Tommy's Take on Stealer of Children

In theory, I review games. Haven’t had the time or opportunity to do that in a while. Let’s remedy that, shall we? Starting with the latest release from Small Niche Games: The Stealer of Children.

Yes, there's a REASON the dead guy is in a tree.

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW: This is another Labyrinth Lord adventure from Small Niche Games, set in the Chronicles of Amherth setting. The PDF is $4.95 and is 31 pages long, and you can order a POD softcover for $7.95. The assumed number of heroes is 3-6, of first level.

Now, I’ve made no bones about the fact that I’m not a big Labyrinth Lord fan, but I sure do like Small Niche adventures, which have all had a quasi-Ravenloft-ish feel to them, which I DO like.

Set in Leandras Row, The Stealer of Children is a fairly open ended adventure. The PCs are assumed to have come to Leandras Row for their own reasons, when they find a farmer being attacked by an undead warrior. This should set the group on edge, but despite their investigations, they won’t be able to do tooooo much…yet.

Soon, a child turns up missing (hopefully just one), and the group is the only realistic hope of calming the townspeople. If the group decides not to get involved, the kidnappings continue…and if the group still doesn’t get involved, the townsfolk begin to suspect that they may be involved, due to the timing of events. While this doesn’t have any IMMEDIATE ramifications, it will haunt the group going forward.

The investigations have a couple of places they can go, a ruined manor and a stretch of woods. The woods are FILLED with encounters that are short enough, but weird enough, to raise the interest of the group, and they can be spun off into their own adventures after the fact. (Unicorn hunting, anyone?)

Though the adventure is meant for level 1 characters, there are tips for scaling it up for larger characters. I don’t recommend using those guidelines, because more capable parties will be able to handle the adversary of the module without the adventure’s macguffin, which in turn takes away from the uniquely awesome finale of the adventure.

WHAT WORKS: A nice change of pace for a level 1 adventure, with one of the coolest workarounds for a level 1 party having to deal with an enemy that’s immune to non-magical weapons. The encounters in the Tanglewood outside of town are cool and potentially awe-inspiring for a level 1 party.

WHAT DOESN’T WORK: Nothing that can’t be fixed with a conversion to Savage Worlds or the AGE system, something other than a D&D derivative (purely subjective, of course.) Oh, the color selection for the cover is just downright ugly. I would have picked something, anything, other than pink, I think. And maybe an art piece that fit the theme more closely (though the art is directly linked to the adventure).

CONCLUSION: Another great adventure with a unique adversary. If I were to nitpick anything about the SNG adventures, it would maybe be the production values, but remember that this is coming from a guy who’s looking at the material from outside the OSR fanbase. The art and layout perfectly matches the aesthetic they are aiming for. For the material itself, I have no real complaints, as the adventures have been unique and interesting, with conversion work being no real problem. Stealer of Children continues to fit that pattern, providing low-level fantasy adventure with a weird/horror twist.  

Tommy's Take on Ghoul Keep and The Ghoul Lands.

I’ve reviewed the previous entries by Small Niche Games, but I hadn’t had a chance to read anything new in a while…until Ghoul Keep and the Ghoul Lands was just released, a gazetteer-style release for The Chronicles of Amherth!

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW: Ghoul Keep and the Ghoul Lands is $7.95 in PDF format at RPGNow, or for $15.95 you can order the print version and get the PDF for free. Ghoul Keep and the Ghoul Lands runs 132 pages, larger than the entire Amherth setting book, and is set just north of the Duchy of Valnwall, meaning you could easily run the earlier adventures in Valnwall and then move North.

The rules support is for Labyrinth Lord, as usual. The book opens with some important themes to remember, such as Isolation (the PCs, once they get in, don’t have a lot of room to run), Adventurers Are Heroes (but people can only become Adventurers in the capitalized sense if duly sponsored) and Undead Rule The Night (so stay inside when the sun goes down).

The Ghoul Lands are actually the Kingdom of Makaar Mor (a reference to another company’s supplement, Lesserton and Mor). Lorrgan Makaar was ripped to pieces by Valen of Vay, but Makaar survived this dismemberment and now his disembodied head rules his kingdom while seeking out the rest of his body. The Ghoul Lands are surrounded by mountains and is dominated by The Cult of Rebirth. This could be a Ravenloft domain already.

