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It's not as good as Mummy of Pemberly Grange, but I like this scenario quite a bit. It's short and easy to prep for (as all of the Seeds of Terror scenarios are meant to be), but it builds up the suspense nicely and presents the PCs with a creepy, powerful supernatural threat.
My only complaint is that I wish there was a bit more for the PCs to discover in the church and crypt, maybe something that gives a bit more backstory to the horrific events that are about to occur. Still, a creative Keeper could always come up with some of this stuff themselves.
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This is a pretty decent one-shot. Like all of the other entries in this series, it's designed to be very easy for the Keeper to prep and should only take a few hours at most to play through.
I had previously bought Mummy of Pemberly Grange and One Less Grave, and I think both of those scenarios are better than this one. My problem with Hand of Glory is that it just feels very threadbare in terms of plot and backstory and just too simple overall. It also doesn't really present the PCs with enough danger or threats IMO.
Pemberly Grange was pretty simple too, but that had a nice subtle build up and an ever-present threat that was always stalking the PCs. I think Hand of Glory could actually be a pretty fun scenario with extensive revisions from the Keeper though, and I do feel like the threads of a good adventure are in here, so for the price I think it's worth it.
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My spoiler-free review of this campaign is that I liked it, but it's nowhere near as good as the masterpiece that is Impossible Landscapes. It features copious amounts of both child abuse and animal abuse, to the point that even I as an experienced CoC and DG GM would be hesitant to run it for any table, even a group of my friends. And it doesn't really feel like a Lovecraftian horror campaign, more like a gritty detective drama with some supernatural elements.
Potential spoilers from here on:
God's Teeth begins with the Agents being contacted by a rogue DG operative for an unsanctioned operation. They are to travel to a remote orphanage/farm and kill the 4 adults there, all of whom are abusing the children. This sets into motion a series of events which leads to the Agents returning to cover their tracks 15 years later and to deal with the fallout of what happened at that orphanage.
It turns out that the orphanage was a cover for a cult of Shub-Niggurath which was led by a powerful witch seeking the recipe for immortality. This recipe just so happened to involve the heinous abuse of both children and animals.
15 years after the Agents kill the witch and her lackeys, two shocking murders occur just days apart. The murder victims can both be traced back to the orphanage, and it isn't long until the Agents discover that the culprits are a group of children who survived that horrible place. It turns out that the Agents themselves, the group of survivors, and any number of other people and animals are just pawns in a game of chess being played by an ancient, hungry god. They are the God's Teeth.
To address the elephant in the room, yeah, this campaign delves into some really heavy stuff. Honestly the animal abuse depicted in this scenario bothered me far more than the child stuff, especially because it frequently involved domestic animals like dogs and cats. I've run many, many horror RPGs for many different groups and I consider myself to be pretty good at knowing when to delve into disturbing content and when to ease off, but I don't think I could ever run God's Teeth for any group. It's just hard for me imagine any group of people having fun playing this particular scenario at a table, no matter how much they like Delta Green or how unbothered they think they would be by animal/child abuse.
I’m not a prude; I love all sorts of dark and disturbing stuff and gore and taboo subjects. But in my opinion, the content depicted in this scenario crosses a line where it just becomes impossible to have any sort of fun playing pretend characters in a fake world, even if that world is supposed to be full of macabre, morbid secrets. And that's a shame because I really like a lot of the stuff in this book.
But there is a lot of other plot stuff in God's Teeth that I'm not a huge fan of. I thought that the Shub-Niggurath cult was way more interesting than Bast and her hunger, but unfortunately that cult is kind of just an inciting force for the campaign and nothing more.
All of the plot points, characters, locations, and themes depicted in this book just don't really come together in a satisfying way. It felt like the author had a lot of really cool ideas and really tried his hardest to make them all work together, but he couldn't quite do it.
Honestly, I think he would have done much better to just leave out the child abuse stuff and all of the weird predeterminism stuff and to write a campaign that is just a group of Agents working in the service of Bast - either knowingly or unknowingly - to take down a Shub-Niggurath cult.
The whole section that starts off the second chapter in 2016, wherein the Agents travel back to Maryland to assist in uncovering a mass grave at the orphanage, just seems unnecessary and out of place. Your Agents are supposed to get really into the idea of crafting an official narrative around the crimes and deciding which agency to blame for the whole mess, but I'm just not sure that any group is going to get too invested in this part. It kind of just feels like a waste of 5-6 game sessions to me.
Fortunately a lot of the other sections are a lot stronger and more compelling, but like I said before, God's Teeth just doesn't have that Lovecraft feel for me.
