When I kicked off my D20 Modern Call of Cthulhu campaign, I needed a training scenario to test the new agents. You might think "Danger Room"-type scenarios are common, but they're much harder to find than you might think. This scenario involves robot tentacles, heat seeking missiles, and lots of danger room madness that was perfect for my new players and helped them get into the groove. It was compatible enough for me to easily convert it to D20, but really I just wanted the training challenges so it worked fine for my campaign.

I wrote an adventure for 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons that was inspired by Shakespeare. It was my chance to finally put my English major to good use! To my surprise, I discovered that there weren't a lot of tiles for a theater -- apparently, your average murder hobo is an uncultured boor -- so this is pretty much it when it comes to battling it out on stage (or in the cheap seats). The design is a little bland but it worked well for the adventure.

Like the Wilderness Paths and Deciduous Forest tiles, this is a rectangular tile set that's much-needed but not nearly as customizable as a result. Since the tiles aren't square, you can't easily mix and match them. But you shouldn't need to, as the ruins are meant to more be one-offs by tile -- that is, you're not likely to build a giant set of ruins with this set. This limits its use somewhat, but it will work fine for most GMs looking to set up a quick random encounter.

Wilderness paths is probably one of the most commonly used tiles you'll need. Most outdoor encounters take place on these kinds of paths. Like the Deciduous Wilderness tiles, they're not square and therefore not easily interchangeable, but that's not a huge problem for me. SkeletonKey Games brings clarity to the battlemap spaces, and I prioritize that over realistic-looking 3D terrain. Easy to print, easy to use, this worked fine for my purposes.

Before I got my hands on a 3D printer, printed tiles were the next best thing -- and in many cases, are still the most economical and convenient. e-Adventure Tiles are some of the best. In my case I needed a snowy forest landscape, so I simply turned off color and increased the contrast to make the tiles white. They're not square though, so they don't easily mesh together as other tiles did. On the other hand, one tile was enough for my purposes. Larger set ups will require considerably more ink and don't fit together as easily.

Our tenth-level heroes include dwarven cleric of life Tobias Ironaxe (my character), halfling ranger beastmaster/druid Lektra Alderleaf (my five-year-old daughter's character), and gnome arcane trickster Elec Alderleaf (my eight-year-old son's character). Having driven off Arauthator from his lair in Oyaviggaton they head straight for the crash site of Skyreach Castle. To their dismay it is not a simple trek!

They wisely chose to go straight to Uldoveld, mead hall of Brunvild the frost giant jarl. They were received by Brunvild with much humor, who found Elec's lie about working for the orcs to be absurdly comedic. When Elec bragged that he had driven off Arauthator -- the same white dragon that had killed Brunvild's brother, Storvirk, the jarl took him much more seriously. Being a sneaky sort, Brunvild gave Elec the option of stealing a remorhaz egg or taking a dream quest. Lektra decided on the dream quest, leaving Elec and Tobias to go after a remorhaz in her lair.

Lektra's dream quest branded her with an ancient giant rune meaning "rebirth" and she was declared the spirit-heir of the long-dead giant warrior Salakko. Meanwhile, Tobias got eaten by a remorhaz while Elec sneak attacked it from behind -- only to discover remorhazes are immune to fire. They eventually defeated it thanks to Tobias' protective spells, with spirit guardians saving the day once more by tearing the remorhaz up from within.

Convinced that these are worthy allies, Brunvild and his frost giants set off. It's not really clear how many frost giants come with Brunvild -- he has "nearly a hundred" at his disposal, not counting his personal retinue of a dozen. If Brunvild even commits 50 giants to the castle, he could easily wipe out the opposing forces. I went with just Brunvild retinue to keep things interesting.

Upon reaching Skyreach Castle the PCs resolved several mysteries. Glahzael really was dead, his soul trapped in the nine lives stealer named Hunger. Rezmir had exploded, destroying the black dragon mask with her and much of Glahzael -- they found Hunger still stuck in Glahzael's claw a hundred feet away. With Hunger in his possession, Tobias restores Sir Isteval and Gog (the marble frog) to life. Alas, the cloud giant Esclarotta has died, but our heroes discover that her soul now pilots Skyreach Castle.

