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A Maelstrom of Fun for Horror Adventure Fans: Deep Madness: Shattered Seas by Byron Leavitt

A Maelstrom of Fun for Horror Adventure Fans: Deep Madness: Shattered Seas by Byron Leavitt

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BG_SS_cover
Cover art by Christopher Shy / Cover design by Byron Leavitt.

Shattered Seas is a toxic dose of Lovecraftian mythos, psychedelic team-exploration (reminiscent of Star Trek voyages), and survival-horror melee (mutant creatures replacing zombies). It’s a maelstrom of fun if you enjoy horror adventure, losing your mind, and drowning.

Ever want to crack open the gateway into an Otherworld with a few friends? Perhaps you are ambitious and naively want to gain dominion of cosmic powers. Will you be comfortable with mutating forces transforming you into a tentacled mass? Start the madness by searching for the mystical Sphere buried in the ocean near the submerged Kadath Mining facility. Lucas Kane, a marine biologist, is one of your tour guides. Here he observes Kadath, a mining facility with organic qualities (excerpt):

Kadath lit up below them drew his attention and caught his breath. The facility sprawled across the seabed like a sunken metropolis from another world, its illuminated structures pushing defiantly upward into the inky abyss. The station’s domes and towers seemed like the last bastions of light and reason still standing in an endless Stygian wasteland. It was hypnotic, dreamlike, and yet somehow inexplicably solid. Lucas could make out the shuttle tubes running between the three main domes, as well as to the smaller, squarer outposts and middle structures. He could even see the primary enclosed drilling site not far off from the main facility, connected to Dome Three by long, spacious tubes.

This novel was inspired by Diemension Games’ Deep Madness, a cooperative sci-fi/horror board game. The novel serves as a stand-alone book as much as it does a gateway into the game narrative. Non-gamers will enjoy it all the same since the key protagonists (Lucas Kane and Connor Durham) are freshly introduced, plus the story is a prequel to the story presented in the game. At the end of this article, there is an embedded movie overviewing the board game.

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New Treasures: Warhammer 40,000: Nexus & Other Stories

New Treasures: Warhammer 40,000: Nexus & Other Stories

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Nexus and Other Stories (Black Library, October 2020). Cover by Amir Zand

My favorite audiobook of 2020 — and easily one of my favorite books of the year, period — was Dan Abnett’s Warhammer 40,000: The Magos. In addition to reminding me what a good writer Dan Abnett is, it reignited by interest in Warhammer 40,000, and its gorgeously rendered future of superstition, terror, and dark sorcery. I enormously enjoyed the audiobook versions of the first Horus Heresy novels, which helped me cope with a daily 90-minute commute through Chicago traffic back in 2015.

Nexus & Other Stories, which I stumbled on last Saturday on a trip to Barnes & Noble, looks like a great way to dip my toe back in the water. It’s a collection of Warhammer 40K stories by Dan Abnett, Guy Haley, Peter McLean, and many others — including a 120-page novella by Thomas Parrott. Here’s the description at the Black Library website.

Take your first steps into the adrenaline-fuelled fiction of the 41st Millennium with a thrilling collection of tales, including an action-packed novella pitting noble Ultramarines against sinister necrons.

Whether you’re dipping a toe into the galaxy of Warhammer 40,000 or are a hardened veteran of the universe, this anthology is the perfect way to discover the many factions of the games in action-packed tales.

Nexus & Other Stories includes a total of 16 tales; mostly reprints (although they’re all new to me). Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

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Steamed – Gaming here at Black Gate

Steamed – Gaming here at Black Gate

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Hudsucker_RobinsElevatorEDITEDThe pay phone on the wall by the door into the dungeon…cellar…basement…journalist’s suite below Chicago’s permafrost layer rang at the Black Gate World Headquarters. I vaulted over the wood plank that rested on two sawhorses, which served as my desk. The last person who hadn’t answered before the third ring had been sent downstairs. ‘Downstairs’ was rumored to be the lair of a beast that Conan wouldn’t be able to defeat.

“Black Gate World Headquarters. Home of the world’s preeminent fantasy magazine.”

“Who is this?” barked the voice of John O’Neill, Founder, editor, publisher, CEO, CFO, and overall Grand Poobah of Black Gate. I could think of a three-letter acronym beginning with ‘S.’ “Is that you, Bryne?”

