no immediate material upon which to hang campaign, for example, does mean that it is just background when it could have been just a little more supportive.

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Your Zombie Primer

Zombies: A Hunter's Guide is an entry in Osprey Publishing's Osprey Adventures line of sourcebooks. To date the line includes Ken Hite's treatment of the Nazis' esoteric interests in The Nazi Occult, the truth behind the Templars in Graeme Davis' Knights Templar: A Secret History, and an examination of what the 'Greys' really want in We Will Destroy Your Planet: An Alien’s Guide to Conquering the Earth by David A McIntee. What each title in the line does is blend the fact and the fiction of their respective subject matters, but without providing either game mechanics or game stats - these the Game Master has to provide himself. Essentially, what each entry in the line is, is a systemless sourcebook, a background to which the Game Master adds the rules of his choice. Although an entry in the Osprey Adventures line, Zombies: A Hunter's Guide pre-dates the line, beginning life as a parody of the traditional history books that the publisher is better known for. Originally published in 2010, in 2013 it was reprinted as a deluxe edition and that is the version that is being reviewed here.

Take any number of treatments of the zombie, from The Walking Dead and The New Deadwardians to All Flesh Must Be Eaten and Zombicide, and the common theme between them is that the dead have arisen and civilisation as we know it is doomed... Not so in Zombies: A Hunter's Guide. It posits a world in which zombie uprisings are a known threat, in which Zombie Wars have been fought by military units, in which the zombie hunter is a recognised profession, and in which the zombi phenomenon is common enough to be the subject of academic study. Once myth and conjecture, the number of zombie outbreaks have increased year by year since the end of World War 2, despite the attempts of numerous governments to cover them up. Zombies: A Hunter's Guide is also an actual book that could be purchased in this alternate Earth, so barring the suggested 'Further Reading, Watching, and Gaming', the contents of this book can be accessed by both the GM and his players - and even referred to during play!

Over the course of several chapters, Zombies: A Hunter's Guide presents everything that the prospective zombie hunter will need to know in order to combat the corpse challenge. Over the course of several chapters, the fictional author of Zombies: A Hunter's Guide examines the origins of the zombies, the types of zombies that might be encountered, their strengths and weaknesses, and not only how to recognise them, but also eliminate them. These include necromantic zombies, voodoo zombies, Nazi zombies, revenants, atomic zombies, viral zombies, zombie masters, and viral hounds and zombified animals. Other chapters cover the matter of zombie hunters themselves, as well as zombie hunter weapons and equipment, and zombie hunter tactics.

In describing these various members of the corpse cortège and the means to combat them, the author draws deeply on the pop culture of zombies and the history of that pop culture. The combined effect of this is to make the contents of Zombies: A Hunter's Guide very familiar, for example, the island of Haiti is given as the home of the Voodoo zombie, Wade Davis exposed the secrets of the Voodoo zombie in his The Serpent & The Rainbow, and Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier used Voodoo and zombies to keep himself in power as president of Haiti. So far, so good, but what Zombies: A Hunter's Guide does is add elements of a secret history. For example, the USA sent the US Marines in not to keep the peace in 1915 after the assassination of the president, but to engage in a war against the threat represented by zombies. Of course, Haitian refugees and immigrants have since brought Voodoo and Voodoo zombies to America...

It does this over and over with each type of zombie. For example, both the Miskatonic University and the Bodleian Library are known centres for 'Necromantic and Animate Necrology Studies', and the best-known revenant, a particular type of zombie that is driven to perform a particular task, is William Bonnet, better known as 'Billy the Kid'. Which is why his grave is caged off! For the Game Master and his players there are organisations to join, such as 'Bureau 9' (founded by Allan Pinkerton during the American Civil War), the Vatican's Corpus Mortuambulanticum, and the mercenary unit,Command: The Blue Unit. Also included are discussions of the contemporary weapons and tactics needed to fight zombies in general.