A good overview follows, with a calendar, a section on the tech level (they are about semi-Bronze Age) and the topic of alignment (most folks fall in the area of Lawful-Neutral and Neutral-Evil…few Chaotics or Evils). Women outnumber men five to one and everyone is assumed to be serving the Ghoul King Lorrgan Makaar, from the barons to the nobles to the commoners.

The geography section aims to provide “just enough detail” without mapping out every inch of the world, with the major landmarks even about a paragraph. For instance, the Westwood is an untamed forest uninhabited by humans which holds all kinds of ruins and monsters. The Cowl is a river known for its dangerous undercurrents, hidden debris and quicksand bogs.

Palatz Makaar, the seat of Makaar Mor’s power, has blood red waterfalls that flow into a blood red lake and a large chunk of the city that is now underwater. Each of the five Provinces of Makaar Mor have suitable evocative landmarks with definite room for exploration and adventure.

The Cursed Ward of Valen surrounds the Ghoul Lands and damages (to the death) any undead that tries to cross it.

Adventuring can be…interesting…as warriors and rogues are respected for their prowess, but clerics and magic-users are viewed with suspicion, and clerics preaching of other Gods treated as Heretics. And demihumans are automatically treated with suspicion. Oh, and remember how you have to be sponsored in order to be an adventurer? Well, there’s this whole ritual you also have to undergo that allows you more freedom to move at night. It’s creepy, it involves ghouls, and it has a nasty surprise if you do certain things…that’s all I’ll say.

A dozen plot seeds are provided, with many being open enough to go multiple ways (like Lorrgan Makaar selecting a bride: Do the PCs answer his call to help track her down…or help her hide?). Another seed involves overthrowing the King and ties in nicely with others (like having an evil NPC help the PCs out…leading to the PCs having to deal with the bad guy left over), and even an old prophecy that is left entirely to your interpretation.

The NPC section stats up the Ghoul King, his Barons, The Cult of Rebirth as well as providing information on The Church of Law and Order and The Keepers of the Old Law. Makaar’s Brood as the children of Lorrgan Mor, half-human and half-ghoul, each with their own motivations and goals. The Ghoul Lands even houses a blue dragon, an elder vampire and a swamp witch.

New magic items include the Dead Man’s Draught, which tricks lesser undead into thinking the drinker is also undead, as well as the Cape of Entanglement (which can be a surprising and effective weapon), Herkon’s Ink (which can provide magical tattoos), the Spear of Rot (which injects rot grubs into its victims) and the Sword of the Unliving (which burns the flesh of the living upon touch).

Relics include the Sword of Valen (though both the powers and fate of the sword are shrouded in mystery) and the Skeletine Throne, made from the bones of Lorrgan Makaar’s enemies.

The Flora and Fauna section includes plants like corpsegrass (which can force the dead back into unlife) and ghostmoss (which can heal the dead and poison the living) as well as creatures like bonewraiths (made up of the bones and spirits of fallen soldiers), and half a dozen types of ghouls, including the half-human gahouls.

Ghoul Keep, which is pretty much the entry into the kingdom, is fully mapped out with its traps, treasures and pitfalls, as well as random encounter charts. The Agden Commoner’s Hall is also provided as a base of operations and includes a list of rumors, relevant NPCs and rules for haggling, as well as a series of games used in competition (like arm wrestling and Five Finger Fillet). Plot seeds are also provided for the Hall.

Kalitus Corpi, a sandbox adventure, is also provided. It is an exploration of an evil, ruined temple (how the PCs get there is determined by the GM, though suggestions are provided) that is housing a hidden cult that is in opposition to the Cult of Rebirth, though far from good guys themselves. It also includes a really freaky temple inhabitant that is essentially a four armed undead human rat maggot.

Rules are provided, based off of an old Dragon magazine, to tweak undead in order to make them stronger. Finally, the book concludes with an index.