The giants set to work repairing the place, but Brunvild's absence leaves him vulnerable. The current Gru-Nar orc leader is secretly in league with Talis the White, who is determined to reclaim Rezmir's body and the treasure promised to Tiamat. Spying on them the whole time is Sandesyl Morgia, who long since moved her coffin out of the castle and bides her time for the perfect moment to strike.

That moment comes just as the castle is ready to take off. Gru-Nar commits his forces in a wave of 20 orcs to test the castle's defenses. They learn the hard way about Tobias' glyphs of warding, including two dragonwings who attempt to fly up to the tower to engage the heroes. Morgia surprises the PCs by charming Tobias and keeping him from acting. She then tears into the other two PCs, but the combined attacks of Elec and Lektra drive her off. By the time the battle in the tower is over, the second wave of orcs has begun.

The second wave lights the walls on fire with seal blubber and flaming arrows. The three dragonwings and dragonsouls keep the PCs busy, with the dragonwings getting off one devastating attack before falling to spirit guardians, spiritual weapon, and guardian of faith. The dragonsouls fire bolts of acid and are brought down by arrows from Elec and Lektra.

The orcs retreat with no frost giants left but Brunvild himself. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief...until they see the last wave come over the mountains. Over 160 orcs, backed by 16 dragonwings, with Talis the White and Gru-Nar himself astride Arauthator.

Tobias falls to his knees and prays. A storm brews overhead.

Arauthator strafes the tower with his breath weapon, but this time the heroes are ready. Tobias wears a ring of frost resistance and Elec dodges the attack completely. As Brunvild and Sir Isteval wade into the melee with the draongwings and orcs, Talis unleashes her wand of frost on the heroes while Gru-Nar throws handaxes. Arauthator drops Tlias and Gru-Nar off, casting cold spells from a distance while his breath weapon recharges.

Gru-Nar tears into the heroes with glee, headbutting Lektra and nearly knocking her out. Tobias spends all of his time keeping everyone healed. Occupied with the battle in the tower, the acid rain that falls from the skies is largely unnoticed but it is deadly to the orcs on the ground.

Lektra rallies and strikes back at Gru-Nar who knocks her to the ground. The orc leader raises his axe overhead with a roar of triumph -- and is promptly struck by a bolt of lightning. He falls over, dead, his corpse bouncing off the side of the tower.

Talis is luckier. Elec sneak attacks her into unconsciousness but Tobias heals her -- she has important information, and Talis has negotiated in the past.

The storm is too much for Arauthator. Lektra sends arrows into the white dragon, but he is well and truly defeated this time. He disappears into the haze as Skyreach Castle rises triumphantly above the storm. The orcs flee, beset by hailstones and freezing rain.

Tobias gives thanks to Moradin for his grace. Brunvild claims the castle for the giants. Isteval is restored to the Council. Elec and Lektra return some of the treasure to Phandelin (Elec decides 5,000 is appropriate). Tobias tithes much of his share to the church in thanks and Lektra likewise tithes to the Emerald Enclave. Thanks to Talis' information, the PCs know about the whereabouts of the white dragon mask. Skyreach Castle drops them off in the Serpent Hills to pursue Varram the White.

This adventure was a lot of fun to play out, although some of the details that were crucial to the battle seemed to be missing (like how many frost giants participate). The combat felt epic, with hordes of orcs and frost giants battling below while the heroes fought the dragonwings and dragonsouls from their tower. I particularly liked the opportunity to give three villains a second chance at the PCs: Morgia (determined to kill Tobias), Arauthator (unnerved by his defeat and willing to let his allies take the brunt of the conflict), and Talis (desperate to get a leg up on the cultist competition).

