RPG REVIEW

Issue #28-29, Sept-Dec 2015

The Undead

John Snead Interview … Zombie Facts .. All Flesh Must Be Eaten … Liber Mortis … Open Grave … Warhammer 40K … Death in Eclipse Phase … Labyrinth Lord in the Underworld … Survival from Great Falls … Killer LARP … The Green Isles D&D Setting … The Scythe of Thanatos … Pyrrhic Victories and more in HeroQuest … You Only Live Thrice ... Death Isn't The End … Horror Game Mastery … Secret of Saltram Shore … Phaemorea … The Revenant, Crimson and Lights Movie Reviews

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Administrivia, Editorial, Letters many contributors p2-5

The RPG Review Cooperative many contributors p6-7

Hot Gossip: Industry News by Wu Mingshi p8-9

John Snead Interview with John Snead p10-11

Threats and Themes of Undeath in Warhammer 40K with Randal Henderson p12- 14

Killer: The Shape of Things to Come by Stephen Dedman p15

Survival from Great Falls in D&D by Adi Gondo Hartoo p16

Beyond Total Party Kill by Nicholas Moll p17-18

You Only Live Thrice by James Introcaso p19-22

Death Isn't The End by James Introcaso p23-24

The Scythe of Thanatos by Lev Lafayette, Stean Vitasovic p25-26

Undead in Reality by Lev Lafayette p27-39

Undead RPG Reviews by Lev Lafayette p40-51

Laundry RPG Review by Andrew Daborn p52-55

The Undead in 'Eclipse Phase' by Lev Lafayette p56-58

Secret of Saltram Shore by Robert J. Hall p59-89

Poisons in GURPS by Michael Cole p90-92

Dungeoneering in GURPS by Michael Cole p93

The Green Isles for D&D 5e by Karl Brown p94-96

Pyrrhic Victories in HeroQuest by Lev Lafayette p97-101

Game Mastery Good Horror by Kieran Brannan p102-104

Phaemorea: A Classic D&D Setting from Kieran Brannan, Ryllandra Rose p105-109

Savage Worlds Space Ship Ownership by Karl Brown p110-113

Why Computer RPGs Aren't As Much Fun as TTRPGs by Lew Pulsipher p114-117

Movie Review: The Revenant by Andrew Moshos p118-120

Movie Review: Crimson Peak by Andrew Moshos p121-124

Movie Review: Lights by Andrew Moshos p125-127

Next Issue: Superheroes! by many people p128

ADMINISTRIVIA

RPG Review is a quarterly online magazine which will be available in print version at some stage. All material remains copyright to the authors except for the reprinting as noted in the first sentence. Contact the author for the relevant license that they wish to apply. Various trademarks and images have been used in this magazine of review and criticism. This includes Dungeons and Dragons from Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro, Killer and GUPRS from Steve Jackson Games, Eclipse Phase from Posthuman Studios, etc. The Revenant, Crimson and Lights are distributed by Disney and Fox, respectively. Cover image is Chapel of Skulls in Czermna, Poland by Merlin on Wikipedia Commons Use of trademarks etc are for fair use and review purposes and are not a challenge to trademarks or copyrights. Nobody is making money from this publication, OK?

EDITORIAL AND LETTERS

Fan Mail

I highly endorse RPG Review! Look forward to every issue, there's always something great in there (and often many great things)

Morgan Davie, Wellington, New Zealand

RPG Review is just awesome! And the new issue's editorial is just GREAT, Lev. Some serious issues raised and thoroughly discussed. I'll recommend it everywhere.

Fábio Romeiro Gullo, Sao Paulo, Brazil

A Cooperative Future

I've followed the Crux Australi newsletters with interest as I have felt for some time that there is a lack of cohesion in Australian gaming (and in the localised industry too). The focus on advocacy I think is exactly what is needed nationally. One of the core experiences shared by a number of gamers locally in my home town is that gamers are falling into a few categories (i) those that have always gamed together at someone's house and have become insular, (ii) those that have either turned exclusively to gaming via online tools or simply abandoned the hobby for video games, (iii) those that simply drift from casual game to casual game and usually don't roleplay all that much and fill in the hobby with boardgames.

There doesn't seem to be an interest in building another generation of gamers, or getting gamers to meet outside their own groups. Admittedly I'm part of the problem as I have a lot of trouble with the energy required to engage with large social groups (both of my gaming groups are two players apiece). I've run clubs in the past and a convention, but that was fifteen years ago, when one could reasonably expect between 40-60 gamers every fortnight. Nowadays, the local boardgames club is excited because they get fifteen people per monthly meeting.

This brings me to connectedness. I wondered whether the newsletter might also focus on promoting Australian gaming by highlighting podcasts, KickStarters or other initiatives like blogs? Crux Australis could then be actively building listener- and reader-ship of Australian content. There could be an arrangement that sees the Crux receive some more members through reciprocal promotion.

Lastly, it might also serve as a place for Australian games designers to seek input and maybe playtesters for their new ideas. As such, it could be a very powerful incubator for national activities.

These were just a few thoughts that occured to me as I was reading the latest issue; my apologies if my narrative has become 'stream of consciousness', but I do see an overall pattern of connectedness that could have the Crux as its' centre.

I do hope that this is helpful and I'd be happy to expand on any of the ideas or discuss this further with you.

Pax

FR Podcast, Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia

EDITORIAL

Welcome to the extremely late 27th and 28th double issue of RPG Review. Those who were not in the know may have presumed our demise. A handful - fools all - wished it. However our death was somewhat overstated to say the least. Rising from the tomb, the crypt, the velvet-lined coffin, or some similar place in alleged interment, RPG Review is here - with a special double issue on the matter of everyone's favourite bad guy - the undead.

But why, by all that is holy and unholy, is this issue so late? Well, there is of course the usual level of lateness from prior issues which pushes the agenda along a bit further than it should be on this one. After all get out our double-issue of RPG Review is no easy feat - there's some seventy thousand words to find. One can note however that, with good fortune, that the next issue of RPG Review has already received several significant contributions and we may be able to play catch-up with our alleged time-table fairly quickly.

However another issue that has taken up quite some time with the normal efforts that go into producing RPG Review has been the conversion of this publication from a single-person show with some valiant, welcome, and thoroughky appreciated helpers, to an incorporated association - and not just for the publication but for a range of activities dedicated to promoting roleplaying games and promoting better roleplaying games. There are details of this association and its activities in an article immediately following this editorial.

There is of course our regular Mingshi, who is quite irate at having to rewrite here column multiple times due to these delays. But in an industry that's famous for gossip, I am sure she has not shortage of rumours to act on, with the delays, it's just that some of the rumours have become a reality.

After this we have an interview with John Snead, one of the quiet achievers in the roleplaying industry. John has produced an enormous quantity of work over the years an is without a doubt one of the most respected authors out there. From Ars Magica, to Nephilim, Star Trek, Exalted, Trinity, Blue Rose, Eclipse Phase - once you start looking you see his name everywhere. John gives his thoughts on the various influences that led him to become an RPG writer and some future plans.

After this is Randal Henderson' special article on death and undeath in Warhammer 40K. Randal deserves a special mention because he submitted this article many months ago but of course has been waiting far too long to see publiction. To say the least WH40K is a setting that is absolutely sublime in its presentation of the undead and this piece deservers a jolly good review.

Following this is a ready-to-run single page Killer scenario from science fiction writer and occassional game-author Stephen Dedman. Stephen has, of course, managed to incorporate in a single page all the horror that comes from a shapechanging alien monster from Antartica. Sounds familiar?

There is a few articles relating to Dungeons and Dragons, of various editions. New contributer Adi Gondo Hartoo gives a little snippet of a piece on a character build that engaged in falls that should die, but walks away. A game that's very close (OK, extremely close) to the traditional Basic and Expert sets is Labyrinth Lord - Nicholas Moll provides an interesting exploration on how to offer alternatives in a game system which is a little notorious for its lethalness, especially to low-level characters.

Still with the Dungeons and Dragons content (OK, it does make up at least half the market), is a pair of previously published articles by James Introcaso, who kindly and unproblematically allowed us to republish. The first refers to the lack of sufficient difficulty is bringing characters back from the dead, and the second is a logical elaboration of some plot matters arising from this. Rounding off this first bloc of Dungeons and Dragons articles is a piece by myself and Stean Vitasovic on an very troubling artifact from a Balkans historical fantasy campaign that we ran many years ago.

This begins a string of four of articles by your editor and the next two I'm must say I had a great fun writing. The first covers examples of the undead in reality - strange mythologies, unusual attempts, and more than enough disturbing modern day science which requires just a little elaboration. The second piece is a review of several undead-related RPG products; including Vampire The Masquerade, GURPS Undead, All Flesh Must Be Eaten, and the two recent Dungeons and Dragons supplements, Libris Mortis and Open Grave. In keeping with the review approach - this is the name of the journal after all - the recent combination of Paranoia and Call of Cthulhu makes its appearance with Andrew Daborn's visit to the Laundry files. The final piece by your editor is a look at the role and meaning of being undead in Eclipse Phase. Following this is Secret of Saltram Shore, a massive ghostly scenario for the Hero system, but readily available for other games. Written by Robert J. Hall, it was available online many years ago but has since vanished into the ether. We bring this brilliant scenario back from the dead (very appropriate verdade?).

Long-term contributor Michael Cole provides a couple of deadly snippets with supplemental rules for GURPS. What could be more deadly that poisons and dungeoneering? In a distinctly not very undead article worthy contributor and once even editor of this 'zine Karl Brown provides an overview of the faerie-heavy Green Isles campaign setting, strictly for fifth edition of Dungeons and Dragons but easily adapatble for other settings. Of course, there is nothing saying that every article in an issue of RPG Review must follow its advertised setting and theme. Thus we also see an elaboration of rules for the HeroQuest RPG, starship economics for Savage Worlds, and a pair of articles by astrology author Kieran Brannan - one on GMing horror games and one for the BECMI setting of Phaemorea, which is co-authored with the psychic author Ryllandra Rose. The setting is somewhat thematic it does involve a large undead-powered empire as a major setting feature. Also, whilst it is described as "adapted" from the author's on demand it is really an extracted selection, with an estimated 99% of the words are directly from their material - the most significant change was altering "I" to "we" and changing ampersands to "and".

Speaking of which, being published in RPG Review is surprisingly important, at least from a critical point of view. With the move from print to electronic publications the marginal costs of producing written material has fallen dramatically. Whilst there is still a significant market for physical game-system books and supporting material there is no financially supportable market for physical magazines (a hat-tip to Gygax which is making a brave effort in that regard) and electronic magazines, such as ours, only survive on volunteers who are dedicated to the hobby for its own sake. Take the effort and hunt around – how many other roleplaying 'zines are there out there which have been around as long as we have? I can think only of Alarums and Excursions.

It is little wonder that we have had such industry luminaries grace our pages in the past - and in this issue we have an article from the ever-controversial but usually right, Lew Pulsipher who has penned a deeply considered opiion on why computer RPGs aren't as much fun as traditional tabletop RPGs. You could say that we have his piece in lieu of a computer game review - but that would be a bad pun.

The issue concludes with three movie reviews by Andrew Moshos; there is a temptation by merge the reviews into a single article given the consistency in his approach and thematic selection choice. They are all movies about the undead, more or less, The Revenant, Crimson Peak, and the smaller budget Lights. Andrew continues to show his love of the big screen in reviews that can be both passionate and acerbic and his work is always a welcome rounding off to the RPG Review journal.

With that summary, happy gaming all, and sleep tight and may the hauntings be light.

Lev Lafayette (lev@rpgreview.net)

THE RPG REVIEW COOPERATIVE

Formation

At the end of last year a small group of people met at the office of the Victorian Partnership for Advanced Computing (VPAC), in Victoria Street, Carlton. Their purpose was to establish a new incorporated association for the promotion of roleplaying and simulation games.

There was a gentle and tragic narrative occuring at the same time. The board of VPAC, which had provided supercomputer services for the previous fifteen or so years, had decided to close the non-profit association down, and many would say without justification. In just days after this meeting VPAC would close its doors for the last time.

Nevertheless, from the ashes of one association another, albeit very different in scale, scope, and activities, could arise. The agenda was set, with the following purposes for the Association:

* To promote and advocacate the use simulation and roleplaying games.

* To design, develop, and distribute of simulation and roleplaying games by members.

* To publish periodicals, manuals, books, websites etc related to the simulation and roleplaying games.

* To engage in activities, including generating income and expenditure, to further these aims.

The association will use the Model Rules for Incorporated Associations, published by the Victorian Government. The association will have an annual membership fee of $10. The association will take ownership of the RPG Review website and the RPG Review Quicksales store, for use and development by members. The association will raise funds for the publication and distribution of simulation and RPG games designed by members (e.g., Gulliver's Trading Company) and will purchase ISBNs for this purpose.

The following motion was tabled and, put following discussion.

"That the RPG Review Cooperative be formed, and that the Model Rules for an Incorporated Associated be applied."

Moved Lev Lafayette. Seconded Andrew Daborn

The motion was passed, and with the election of a committee consisting of Lev Lafayette, Karl Brown, Andrew Daborn, Liz Bowman, and Nicholas Moll, the organisation was its way.

Consumer Affairs Victoria approved the application and on January 7th 2016 we received the certificate of incorporation, with the identity A0094301K.

Activities

The immediate activities was to establish a github (because that's what the cool kids are doing) for works in development, including several game systems and supplements and applications (Torquil Gault's Visual Combat Simulator is a particularly great item), open up the RPG Review Quicksales store to all members, and advertise existing game sessions organised by members. Soon after this we started organising monthly movie nights at the Astor for their invariable appropriate double-feature sessions – including a very enjoyable visit on World Aliens Day.

"All right sweethearts, what are you waiting for? Breakfast in bed? Another glorious day in the corps! A day in the Marine Corps is like a day on the farm. Every meal's a banquet! Every paycheck a fortune! Every formation a parade! I love the corps!"

As part of our advocacy role we launched a petition to Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast to give 4^th edition Dungeons and Dragons and Open Game License. The Game System License which it has been granted compares poorly to the OGL (no open game content, restrictions on game terms) and as a result it means that consumers and publishers have less choice for this particular edition of the game – it is also inconsistent with the licenses granted for the third and fifth editions of the game.

https://www.change.org/p/wizards-of-the-coast-grant-dungeons-dragons-4th-edition-an-open-game-license

The Association has also started a library of games, magazines, and supplements. There was an offer to ship the significant gaming library from the Murdoch (University) Alternative Reality Society (MARS), and organisation which the president founded way back in 1988, and is now defunct after over two decades in operation. That has not been not happened yet, but we're still hopeful. In the meantime, a library has been established with generous donations from Lev Lafayette, Paul Smith, and Simon Stainsby. Borrowing rules have been established and Charmaine Daborn has kindly taken the role of looking after the library. It's not enormous yet, but from such humble beginnings great things can grow.

To top it all off, every month the RPG Review Cooperative has provided a newsletter to its members, Crux Australi.