WHAT WORKS: As is usual for Small Niche Games, they provide a lot of gameable material for a good price. Lorrgan Makaar could easily be a Ravenloft Dark Lord, and I mean that as a compliment. This isn’t a straight forward “let’s go kill the bad guy” supplement, though you can certainly do just that. Raltus the Undying is just absolutely creepy. The lands are detailed enough to get you going while providing plenty of room for you to add your own twists.

WHAT DOESN’T WORK: As usual, my biggest complaint is that it isn’t written for a system I’m a bigger fan of, but a little conversion work later and that’s not an issue.

CONCLUSION: My favorite release yet from Small Niche Games. Making an undead kingdom gameable in more than just the “kill everything that moves” sense isn’t the easiest thing in the world, but they pulled that off here. Lorrgan Makaar is an interesting villain who is operating from a position of power while having very noticeable vulnerabilities that prevent him from being unstoppable. You could easily get a full campaign out of this book, either using native-born PCs or travelers from outside The Ghoul Lands.

Tommy's Take on Chronicles of Amherth

Hey, remember me? Got a new job, been crazy busy. So let me try to jump back into things here with Chronicles of Amherth, a Labyrinth Lord setting by Small Niche Games. As you may recall, I've done reviewed other Small Niche Games adventures in the past, so here we go with their first full setting.

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW: This is actually two books: The Chronicles of Amherth setting and the Atarin's Delve adventure. You can purchase this for $4.95, Atarin's Delve by itself for $2.95 or the entire run of LL material by Small Niche Games for $9.95. The production values are pretty old-school, as Small Niche Games tends to do. Atarin's Delve is a mere 15 pages, and the setting book itself is 77.

Amherth is scaled for characters of 10th level or lower, specifically stating that NPCs at 9th level or beyond are exceedingly rare. Small Niche Games has exhibited a knack for putting PCs in situations seemingly beyond their "level", as it were, and making it work, so it is little surprise that Amherth takes this approach.

Amherth also introduces a pair of great new rules: Latent magic and arcane bleed. Latent spell-casters have a knack for casting spells, they just can't always control it. Arcane bleed, on the other hand, basically helps explain how magic items exist in such a lower-level, lower-magic setting: Latents can unknowingly bleed magic off into items, empowering them. For instance, a latent warrior may bleed power off into his long sword, gradually increasing its bonus. Personally, I have ALWAYS liked the idea of "your sword become powerful during your exploits" over "you find a kewl new magical sword".

Adventuring companies are also a big deal, governed by The Adventurer's Guild, which forces merchants to track all commerce with companies and so forth.

The world itself is painted in fairly broad strokes. Each kingdom gets a page or two of detail, with some adventure seeds to go with it. There are not masses of NPC stat blocks here, just overviews to let you hit the ground running. All of the previous Small Niche Games adventures are namedropped in the Duchy of Valnwall, as well as adventures from a couple of other companies.

The demihumans each occupy their own places, and the author notes that modern peoples have not explored many areas of the world, leaving it open for exploration...(the world is ancient, but a number of cataclysms have rocked it throughout its history, so there isn't a great, unbroken line of history).

There are many new monsters (some of which hail from the previous adventures by Small Niche Games) as well as a number of plants that each have their own unique properties, look a wood that is as hard as metal and requires magic in order to be worked into weapons. As well, a slew of magic items are included, two of my favorites being the weir-skins (which allow the wearers to transform into animals) and the Godmaps, which can "zoom" in on areas and provide a "live" map of the area...including creatures that are moving around.

There is also a page on how Monks incorporate into the setting, for those using Advanced Edition Companion.

Atarin's Delve is a fairly straightforward dungeon crawl, designed as an introductory adventure. It has a couple of plot threads intersecting in it, as the heroes are hired (via letter) to assist an archeologist who has gone missing by the time they arrive.

The adventure lacks some of the charm of the previous Small Niche Games adventures, although the enjoyable backstory threads that make the Small Niche adventures stand out are still present as they are in the others.

WHAT WORKS: I really like the Latents and the Arcane Bleed. Easily my favorite parts of the setting. Ample detail is provided to get your games rolling, while giving you more than enough room to stretch your creative legs. The callouts to the Small Niche adventures was a good thing as well, and I may have to check out those adventures tied to Amherth that aren't made by Small Niche, to see if they have the same "feel". There is MORE than ample value for $5, even if you left out Atarin's Delve.