The book itself is well-written, though, and I like the little "synchronicity" moments, even if they feel like they're trying to imitate the feel of the surreal moments from Impossible Landscapes.
Maybe your particular group will absolutely love this scenario, but for me, it's hard to imagine sitting at a table with 3-5 people on a Saturday night and actually having fun with many of the parts of this campaign, no matter who those 3-5 people are and how skillfully I present the content as a Handler.
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WW1 with magic, monsters, and insanity is an awesome theme for an RPG, and the rules for this game service that theme really well. Never Going Home uses a mixture of D6's and playing cards in a way that is really brutally elegant.
Unfortunately, I really do not like this game's rulebook. It's not very well formatted and it doesn't do a great job of explaining some of the game's mechanics.
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Haven’t had a chance to run this for my group yet, but based on my readthrough, this seems like a great DG scenario. The premise is that several children have gone missing in an area around a mansion with a long, sordid history. Delta Green believes that their disappearances are linked to the mansion, and sends in a team to investigate.
There’s a lot of things I really like about From the Dust. First off, we get a fully detailed handler meeting and a fully fleshed-out Green Box, complete with all sorts of strange and dangerous items. Delta Green scenarios don’t always provide this info, and it’s always a nice treat to get it.
And of course, I love the premise of investigating a spooky mansion. In my experience, every group of players loves playing a scenario about exploring a supposedly haunted house, no matter how many times they might have done it in other games. But I also really like that this scenario gives plenty of opportunities for investigation and detective work outside of the mansion as well.
From the Dust utilizes a bit of an unusual supernatural villain, and has a very subtle yet clever connection to H.P. Lovecraft’s work. Even if you are running this for very experienced players, I doubt they’ll be able to guess the exact nature of the threat that they’re facing until they confront it face to face. Despite this, though, this scenario still gives me classic CoC scenario vibes, which I really love.
I also think that From the Dust strikes just the right balance of difficulty, in that it will be very tough but not impossible for your Agents to resolve this scenario with a good outcome. In my opinion, that’s exactly the level of challenge all DG one shots should strive for. The final confrontation could very likely leave a few Agents dead, but it’s not quite the meatgrinder that you’ll find in some other scenarios.
I do have a few minor nitpicks about this scenario. First of all, many pages of this PDF are wasted in giving us tons of details about NPCs that aren’t really necessary. Sure it’s nice to have this info, but this isn’t the kind of scenario that requires all of these NPCs to be fleshed out to this degree. It kind of feels like it’s just there to pad out the final page count. I also wish there was a bit more for the Agents to discover in the actual mansion itself. There’s enough backstory that a good Handler could come up with some more little secrets to plant around the mansion, but it would be nice if the PDF itself provided some.
Still, this is a fantastic DG scenario and I have a feeling that once I run it, it will become one of my new favorites.
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I really like this RPG quite a lot. It's like someone who was really good at game design took a long look at D&D 5e and then redesigned it to be much more intuitive and easy to learn. And the setting is quite well-developed and interesting as well. It's clearly very heavily inspired by Warhammer Fantasy, but it's still unique enough to stand on its own.
This core rulebook does pretty much everything perfectly. The graphic design is unique and yet easy on the eyes. The rules are very clearly explained with plenty of examples. There's a very extensive section on the history and geography of the setting. And the section for gamemaster is very lengthy and helpful, probably the most helpful of any GM section in any RPG book I've ever read. And the bestiary is lengthy and full of cool descriptive text. The only thing I wish this rulebook had was a starter adventure, though reading through the fluff sections will give you plenty of inspiration for adventure ideas.
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Just as a disclaimer, I have not run this scenario for my group yet, and I don’t think I’ll have a chance to for some time, so I’m writing this review now just based on my readthrough for those who might be interested in purchasing this scenario.
I absolutely love the concept of this scenario: A daring assault on a highly-guarded, futuristic train carrying none other than the Fuhrer himself! It fits the pulpy tone of A!C perfectly and the premise alone is sure to get your players excited. Unfortunately, while the bones of a good adventure are certainly here, I think the module leaves a bit to be desired as written.
One important thing to know about Assault on the Fuhrer Train is that it's not really meant to be a standalone adventure; rather, it’s meant to be an introduction to the Forest of Fear campaign that is supposedly coming soon. While I am excited for that campaign and will definitely check it out when it releases, I wish that this scenario had been written with the intent of being more of a one-shot; after all, I think that’s how most groups will want to run it. There’s definitely nothing stopping you from running it as a one-shot, but that will require a good amount of rewriting from the GM. Without going into spoilers, if you want this scenario to be satisfying as a standalone scenario for your players, you’re going to have to basically rewrite the entire ending of the adventure. I wish that Modiphius had written Fuhrer Train first and foremost as an independent scenario and tacked on the links to Forest of Fear as an optional ending B, but I guess they really wanted to plug their new campaign.
