Rather a long time ago, when I had just taken the Queen’s Shilling and the new game was Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, I thought about applying classic squad tactics to adventuring parties on the tabletop. War, after all, happens at least as frequently in a fantasy realm as it does in the real world, and small groups are the norm in both role-playing and Special Forces. So it is with a measure of glee that I find a book which has taken this route with the combat-orientated 4th Edition of D&D; providing both a rich but war-torn setting and ideas for building a special forces unit using the full potential of fantasy adventurers.

The Introduction explains precisely what is intended. Although it has the normal trappings of a standard fantasy campaign setting (and indeed if that is what you want you can play a normal fantasy game here), the intention is that player-characters will be members of an elite ’special forces’ style group called Wraith Recon; and that rather than normal adventuring activities they will engage in classic special forces missions, acing often on their own but under direction of their commanders.

Game books devoted entirely to the Art of Death, Destruction, and Detective Lieutenant John McClane rarely win me over. It’s a personal taste because I fully know that a handful of the players in my gaming group deeply appreciates the details that good combat manuals can offer. I assumed when diving into this book that it would be an updated version of the Combat book White Wolf released with their original run in the World of Darkness. That book always struck me as too much comic book and too little horror. Even the front and back covers had artwork that never matched anything else in any of the other lines. I must admit there were some flinchingly horrific pieces of art in that book that I’ll call Things You Don’t Want to Happen to You. Even with those minor high points, I felt cheated by that book.

That was then . . .

Armory Reloaded gets away from White Wolf’s Street Fighter RPG rules and tries to remain attached to the grit and horror of the setting. In the introduction, readers are told that “Combat is Horror.” The writers of this book don’t want to make the same mistake the miserable Combat made. The development of this project backs the statement through both its writing and artwork.

Blood Drive ($6.99 PDF) is the newest installment from White Wolf’s Storytelling Adventure System. This Hunter: the Vigil adventure offers an action-oriented romp for slightly seasoned characters (XP 25-29). This adventure plays on a personal favorite of mine. It’s the classic tale of the supposedly “easy job” that becomes something else altogether. At eleven scenes and forty-six pages (none of which are ads), this is a healthy night’s adventure or (more likely) multiple sessions of fun.

The direction of this adventure, like other White Wolf products I’ve recently reviewed, continues to impress me. The layout of the adventure offers both the detailed story, which the Storyteller will have to go over and a collection of Scene Cards to act as Storyteller cheat sheets.

“The Malleus Monstrorum: Creatures, Gods & Forbidden Knowledge” is a supplement for the Call of Cthulhu RPG by Chaosium Inc. The book includes entries on all of the creatures described in the works of H.P. Lovecraft as well as other authors who dabbled in the Cthulhu Mythos, such as Ramsey Campbell and Clark Ashton Smith. Also included are some of the critters created specifically for CoC adventures and supplements.

Overall the Monstrorum is an excellent book, not only for CoC players, but for any fan of Lovecraft or the Mythos. It is a great source of adventure ideas just in reading the creature descriptions and story excerpts. Fans of the source material will enjoy having so many bizarre creatures in one volume, while those new to the Mythos will find themselves looking up the source material to learn more about the Elder Gods and their servants.

Review by Michael Erb

Most players enjoy something tangible given to them in a game. It can be as simple as dice, poker chips, and a character sheet; nevertheless, the experience deepens when newspaper articles, photos, and varied memorabilia are also handed out. People are bound by their senses.

The more senses used during a game greatly intensifies the overall experience. Attack them all. While the Testament of Longinus (PDF $7.99) won’t smell like a centuries old text, it’s still a masterfully fun little addition to the World of Darkness (and you can always check-out an old book from the library to relate that old smell for your players). This psudo-document follows the story of a self-described “antichrist” as he moves from criminal to vampire to . . . something more.

White Wolf experiments with “ready-made player-characters” for those gaming groups on the go. Two such PDFs already exist, but I’ll only be talking about the Slaughterhouse Five. The PDF is 26 pages (no ads) devoted to the description of five player-characters and a bit of the world they live in. It’s an interesting idea, so let’s see how I felt it played out.

A few years ago, I wouldn’t have wanted to be fed a handful of pre-made characters to push onto my gaming group. It’s too much fun to make your own character. Right? Once upon a time, I would answered “yes” to that question without hesitation. I’ll now mend my answer to “yes, usually.” Why do I now permit myself to sacrifice creativity for availability? First, I no longer believe that question is even valid. The biggest reason why is pointed out by the blurb for the game.

