An absolute gem of a Supers RPG city book! Complete but concise, with enough detail to make you want to visit, but not so much that you feel like you are running for Mayor. Includes several statted-up heroes and villains, as well; some even written up a different "power levels." If you need still more characters, an absolutely FREE "Sovereign City Heroes and Villains" supplement was just released, too. Triumphant is really shaping up to fill the "point based but not a total pain" niche for this genre.

Really excellent game. The highlight is easily the excellent magic system which focuses on summoning and binding elementals, and demons. Includes a lot of detail on these summon creatures and the gods associated with them. Worth the purchase price for that alone. Also has a great gazeteer of the Crimson Lands, a mass combat system, and all the basic rules you'd expect from an RPG too.

The perfect blend of street hero, urban mystic, mystery men, thriller, and pulp. With any OSR campaign, the main ingredient is a good set of classes to build a foundation on. And these classes have to mesh with whatever your ideal vision is of the setting.

Hideouts & Hoodlums, Eldritch Tales, Gangbusters B/X and Fallen Justice gave me parts of what I was looking for, but I really wasn't satisfied with any particular one of them as the foundation for my urban pulp hero campaign. Terror Tales - X has just what I needed.

Plus, I can add stuff from the others to it, if I want to. I very likely will, as they each have elements that I think could expand on Terror Tales - X in good ways.

Ended up ordering a print copy from Lulu, as well.

With Superheroes - X!, Simon Washbourne expands on his game Light Superheroes. The earlier title was an adaptation of the Swords & Wizardry Light rules to the superhero genre, with five character origins and seven character classes, enabling you to take your superhuman champions through the Third Level. X! adds even more, with two more classes, three more levels, and many additional powers.

The character origins function much like race in OSR-style fantasy games. They give your hero some special abilities or bonuses, and sometimes an extra power of choice. The origins include Alien, Construct, Highly Trained, Mutation, and Deity.

The character classes give your hero a specific hit die, saving throw, task check bonus, basic hit bonus, and a choice of powers (usually two at First Level, with others that can be added at higher levels). And powers normally gain in effectiveness as your hero increases in level. The classes are Brick, Daredevil, Detective, Elementalist, Fighter, Gadgeteer, Metamorph, Mystic, and Psychic.

Putting these together, and using some Golden Age characters as examples, you could deploy the Human Torch as a Construct-Elementalist, the Black Hood as a Highly Trained-Fighter, the Flash as a Mutation-Daredevil, Starman as a Highly Trained-Gadgeteer, Amazona as an Alien-Brick, the Thin Man as a Mutation-Metamorph, etc. Moving into the Silver Age, you could set up the Doom Patrol with Elasti-Girl as a Mutation-Metamorph, Negative Man as a Mutation-Elementalist, and Robot Man as a Construct-Brick.

Superheroes –X! does not feature every possible feat, power, or skill seen in comics over the last 80 years. (If you need that level of detail—and rules burden—you can always try Champions or Mutants & Masterminds instead.) But the available origins and classes, mixed with nearly 40 powers, will certainly give you a wide range of possible characters—enough to match many superheroes, if you want to play in an existing continuity, or an endless cast of characters in an original continuity. Really high-end heroes like the Spectre, the modern Superman, and the Martian Manhunter are probably beyond the scope of these rules, though.

Superheroes –X! marks an excellent progression from Light Superheroes, combining great playability and great value in its small package. Highly recommended for those looking for a true fast-play superhero RPG!

The basic mechanics of BoL are simple, fast, and enable good storytelling. The characters built with these rules are competent but not over-poweringly so, and typical adventures present a good challenge without TPKs. The character options are flexible so that it's possible to engage in both combat and roleplay with success.

Light Superheroes comes to us from Simon Washbourne, who is probably best known for his Barbarians of Lemuria game, but who also has solid previous design experience in the superhero genre with Supers and Triumphant. Here he adapts the popular Swords & Wizardry Light system to the wonderful world of comic book adventures. There is no specific setting given, although the fast-play, rules-light nature of the game makes it particularly appropriate for Golden Age heroics.

There are five character origins—Alien, Construct, Highly Trained, Mutation, and Deity, along with seven character classes—Brick, Daredevil, Detective, Elementalist, Gadgeteer, Metamorph, and Psychic. Origins give your hero some special abilities or bonuses, and sometimes an extra power of choice; classes give him or her a specific hit die, saving throw, task check bonus, basic hit bonus, and a choice of powers (usually two at First Level, another at 2nd, and another at 3rd. Powers normally gain in effectiveness as your hero increases in level.