The Future

The Association has succeeded beyond expectations. A number of committee members are old hands at this sort of thing and they know full-well that such a body only really gets its feet truly on the ground. Already we have more members than expected and will aim to increase that even further by the end of the year. The library will hopefully continue to expand, and we will certainly continue to provide the online store, this journal (ISSN about to be established), the newsletter, our movie nights, the github, and our regular gaming sessions. The next major task will be buying a bulk of ISBNs for would-be publishers – including the superhero game, Verge, the third edition of Swordbearer entitled Spirit and Sword, the well-playtested Gulliver's Trading Company, The Eclipse Phase Companion, and The Laundry Down Under.

Something we will not be doing in the immediate future of course is holding our own conventions. We're Melbourne based and there is already several well-established conventions operated by some excellent minds in this city, including Arcanacon and Conquest. As much as we possibly can we will be working with existing groups, not in competition but in cooperation – indeed competition in a hobby like this is frankly quite bizarre. We will instead look other national oganisations such as SVEROK in Sweden and their federated approach to promoting a critical advocacy to our shared hobby, and put any differences aside in favour of that common interest.

HOT GOSSIP: INDUSTRY NEWS

by Wu Mingshi

Hosei bo, Mr. Lev,

Where you been? I think you dead! But no, just hiding behind this so very late double issue, lah? You so late Mingshi's rumors have become stale like old metaphor. You like that one? So Mingshi have to write her column again and again. It like I go on second day at Jie Bakery for stale ice-cream colored bread. You make my tasty column stale! No do again!

So in stale-bread news, the new Chaosium are now gone from California, and the new office with Moon Design and with distribution scattered all over world. But everyone know that because you so cruel to Mingshi. But new team doing well, with regular news about 7^th edition RuneQuest and of course big success with 7^th edition Call of Cthulhu.

In more stale bread news as Mingshi report in last issue, remember so long ago, Savage Worlds Rifts has been released mean that crazy world meet good game, equal crazy good game! Over $200K raise in Kickstarter. But that small cheese, for John Wick's second edition of 7th Sea, 11,483 backers pledged $1,316,813! Hey RPG Review have double pirate issue last time? Maybe new association get any kickback? Meanwhile Pathfider Humble Bumble bee get record $1.298 million with 77,499 Bundles sold. Minshi think that maybe she in wrong industry with real job when she could make money like this from games, lah?

(image for 7^th Sea second edition Kickstarter)

Good news to see settlement reach between Jeff Dee and Jack Herman of Monkey House Games and Scott Bizar of Fantasy Games Unlimited over Villains and Vigilantes. Monkey House Games has copyright over game, FGU has trademark and license to Monkey House. So why you all fight in first place?

This issue of RPG Review so late I can even talk about 2016 Origins. It has Cthulhu Britannica from Cubicle 7 nominate for best roleplaying game, along with Dracula Dossier Director's Handbook from Pelgrane Press, Fall of Magic - Heart of the Deernicorn, Lone Wolf Adventure Game, also by Cubicle 7, and Star Wars: Force and Destiny, by Fantasy Flight Games. Mingshi give confused face, some of these look like supplements not games? My spies do not tell me of secret change!

Remember big mess over Cthulhu Mythos in Dungeons and Dragons in Deities and Demigods many years ago? Well all resolved now, and Petersen Games is publishing a Cthulhu mythos-based Pathfinder RPG campaign world entitled Sandy Petersen's Cthulhu Mythos for Pathfinder.

Internal Correspondence tell me that top five roleplaying games for last season of 2015 was (1) Dungeons and Dragons (Wizards of the Coast), (2) Pathfinde (Piazo), (3) Star Wars (Fantasy Flight Games), (4) Dragon Age (Green Ronin Publishing), and (5) Fantasy Age (Green Ronin Publishing). This compare to previous season where top three the same but (4) Shadowrun (Catalyst Game Labs) and (5) Iron Kingdoms (Privateer Press). So big congratulation to Green Ronin to have two new game in top five.

Maybe something to do with new release for 2016 announced? They say they will publish Dragon Age Gamemaster's Kit, and second printing of Dragon Age Core Rulebook. A Return to Freeport new edition also plan, and Gamemaster's Kit for Fantasy AGE also plan, and new Mutants and Mastermind Gamemasters Kit. Green Ronin like Gamemaster's Kit. Also, new edition of Blue Rose, complete with magic deer! Mingshi love magic deer, maybe we get some for our nighttime zoo?

Big surprise, German company Ulisses Spiele will release new Torg roleplaying game, originally by West End Games. New game called, Torg: Eternity, and be in big hardback volume. Mingshi very interested in Torg journey - first sold when French company who do comics, Humanoids, then in 2004 sold to Eric Gibson and Purgatory Publishing and then sold to Ulisses Spiele. It a little like the game jump from one reality to next.

Hasbro is planning to run own conferences in future, with trademark of HasbroCon for "organizing and conducting conventions, exhibitions, fan clubs and gatherings for entertainment purposes and in the fields of toys, animation, comic books, fantasy, gaming, popular culture, science fiction, television and film”, and also buy domain habro-con.com . Hasbro have some material to have it own con, including G.I. Joe, My Little Pony, and Transformers. Mingshi assume it also going to include Wizards of the Coast games like Dungeons and Dragons and Magic: The Gathering. Maybe we seem combine product? My Little Pony Dungeons and Dragons?

OK, that is all Mingshi has for this quartering! You be on time next issue! Ha! Already you late. Hurry up and catch up!

Mingshi! xox (mingshi@rpgreview.net)

INTERVIEW WITH JOHN SNEAD

with John Snead

Hi John, welcome to RPG Review. Let us start with a common question, how did become involved in roleplaying games? What were the first games you played and what did you think of them?

I started back in the early 80s with AD&D, I loved it at the time, but can't ever see myself playing any form of D&D again.

What games are you currently playing?

Sadly none at the moment. Until December, I was in a short playtest campaign run by Ben Lehman called Thousand Kingdoms. A few months before that, a three year free-from campaign run by our primary GM ended. She'll be starting a new one in a few months, which will likely last between 2 & 5 years. Other than that until last year I was also in a 2 year long Amber Diceless RPG campaign. Unlike most RPG designers, I vastly prefer playing to running games.

You have an extraordinary list of RPG credits associated with your name; White Wolf and Atlas Games' Ars Magica, Chaosium's Nephilim, Last Unicorn's Star Trek, supplements for White Wolf's Trinity, Exalted, Mage: The Ascension and The Awakening, and others, Green Ronin's Blue Rose, Posthuman Studios' Eclipse Phase... It's an extraordinary range. How do you find developing across such a wide variety of genres, styles, and game systems?

I started out looking for any work I could get and was both persistent and lucky. For the past 15 or so years, my name is sufficiently well known that if there is work available that I'm interested in, I can usually persuade someone to let me help.

Do you think your varied educational background has helped?

Dear gods yes. I have degrees in Math, History, and Cultural Anthropology and what amount to minors in Classics and Physics. I use elements of some of these in every gaming project and all of them in some.

Of the various games and supplements that you have designed, which one are most pleased with and what generated that sense? Conversely, are there any that you're not entirely happy with?

There are books I'm exceptionally happy with the entire work and others where I'm only happy with my part. My current project – writing most of the Traveller conversion of the Mindjammer RPG is one of the first type, as was Stellar Frontiers (the space and teleportation supplement for Trinity), Scavenger Sons for Exalted, and everything I've done for both Changeling: The Lost and Eclipse Phase. In contrast, I'm very pleased with all the writing and editing in my mythos SF RPG Eldritch Skies, but the layout (which I did not do) was well less than perfect. Also, I loved working on Dreams of the First Age for Exalted, and think I did some fantastic work, but the entire project was problematic because it was set in one of the least interesting times to play Celestial Exalted, and some of the rules (written by other authors) were less than ideal.

As for being dissatisfied with my own work, I'm happy with most of my own work, but several of my early projects clearly show I had a long way to go. I honestly wish all copies of the first edition of Faeries for Ars Magica would vanish of the face of the earth. I love my work on the 2nd edition (put out by WOTC), but 1 st edition was a mess.

Many of the books you have written have been a co-authored process. This is especially a feature in White Wolf games where, even in their core rules, there is usually several authors rather than a few. What difficulties does one encounter having such a large number of writers working on a cooperative project? How do you get around various creative and design differences?

I love working with other people. Difficulties are typically minimal because we all work for a single developer and it's the job to handle disagreements and questions (which I'm finding to be a fair amount of work since I am now the developer for Trinity Continuum: Æon). My favorite part of collaboration though is playing with other people's ideas and seeing what they do with mine. Exalted has a large amount of this – I created a number of locations and cultures in Scavenger Sons that other authors expanded on in later books in ways that I dearly loved. Even on a single project, I find the process of discussing our goals and plans with other authors to be exciting rather than frustrating.

For over fifteen years you've been a full-time game designer in an industry that's not exactly known for being a path to great riches. In this issue we have fellow author Stew Wilson make some critical comments concerning declining pay rates for freelancers. What are your thoughts on how RPG game authors can generate a living income?

You need to write rapidly and well, and constantly look for new work, even when you are currently busy. Kickstarter has definitely improved the RPG market a great deal, and these days well more than half of my work is associated with Kickstarters. However, that said, the pay is terrible and the fact that one of my partners is a CPA definitely helps. RPG writing as a single source of income is likely impossible unless someone has inherited a house in a location with a very low cost of living.

You're currently working as the developer for Trinity Continuum: Aeon, the second edition of the Trinity RPG. How has that process been? Can you give us any insight to what's going to be included in the new game and what supplements we can expect?

Until recently, the process had been frustratingly slow, in large part because of the necessity of creating a new core rule system (the Storypath system), which needed to be mechanically robust and to be able to handle playing normal people, pulp heroes, psychics up to the level of the X-Men, and supers up to the level of power of Superman. This is an exceedingly non-trivial task, and while I was only peripherally involved in actually creating these rules, they took a long time to finalize. They are at last done and seem to work (they haven't been done for very long) and the rule portions of Trinity Continuum: Æon are being written as I write this.

Trinity was very much of a late 90s game, with features I saw in a number of other SF games of the time, like finding ways to remove character's access to mobile communications and mobile data access. I didn't think this was an interesting solution at the time and it's ludicrous now for any high tech SF game. So, Æon has ubiquitous mobile data, augmented reality and all of the other technological wonders one would expect in an early 22nd century with interstellar travel. Also, my goal is to have the psychic powers be both somewhat more powerful (except for teleportation, which was definitely powerful enough), while also being more flexible. Also, the game will not have any sort of on-going metaplot. It's set in 2123, 6 months after the teleporters return from the stars, and that's the time all supplements will be written about. Finally, I love how Trinity had a global scope, with nations all across the globe being important, but as was true with most 90s RPGs, the execution of this was less good than the ideas, and so I've been trying to actually do justice to the world's diversity in this edition. When possible, I've hired authors who live or lived in the regions they wrote about, and I think we've done a good job of fairly representing the world of 2123.

I'll be thinking more about supplements after the current book is complete, but the current plan is for a Tech Manual (a book of more gear and also discussions of technology and more tech-related rules), a book detailing Earth and Luna even more, and a book detailing the various colony worlds more and providing additional worlds to explore. After that, I have plans, but they are less definite.

-John Snead sneadj@mindspring.com

THREATS AND THEMES OF UNDEATH IN THE WARHAMMER 40000 UNIVERSE

with Randal Henderson

The far flung universe of the 41st Millenium of the popular table-top skirmish game series Warhammer 40,000 produced by Games Workshop is indeed a dangerous place. The reaches of the Imperium of Man, as it us known in this mythos spans far and wide across the known universe, each system linked together by precarious trade routes governed by navigators who 'fold space', moving vessels from real space into the immaterium, thus travelling vast distances with relative speed. There are lots of bad thing out there which threaten humankind's survival – races of aliens bent on destruction and conquest, wayward men fallen sway to the chaos gods and the lure of forbidden powers, hordes of daemons that are summoned by chaos worshipers to unleash reckless abandon (did I mention that you pass these whilst travelling in spaceships during fold-space), and mass riots and regicide on the Imperial worlds. That's all on a good day.

In this game universe, in most of its off-shoot games including table-top battles, gang skirmish and role-play games (the later produced namely by Fantasy Flight games under licence), the strongest fantasy references in this series are from the HP Lovecraft variety on forbidden powers and unworldly creatures that present themselves in the 'real word' by being summoned or stumbled upon, but there are some themes of the undead as we might understand from the George A Romero Night of the Living Dead sense (albeit in a high tech distopia) that would threaten mankind in this universe, but themes of the dead rising up again in WH40K are not strictly defined in this way. Well it's not so much the these threats exist as the undead, but more they exist as un-death, and this singular theme is presented in numerous ways. This essay will highlight a few examples of how undeath presents itself from the most threatening, otherworldly sort contrasting to what the typical tv or film audience might accept as the 'undead'.

In the game series the really dangerous threats are superhuman characters, eternal warriors, immortal aliens and technology and forbidden lore that is concerned with everlasting life abounds in this universe. The gist of the WH40K myths as far as humanity is concerned revolves around a genius of sorts, The Emperor of Man, in fact a fantastical character who is brilliant at everything - the amount of qualities and skills this pivotal character for this universe is frightening, and quite simply absurd - master statemen, scientist, geneticist, warrior, wielder of psychic powers, the list, much like this essay, tends to go on. This character prior to the 31st century created legions of superhumans, the ubiquitous Space Marines the game is so famous for, to meet with the challenges of the galactic exploration (and conquest) head on, hence the long list of physical requirements – superhuman strength and stamina, reinforced skeletal frames, multiple organs and the ability to go into suspended animation, not to mention specialised weaponry – these genetically engineered warriors have the curse of prolonged life.

So when you get bored of relinquishing your own humanity to protect and serving mankind, gaining powers though unholy means or pursuing individual desires and pursuits can sound attractive, not to mention the stifling bureaucracy that has been created for humanity, rebellion and ultimate damnation sounds like a wild trip! Which of course is what some of these superhumans asked themselves and a great number of them became unsatisfied with their own position, and threw themselves before the Dark Gods, which in their explorations no doubt uncovered - this presents a more rewarding prospect than reuniting mankind. Those of you familiar with the game series skip this next but, but for everyone else an interplanetary revolt occurs and our Emperor character is thrown into battle against the leader of the revolt, Horus, a superhuman of immense proportions and one the Emperor created but nonetheless had goals for conquest and forbidden powers beyond unifying mankind across the galaxy. The Emperor faces Horus head on and emerges victorious, but mortally wounded as a result and lays in permanent stasis on the Golden Throne on Holy Terra. Navigators rely on his 'spirit' as a navigational beacon called the Astronomican in being able to fold space. The Emperor is too valuable to die a natural death, so his state of 'undeath' has been running for over 10,000 years and is extremely important! However, this serves as a precedent for other factions, races and creature types serves as a precedent that the greatest threats to humanity is both one that humanity created, and that almost every other faction exhibits some form of undeath.