The plot for this scenario is pretty straightforward: A young member of the French Resistance escapes German captivity, but not before learning a valuable secret. It seems as though the Fuhrer himself will be aboard a train that will be passing through the nearby forest. Enticed by this opportunity, the local Resistance leader immediately orders a strike on the train, and that’s where the PCs enter the picture.
The scenario comes with 5 pre-generated characters, but almost any type of party composition would work for this scenario and there’s nothing keeping you from throwing this mission at your existing PCs. As you might expect, the scenario is pretty on-rails (no pun intended), but there are some opportunities for a creative GM to throw some unique challenges at the players. There are some interesting things for your players to find on the train, and I like the way that the threats escalate from simple German soldiers to more dangerous enemies.
Overall, I liked this scenario and I’d place it about on-par with the other A!C modules, which is to say it’s pretty solid but not mind-blowing. It shouldn’t be $10 as it has about the same amount of content as the other modules which are priced between $5 and $7.50. I can’t help but feel like Modiphius is using the cool premise of this module as a means of charging more money. If the ending didn’t tie in to Forest of Fear so directly, I’d probably rate it higher, but as it is I recommend Fuhrer Train, as long as you don’t mind having to write your own ending.
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I’ve always been a big fan of Modiphius’s 2d20 system, and have played and loved games like Fallout and Conan. I’ve been meaning to check out A!C for a while, but have always been turned off by the price. I’m not sure why, for this game out of all the 2d20 games, they chose to make the barrier of entry so much more expensive. Not only do you need two books instead of one to actually run this game, but those two books are usually much more expensive than any of the other single core books. It doesn’t make any sense considering: A. All of the subject matter here is public domain stuff and B. this game is inherently going to have a smaller player base than something like Fallout or STA because it is a much more niche setting. You would think Modiphius would want to make the A!C books cheaper because of this, not more expensive. While this criticism has nothing to do with the quality of the product itself, it is something that really irks me.
But of course, we should talk about the actual game itself. All of the 2d20 games have varying levels of complexity, and I would put A!C somewhere on the upper end; closer to the high crunch of something like Conan than the low crunch of something like Dishonored. Overall, this is a pretty standard take on the 2d20 system and there’s nothing here that really changes up the formula, but I think that’s a good thing. The 2d20 system works really well as-is for this kind of subject matter. And I absolutely love the subject matter. The whole dastardly-occult-Nazi-cults-fight-two-fisted-pulp-action-heroes setting is just fantastic.
If you like the 2d20 system, you’ll probably like the gameplay of this game. If you don’t like it, you probably won’t, as it doesn’t do anything to shake up that system at all. If you’ve never played a 2d20 system before, I’d recommend you go into it with an open mind. Concepts like “truths” and “zones” might seem a little weird at first, but they start to make sense as you play the game. And, as a side note, I think this book does a better job of explaining what exactly truths are than any other 2d20 book. Which is ironic because some of them, like Dishonored, rely on truths in order to function much more than this game does. But I digress.
That said, I have some issues with the content of the book. The layout and asthetics of the book are all pretty solid. The art that is in here is really good, but I wish there was more of it. The book does a generally good job at explaining the 2d20 ruleset, but drops the ball when it comes to certain mechanics like extended tasks. That whole section is badly explained and really needs a re-write. There are some minor typos throughout, and unfortunately, this book contains one of the most glaring typos I’ve ever seen in an RPG book. It tells you at one point that melee attacks are made using “Agility + Fighting,” and then later says that melee attacks are made using “Brawn + Fighting”. While it is true that technically your GM could have you roll with agility for melee attacks, 9/10 times you’re going to roll with brawn, so this is a pretty glaring error and I don’t know how it made it into the final product. Overall, really not the best explanation of the 2d20 rule system, but not the worst.
The character creation section, though, is quite good and provides a lot of neat options for players to choose from. The combat and magic sections are pretty good, too. One of my favorite unique mechanics to this system is the stress track, and the way that physical damage and mental damage (insanity) are basically combined into one type of HP.
So, overall, while I wasn’t exactly blown away by this book (which, for the asking price, I feel like I should have been), I think it’s a very solid 2d20 game with a very fun theme. If the idea of pulpy WW2 Cthulhu mythos antics appeals to you, I think you’ll like this book.