Physically, Zombies: A Hunter's Guide is a slim hardback. It is well written and as you would expect with an Osprey Publishing book, it is well presented with a good mix of full colour and black and white artwork. If there is an issue with the book it is the options given in 'Further Reading, Watching, and Gaming' for gaming are all war games and board games. There is nothing wrong in the choices given and none of them are surprising given that war gamers purchase Osprey Publishing titles, but no role playing games are suggested, which is a major omission. Certainly, All Flesh Must Be Eaten deserved a place on the list of suggestions.

At its gaming core, the concept behind Zombies: A Hunter's Guide is a world in which zombies are a known threat and outbreaks are dealt with by sanctioned organisations as well as the foolish amateur. This is an incredibly easy set-up to do for the RPG of your choice -- Savage Worlds from Pinnacle Entertainment Group and Evil Hat Productions' recent FATE Core would work very well with the setting material presented in Zombies: A Hunter's Guide. Lightly drawn -- after all, who needs depth when dealing with the cadaver cavalcade? -- Zombies: A Hunter's Guide gives a juicy setting that is easy to add the rules to.

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The Fate of Arthur

In roleplaying, many genres come to be dominated by the one title. For example, zombie roleplaying games are dominated by Eden Studios’ All Flesh Must be Eaten and West End Games’ Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game is regarded as the perfect Space Opera RPG. So when it comes to the Arthurian RPG, there is only the one title that deserving of the crown – King Arthur Pendragon, originally from Chaosium, Inc., but since published by others. In truth, there have been few pretenders to the throne over the years. For example, I, Mordred: The Fall and Rise of Camelot from Avalanche Press and Legends of Excalibur: Arthurian Adventures from RPGObjects both offered d20 System options for Arthurian roleplaying, the latter sourcebook ultimately more interesting and better than the former. Steve Jackson Games’ GURPS Camelot offered an overview of the genre, whilst Once and Future King, published by TSR for the Amazing Engine rules, transplanted the legend into the far future. With the latest version of King Arthur Pendragon from Nocturnal Media currently available only as a PDF or via Print On Demand, there is another young pretender to the throne – Age of Arthur: Heroism in the Dark Ages.

Published by Wordplay Games, Age of Arthur: Heroism in the Dark Ages approaches the legend of King Arthur from a historical standpoint. It is set firmly in a post-Romano-Britain Britannia, some two generations after the withdrawal of the Roman Empire towards the end of the fifth century A.D. What was once a united province that had the support of Rome and in turn stood against Rome’s enemies, is now rent by religious and political differences; assailed by barbarians to the north, the west, and the east; and touched once again by magic, much to the dismay of the Christian church. In the province’s stead have arisen old tribal kingdoms, some of which adhere to the customs of Rome, others to the old ways. Picts threaten from the north; pagan Gaels, exiled from staunchly Christian Hibernia, raid in the west; and Saxons from old Germania cross the sea to glory in the raid and the plunder and take the kingdoms that they want. The peoples of Britannia are forced to choose between the faith of Rome and following the old gods, as in Rome’s absence, the Druids and bards return bringing their magic with them, whilst barely beyond his imagination, the fae would play their alien games with man… Britain stands ready to slip away into the Dark Ages, but perhaps there are yet men and women who would unite the tribes and kingdoms, and together stave off the dark and withstand the threats that assail the land. Perhaps such a man might be Artorios Aurelianus as advised by the fae-blooded druid, Myrddin, but conceivably it might be someone else. The player characters, perhaps?

As an RPG, Age of Arthur uses the Fate system, the Fudge variant first seen in Evil Hat Productions’ award-winning Spirit of the Century. Not the latest iteration of the rules, the recently released Fate Core, but Fate 3.0 as seen in Diaspora and Chronica Feudalis: A Game of Imagined Adventure in Medieval Europe, as well as 2012’s Agents of SWING. At its heart lie the Fate Points that push and pull the play of the game onwards. Just as in many other RPGs they can be spent to gain a bonus to a roll or to re-roll the dice, 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 Compel another character or location related Aspect to bring it into play, and to Compel the story and add to the narration. The Fate system also ditches traditional attributes, instead defining characters by Skills, Aspects, and Stunts. It plays fast and easy. The player rolls four Fudge dice or ‘4dF’ – six-sided dice marked with pluses on two sides and minuses on two sides with other two sides being left blank and applies the result, along with 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 or Composure, the latter representing mental and social stress. A player can roll a Manoeuvre to place a temporary Aspect on a scene that can be Invoked once for free and then again at the cost of a Fate Point.