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My kids are on a My Little Pony kick, so this adventure perfectly fit the bill. It features a unicorn in need, some evil goblins and wolves, and a quest to save her. With just a few tweaks the unicorn Alethia became Princess Celestia, the spear became an element of harmony, the Darkenwold Woods became the Everfree Forest, the goblins became diamond dogs, the wolves became timber wolves, and with our miniature ponies collection we were off and, uh, trotting. My 3-year-old and 6-year-old were excited to play.

This scenario, like all the adventures in the Hero Kids series, is entirely self-contained. It includes paper miniatures, battle grids and maps, and scales up the adventure depending on how many children will be playing. It even places the monsters on the maps. Each encounter is straightforward, leading to a branching path determined by the children.

Although Hero Kids is theoretically for kids ages 4 through 10, the scenario is decidedly adult. Our kids have to save a wounded unicorn by retrieving a cursed spear from a goblin clan, dipping it in a holy spring, and bringing it back to the unicorn. The encounters include one role-play encounter in which the kids have to prove that they are "worthy" of the sacred spring; one with wolves (if they get lost); and three goblin encounters in which the goblins stage a running battle inside a ruined fortress.

My kids' characters got lost along the way and ended up encountering the timberwolves; once defeated, I had them turn into a dire timberwolf. They eventually found the sacred spring, which is the sole role-playing encounter. Here's the description:

You emerge from the dank and oppressive woods into a tranquil clearing that is dappled with soft sunlight. A mossy rock cliff rises straight up on far side of the clearing. At the bottom of the cliff is a still pool, a thick mist blankets the pool, wafted and stirred by a cool breeze.

I started to read this and then gave up. "Oppressive"? "Dappled"? "Wafted"? I don't mind stretching my kids' vocabulary, but the text (dripping with adjectives for every single noun) is way over my six-year-old's head, and he reads quite well.

This encounter is intentionally left vague -- the game master's job is "to coax from the heroes a statement of their worthiness." This can be a frustrating exercise if the GM doesn't know what that is. I pretty much took whatever my kids were willing to share (in this case, a tentative explanation of why Princess Celestia needs the Elements of Harmony.

The subsequent battles are a fight to the finish to retrieve the object and save the unicorn. Despite the combat challenges, both kids were engaged for the entire adventure and agreed to play more. This might have something to do with the fact that they were playing with the ponies they know from the show (including characters they haven't seen yet), but I like to think that at least some of it was due the structure of the scenario.

Overall, this scenario is a standard dungeon crawl written for kids closer to ten-years-old. Younger kids might not be as excited about the relentless combat and have difficulty with the larger words.

I bought this product because I was looking for battle tiles of an inn. Battlemaps: Floorplans, Inn Vol I outlines an inn called "The Fang." It's broken out into a kitchen, brewery, warehouse, common room, bedroom with toilet, master bedroom, and "genius room." There are also black-and-white versions of all of these rooms.

0one Games' products tend to have a bit of a CGI-look to them, in that they're cleanly rendered but semi-realistically shadowed. It's a slightly isometric rather than a direct top-down view, so some detail is visible -- barrels aren't just circles, you can see the shelves on a bookcase, etc. This gives a little bit of a fisheye lens to the map, which works well in providing enough detail for the players to distinguish between a large plate, a bowl, and a barrel (all of which look like different colored circles from above).

It's called "The Fang" because of how it protrudes from the mountains, but although there is a front and side elevation map as well as how all the rooms hang together, there is no visual of this fang-like architecture. That's a shame, because by simply looking at the maps it doesn't make any sense as to why the place is called "The Fang." "The Axe" or "The Edge" might be more appropriate.

The brewery features a steampunk-looking distillery and a table with a tapped barrel and several mugs. The floor features 1 inch-square (or 5-foot square) tile that consists of two sets of different-colored triangles meeting in the center. These tiles are the unifying theme throughout the set.

The common room (two pages) has lots of detail, with weapons hanging from the walls and an active fireplace. There's a theme of axes on the carpets, which biases the set a bit. Maybe it's owned by dwarves, maybe by Vikings, but if you weren't planning on having axes be central to the inn you're out of luck. The kitchen is straightforward, but the warehouse is really the basement, also two pages.

