A Scathingly Positive Review Jim Henson's Labyrinth: the Adventure Game is a self-contained system and adventure adapted from the 1986 film Labyrinth, published in 2019 by River Horse Games. The main creators behind it are the brothers Jack and Chris Caesar, but the adventure is mostly written by Ben Milton (AKA Questing Beast). The book is 294 pages and uses the original concept artwork for the movie by Brian Froud, with additional artwork by Ralph Horsley and Johnny Fraser-Allen. I own the PDF of the game and am currently running it for the second time, both campaigns using Discor ..read more

Come Sail Away Vampire Cruise by Amanda lee Franck is a 40-page zine containing a site-based location (the Sea Star cruise ship) for a horror-comedy adventure that unfolds over the course of two days at sea. It acts as a referee’s creative partner in bringing to life an adventure with a unique premise that is simply summed up by the title. It is system-neutral but contains roughly B/X stats for its monsters, which makes it relatively easy to adapt to any vaguely “old-school” system.  This review is based on two sessions I ran online in February, which is described in more deta ..read more

Similar to my Hold in the Oak review, I again will be using Arnold K’s dungeon checklist. I have not played this adventure, but it grabbed my attention. THE BAIT: This 6 in x 10 level 1 adventure from Andrew Duvall published by Exalted Funeral and was an upgrade from the similar adventure published in KNOCK Vol. 2. This “long” format is novel in the RPG universe, but its proponents are correct. It is easy to place on the table especially if you have a DM screen or computer as well. So what drew me to this adventure? The first thing was the phrase “desiccated temple”. How interesting–”all wate ..read more

A Book of Beasts Review by WFS This bestiary is a supplement for a supplement. In 2015, Jason Lutes wrote “The Perilous Wilds”, a supplement for overland exploration for the Dungeon World RPG, which is regularly cited as an essential product for that system and a source of inspiration even for those who lack any interest in Dungeon World. “A Book of Beasts” was a stretch goal for the Kickstarter for The Perilous Wilds.  The premise for A Book of Beasts is that The Perilous Wilds provides a series of random tables for generating creatures, and that all 56 of the monsters inclu ..read more

Cy_Borg is a ‘nano-infested’ cyberpunk RPG by Christian Sahlén, based on the rules of Mork Börg, and published in 2022. Layout and art by Johan Nohr, perhaps even more ambitious and out there than in the aforementioned Mork Börg. Let’s not mince words – this book is pretty, but what does it bring to the cyberpunk games and genre as a whole? As a bonus I go on a tangent about character moral choices. Entering the Cy Cy is the cyberpunk future megacity where the game takes place. It is divided into regions such as the toxic industries, or the high end hills. It reminded me of Bastionland, in th ..read more

A vast unpredictable nebula! Three mysterious pillars rising from the clouds! This week our tour is landing somewhere in Gaelar XII, or The Amaranthine Nebula as they call it. What We Give to Alien Gods is a 70 page full-colour zine module for the Mothership RPG, written and published by Lone Archivist (known for Primeval). It was funded during ZQ3, pitched as a slow burn scenario about exploring your character — a crossover between Event Horizon (1997) and Arrival (2016). As a big fan of both I did not hesitate to dive in. Summary: reading and playing Alien Gods is in a way like deciphering ..read more

Conundrums of Old School Combat Combat occupies a central if ambiguous place in old school games. In many old school games, combat is not incentivized in terms of experience points. Unlike more forgiving versions of the world's most famous roleplaying game, in old school games the risk of death for PCs is very real. This means that there is a strong reason to avoid combat, at least when the outcome is not clear in advance. The use of reaction rolls and morale checks ensure that combat to death is often not the default result of interaction, even with "monsters". Adventure design for this plays ..read more

At long last, I turn my Ludic Dreams series to what I probably should have been doing all along: reviewing games and adventures about dreams, the dreamlands, and general phantasmagoria. It’s like coming home—if your home was Dylath-leen. I have a few more in the pipeline, so stay tuned! This time I am reviewing My Body is a Cage, a game by John Battle, with editing by Jared Sinclair, and seven accompanying 2-page dungeons written for the system by Alex Damanceno, Ema Acosta, Jim Gies, Josh Domanski, Maria Mison, Nevyn Holmes, and Julie-Anne Muñoz (who also illustrated several of the other d ..read more

Frontier Scum is a fantasy “acid western” tabletop role-playing game by Karl Druid, published in 2022. The subtitle reads, “A Game About Outlaws Making Their Mark on a Lost Frontier”, a description you might find typical of any classic American Western work. For its part as a game manual, it’s totally serviceable. Character creation evokes the flavor of a weird Wild West, especially with the different tables for characters’ background and equipment; it’s pretty fun! The math is standard for a light-weight game, even if the rules use too many four-sided dice for my liking. There is a spread de ..read more

Author: Ian Yusem Artist: Sajan Rai Reviewer: Dan D. System: Mothership Run as Referee General Disclaimer: I share a couple discord servers with Ian and we've chatted on occasion. MANHUNT Manhunt is a alternate ruleset for Mothership where you play as the monsters, found as part of Hull Breach Vol 01. Four new classes are included: the Broodmother (your classic spawn-producing xenomorph), the Leviathan (gigantic ooze), the Anomaly (weird psychic egg-thing), and the Parasite (a puppeteer worm-centipede). I love these, and their art, and in practice they fulfilled their individual niches exce ..read more