For example, Sullio ap Hywel, a Briton who served Rome as an engineer has returned to home to find the former province in a perilous state. Visiting an ally of his uncle in Durnovaria, in the south of the province, Sullio has learned that Saxon raiders have landed in the wide bay to the east and are travelling by river to attack the wealthy market town. Unimpressed by Durnovaria’s defences, Sullio petitions the local chief to give him the men to shore up the defences. Sullio has the skill Profession [Engineer] +5 and the Aspect, ‘Engineering is an exact science’ as well as Charm +3 and the Stunt, ‘Specialism: Persuasion (+1)’. 

First, Sullio needs to convince the local chief that the town’s defences are inadequate to the task ahead. The Storyteller rules that the chief is preoccupied by the need to defend Durnovaria, and is too busy to take notice of what a Roman busybody wants and sets the Difficulty at 4 for his Charm +3 skill roll. To this roll, Sullio’s player will add in his ‘Specialism: Persuasion (+1)’. He rolls 4dF and gets +, –, and two blanks. This gives him a result of zero to add to his Charm +3, not enough normally to equal the Difficulty, but because he invoked his Specialism, he increases his roll to +4 and matches the Difficulty. The chief listens to Sullio and allows him to assemble a work force to prepare the defences properly, but because Sullio only managed to meet the value of the task’s Difficulty, there is a complication. The Storyteller decides that he is not assigned enough men and increases the Difficulty of the engineering task.

As he directs the bolstering of the defences, the Storyteller Compels Sullio’s Aspect of ‘Engineering is an exact science’ to affect the length of time it take to complete the task. Sullio accepts the Compel and its accompanying Fate Point, but decides that he wants to set up a Manoeuvre that he and his fellow defenders can Invoke during the coming battle. He rolls 4dF and adds his skill of Profession [Engineer] +5 to the roll to beat the Difficulty, which is again 4. He rolls, +, +, and two blanks, which gives him a total of +7. Sullio succeeds and creates the temporary Aspect of ‘These walls will hold’ which he applies to the defences. In addition, Sullio rolled three more than the Difficulty which is a Critical result and will thus give him a +1 on a subsequent roll. Sullio has successfully bolstered the defences, but this has taken too much time and as the last of the work party scrambles back over the walls, the vanguard of the Saxon raiders are at the walls and Sullio is caught outside them!

A character is defined by his 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 ‘Girl in every port’ or ‘Pious’, and work as the more interactive elements within the game. A player can spend a Fate Point to Invoke one of his character’s Aspects or an Aspect particular to a location, and so get a bonus to a roll, but the Storyteller could Compel either Aspect to add a problem to a character’s situation and so drive the story along. If a player accepts the Compel and the resulting problem, he is awarded a Fate Point. When choosing Aspects for a character, 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 player could just select all of them, but the intent of Age of Arthur is that the players each tell tales about their characters, creating connections between their characters in the process as they occur suitably, and selecting equally as suitable Aspects for each of their tales. The four tales cover a character’s beginnings, what he did at a major event, how he became the hero that he is, and a significant event, while an optional fifth tale details an Oath made by the character and how he came to make it. The resulting character begins play with fifteen skills of varying levels, five Aspects, and five Stunts that come of, and support, the tales told during the creation process. In addition, suggested Stunts can be found throughout Age of Arthur, such as ‘Dark Adapted Eye’ for a priest of Arawn, King of the Dead, though primarily in the sample characters and numerous NPCs.