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This was the first scenario that I’ve read from M.T. Black and I have to admit I’m pretty impressed by it. Shadows on the Long Road is pretty much your basic “haunted house” one-shot, but it has enough memorable scenes and NPCs to make it stand out. There’s a good amount of atmosphere and it manages to be just horrific enough without going so far that anyone would be really disturbed by it. If you’re looking for a horror one-shot, especially something for Halloween, this is great. And it’s a steal at $2.
My only real complaint is that I don’t like the way that the portal beneath the house is handled. It feels like the author missed the opportunity to put something really horrific here and just kind of went with “the players should probably walk around for a while and then just leave.” A little disappointing considering this portal is advertised as one of the main selling points of the adventure, but as the DM you could always just come up with some kind of otherworldly threat that could be waiting for the adventurers here.
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There’s nothing terribly original about this adventure, but the hook of the sudden, violent murder and the mystery surrounding it provide a pretty compelling entry point for the adventurers. The meat of the module is a pretty standard dungeon crawl, but there’s enough creepy sights (like the zombified adventuring party) to keep things interesting. And I really like the idea of the adventurers having to defend the wrongfully condemned man in a trial at the end. A creative DM could take this somewhat barebones module, fill in some more details about certain events and NPCs, and expand it into something really special, but there’s enough cool stuff here that even if you’re just following the module as written, your players will still have a really good time. Another really solid M. T. Black adventure at a very reasonable price.
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This is a very simple, charming little one-shot. I could see this working very well for someone’s first attempt at DMing, or as an adventure for a group of younger players, but there’s enough going on here that I wouldn’t sneeze at running it for a table of adults. This is definitely a great “not everyone could make it to tonight’s session” kind of module, especially because I think you could feasibly run this entire one-shot theater-of-the-mind. Overall, highly recommended, especially at this price.
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I really like this module, it just oozes charm and it would be great for younger players and adults alike. It really captures that epic adventure feel without actually being the length of an epic adventure, and it doesn’t require very much prep to run. I wish I had stumbled upon this module a few months ago, because it would be a great module to run around the holidays, but it’s not so “Christmas-y” that you can’t run it any other time of the year. Overall, a very fun adventure and well worth the money.
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Overall, I think this is a decent collection of modern CoC scenarios. I was a little worried when I only really saw most actual play groups playing through the first two scenarios that those would be the only two good scenarios in the book, and unfortunately to some extent that’s true. But I’ll go through them one at a time:
Ladybug, Ladybug, Fly Away Home: A little girl is abducted from a big box store under strange circumstances. Moments later, a man walks into the store and commits suicide. The investigators are left to find the girl and piece together why she was taken. This is probably the second best scenario in the book. There’s a lot of layers to the mystery here and a lot of investigating for the players to do. And while there’s a lot of room for the investigators to travel down many different paths, the bloody showdown at the end is all but inevitable. I think there’s maybe a bit too much Christian mythology here (in general, I’m not a big fan of scenarios that mix Christianity with the Cthulhu mythos), the memorable NPCs and setpieces make this a really solid entry.
Forget me not: The investigators wake up inside a crashed van in rural Michigan, and slowly piece together how they got there and what happened to their missing colleague. This is the standout scenario in the book, and is really the most compelling reason to purchase TTWLB. The amnesia trope is used really well here and adds another element of terror to the proceedings. There’s some great body horror and a confrontation with a lesser-used mythos entity. You also get some good old fashioned haunted house exploration, and some compelling clues for your investigators to sift through. There’s a lot of different ways this scenario could go, but no matter what this seems all but guaranteed to be a fun and horrific time at the table.
Roots: A young woman goes missing during a camping trip, and her adoptive parents fear that she has gone off in search of her birth mother. The search for this young woman brings the investigators to an isolated small town surrounded by deep, dark woods. There’s a lot of really interesting ideas here, and I can see what the author was going for with this scenario, but overall it doesn’t really work for me. It’s one of those RPG scenarios that would work much better as a short story. The initial investigation is interesting, but once everyone figures out what’s really going on, I think this one is going to fizzle out a bit.
Hell in Texas: In small-town Texas, a young woman commits suicide inside of a “Hell House” being run by a local church. I had never heard of a Hell House (and strangely, the scenario doesn’t really explain exactly what it is), but from what I gather it’s sort of like a Halloween haunted house attraction but with strict Christian messaging instead of light-hearted scares. The idea of the investigators looking into a haunted house attraction that is actually haunted is fun, but from what’s written on the page it’s almost impossible for the players to actually “solve” this mystery. Instead, this scenario will most likely involve the players witnessing a bunch of horrific events before throwing up their hands and saying “Well, I don’t know what to do here” and just leaving. As written, it’s pretty anticlimactic and if you’re going to run it, it will need a bit of an overhaul to give it a better ending.
