Review: What Lies Beneath

Disclaimer: I was provided a review copy of the game. Also, some of the links below are affiliate links (meaning I get a small percentage of the sale without extra cost to you or the publisher).

Written by Chris Scaffidi and published in 2023 by Fervent Workshop, What Lies Beneath is described as "a solo dungeon-crawler of dice, decisions and death" that is "structured as a branching narrative". We all know what this really means: it's a gamebook!

In case it needs explanation, a gamebook is a form of interactive fiction delivered in book format. The text is arranged into numbered paragraphs (or sections) that you don't read linearly. Instead, at the end of each section you are given a number of choices that direct you to different paragraphs, leading to different outcomes in the story. Some gamebooks are literally just this (like the Choose Your Own Adventure series), while others also have detailed game mechanics.

While a lot of modern gamebooks strive to be epic in scale (often having a thousand or more sections), WLB is relatively short even compared to the classics (241 sections vs. the standard 400 of Fighting Fantasy). What it may lack in size, it makes up for in depth and mechanics.

Let's start at the beginning. There's no detailed backstory; you are thrown right into the game. You wake up in a dungeon with no memories or equipment and an apparently infected arm. Then the game describes how you are supposed to use the book, and you get to make your character (just a few stats, really).

The next few sections introduce the various game mechanics by example (e.g. you are taught how Hit tests work by having you encounter a giant rat). This sort of tutorial and teaching only what's relevant at a time reminded me of Metal Heroes and the Fate of Rock — and I loved it there as well.

I found it really interesting how WLB handles testing the three stats differently:

• Hit tests are the most straightforward. You roll as many dice as your Hit stat, and you need at least one of them to meet or beat the target number.
• Wit tests are about dice manipulation. You roll a number of dice equal to the difficulty then try to arrange them into a sequence (or run). For each point of Wit you have, you can either re-roll a die, flip it, or increase/decrease its value by one.
• Testing Dex involves physical dexterity. You place two dice on each other to form a tower. You need to flick a third die at the tower from a distance in inches equal to the difficulty so that it touches the tower without knocking it over. (There is an alternative system provided in an Appendix in case you don't have room for or don't want to flick dice around.)
  

On the one hand, these mechanics often got me out of immersion. It's hard to retain the gritty atmosphere built up by the text when you have to handle dice to such a degree. However, engaging the mechanics has never been this much fun for me with a gamebook (not even The Sword of the Bastard Elf with its simple but elegant resource management or DestinyQuest and its gazillion combat abilities). Or perhaps I just like dexterity games.

Let's talk about the atmosphere. This is gritty fantasy through and through. You wake up behind enemy lines, and your only concern (at least at the beginning) is survival. You must balance risk and reward, because the game doesn't pull its punches (but you're never thrown into more trouble than you really ask for either). Descriptive texts are brief and evocative. Illustrations are plenty, but they're fairly small.

Getting out of the dungeon also works as a checkpoint in the game. You get to save your current stats and also spend your XP to improve your character a bit. When you die, you don't have to start over from the beginning (although you might still want to). From then on, the game focusses on overland exploration — this is where the low number of sections is felt the most. Since you can go in any cardinal direction, you essentially have four different stories, and not all of them felt particularly satisfying.

For gamebooks, I like to use a different scoring method largely based on the Lindenbaum Prize judging criteria (it just makes more sense for these games). Note that I don't weigh all the categories equally, and I score on a 1 to 10 scale:

• Literary Ability (20%) Well-written and evocative with good grammar and spelling. The narrative is minimal (it's mostly concerned with survival and getting back your memories), but it's not an issue. A solid 7 out of 10.
  
• Game System (30%) The mechanics are simple but varied. Beyond the three main test types described above, there are a handful of unique situations with even more dice manipulation or different dexterity-based challenges. It's all reasonably difficult. There is an interesting connection between Wit and dice manipulation, and in turn Dex and flicking dice, even if the mechanics can disrupt immersion at times. Never boring, though. And it's all explained succinctly and unambiguously (apart from how the distance is measured for Dex tests). Equipment tags and story keywords are also competently used. I'm giving it 9 out of 10.
  
• Story (30%): The narrative you experience is overall satisfying, but it's mostly to do with overcoming challenges. WLB is very much limited in scope, for better or for worse. Getting your memories back can be interesting. There are many different endings, and the consequences of your choices are meaningful. 5 out of 10.
  