Light Superheroes does not have hundreds of pages listing every conceivable feat, power, or skill seen in comics since Superman debuted 80 years ago. If you need that level of detail, maybe you should be considering something like Champions or Mutants & Masterminds instead. But the available origins and classes, mixed with more than 30 powers, will certainly give you a wide range of possible characters—enough to match many, if not most, of the heroes from the Golden Age. Or to create you own original characters in the Golden Age tradition. (And although I am emphasizing the Golden Age, there is absolutely nothing here that would prevent you from using these rules for any other comic book “era.”)

Overall, I think Light Superheroes combines great playability and great value in its small package, and I recommend it highly for those looking for a true fast-play superhero RPG.

The sword and planet genre of yesteryear was revived in Beyond Belief Games’ Jarkoon-Adventures on Planet X, a gloriously simple yet contagious OSR game. GMs were left to their own devices when it came to adventuring on Jarkoon…at least until now, with the release of Jarkoon—The Princess and the Green Men, a 10-page mini-adventure filled with ancient ruins, strange beasts, a beautiful damsel-in-distress, and the frightful technology of the Science Lords.

Princess Jayela and her flyer have disappeared while en route to the city of Mirinpoor. Her badly injured bodyguard, Trajun, stumbled into the palace with a tragic story: the flyer developed difficulties and had to at the Ruins of Oatar, where Jayela and Trajun were attacked by Green Men. Jayela, he explains, was killed in the escape while he himself barely escaped with his life. Lord Sordor has called for a group of adventurers to retrieve his daughter’s body

The good news is that Princess Jayela is actually alive. The bad news is that she’s destined to be handed over to a Science Lord to be a concubine or worse. What actually happened was a dastardly plot hatched by Trajun and his pirate brother Drogan to ransom the princess. Things went awry when a party of Green Men came upon the kidnappers, killing all but Trajun and taking the Princess for themselves. They offer her to a wicked Science Lord as an appeasement, trading the beautiful noblewoman in exchange for their safety.

The module is pure pulpy action. The PCs venture into the Ruins of Oatar where they pick up the Green Men trail, leading to their desert encampment. The scene on the cover? That’s likely what happens when the PCs first meet the Green Men and their Klort riding beasts. Eventually, after the inevitable clash of cultures is resolved—perhaps including ceremonial hand-to-hand combat between champions of the opposing sides—the two sides eventually reach an uneasy entente. The Green Men explain what has befallen Jayela and will even direct PCs to the Science Lord’s lair. The PCs venture here to confront the villain, Thazath, a powerful and deranged individual, and his bone guardians. Once Princess Jayela is freed, the heroes return to Mirinpoor and reveal Trajun’s plot.

It’s a brief and linear adventure, but author Simon Washbourne has added a number of optional events for each of the scenes that can greatly expand the scenario at a GMs discretion. There are also a number of opportunities to spin the adventure off into future story lines; Thazath and Trajun might become recurring villains, and the ruins of Oatar might hold ancient secrets ready to be uncovered.

Conclusion Writing is concise and to the point, and yet manages to convey the wonder that typifies the genre. Editing and layout are excellent, and the module makes good use of full-colour public domain artwork culled from sword-and-planet comic books of the ‘50s and ‘60s.

Simon Washbourne’s The Princess and the Green Men represents an ideal introduction to Jarkoon-Adventures on Planet X! It provides pulpy action aplenty, lots of strangeness intended to create a sense of awe and wonder among players, and opportunities for characters of every class to shine, yet doesn’t try to do too much.

The sheer sense of rousing fun that adventure breathes is contagious——it reads very much like a story from the comics the game is meant to emulate. Here’s hoping there’s a return to Jarkoon in the works.

This Is an improved version of "Supers!" More Speedy, More fun. Very Good Game.

Great minis and worth every gold piece! Thank you! Would love to see more of these minis in this style.

"Crom laughs at yuh 4th Edition!"

Barbarians of Lemuria - a game that comes from an age undreamed of, between the sinking of Atlantis and the rise of the sons of Aryas! A game of man-sized fantasy where elves, orcs and dwarves dare not tread.

BoL characters are defined by their chequered pasts - thief, pirate, gladiator, etc. - if you can convince the GM that some previous career is relevant to your roll to perform a task then you get to add those points to your roll. Simple and it encourages character based play and avoids the munchkinism of feats. Combat and tests against attributes work in the same way. Achieve a Legendary Success and see your enemies driven before you/cut down in bloody swathes.

One clever genre innovation is that experience is awarded only after the player narrates how his character blew all his loot and is once more down to his last few coins, trusty blade and thirst for adventure. BoL encrouages you to play a sullen northern barbarian, a savage jungle tribesman or cunning desert nomad and play it to the hilt. There's no place here for treehuggers like elven rangers. BoL characters trust only their wits and cold steel.