There are a lot of characters / races who exhibit the immortality trait, and all go on some kind of Carl Jungian 'heroes journey' where they embark on quests to gain martial prowess. For example, the Eldar (think of Tolkein's elves, but in space!) by their very nature are immortals, and there are others, but using the Space Marine as the basis works well – even within their own ranks they sort of imitate the ascension of the Emperor by prolonging the useful lives of highly skilled warriors who become mortally wounded in combat by preserving them inside walking sarcophagi known as Dreadnoughts so that they may continue fighting for humanity in a deathless state. On the other side of the immaterium, Chaos Marines are another type of damned eternal warriors who on the tabletop game are above elite foes, but their experience in the any of the WH40K RPG spinoffs reveal a deeper side to these character beyond simply being foes to conquer on a tabletop – some are simply malevolent psychopaths who simply crave combat (the worshippers of Khorne below their blood-curdling catch cry 'blood for the blood god!' before taking to their foes), but others have been spurned by Humanity at large because of either a misinterpretation of Imperial dogma, but others represent a truly horrifying and sinister image of mankind with megalomaniacal views on a path to damnation. An excellent example of an eternal warrior is Abbaddon the Despoiler, a brother in arms of Horus who became maddened of his death, has roamed the galaxy for the better part of 10,000 years (thanks to being a by-product of genetic engineering, created by mankind's own Emperor) as a glorified brigand looking for conquest and the challenge of combat and during his journey has enlisted hordes of warriors to embark on Black Crusades and uncover dark powers to aid his selfish and never-ending pursuits.

Coming a little closer to the undead archetype, but one that I do not think qualifies as undead are the chaos daemons and their ilk of Nurgle, god of pestilence and decay. These beings exist in the immaterium (remember this is that infinite limbo where space vessels pass through...) and have lesser daemons such as Plague Bearers and Nurglings (not to mention the hordes of men who worship such a god and gain forbidden powers of toughness and flesh shaping), to stave off death, these creatures (and followers) exhibit qualities such as dying flesh, diseases, plagues and body- shaping powers. But are these characters and creators undead? To my mind no, but what they are concerned with is prolonged life, well of you call having decaying flesh and swarms of buzzards follow you around any kind of life, well sure.

But what threats are there of romanticised undead nature to humanity in this universe? Necrons who were introduced to the game series in 1998 are a cross between James Cameron's Terminators and any imagined beast that might lurk in an Ancient Egyptian crypt. These creatures are described as an alien race known as the Necrontyr whose cold science achieves immortality for this race, where they find the long lost Imperial Tomb Worlds their ideal resting place. These robotic legions are forever guarding lost crypts, repositories of ancient knowledge and forgotten technologies and lost souls around the universe. In either the tablettop or roleplay game they are extremely hardy and are prone to resurrection after being destroyed (I stress not killed, as they are inherently inanimate which implies they 'exist' indefinitely), and are accompanied by ethereal creatures called Nightbringers which exhibit supernatural strength and psychic abilities (can ghouls and ectoplasmic creatures exist among robots...? Well somehow this works). Hordes of Necrons guard monoliths and tombs, and yes they lurk in crypts similar to Ancient Egyptian mummies only to be awoken from their eternal sleep when their domain are intruded upon, but due to their robotic nature cannot be counted as 'undead'. But the threat to mankind in this universe is benign – only apparent when they are disturbed.

But what about the George A Ramero archetypal zombie that staggers around, moaning and bays for human flesh? Does this creature threaten the race of man in this distopian future? Each of the games within the series have some form of staggering zombie that originates from either plagues and illness or technology that thrives on dead flesh. The Fantasy Flight roleplay game Dark Heresy is where a group of acolytes, usually individuals from the darkest depths of society chosen who have been given an opportunity to rise above the ranks for a holy purpose if you like, under the leadership of a well established inquisitor would investigate and quell heresies or other anomalies that exist on Imperial Worlds, usually on cities called Hives (think of Megacity 1 from Judge Dread), whether they be of the minor illegal sort (owner-less organ and limbs on the black market, or Emperor forbid indentured miners having their own socialist revolution) or the nefarious major heresies such as cultists dabbling with dark god worship (summoning daemons and monsters, gaining access to forbidden powers). Acoloytes can meet the Night Cult in the expansion pack “Disciples of the Dark Gods” (2008) - Imperial citizens somehow get hold of forbidden technology or warp lore (the game is not clear which it is) that is able to reanimate the corpses of their dearly departed, as a way of revering the myth of the Emperor, rising again after death, but of course this results in flesh-eating zombies running amok.

The gang skirmish game that Games Workshop produced in 1995 Necromunda set on the hive world's namesake certainly had zombies. Gangs of Scavvies - mutants who lurk in the toxic-ridden underbellies of the hive would defend their territory when rival gangs looking to expand their territory would come out of the sewers and fight to their last. Scavvies can wrangle "plague zombies" to do their bidding, with the promise of an unlucky ganger becoming dinner for some. If a ganger is unlucky to be bitten, there would be a 40 percent chance that they too would succumb to brain death. Having said this, the threat Scavvies and their plauge zombies on mankind in this universe is minor at best. In this universe most Imperial worlds have standing armies and Judge Dread style police forces, and most citizens carry a simple las pistol or stub gun as a basic necessity in this distopia, but don't count on a zombie apocalypse taking over the Holy Throne of Terra, or Hive Sibelius anytime soon!

So the question is, does the undead pose a threat to humankind in this series? In short no, but the characters, races and factions that exhibit undeath beyond doubt do. Constantly warring and testing their mettle without end until of course they meet their own demise, often with no family life or other goals to express or nurture. The undead in this series is an after thought that is tacked onto some of the games within the genre over the years. Humanity gets tossed around with the tide and does its best to hold on.

There are numerous threats to the Imperium of man, both from outside to within - alien races vying for territory, men gone wild with their taste for forbidden powers from the warp and the chaos gods, the perilous nature of space travel, to religious uprisings and schisms from within. The scales of humanity's survival is constantly at tipping point.

A path that we can only assume is endless as an ultimate goal is never presented in this universe, as the theme suggests, in the far fling universe of the 41st Millenium, there is only war.

KILLER: THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME

by Stephen Dedman

The place: Mawson Station, Antarctica.

Scenario originally run at GenghisCon, Perth, Western Australia, 2015

The scenario: An alien shapeshifter, accidentally released from ice where it has been trapped for centuries, has infiltrated the base by replacing one – and possibly more – of the personnel. The aliens are invulnerable to gunfire, knives, and other conventional weapons, but there may yet be a way to detect and defeat them before they have taken over completely.

Gameplay: On the Friday evening of Genghiscon, all players will meet with the GM, and be issued with a sticker to place on their badges. This sticker marks them as Killer players: anyone without a sticker is an innocent bystander. At the same time, 1d6 players will secretly be informed that they have been replaced by Things.

At this meeting, everyone will be told the code word that enables Things to take over their victims. The game will run until midnight, and then recommence at 8am. Some areas (such as the panel room during panels) will be off-limits for attacks. Things will also be restricted by the need to not have any human witnesses when they attack, and can’t attack when outnumbered by humans.

On Saturday afternoon, all players, including any new players who missed the meeting on Friday night, will meet again and be informed of how to identify Things and destroy them. New players will be issued stickers: a truce will be active for long enough to allow humans and Things to disperse.

If any Things remain alive at the end of GenghisCon, the Things will have won; the winning player will be the surviving Thing with the greatest number of victims. If not, the humans are victorious, and the winning player will be the surviving human with the greatest number of kills.

Weapons: Not needed.

SURVIVIAL FROM GREAT FALLS IN D&D

by Adi Gondo Hartoo

Efficient and effective character builds in Dungeons & Dragons have been a major feature since third edition, if not before then. This following example for 5th edition : How to survive a great fall (1000 meters & over) as level 2 Half Orc barbarian and still walk to tell the tale:

This is just a thought experiment, but I think I have figured out a way for my current PC, which I am basing this idea on to not die from falling off a cliff.

First, I will have to stipulate a few conditions:

1. The half orc's max hp is 20 points or over and he's at full health.

2. He still have at least 1 rage usage left.

3. He still has his Relentless Endurance racial trait available to use.

4. He is unrestrained and is free to do whatever he wants.

This is what we know about falling damage rules:

* According to the PHB, maximum fall damage is 20d6. Looking at the wikipedia link below, I assume that's because it reached the terminal velocity of 200mph.

* Wikipedia also says that the terminal velocity of a skydiver in a belly-to-eath (face down) position is 122mph.

So putting these two set of information together, our half orc can survive a fall in this way:

1. Get into a freefall position to achieve maximum drag. At 122mph fall rate, you can argue a case with your DM to reduce the number of damage dice accordingly. Let's say to 13d6, to round it up.

2. At 6 seconds before you touch the ground, Rage! (because rage only last 1 round if you don't attack or lose HP)

3. You hit the ground & DM rolls 13d6 for bludgeoning damage. Let's say that your DM is lucky and got all 6s for a total of 78 dmg.

4. Rage gives you resistance to bludgeoning damage, so you take only 39 damage.

5. Your hp is at -19, but since it does not reach your max HP negative, you don't die instantly.

6. Using the half orc Relentless Endurance racial trait, you drop to 1 hp instead of 0hp.

7. Walk away and sing your tale of survival against insurmountable odds.

BEYOND TOTAL PARTY KILL: PLAYING LABYRINTH LORD IN THE UNDERWORLD

by Nicholas Moll

Sometime ago, I became notorious for building Labyrinth Lord campaign settings that were quite lethal to player characters. One of my initial creations, Scarlet Empire, presented the situation where a dark lord has risen, triumphed, and was now ruling the world. The Party began this campaign as prisoners of war from the previous conflict sold into slavery by a Goblin merchant and deployed into a certain trap-filled labyrinth – armed only with their wits – to, well, spring every trap before the merchant sent in the real adventurers. Another example is the setting I publish through Owlman Press – Over the Top – which applies the Tolkien-esq template of Labyrinth Lord to a steampunk, World War One inspired, campaign setting. The thing I found very quickly with Over The Top was that a machine gun nest – even at a cinematic scale of realism – is really effective at killing level 1 parties. This required some special setting rules designed to bring some heroism to Over the Top and avoid a regular total party kill.

Total party kill can be an awkward event for most gaming groups. It effectively ends play for at least that night, which can also mean an entire evening of entertainment goes to waste if it happens early in the session. While poor luck or player-initiated actions (and when I say players, I mean the Game Master as well – there seems to be this strange assumption that the Game Master is somehow not a player at the table. Their role may be different, but they’re still looking to have fun. But that is a discussion for another time) may be all involved in individual or collective character death. There are many common solutions to this from fudging dice for damage rolls, having some sort of deus ex machina occur such as a cleric appear offering an instant resurrection, and so on. However, for my Labyrinth Lord games I started to consider the other possibility. What if play continued after death as dead and departed souls in the underworld?

The underworld itself changes with each campaign setting. But at base, it is a composite of the world itself – meaning that it has a little bit of everything from each vista featured in the game. It generally is inhabited by the dead, gods of the dead along with their aids and helper beings (such as Angels). The underworld does not, however, contain any undead as such. Rather - as the player characters are not ghosts, zombies or the like - the undead are an aberration of the natural cycle of life and dead that occurs in the world of the living. The player characters themselves along with the underworld at large is posed herein as a natural part of that cycle. Aside from that basic premise, there are also some specific rules I engage for Labyrinth Lord characters playing on after their death:

1. Your character is dead, not undead

The hero is dead, and their soul has left their body coming to dwell in the underworld. When manifest in the underworld, the character’s corporeal (that is, the soul-form that serves as their body in the underworld) mirrors the one they had in life – including any possessions and equipment they had with them at the point of death. There may be some differences. The body may be withered, pale and ghostly. But it is still clearly the character. Any aging will, naturally, cease upon death.

2. You do not eat, but you do need to sleep

A dead character’s corporeal does not need to eat. It’s not a body in the biological sense, but has taken on a purely spiritual existence. A corporeal form does, however, still need to sleep as the mind requires breaks from, well, eternity to refresh focus and process the endless experiences of underworld existence.

3. You still loose Hit Points, but you cannot Die

A dead hero awakens in the underworld with full hit points. And this along with the presence of a body implies that the corporeal of a hero can be damaged and wounded by all the things that they once could in life. But the character cannot die. Rather, after reaching zero hit points they are unconscious but continue to take damage to maximum of -10 – at which point their body is little more than an oozing, shattered form. In the underworld, this state is often called Silence. A corporeal in the state of Silence will not heal naturally and can only be restored through magical means.

4. Certain Class Abilities and Spells may not work on a corporeal form

The inhabitants of the underworld are largely deceased living creatures – mostly Humans and Demi-Humans. But their corporeal forms are not a state of undeath, rather a natural progression from life to the great beyond. As such, a Cleric’s Turn Undead ability will had absolutely zero effect on most inhabitants of the underworld. Likewise, the spell Animate Dead has no effect on the corporeal bodies of the dead nor does Raise Dead or Resurrection.

Effects that cause a Save vs. Death still function on the dead, rending and reducing the corporeal body to Silence. Effectively, this means failing a Save vs. Death reduces the hero to zero hit points. While a character can recover they are considered, for all intents and purposes, non-functional and can still loose further hit points to the maximum of -10.

5. You can’t go home

Generally, death is a one-way trip unless friends in the world of the living have the ability to muster up a Raise Dead or Resurrection Spell. And on returning in this fashion, any memories of ones time in the underworld vanish – making return trips somewhat interesting. Naturally, there are rumours throughout the underworld of special gates that connect the underworld to the lands of the living, maps that will guide an individual to said gates, special ferrymen that will guide them there and so forth. Such routs are about as common as means to for the living to enter the underworld without actually dying. And many of the dead who wish to return can spend years, if not centuries, trying to find a way out.

Aside from the rules and premises above, most monsters can still be employed when adventuring in the underworld. As far as underworld-specific adventures go, the obvious one is to try and defy death and return to life. However, should the Party embrace their life beyond they may find themselves still sought for their heroic abilities. With decades or even centuries (Elves do live long lives) apart, the recently departed may have difficulty locating their previously departed loved ones on arrival. Likewise, many lost places and treasures lie in the wild places throughout the underworld and there are those willing to seek them – particularly if such wonders are those that eluded them in life. Additionally, most Labyrinth Lord Party’s kill a lot of people and even if they were not a dire villain in life, a mere henchman may have risen to such in death (motivated by their own demise). Revenge of their former foes always makes an excellent adventure, especially if the immediate option of death is off the table…

Glossary

Corporeal: The physical manifestation of the individual’s soul that serves as their body in the underworld.
Silence: The state by which the Corporeal reaches zero or enters negative hit points and becomes unconscious.
Underworld: The plane of the dead, inhabited by deceased creatures and beings.

YOU ONLY LIVE THRICE

by James Introcaso

I have a bit of a problem. Some of my players have begun to look on dying as a minor inconvenience rather than the big deal it should be. You see, my players are seasoned, and know that when their PC dies, there’s always a raise dead or resurrection spell to be cast. For the most part, I’m ok with this. D&D is just a game after all, and as long as my players are having a blast, who cares if they’re coming back from the dead? But this has really begun to go too far…

When a character dies, he or she may spend a session or two playing another character while their original’s corpse spends its time gentle repose-d in a bag of holding, but eventually they find that diamond, or scroll, or rod and they’re able to bring the old character back to life. They have even begun to see the death of major NPCs as, “Oh well, we can just raise them later,” as opposed to the big story moments they should be.