• Technical Ability (10%) The section links never lead to a dead end. Everything is hyperlinked in the PDF. There is no ambiguity when it comes to resolving the mechanics (although measuring from the middle point of dice is annoying), and all outcomes are accounted for in the text. 9 out of 10.
  
• Miscellaneous (10%) WLB weaves a lot interesting concepts together into a coherent whole: tags and keywords, checkpoints, varied dice mechanics, dexterity-based tests, etc. None of them are unique to WLB in the realm of gamebooks (except maybe for the dexterity stuff), but the way they all work together makes it great. The layout is clear and easy on the eyes, and the illustrations are charming. 8 out of 10.
  

This comes out to a respectable total of 73 (it would've been 76 if all categories weighed the same). Although a fairly short affair, WLB is a fun romp with lots of replayability packed into its small package.

What Lies Beneath is available on Amazon, itch, and DriveThruRPG. You can also check out a preview on itch or DriveThru. You can also check out the preview of an upcoming prequel, Dwarfdom (again, on itch or DriveThru) — it looks just as interesting mechanically without being a repeat of WLB.

RPGaDay 2024

I again missed this year's RPGaDAY blogging event. But hey, at least it's still the same year this time 'round. These will be fun to come back to 10 years from now.

Day 1: First RPG bought this year

I think it was Swyvers. If free games also count, it was Advanced FASERIP. Both PDFs, of course; I haven't bought physical RPG products this year (instead allocating shelf space and hobby budget to gamebooks and board games).

Day 2: Most recently played

The last game I ran was WFRP 4E where the group tracked down and defeated a pair of trolls (finally allowing the troll slayer the opportunity to advance in their career). Since then I also played in a Kazamaták és Kompániák campaign where we set sail for a distant island to rid some party members of a terrible curse.

Day 3: Most often played RPG

This year it was WFRP 4E, closely followed by Lancer and Arduin.

Day 4: RPG with great art

I'm much less interested in art in games than many others. Still, if I had to say, my favourite game in terms of illustrations is the first edition of Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea (in its current edition known as Hyperborea). All illustrations were done by Ian Baggley, ensuring the kind of visual consistency that gets even me going.

A close second would be Rifts (not just the core book but also many supplements). What can I say? I like tanks and robots.

Day 5: RPG with great writing

Again, I don't particularly judge RPGs on their artistic merits. For me a game is well-written if the writing is competent, unambiguous, and free of typos and other errors. HârnMaster is definitely one such game.

One that always fires up my imagination, though, is Monster Island, an unabashed sword-and-sorcery setting supplement for Mythras.

Day 6: RPG that is easy to use

Easy to use at the table or while learning the game? I would hope Kazamaták és Kompániák (click here for excerpts in English) fits both (particularly with the game aids my partner in crime, Narmor, designed for it), but I'm hardly unbiased and way too familiar with its systems.

I have yet to form a comprehensive opinion, but Break!! seems like one that is easy to learn.

As for easy at the table... all games are easy once you're familiar with them (just ask GURPS and HERO players).

Day 7: RPG with "good form"

Arguably not even an RPG in the traditional sense, En Garde! immediately jumps to mind when I think about social rules in a game.

Day 8: An accessory you appreciate

I don't know... A lot of these daily topics have to do with auxiliary stuff such as apps, screens, dice, and whatnot. At the end of the day, I think the most important accessory for my current gaming habits is Discord, because that's where we communicate, organise, and conduct our gaming sessions.

Day 9: An accessory you'd like to see

I'm not sure... I generally have everything I need, although they all could be improved slightly. I guess most games need better quick reference sheets.

Day 10: RPG you'd like to see on TV

I'm not that attached to RPG settings (and I also think television would butcher them anyway in order to appeal to a wider audience). A Rifts series would be pretty rad, though.

Day 11: RPG with well supported one-shots

Maelstrom Domesday has an incredible two-volume campaign spanning over 100 years. Each year comes with its own mini-adventure in the form of an investigation that can easily be played separate from each other.

Day 12: RPG with well supported campaigns

The obvious answer would be D&D or Call of Cthulhu or the aforementioned Maelstrom Domesday... but I wanna point out a rules-agnostic campaign that I like: King for a Day. It's a huge early medieval Anglo-Saxon sandbox with a bunch of interesting NPCs, conflicting goals, and plenty of secrets and horror elements.

