Twilight of the Solstice

Twilight of the Solstice is a level 4 adventure written by Marc Bruner. Art is by Doug Kovacs (including cover and cartography), Cliff Kurowski, and Stefan Poag. The publisher is Goodman Games.

This was the fourth yuletide and the sixth holiday module put out by Goodman Games. The adventure is about as epic as you can get, with the fate of the entire universe in the balance. The opponents are more than tough enough, and incautious players are going to get creamed.

This is the adventure that introduced the "scratch off" character sheet, and the idea is used well herein. One notes that the idea that players do not have access to their PCs' abilities immediately - but get them over time - makes this far more suitable for one shot and convention play than for use in an ongoing campaign. The pdf version does include the means to simulate scratch-off character sheets.

I like to consider how an adventure can be used as part of an ongoing campaign though, or woven into the larger tapestry of your play experience.

The first thing to note is that the time travel that the PCs experience doesn't necessarily affect the rest of the universe. The PCs (should they fail) might find themselves at the end of time, but the rest of the campaign milieu will not be affected immediately. Or, should I say, the immediate effect is not the end of the campaign milieu. Certainly, effects should leak back through time to confront whatever current PCs share the setting.

A judge could run this as a one-shot when the party reaches 4th level, using the PCs provided (either the actual scratch-offs or their simulacra). If the one-shot PCs survive, they become alternates in the case of PC death. If they fail, the adventure forms a kind of "cut scene" showing how this new problem came to arise...and the wily judge can create a new adventure to give the players a chance to repair the damage, perhaps at 8th level....

There is also a chance that the one-shot PCs end up in a different era, in which case the judge can use this opportunity to run the occasion adventure that teaches history and sets up what the regular PCs must deal with. It is possible that an elf could survive from an earlier era, as Elrond remembers being at the Last Alliance between men and elves which defeated Sauron at the end of the Third Age. In this case, a former-one-shot-PC elf might become a recurrent NPC. Being originally from the PCs' future, he may even hint at some knowledge of their potential destinies....

An Endzeitgeist review of this adventure can be found here.

A conflict at the end of time! On the eve of the winter solstice, long-banished giants from the frozen void strive to complete a ceremony that will cause an endless winter to envelope the world. The adventurers find themselves torn from existence, stripped of not only their equipment, but their very memories, and summoned to the far edge of the world to repair an ancient temple of time. Will you recover your abilities and solve the challenges of the world clock before the end of time itself?

An exploration-based adventure taking the characters deep into the icy depths of unknown, Twilight of the Solstice tests the player’s ability to confront the challenges of the harsh winter setting while also unraveling the singular puzzle of their own identity. Faced with limited knowledge and time, only the most crafty - and lucky - can hope to defeat the returned agents of primeval chaos and restore events to their proper course!

The original print edition of this module included scratch-off character sheets! This PDF edition includes a PDF of that sheet, plus a special separate file that allows the judge to randomly generate up to 10 pregenerated characters which can be used to simulate the scratch off aspect.

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The Twisted Menagerie Manual

The Twisted Menagerie Manual is a collection of creatures for the Umerica campaign setting. It was written by Reid San Filippo and Bob Brinkman, with additional content by Daniel J. Bishop, Gilbert Isla, and Tanner Yea. Illustration is by Nate Marcel (including cover), Aaron Robinson, Andrew Walter, Brad Morris, Clip art, David Coppoletti, Diogo Nogueira, Frank Turfler Jr., James V West, Karl Stjernberg, KJ O'Brien, Lee Anthony “Deadpoolrus” DeviantArt (CC BY SA3), Matt Hildebrand, Matt Jordan, and Richard Tingley. The publisher is Shield of Faith Studios, LLC.

Disclaimer: I have an "Additional Content" credit on this for use of the Doomriders from this blog post. This was an unpaid contribution.

What we have here is a hefty collection of creatures, not all of which are "combat-only" types. All of them are at home in the post-Apocalyptical setting of Umerica. Many would be at home in other settings as well, including Mutant Crawl Classics, Hubris, and more vanilla Dungeon Crawl Classics games. Definitely, many of these beings would fit into a Star Crawl or Galaxy Black milieu.

The Umerica setting, from The Umerican Survival Guide onward, does use different rules for armor than the core DCC rules. This book provides everything you need to convert monsters from the Umerica rules to standard rules and vice versa. 