The Current Penalties

Take a look at how the raise dead, resurrection, and true resurrection spells read from the Basic D&D Player PDF (http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/basicrules).

There are some good things going on here. There is no experience point loss, Constitution score loss, or level loss, as in first, second, and third editions. While I may be looking for some more serious consequences when it comes to dying, these permanent draining penalties are no fun. They just give you an underpowered character compared to the rest of the party (unless everyone in the party dies and is raised an equal number of times). Always being a level behind everyone else can be embarrassing for many, and having low Constitution makes it even easier and more likely for a character to die again. While a little shame for dying can be fun, having a constant reminder like that is simply not fun for many players (myself included) which makes folks less likely to take risks with their characters. I would rather see my fictional hero die in a blaze of glory than cower in the back because I don’t want to have to feel the shame associated with being second-rate compared to the rest of the party. These old school penalties are a bit of a pain in the butt as well, since backwards math can take some time to figure out and get used to.

So the fifth edition spells do not have some of the bad drawbacks I personally disliked in older editions. They have a few other drawbacks which make sense to me. Let’s break it down spell by spell.

Raise Dead Drawbacks

Price and gem rarity. 500 gp is typically in the reach of PCs within the first five levels, perhaps within the first few sessions if the party pools resources and the DM is a handsome and generous person like myself. But a diamond worth 500 gp is more difficult to find than a few (hundred) coins. Only the most successful big city jewelers, nobles, and royalty are likely to have something like that lying around waiting to be sold. Even then they may not wish to part with the item (or have the characters undertake a quest before they consider selling it to them). Making these diamonds hard to find is the first drawback and it goes hand in hand with the next.

Time limit. A person may only have died within the last 10 days for the spell to work. Now in most campaigns that’s a time crunch to find a 500 gp diamond if the party does not already have one, so it does put the pressure on a party find a gem more quickly, which is great fun.

Gotta have the body. This makes sense for a fifth level spell. You can be raised from the dead provided you haven’t lost your head or turned into a pile of ash. So if this is the only spell available and you just died via red dragon breath, you are SOL. Also lost limbs stay lost and all magical diseases, curses, etc. remain in effect. So it’s not a heal all spell (like resurrection and true resurrection).

Fifth level spell. A fifth level spell for bards, clerics, and druids means the caster must have at least nine levels in one of these classes. So if the party does not have a ninth level caster in one of said classes (or a 17th level Paladin), their options are somewhat limited. Either the party must have a magic item such as a scroll which casts the spell and someone capable of activating said item or be able to find a willing NPC to cast the spell. The rarity of both of these is, of course, up to the DM. Not a bad drawback, but at a certain point this isn’t a hurdle once the party has a caster who can cast the spell.

Temporary penalties. I like this one. Coming back from the dead and being dead should take more out of you than having the flu, but eventually you get back to your old self.

Resurrection Drawbacks

Price and gem rarity. Now you need a 1000 gp gem, so it has all the drawbacks of raise dead at seemingly double the price, right? Nope! This drawback barely matters because you have 100 years to find the thing if you don’t already have it.

Time limit. If we’re talking PCs, in most cases this isn’t an issue. Unless you’re playing a game with a party of elves which spans centuries (actually a pretty awesome idea… called it), if a party member dies this is nothing to worry about. It could come up in other ways in your story, but won’t matter much for dead PCs. However, a caster is taxed greatly if a creature dead for more than a year is brought back to life, which is a little more likely to happen to a PC (though still not very in most cases).

Caster taxed. If a creature has been dead more than a year, the caster pays a big price… for a day. This isn’t a huge sacrifice, unless the spell is cast in the middle of a dungeon, which it very well may be, but again, in most cases probably not.

Seventh level spell. The spell is seventh level which means, a caster must be a 13th or higher level caster to cast the spell, and in most cases a DM will rule it’s even harder to find a scroll or NPC caster than for raise dead.

Temporary penalties. I’m still loving it.

True resurrection penalties

Price and gem rarity. Dang! 25,000 gp is a pretty penny and it’s even harder to find in gem form. Even with 200 years, you’re going to have to go through heck to get a diamond of that worth.

Time limit. 200 years. Really not a worry for a PC. This is barely a drawback (as it should be for a ninth level spell).

Ninth level spell. Good luck finding a scroll or NPC caster in many settings. If you do, be prepared to make some big sacrifices or before you get your hands on an item or a favor granted.

My Conflicting Feelings

Overall, I’m pretty happy with the way these spells play out and their penalties. The pay off and penalties seem to scale well with spell level, but I do want something more. Here’s what I’m keeping in mind as I come up with some modules for death in Exploration Age.

It’s A Game. I want my players to have a shot at bringing their characters back from the dead if they truly love them. Characters returning from the dead is a hallmark of fantasy (Gandalf and Harry Potter did it) as well, so I’m cool with the fact that it doesn’t actually happen in the real world. At the same time, sometimes people lose games, so coming back from the dead shouldn’t be a gimme.

Death Should Be Scary. Death needs to have consequences beyond what the spells present, for my players have lost their fear of dying, a subject which should really be the main concern of players in most D&D campaigns.

Death Should Not Be A Straight Punishment. I want my players to take risks with their characters. Risks should be rewarded with great story, whether or not they pay off. A sweet, fiery death is a lot better than running around a few levels or Constitution points shy of the rest of the party.

With that in mind, check out these modules for death I’m offering in the Exploration Age Campaign Guide. The first makes PC death permanent… eventually. This seems fair as I have never had a PC die more than twice, but it could happen and would make death more meaningful. The second makes coming back a riskier proposition (though still fairly easy to accomplish), and was inspired by some first edition rules.

In an Exploration Age game, GMs can rule that character death has greater consequences than what is presented in the current Dungeons and Dragons rules. These variant rules are meant to make death a more serious threat.

Module: Three Strikes and You’re Out

Each time creatures are brought back to life via magic, a piece of their soul remains in the afterlife. They may only return from death twice, before their souls are permanently anchored in the afterlife. A third death is the absolute final for any creature, after that they may not be brought back to life by any means. In a sentence – every creature only gets three lives maximum.

Variant Module: Escalation Strikes

In this variant of the Three Strikes and You’re Out module, creatures may be brought back to life three times and a fourth death is the absolute final for any creature. In a sentence – every creature gets four lives. In this module a raise dead spell can no longer bring dead creatures who have died more than once back to life, and after their third death only a true resurrection spell may return a character to life.

Module: The Soul is Fragile

Outside of the body, a soul is fragile and can easily be destroyed. The process of bringing a person back to life is hard on the soul and there’s a chance a returning soul could be destroyed in the process. A caster must make a DC 15 ability check using their spellcasting ability modifier. If the check fails, the GM should roll on the appropriate table below for the result, based on the spell cast.

Raise Dead

d100 Effect

1 – 40 Spell works as normal.

41 – 60 Soul is not returned to the body, spell slot and diamond are expended, but soul is not destroyed.

61 – 99 The soul is destroyed.

100 Soul is not returned to the body, spell slot and diamond are expended, but soul is not destroyed. In addition, an outsider (such as a devil, demon, or angel) instead inhabits the body of the deceased. The inhabitant must be removed from the body before the original creature may be returned to life.

Resurrection

d100 Effect

1 – 50 Spell works as normal.

51 – 70 Soul is not returned to the body, spell slot and diamond are expended, but soul is not destroyed.

71 – 99 The soul is destroyed.

100 Soul is not returned to the body, spell slot and diamond are expended, but soul is not destroyed. In addition, an outsider (such as a devil, demon, or angel) instead inhabits the body of the deceased. The inhabitant must be removed from the body before the original creature may be returned to life.

True Resurrection

d100 Effect

1 – 60 Spell works as normal.

61 – 80 Soul is not returned to the body, spell slot and diamond are expended, but soul is not destroyed.

81 – 99 The soul is destroyed.

100 Soul is not returned to the body, spell slot and diamond are expended, but soul is not destroyed. In addition, an outsider (such as a devil, demon, or angel) instead inhabits the body of the deceased. The inhabitant must be removed from the body before the original creature may be returned to life.

Module: A Combination

You could combine the Three Strikes and You’re Out module and The Soul is Fragile module, by limiting creatures to only three lives and asking for a spellcasting ability check and rolling on the appropriate table anytime raise dead, resurrection, or true resurrection is cast.

Originally published at http://worldbuilderblog.me/2014/09/11/you-only-live-thrice/

DEATH ISN'T THE END

by Joe Introcaso

In many Dungeons and Dragons campaigns death is merely a hurdle. In fifth edition PCs and NPCs alike can return from death with a diamond and a 3rd-level or higher spell slot. Creatures can return from death as wights, revenants, ghosts, and other more powerful undead.

Now I know in most D&D worlds returning from death isn’t possible for common folks. One must have the money and the means to return. While the masses may not have access to such means, many adventurers at least have access to someone who can cast revivify by 5th level. In a world where such things are possible, I would assume that even if many have no hope of access to such magic, they have heard of these spells. That awareness would certainly change the way the world interacts with the characters.

Here's a few tips for you to use in your campaign that make death and returning a more layered and complex story in your campaign world.

PCs Coming Back

The fact that there’s a chance PCs can come back to life after dying is probably not a complete shock to your villains. They know the spells are out there and if they're aware the PCs have access to other higher level spells, they might assume raise dead is also in the mix. Even if that’s not the case, if the villain or a henchman kill a PC and that character returns to face them again, the game is up. They know that magic is out there now and that the PCs have access to it. What might villains do with a vulnerable character in their clutches to assure they stay out of their hair?

The first option is that enemies may go for what I call the super kill. A simple beheading after a PC has died dramatically increase the resources needed to bring the character back to life. Instead of diamonds worth 300 gp and a 3rd level spell slot for revivify, a single diamond worth 1000 gp (a more difficult find) and a 7th level spell slot for resurrection is required. If the villain disintegrates their body and they tosses it in the wind or throws the corpse into lava, suddenly diamonds worth 25,000 gp and a 9th level spell slot are needed for true resurrection. Heck if the villain absconds with the body of the deceased, the PCs have to go on a mission to get it back if they can’t cast true resurrection. If they hang onto the body for longer than 10 days, raise dead isn’t going to work anymore. Something more powerful is needed.

Of course there might be even craftier villains. PCs can choose to knock a target out with a melee attack instead of kill it. Why can’t villains do the same? They could run, fly, or teleport away with an unconscious PC and lock that person away or torture them for secrets. Suddenly an exciting prison break adventure is on the menu. Or perhaps the bad guys kill that PC, steal the character’s head, and cast resurrection on it as soon as they’re back at their stronghold. They party tries to raise the fellow adventurer only to find the spell doesn’t work because that character is already back from the dead and imprisoned.

There are also otherworldly forces that could stop the return of PCs from coming back from the dead. In a fourth edition D&D campaign I had two characters royally anger The Raven Queen, who was the goddess of death. She did not let them return from the dead when their spirits were called by the magic of their companions. Instead she threw them into a demiplane where time passed differently and her servants tortured them for the equivalent of 100 years. Then she gave them a mission to do in her name and returned them to the Material Plane. Their characters and the story were completely changed by this action.

Death and Returning Modules

If you want character death to have a more debilitating impact on PCs in fifth edition D&D, checkout the modules I created. The first module limits the number of times a PC may return from the dead and has some add-on features which make dying more easy and coming back more difficult after each death. The second module features tables of random effects which might occur when a spell such as raise dead is cast.

You can pick up the PDF of these modules over in the Free Game Resources section of this site anytime. If you go there feel free to also explore the backgrounds, magic items, monsters, D&D fifth edition rules modules, spells, adventures, and more I have made for fifth edition D&D.

When Villains Return

Of course in a world where the PCs have access to powerful, death-defying magic, why wouldn't the villains have access to it as well? Any intelligent, high level NPC is going to have a back-up plan. There’s a cleric friend coming by each week to check in on the villain who can cast raise dead or an invisible druid nearby with a rod of resurrection. Many of our villainous NPCs have many resources at their command. If I was someone with a pile of gold, a high-level cleric or bard would probably be the first person on my retainer. When villains like this come back again and again like the Tyrant in Resident Evil 2, your PCs will be searching for a way to destroy them for good.

I'm baaaaaaack!

Some villains might return as undead instead of their former selves. Vampires, liches, mummies, revenants, and more might seek the characters as vengeance for their deaths. In the same fourth edition game I mentioned above, the PCs were taking on a cult of Orcus-worshipping baddies. Since he is the Demon Lord of Undeath many of the high-ranking members of the cult would be killed by the PCs only to return later as more powerful, undead versions of their living selves. This was great fun for me to role play and gave the PCs a preexisting relationship with the villains they were facing.

Be sure to only bring villainous NPCs back from death when it’s going to make the story more interesting and fun for your group. Doing this with every single villain will get tiresome and become a predictable trope! You don’t want the shock of a returned baddy to lose its surprise.

NPCs Want to Live!

If the PCs require help from an NPC, the NPC might contractually obligate the party to bring him or her back from the dead if the unthinkable happens in the line of duty. The husband of a soldier who died defending the town from orcs might beg the PCs to bring back his wife. A PC’s best friend and sister dies in a dragon attack that was a response to the party raiding its hoard. If word gets out the PCs have the power to return themselves from death other people will be pressuring them to use that power on themselves or those they love.

Originally published at https://worldbuilderblog.me/2015/09/22/when-death-isnt-forever/

THE SCYTHE OF THANATOS: D&D 3.x

by Lev Lafayette and Stean Vitasovic

The Scythe of Thanatas is an major artifact item for D20/Pathfinder and similar systems. It was originally used in Stean Vitasovic's D&D3e fantasy dark ages Balkans campaign c2001-2002, and whilst the statistics provided are for that particular context it requires little elaboration for other game settings or systems. In the original campaign it was discovered in a in same chaotic caves near a keep on the borderlands of the Vrhbosna province by a sorcerer of medium ranked ability. The Scythe's frustration at the sorcerer's attempts to use the weapon without proficiency in narrow underground passageways generated some hilarity. The Scythe itself, as an artifact, became a feature of the entire campaign as its ever increasing urges for greater bloodshed became dominant.

In Pathfinder the Scythe is a two-handed melee weapon. Note however that this is specifically the 'war scythe' which historically was primarily by peasants during uprisings (e.g., , Hussites, battle of Sedgemoor, Ko?ciuszko Uprising etc) which required a modification of the blade and shaft. The painting by Mort de Bara by Jean-Joseph Weerts (1883), illustrated the use of this weapon (and stands in contrast to the drawing in the Players Handbook, p100).

These weapons has the following statistics common to D&D3.x/D20/Pathfinder

Scythe: 18 gp, 1d6, 2d4, ×4, 10 lb., Piercing or slashing

The Scythe of Thanatas however is encountered as the traditional peasant's tool, that is, with the chine (blade) at right angles to the snaith (haft). As a combat weapon, it is automatically at -2 due to this design, in addition to any lack of exotic weapon proficiency. To convert it to a war scythe requires a simple Craft: Weaponsmithing check with a DC of 10.