I took a breath. I had been writing for Black Gate for going on seven years now, and he still got my name wrong. I had given up trying to correct him after the second year. I figured, as long as I remained on the payroll, it didn’t really matter. Not that I actually got paid.

“Yes, sahib.”

“What are you doing down there?”

“Just working on a column, sir.”

“What do you mean, man? You’re in the office on a Sunday, working on a column?”

I caught myself. “Working on three columns, sir. I finished two yesterday.”

“That’s better. Thought I was going to have to reassign some stories from that Ted guy. Can’t have you coasting on past accomplishments.” He paused. “Of course, we’re a team here – no individual egos.”

Yours is certainly big enough for the rest of us, I thought.

“What was that, Bryne?”

“I didn’t say anything, sir.”

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Take Advantage of the Thanksgiving Sale at Dark City Games

Take Advantage of the Thanksgiving Sale at Dark City Games

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Dark CIty Games

If you’ve been paying attention, you know we’re big fans of solo role playing games here at Black Gate. Whenever someone asks me for a superior modern example, I point them without hesitation to Dark City Games.

George Dew and his talented team of writers and artists at Dark City Games have been producing high quality solitaire fantasy and science fiction games for nearly two decades. They started with programmed adventures in the mold of The Fantasy Trip classics like Death Test, and soon graduated to much more sophisticated fare. Their games include ambitious fantasy epics likes The Island of Lost Spells (which I reviewed as Todd McAulty in Black Gate 10), and The Sewers of Redpoint, exciting SF fare like Void Station 57 and At Empire’s End, a line of Untamed West western adventures, and even tactical wargames set in WWII. Howard Andrew Jones took a fond look at their early catalog back in 2008, and we even published a free Dark City sample adventure titled S.O.S. in 2010.

That’s why I was so excited to see they have a Thanksgiving Sale. Every game in stock is discounted to $10. I ordered four — the SF horror title Into Chaos, dark fantasy Punisher’s Keep, Battle of the Bulge, first in their Combat Boots series of tactical wargames, and the SF mystery tale The Dark Star Incident.

Whether you’re a new gamer curious about role playing who wants to dip your toe in at your own pace, an experienced player looking for a real challenge, or just someone looking for a great bargain, Dark City has a game for you. Have a look at their catalog here, and try a game or two for just ten bucks each. And tell them Black Gate sent you!

Mutants and the End of Days: Mutant Year Zero

Mutants and the End of Days: Mutant Year Zero

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Mutant Year Zero RPG

The premise of Mutant: Year Zero is simple. You play a mutant (“human but more than human”) living amongst the wreckage and devastation humanity left behind and searching for something called Eden, but the world is full of dangers, ruins, and other mutants. You live in the Ark, the only safe haven. Even it is struggling. A person simply known as the Elder — the only person above the age of 25 – is declining in health. Factions in the Ark are vying for a place in the post-Elder Ark. More importantly, supplies are dwindling. Food. Water. Even Mutants. No one has been born in the Ark.

To provide the Ark the precious resources needed to survive, some brave (or foolhardy) mutants explore beyond the Ark’s protective walls and out into the Zone. Rare artifacts of unknown purpose can be found. The Stalkers, as they are called, bring back valuable items, scrap, clean water, and tales of a better place, Eden. If they come back that is. If they survive the monsters, the Rot, and any number of untold disasters.

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Uncover the Frozen Secrets of the Forbidden Lands in The Bitter Reach from Free League

Uncover the Frozen Secrets of the Forbidden Lands in The Bitter Reach from Free League

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The Bitter Reach by Free League, an expansion for the Forbidden Lands RPG

Last year at the Spring 2019 Games Plus Auction (when it was still legal to go to such things), I was supposed to be saving all my pennies for auction bargains. But before I even reached my seat, a new games on the shelves caught my eye: Forbidden Lands, a boxed RPG developed by Swedish development house Free League, and distributed in the US by Modiphius. Here’s what I said about it at the time:

What drew me to Forbidden Lands? Truthfully it was the cover art by Simon Stålenhag, and the impressively sized (and heavy!) box. Once I picked it up however, it was the back-cover text that fired my imagination.