It also contains a section on Boss Monsters, that gives the reader/judge some idea of how to utilize these beings to create the "Big Bad" for an adventure or campaign arc. Overall, it is an extremely impressive piece of work. 

The Twisted Menagerie Manual is brought tangentially as part of a wider Umerica discussion on the Order of the Shanna podcast here. Umerica is discussed on the Glowburn podcast here.

The wild and weird world of Umerica is a dangerous place filled with murderous creatures. It’s a good thing too since XP does not grow on trees! Within these pages dwell a cornucopia of crafty creatures to cram your campaign with consternation and paralyze your party with panic. Each one listed with adventure hooks to help drop them into your game.

Take a look at this selection of monster names from this tome

Apocalypse Ooze • Autogiest • Autovore • Beetle Apes • Blast Shades • Bowel Tyrant 
Can Crabs • Cake Horror • Clown Servants of Buddy O’Burger • Constrictor, Mutant
Corpsenado • Cryo-lurker • Cyber Ghoul • Cyber Saucer Simian • Demolishroom
Dinosaurs • Dinosaurs, Augmented • Dinosaurs, Mutant • Shroomers • Ox Beetles • Pigtipede
The Discarded • Doomrider • Dragon, Biohazard • Dragon, Cryo • Dragon, Forest
Dragon, Gearhead • Holographic Dragon • Robot Dragon • Xeno Dragon • eGhost
Elementals-Data • Elementals-Debris • Elementals-Gun • Falcon Wolf • Flying Laser Ursine
Frab • Fruiti-Slush Ooze • Game Devil • Golem, Junk • Golem, Mannequin • Golem, Plush
Golem, Vehicle • Greenman Swarm • Hippotaur • Iguanadillo • Insect, Mutant
Jack-O-rang-utan • Komo-doans • Linoleumoeba • Lion-Snake • Luck Eater • Menfish
Monitor Lizards • Muckraker • Mutitan • Newt, Aberration • Octowolf • Orbus • Power Wight
Puppetcubi • Quantum Ape • Railipede • Rail Wraith • Reindire • Rerun Wraiths • RoboDevil
Robo-Lich • Robots • Rocker • Rockin’ Wraith • Scorpionoid • Septicraken • Serpent Shrubs
Sharkhana • Shriek • Splice Fiend • Sporefangs • Techno-Mimic • Think Tank • Toycubim
Trapdoor Toadspider • Trashlodyte • Tru-Pet • Un Men • V.E.T.T. • Varrok • Vendibeast
Whalephant • Wraith Rider • Whaaar Mutts • Wheeler Demon • Wrath • Xeno-Locusts
Xenotaur • Xeno Mummy • Yowling Atrocity • Zilla • Blink Zombies • Chrono Zombies
Melting Zombies • Petrol Zombies • Rave Zombies • Silver Zombies
Zombie Monks of the Cyberhive

Besides over 100 brutal beasts, this book also contains a bevy of barbarous Bosses based on a few of the creatures within. Each one listed with a backstory, common followers, motivations, and more.

The icing on the irradiated cake is the Scenario Sketches, a bunch of rough encounter ideas incorporating one or more of the monsters from this tome, all ready to be polished a bit and dropped into your campaign on short notice.

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Terror of the Stratosfiend #2

Terror of the Stratosfiend #2 Melancholic Terminal Ascent was written by Sean Richer. Art is by El Huervo (Niklas Åkerblad) (cover), GRAZ, 2headedgiant.com, RabidBlackDog/Krzysztof Bieniawski, Shane O'Neil, James Everett Jackson, Michael Weeks, Sam Mameli and Andy Hopp. The publisher is Orbital Intelligence.

Disclosure: I backed the successful Kickstarter for this product.

Let's look inside. 

Introduction - or Welcome Back: This is not a standard foreword, but is a mini-description of the setting. Someday, I hope that there is a volume which is pure sourcebook, that expands upon the Drop. 

Equipment: This section has two major parts. The first is The Conduits : Living, Sentient, and Incubating, wherein we learn more about the strange effects the Drop had on ordinary objects...including (and, in this case, specifically) weapons. This is really, really good stuff that judges using any flavor of DCC may wish to use in their campaigns.

The second part is The Six Chambered Hell's Apothecary for Wandering Clerics, which offers four items that clerics, surgeons, or others might use to aid the wounded, and two that simulate parts of Turning the Unholy. This does be the question "What do clerics look like in this setting?" and makes one want to mash up Stratosfiend with the twisted deities from The Umerican Survival Guide! 