Opinions vary. Some people think Tarot cards hold power, while those who know say that they are merely guides, an interface to unlock your own knowledge of ancient secrets. In this book, the 22 Major Arcana are used as keys to chronicles for your Mage: The Awakening game… a smart idea as many mages study the Tarot.

The work starts with a short story in which a regular game of cards turns into a reading, and perhaps something else. You don’t need a special Tarot deck if you know what you’re doing.

The intention behind this book is to introduce new races, classes and powers as options that players can choose when designing their characters. The Introduction launches off with some grandiose claims about being a ’significant expansion’ - well, it is fair to say that five new races and eight new classes broadens your options… it just depends if what is offered happens to suit what you want to play. The second part of the Introduction presents the ‘Primal Power Source’ which underlies the supernatural powers available to the barbarian, druid, shaman and warden classes presented later on. It links to the spirits of nature, the power of the world itself that originally arose to protect it from the depredations of squabbling deities and primordials. Having banished them so that they can only exert an influence the primal powers, a myriad of spirits, have established what is perceived as the ‘natural order’ - the cycle of life and death, the turning of the seasons. The characters who draw on them are thus firmly rooted in nature.

Ed’s Midnight Tales (TWL0032) gives fans of Savage Worlds and Pine Box, Texas another forty-two pages of information ultra-helpful for both. As the title suggests, this is a brief collection of scenarios (mostly one-shots). The stories do not need to be interwoven, but could easily be fused together in a long-running campaign. The book is broken up into an introduction and five chapters, each progressive chapter offering a more detailed storyline for players.

Finishing out the book is a special edition of the Pinebox News, complete with strange articles and story seeds. The PDF comes in two versions, a typical version and a printer-friendly version.

While 12 to Midnight tends to focus on supernatural horror in modern settings, this collection doesn’t always include supernatural threats. Forest creatures and gang-bangers fill out of the ranks of things to fear.

Wolfsheim is a mini-adventure for Scion, stand alone, suitable for an evening’s play or as a pick-up or convention game, though it will need experienced characters to be pre-generated in such an instance. It’s fairly straightforward, if a little rail-roady (as most of these adventures from White Wolf have been) and it could easily be shifted in space and time from its modern, Germanic setting to just about anywhere or anywhen.

The basic storyline is that of Yojimbo, the famous Japanese samurai story, a town caught between two predatory groups and the wanderers coming in, upsetting the balance between the people and their antagonists and, hopefully, causing a new peace to come about (through a great deal of bloodshed in the middle).

The third installment from Third Eye Games fittingly brings three new demon races to the world of Apocalypse Prevention, Inc. This minor races don’t merit a full book like the recently released Lochs supplement, but still offer some quirky newness to an API game. This trim PDF comes in at eight pages, which consist of one cover sheet, six pages about the creatures, and a one page ad. Let’s see what these three writers offer when only given two pages to play with.

We’ll also see how long a review is on an eight-page PDF.

The Introduction begins by discussing the true tools of a warrior: not so much his weapons and armour, but his skills and techniques. The best fighters may even be know for a particular style or manoeuvre that has become a trademark. This book is laid out so as to help you to develop such a character, one tailored to the style you wish him to have. Each of the martial character classes - fighter, ranger, rogue, and warlord - has a chapter dedicated to honing characters of that class, and the book rounds out with a massive listing of new feats which may be used to good effect. While some players may take the opportunity to build a new character from the bottom up using these resources, allowance has also been made for those who wish to revise existing martial characters in the light of what is written here.

In Jaws, Roy Scheider’s character tells us that “we’re gonna need a bigger boat.” That is
the chief message underlying CthulhuTech. We’ll explore the meaning of this later on. The Cthulhu mythos has seen some amazing variations since it’s conception nearly thirty years ago. The core rules evolved through six editions, not including solid side ventures like Delta Green. One of the hallmarks of these games is the sheer horror that comes when facing something you, well, can’t really beat. Chuck your stick of dynamite, hope you blow it up before you blow your sanity roll, and get the heck out of Dodge. I’ve always felt that these games were the Anti-Dungeons and Dragons based simply on the bleak outlook of the mythos and the mindset of the players.

Review by Todd Cash

Aletheia is a journey into the weird world on the fringe of our own. It is an exploration of the supernatural and the paranormal in the modern world, and while the characters may find this experience holistically terrifying, terror and horror is not built into the system. Characters are designed as individuals, but they are brought together as a team due to their pasts and genealogical connections, regardless of profession or ability. The team has a residence and funds that are intricately connected to the setting, and after the team is assembled, they take off on their investigations of the paranormal and the weird.