The second floor has an axe-head design built right into the tiles. The single bedroom with toilet features two beds per room and a very fancy washroom. The master bedroom steps going up (not sure to where) and a double axe laying across a chair. This isn't really a master bedroom so much as it's a dwarf's bedroom, probably the owner, which means it's not particularly useful for scenarios.

Finally, there's the "genius' room," which features some kind of mechanical contraption, lots of papers, and little else.

If you're looking for an inn run by a dwarf, you can't beat this map collection. Because this set makes some very specific commitments to a style of play, game masters looking for a generic inn should look elsewhere.

The Lost Village is the second adventure I played with my son using the Heroes of Hesiod rules. This time he decided to bring three adventurers along: a bomb-throwing tinkerer, a paladin, and a druid. The adventure revolves around solving the mystery around the disappearance of an entire village. The adventure begins with a choice as to how to travel to the town, by water (an action-oriented challenge) or by land (combat). My son chose water, skipping the bandit combat encounter.

Once at the village, the next step is to find tracks – this is the answer to most of the scenario, as there aren’t really any clues to find beyond this. The meat of the adventure takes place within a cave, which is secretly led by a fringe cult of lizardfolk. My son’s adventurers avoided the pit trap and took out the guards, making their way to a prison cell. There, they had the opportunity to sneak past more guards, but the adventurers failed and ended up alerting them while trying to sneak over to the keys. After defeating the second set of guards, they freed the humans and discovered a lizardfolk in a separate cell who didn't share the same beliefs of the evil lizardfolk. Finally, a role-playing opportunity!

My son released the lizardfolk, whom I named Calactyte after my brother’s lizardfolk character, and Calactyte promised to lead the human prisoners to freedom. The prisoners were not okay with this, so I left it to my son to convince them that Calactyte was a good guy. After some role-playing he convinced them and they left, leaving the adventurers to deal with the lizardfolk lead cultist.

This final battle was epic, as the shaman, a lizardfolk warrior, and two archers ambushed the party. Once again they were barely victorious, with two of the adventurers down by the end. Calactyte returned at the last minute to assist and promised to lead the restore peace to the lizardfolk clan.

Overall, this adventure was a lot of fun, featuring both an interesting role-playing dilemma for the kids as well as thrilling combat.

My son has been playing some variant of Dungeons & Dragons since he was three (in other words, since he could roll the dice), but when I discovered the simple rules system for Heroes of Hesiod I decided he was ready to move on to something approximating an actual system. But I needed scenarios, and even though I’m not using the Hero Kids system, the scenarios are an excellent example of adventure design done right. The first scenario we tried was Curse of the Shadow Walkers, with a sorcerer named Sir John and his female fighter companion and sister named, oddly enough, Sis. My son controlled both characters, although he was nominally controlling Sis for his sister.

But before we dive into the scenario, a word about how these adventures are structured. Each encounter is clearly separated out, there’s box text to read, maps accompany every encounter, as well as a set of paper miniatures. We didn’t use the somewhat crudely-sketched maps in favor of my adventure tiles from the Dungeons & Dragons miniatures sets. And of course I replaced the paper miniatures with plastic ones. But any parent could easily use this adventure right out of the virtual box.

Even better, each encounter is scalable by the number of adventurers, from a solo game up to four. With the exception of dice and a character, this is everything a game master could possibly need to run an adventure. EVERY adventure should be like this.

That said, I grade scenarios for kids by their ability for the players to not just hack-and-slash their way to success. Unfortunately Curse of the Shadow Walkers falls a little short. The first scenario involves rescuing a girl from an out-of-control wagon, but it’s impaired by language that’s well above most kid’s reading level and features significant typos.