Characters: This issue of Terror of the Stratosfiend offers up three new character classes:  

Half-Stratosfiend Reality Binder: Living siege towers-watch as they twist and contort their limbs and tentacles into complex formations. Flesh surging forth, forming platforms and facades. As they harden, the Stratosfiend's will surges through, warping and mutating all spells they cast.

It is rumoured the Stratosfiend were here all along, and the Drop was caused by those trying to force the Hive to join them. All over the planet you find strange enormous statues of tentacle entwined beings-allegedly these Reality Binders called the Drop.

But who cares about history, when all we have is now? Benders serve as conduits and nodes for the Stratosfiend hivemind's will, their bodies are the tuning forks.

Stratosfiend Magistrate "IX-777" Fear-Engine: The most secretive members of the Stratosfiend invasion are known as Unit IX-777. They are, literally, the Terror of the Stratosfiend. They believe dread is the only way to drive the invasion forward and they are ordained as "living saints" with a divine right to spread fear.

The Fear-Engines rely on living sentient weapons that they refer to as "instruments"-voice of the Stratosfiend Hivemind and conduits for the nightmares they've incubated.

They prefer the company of the lesser Stratosfiend. As a result, they often infect worlds with Half-Stratosfiend agents, making way for the towering Gladiatrices.

Members of the IX-777 frequently take trophies from the defeated but do not believe in or practice torture as it means expulsion from the unit. (ALSO THE WRITER DOES NOT CONDONE IT.)

Half-Stratosfiend Roof Jumper: Glass, concrete and rebar form no cage that can hold these kin of the Stratosfiend. They excel leaping from rooftop to rooftop, unleashing bursts of speed confounding all that seek to trap them.

If you need a job done quick, consider it already done-delivery, theft or a quick assassination.

They, and their trademark RavenSpawn, are literal front runners of the hive mind. Their temporal wakes serve as guideposts for the arriving armada.

It should be obvious from the class descriptions that there is a certain amount of complexity involved in their write-ups. This is not, however, too much complexity to make the class mechanics at all difficult. The very real differences in these characters makes me, again, wonder what adventures in the author's home campaign must be like. There is a section on Terror Incarnate, which relates both to the Conduits in the Equipment section and the IX-777 Fear Engines.

Spells: This section starts with a wonderful bit of lore entitled Doors Were All the Rage. It is necessary to understand the spells that follow. More importantly, it provides statistics for using doors as they were intended - as two-handed weapons. Included, naturally, is a d10 table of door types. The spells are:

Hatch Door Offspring (level 1): One of the strangest spells; where do doors come from? Rumour has it that strange forms of door husbandry, egg laying and occult magics led to ‘The Modern Door.’ Door mages rely on this spell to replenish their door supplies—as they’re always running off, shattering or being ushered into dark realms. Each additional door used in the spell adds +1 to the spell result.

Door Surfing the Cosmos (level 2): A simple spell from back when the Door God still held lavish parties and everyone was expected to show up in style. Door practitioners often use flocks of doors to transport their associates. So, uh… pile on and let’s fly!

Oh, and the door is imbued with some extra damage potential.

And it might shatter…

Entangle Doors (level 3): Easily one of the most useful and dangerous spells of a doorceror, allowing 2 (or more) doors to be spectrally entangled over long distance. What does this mean? You can use 2 (or more) doors for long distance communicating and—with enough invested energy… maybe even as a portal.

Once a connection is established, 10% chance both doors shatter when used.

Good stuff for any post-Apocalyptic setting where magic and super-science mingle. 

Bestiary: This section has six parts, the first providing demon statistics for the various entities in Razor-Worn's Oasis of Wires and the second all the cultists of Razor-Worn and the Door God in A Tale of 2 Cults. For more information on Razor-Worn, see Terror of the Stratosfiend #1.5. The third part, Space Piracy, provides some tables for describing your space pirates. The fourth part, Goliath Fractal Engines, provides a doomsday scenario monster if you want one. The fifth part is A Brief History of Organ-Fractals, where a bit of body horror...or healing...or power-gaining comes into play!

Organ-Fractals were initially a medical process to repair damaged limbs and organs, a strange mixture between the maggot spas of Xentarsus and nano biomachines with minds of their own. They bend to strong wills and all of them flock to the Orbital Intelligence Acceptance (considered by many to be the root OrganFractal, from which they were all shaped).