Day 13: Evocative environments

I generally prefer simple but atmospheric environments to the zany and over-the-top. A ruined castle, a dark forest, misty mountains, and green hills are all I need to get into the fantasy adventuring mood.

I also adore the general setting of Werewolf: the Forsaken. The whole animistic cosmology with the separated worlds of Shadow and Flesh speak to me on a deeper level. However, its most evocative explanation isn't in a Werewolf book; it's actually the Book of Spirits, a supplement for the mortal line of World of Darkness.

Day 14: Compelling characters

Most of the time in my games, characters are memorable not because of their story arc, as it were, but because of some (usually funny) thing they did during play. The ex-student who charged alone into a beastman with his quarterstaff. The sorcerer who drank the warrior under the table using clever illusions. The avatar of a god who appeared out of thin air when his priest died (best character replacement mid-dungeon so far). The archaeologist who tragically destroyed a magical tome and thus began her unstoppable descent into madness. Sadly, you kinda had to be there to find them interesting — it's the adventures they went through and the shenanigans they pulled off that made them interesting.

Day 15: Great character gear

GURPS High-Tech and Ultra-Tech immediately come to mind as they are very comprehensive. We also had great fun with Shadowrun 3rd edition and the Cannon Companion back in the day. However, the most entertaining read has to be Paranoia's Stuff. The preview on DriveThruRPG doesn't really do justice to it, so here are two items selected randomly:

Day 16: Quick to learn

Mazes & Minotaurs (which I briefly talked about here) is one of my favourite rules-light games. It's immediately accessible in terms of both thematics and mechanics, and it only needs a d20 and a d6 (or maybe two of each for smoother play). Character creation is extremely straightforward (and because you have to assign your best rolls to the primary stats of your class, you cannot accidentally make a useless character), and record keeping is minimal. I heartily recommend it for everyone who likes games about adventure and/or Greek myths — and it's all free (or pay-what-you-want)!

Day 17: An engaging RPG community

Nowadays I mostly get my RPG-talk fix on the RPGPub forum. There's a tendency to favour traditional systems and appreciate crunch — both of which I had found lacking elsewhere. Also, it's very light on moderation: thread drift and necroing are both allowed (and practised regularly).

Day 18: Memorable moment of play

After twenty years of gaming, we've had many of those... Let's pick a fairly recent one. In my current Lancer campaign, the objective was achieved by one player self-destructing his mecha. However, before reaching the exfil zone, he found himself running into an enemy mech with a mech-scale shotgun. They attacked and scored a hit; the player had to roll for the severity of the injury, but he rolled a 1 — instant death.

Funnily, their clone at the end of the second mission pulled off a similar stunt, this time managing to survive the encounter. His call sign was changed from Stranger to Sacrifice to reflect his habits.

Day 19: Sensational session

I don't know about sensational, but there's one session in particular that we often reminisce about. Set in the City of Masks, the party was tasked with recovering a gem that was to be present at a noble wedding. During reconnaissance the party sadly killed the bride. So they picked a girl off the street and My Fair Ladied her, just enough to fool everyone until the ceremony. To ensure things go smoothly, they also killed off the bodyguard's captain, and one of them took his place. They suspected others had also infiltrated the mansion, so they had to be really cautious. The ceremony ended up being one giant disaster — it turned out that a group of Amazons were there to rescue the bride (their kidnapped queen), but of course they rescued the replacement girl; a few other parties revealed themselves as the gem was presented; and the party, disguised as the loyal guard and his mates, had to escape through the backdoor along with the nobleman. They made it to their hideout, where the noble thanked them for their service and even tasked them with cleansing his house to ensure his safe return — for a significant reward, of course...

Day 20: Amazing adventure

I've been quite enamoured with the original Boot Hill adventure modules, particularly Ballots & Bullets. I was already going to pick up some western minis and MDF buildings in the foreseeable future, but reading these modules just made me even more certain about it.

Demonspore is still among my favourite OSR modules, though, and I find it sad it's almost never mentioned.

Day 21: Classic campaign

We started Masks of Nyarlathotep a few years ago (although I ran the latest edition), but it's largely petered out by now... I'd really like to finish it, but I also don't want to put my current games on hold (play's already been pretty sporadic in the last few months). Beyond the Mountains of Madness is also on my wishlist of campaigns to run, but I'm really not sure when/if we'll get to it.