The order of events is straightforward: kids rescue girl, meet her family and rescue them from wolves (combat), meet with a wise-woman who tells them how to cure a werewolf, fight spiders to retrieve wolfsbane (combat), then fight a werewolf (combat) and force wolfsbane down his throat. The only role-playing scene of substance is discussing the cure with the wise-woman – she has no name, and neither doe the two farmers/parents of the girl the adventurers rescued. The discussion doesn’t really have anything but an obvious goal – ask about the cure – and there’s no alternatives provided if they don’t do the right thing. In other words, there’s really not a whole lot of role-playing to be had in this role-playing scenario.

There’s also no alternatives to fighting the monsters. The wolves, spiders, and werewolf aren’t interested in negotiating, so there’s really not a lot of decision-making on behalf of the characters. The players' job is to knock monsters unconscious and that’s pretty much it.

That said, this is a perfectly good scenario for older kids who are looking to beat things up. The giant spiders hatch from eggs, which makes combat interesting, and of course the wolves are a persistent threat due to their numbers.

My son made it through the scenario just fine, with Sir John taking out the wolves with a fireball while Sis took on the werewolf in hand-to-hand combat. In the end, Sis was knocked unconscious and Sir John just barely managed to defeat the werewolf, curing him of his curse.

The inaugural March issue of Open Gaming Monthly, presented by D20 PFSRD, has been released by Fat Goblin Games. Editor in chief Rick Hershey explained:

Earlier this year, I discussed with John L. Reyst about launching a d20pfsrd.com magazine to help support Open Gaming and the many publishers that work hard bringing fans 3rd party content. After many conversations and random brainstorming emails, we both had a solid idea of the type of magazine we wanted to produce. From there, it was up to me (with the help of Fat Goblin Games co-owner, Jason Stoffa) to start figuring out how we were going to actually pull this off. This first issue has truly been a labour of love – of art, good writing and publishing – by the team at Fat Goblin Games and all the contributors from d20pfsrd.com, the many publishers that donated time and content, the artists and freelancers who sent us material, and the fans who supported the magazine’s announcement on the gaming scene. I cannot say “thank you” enough for everyone’s encouragement and enthusiasm.

Open Gaming Monthly builds on the publications that have gone before, dividing its content into Features (new locations, races, and an interview with an industry insider), Characters (new equipment, spells, and archetypes), Design & DMing (new monsters, locations, and adventures), and Columns (Open Gaming Spotlight; The Good, the Bad, the Henchmen; and BadWrongFun).

The cover by artist McLean Kendree is a gorgeous blue-tinted battle between a flaming-haired demonic wolf-like humanoid and a lot of warriors in an arctic landscape. It's clear the warriors are losing the fight. There's a full-page spread of the picture on pages 4 and 5, but unfortunately it's cut up by the PDF into two separate pages, meaning you can't really get a good look at it.

After a roundup of news and events in the RPG and gaming geek industry, Nicole Lindross provides a recipe for Spinach Lasagna Rolls titled "Adventures in Dinner." It's written like a monster encounter, which is pretty funny, and it looks yummy too. Of course, Lindross is a highly accomplished game designer and her bio is surprisingly modest about her accomplishments. I'm not sure I would have put the recipe as the first feature in the magazine, but it's a welcome and different addition to the usual gaming fare.

A minor oversight: There's mention of Wolfgang Baur concluding Kobold Quarterly on page 11, but no recognition that he will be continuing a column dedicated to Pathfinder open content in Gygax Magazine.

Page 12 features an in-depth interview by Christina Stiles with the mastermind behind D20PFSRD.com, John Reyst. Throughout the magazine are Random Treasures, little blue boxes of magic items to reward readers randomly browsing through the magazine. They're not necessarily magical, but colorful additions to a campaign's random treasure tables.

Worlcraft features the land of Grigoria, complete with maps, deities, cities, and unique races. The picture of the new monster, the Gogling, is frightening, even if the name makes it sound cute. Arctic Arsenal is all about mundane and magical equipment for surviving in cold weather climates – appropriate, given the amount of snow dumped outside as I write this. Spring returns with the Briarborn, a plant race perfect for outdoor classes. Then we're back to winter again with cold weather monsters: the Frost Hag, the undead Glacial Gaunt, and will-o'-wisp variant Ice Wisp.

