This collection of “three plus one” brief adventures for one or two Villains & Vigilantes player-heroes hums with the classic V&V vibe. Don’t be confused by the term “solo adventures,” used on the front cover; these aren’t adventures you play without a GM, but adventures suitable for a lone superhero. If you’re interested in these as a player rather than a GM, you shouldn’t read the rest of this review, as spoilers lie ahead!

The first adventure, “No Crime Like the Present,” is the least satisfying of the three. One encounter (plus aftermath) constitutes the whole adventure. The city planetarium makes a wonderful set-piece for the adventure, and the scenario includes some fun and memorable non-powered NPCs. However, the main villain’s name, Miz Happ, features a pun that falls a bit flat when you’re speaking instead of reading; more importantly, Miz Happ’s motivation is left vague, and seems to be simple greed, in which case her target seems ridiculously mis-chosen (how is she going to fence stolen meteorites)?

The second scenario, “Survival of the Fittest,” transpires mainly on a golf course. It introduces two super-powered NPCs who could become regular guests in an ongoing campaign. I particularly like Contender’s shtick (a super-powered protection racket), and Ilk provides a great link into the V&V adventure “Escape from the Micro-Universe.”

The third adventure, “True Believer,” features another interesting villain, Pioneer, although his shtick is different from Contender’s. The scenario believably brings together two or three villains that otherwise wouldn’t likely be involved in the same fight. Before you use “True Believer” and “Survival of the Fittest” in the same campaign, however, decide carefully whether you want to include multiple instances of “apparent heroes who are really villains.” The player-heroes might get too suspicious to trust any truly heroic NPCs.

I don’t quite understand the names of the adventures. The planetarium heist in “No Crime Like the Present” seems to have nothing to do with time; “Survival of the Fittest” could perhaps apply generically to any fight, and the confrontation is potentially lethal, I guess; and “True Believer” doesn’t have any kind of religious overtones or even “(dis)believable” illusions in it. What’s up with that? Also, some of the villains seem to have come out of a random generator, which is classic V&V but comes off feeling odd. The villain write-ups leave a lot of unanswered questions. The most nagging of these surround the villain Scrimmage, in “True Believer”; he has a devitalization ray that is never really explained, either in his origin or in terms of special effects, or even how he projects it. Some GMs will enjoy filling in these blanks; personally, I’d rather have more information provided in the adventure itself.

The fourth, brief encounter introduces yet another useful NPC, a photojournalist with insidious powers of his own. He could make a great recurring antagonist for the player-heroes in an ongoing campaign.

Overall, I generally like these scenarios, and this format. The single-encounter or mini-adventure format provides a great vehicle for introducing interesting villains and NPCs, much better than a simple roster book like Most Wanted. James Bishop’s black-and-white interior artwork and color figure flats are reasonably good, though not up to Jeff Dee quality. In the end, Always Outnumbered isn’t quite a must-have, but it’s a very good resource for a V&V gamemaster running games for one or two player-heroes, and the scenarios are easily adapted to other superhero game systems (just restat the villains and you’re good to go).

The One Ring is a lovingly crafted, beautifully executed RPG set in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-Earth. Anyone who is a fan of both Middle-Earth and RPGs should find the game compelling, and it’s a good gateway from one love to the other, especially for Tolkien fans who aren’t already gamers.

The TOR core set comes in two books, the Adventurer’s Book (about 190 pp.) and the Loremaster’s Book (around 145 pp.). The Adventurer’s Book contains all the rules for task resolution and character creation, as well as a small selection of pregenerated characters. Each “Player-Hero” is defined statistically by three attributes—Body, Heart, and Wits—plus ratings in Valour, Wisdom, Endurance, and Hope, as well as levels in a selection of eighteen skills. The skills are cleverly arranged into six skill groups, each containing three skills corresponding to the three attributes. For example, the personality skills group includes Awe (linked to Body), Inspire (linked to Heart), and Persuade (linked to Wits). Some of the skills, such as Riddle, might seem a little “corner-case” at first to role-players with experience in other systems, but they fit the setting very well.