Our sample character is Sullio ap Hywel, a Briton who served Rome as an engineer has returned to home to find the former province in a perilous state. The son of Hywel ap Senorix, a nobleman of Siluria, Sullio was sent to Rome as a ward of Decius Vodinius Sapens, an ally of the tribe to whom a favour was owed. The young man grew up in the greatest city in the world and embraced its culture as much as he could, eventually following his ward into the military. He became a legionary in Rome’s great armies and trained as an engineer. More recently he has returned home after twenty years, following the death of his father. It is his uncle, Andoc ap Senorix, who is now the head of the household, a man ill-disposed towards Rome and his nephew. Andoc’s son, Ban ap Andoc is of a similar mind, though his sister, Belicia is more sympathetic.

Name: Sullio ap Hywel
Aspects: Son of Britannia, Man of Rome
                   Engineering is an exact science
                   Loyal to his friends and family
                   Distrusting of Saxons

Oaths: To serve Siluria as my father did

Skills: Level 5 Profession – Engineering
              Level 4 Leadership, Melee Combat
              Level 3 Agility, Charm, Strategy & Tactics
              Level 2 Gaming, Investigation, Languages, Willpower 
              Level 1 Awareness, Contacts, Ride, Strength, Wealth

Stunts: Specialism: Persuasion (+1)
                Tough [Extra Capacity]
                Rally [New Skill Use]
                Danger Sense [Ignore Difficulty or Restriction]
                Extra Refresh (+1 Refresh Rate)

Health: 5 Composure: 4 Refresh Rate: 6
Languages: Brythonic, Latin, Latin Literacy, Ogham
Equipment: Spatha (Damage 3), Riding horse, Surveying Equipment, Small collection of history books, Dagger (Damage 1, can throw), Expensive clothes (suitable for court)

The Age of Arthur is also an age in which magic returned and Age of Arthur lets a player character be capable of using magic that in the setting comes in several forms. These are Divination, such as astrology, dream visions, and ectomancy – the character needs to define which; Druidic Magic, the worship of the old gods; Faith, the worship of the Christian god; Glamour, the magic of the Fae and those with Fae blood; Plant and Root, which covers both ordinary and magical herbalism; Rune Magic, the power that can imbue places or objects with potent magic; and Shapechanging, the ability to turn into various animal forms. Both Rune Magic and Shapechanging were brought to Britannia by the Saxons. All require the ‘Magical Calling’ Stunt, which then lets a character take the appropriate skill. In addition, Bards may know some Druidic Magic, but to a much lesser extent than a fully trained Druid, plus they have their own suggested Stunts, Bardic Knowledge, Bardic Protection, Biting Satire, Jack of All Trades, and Song of Battle.

Our second sample character is capable of using magic. Rosula has no idea of her parentage, but she grew up as a slave of the Saxons in the household of Eadgar, mistreated and often abused. In time, he took her as his mistress and for his amusement began to teach her the rudiments of magic when he discovered both her curiosity and her intelligence. She learned to read the stars and foretell the future, and already deceitful and mistrusting, began to deceive her master as to his future and his wife as to their affair. She also watched Eadgar take on the form of an animal, a bear, and other creatures, and after obtaining a wolf pelt, managed to mimic her master in secret. How she came to escape is not a subject that Rosula volunteers to talk about, but she harbours a hatred of both men and Saxons in general. Sullio ap Hywel is an exception to this hatred, his having saved her from bandits on the road.

Name: Rosula
Aspects: Former Saxon Slave
                  Wiser than any man
                  The truth always lies in the future
                  My looks belie my brains

Oaths: To drive the Saxons from Britannia

Skills: Level 5 Deception
              Level 4 Empathy, Divination [Astrology]
              Level 3 Agility, Charm, Healing
              Level 2 Brawling, Lore: Folklore, Performance: Storytelling, Willpower 
              Level 1 Awareness, Languages, Melee Combat, Shapechanging: Wolf, Wealth

Stunts: Diviner [Magical Calling]
                Strong-Willed [Extra Capacity]
                Skin Changer [Magical Calling] 
                Dirty Fighter [Brawling]
                Extra Refresh (+1 Refresh Rate)

Health: 3 Composure: 5 Refresh Rate: 6
Languages: Brythonic, Latin, Saxon
Equipment: Dagger (Damage 1, can throw), Ordinary clothes, Expensive clothes (suitable for court)

The Age of Arthur is of course one of conflict. The rules already support this on a personal level, covering physical and mental conflicts that a character can become enmeshed in. With internecine fights between the kingdoms of Britannia common and with threats on three of her borders, such conflicts can be fought out on a much larger scale. Age of Arthur handles this with a well thought out set of rules for battles and mass combat that allows plenty of personal involvement upon the part of the player characters. A detailed example supports these rules.