Note that the depiction of Thanatos as the "the Grim Reaper" carrying a scythe was not the norm in ancient Hellenic societies who depicted Thanatos with either a sword or an upside-down (extinguished) torch. It seems that the version most familiar in the Anglophone world actually comes from Polish origins (which, at quite a stretch, also suits the Balkans). The Hellenic Thanatos was considered more neutral in overall disposition and appeared in a male form. Note therefore that despite the Hellenic association, this is actually a Slavic artifact and could even more justifiably be called "The Scythe of Marzanna" or similar.

The Scythe has the following properties:

* Haft is manufactured from Underworld Darkwood and has a blade of Adamantine (adamastos). Note that the use of the supernatural Darkwood allows for the usually prohibited wood and admantine combination. Being made form such materials, the Scythe of Thanatos weighs only 5lbs.

* The Scythe is a Vorpal weapon; on a roll of natural 20 (followed by a successful roll to confirm the critical hit), the weapon severs the opponent's head, causing instant death. Note that the opponent must actually have a head for this to occur.

* The Scythe has a +5 Weapon Bonus enchantment.

* The Scythe is intelligent and telepathic, inhabited by a spirt named "Krv" (Blood). When it speaks to its wielder it does so in whispers and knows Koine Greek, Thracian, Serbo-Croatian, and Old Church Slavonic. Krv has a Wisdom score of 25, a Charisma score of 20, and an Intelligence of 15.

* Alignment of Neutral Evil.

* Once a day it providers the wielder, Finger of Death, Bull's Strength, Haste. Three times a day it provides Charm Person for the wielder. The wielder will also gain free use of the Sunder, Improved Initiative, Combat Reflexes, and Blind-Fight feats.

* The item has a Special Purpose to Slay All (except the wielder). It will become very annoyed if the wielder does not implement its purpose, and will engage in an Ego possession if its purpose is not carried out on at least a daily basis (although an incredibly bloody episode may lead it to be satiated for a couple of days). It will of course, first engage in encouragement first, but if the wielder resists or is incompetent, it will direct those who are unwilling, or seek one who is more skilled.

* The Scythe has Slay Living when engaging in the Special Purpose. On a successful melee touch attack to touch the subject it will kill, unless the target makes a Fortitude Save against a DC of 20. If the saving throw it successful, the target takes instead takes 3d6 + 20 points of damage.

In terms of publishing history, in addition to having an association with a certain set of caves near a well-known (if somewhat modified) Keep On The Borderlands (The Keep on the Borderlands, Gary Gygax, 1979 and Little Keep on the Borderlands, Jolly R. Blackbrun et al, 2002). the Scythe of Thanatos also has an association with the The Caverns of Thracia, Paul Jaquays, 1979. In that particular setting there is a Thracian temple to Thanatos which also includes a minor Incarnation of said deity. The Scythe will relinquish its possessive urges if it is delivered to the temple and to the incarnation, where it will be able to commune directly with a death god.

UNDEAD IN REALITY

by Lev Lafayette

The Undead have a very special place in the human psyche. Across time and culture there is all sorts of stories of who the undead are, where they come from, whether the undead takes the form of an incorporeal spirit like a ghost, or has a physical bodes, like various forms of vampires. Whatever approach is taken, it is something that was definitely dead, but whose corpus, spirit, or both, is now present again.

The following lengthy article is not meant to be any sort of consistent approach to the matter of the undead. It is simply a collection of mythologies and even scientific facts that should be mined as a resource for GMs, especially those who prefer to have engage in a real-world settings, whether with a sense of magical realism, historic fantasy, or even otherworldly conspiracies.

Osiris

There is a body of evidence (see what I did there?) that suggests a range of ancient deities associated with a birth-death-rebirth cycle. The ancient Egyptian Osiris was one of the first, associated appropriately as the god of the afterlife, the underworld, and the dead, but also as the god of transition, resurrection, and regeneration.

In the Osiris myth he starts as an early King of Egypt, with a lineage stretching back to the creation of the world by Ra (Atum). The queen and sister is Isis (yeah, they went there), and his brother was Set. They were all the children of the earth god Geb and sky goddess Nut.

Set gets annoyed with Osiris for a variety of reasons; early texts say it was because Osiris kicked him, later texts is because he and Nephthys are getting it on. Nephthys, by the way, was Set's consort and the fourth child of Geb and Nut. Yes, that's right, the younger sister.

In any case, Set gets it into his head to knock Osiris off and get to rule on his throne. How he did this is subject to some debate. Some sources says that he turned into a crocodile or bull and did his brother in whilst in such a form - a lycanthrope! Later texts seem to settle in the idea that Set chopped Osiris's body into pieces and scattered them across Egypt - symbolically forty two pieces (one for each province) was a popular number, making the god the literal embodiment of the Kingdom, with a body part claimed for cult centres.

Isis decided that it was time to put the pieces back together, and goes looking for them with Nephthys. After various trails and tribulations she gets everything together, with the help of other deities, including Thoth, who with his awesome magical and healing powers, and Anubis, the god of embalming and funerary rites, turn Osiris into the first mummy, and they restore his body to life.

However, there was a slight problem: they were missing his dick. I kid you not. So Isis fashions one out of gold, sticks it on the body, casts a spell that wakes Osiris up (“blows life into him”, you know), and gets herself pregnant through the golden penis that shoots a lightning bolt. Note that according to some texts Isis does this whilst in the form of a bird, because that's what she was doing at the time whilst searching for the bits of her brother-husband-king. I swear, if this is ever made into a film...

Osiris dies again, and goes off to rule Duat, the realm of the dead. Isis gives birth to Horus (no, she doesn't lay an egg), who eventually defeats Set after a series of battles and, being ancient Egyptians, various acts of sexual dominance against each other. Without going into the details, Horus wins, or at the worst, they split Egypt up. But the main thing to remember in reference to the undead: Osiris is the first mummy and has a golden penis that shoots lightning bolts. Never forget that.

Asclepius

The Ancient Hellenes had a bunch of characters that were demigods, children of gods, or immortals. In particular there was a few heroic mortals who died and attained immortality after being resurrected, because being a hero and reaching immortality was a big deal to the old Greeks.

Asclepius is one well-known example, starting life as the son of a mortal woman named Coronis and the god Apollo, and most certainly not a neighbour or anything like that. Apollo, who was not exactly famous for his fidelity, was nevertheless a jealous patriarch and decided to have Coronis killed for being unfaithful. Jeez, those Greek gods were arseholes.

Coronis gets thrown onto a funeral pyre, which is set alight, and then decides this is the opportune moment to go into labour. In what appears a line-ball situation, Apollo intervenes at the last moment as Coronis is being burnt alive in childbirth and cuts the unborn child out of her womb.

Apollo then gives the child to the centaur Chiron, who raises and instructs Asclepius in the medical arts. Asclepius eventually surpasses even Apollo in this skill to the point that he was able to bring the recently deceased back from the dead, including Hippolytus, son of Theseus. That apparently annoyed Zeus - and he had his brother Hades on his back who was complaining that if this Asclepius kept up his work there would be no more dead spirits in the underworld.

So Zeus smacked Asclepius with a thunderbolt. This angered Apollo who in turn killed the Cyclopes, who made the thunderbolts for Zeus. In return, Zeus banished Apollo from the night sky and after a while revived the Cyclopes, and Asclepius was revived and became a star constellation and a deity in his own right.

Dionysus

Dionysus is known as the god of wine and winemaking, of madness, theatre, and religious ectasy. But how he got there involves multiple resurrection stories. The first is yet another Greek story of conflagaration and the male gods "sowing their seeds". His mother was the mortal Semele, and the father was Zeus. Whilst Semele was pregnant Hera found out about Zeus' indiscretions and paid Semele a visit, befriending her, and causing her to doubt that the father was really Zeus. Her work done, Semele demanded that Zeuss reveal himself in his godly splendour - which under duress he did, and Semele promptly combusted, because that's what happens when look upon an god that's coated in lightning bolts.

As she burnt to a crisp, Zeuss pulled the unborn Dionysus out her womb (there's a lot of that going on) and stiched him into his thigh, where presumably he kept a spare womb for such emergencies. A few months later he is born, received the the nickname "of two-mothers".

The Cretan version of the myth is even more hardcore. In this instance, Hera decides to use the Titans to lure the infant Dionysus away with toys, and having done so, tear him apart and eat time. Zeus turns up and, being pissed off in a manner that only the king of the gods can be, smites them all with lightning bolts. He then picks up the still beating heart of Dionysus, the only thing that remains of him, and sticks that in his thigh.

Note that it is possible that both these stories are "true" if they happened in sequence - meaning that Dionysus would have been born twice to three mothers, with Zeuss getting the job twice. Just as well he had that spare womb in his thigh.

Baldr

The Norse god Balr is particularly well known through the Völuspá, the first poem in the Poetic Edda. Being the sort of woeful Cassandra that he was, he dreamt of his own death first, but so did his mother, Frigg, showing that a madness shared becomes a sanity.

Frigg, being the sort of mother who would do anything for her son, made every object swear to never to hurt Baldr. Surprisingly, all objects made this vow except mistletoe, which was considered too young to make such a contract. Frigg probably should have gone back to mistletoe, because having an Achilles Heel like that is going to bite you.. And it did.

Loki found out about this, and being the sort of prick that he was, he made a magical spear (or arrow) from this plant and gave it to Baldr's blind brother Hoor, where the gods were engaging in the new favourite pastime of chucking stuff at Baldr which would bounce of harmlessly. In many ways, you can see, they weren't much better than Loki. Anyway the inevitable happened, and so began a succession of events that led to Ragnarok, when a multitude of gods are killed, there is a succession of natural disasters, and the destruction of the world - the sun becomes black, the earth sinks into the sea, the stars vanish, steam rises, and flames touch the heavens. Quite an effort there.

So after all this, the earth reappears from the water, Hoor and Baldr return from Hel and everyone lives happily ever after. The end.

Judeo-Christian Undead

"And the Lord will send a plague on all the nations that fought against Jerusalem. Their people will become like walking corpses, their flesh rotting away. Their eyes will rot in their sockets. Their tongues will rot in their mouths."

Zechariah 14:12

Appropriate for a games such as the d20 supplement Testament, or any number of angels versus demons games that were particularly popular in the late 1990s (e.g., In Nomine, Heaven and Earth, Rapture: The End of Days), is the use of the undead within the Judeo-Christian tradition. The biblical quote is pretty explicit. Are there there are a few more suggestions that the dead will walk the earth? You betcha.

Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise. You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy! For your dew is a dew of light, and the earth will give birth to the dead. Come, my people, enter your chambers, and shut your doors behind you; hide yourselves for a little while until the fury has passed by.

Isaiah 26:19-20

You have to hand it to Isaiah, that's pretty sound advise under the circumstances.

And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.

Daniel 12:2

Well the dead will definitely awake, although some will be embarrassed about the things they did a thousand or so years beforehand. Embarrassed zombies, think over that one for a while.

If anything it's just about zombies, even those who regain some of their intellect, think again. There's vampires to worry about as well, and is their want, they prey primarily among those who won't be noticed when they're gone.

There are those whose teeth are swords, whose fangs are knives, to devour the poor from off the earth, the needy from among mankind.

Proverbs 30:14

It's certainly not just the "Old Testament" either.

Unsurprisingly, some ask whether vampirism is such a good idea.

And said, “Far be it from me before my God that I should do this. Shall I drink the lifeblood of these men? For at the risk of their lives they brought it.” Therefore he would not drink it. These things did the three mighty men.

1 Chronicles 11:19

There is, of course, references to time-dependent points where the dead rise.

The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended. This is the first resurrection.

Revelation 20:5

Surprisingly, few thought that the world was going to face any sort of apocalypse in the year 1000 CE, as even most literate people used a regnal years system (e.g., the forth year of Jarl Olaf Tryggvason of Norway). There were a few medieval historians who knew different however - and they were very worried. It's a rich source of terror for historical-fantasy gamers; what if they were right?

But maybe some of these walking dead will be friendly.

And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many.

Matthew 27:51-53

Ah, walking dead saints. You mean, high level former clerics that have come back. What could possibly go wrong? Well sometimes you need to get advice from ghosts.

And after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James, and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light. And behold, there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him.

Matthew 17:1-3

Contrary to popular opinion advocated by jokers on the Internet around Easter time, Jesus was definitely not a zombie. He was certainly not mindless, rotting, and to use the popular vernacular, nor did he want to consume brains (perhaps he wanted to consume minds or souls, at least metaphorically). Arguably Jesus could have been a ghoul, because one supposes he could have caused paralysis by touch, although as far as the Scriptures say, there is no mention of an graveyard stench. We can immediately rule out all the incorporeal undead, such as ghosts, wights etc because after the resurrection the wounds were present.

You know where this is heading. A king of kings, a former powerful magic-user, who still bares the wounds of their supposed mortality, and is themselves capable of raising the dead. Jesus was a lich.

Buddhist Mummies

In 2014, Drents Museum of the Netherlands conducted a CT scan of one of its Buddhist monk statues and found a mummified Buddhist monk inside it. According to the experts, the mummy was that of Buddhist master Liuquan, who had died around 1100AD. Another CT scan and endoscopy revealed Liuquan's internal organs had been removed and replaced with scripts covered in Chinese writing, presumably an early form of software virtualisation to replace hardware components.

But gamers know better than that. This is actually a 18th-level mummy-monk who will kick your arse to enlightenment and back again. Worse still, there's more than one of them.

Buddhist mummification, is a quite extraordinary practise and sometimes carried out as self-mummification (sokushinbutsu). The story is that in the Japanese version monks caused their own death by adhering to a wood-eating diet made up of salt, nuts, seeds, roots, pine bark, and urushi tea. They were then buried alive in a pine-wood box full of salt connected by a tube for air and would ring a bell signaling they were alive. The self-mummification of a Tibetan monk, who died ca. 1475, was acheived through a combination of meditation, prolonged starvation, and slow self-suffocation using a special belt that connected the neck with his knees in a lotus position.

As another example, in Thailand the body of Luang Pho Daeng is still on display; complete with sunglasses. He died in 1973 whilst meditating.

There are hundreds of known cases of these mummy-monks. What if they get sufficiently annoyed with something that they get up? Perhaps it is just as well that they have reached Buddha-hood. With no attachment to the world, nothing that happens will sufficiently upset them to the point where they rise to action.

Which is why some Buddhists claim that these monks are not actually dead, but rather in a deep meditative trance known as “tukdam”.

Robert Cornish

To put it bluntly, Robert Cornish (1903-1963) was a reanimator, a modern day necromancer if you like. A brilliant student who graduated with honours from the University of California at the age of 18, and received his doctorate at 22. In 1932 he became interested in the idea of reviving the dead, initially by using a teeter-board to encourage blood-flow in the recently deceased, effectively by placing the corpse on a see-saw. CPR techniques were not well known until the 1950s, and as you can imagine trying to get blood to circulate via a see-saw was not going to the most successful process. Still, one can not help but be impressed by such efforts.

After failures on human subjects from a variety of causes – and apparently trying every folk tale technique that was known - he began to experiment on dogs, eventually reaching a degree of success with forced circulation mixed with injections of epinephrine and anticoagulants. Antivivisectionists and the University had some problems with Dr. Cornish's fiendish plans and closed down his laboratory, forcing him to further his experiments at home (don't try this at home readers).