Day 22: Notable non-player character

I don't know; my memory tends to focus on the players... Perhaps the main cast in my published module, Benighted Betrothal? It's been many years since that campaign, but because of so many repeated interactions, they still haven't completely left me.

Day 23: Peerless player

If you're one, no worries; there are plenty of solitaire games you can play. It's probably worth a whole post (or series of posts) on its own, but there are games ranging from angsty journalling games and clever town management games to gritty dungeon crawlers and space exploration. Not to mention the various solitaire hex-and-chit games, procedurally driven "narrative" wargames, all sorts of interesting new gamebooks, and solo skirmish miniature games.

Day 24: Acclaimed advice

[edit: it looks like I skipped this one]

Day 25: Desirable dice

The lucky ones :P

I was gifted a set of D&D dice a few years ago — and now I understand the appeal of metal dice. For dice pools I still prefer my trusty purple d10s and d6s, but the heft of those metal dice, man... It's just a really nice tactile experience.

Day 26: Superb screen

I don't really use GM screens, to be honest. I prefer quick reference sheets, and my favourite is probably the one my good friend Narmor made for Kazamaták és Kompániák. Here you can find a collection of the most important tables, and here's a sheet for note-taking during the game (alas, both in Hungarian).

Day 27: Marvellous miniature

I adore Victrix's Dark Ages set, and I've been eyeing their 1:144 WW2 figures as well. I have a few fantasy minis, but to be honest, I'm much more interested in historicals (and sci-fi) than fantasy. I have recently pulled the trigger and order some Bloody Miniatures figures as well — I find the ECW and TYW era aesthetically pleasing, and I have a number of game systems lined up for those very miniatures.

Day 28: Great gamer gadget

The most sophisticated gadget I use at the table is a dice tray my significant other made for me. It's very simple, but I prefer the minimalist aesthetics.

Day 29: Awesome app

COMP/CON for Lancer. Nothing comes even close. On the other hand, it's almost necessary to use (otherwise you'd almost have to replicate it on paper yourself). I'm also partial to Hex Kit and Dungeondraft.

Day 30: Person you'd like to game with

My sister. She hadn't shown any interest in RPGs for a long time, but a year or two ago she and her friends began a Vampire: the Masquerade campaign. My brother already plays with us when his time permits, so we could have a proper family game sometime — if we can overcome the hurdles of scheduling.

Day 31: Game or gamer you miss

I haven't played with anyone from my first long-term group for ages. I'm not sure we'd be "compatible", but it'd be fun too play again sometime.

Weapon vs. Armour in Chainmail vs. AD&D

Disclaimer: Note that some of the links below are affiliate links (meaning I get a small percentage of the sale without extra cost to you or the publisher).

Also, I'd like to give a big shout out to waysoftheearth over at the odd74 forum for his insights. My original goal was simply to reproduce his calculations and to be able to compare variations myself — like I do so below.

I have recently talked about some aspects of the man-to-man combat tables in Chainmail (and even shared my calculations so that you can play around with your own variants). It occurred to me that there's a weapon vs. armour table in the AD&D Players Handbook as well (which has been shown to be wildly different from that in Chainmail) — wouldn't it be fun to compare the two?

Here is the weapon vs. AC table in AD&D. As a reminder, these are modifiers added to the to-hit roll with a d20. Armour Class (leaving Dexterity aside) is determined as follows:

For a level 1 fighting-man, the minimum required to hit these AC values is (20 minus AC). so 10+ on d20 hits an unarmoured foe, and 18+ hits someone in plate and shield.

To compare these values to those in Chainmail, we need to cut some of it. The Chainmail tables only include thirteen different weapons, and the armour categories are also different (for instance, chain, banded, studded, and splint mail all belong to the same category). To make things easier, we will only consider the following armour categories: no armour (AC 10), shield only (AC 9), leather (AC 8), leather & shield (AC 7), chain (AC 5), chain& shield (AC 4), plate (AC 3), and plate & shield (AC 2) — leaving out AC 6 for now.

Most weapons in Chainmail have a clear equivalent in AD&D, but note the following:

• for mace and flail we'll use the footman's mace and flail
• sword is interpreted as longsword
• polearms, a single entry in the Chainmail table, are left out because AD&D has different stats for each variant
• lance is similarly left out for now to make things simpler

Edit: I made a crucial mistake in my calculations, essentially flipping the modifiers in AD&D. I'd like to thank everyone who pointed this out! My conclusions are also rewritten to reflect this. Apologies for the errors in the first place.