In this open-world survival roleplaying game, you’re not heroes sent on missions dictated by others — instead, you are raiders and rogues bent on making your own mark on a cursed world. You will discover lost tombs, fight terrible monsters, wander the wild lands and, if you live long enough, build your own stronghold to defend.

Last thing I need is another fantasy RPG crowding my shelves, especially one in a generic fantasy setting. But the evocative text sold me on the promise of a dark world far-removed from routine high fantasy tropes, and characters that sounded a lot closer to sword & sorcery archetypes than I’m used to. The price on the box was $49.99, and I decided to take a chance.

Well, I’m very glad I did. Forbidden Lands proved to be one of the most exciting and successful new role playing games of 2019, and the early expansions looked very promising. So when I returned to Games Plus for Free RPG Day in July and found a brand new expansion, The Bitter Reach — a handsome and imposing 312-page hardcover — I snatched it up immediately.

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New Treasures: Agent of the Imperium by Marc Miller

New Treasures: Agent of the Imperium by Marc Miller

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Agent of the Imperium Marc Miller-smallMarc Miller created Traveller back in 1977, and over the last forty years it’s become pretty much the de facto science fiction role playing game. It’s certainly the one to beat, anyway.

A few years back Marc Miller launched a Kickstarter to fund the publication of the Traveller novel Agent of the Imperium. It was a huge success. raising $35,113 from 970 backers, and the book appeared in 2015. Like most Kickstarter-funded book projects however, it’s early success didn’t immediately translate into a lot of readers.

Baen Books is hoping to rectify that with a 2020 reissue, which arrived this week in a handsome new trade paperback edition. Here’s an excerpt from Shannon Appelcline’s thoughtful review at RPG.Net.

Jonathan Bland is a dead man, but he lives on in a technological wafer that allows him to exist again for 30 days at a time as an Agent of the Imperium. When called upon, he continues the work of the Imperial Quarantine Agency — which as often as not requires the scrubbing of dangerous planets. Jonathan Bland is a dead man, but that doesn’t mean he’s stopped learning… The threats of Agent of the Imperium include rogue robots, virulent diseases, and psionic infections, but at its core it’s a journey into the heart of a man who lives the most unusual life imaginable….

Agent of the Imperium is a troubleshooter novel, much like the Retief series (1967+) that Miller has listed as an influence on Traveller. Here, you can see the connection; where Keith Laumer wrote silly tales of a diplomatic troubleshooter, Miller instead offers the serious and sometimes grim tales of a quarantine troubleshooter in the Official Traveller Universe….

It is surprising that Marc Miller is able to incorporate so many elements of the Traveller universe in such an effortless, organic way. Vilani, psionics, newts, stasis globes, Geonee, naval officers, Threep, and amber zones. They’re all here, and they never feel gratuitous. Somehow, Miller is able both to fill Agent of the Imperium with the wonders of the Third Imperium and to convince us that he had to include those many and varied elements to give us the complete story…. Agent of the Imperium also does a great job of depicting Traveller‘s history. Because his book is set so far before the Golden Age, Miller is able to easily introduce historic elements such as the Frontier Wars and the Emperors of the Flag that could be backstory for any Traveller game… At the same time, Miller also foreshadows some of the future problems of the Imperium — great mysteries from the final days of the classic game. It’s an impressive (and surprising) trick.

Agent of the Imperium was published by Baen Books on November 3, 2020. It is 368 pages, priced at $16 in trade paperback and $8.99 in digital formats. The cover is by Alan Pollack. Read a generous sample at the Baen website.

See all our recent New Treasures here.

Rebuild Civilization on a Savage and Alien Earth in Midnight Legion from Studio 9

Rebuild Civilization on a Savage and Alien Earth in Midnight Legion from Studio 9

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Midnight Legion box set from Studio 9 (2016). Art by C. Aaron Kreader.

It’s been a busy year, between changing jobs in April, managing a fledging writing career as Todd McAulty, running Black Gate, and coping with a pandemic. I don’t get to read as much as I used to, and I definitely don’t get to game as much. I especially regret not having the chance to dig into some of the new generation of solo RPGs, like Four Against Darkness and Into the Dungeon.