The Night Season: In Achorage, Alaska, a young man commits suicide in an unusual manner, and the clues point towards the involvement of a strange, gifted young woman. I really, really don’t like this scenario, for a number of reasons that I won’t get into because it’s impossible to talk about without spoiling the entire thing. Suffice it to say, It mixes the Cthulhu mythos with pop culture in a way that I really dislike. A lot of that is personal preference; some people might actually like the unique premise of this scenario, but I was flat-out repulsed by it. This one might as well not even be in the book because it’s completely unsalvageable as far as I’m concerned.
Intimate Encounters: A serial murderer known as the “liposuction killer” is prowling the internet for victims. Can the investigators stop him before he kills again? I actually really liked this scenario. It has an “X-Files monster of the week” feel to it that I really dug. It’s a bit simple and straightforward, but it’s still good fun. I think some of the clues don’t connect together as neatly as they could, but that would be an easy fix for the keeper.
So, a pretty mixed bag overall. I don’t think TTWLB is quite worth $20, because half the scenarios are not really worth running, but the three that are good are pretty solid, so this collection gets a tentative recommendation from me.
One other thing that bothered me is the way that some of these scenarios use adult themes. I’m all for tons of gore and sex and body horror, but a few of the scenarios throw in some pretty heavy themes for almost no reason (abortion, HIV/AIDs, sexual abuse, etc). I’m all good with using these themes to invoke horror, but here it kind of feels like they are thrown in as an afterthought that has no impact on the story. It sort of feels like the authors felt like they had to include some “mature” stuff just because this book has a “for mature gamers” disclaimer on the cover.
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These are two pretty good scenarios, and as a history nerd I definitely enjoyed how many of the events of the French Revolution play out as a backdrop to events. Overall, I think these scenarios evoke the feeling of the era well, while still being exciting and horrifying in their own right.
I do have a few complaints though: First, while you can technically play these as standalone adventures independent from Horror on the Orient Express, your players will really need to be familiar with that campaign to get the most out of the experience, and especially to appreciate the depth of the main villain's depravity. Without having played HotOE, Count Fennalik kind of feels like he comes out of nowhere and your players don't really get a chance to understand him as a character. The same goes for the statue in Fennalik's basement. I guess I should have expected this to be a factor going in, but it would have been nice if these scenarios felt just a bit more stand-alone.
Second, your players pretty much have to be soldiers for this scenario to work. Some groups may not mind this, but I always find it a bit off putting when a scenario needs the players to be of a certain profession in order for it to be run properly.
Third, you can't really run the second scenario without running the first, so this isn't so much two one-shot scenarios as it is a single one-shot scenario that has an optional second half. Again, not a huge deal, but it feels like a bit of false advertising to say this book has two scenarios.
Groups playing through Horror on the Orient Express will absolutely love these scenarios though, as it gives them a chance to delve more into the background of the important figures and lore behind that campaign. If you're not running HotOE, I think you may want to pass on this one, unless you're a huge French Revolution history buff. The two scenarios just don't quite stand on their own well enough.
It would have been nice if they had taken the occasion to expand out this book as a sourcebook for running all kinds of CoC adventures set during the late 18th century/early 19th century. Feels like a huge missed opportunity that they didn’t do that here. Yes, that would have required a lot more work and playtesting, but it would at least justify this book's existence as a standalone product.
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Back in the day, this was the first Delta Green scenario that I ever played, and it’s what made me fall in love with the game. Now, much later, I’ve finally read the scenario myself. I think this is probably my favorite DG scenario; the premise is so simple and yet it’s so full of horror and mystery. This scenario probably creeped me out more than any other RPG scenario I’ve played, and reading through it recently I still find it very unnerving.
The premise here is simple: the Agents have been tasked with investigating the apparent suicide of a fellow Agent in a house in New Jersey, only to discover that the house has been the site of numerous grisly deaths in the past, all presumed accidents or suicides. Like any good DG scenario, the Agents are given a mysterious handler, a few friendlies to talk to, and a green box to pilfer through. But eventually, they’ll make their way to the house, and that’s when the terror really begins…
A good handler with a real talent for building tension and a creative mind could create something truly horrifying with this scenario. There’s so many potential ways to unnerve and scare your players thanks to the house’s long and sordid history. But I really appreciate the fact that the scenario provides the handler with many possibilities you could use if you’re feeling lazy or uncreative.
I think this is Delta Green’s “rite of passage” scenario, like what The Haunting is for CoC, and if you have a Delta Green group it’s pretty much mandatory that you play this at some point.
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