If we calculate the minimum requires rolls for a level 1 fighting-man with these weapons vs. the discussed armour categories, we get the following:

 

 

And here are the percentile chances of hitting compared to Chainmail:

 

In AD&D the average difference in performance is minimalised; blunt weapons are generally much worse against heavy armour than in Chainmail (cf. mace 20% vs 41.67% or 25% vs 58.33%); and the two-handed sword doesn't vastly outperform all other weapons.

Now, what if we make a direct conversion from Chainmail instead? If we take the percentile values and convert them to target numbers on the d20 scale, we get the following:

Of course, lance and polearms are still too ambiguous in AD&D terms, but it's definitely a starting point. Now, for the last bit, here are the to-hit modifiers for the above, presented in the AD&D format (AC 6 left blank and up for interpretation):

Editable Chainmail M2M Tables

This is going to be a short one.

In my last post I shared some statistics about the man-to-man tables in Chainmail. Here's a link to my calculations, with separate sheets for the numbers as presented in the book and another to play around with (Raw and Mod, respectively). To edit your own version, go to "File" then "Make a copy". Have fun!

On Chainmail's Man-to-Man Tables

On and off I've been working on Láncvért, a supplement for Kazamaták és Kompániák that integrates most subsystems found in Chainmail into the KéK framework in a much less confusing way than the original (at least that's my hope).

One of the many interesting bits in Chainmail is the man-to-man combat system (the one that was supposed to be used with OD&D according to the rulebook, although apparently even the designers disagreed). It's a fairly simple 2d6 table where you check the attacker's weapon and the defender's armour to see your target number; if you meet or exceed your target, the defender is killed (or dealt one die of damage in D&D terms).

Below you can check the table (colour-coded for our convenience); I also added averages (and rounded averages) for each weapon and armour category as well:

The bell curve can be a little counter-intuitive, so I also included a handy chart with percentages. Don't be confused by the colours; I decided to swap them so that red means "hard to kill" instead of "meagre defence" here:

We can already see some interesting things here. For some reason, the spear seems to be the worst weapon in terms of stopping power. Two-handed swords vastly outperform all other weapons (including the mounted lance!), followed by the flail and the morning star.

Leather armour is virtually the same as no armour (it only makes a difference against a dagger or a sword). Shields, however, are really good. In fact, if you have to choose between picking up mail armour or a shield, you should go with the latter.

I also made some more detailed comparisons between various armour types:

Curiously, mail armour makes you more susceptible to being killed against a number of weapons (possibly because the manoeuvrability you sacrifice is greater than the protection of the extra armour that the weapons in particular can bash through — at least that's my theory).

Shields, if we look at them closely, always improve protection, except in one case: against a halberd and paired with leather armour.

There are more rules that go into this subsystem, of course, but this is the main engine. I quite like the extra differentiation between weapons, but I'm not convinced about the specifics. Further testing needs to be conducted until I find a happy middle ground.

List of D100 Games

Like my lists for D&D-esque games and 2d6 games, here's the final piece: a list of d100 games.

I decided not to be strict with my criteria here; the list includes everything from the BRP family (and its d20-based derivatives, such as Pendragon), various Warhammer games, and even Rolemaster and its ilk. It's not comprehensive at this point, but I'll be slowly expanding the list with both old and new games.

Gamebook Flowchart: The Cluster of Echoes #1 Nightshift

Inspired by The Outspaced Shrine, I decided to map my gamebook ventures using Graphviz. Transcribing my written notes into the new format is tedious, but I have a high tolerance for monotony. I've only completed one so far: the first volume in The Cluster of Echoes series, Nightshift (which I talked about here).

You can get it in svg or svgz format. Needless to say, it contains spoilers!

Bits from the Adventure Ideas Folder

I have been thinking about campaigns and half-prepped adventures I didn't end up running or that otherwise fell through the cracks. Here are a few from my IDEAS folder. Some of them have a few files detailing locations and NPCs; some only have the one paragraph I jotted down once on a late night after a few drinks.