Let's skip to the part you care about: how to inject them and what happens when you do.

The final part details two demons related to Acceptance, who is also described in Issue #1.5. The Table of Contents does not list the Goliath Fractal Engines or the demons related to Acceptance as separate headings, so this might all be considered part of the Brief History.

Appendix O - Post-Drop'Torate Occupations: Setting occupations. 

Appendix S - Lucky Signs: Alternate birth augurs "for those of pre-Drop earth origins (or those in hiding)" and "those born beyond the stars and those that were molded and warped by ways of the Cosmic  Gantry".

Appendix L - An Aside on Language: Information on the setting languages, which has a random table. 

Wait... There's More: Finally, the issue rounds off with Appendix B - The Lust of the Bat God...which consists of random tables for when you ask the Bat God for a lift to another planet. How you get there, what the Bat God does to the planet, the state of the planet when you land, and how you pay. 

“While Earth was ravaged by the Drop, space continued distorting. Strange new entities, unknown to modern and fantastical humanity, roiled in the depths of space.”

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DCC#2 Beneath the Well of Brass

DCC Day #2 Beneath the Well of Brass is a 0-level funnel adventure written by Harley Stroh. Art is by Doug Kovacs (cover), Chris Arneson, Tom Galambos, Cliff Kurowski, Jesse Mohn, and Stefan Poag (including cartography). The publisher is Goodman Games.

At least part of the purpose of a 0-level funnel is to make clear what happened to these particular characters, that they can never simply go back to working fields or scaping out garderobe middens. Well, this adventure is going to accomplish that, and how it ends will set the tone, in all likelihood, for the PC's careers (at least in the short term).

Another thing the funnel can accomplish is to ensure players understand that the game will kill you if you act without caution and that you are not guaranteed any sort of balance. Oh, and that the universe is full of weirdness, with other planes of existence far closer than you think. This funnel accomplishes all of those things as well.

Actually, this funnel introduces Dungeon Crawl Classics amazingly well, and I predict that it will join Sailors on the Starless Sea, Hole in the Sky, and Frozen in Time as a fan favorite.

As long as you’ve known of the flame-licked caves and suffocating caverns, they have been forbidden to your people. But three days ago the Black King and his brigands overran your small hamlet, taking friends and family hostage. His demands are as simple as they are impossible: Venture into the burning caverns and return with the secret of eternal life.

Now, standing before the seething fissure, armed with only your simple tools and desperate courage, you must accomplish what an army of blackguards cannot. The Well of Brass awaits.

Designed to be run in a single session, this introductory 0-level module wrenches your PCs free from their humble lives and casts them into a world of high adventure. Many will perish amidst the strange mysteries, weird foes, and forgotten magics, for only the most courageous and cunning of reavers can emerge from Beneath the Well of Brass.

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DCC Day 2021 Adventure Pack

The DCC Day 2021 Adventure Pack was written by Julian Bernick, Marc Bruner, and Bob Brinkman. Art was by Russ Nicholson (cover), Brad McDevitt, Stefan Poag (including cartography), Chris Arneson, Tom Galambos, Doug Kovacs, Cliff Kurowski, Jesse Mohn, William McAusland (including cartography), and Chad Sergesketter. The publisher is Goodman Games.

The Adventure Pack contains three adventures that can be run in a single session each. As of this writing, I have not had the opportunity to play or run any of these.

Temple Siege! was written by Julian Bernick, and is a level 1 adventure for Dungeon Crawl Classics, inspired by the Cossack stories of Harold Lamb. As a point of fact, I have not read Lamb to date, so I can't say how well the author captured the spirit of these stories. The adventure is unusual in that the exploration portions are interspersed amid waves of attacks.

Reading through this, one of the things that I like best is that the author followed the general guideline that NPCs do not need to follow the rules. Secondarily, the villain of the piece is so well known and hated that his body itself is a significant treasure. Moreso to some than others!

Fathoms Below Witch Isle is a level 1 adventure for DCC Dying Earth, but, sadly, you get no sneak-peak at the mechanics of the (at this time) forthcoming boxed set. The adventure is written by Marc Bruner, and could potentially take place in any DCC game milieu, although the details make use of the flavor of The Dying Earth. It is difficult to say how long the video will remain, but as of this writing, there is a live play video of this adventure on the Goodman Games Twitch Channel. Notably, this is the first published adventure for DCC Dying Earth.

