RPG Print News – The One Ring, Troika!, and More

Not everything is new this week. Instead, here is a list of rules, setting, and adventures that work together so any GM can get to kick off an entire campaign. From the Lone-lands of Middle-earth to the science fantasy city of Troika, each of these RPG supplements work well to set up an entire ongoing campaign. Four options are presented: archetypical fantasy, decadent decaying science fantasy, modern body horror, and mutated post-apocalyptic urban sprawl.

Note: RPG Print News covers recent RPG releases and some classics, reprints, and sales available from retailers. It does not cover products that are available directly to customers only through Kickstarter or as print on demand.

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Over Hill and Under Hill Starter Set | The One Ring Core Rules | Tales From the Lone-lands by Free League Publishing

• SYSTEM: unique d6 dice pool with a d12
• PRODUCT TYPE: box set and hardcovers
• RETAIL PRICE: $31.87/$60.75/$46.85
• DESCRIPTION: A GM can kick off an entire campaign set in the Lone-lands of Middle-earth set during the Third Age. Each of these RPG products contain rules, setting details, and plenty of adventures and adventure locals set in the Lone-lands. With the Starter Set there are even back up Player-heroes if one should die in battle. Plus, it includes dice, maps, and standees.

Welcome to Troika Bundle by Melsonia Arts Council

• SYSTEM: uses system from Advanced Fighting Fantasy
• PRODUCT TYPE: six digest sized softcovers and hardcovers
• RETAIL PRICE: $137 (retail $185)
• OTHER RPG NEWS: Troika!: Interview with Daniel Sell
• DESCRIPTION: A core rulebook and five adventure/setting books provides PCs and GMs all the rules required to play, plus a veritable education in running adventures and exploring the strange crystal Spheres of science fantasy. A months long campaign can be run with almost no effort by following the chain of adventures presented here. The PCs arrive in the city of Troika, where they look for a hotel room in the Blancmange & Thistle Hotel (adventure found in Troika!). Once settled, they have three adventure options they can investigate in any order. They can explore an abandoned wizard's warehouse (Whalgravaaks Warehouse), get hired by a plant king to travel the stars and retrieve something precious to him (Fronds of Benevolence) while learning more about the mysterious Wall, and conquer a vertical flesh-dungeon to save the world (Slate & Chalcedony). Somewhere along the way, they get kidnapped by, and need to escape from, a demi-god (The Hand of God). To wrap things up, they can embark on a career as private detectives attempting to solve the case of the missing scarf worms (The Big Squirm).

Liminal Horror Investigators | The Parthenogenesis of Hungry Hollow | Ex Inferis by Space Penguin Ink

• SYSTEM: modern horror hack of Cairn
• PRODUCT TYPE: softcover/hardcover/softcover
• RETAIL PRICE: $13/$40/$15
• OTHER RPG NEWS: Liminal Horror: An Interview with Josh Domanski and Zach Hazard Vaupen
• DESCRIPTION: R-rated body horror, Liminal Horror is a rules-lite modern horror RPG about normal characters who investigate and struggle against terrible and unknowable horrors. Survival is not guaranteed, and those that do survive are often forever changed. Horror is represented mechanically by Stress and Fallout. Fallout is both how characters are changed encountering horrors and how they improve over time (if they survive). The mechanics avoid using mental illness and trauma. Wounds detail the lasting physical effects of injuries. Resonant Artifacts (magic items) also vary wildly. What makes a long campaign of l interesting is how uniquely each horror encountered warps and shapes the PCs. Playing at least two or three adventures will alter the beginning PCs in ways no one at the table can predict. PCs could start with The Parthenogenesis of Hungry Hollow. Something strange is happening in seemingly centered around the upcoming birth of its newest resident. The PCs unravel the horrid truth that lies buzzing just beneath the surface. Includes eight new archetypes for and six investigation kit loadouts (extermination, artillery, heavy duty, reconnaissance, containment, and espionage) which support longer campaigns. The horror is gross, horrifying, and extremely dangerous. Plenty of GM support including a Doom Clock to ratchet up the tension. PCs who survive the town will be changed forever. With a bit of time to reflect and make sense of the changes to mind, body, and soul they are next called to find the Ex Inferis. Seven years ago, the deep-water survey ship Ex Inferis was lost over from the deepest, most remote parts of a lake. Rumors of a demonic ship crewed by Eyeless ghosts begin to spread across the region. The adventure reimagines the sci-fi horror movie Event Horizon (1997) as a modern-day nautical nightmare. Includes a fully-detailed ship to explore along with boatcrawl procedures for navigating a living environment that seeks to separate and isolate the Investigators. The horrors here are just are disturbing with the flesh itself serving as a vector for living evil. PCs who survive yet again will be profoundly changed. And hopefully ready for more horror adventures!

Vaults of Vaarn #1 | Vaults of Vaarn #2 by Antipode Zines

• SYSTEM: sci-fi hack of Knave
• PRODUCT TYPE: softcover zines
• RETAIL PRICE: $10 each
• DESCRIPTION: Vaarn is a vast blue desert where the sun is dying and the wreckage of countless eons litters the parched wastes. Common folk call it the blue ruin and say that the sky-colored sands hide graves buried with lost wonders of ancient humankind. PCs are desecraters of the tech-tombs that lie sunken beneath the azure wastes seeking far-future relics. Vaarn is a place where machine and animal and fungus think to crown themselves equal to man. Vaults of Vaarn #1 includes rules for play and five PC ancestries including the haughty true-kin, mutated cacogen, mechanical synths, feral newbeasts, and fungal mycomorphs. All augmented with twisted mutations, psychic gifts, and cybernetic implants. There are also far-future relics and a bestiary of 28 ferocious science-fantasy monsters. Combine that with Vaults of Vaarn #2 to create a city-based campaign. Gnomon, the city of shaded markets, contains taverns with learned conversation and hookah smoke, glittering mezzanine gardens and parades of masked hierophants, guild halls where cone-hatted clerks ponder their ledgers of debt, and babbling souks where the merchants sell memories for the right price. Of course, the merchants’ smiles do not reach their eyes, the women who wave from passion-house windows have faces brittle as porcelain, and each local calling out brother has an accomplice ready to reach into a newcomer’s pocket. Gnomon, the undreamed-of city, also called the gilded trap. Also includes seven major NPCs who influence the city's politics to use as either allies or antagonists each linked to one of seven major factions. They run from water-hoarding militias and clandestine cannibal cults to sun worshippers and gladiator lawyers. PCs might join them and guidance is provided on playing the factions against each other. There are story hooks and several generator tables for creating merchant cartels, noble houses, taverns, pit fighting arenas, gangs of criminals, and more.

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