BoL splits the skulls of all other fantasy games to the teeth with a single, savage blow. A simple system that effortless recreates a specific genre leading to swift, exciting play.

Substance - 5 - Finally a system that does sword and sorcery properly. Comes with a default setting based on Lin Carter's Thongor books but easily transposed to Hyboria or Valusia.

Style - 3 - Some art, like the cover, is nice. Some isn't. Simple, but readable, interior shows its amateur origins a bit too clearly.

Thus product clocks in at 13 pages with a nice retro sci-fi cover that is evocative of the genre the game is meant to emulate. Let’s open it up and take a look!

Sometimes you want to play a game but don’t want—or have the time—to read and digest massive tomes to get a mastery of the rules. Beyond Belief Games’ X-series of thematic games are designed to do just that. Based on OSR rules that most of us are familiar with, a GM can digest rules and be ready to within half an hour. Players, meanwhile, can have characters ready to blast off in rocket ships and battle aliens with beam guns within minutes of parking themselves around the table.

In Space Adventures-X characters choose from one of five simple archetypal classes, including Scientists, Envoy, Scoundrel, Space Ace, and Psychic—a solid and logical selection enabling players to reproduce any of the characters that populated 1950s space action comic books. Each character class boasts unique abilities that enable them to do a surprisingly diverse range of things—the Envoy, for example, can glean valuable information about an individual simply by studying them, can charm people to get their way, can eves-drop on private conversations, has access to vast resources, and master obscure skills (perhaps disguise, law, or acting) that can come in handy. In true OSR fashion, much of how these abilities can be applied is left to GM interpretation and player imagination. This encourages ‘role’ playing over ‘roll’ playing, and means the game is surprisingly flexible.

Much of game play should be familiar to most players, with ubiquitous AC, hit points, saves, and so forth. Simple but effective space combat rules are included, as well as eleven sample spacecraft—from rocket ships and flying saucers to massive warships.

As a cool bonus, we get thirteen sample aliens to battle, each one a classic trope in early sci-fi comics and illustrated with public domain art. We get psychic worms, hungry plants, vengeful robot-men and territorial bird people, among others.

Finally, there’s a table of weapons and gear.

In playtest, Space Adventures X proved to be smooth and engrossing. Within minutes, my players were completely immersed in the spirit of the genre—gleefully spouting techno-babble while performing heroic derring-do. Kudos!

Conclusion: editing and formatting are very good, and after playtest I noticed no mechanical hiccups. We get a number of nice full-colour public domain artwork inside.

Beyond Belief Games provides a fun and creative little game that manages, despite its brevity, to capture the essence of the genre it is meant to pay homage to. Though the book is brief and the text limited it nonetheless manages to evoke the fun and optimism of these golden age comics. Considering the limited room available, this is an impressive achievement. 5 stars.

"Weird! Baffling! Terrifying! Rousing tales of macabre adventure using familiar rules! Who wants to read through reams of text just to get to the action? No-one right? These rules assume you know how to role play. They assume you know about “Golden Age” comic book pulp mystery fiction. (Thrilling adventures through a retro lens). They assume you know how OSR products work. There, it’s done. You know how to play already. Just get on with it. Two-fisted tales and mysterious investigations. " Terror Tales -X! by Beyond Belief is a solid addition to the OSR horror adventure genre. The whole affair clocks in at twenty one pages & gives the DM all of the optional dark adventure material that they need. The focus is the Precode horror comics of the Golden Age & all that goes with it. Dark rites at three A.M., occult monsters in the deep urban environment of the city, spooky alleyways that lead into other worldly Hells. Adventurers here are crusaders & heroes at much as victims themselves & the forces of darkness are always a heart beat or closing coffin lid away. Ahh now that's the Hellfire & classic precode public domain horror comics that I've come to know & love. These are perfect for OSR horror adventure & with a wide array of PC options its a snap to 'plug & play' this set of rules. There's a nifty sanity set of rules for PC's straight off & a wide array of victims erm PC options. You got your scientist, your detective,the psychic, the scoundrel, the adventurer, tough guy, & mystic. Two pages of advantages & disadvantages along with quick descriptions. Enemies & NPC's to thread the adventure along. Animals including dinosaurs & normal run of the mill wildlife. The weird & supernatural is a similar but well rounded cast of Dungeons & Dragons style monsters retooled for horror adventure. Vechiles including surprisingly mounted weapons! Quick & dirty combat rules along with modern fire arms, weapons, melee weapons, & armor. Experience charts for the PC classes & some horror adventure hooks. Christmas time is the season for ghost stories & horror adventure. This year is no different Terror Tales -X! is based around Swords & Wizardry rules so its easy to pop into an existing OD&D or Retro clone system setting. The entire product is open game content on the OGL & that makes this a fantastic horror setting enhancement. But if that wasn't enough there's blogs like the OSR Library offer a huge amount of OSR horror adventure support. May I also go on record as saying that incredible Horrors of It All Blog has some of the best precode Golden Age Horror comic book stories around & his collections of stories are an unsung gold mine of OSR horror adventure. Comic Book Plus is also an excellent resource for lots of pure gold adventure fodder. All of this is perfect support material & a starting point for OSR horror adventure especially with the Terror Tales -X! rules. I'm a super hero guy & Sword & Sorcery guy the Terror Tales -X! rules are perfectly compatible with the other Beyond Belief games rules & for introducing super heroes to the horrors of the dark forces of the occult & supernatural! There is a long tradition of heroes fighting the over whelming forces of darkness. This crosses over into so many gernes making this a real easy winner to grab for only $3.50!