The Neverwhen Rock is a 0-level Mutant Crawl Classics adventure, written by Bob Brinkman based on a concept by Jim Wampler. If you, like me, are a fan of Doctor Who, you will not be able to avoid noticing the many homages to the series. I recently created statistics for Silurians; you can see how my work compares to that of Bob Brinkman by picking this up. Not that one is better than the other - they are different interpretations from the same inspiration. And, of course, you will discover quite a few other nods herein. You may also note a nod to The Land of the Lost, unless I am mistaken.

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The Bakeneko

The Bakeneko is written by Gustavo Tertoleone. Art is credited to Gustavo Tertoleone. The publisher is Black Dog. 

This is a character class written for use with Old School Essentials, Caves & Hexes, Dungeon Crawl Classics, and Lamentations of the Flame Princess. Like The Jester before it, this product does make some use of harder-to-read fonts, but this doesn't extend to the important text.

The Bakeneko is a Japanese nature spirit, a yokai, which takes the shape of a cat, of a humanoid cat, or even a human. In this they are similar to Faerie Animals, but there the similarities end. Bakeneko get a number of class skills, which they need to allot points to in order to use. All of the skills are potentially useful, and the Bakeneko can gain more points (potentially) at each level. The skills are roll-under, d6-based, so that if you have 2 points in the Necromancy skill, for instance, you have to roll a 1-2 on 1d6 to use it. Skills may have other limitations; for instance, Nine Lives can only be used nine times.

Some of the skills are not well defined, and will require judges to adjudicate when and how they apply. This is an artifact, in part, of the OSR aesthetic, in part due to the pamphlet-sized space the class is published in, and in part, I think, because the class abilities are written to make sense in more than one game system.

Altogether, this is a good class, and will fit well into an Oriental/Asian-themed DCC game.With minor name changes, it would work well in almost any game. A judge running a game in Dolmenwood could use this class as a substitute for the Grimalkin in Wormskin #1. See also the Black Cat class in The Class Alphabet.

In the Far East, located in a secluded island which is home for an entire nation, live a group of powerful individuals who have deep connections with nature itself. These beings are called yokai by the local people. Some of them get used to living among humans, disguising themselves to look like us. These are called Bakeneko, cat spirits who can take different forms, like humanoid cats or regular cats, and some may even take the face of other people to look exactly like them! Be ready to become a Bakeneko and live huge adventures in a far land.

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Demon Cult Classics

Demon Cult Classics was written by James MacGeorge. Art is by (with apologies) Giovanni Canavesio, Caravaggio, Louis Le Breton, Carlo Dolci, Gustav Dore, Hugues Merle, Guido Reni, Jean-Léon Gérôme, and Agostino Musi. Thoughts and Prayers were provided by Doug Kovacs, Wayne Snyder, Ian Walker, Daryl Austin, and Christian Kessler. No publisher is listed.

Disclosure: I was provided with a pdf copy by James Pozenel Jr., without which this listing would not exist. Thank you, James!

There are a lot of these small-run items put together, which get played at one or more conventions, and then become extremely hard to find. Most of them push the bounds of the game in some extreme direction, and offer a fun diversion, but then become difficult to work into a long-term campaign.

Demon Cult Classics does not follow that model, but rather offers an elegant system for handling demonic cults that should be usable in almost any campaign. 

At its core, Demon Cult Classics uses the four-PC funnel character sheet as a way to model a sect of a demonic cult. Instead of Luck, the sect has Favor. If your Favor falls below your Personality, you receive disapproval. If your Favor ever reaches 3, you are dragged down to hell. Simple, elegant, and easy to understand. There is more to it than that, of course, but the system is clear, and is neither so under- or over-powered as not to be usable with levelled characters as well as with Zeroes. You could have a party of PCs, each run by a different player, who were part of the same sect, and this system would work.

Specific rules for Cultists of Astaroth and Cultists of Paimon are provided. The aspiring judge could easily create more. Likewise, the aspiring judge could create patron write-ups for Astaroth and Paimon (or other demons of their choice), which would help when using this material with higher-level characters.

The author makes a great point of saying 

THIS SHIT IS NOT REAL.

If there's anything about this that confuses you, if you're unclear about any of this, if you disagree with me on this point, anything you find herein in no way justifies, validates or in any way provides you with anything you would need in order to do anything illegal, immoral, or otherwise.

For the rest of us, what an amazing product! I would gladly shell out cash for an expanded version of this. Sadly, I know of no place where it is currently available.