After the success on dogs, humans began to contact Cornish who was very interested in expanding his work. In the late 1940s, an application was received from a death-row inmate, Thomas H. McMonigle. A major problem was the inmate was to be executed by poison gas, and the corpse was normally left in situ for some hours. "He wants me to bring him back to life after his execution, in the interest of science.", said the ever-factual Dr. Cornish. But ultimately it is believed that Californian law enforcement refused the application on the concern that a reanimated murderer would be freed under "double jeopardy". If executed murderers could walk the streets again an hour after execution the supposed punishment deterrent would be somewhat lessened.

Dr. Cornish was also a practicing Roman Catholic, which led to some debate among leaders of that body about what they thought of the resurrection of dogs and murderers. In his final years he lived in a tin shack in Berkeley, having marketed a dentifrice, made a steam-resistant paint, and dealt in war surplus goods.

You might think that would be the end of it. After all bringing dogs back to life after death is one thing, but even after a few minutes one would expect that there would be some brain damage and the longer the corpse was left to lie, the more serious it would be. Dr. Cornish's dogs were revived, but let's just say they weren't bouncing around and barking.

Surely nobody would continue these experiments in reanimation ….

Behringer, W. et al. (2003). Survival without brain damage after clinical death of 60-120 mins in dogs using suspended animation by profound hypothermia. Critical Care Medicine, 31(5), 1523-31.

My Mother was a Zombie?

In 2014 a clinically dead woman who was pregnant was being kept alive against her family's wishes. How could such a situation arise? Ah well, it was Ireland, a country famous or notorious - depending on your point of view - for being the only democratic state with a constitutional ban on abortion (the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution Act, 1983, was carried by referendum with 67% in favour).

In what became known as PP vs HSE, Ireland's High Court had to decide about what to do about zombie mothers. The facts were as follows: On November 27 2014 a woman in early pregnancy was admitted to hospital with nausea and headaches. Two days latter, she fell over and was unresponsive. By December 3, she was declared brain dead. At this stage she was fourteen weeks pregnant. She was then placed on life support.

The woman's family had to battle the issue through the High Court who, at least to some credit, were relatively quick about the issue. After being on life support for three weeks on December 26, 2014, they decided that the life support machine could be turned off.

None of the seven doctors who gave evidence at the case argued that life support should continue, nor did there was any prospect that the child would be born intact.

Meanwhile the woman's condition was deteriorating, as her brain rotted away. There was an open head wound and several infections, and there were concerns that the drugs being administered to the brain-dead-woman, would be affecting the unborn child.

In the case, an attempt was made to argue that the Irish language version of the Article 40.3.3 claimed that the State had an obligation to ensure the right to life "as far as possible". The Court however argued that that the prospects for a successful delivery of a live baby in this case "are virtually non-existent", and that the obligation meant that protection must not be "futile, impractical, or ineffective".

Of course, it could have gone the other way - and a drug-addled damaged child could have been born of a zombie mother. Now surely that would be super-villain potential.

We're Actually All Psychic Zombies Time-Travellers

A fascinating study by Adam Bear and Paul Bloom from Yale University has suggested that our brains seem to rewrite history so that the choices we make after an event seem to precede it. Why would we do such a thing? Because it generates a sense that we can predict things that in reality have already happened.

The experiment consisted of subjects viewing white circles and guessing which ones would turn red. The reported accuracy was 20% higher than chance, suggesting either a surprising level of psychic capability among the volunteers or they had tricked themselves (it is not uncommon, of course, for psychics to trick themselves - and other people).

So the next step was to vary the rate of change between the circles changing colour. Interestingly, the reported accuracy was the highest when the delays were the shortest.

Adam Bear and Paul Bloom at Yale University conducted some simple tests on volunteers. In one experiment, subjects looked at white circles and silently guessed which one would turn red. Once one circle had changed colour, they reported whether or not they had predicted correctly.

It seems that that we perceive the order of events correctly but then subconsciously swap the sequence in our memories so the prediction seems to come first. Or, in a similar manner, our brains confuse events and time, making more significant errors in this perception between event and prediction when the time frame is shortest.

It could be that we're psychics, whose ability to predict the future is greatest when when that time-frame is smallest. Or that we're time-travellers, who can journey at best into the very near future and snap-back to the right time to make a correct predictive choice. Or we're zombies, who despite our best intentions, have a brain that rewires our sense of perception to make us feel that we've made the right prediction.

Adam Bear, Paul Bloom, "A Simple Task Uncovers a Postdictive Illusion of Choice", Psychological Science April 28, 2016 0956797616641943

Zombification and Mind Control in the Small World

Various parasites alter the behaviour of their hosts in destructive ways. They effectively turn them into zombies. It should be a relatively easy task for GMs to think of ways to convert these little horrors into effective undead for one's roleplaying game.

The female jewel wasp is the first example, with a way of ensuring that their children have plenty to eat. First they find a cockroach and inject a toxin that paralyzes its front legs. Then it strikes again, hitting part of the cockroach brain that determines movement. Unable to move and effectively zombiefied, the cockroach is dragged into a burrow, and the wasp eggs injected into it. Once hatched, the wasp larva will spend several days consuming the wasp, before converting its body in a pupa shell. A month later it will emerge, and the wonderful cycle of nature will continue.

Direct Injection of Venom by a Predatory Wasp into Cockroach Brain

Gal Haspel, Lior Ann Rosenberg, Frederic Libersat, Zlotowski Center for Neuroscience and Department of Life Sciences, Ben-Gurion University, Beer-Sheva, Israel

http://www.bgu.ac.il/life/Faculty/Libersat/pdf/JNB.2003b.pdf

Females of the Costa Rican wasp (what is it with these wasps?) Hymenoepimecis argyraphaga lay their eggs on the abdomens of unlucky orb spiders called Plesiometa argyra. The wasp larva effectively drugs the spider, leading it to build a new type of web. This web is designed to support the cocoon that the wasp larva will build after it has killed and eaten the spider.

Under the Influence: webs and building behavior of plesiometa argyra (araneae, tetragnathidae) when parasitized by hymenoepimecis argyraphaga (hymenoptera, ichneumonidae)

William G. Eberhard, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, and Escuela de Biología, Universidad de Costa Rica, Ciudad Universitaria, Costa Rica.

Journal of Arachnology 29(3):354-366. 2001

"Enough of wasps", gentle readers cry, "I am freaked out enough already". OK then, how about flukes? Not so lucky?

The lancet liver fluke lives inside various grazing animals, unsurprisingly in the liver. When it lays its eggs, they make their way to the world through the animal's defecation. Certain snails, being what they are, think that cowshit tastes awesome and eat the eggs. Which then hatch inside the snail (oops).

The snail, understandably disliking this turn of events, creates a cyst around the nearly-hatched parasite and coughs them up in a mucus-covered spitball. These flukes know how to party.

The parasitic slimeballs are then eat by some particularly daft ants. They flukes make their way through the ants system, eventually finding the brain. They then use their awesome fluke-mind-control powers to zombify the ant, and cause to seek the highest blades of grass it can find, where it will stay motionless ... until a grazing animal comes a long, and the beautiful cycle of nature continues.

Behavioral and Morphological Changes in Carpenter Ants Harboring Dicrocoeliid Metacercariae

W Patrick Carney, American Midland Naturalist (1969), Volume: 82, Issue: 2, Pages: 605-611

Following a similar trajectory, the fluke euhaplorchis californiensis begins its life in the ocean-dwelling horn snail. From there they produce larvae that swim around estuaries and salt marshes looking for killifish. Once a victim has been located it makes its way to the fish's brain, where it attaches itself as a cyst causes the killifish to become obvious as possible - swimming close the surface, jumping around and so forth - making it a very attractive target to wading birds.

When healthy killifish fish is stressed, it produces serotonin from the raphe nuclei region of the brain. The parasite larvae block that response, causing lower serotonin in the hippocampus, while boosting dopamine in the hypothalamus. The result? A fish full of energy that makes every effort to get caught by motion-sensing predators. Once the killifish is swallowed, the flukes can hook up in the belly of the bird, their eggs are released back into the water in the bird's droppings to be eaten by horn snails and start the cycle anew.

Ain't nature grand?

Shaw et al, Parasite manipulation of brain monoamines in California killifish (Fundulus parvipinnis) by the trematode Euhaplorchis californiensis, Proceedings of the Royal Society doi:10.1098/rspb.2008.1597

Of course, all this isn't quite the same thing as being undead. But it is mind-control. If you really want to get into zombie-behaviour there's nothing like the South American phorid fly and their fire ant victims. The much smaller fly lands on the ant and injects its eggs into the ant's body.

The egg hatches, burrows its way into the ant's head makes its new home. For several weeks it makes a meal of the ant's brain, compels it to leave the colony (so it doesn't get attacked by other fire ants), and eventually decapitates the ant, and "hatches" from the decapitated head.

cf., http://www.sbs.utexas.edu/fireant/faq%20answers.html

(Image from National Geographic, May 2009)

Three Cases of Zombification

In 1997 The Lancet provides a short, but fascinating study, entitled 'Clinical findings in three cases of zombification'.

Prof Roland Littlewood, Chavannes Douyon, MD, "Clinical findings in three cases of zombification", The Lancet, Volume 350, No. 9084, p1094–1096, 11 October 1997

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(97)04449-8

These are literal example of zombification, following the that were reported to have taken place in Haiti. The example zombies, identified by their initials, died, were buried, and then were noticed by others. The article begins by noting that the the Haitian Penal Code (Article 246) considers zombification to the equivalent of murder, explaining that Haitians are typically not buried but encassed in above-ground tombs. According to the authors, zombie cultural tradition argues that the person consists of their body, the animating principle, and agency. The process of control is described as follows:

"In zombification, the latter is retained by the sorcerer [boko], usually in a fastened bottle or earthenware jar where it is known as the zombi astral The animated body remains without will or agency as the zombi cadavre, which becomes the slave of the boko and works secretly on his land or is sold to another boko for the same purpose. In Haiti, the term is also used in metaphor to refer to extreme passivity and control by another."

From the three examples, FI was approximately thirty years old when they died and were buried in the family tomb next to their house. Three years later they were recognised by a friend and relatives, wandering near the village. The friends and relatives accused the husband of zombifying here. A local court authorised the opening of her tomb, which was full of stones. FI was admitted to a psychiatric institution and diagnosed was diagnosed with catatonic schizophrenia.

WD was the eldest son of an alleged former 'tonton macoute' (secret policeman) under the Duvaliers’ regime. At 18, he suddenly became ill at died three days later and was buried. Almost two years later he was at cockfight, and recognised his father, accusing him of zombifying him. WD was diagnosed with epilepsy and “organic brain syndrome”, whatever that's supposed to be. Perhaps having an organic brain is unusual in Haiti.

The third example, MM, was the younger sister of our principal informant. At the age of 18, MM had joined some friends in prayers for a neighbour who had been zombified. However, she herself then became ill and she died in a few days. The family suspected revenge sorcery. Thirteen years later, MM, reappeared at the town market and had been kept as a zombi in a village a hundred miles north, having born a child to another zombie (zombies can breed!). With the death of the sorcerer, their son released MM from bondage and she made her way home.

The authors conclude that the most probable explanation for these three cases is mistaken identity and wandering individuals with mental illnesses. However the conclusion also suggests that possibility of rapid and incorrect burial, with bodies stolen by boko, and then the repeat use of Datura stramonium to control the “deceased person”. This particular approach has been suggested in a number of publications, for example in reference to Clairvius Narcisse, who had been turned into a zombie in such a fashion.

Kao, C.Y., and T. Yasumoto, 1986, "Tetrodotoxin and the Haitian zombie." Toxicon, 24:747–749.

Kao, C.Y., and T. Yasumoto, 1990, "Tetrodotoxin in 'zombie powder.'" Toxicon, 28:29–132.

Undead Mathematics

A group of authors, one with the interesting surname "Smith?" (yes, with the question mark), mathematically modelled what was the most effective way of dealing with a zombie apocalypse. After explorations of the alternatives, the zombie utilsed in the study is the modern popular culture version; one of the living dead with an insatiable desire for human flesh. A zombie bite would leave an open wound and the mixing of zombie saliva and blood would lead to infection and transformation.

Applying statistical modelling, the basic model has been played out many times; there is a zombie outbreak and in a very short period of time the zombies overwhelm the "susceptibles". A quarantine model is proposed as an alternative, with the possible chance of a breach. Depressingly, this attempt with delay but not prevent the eventual takeover of the zombie horde.

An optimistic model explores the possibility of a cure for the zombie disease; however it is not one which provides immunity (i.e., a zombie becomes a susceptible). In this case the zombies still overwhelm the susceptibles, but do not completely destroy them as there is a sufficient number of zombies who are "cured" to keep the human population low, but relatively stable.

The final model proposes successive waves of attacks on the zombie horde, depending on resources, resulting in an impulsive effect. Striking early and striking with force rapidly reduces the zombie numbers and subsequent attacks must occur before the zombie popultion can grow again. With this approach the forces of humanity can defeat the zombie horde. In its conclusion the article states:

"An outbreak of zombies infecting humans is likely to be disastrous, unless extremely aggressive tactics are employed against the undead. While aggressive quarantine may eradicate the infection, this is unlikely to happen in practice. A cure would only result in some humans surviving the outbreak, although they will still coexist with zombies. Only sufficiently frequent attacks, with increasing force, will result in eradication, assuming the available resources can be mustered in time."

Phillip Munz, Ioan Hudea, Joe Imad, Robert J. Smith?

When Zombies Attack! Mathematical Modelling of an Outbreak of Zombie Infection

Infectious Disease Modelling Research Progress, pp113-150, 2009

Zombies are not, of course, the only one of the undead subject to a statistical analysis. In a multinational research paper, researchers from Ireland, the Czech Republic, Russia, and Germany reviewed the "intertemporal interactions between species based on differential equations", specifically vampires and humans. Mathematical models are provided with hindsight analysis that show the exponential growth rate of human populations. A brief historical account of vampires is provided, for a "predator and prey" population model. "The growth of

vampire population will be determined by the quality and quantity of interactions with humans." Vampire slayers are also introduced to the model. It is possible, using the Lotka-Volterra system, for a stationary situation, where the number of predators and prey reaches a stable number, allowing for the two species to co-exist.

Reviewing a variety of popular culture sources however, the researchers were pessmisitic of such co-existence. A Stoker-King model ("Dracula" and "Salem's Lot"), where killed humans return as vampires, leads to a situation where the human population would be defined as "critically endangered" after a mere 165 days. Elaborating from this, where vampires must feed and conversions are rare, the Rice model (Vampire Chronicles), the human population is also effectively wiped out however it takes 48.7 years.

A third scenario, the Harris-Meyer-Kostova model (based on Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series, Charlaine Harris's "Sookie Stockhouse (Southern Vampire) series", the "True Blood" TV series and Elizabeth Kostova's "The Historian"), proposes a world where vampires (mostly) peacefully co-exist with humans. Vampires in this model do not need to feed or kill humans, and conversion is a difficult process. This may be the only manner in which the "Twilight" series has any degree of a plausible depiction of vampires, and even it is clearly by accident.