Each Player-Hero comes from a specific culture and follows a specific calling, as befits Middle-Earth. Emphasizing cultures rather than races allows the game to easily model differences between, say, the Men of Dale and the Woodmen of the forest. Cultures provide various blessings and proficiencies at character creation and during character advancement. As Player-Heroes advance, they can improve in Wisdom and Valour, and they gain Rewards or Virtues depending on which of Wisdom and Valour they choose to emphasize.

Since most of my role-playing experience is with “roll plus modifiers” systems, it took me just a little while to adjust to TOR’s action resolution system. Player-Heroes can propose “tasks” and Loremasters can require “tests,” but both are resolved the same way: the player rolls a “feat die” (a special d12) and variable number of success dice, comparing the total to a Target Number. TOR does not use character levels, so there’s just one set of TNs to learn. This bringsus the biggest drawback to buying this TOR in PDF form: the game assumes the use of specially-printed dice. The feat die included with the print version ofthe game is numbered 1–10, with the remaining two faces bearing an symbol representing Sauron’s eye (replacing the 11) and a G (for Gandalf) rune (replacing the 12). A roll of “Sauron” is an automatic failure for Player-Heroes, while a roll of “Gandalf” is an auto-success. The success dice are special d6s, with the numbers 1–3 printed in outline and the 6 face bearing an additional symbol, the Tengwar numeral 1. All of the variations have special meanings in judging an action’s success. Combat (which requires tactical decisions, but notprecise tactical positioning or miniatures/counters) is resolved using the same system; armor and other benefits protect you by affecting the opponents’ target numbers.

The Loremaster’s Book provides everything the Loremaster needs to know about creating and running adventures for TOR, including a small selection of monstrous adversaries (with the predictable and appropriate orcs, wolves, and spiders). The default timeline for the Player-Heroes’ adventures begins five years after the Battle of Five Armies, and the default geography is Wilderland (the northern part of Middle-Earth), giving the Loremaster plenty of time and space to create an imaginative Tale of Years without stepping on the toes of the established timeline of the War of the Ring. The Loremaster’s Book closes with an introductory adventure carefully designed to expose players to all of the key mechanics, introduce the Player-Heroes to some famous personages, and help the players appreciate the ethos of Middle-Earth.

I’ll close this somewhat lengthy review with a comment on that final point about the ethos of Midle-Earth. The One Ring beats in perfect time with the heart of Middle-Earth; it wonderfully instantiates Tolkien’s moral vision for Middle-Earth’s inhabitants. The threat of Shadow and the promise of Hope are ever-present. Upon finishing my first read through the PDFs that I received as review copies, I purchased the printed game—a rare occurrence for me. Buy and play The One Ring. You won’t regret it.

As someone whose main role-playing outlet is DMing D&D 4e, I found Kobold Quarterly 21 to be a bit thin on good material. As someone whose day job is on a university’s religion faculty, I was fascinated by the varied treatments of divine magic in this issue and the varied ways of translating ideas about divine magic and faith into game mechanics.

Although “Daughters of Lilith: Ecology of the Succubus” is marked as a 4e article, it’s mostly free of game mechanics—and thus equally appropriate for any fantasy RPG that includes succubi—until the very end. Zeb Cook’s article on mystery religions is completely systemless, and very useful. Tim and Eileen Connors’ article on “Clerical Conflicts” employs a lot of Pathfinder crunch, but has a lot of story elements too that could easily be ported over to 4e or other systems. Steve Winter’s column asks “Why No Monotheism?” is pretty short, and actually spends more time answering the titular question than providing any hints for GMs wishing to run monotheistic settings (the advice occupies basically the final column of the two-page article). I enjoyed the interview with Bill Slavicsek. The “Scriveners of Allain” article, though 4e in mechanics, didn’t light my fire; the Pathfinder article presenting the witch louse was much more engaging (though somewhat disgusting).