But I did spend a few shekels to try Midnight Legion, a very promising post apocalyptic solo gamebook series with a strong Metamorphosis Alpha vibe. Created by writer Aaron J. Emmel and artist C. Aaron Kreader and published by Evanston, Illinois-based Studio 9, Midnight Legion is a three-book series featuring an amnesiac android who awakens on a vastly changed Earth peopled with strange creatures and deadly mutant plants, and must piece together the clues to his original mission. You get everything you need to start in the intro Midnight Legion box set, published in 2016 with this description on the back:

You are an elite, android agent of an ancient, clandestine group who is forced awake after hundreds of years of stasis. Your memory is gone, and you can’t recall your purpose. You will need to solve puzzles and choose whether to use combat, stealth, or sixth sense and diplomacy to unlock your mission and the secrets of the world you knew.

The Midnight Legion is an interactive story where player(s) choose how to respond to what happens next. Created for solo play, with a 2-player option, this three book game series promises hours of gaming. Starting with Book 1: Operation Deep Sleep, everything you need to begin is contained in this boxed set.

The second gamebook, The World Reborn followed in 2017, and the final volume Portal of Life in 2019. Together they form an ambitious and compelling science fiction adventure that I’m anxious to dig into.

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From Galaxies to Planet: Instant Universe

From Galaxies to Planet: Instant Universe

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Instant Universe-small

I’ll confess. I love random planet and system generator tools in roleplaying games. There I was as a young boy with the now classic science fiction RPG called Traveller, and I was able to roll up via a set of tables a planet. Size. Population. Technology level. Type of government. It provided a logical way to help game masters (GM) both create interesting worlds on the fly and help avoid our own creative traps of repeating the same planets with different scenery.

Additionally, I think it fired as much creativity as not, something that the creator of Traveller, Marc Miller, has noted. How does that small population world on a planet with a tainted atmosphere, high security level but rather liberal government function and look. The dice could result in interesting combinations the encouraged creative thinking.

Of course, the GM could ignore whatever results she wanted and choose at whim — something I, too, certainly engaged in. Nonetheless, I had a certain thrill every time I rolled up a planet and awaited its outcome.

Every edition of Traveller has had some planetary generator. A number options have shifted over time to reflect new understandings and science, but the core remains the same: grab some six-sided dice and generate the famous Traveller hexadecimal code for the description of a planetary system.

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Modular: RIP Lenard Lakofka – Lord of the Lendore Isles

Modular: RIP Lenard Lakofka – Lord of the Lendore Isles

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Lakofka_L5CampaignEDITEDLenard Lakofka has passed away. Lakofka was one of the early figures in the history of Dungeons and Dragons. He was President of the International Federation of Wargamers when it worked with Gary Gygax to host the very first GenCon.

He began play testing the developing Dungeons and Dragons, providing input to Gygax. He created his home campaign, set in the Lendore Isles. His character, Leomund, is a well-known name in D&D history.

He wrote articles on D&D for his own magazine; many of which were reprinted in the new Dragon magazine. He edited, and contributed to, the core Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (AD&D) books. Then things really began to pick up. In 1979, at the first official AD&D tournament, he finished second and TSR paid him $10,000 to write three modules. He was also given a regular column in Dragon – Leomund’s Tiny Hut.

Those modules had an interesting history. L1 – The Secret of Bone Hill, was the first official module written by a non-TSR employee. And it was based on his own Lendore setting. It was included in the World of Greyhawk, but it was the first setting not developed by Gygax. At the time, Lendore Isle, and the village of Restenford, was the only official campaign setting other than Gygax’ famous village of Hommlet.

Bone Hill is second-level, which meant the Dungeon Master had to come up with something for a first-level party, consistent with this new non-Greyhawk environ. It has some relatively tough monsters, with more maps than was standard in the day. Bone Hill leaves a lot of room for the DM to create motivations and adventure lines. I was 14 back when it came out, and I would have been overwhelmed as a novice DM.

TSR employee Kevin Hendryx was editing Bone Hill, and he created a lizard-man encounter. Lakofka asked that it be removed, and Hendryx began developing it into a full-blown adventure. There was even a cover developed. But Hendryx was sacked during the famous 1981 TSR purge. Douglas Niles took the existing material and turned into N1 – Against the Cult of the Reptile God, which is one of the most popular modules of all time.

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