WHAT DOESN'T WORK: Atarin's Delve is the weakest Small Niche adventure thus far, but a) I was never a fan of dungeon crawls and b) I really like what has come before. There is a section of the world on floating islands that seems a tad out of place given the "low magic, low level" approach to the setting. I would have liked trade dress similar to the adventures on the Amherth book itself. Just seems like its missing something without it.

CONCLUSION: Chronicles of Amherth never tries to reinvent the wheel, just put some tweaks on familiar D&D/Labyrinth Lord tropes. Small Niche Games provides a setting that not only accomodates their previous adventures, but room for most of your old school or retroclone adventures as well. In fact, I enjoy the adventures so much, that I plan (with the author's permission) to adapt them to Savage Worlds and post the conversion notes on my blog. Check it out if you like your fantasy a little darker and little lower level.

Tommy's Take on Blitzkrieg, Bonus Cards and Bookbinder

BLITZKRIEG LONDON

Blitzkrieg London is a new adventure for ICONS by Vigilance Press, set in their World War II setting.

It is designed for people playing Vigilance Force, The Crown Guard or (possibly) The People's Revolution but as long as your PCs are anyone opposed to the Axis powers and operating in Europe, it shouldn't be too problematic to figure it out.

The Eugenics Brigade are about to launch a desperation assault on allied leaders, who are finalizing plans for D-Day, and the PCs are in London providing extra security.

It isn't a terribly complicated adventure, but it is very well organized, and a good bit of two-fisted fun. Over the course of the attack, the heroes will have the opportunity to fight Nazis on land, sea and air, as well as intervene in a superhero misunderstanding between the Crown Guard member Swordfish and a Captain America stand-in (who acts more like the USAGent).

I applaud them for providing tips on scaling every encounter, as well as tossing in extra "mini-challenges" to spice each encounter up. The adventure is only 17 pages (taking away the cover and OGL information), but is very well organized, making it rather user friendly. Unlike the Battlescenes released recently, however, there is little use if you're not wanting to play in WWII, and you will need at least the Eugenics Brigade PDF to get the most use out of this.

Great value for the price, as always.

OSR BONUS CARDS: Fantasy Deck #1

I...could see these not going over real well.

The OSR Bonus Cards are a deck of cards designed for D&D or any retroclone, designed to be doled out to the players and allow them to gain access to small bonuses. I've seen some old school purists go so far as to say that giving players stuff like that actually means the games are no longer even RPGs at that point...that being said, I think they're kinda cool.

The cards are mapped to the standard playing card decks, with Jokers being wildcards. Clubs belong to Fighters, Diamonds to Thieves, Hearts to Clerics and Spades to Magic-Users.

Fighter benefits include an extra attack, an automatic hit or an automatic parry.

Thieves can score an auto success on a thieving skill roll, double damage on a backstab and various bonuses to thieving skill rolls.

Clerics can get an auto success on turning the undead, a free Detect Good/Evil or doubling the range and duration of a spell.

Magic Users can memorize a bonus spell, an auto success on an Intelligence check or a free Detect Magic.

They're a nice product for under $2 and not art intensive, so it won't be a strain to print them out...plus, being mapped to a standard deck of playing cards, you don't even need to print them if you don't want to. Just draw the cards and check the chart.

Great stuff from Small Niche Games once more, but I'm not a grognard.

OPERATION: BOOKBINDER

The third Battlescenes offering from Vigilance Press is a departure from the first two, featuring the PCs versus your choice between Pearl Harbor December or giant Japanese robots.


It's a straight forward set-up, with the PCs being part of an operation to lure the Japanese into a trap...and, as mentioned, you either get PCs vs Pearl Harbor December or a giant robot and soldiers in power suits.

This is probably closer to what Vigilance Press intended with the Battlescenes, as it really is just a big combat scene (on an aircraft carrier in this case), but it does suffer compared to the detail of the previous two (especially when the first one could be easily transplanted outside of World War II).

Still a cool purchase, especially for the giant robot stats and the vehicles included in the PPDF.