Kobold Quarterly is always a mixed bag, unless you play several different game systems or are willing to put in the extra work to convert other crunch to your favorite system. If you’re strictly looking for material for just one system, I’d say this issue is worthwhile for Pathfinder, less so for 4e. If you’re up for mining articles written for a different system than the one you usually play or run, KQ 21 is a worthy entry in the series.

I’d say this track definitely has more of the “happily” than “depressed” in it. It’s very bouncy, almost bubbly. Even the slower interlude in the middle feels more peaceful than depressed. It’s not a bad choice to loop this for fifteen minutes or so when you have the after-lunch sleepies just to pep up a little bit. For use at the gaming table, you’ll want a scene in your story where everything is pretty much happy-go-lucky. My only serious complaint about the track is that it doesn’t loop well at all, both because of the slide-in/slide-out and a couple of seconds of silence at the end. An updated version with better population of the ID3 tags would be nice to. Although by my usual calculus this track ought probably to receive three stars, I went ahead with four just because the track makes me feel good.

This piece might serve well to score a modern or sci-fi role-playing scene where there isn’t really any immediate danger, but you still want to infuse a bit of intensity and maybe a bit of urgency. It doesn’t quite have the feel of a “race against time,” but it does give you the sense that things are moving along at a decent clip. On the down side, the low-pitched, indistinct vocals—almost a growl—at the beginning of the track seem distracting to me, there’s an electronic pulse throughout much of the piece that’s a bit too intense, and the track doesn’t loop well at all. This offering predates some of the ID3 tag improvements Fishwife Games employed later on. For both quality and usefulness, this track falls somewhere in the middle range of Fishwife Games’s musical offerings.

This track has enough variety to avoid tedium, but not so much that the changes are distracting. For the most part, it’s fairly minimalist in instrumentation, and—no doubt I’m influenced by the title here—puts me in mind of an alien world where advanced technology and tribal societal structures work hand in hand. The track doesn’t seem to be designed for looping, but it does begin and end gracefully enough that looping it won’t be disruptive. The ID3 tags need to be cleaned up; only the title field is populated, and it shouldn’t have all those underscores in it. Otherwise, this piece is a good addition to your musical library for scoring sci-fi role-playing scenes, especially when the PCs are out of their element.

I’m not really sure what it is about this track, but it just doesn’t “work” for me. There’s nothing especially bad about the piece, but nothing especially great about it, either. It’s solidly midrange in quality and effectiveness. It’s one of Fishwife Games’s longer pieces, which is nice, and its loops well if you trim off the second or two of silence at the end (though this is something the end user shouldn’t have to do). It does embody the feel of 70s/80s crime movies, so from that point of view it hits the mark. I think maybe my tepid reaction to the track stems from the fact that the name and artwork imply gunplay, but the music doesn’t. (The ID3 tags need cleanup, too, but I don’t think that perfect ID3 tags would make me like this track better.)

These maps were apparently designed by Jonathan Roberts to accompany an adventure called “A Trail of Poison.” I don’t know anything about that adventure, but it doesn’t matter. Any fantasy setting can use a generic, three-level tower. The artwork is well done in Roberts’s signature style (distinct black outlines with a hand-drawn feel). The layout is well-conceived and leaves everything but the walls and stairs to the DM’s imagination, giving it very high replay value. There must be dozens of towers dotting your fantasy landscape that could be represented with this layout. The download includes both gridded and non-gridded versions, in JPG format, and this brings us to the products big downside. Each map is 15" square, so unless you’re printing direct to poster-sized paper, you’ll need to slice up and tile the maps yourself. A pre-tiled PDF or even JPGs would make the product much easier to use. I would give the product 5 stars for quality, but only 3 for ease of use.