Five out of five in my book for solid product & ease of use. Eric Fabiaschi Sword & Stitchery blog Want more solid original content? Subscribe to https://swordsandstitchery.blogspot.com/

"Strange! Ghostly! Mysterious! Rousing tales of action and adventure in a wild west that never was. Who wants to read through reams of text just to get to the action? No-one right? These rules assume you know how to role play. They assume you know about “Golden Age” comic book pulp western fiction. (Thrilling cowboy adventures through a retro lens). They assume you know how OSR products work. There, it’s done. You know how to play already. Just get on with it. Go fer yer gun, hombre! " Sometime ago I got into Beyond Belief Games Eerie West - X! for a set up for an OSR Wild & Weird West campaign set up. The product is put together with spit, bailing wire, & a micro system built on the lines of Swords & Wizardry. But it should work with mostly any OSR rules set with some work & best of all its open game content. You get a wide variety of PC classes from the Shootist, Cardsharp, Trailblazer, Dude, Quack, & Hexer. The shootist is your gun fighter/fighter type. The Card sharp is your thief & all around rogue. The Trail blazer is your ranger & scout type for the Wild West. The Dude class is your socialite, tenderfoot from back East, & diplomat all rolled into one. The Quack is your cleric/doctor/fake medicine man all rolled into one whose potion might actually work or they might make you worse. The Hexer is your occultist who shouldn't be messing with the 'things man wasn't meant to know. Did I mention that there's a sanity rules set in here, full system for guns, monsters, NPCs,equipment, mundane animals, stats weird menaces, adventure ideas, two pages of rules & random charts. The fact is that I've been looking for a more open set of Weird West rules over the last couple of years. Since these rules are cross compatible with other Beyond Belief X rules sets its very easy to swap them out for other OSR or even other D20 systems.

Even though Belle Starr wasn't featured in The Eerie West - X! she's exactly the sort of cowboy or outlaw adventurer that could be used in adventures surrounding this campaign using this product. The fact is that a lot of Golden Age of Comics public domain artwork & source material was used in The Eerie West - X!. This puts the 'X' material square in the Golden Age of Comicbooks & Pulp magazine source material making it perfect for that style of old school or OSR campaigning.

Everything from your bandits to your Wild West Gumberoo is covered; "Gumberoo AC: 10* HD: 3d6+1 Attacks: Claws 1d3 (x2), bite 1d3 Move: 10 San Loss: 1/1d3 Special: The creature has a rubbery hide that bounces back anything thrown on it. Bullets, arrows and so on will rebound in the direction they were fired, hitting the person that fired them (separate roll needed to hit). A nearly hairless, extremely disgusting, bear-like brute of the woods."

There's just enough here to get a campaign off the ground & with blogs such as the OSR library its a snap to get a campaign off the ground plus get support. The material here isn't incredibly expansive but it doesn't need to be. The layout is easy to read, the stat blocks are standard, & the material is straight on point & top drawer. While The Eerie West -X ! follows the tradition Western comic & pulp genre it really plugs into the Revisionist Weird Western;

"The late 1960s and early 1970s saw the rise of revisionist Western film. Elements include a darker, more cynical tone, with focus on the lawlessness of the time period, favoring realism over romanticism, and an interest in greater historical authenticity. Anti-heroes were common, as were stronger roles for women and more-sympathetic portrayal of Native Americans and Mexicans. The films were often critical of big business, the American government, and masculine figures (including the military and their policies). "