Sky Ship from Another World

You are on death row. The serious nature of your crimes (murder, heterodoxy, or effrontery), whether real or fabricated, has sealed your fate. Yet, a glimmer of hope sneaks into your heart upon the visitation from Taraxiam the Pale, a reputed sorcerer, offering you a chance to escape death. You are in no position to bargain, and you accept his proposition without consideration. In exchange for his great favour, you are to embark with haste on an expedition to Lake Nova, join forces with Ziamos the Crimson and his company, and explore a sunken sky ship, purportedly originating from another dimension.

Trogos Gold Rush

The misty woodlands of Trogos are experiencing a new gold rush. Adventurous prospectors from Khromarium and its vassal towns are flooding the area as the streams and slot canyons provide ample locations for panning and other forms of placer mining. A small boom town (Mulgrave) has already emerged close to the popular prospecting sites.

There are many rare woods and herbs to be harvested in the forest, and the impossibly deep slot canyons hold even stranger treasures. There are rumours of a triple temple of Lunaqqua, each dedicated to a different aspect of hers (the Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone), and of an ancient Hyperborean burial site as well.

However, there lurk many dangers in these woods constantly enwreathed in the mists rising from the unfathomable gorges. You may encounter ape-men scouting parties from the nearby City-State of Kor, native tribes of troglodytes, as well as the strange oon, a subterranean servitor race of the mi-go; giant weasels, wolverines, snakes, and spiders; owl bears, lycanthropes, fungi, and sentient plants; crazed druids, shamans, and cultists, and possibly the mighty phoongh, intelligent humanoid grasshoppers who seemingly kill for their own entertainment and embrace their own death as if it was part of their nefarious plans...

I even prepared a few images for myself and my players (something I don't usually do) to help visualise the environment:
https://goo.gl/images/X4vbiu
https://goo.gl/images/wBPpd4
https://goo.gl/images/mmsAQ1
https://goo.gl/images/upED4E
https://goo.gl/images/VABtxX
https://goo.gl/images/2Y7RQS
https://goo.gl/images/Q5cH7H
https://goo.gl/images/gHFqnz
https://goo.gl/images/Hu5afx

Raygun Holocaust

This one is basically my Carcosa campaign that never materialised.

The characters awaken from hibernation in a strange laboratory with no memories. Their first task is clear: escape their captors. They soon find themselves on a strange planet where humanity is the subject and object of arcano-technological experiments carried out by serpent people. The local gods are cthulhoid monsters; there are nomads riding velociraptors; bounty hunters use laser sniper rifles and jet packs; magic rituals are carried out at precise times and locations; and ancient ruins are scattered across the land.

Chaos Warbands

This one was greatly inspired by WARBAND! (and, of course, Realms of Chaos).

The players are wandering, independent mercenaries and adventurers (essentially disbanded/deserted chaos marine–like figures) who are trying their luck in this no man's land. They are beginner but potent characters, with random mutations, chaos artifacts, and fanatic followers.

Superhuman soldiers, techno-gothic armour, chainswords and laser rifles; demons, mutants, and wild magical creatures; surreal but cool aesthetics and items; demons and tormented souls imprisoned in weapons and ancient machinery; human sacrifice and gore.

I'd also added a few NPC ideas to my notes; here's one:
An old hag hidden behind dark veils, with one of her hands replaced by a sword-sized pair of scissors. Her servants are mechanical spiders with the head of an infant.

Magic-Users Only

The characters are a group of "applied librarians" seeking knowledge and power (such as magical artefacts and grimoires). The caveat is that they must be magic-users of some sort (in AS&SH terms that means they must be members of the following classes: Magician, Cleric, Warlock, Cryomancer, Illusionist, Necromancer, Pyromancer, Witch, Druid, Priest, Runegraver, Shaman, Bard, Legerdemainist, or Purloiner).

I wrote this one down because my players generally prefer fighter-types over magic-users, and I liked the idea of running a short campaign specifically to dare them. I also thought about having each of them play two characters: one wizard-type and one bodyguard so that they wouldn't have to rely on hirelings constantly.

The Bucket List

The characters are the young sons and daughters of rich nobles from a reclusive community — but before they can become true members of the aristocracy, they must travel around the world (maybe they have a bucket list, and they can only return if they cross everything out). They get some starting equipment (probably better than regular stuff they can buy elsewhere, but obviously the supplies will run out at some point), a few magic items, a handful of cannon fodders servants, a sky ship, a map, and a to-do list. Go!