Using the 3D terrain models that make up Winterhawk: Ruins can really enhance any fantasy role-playing experience that uses 25–30mm miniatures. This set uses Fat Dragon’s “E-Z Lock” system, which means a little more work for the crafter on the front end and a better experience at the table on the back end (less slipping and sliding of terrain pieces). The product description provides an excellent overview of the model you can craft with this set. You’ll need some crafting supplies, a lot of patience, and an intermediate level of paper crafting skill to get the most out of this product.

The nine tracks that make up this “soundtrack” to a nonexistent movie are short (the longest tops out at 3:42, and all nine tracks combined last fewer than 25 minutes), simple, and repetitive. Even the “Main Title,” the most complex of the compositions, consists essentially of the same chord progression over and over. This can actually be beneficial at the gaming table, where you want to be able to loop a track under your scene and then forget about it until it’s time to change to another track. However, for listening out-of-game, it gets tedious quickly. Given the brevity and relative simplicity of the tracks, the price point may be just a tad high (by a dollar or two). The ID3 tags are well-populated (something that some game music publishers overlook), and album art is even embedded in the MP3s (something that most game music publishers overlook). All in all, “Ghost in the Graveyard” isn’t something you’re likely to listen to for pleasure, but it’s a reasonably good investment for scoring horror or suspense RPGs.

This is a fairly complex but very satisfying set of 3D terrain, usable with any role-playing genre where you want to stage a miniatures-scale scene in a forest. You will need at least an intermediate level of crafting skill to put these models together well. In my opinion, the trees are the best innovation in this set, as they look pretty good on the table and allow you to place snipers within. This is a great addition to the Fat Dragon line, though admittedly, a somewhat expensive one.

This is a smooth, nonintrusive track that could play very well under a variety of role-playing scenes in any setting from about the 1970s onward, into the distant future. I’d recommend using it for relatively calm scenes when the PCs are in non-threatening situations. It would be good backing for montage moments, travel scenes, or extended periods of investigation in libraries, government offices, and so on—scenes that advance the plot but don’t involve combat, hazards, or other obvious dangers. The ID tags need some cleanup (Fishwife Games has been doing a better job with these in more recent releases), and the track doesn’t loop as well as I’d like, but otherwise it’s a very fine piece of RPG background music.

“E-Z” may not be quite the right moniker for this product. You’ll need an intermediate level of skill with paper modeling and a whole lot of patience to put these pieces together. However, the extensive instructions that Fat Dragon provides will help jumpstart your paper modeling experience if you’re new to this aspect of the hobby. Once you build these expansion pieces, however, the results are fantastic. This set and the related offerings from Fat Dragon can really make your tabletop pop. The shrine with the beholder idol in it is a particularly fun touch here. Keep in mind that this is an “expansion”; you’ll want to combine it with a base set for maximum usefulness.

This track will take you through a number of different musical styles, from spacy electronica to rock and roll to lounge jazz. You were expecting creepy, due to the name “Haunted House”? The sounds of wind and indistinct voices—possibly moans or cries—try to inject this into the piece, but the sound effects aren’t enough to turn basically non-creepy music into a scary experience. I wouldn’t use this track to score an exploration of a haunted house. But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t use it; I just think the name and the music are mismatched. I’d use this track instead to score something like a night of investigation or patrol up and down the Las Vegas strip or a similar setting. Even here, though, the dramatic changes in mood, genre, and (especially) volume make this track less well suited to continuous looping under an RPG scene, unless the scene just happened to play out in a way that exactly corresponds to the music’s rises and falls.

This track definitely hits the target on both the “creepy” and “carnivalesque” scales. Composer Randin Graves deserves a giant teddy bear from the midway for getting the atmosphere just right. He’s also cleverly engineered the track so that it both ends well and loops well, a good accomplishment with this piece. However, the shifts in tone and mood take you from the bright lights of the midway and the rides to the dark shadows behind the attractions and perhaps inside the freakshows. While this makes for a great listen and evokes the carnival mood exceedingly well, it also detracts from the track’s usefulness at the table. These variations make it hard to know what kind of scene to score with this piece.