Wadim Strielkowski, Evgeny Lisin, and Emily Welkins, "Mathematical Models of Interactions between Species: Peaceful Co-existence of Vampires and Humans Based on the Models Derived from Fiction Literature and Films", Applied Mathematical Sciences, Vol. 7, 2013, no. 10, pp453-470

A Neuroscientific Approach to Zombies

Tim Verstynen and Brad Voytek are neuroscientists think that archetypical zombie behaviour can explained. In 'Do Zombies Dream of Electric Sheep? A Neuroscientific View of the Zombie Brain' (http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10305.html), the the assistant professors of cognitive science provide details of the symptoms and causes of what they call 'Consciousness Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder' (CDHD).

The first issue is poor impulse control and violent behavious on the part of zombies. As a related matter, the zombie lacks the ability to have a 'flight or fight' response. According to the researchers, this is explicible from damage to neural circuits.

The second issue is that zombies have notoriously bad motor skills. They stumble about, they always look like they're about to fall, and they move very slowly. The argument goes tht they have damaged cerebellum, the small brain structure at the base the neck, which is coordination of muscular activity.

Thirdly, zombies aren't exactly known known for their verbal acumen. Talk to them and the seem confused. Often they are just able to mutter the object of their deepest desire: "Brains!". Evidentally zombies suffer from aphasia, unable to communicate and barely able to express their single and simple concepts. There is a variety of neurological causes which could suggest a variety of zombie minds!

Further, zombies struggle with facial recognition. People whom they have been close to for years may result in a confused moment of recognition until the desire for brains takes over. This suggest that zombies have a damaged fusiform face area of the brain, near the bottom of the neo-cortex, towards the back of the head.

But what is it with brains and their desire to chow down on the flesh of the living? Well, the researchers don't deal with that directly, but they do discuss hunger. There is, of course, a tight link between hunger and brain activity, and there are two chemicals that regulate hunger and satiation. If these are blocked or, then a person can suffer from constant ravenous behaviour.

Put it altogether, you have a collection of conditions that explain how the zombie virus transforms the human brain.

Don't Mourn, Organize!

Uttar Pradesh is the most populous state in the Republic of India, and indeed, the most populous subdivision in the world with almsot two hundred million inhabitants. Like other parts of the world which have been known for poverty and a high population density, it has also had its fair share of corruption, especially involving what is a relatively and increasingly scare commodity that is a human necessity and in fixed supply; land.

In 1976 as a young man Lal Bihari applied for a bank loan. He visited the revenue office at its district headquarters, Azamgarh, to obtain a proof of identity and found that his application was rejected for one of the more unusual reasons - he was offically listed as 'dead'.

Following some investigations it was discovered that his uncle had bribed a government official to register him as dead, so that he would get the ownership of Bihari's ancestral land at Khalilabad, which measured less than an acre. Unsurprisingly incensed at his status, Bihari began the difficult process of undoing the error, facing a bureaucracy known for inefficiencies and corruption.

Taking the additional name Mritak (deceased) Bihari also discoverd that there was a number of other individuals in the same situation. Forming the Uttar Pradesh Mritak Sangh (Uttar Pradesh Association of Dead People), they began to campaign for legal recognition that they were, in fact, alive. By 2004 the association had over 20,000 members throughout India, and had succeeded in having four members legally defined as alive - including Bihari who, after standing for election against the Prime Minister of India, Rajiv Gandhi, in 1989, was acknowledged as being alive in 1994. In 2003, Bihari was awarded the Ig Nobel Peace Award.

Also following the political path was Santosh Kumar Singh who had been declared dead for nine years before deciding to run for President. After moving to Mumbai, he fell in love and married a woman from a dalit (lower caste) family. Incensed relatives - the family was thakur (upper caste) - decided to teach Singh a lesson; they socially outcast them, then had him declared missing, and shortly afterwards, dead. Unsurprisingly, the relatives acquired his land and property. Would you be surprised that this also happened in Uttar Pradesh?

(image from Gulf News)

For gamers and other fiction writers whose setting involves the walking dead similar issues can arise, especially with those undead with effective cognition. It is perhaps unsurprising that vampires and liches are so powerful - if they were not their land and property would be seized by opportunistic relatives. But what if they were in an advanced industrialised democracy? Could a vampire stand up to a SWAT team? Or would they be driven from their crumbling gothic mansion?

Under such circumstances it is probable that they might need to begin a political campaign for legal rights and recognition. Rather like the unfortunate individuals in India who are among "the living dead".

See:

"Azamgarh Journal; Back to Life in India, Without Reincarnation"

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/24/world/azamgarh-journal-back-to-life-in-india-without-reincarnation.html

"Plight of the Living Dead"

http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2054133,00.html

“'Dead' man in India must prove he is alive”

http://gulfnews.com/news/asia/india/dead-man-in-india-must-prove-he-is-alive-1.1048301

UNDEAD RPG REVIEWS

by Lev Lafayette

Vampire : The Masquerade

Physical Product and Preface

It is possibly the single most influential representation of undead in the history of roleplaying games and arguably the second most important roleplaying game in existence, after Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. Having already produced a softcover first edition (which generated sufficient playtester feedback), the hardbacked second edition of Vampire : The Masquerade is an extremely well-produced book, tightly bound with semi-gloss paper. The presentation is extremely good as well. Pages are given an appropriate border with the right amount of white space, each page is marked with the chapter, title and page number, headings and sub-headings are clear. It is mostly presented in a serif font with two-column justification with a four page index, but an woefully inadequate table of contents that even lacks page number references.

Artwork from a book that notes a chuckle-worthy trademark of "Gothic-Punk" is to a particular style, and it does not fail to impress. Both the simple but evocative red rose on the cover by Mark Pace and Chris McDonough and the various black-and-white internal art are of a high quality, showing both technical acumen and a good sense of the representational style, especially those pieces by Tim Bradstreet. Despite several different internal artists with different techniques the overall effect does not clash, although a fair criticism is that the art is rarely contextual except when absolutely necessary, such as with sample NPCs or Clans.

The organisation of the text and writing is not entirely to my taste. The book is broken up into three "books" each with three chapters. Following a thirteen page Preface, which provides The first is "Background" material describing the setting and style of the game is fluffy detail, taking up over fifty pages. The next set of chapters, "Becoming, also weighs in at around fifty pages and covers matters of core rules, character generation, and roleplaying advice. The third set of chapters, "Permutations", at over one hundred pages, includes character traits, character development and rule elaborations, and dramatic resolution. In addition to this there is a handy twenty-five page appendix which includes some handy generic NPCs and a introductory setting and scenario. The writing style throughout is mixed; it does a fair job at expressing the appropriate style for the setting, but does so in a manner that lacks economy. Of note is the use of literary and popular culture references to illustrate a section.

The Preface really covers the core setting information; this is a book about being a particular type of monster, an ageless vampire, a member of a community that makes a great deal of effort to remain anonymous. These are not entirely the cinematic sort – they can tolerate crosses, they have a reflection in mirrors, but they do burn in sunlight. They have ghouls, mortals under their sway who have drunk from the kindred but have not been converted. Most important however is “the hunger”, the endless desire for blood and the incredible ecstasy that it brings.

Background

The first chapter, with the title “Introduction”, covers a lengthy introduction to roleplaying with an emphasis on the storytelling aspect, and again references to the thematic considerations. It is a fairly good introduction, but overly long. Effectively the entire chapters could have been reduced to a couple of pages without losing a sense of its importance.

The second chapter, “Setting”, is what it says on the tin. The style is expressed as “Gothic-Punk”, a world like our own but that is far grimmer – much of the happiness and levity has been turned off. Of particular note are the social distinctions within vampire society and the role of a local prince, or elder vampire, that has at least nominal control over an area. Vampire society has more than its fair share of intrigue, and “the Traditions” – the most important being the masquerade (do not reveal the existence of vampires), the domain (the prince rules), the progeny (do not sire vampires without the permission of an Elder), and so forth. The traditions are enforced by the largest vampire sect, the Camarilla. Smaller sects include the rebellious Sabbat and the distant Inoccu. Another important features in the vampire setting are the bloodlines, which in a weird sort of way are sort of character class and culture (e.g,. the Brujah are rebels, the Malkavian are the insightful crazies, Toreador are bohemian artistes, Ventrue are social elites and so forth). Vampires have their share of enemies and concerns (witch hunters, government, inquisition, etc). The chapter concludes with a few pages of lexicon.

The last chapter of the first book deals with “storytelling”, which is a lengthy description and advice for gamemasters (or “storytellers” in this system). It is mainly various tools of the trade, to provide matters of pacing and intervention. The advice is sound, but rather like the first chapter, far too verbose and something that could, and should have, been completed in less pages.

Becoming

By page 75 and the fourth chapter, we're finally introduced to some rules. This starts with timescales (turn, scene, chapter, chronicle). The core mechanic is based on a d10 dice pool of typically the Trait and Ability (e.g., Perception plus Alertness) against a difficulty target number, with degrees of success based on how many dice in the pool beat the target difficulty. Each die result of a '1' cancels a success, and if more '1's than successes are rolled a botch results. Whilst at first glance all this sounds fine, but more careful investigation reveals some unfortunate quirks – such as the fact that the greater the dice pool the greater the botch chance. Actions are resolved as either simple, extended, resisted, and resisted and extended. Basic options for teamwork are also provided by combining results.

The following chapter provides character creation (yes, finally). It's effectively point-buy system starting with character concept, including selection of clan, nature and demeanor (optional). A distribution of attribute points is the second step, distributed among Physical (Strength, Dexterity, Stamina), Mental (Charisma, Manipulation, Appearance), and Social (Perception, Intelligence, Wits) attributes. The same is then applied to Abilities (Talents, Skills, Knowledges), then Advantages (special power Disciplines, Backgrounds, Virtues), base scores for Willpower, Humanity, and Blood Pool, and then a distribution of free points. Of particular note in these components is the incorporation of game-setting themes (willpower, humanity, and blood pool) into the game system, and the sense of balance in a guided point-buy system.

The sixth chapter is entitled “Chronicle” and it's a Storyteller advice chapter. Whereas the previous one (chapter three) was about the art of telling a story, this one is about the art of setting up scenarios and narratives, using literary elements such as motif, setting, characters, antagonists, and scheme (i.e., planning the narrative direction). A variety of

conflict and narrative elements are provided, along with story archtypes. Again, the advice is sound, but the organisation a little sporadic and the writing is a bit fluffy.

Permutations

The third books starts of with a chapter on “Traits” beginning with specialities for high abilities allowing an additional potential die when appropriate – why it was mentioned in the original rules section is perplexing. The clans are elaborated in detail, in terms of their history and attitude, appearance, organisational structure, and approach towards others. In actual character creation the jumping between this section and the fifth chapter is common, as it moves on to elaborate the meanings of various attributes, abilities, disciplines, backgrounds, and so forth. This is a utterly solid, rules-heavy chapter whose content could have been better distributed throughout appropriate sections of the book.

The eighth chapter, “Systems” covers the rules for character improvement (experience points), which are heavily based on roleplaying and heroism at the end of each chapter, and with additional points at the end of each story. There is also rules for healing for both normal wounds (very rapid) and aggravated wounds (not so much), typically those acquired from sunlight, undead attacks and so forth. A variety of sources of injury and their ratings are provided, and the resultant humanity-based torpor for the equivalent of death. Mental states are also described in this chapter with vampires being surprisingly sensitive beings and subject to frenzy through provocation. Rules are also provide for courage in the presence of fire, derangements, and creating blood bonds.

The ninth and final chapter, “Drama” again initially seems to follows the preceding Storyteller advice chapters. However in this instance there is a variety of effectively spot rules for applications of physical, social, and mental actions that can be quickly derived. Following this is an step-by-step presentation of the combat system, which follows the time-honoured tradition of initiative, attack, and damage. Appropriately the ranged and melee weapons list is quite modest. Finally the chapter gives an example of play, split between a story and game system explanation.

Conclusion and Assessment

It is not unfair to say that Vampire : The Masquerade changed roleplaying and changed it for the better. Physically it was a rock-solid piece of work; strong and attractive. It had an innovative game system and setting, added new thematic content, and provided a new emphasis from game and simulation to story. It must also be said it attracted a large influx of new gamers to the hobby by making an explicit appeal to the real world gothic-punk subculture, many of whom are still playing RPGs to this day.

The greatest weaknesses is in the organisation of the text and the text's density, especially in some of the Storyteller's chapters – it's not quite rambling but it's hardly up to an average standard. The two things mean that the style and substance ratings are lower than what they should have been, at least at the point level. Overall in aggregate this game is one of the most stylish that has ever been produced. With well above average substance as well, it stands up will to the test of time and undoubtably deserves a place on every RPG collector's shelf.

Style: 1 + .6 (layout) + .9 (art) + .9 (coolness) + .7 (readability) + .9 (product) = 5.2

Substance: 1 + .8 (content) + .4 (text) + .8 (fun) + .7 (workmanship) + .7 (system) = 4.5

GURPS Undead

Introduction and Physical Product

GURPS Undead comes a part of a stock-standard product for the third edition line; softback, a solid glue binding, 128p, and with a good cover piece by Rogerio Vilela. The interior art includes many pieces but the irrepressible Dan Smith, with a scattering of others that supplement rather than detract from the style. The artwork throughout shows talent and creativity (the undead are always fun to draw) and are occasionally contextual - however one does get the sense that these started as "undead filler" and were placed after-the-fact. The format switches between two-column justified to single-colum with side-bars; it is a little disconcerting and probably detracts from the overall presentation.

There are six main chapters to the book, roughly of similar size. It starts with a history of the undead, followed by "dealing with the undead", then various game system mechanics, sample undead beings, sample characters, and finally undead campaigns. There is also a two page table of contents, a solid index, and recommended reading. The writing style is typical for GURPS products - a mixture of formal and informal, the occasional joke and semi-random use italics. It's not really to my personal taste, but it is not a disaster by any stretch of the imagination.

Facts, Theories, and Mechanics

The first two chapters can basically be described as 'facts and theories', with one chapter on each. The factual part is a historical and cultural overview of the undead, It starts of on a few tangential matters (funeral rites, eschatology) before delving into various cultural beliefs, covering in a rather sweeping manner the classical world, "eastern" beliefs, medieval approaches, the pre-Columbian Americas, and finally modern and cinematic approaches. Surprisingly included in its own section is various "trappings" of the undead; mummification, tombs, grave robbing, and so forth - even though these are very much culturally specific.

This approach continues in the second chapter. It starts with undead origins, giving an scatter-gun overview of cultural and fictional approaches, with a split between "the restless" (e.g., ghosts), "the willful" (e.g., vampires, liches), and "the enslaved (e.g., zombies). The same approach is taken to describe what their strengths and weaknesses are, and how does one put the damn things down.

The third chapter, "The Mechanics of Reanimation" is various theories of how the undead operate. That is, how do they come into being, what form do they take. The first section is essentially how to build your own undead by starting with a broad form-based template and adding in strengths and weaknesses after that. It is not, one must emphasise, as crunchy as a "GURPS Vehicles" for the undead, but it's sort of in the same principle – unlike that book there is more attention to providing examples of actual undead rather than just how to build them!

