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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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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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Warcaster: Neo-Mechanika – Miniature Future Science Fantasy Wargame

Warcaster: Neo-Mechanika – Miniature Future Science Fantasy Wargame

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Warcaster_MarcherWorldsLast spring, I spent some time discussing the Kickstarter for Privateer Press’ new game, Warcaster: Neo-Mechanika. The game is something of a spin-off from their popular Warmachine miniature wargame, which allows players to field an army that includes hulking metallic warjacks. Warcaster is set thousands of years in the future, in a distant galaxy, where human refugees from the Warmachine setting have set up home, technologically advanced, populated the galaxy, and, not surprisingly, found new and more impressive ways to kill each other.

To get you up to speed on the setting, the game is played in battles of armies composed of three different factions that have ample reasons to fight against each other:

  • The Iron Star Alliance are the troops representing the major government in the Warcaster galaxy, the towering monolithic empire that is seemingly necessary in any sort of space opera-style setting. They’re not necessarily evil, but they like order, and they exist to enforce that order.
  • The Marcher Worlds is a loose ragtag group of independent worlds that resists the order the Iron Star Alliance seeks to impose upon them. If you’ve watched Firefly, these would be the equivalent of the Browncoats that Malcolm Reynolds fought for.
  • The Aeternus Continuum represents a darker faction of human society, a vast cult of pirates and murders that is banned across both the Iron Star Alliance and the Marcher Worlds. They are dedicated to a form of techno-necromancy that seeks to use medicine and sorcery to grant immortality to their leaderships.

That initial Kickstarter has been fulfilled, with a surprising amount of speed given that their production facilities had to deal with a pandemic lockdown for COVID-19. I’ve now had the chance to play through the game several times, to develop some more detailed thoughts on the game … and let you know about their next plans for the game, including a current Warcaster: Collision Course expansion Kickstarter that ends at 3 a.m. Eastern Time on Friday, November 6. You can buy any of the factions’ existing or new products through the Kickstarter, but they’re also available through the Privateer Press store or your local game store.

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Delve Deep in Lost Catacombs in Empire of the Ghouls from Kobold Press

Delve Deep in Lost Catacombs in Empire of the Ghouls from Kobold Press

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Empire of the Ghouls (Kobold Press, April 2020)

The Free City of Zobeck, a booming trade city in Kobold Press’ popular Midgard, is one of my favorite modern adventure settings. It’s a terrifically imaginative urban environment with guilds, gangs, and gods, a notorious Kobold Ghetto, the Arcane Collegium, a clockwork wizard school, and much more. It was originally designed by Wolfgang Baur and, according to Kobold Press, is where the setting of Midgard was first born, “a clockpunk city forged in the fires of revolt, with monsters and magic drawn from the dark folktales of medieval Eastern Europe — plus details of devils, Kobold kings, and plots galore.”

Zobeck has been well supported over the years, with releases like Tales of Zobeck, Streets of Zobeck, and multiple editions of the Zobeck Gazetteer. But the most ambitious supplement to share geography with the free city is Empire of the Ghouls, funded by a hugely successful 2019 Kickstarter that raised over $168,000.

Weighing in at a massive 345 pages in full color, the standalone Empire of the Ghouls is a complete adventure campaign for characters from 1st to 13th level, fully compatible with 5th edition D&D and other modern RPGs. It details a Ghoul Imperium in the depths of the underworld and a series of interconnected adventures that delve deep into its secrets.

This heavy and highly readable volume is one the more ambitious and entertaining adventures to cross my desk in years, and it’s now available to all. Here’s a look at the wonders within.

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Future Treasures: The Fractured Void: A Twilight Imperium Novel by Tim Pratt

Future Treasures: The Fractured Void: A Twilight Imperium Novel by Tim Pratt

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Twilight Imperium, Third Edition (Fantasy Flight Games, 2004), and The Fractured Void (Aconyte, November 2020)

Tim Pratt has been nominated for all the major genre awards, including the Nebula, World Fantasy, Sturgeon, Mythopoeic, and Stoker, and he won a Hugo in 2007 for his short story “Impossible Dreams.” His most recent books include the Axiom trilogy, and the 10-volume Marla Mason series.

His upcoming book is a space opera with a twist — it’s based on the rich background created for Twilight Imperium. Yes, that Twilight Imperium, Fantasy Flight’s epic (and I do mean epic) game of space conquest, politics, and trade. Designed by Christian T. Petersen and first released in 1997, Twilight Imperium is one of the most successful science fiction games of the last few decades. It’s been continuously in print for over two decades, and gone through four editions. The mythos that has grown up around the game and its 17 playable races is sprawling and rich, and certainly deserving of a line of fiction novels. I’m definitely looking forward to the first, The Fractured Void, and Pratt is an excellent choice to kick off the line. Here’s the publisher’s description.