Mansion Inherited

The party inherits a haunted mansion in a fairly isolated region (like a valley). The villagers are generally good-hearted but fairly strange (think of Twin Peaks but in a fantasy world), and there are mysteries abound (like the ghost lady of the lake, the slime-infested old well, or the three deer-saints of the woods). Plus, y'know, old scrolls in the mansion's library, the dungeon beneath, and the ball room where ghosts party when the clock strikes thirteen.

Bedlam in Bormium

Visitors from all over the country have flooded the streets of Bormium, eager to witness the historic coronation of Prince Agalloch. As the revelry approaches its zenith and order breaks down, opportunists use the ensuing chaos to their advantage to further their own agendas.

Well, this is a vague one... I think I just liked the names and the idea of a city during festivities.

List of 2D6 Games

Similar to my somewhat popular (and still maintained) list of D&D-esque games (which began its life as a "comprehensive list of OSR games"), I decided to make two further lists (firstly for my own benefit). The first of these is a short list of 2d6 games. It's still missing a few entries, but the goal is to catalogue the various versions of Traveller and their offshoots (basically, the standalone Cepheus variants).

The next list is a little more ambitious (but still not as big as the D&D-esque one); it should be ready sometime in September.

Review: The Cluster of Echoes #1 Nightshift

Nightshift is a horror gamebook written by Victoria Hancox and was originally published in 2019. It is a self-contained product, but the most recent offering (2nd edition) ties it to the author's later gamebooks, forming a series called The Cluster of Echoes. I should note that the connection is fairly surface-level; I actually started with book #3, and it didn't impede my enjoyment or understanding one bit. Apart from the sixth and final book in the series (Game Over), you can play them in any order you like.

In case you're not familiar with the tern, a gamebook is a form of interactive fiction. The text is organised into numbered sections (or paragraphs). Most sections offer you multiple ways to progress, and depending on your choice you are directed to another section to continue, hopping from section to section in the book.

Writing and Art

The text is conversational but competent. Apart from a few typos and missing commas, it's all pretty clean. Because the game is structured very much like a puzzle, I didn't really experience a sense of dread, but there were definitely a couple of horrific scenes in there.

The game has 400 sections in total (reminiscent of old-school gamebooks) plus one that ties it to the series, with 42 "bad endings" and one victory paragraph. The interior images are all black-and-white. I liked some of the filler illustrations meant to break up the text. The art ranges from serviceable to off-putting; some of them are quite pixelated for some reason as well.

Mechanics and Structure

Nightshift is much closer to the Choose Your Own Adventure series than Fighting Fantasy in that no randomisers (cards or dice) are used. However, much like old-school gamebooks, it is about collecting items, gathering clues, and solving puzzles. There are a few cases where you can progress by sheer luck, but it's never because of a die roll.

Although I enjoy elaborate mechanics as much as the next nerd, I've come to like this approach just as much — as long as the puzzles are varied and challenging, and there are ample opportunities to gather information to help you make the right choices.

There a few riddles in there, and another puzzle or two test your knowledge of the real world, but most challenges require an item or a specific action for which you had hopefully found a clue earlier on. There are a couple of these that you can easily miss out on but absolutely cannot finish the game without. It can be a little frustrating unless you keep track of your runs.

There's one red herring in particular that I thought was both ingenious and cruel. Not everyone you can talk to is a friend (although most of the time you can tell who's on your side).

Story and Gameplay

You work in a hospital as a nurse. It's the night shift, and you're just waking up from a nap between two emergencies. You immediately realise something's wrong when you find your colleague murdered, and the murderer is still around... Can you survive the night shift?

As you explore the hospital, it becomes apparent that you're not in Kansas any more. Creeping along the dark hospital corridors, it all starts to feel like you're in a nightmare, with an appropriate cast of creepy characters and surreal environs. It's not just a terrifying hospital; it's weird and otherworldly too, which makes it feel much more like a game, but it also means there's always a chance of something crazy awaiting you in the next room, rewarding exploration with a clue, description of a gory scene, or an interesting way to die.

Navigating the environment is IMHO unnecessarily challenging. Although a lot of times various sections of the hospital are named explicitly ("if you want to enter the vascular ward, turn to XX"), there were still numerous "left or right" choices without any hint whatsoever. I'm told that the hardcover version actually contains a map of the hospital (but it's also available on the author's website).

Summary

Overall, Nightshift is a great little puzzle if you're not squeamish about body horror (it takes place in a nightmarish hospital after all), and you don't mind the occasional "you hadn't picked up the right item so you die" sections. It's not perfect by any means, but it's a decent romp, especially from a first time designer.