But really what The Eerie West -X! does is mix & match its material so that the dungeon master & players get a mix of classic Western material with Golden Age of Comics adventure! But could Wild West-X! be mixed with an old school or OSR adventure? Yes as a matter of fact this material could easily be incorporated with say Swords & Wizardry or even original Dungeons & Dragons? Yes it could easily support such a campaign where the PC's blunder into The Eerie West -X! or perhaps the PC's of the Eerie West X blunder into B4: The Lost City by Tom Moldvay. The PC's become lost in a sand storm & they suddenly blunder into the lost city itself. Its not hard seeing the pyramid located some place in the South Western Mexican desert & the factions of the city waiting to sacrifice the PCs to their bastard Lovecraftian god thing.

"Lost in the desert! The only hope for survival lies in a ruined city rising out of the sands.

A pyramid with five twenty foot high tiers rises from the sand. Atop it are three 30 foot tall statues. One is a bearded man holding a scale and a lightning bolt. Another is a beautiful woman holding a sheaf of wheat and a sword. Between them is a child with two snakes twined about its winged body holding a wand and a handful of coins.

Food, water, and wealth await heroic adventurers inside the ancient pyramid." Is the The Eerie West - X! worth getting?! I think so in spades, the game does what it says in nineteen pages & delivers on its promise with less filler & more killer with little issue. Plus its a great value & the material is cross compatible with other retroclone & OSR games. Five out of five in my humble opinion.

Eric Fabiaschi Swords & Stitchery Blog Want to see more original OSR reviews & material then subscribe to https://swordsandstitchery.blogspot.com/

So in 17 pages you get a complete weird west horror OSR game: 6 character classes with rules up to L6; a sanity mechanic, NPCs and enemies, mundane animals, stats for some supernatural and weird menaces, adventure ideas and 2 pages of rules and 2 of tables and charts.

The classes are: Shootist, Cardsharp, Trailblazer, Dude, Quack, and Hexer. For the Shootist, Cardharp Dude and Trailblazer what their niche is in the game should be relatively obvious from the names. Care is taken to make sure each is unique. All are very cool and well done. The quack and Hexer and fun. The quack is a magic stand-in, capable of mixing up potions and cures with the effect of magic. Of course there is only a chance they are work and are anything other than coloured water. Hexers cast real magic but also become warped by ‘weirds’ as they progress in levels. Great stuff.

I realize some would argue it has no business in the eerie west but the only thing I would have liked to see but didn’t is a ‘mad/weird science’ type class, but then I realized you just have to reskin and modify the invention list of the ‘Astronomer’ from the brilliant Jarkoon to make it; restrict it to the stuff that you could handwave into steam or ‘radium’ power and chemistry instead of martian er I mean Jarkoonian super-science.

The rules are very straightforward as all the OSR-based X games and the page of adventure ideas is great. All-in-all a great flexible little game that distills the golden age of western horror comic genre down to under 20 pages. Buy it! Especially since it's 33% off this weekend.

So in 17 pages you get a complete weird war horror OSR game: 6 character classes with rules up to L5; a sanity mechanic, mundane enemies and animals, stats for some ocult menaces,some stats some vehicle stats, adventure ideas and 3 pages of rules and 2 of tables and charts.

The clases are pretty standard for weird war type games: Recon, Leader, Grunt, Covert, the Para-medic and Talisman.

The classes are well done, with the Leader, Grunt and Recon prety much what you'd expect.There is only a small bit of overlap between the Covert and the Recon in terms of abilities, and the Covert general enough to be tweaked into a French Resistance fighter or a Viet Cong or other insurgent -type if you want to set your game in something other than World War 2 - just by renaming the specifics.

The Para-medic,is something akin to a cleric, with some curative and protective magic at his disposal. The Talisman islike your Magic User, with a nice range of supernatural magic that he can cast and/or use to imbue objects.

I think the take on the para-medic as 'occult' granted powers steps on the toes of the Talisman a little. If I were running this, I would maybe interpret the Para-medic as a psychic sensitive or empathic of sorts who can do some protection, undead turning etc and leave the healing and poison neutralization as a class ability usable a couple times per medikit refill (a good excuse for the para-medic to scrounge as well). I would reduce the 'spell' repertoire a touch to compensate.

The rules are very straightforward as all the OSR-based X games and the page of adventure ideas is great, almost all writen specifically for the world war 2 western front though most easily adaptable to something else.

All-in-all a great flexible little game that distills the golden age weird war horror comic genre down to under 20 pages. I see being able to scavenge stuff from weird-war, CoC and D&D type modules. Buy it! especially since it's 33% off this weekend.