A brave starship crew are drawn into the schemes of interplanetary powers competing for galactic domination, in this epic space opera from the best-selling strategic boardgame, Twilight Imperium.

Captain Felix Duval and the crew of the Temerarious quietly patrol a remote Mentak Coalition colony system where nothing ever happens. But when they answer a distress call from a moon under attack, that peaceful existence is torn apart. They rescue a scientist, Thales, who’s developing revolutionary technology to create new wormholes. He just needs a few things to make it fully operational… and now, ordered to aid the scientist, the Temerarious is targeted by two rival black-ops teams intent on reacquiring Thales. Can Felix trust Thales? Or is this a conspiracy to tip the balance of power in the galaxy forever?

The Fractured Void will be published by Aconyte on November 3, 2020. It is $16.95 in trade paperback and $9.95 in digital formats. Get more details and read an excerpt here, and check out the handsome fourth edition of Twilight Imperium at the Fantasy Flight website.

See all our recent coverage of the best in upcoming SF and fantasy books here.

Survive in a Post Apocalyptic World: Posthuman Saga by Mighty Boards

Survive in a Post Apocalyptic World: Posthuman Saga by Mighty Boards

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Posthuman Saga by Mighty Boards

I miss walking the crowded aisles at Gen Con. In fact, these days I wonder if we’ll ever see something like the vast Exhibit Hall of Gen Con ever again. Hundreds and hundreds of vendors proudly displaying wares, and tens of thousands of eager gamers, all crammed into a vast indoor space bigger than a football stadium. And I do mean crammed — sometimes those narrow aisles were so packed you could barely move.

Just the thought of that makes my skin crawl these days. Talk about a potential pandemic superspreader event. You could take out an entire generation of gamers in 72 hours. Yiiiii.

Like all major social gatherings this year, Gen Con 2020 was canceled. But that’s okay. Truth be told, I’m still processing the hundreds of photos I took as I wandered the Hall in awe the year before. The impossibly large Gen Con Exhibit Hall is something every gamer should experience at least once, if only to get a sense of the vast scale and enormous creative energy in our hobby. It’s been fourteen months, and I’m still a little overwhelmed by the experience.

I’ve slowly been processing it all by writing about the games that most impressed me, like Alien: The Roleplaying Game, The City of Kings, Escape the Dark Castle, and Heroes of Land, Air & Sea. And now we come at last to one of the most visually impressive titles on my list, Posthuman Saga by Mighty Boards, which throws players into a beautifully designed and adventure-filled post apocalyptic world.

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A First Look At The Sword of Cepheus for (cough) Travelers in Sword and Sorcery Realms

A First Look At The Sword of Cepheus for (cough) Travelers in Sword and Sorcery Realms

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Art: Stephanie McAlea

I don’t like complexity in my tabletop-roleplaying games. It’s not just my age, I’m also more interested in the adventure than the stacking the of feats and traits. And, as a GM, frankly, the chaotic exploding synergies of games like Dungeons and Dragons make me feel panicky.

However, I don’t like it when glossing over resource management breaks genre conventions — if torches can’t run out, if food isn’t scarce, then players will turn each dungeon adventure into weaponized archaeology.

Unfortunately, I’m also — on reflection — unkeen on randomized emulations that  take away the possibilities and drama created by choice: “Oh, you rolled a ‘1’. Whoops your arrows ran out.” (Some games square this circle a little.)

That’s why I was excited when Omer Golan-Joel announced he was working on a Sword and Sorcery game called (drum roll) Sword of Cepheus: 2D6 Sword and Sorcery Roleplaying.

The Cepheus Engine is the flagship for a movement of indy 2D6 games, all under an Open Gaming License related to a certain classic SF game. 2D6 games are generally old-school emulators, with encumbrances and resource management. However, unlike D20 OSR stuff, they have recursive rules — the clue is in the “2D6” — and skill lists rather than classes, meaning you don’t have lots of bolt-on background abilities and feats, because your skill list is your background and distinctive range of capabilities. Normally, character generation is a mini-game in itself. You navigate a career, with one eye on the possibility of aging badly — chicken versus the Grim Reaper — also generating your own backstory as you go.  It’s not so good for big sweeping stuff, but perfect for adventurers having adventures.

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