Mechanics, Characters, Campaigns

The fourth chapter is an application of the template system to some sample undead and sample characters. The major types receive quite a lot of detail; there's two pages of game statistics and description for the ghost, lich, shade, shadow, spectre, wight, wraith, zombie and a page-and-a-half for a mummy, revenant, skeleton, and vampire. Sometimes these are culturally clumped, so that the variety of culturally different vampires are given some extra advantages and disadvantages to the standard form - although I cannot help but be disappointed that my personal favourite, the Penanggalan, missed the cut. Various other, more unusual, forms of undead (undead animals, undead plants, undead microbes), receive significantly briefer descriptions.

Character notes (both PC and NPC) are provided in the following chapter. There are standard templates for living characters which are undead related (e.g., priests, grave-robbers, necromancers, hunters, etc), followed by various templates for undead characters (e.g., evil overlords, guardians, righter of wrongs), with suggested undead types. Obviously the "brainless" undead aren't a major feature. Also very much worthy of note are various sidebar notes which add to the various advantages, disadvantages, and skills from GURPS Compendium I, specifically for undead settings. To say the least, these are a very useful addition for clarification and elaborations.

The final chapter, campaigns, starts with the thoroughly sensible observation that the undead when present, often take a prominent role and are tied to the notion of horror. After all, they are not subtle! Campaign issues include the origins of the undead, types, power level, and interactions. GMs have to concern themselves with their quantity, location, various stories generated about them, the undead as foes (and occasional allies), and finally a few notes the use of the undead with other GURPS supplements. Again, the sidebars are very useful, discussing campaigns in a somewhat literary model including genre, mode (i.e., style), background (i.e., setting), sample campaigns, and historical motifs. Rather pleasingly, concluding with "zombies and chainsaws".

Overall

Physically attractive, a solid presentation, and well organised on a chapter level, the weaknesses in terms of style is the inability of the game to generate a sufficient sense of undead horror, and a somewhat confusing approach between contextual approaches in some chapters and the universalistic approaches in others. In terms of content, the text is a little on the verbose side, although it does cover a lot of ground, especially in terms of rules elaborations. The book is both useful in the sense of being immediately useful on the gaming table, and useful for the developing background material. Whilst it lacks panache, it is a solid product and will be helpful for GURPS undead campaigns - it does what it says on the tin.

Style: 1 + .4 (layout) + .7 (art) + .4 (coolness) + .5 (readability) + .7 (product) = 3.7

Substance: 1 + .7 (content) + .5 (text) + .6 (fun) + .6 (workmanship) + .7 (system) = 4.1

ALL FLESH MUST BE EATEN

Introduction and Product

The first edition of All Flesh Must Be Eaten (AFMBE) is perhaps the most well-known roleplaying contemporary implementation of survival roleplaying game settings, perhaps mainly because of its main antagonist component; zombies. Despite some claims to the contrary, it seems that popular culture has not tired of the zombie apocalypse setting, which really kicked off with 28 Days Later in 2002 and The Walking Dead comic series in 2003. In any case, AFMBE has been a hit and because RPGs are awesome and cutting edge, was published in 1999 before the rest of the world caught up. Two of its fiction supplements (Prometheus Unwound and The Book of All Flesh) have won Origins awards.

AFMBE comes in a 232 page B5 sized hardback with good stitching. The cover art is, unsurprisingly, a bunch of rampaging zombies of average technique. Interior greyscale art is also of the same quality but almost invariably as filler art rather than being contextually bound (the sample characters are an obvious exception). Text is provided in two-columns, justified, with a serif font with boxed elements. There is little waste in white-space yet page numbers and chapter titles are also mostly clear. The table of contents is minimal, but there is a four page index. The book is written in a style that is informal without become chatty, and provides information in a manner that is lucid and fairly precise.

There are six chapters to the book and an appendix (character sheet, glossary, skill list, source material). The first chapter is setting information, 'The Dead Rise' which contains a fiction introduction and a description of what roleplaying games are about and what AFMBE is about, along with elements like dice notation etc. The second chapter, 'Survivors', is character generation, skills, and pregenerated archetypes. The third, 'Shambling 101', is the game system, including combat because there is plenty of that in a game like this. The fourth, 'Implements of Destruction', is the various personal possessions that one may find handy in the zombie apocalypse setting. The fifth, 'Anatomy of a Zombie' discusses the various ways that zombies have come into being in a setting and the final chapter, 'Worlds in Hell', provides several fleshed out examples of zombie settings.

Character Generation

Character generation is based on selecting a character type, determining attributes, qualities and drawbacks, skills, metaphysics, and possessions. Several pre-generated archetypes are provided for instant play. It's a point-buy system with Character Type determining the general level of competence; Norms are average types who have just that little bit of experience and grit that's allowed them to survive the zombie apocalypse., Survivors are the truly tough characters who make up the heroic protagonists of the genre., and the Inspired are those who have a touch of supernatural ability but are typically not as tough as Survivors. Character attributes are Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Perception, and Willpower with a typical range of 1-5. There are also secondary, derived, attributes for Life Points, Endurance Points, Essence Pool, and Speed. With the exception of Speed these are all notably resource characteristics which can change in play. There are some excessive break points in the Strength chart and some clunky rule twists for especially low stats to ensure that they fit in the game system, but as a whole it's fairly workable.

Qualities and drawbacks are just what one would expect that they mean, and are left with a fairly coarse definitions and a typical range of 1-3 points, positive and negative. One of the more unusual values is the 3-point quality for Artistic Talent, which also adds to a character's essence pool. There is a section on specifically supernatural benefits (e.g., Accursed, Inspiration) some of which are quite expensive and powerful. In addition to these there are skills, normally rated from 1 to 5 (at the same cost in character points in generation) but with a potential higher levels (with a graduated breakpoint at 5 in costs). Also costing a further investment are "special skills" which have an apparent intrinsic difficulty in learning (e.g., martial arts, medicine). In addition there are Skill Types, representing requisite specialisations that must be taken (e.g., Guns - Handguns) and optional Skill Specialties which provide a +2 bonus when relevant (e.g., History - Early Middle Ages), the latter of which may be taken at extra cost. There are just over sixty base skills, typically described in a paragraph or two, with occasional system use information. In addition to this, there are several metaphysical powers (Healing, Holy Fire, Blinding, Blessing) for those who run supernatural stories; understandably these do better on the system information.

For those in a hurry there are twelve archetypical characters of varying powers are provided; Athlete, Biker, Cheerleader, Detective, Goth Chick, Hacker, Police Officer, Priest, Reporter, Scientist, Soldier, and Video Store Clerk. They're fully developed characters with an often amusing personality background. These are also obviously all modern setting characters, which is a little unfortunate as one of the strengths of the basic narrative is the variety of historical settings it can be used for. I also grimaced a bit at the proposed female roles (Cheerleader, Goth Chick, Reporter); the Cheerleader really is an idiot (suitable for zombie comedy only) and the Reporter is depicted as self-centred and still wearing heels, which fortunately doesn't affect her Speed. The Goth however has the Inspired power to control the zombies; so if you're female in the zombie apocalypse, you'd better be the weirdo. All this is easily enough to change of course - the game system doesn't differentiate between male and female - but cringeworthy nonetheless.

System

The game system, covered in the 'Shambling 101' chapter, allows for two main resolution modes; a random (dice or card) based system, or a straight comparison of values against target numbers, which is termed "story-driven roleplaying". The random method is simply a d10 roll plus appropriate attributes and skills, modified, and if the total is 9 or more, the action succeeds (on average, roughly equal to a 'challenge' target number in the story-driven method). If the action does not have an appropriate skill, the attribute doubles. In addition, in the random method, die-rolls are open-ended with raw results 1 and 10, with additional rolls at -5 and +5 respectively and the penalty or bonus added as appropriate if it results in a negative or above 10, or, as a simpler option an additional d6-1. An outcome table gives a description of six-plus degrees of success, but with no equivalent for failures. In addition there is no equivalent for the diceless method either, although that should have been trivial to include.

One of the great stylistic elements of zombie films is people freaking out with regular and close encounters with the walking dead and the use of firearms to prevent being zombie food. Fear tests are used for the former, with a Difficult Willpower test for most charaters, and a Simple Willpower test for Inspired characters, with modifiers depending on gore and hideousness. A failed test results on with a d10 roll on the Fear Table, with a Willpower reducing effects, but with the hideousness and gore modifiers adding to it. Characters can lose Essence as a result of such encounters, and if reduced below zero they're pretty much useless or crazy.

Combat is carried out in turns of roughly one to five seconds. Turn sequence is declaration of intents, initiative (determined by the GM, or d10+Dex), actions, and damage resolution. Multiple actions are at -2 per action, including dodge. There are various spot rules for targetted shots, multiple shots, corrosives, etc. Damage is meted out in Life Points (or Dead Point, if it's a zombie), with armor reducing damage by a random amount. Weapons inflict damage multiplied by the Strength of the attacker, for melee, or by a number modified by range for ranged weapons.

There are graduated effects at seriously wounded (five or less) and unconscious (zero or less), or at death's door (negative ten). Obviously there are scaling problems with such absolute values, which may be of concern if your GM is inspired by the ideas of zombie elephants or zombie mice. There is also a short foray into vehicle and air combat rules, because running over zombies or straffing them is par for the course. The Life Point and damage range is quite high, which does suit the genre of gradually grinding down the protagonists. Overall, there's some likeable features in the combat system, but in actual play it lacks variety.

Throughout the system, random die roll are also provided with bracketed values for the diceless version of system resolution. All of them, however, make an "off by one" error per die). For example, a .357 handgun does d8*4 damage in the random method or 16 (4*4) in the diceless method. This is incorrect of course, as indices on a die start at one, not zero. The diceless method should provide, for example, 18 (4.5*2). Not a big deal? Well, when that Walker takes you out with 2 Dead Points left, just remember your grade school statistics.

Equipment, Zombies and their Worlds

Taking up about a half of the book are the three chapters for equipment, building zombies and campaign worlds. They are necessary supplementary material and as such can be described in some brevity. The equipment chapter has a strong bias towards modern settings, but does provide a very good range of items in the zombie apocalypse barter economy. Items are usually given a couple of sentences of description, an encumbrance value, a comparative cost, and a rarity rating. The equipment is broken up into electronics, medical, scientific, surveillance, survival, and miscellaneous, before breaking into everyone's favourite of melee, ranged wepons, and armour. There's also a notable selection of vehicles, from a bicycle to a Huey helicopter.

The Anatomy of a Zombie chapter is a relatively short selection of various options that a Zombie Master can add to their campaign world and scenarios. After all, there is good variety in the film and literature, and for a game there must be some means of evaluating the relative powers. Some require a head-shot to kill (classic), others are disturbingly fast, or worryingly strong, or with with the dangerous requirement to eat the brains of the living with alarming regularity. All these things make can zombie more powerful than a baseline version and as a result they 'cost' more points. For those who want every more colour and glitter to their game, there's a small selection of fantastic powers as well, including such things as x-ray vision etc.

The final chapter provides eleven zombie world settings, with a background history, specialised zombies, and a few tantalising potential story trajectories. These are all quite delightful to get the creative juices moving; one chuckles with glee at the appearance of the zombie cow in 'Rise of the Walking Dead', reaches for J.G. Ballard in the all-too-alive foliage in 'Sacred Soil', and prepares for alternate medieval history in 'Dead at 1000' or a weird war II 'Mein Zombie'. They are all excellent game-worlds, but surprisingly without a single fully-fleshed out (pun intended) scenario.

Overall

Physically it is a solid piece of work, presentable, quite readable, and reasonably well organised. AFMBE really picked an excellent time for their initial release and the authors clearly understood the style and thematic content of the genre that they picked, and they developed the main focus of the game system to suit that genre with notable acumen. The game system itself is actually fairly mainstream, (d10+stat+skill, hit target number, open-ended), but has a few unnecessary rough edges which can and do come up as issues and exploits in actual play.

Style: 1 + .7 (layout) + .6 (art) + .8 (coolness) + .7 (readability) + .7 (product) = 4.5

Substance: 1 + .7 (content) + .7 (text) + .6 (fun) + .4 (workmanship) + .7 (system) = 4.5

LIBRIS MORTIS: D&D 3.x

Introduction and Product

As a 192 gloss page hardback Libris Mortis is very well-bound, with a colourful cover piece of a graveyard summoning. The contextual internal art, of colour and monochrome, is of highly variable quality although shows some notable aptitude in creativity; the bored lich is a particularly nice piece as an example. The book comes with a one page table of contents, but no index. The content is in two colum justified serif text with good use of white-space and clearly marked chapter title and page numbers in the margins. As with all books in the edition, the use of black-on-yellow chapter pages is annoyingly difficult to read. The writing also leaves a little to be desired; it is far too vebose, often chatty, and there are an unexpected number of minor typographical errors.

The content consists of seven chapters; Introduction and All About Undead (14 pages), Character Options (17 pages), Prestige Classes (16 pages), Spells (13 pages), Equipment (6 pages), New Monsters (51 pages), and Campaigns (57 pages), which are all pretty much what they say on the tin. As can be easily ascertained, this is primarily a book for new undead monsters and undead campaigns, and the review with emphasise those areas as appropriate.

For its own part, the first major chapter starts of by bringing together various definitions of the undead, and provides an excellent variant rule of 'Haunting Presences'. It also deals with the rather ambiguous issues of undead physiology and does so more as a collation rather than bringing the disparate implementations together. There is all too brief discussions on undead psychology, society, and religion although for the latter the 'Evening Glory' deity of undying love is at least interesting. The chapter concludes with various aspects of fighting undead including knowledge checks, tactics, and of course the time-honoured favourite of ability and level drains that the cold hands deal.

Character Options, Prestige Classes, Spells, and Equipment

The 'Character Options' chapter starts off with almost three score of new feats, some of which are inevitably variations on existing abilities, but are otherwise a good selection albeit with some bias toward spellcasters. There are some notes on undead in the party with the usual character classes (associated with some evocative art) and 'monster classes' for ghoul/ghast, mohrg, mummy, vampire spawn, and wight. The latter collection were not nearly as interesting as I hoped and do remind one when the game had 'demihumans' as classes.

The implementation of prestige classes are not something that this reviewer has been particularly enamoured with and the chapter dedicated to such professions is no exception. Simultaneously twee and munchkin, to their credit the seven classes have a good range and come with the usual collection of requirements, skills, and features, along with some rather useful sample characters. The bard-derived dirgesinger is probably the most interesting of the set. Alas, the additional four unded prestige classes are seriously lacking in creativity.

For new spells there is a brief check of undead related spells broken down by class and domain, then almost 60 new magical incantations related to the undead and necromancy, with a handful of others. Most usefully is a clarified and expaned version of Summon Undead and of the set Ghost Form, Necrotic Cyst, and Necrotic Tumor are quite interesting. A few of the spells are apparently reprints and reworkings from the 'Book of Vile Darkness' supplement. Personally, I still carry the torch for when healing spells were considered necromantic spells.