The discussion of existing open game content picks up with a discussion of intelligent folding boats. Author Landon Bellavia gets a second chance to improve upon his creations by fleshing out the details. The arctic creeps back in again with Winter Wonderland, a list of cold spells by Alex Riggs. That winter theme continues in Drake's Hollow, a frost-themed setting set in a caldera.

Actress and artist Jennifer Page is interviewed, accompanied by several large full color photos. This is followed by the NPC section of Aertar Frostfel the dwarf, his evil sister Ultana, and hound archon Maerlon. There's a short article of Nordic deities and accompanying archetypes for clerics, followed by spells to defeat frozen foes (with fire of course!). The mini-adventure, Ke'Aril's Hunt, is a non-arctic themed scenario for four player characters of 5th to 6th level. Knowledge Check focuses on skill challenges, followed by Nick Esposito's house rules in BadWrongFun. The magazine concludes with Tyler Beck, who explains how to optimize the Winter Witch prestige class, and PJ Grant, who discusses optimizing the Advanced Race Guide.

Overall this is a very impressive magazine for $2.99, with enough content drawn from Open Game sources to make it feel fresh, a professional layout, and beautiful artwork. It's a great start for a publication that's just getting started; here's hoping they can keep up this level of quality for future issues.

Continuing my quest to find a flooded city for my Shackled City campaign's climactic chapter ending battle against Cauldron's flood in Flood Season, I've given up on looking for an actual flood for my virtual tabletop and decided to settle for a city ruins map. I'll just layer over some blue or green water tint on Roll20.

This map is ostensibly of a modern city, ranging from some ruined warehouses, to a completely flattened building, to a military-style warehouse complete with toxic waste, barrels, and a fallen telephone pole. With the exception of the aforementioned pole and an abandoned forklift, you could easily use this for a fantasy city as well. Given that the modern elements are on the right third of the map, it's still quite usable in other contexts.

The product comes in both virtual table top format, 1-inch square grids, and hex grids. It's an excellent abandoned set for a showdown with mutants, gangs, or zombies. And, with an overlay of a watery tint, it will be perfect for battling floods in Cauldron.

I'm very fond of Scrying Eye Games for their modern tile sets, which are in short supply. They also aren't afraid to try esoteric environments like a flooded sewer or a a coolant system on a spaceship. That said, Scrying Eye Games products are specifically meant to be print products -- or in other words, you buy them on heavy card stock like I did (at Gen Con one year I bought every modern set they had).

Unfortunately, this does not translate directly over to PDf. There are a lot of dotted black and white lines, as you can see from the cover. This means that these maps cannot simply be used as is -- you need to cut them up. That's fine if your plan is to use these tiles on a physical tabletop, but not all that helpful if you plan to use it on a virtual tabletop like Roll20.

The water is suitably realistic, with interesting shadows and ripples, but the walls consist almost entirely of big Xs with yellow and black hazard markings along the corners. This almost exclusively skews the set toward a futuristic setting or a modern water treatment plant. There's also some shoreline content, which I would have preferred to see more of.

The real purpose of this set is a sci-fi water treatment plant, and if that's what you're looking for this set will be perfect. But as is, they're not suitable for sewers. The water's a little too clear, the text a little too crisp.

Halloween Horror: The Elder Pumpkin

This collection begins with a modern scenario, Eyes That Should Not See by Jim Lynch. When someone begins gouging out the eyes of victims and using trepanation to control them, it's up to the investigators to discover the Great Old One behind it all. Unfortunately, the Great Old One's name (SPOILERS YOU SHOULD NOT SEE) is F'Ncec, which on paper looks like it might be pronounced "effin-kek." Remember authors, always have a reader unfamiliar with your scenario read your Mythos beasts out loud!