The setting itself is supported with background material that covers kings and warriors, religion, everyday life, as well as some information on the other peoples of Britannia – the Gaels, the Picts, and the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. A timeline projects the future up to the year 556 AD while a gazetteer covers the kingdoms that have arisen in the wake of Rome’s departure and the state of the various towns and cities across the former province. Various sites of importance, either former Roman sites or pagan sites, like Stonehenge or the northerly Wall of Antonine, are also described. Each of the kingdoms, towns, and sites are accompanied by location related Aspects, such as ‘Heavy walls and fortifications’ for Cameludunum or Colchester, or ‘The gods are close’ for Stonehenge. These Aspects can of course, be Invoked or Compelled during a game.

The ‘Allies and Adversaries’ chapter includes both the ordinary and the outré. So not just animals and simple beggars and bandits, but also the Fae, giants, and more, in particular the major figures of the Age of Arthur. These include Artorios Aurelianus, Gwenhwyfar, Lancelot, Morgan Le Fay, and Myrddin. Age of Arthur presents an interesting take on the Fae, making them powerful, but flawed in that they are capable of repetition and imitation, but not originality. Their magic is Glamour, the ability to cast illusions that deceive any sense. All Fae know some Glamour and the Fae-blooded have the capacity to learn it with the selection of the right Stunt.

Rounding out Age of Arthur is a full length scenario, ‘Escorting the Princess'. King Agricola of Urbe Legionis wishes to give the hand of his daughter, Gwenhwyfar, to King Caradoc Strongarm of Siluria in return for an alliance against the Kingdom of Powys. Gwenhwyfar wishes to meet King Caradoc and see Siluria before she agrees to marry him. The player characters are to escort the potential bride to Siluria. It is written with a group of pre-generated investigators in mind, so will require some adjustment by the Storyteller to run it for other players. Although a map of the travel routes would have been useful, the scenario does a good job of showcasing of the game that should last a session or two. In addition, Age of Arthur comes with seven scenario outlines and a discussion of some of the themes that Age of Arthur scenarios typically involve. 

There is advice throughout Age of Arthur on how to run the game mechanically, how to handle Stunts and Aspects, and Fate Points in particular. Not only that, but the rules are supported by numerous examples that help make understanding the game much easier than it might have been. The given advice on running the game is clear, simple, and to the point. Rounding out the book is a quick reference for the game that sums up the rules and setting in just a few pages.

Physically, Age of Arthur is a nicely presented hardback. Notably, it is very lightly illustrated, the art consisting of chapter frontispieces, each done in evocative full colour. The lack of art is initially off-putting, but the writing style is light and layout quite open, so it is not as challenging as it could have been had it consisted of solid blocks of text. The book also includes a handy index.

It should be remembered that when it was published back in 1985, Chaosium, Inc.’s King Arthur Pendragon was a markedly radical RPG. It invoked a particular genre as never before and moreover, it encouraged, even enforced the behaviour of the player characters to conform to the accepted standards and attitudes of their respective cultures. It remains the premiere treatment of the genre in terms of RPGs, but Age of Arthur is a worthy addition to the limited selection of Arthurian RPGs. It is a broader, less focused, more contemporary treatment of the genre; a less romantic and grittier treatment of the genre, being more grounded in the grim history of the period; and a more accessible set of rules, a set that encourages player participation in the telling of tales set during the Age of Arthur. Without a doubt, King Arthur Pendragon remains on the throne of the Arthurian RPG, but the darker, grimmer, more player involving Age of Arthur: Heroism in the Dark Ages is a worthy prince.

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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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