Review by Kevin Rohan

Whether you choose to play a half-dead as one of the most bizarre characters I can imagine, or feel that they will make horrific opposition for your game, this work details a terrifying fate, that of being neither dead, undead or alive… but trapped somewhere in between, a living mind in an undead body. Will madness ensue?

This fate can befall a member of any race, provided it is sentient. As it’s caused by dying while under the influence of dark and necrotic magics, it is a fate which can be held over characters when they encounter a foe capable of casting such magics.

Once upon a time, my friend David ran a Delta Green game. David was a huge fan of the in-game prop, especially when it came to this particular campaign. If our clues were photographs, we generally had photographs in our paws. If the clue was a recording of some nature, then we also received that. I mention this because White Wolf’s new Collection of Horrors line appears to follow in his beliefs that props are good things. CoH is associated with the Hunter the Vigil line as each entry describes a scene (using the SAS platform) that can either be fitted into an already existing campaign, spark a new campaign, or simply fill up a night’s worth of gaming.

As of this writing there are thirteen PDFs associated with this project (a couple more if you count the introduction module and Horror Recognition Guide).

These are the stakes, then, for the Ghosts of Albion roleplaying game. Players take the role of one of the secret Protectors or one of their cronies and goons. It is also possible to play a class traitor – a ghost or a vampire, for example, which has turned its coat and now seeks to hunt down to extinction other members of the supernatural, presumably for money or the baubles of power and influence. No one comes out of this very well. The premise for the action apparently comes from a BBC television production, which does not appear to have made it to Thailand and about which I knew nothing before receiving this game. Fans of the program will be more able to identify with the protagonist siblings Tamara and William and the various aids and assistants, including the revived Queen Boudicca (or Bodicea as she is for some reason spelt here) and the poet Byron (described, on p.70, thus: “… the archetypal Regency buck. Born with a club foot and weak constitution, Byron inherited his title at age ten.” Obviously some new use of the term ‘archetype’ is in use at Eden Studios. I will have something to say about the language later).

Review by John Walsh

The magazine comes in a robust 60 pages. That is not as big as their major competitor, but it is very, very, full. The initial editorial lays out all of the article types that the magazine plans to pursue in the coming quarters and every one seems interesting and with a constant mind toward having something for all players. There was always an eye toward having both solid fluff (flavor) and rules (crunch) in each article. More over, a focus on making sure the flavor and crunch aligned. Readers will notice if there is a disconnect and will be turned off by a product that does a bad job of aligning these two very important aspects of game design. That is not the case here.

The articles are similar to classic articles we, as a gaming generation, have all grown up with. There are articles that detail new weapons and talk about the fighters that use them, articles that introduce a new god, his followers and other important doctrines of the faith.

There is a movie called The Man From Earth that could have inspired this book. In it, a man tells his closest friends that he is an immortal. In turn, the friends try to ferret out if he’s telling the truth or playing some strange game with them. The friends make one mistake countless times when they try to get specific information from him. He often responds with vague accounts that are little better than a history book’s recollection. His claim is that people who cannot remember were they were a year earlier shouldn’t demand centuries old answers. I constantly found myself thinking of this excellent film. White Wolf offers readers an obscure history lesson in their newest release, Ancient Mysteries. After reading the blurb, I thought I would like the first half the book (the “Fog of Eternity” appealed to me) and would probably trudge through the latter half (I always wonder if anyone uses the NPCs from the various books).

Ancient Mysteries isn’t the standard Kindred history book. What Kindred consider high points in history does not always coincide with the mortal populace. On page 100, the authors cleverly compare the “Fog of Eternity” to actual fog filling a mountainous valley. In essence, much of the past is forgotten just as the valley is blanketed in mist; however, there will always be peaks immune to the fog. The text gives a detailed look to a few of those mountains.

All adventurers need good equipment, both magical and mundane, and even the most creative DM sometimes needs ideas for interesting treasure hoards for the characters to, ahem, liberate… so here is a book packed full of goodies to serve both interests. The Introduction explains the organisation of the work: a chapter each for equipment and magical items, plus a couple of appendices mostly for the DM, one with ideas for using magic items and one with them listed by level for ease of hoard creation.

Mainly intended for the character looking for some retail therapy, Chapter 1: Equipment is broken down into sections detailing all manner of gear. It begins with masterwork armour, and also covers weapons, mounts, vehicles and even alchemy - both that which can be purchased and things you can do yourself if possessed of the appropriate tools.