F'Ncec has curiously human-like emotions – he is "deeply jealous of Cthulhu's dreams and influence." Really? Great Old Ones get jealous of each other now? What ensues is an escalating series of attacks over Cthulhu's artifacts by F'Ncec's trepanned minions. The descriptions are sparse, the plot is more of an outline, and all around this scenario feels rushed. Still, it has potential, and could easily be plugged into Delta Green's Army of the Third Eye. Three out of five.

For an example of how to write compelling scenes, look no further than Oscar Rios' Halloween in Dunwich. The set up features a ghostly witch, animated scarecrows, hobgoblins, and man-eating cornstalks. The investigators are children who must use the power of folklore and their wits to overcome their great-great-grandmother, which makes their connection to the story all the more compelling. Each character sheet has an interesting background – one even has a ghostly ally that can be summoned in a time of need. The scenario has a time limit and by its nature hedges the investigators in, but that only adds to the spooky Halloween fun. Oscar even provides a variety of options to defeat the witch. This is how you write a scenario! Five out of five.

Terror at Erne Rock by R.J. Christensen also takes places on Halloween in the 1920s, thrusting costumed investigators into a shipwreck that leaves them stranded in a lonely lighthouse. The lighthouse has several dark secrets that begins (TERROR AT SPOILER ROCK) with a seabird attack and concludes with wave after wave of deep ones. This is a straightforward survival horror complete with a few investigator secrets that crop up at inconvenient moments. Four out of five.

The range of scenarios here are above average, elevated chiefly by Oscar's contribution. For a series of Halloween one-shots it's a tasty treat.

When the Vampire role-playing game first debuted, goth culture had a grim and gritty approach to role-playing. Horror was no longer defined by Call of Cthulhu's battle against the unknown and unknowable, but rather the corruption was within vampires, werewolves, wraiths, and every other supernatural creature that is now common fodder for "urban fantasy" authors. These games were struggling to gain a foothold and demanded to be taken seriously. But goth gaming has mellowed over time, led in no small part by Tim Burton, who always brings a playful if twisted approach to horror. And thus we have the ENnie-nominated Spookybeans. As Serena Valentino explains:

The mechanics are simple. The game moderator (GM) rolls Adversity dice, the player rolls his or her Stash dice. Even rolls are Bones, odd rolls are Skulls. Because this is a goth game, Skulls are good, Bones are bad. It also means that so long as you use some sort of even-numbered randomizing tool (coins, spinners, cards, etc.) you can play the game.

If you win a Conflict (die roll between the player and GM you get a point towards your Yo, the happy ending and if you lose a Conflict you get a point towards your Woe, the bad ending. That's right, Spookybeans actually has narrative conclusions for each session. Also, your Woe is defined by another player, not you, which makes for some interesting role-playing interaction amongst players. Thingies are self-defined abilities of your character that can gain the player a mechanical advantage during the game. Thingies can be left undefined to be used during role-play at an opportune moment.

Spookybeans isn't about winning outcomes so much as it is about narrating them. Your character's Thingies can actually be flaws – winning a Conflict means the player gets to narrate how the circumstances affect the character, even if he's having a really bad day.

Additionally, Spookybeans is mechanically geared towards cooperative storytelling. To gain dice for Thingies, players need to convince the other players to contribute dice from their own Stash. There's just one catch: whatever dice are used to help the player go to the GM in the next Conflict roll.

Spookybeans actually reminds me a lot of game I played in high school, Teenagers from Outer Space. Spookybeans has a "They Came From Outer Spaaaaaaaaaaaaace" setting variant so the parallel is apt. The spirit is the same, although Spookybeans has shed much of TFOS' mechanical design to focus on telling a good game.

Spookybeans isn't just a smart role-playing game, it's also charmingly illustrated with undeniably dark characters peppered throughout. There's better maps in this game than I've seen in the majority of most PDF products. The entire PDF is generously illustrated with big, colorful pictures that make you want to read more.

With its offbeat humor, quirky characters, great art, and tightly focused game design, Spookybeans does an excellent job at an important but modest goal of reproducing the feel of goth toons. Its nomination for Best Electronic Book ENnie is well-deserved. I voted for it.