Nightshift is available in softcover, hardcover, and Kindle formats on Amazon (com, uk, de, etc.).

Lindenbaum 2021/22: The Eldritch Key (by Tiago Filipe Costa)

This is part of a series where I briefly talk about the Lindenbaum Prize winners and runners-up. This is a friendly gamebook writing competition, organised yearly by Stuart Lloyd. The entry discussed below was submitted for the 2021/2022 competition and won a Commendation Award. You can find the details of the competition here, links to all entries here, and the announcement of the winners here. Needless to say, all of these are available for free in PDF.

In this gamebook you play a master thief who must steal a dangerous artefact known as the Eldritch Key. Although there are multiple routes to get there, the end game plays pretty much the same, and there's only one "good ending".

The game is set in the lawless city of Makivel, located on Anarlan, the Prison-Island. There's magic and weird creatures, and the game has explicit Cthulhu mythos influences.

The combat mechanics are fairly involved: 2d6 + Dexterity vs. 2d6 + Dexterity, greater wins. Then the loser rolls 2d6 + Avoidance vs. the winner's attack score. If the defender succeeds, they avoid damage. Otherwise, the weapon's damage is deducted from the defender's HP. The character's basic stats are fairly decent, but to reliably defeat the stronger foes (especially towards the end), a handful of items are needed to boost the character's stats. I very much enjoyed the item-hunting aspect, but the endless rolling without any decision-making definitely felt tiresome.

At the beginning, the player chooses three abilities from a list of six (things like lockpicking, dark vision, or clean kill). These abilities can be used when explicitly offered as an option, and they are largely responsible for facilitating multiple ways to get to the finish line.

The writing is all right. It's simple, apart from a few embellishments here and there, much like an adventure game; the emphasis is definitely on solving the game like a puzzle.

The game features 100 sections, and the whole document has about 13,300 words, including the rules and background info. Apart from the fights, there are only a handful of game-ending choices (they can be avoided by gathering info or having luckier dice).

Things to improve upon:

• the combat system involves too many rolls (this is especially true near the end)
• the inventory system is nice; if expanded upon, I definitely want more of this
• it's unclear whether damage from wielding multiple weapons stack (I assume the answer is yes)
• a few of the "save or die" paragraphs felt too punishing particularly the loose stone block, but to be fair, some of these can be ignored with the right abilities and/or items
  

The Underappreciated Combat Table of Barbarian Prince

Barbarian Prince is a great little game from 1981. James Maliszewski over at Grognardia posted a short retrospective in 2011, and in 2020 Anne from DIY and Dragons wrote an excellent three-part analysis (Map and Layout; Main Menu; Characters, Followers, Encounters, and Combat). It has been recently on my mind partly because of the Drifter series (see my review of the first game here) and a four-part actual play series by the Lone Adventurer.

Today I only want to look at one specific aspect of Barbarian Prince: the combat result table.

The gist of it is this: roll 2d6, add your Combat score, subtract the enemy's Combat score, apply modifiers if any, and consult the chart below to see how many wounds the attack inflicts.

taken directly from Anne's part 3 post linked above

Anne points out how the wording in the original rules is confusing and how the table above makes no logical sense. The Lone Adventurer criticises the rule for a similar reason. I didn't go looking, but I imagine other people being baffled by the above table.

However, this table is actually pretty ingenious. Let me show you a table of the average expected damage results arranged by final modifier to the 2d6 roll.

The first column shows the final result; next to it you can see how many wounds that roll inflicts upon an enemy. The columns after that alternate between showing the percentage chance of a result (given the final modifier noted on the first line) and the expected damage. The bottom two lines show the average expected damage per attack based on the final dice modifier as well as the percentage chance of inflicting at least 1 wound (i.e. the chance of hitting).

As you can see, the average chance to hit steadily increases (up until it plateaus at 83.34%, while also retaining the increase in average damage). The way the table is set up allows the chance to hit
(basically) to follow a gradual progression whereas if it was a standard 2d6 roll (something like 2d6+mods vs a target number), the progression would be much steeper.

Of course, whether the added granularity and hard-capped accuracy is worth having a chart is something we may disagree with; I can at least point out how deliberate the numbers are, and the fact that such granularity can be achieved on a 2d6 roll is just interesting to me in and of itself.