Ghoultunnel

What if a ritual goes wrong? Or rather: What if the timing of a huge ritual goes wrong, and misses the crucial moment for its culmination by a minute or two? This question drove one Alex Hopson, resident of the isle of Okinawa, to explore the fate of its twin island, Awa Nikko, which does not figure on modern maps.

The earth and fire spirits beneath the Ryukyu island chain once conspired to destroy Awa Nikko and the puny inhabitants crawling on its skin. This plan became known to the yuta, female spirit priests, who immediately gathered to take ritualistic counter-measures and to freeze the eruption before it could happen.

Only, the eruption happened while the assembled yuta still were chanting their final spells. A gigantic column of smoke and ash erupted from the coastal ground, 6 miles in diameter and reaching up to the clouds. It froze and turned to stone. This porous pillar, which can be seen from up to 250 miles away, is the Nebulith.

Godly, reality-distorting beings descend from the skies. Demons crawl upwards from beneath the earth. Pre-historic creatures have been elevated from forgotten caves. This heavenly and hellish mega-dungeon structure is the Nebulith.

Alex Hopson ran an Awa Nikko campaign for his home RPG group, and his conception could have remained in obscurity. Destiny, the internet or some clever publisher brought OSR veteran Zak S. to Awa Nikko and got him to write and illustrate a 17^th century, better than any man-made oriental adventures, Awa Nikko setting for LotFP, true to Alex Hopson’s vision while gameable by any OSR referee. This mind-blowing book is the Nebulith.

Design

While a like to review content, and mostly disregard aesthetic presentation beyond usability criteria, the Nebulith prohibits this approach. Zak’s illustrations grace almost every page, and if you are acquainted with his style, you know his art is never boring. Also, the pictures will provide orientation to the referee perusing this campaign book of 300 pages. Together with the calligraphy, by Kei Ka, and the overall design, by Molly Scanlon, this makes Nebulith the most gorgeous book in my collection, by far. Not only the look, also the surface feel of this book’s cover and pages is a haptically rich experience. Don’t go for digital only, folks, you absolutely want that physical copy in your collection!

Player characters

Awa Nikko is nominally still a kingdom, though it is de facto ruled by a daimyo sent from Japan. Foreigners travelling to Awa Nikko include Japanese, Chinese, Korean and European adventurers, or cloudscrapers, as the natives like to call the Nebulith explorers. There are several character classes to complement the standard LotFP classes: the Karate Master, the diminutive Kijimuna Hunter (an Eastern elf living in banyan trees), the obligatory Ninja, the Pirate, the Samurai, and the Yuta (female spirit summoner and ritual keeper). All classes have access to Karate training (there are different schools on Awa Nikko, each with a unique combat style), if they wish to pay for the training. New abilities upon advancement are mostly determined by rolling percentile dice – this is Zak style class design, love it or hate it, but it will always be entertaining and useful.

While the first five classes appear interesting as well as balanced, the Yuta strikes me as particularly powerful. Although her powerful magic requires rituals which are too long to be performed during combat, she also has contingency spells and the ability to charge a certain number of spell effects into objects. This class reminds me of the Sha’ir in AD&D2 Al-Qadim, who has to wait for spells to be stolen on other planes of existence – weak at low levels, and a solo problem solver for everything at mid to high levels. Referees: Prohibit incongruously clever players from picking the Yuta class, or counter-balance it by having another player take the mad bard class from the Ericha Zann book!

Bestiary

LotFP has evolved from its early dogma, where each adventure was supposed to contain only one weird and horrific monster with unique abilities. As Nebulith is played more in a classic adventure fashion than the usual weird horror LotFP module, a bestiary of Awa Nikko creatures is provided, and it is suggested to include further beasts from former publications by the same author.

The creatures are sorted by landscape types on Awa Nikko and by altitudes on the Nebulith.

NPC standard stats are also provided, so we won’t need to roll up characters for every NPC encounter.

To imitate the look of Japanese scriptures, Zak S. chose to handwrite and draw the bestiary part of the book in a unique font style, which may be hard to read when tired, drunk or otherwise inebriated. Fear not, referee! Once you have cracked the code, you will have no trouble deciphering that an

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has „d4 legs“, not „a4 1e95“. Context helps a lot.

Also, when frantically searching for a monster’s armor class, remember that it is indicated in the visually emphasized red square with a shield icon, it is not otherwise spelled out in the stat block!

Encounter tables are of course provided in the manner of fantasy adventure games. Encounter check frequencies on the Nebulith are obviously for dungeon encounter rates – a referee will have to use a lower encounter frequency for traveling, as expeditions onto the Nebulith will require many hours to days of climbing depending on the destination.

For some obscure reason, the Nebulith encounter tables include not only creature encounters, but events like „your torch or lantern goes out“, „you’re hungry“, „you’re thirsty“. Resource consumption in classic fantasy games is usually accounted for by measuring time (in turns, days, etc). Why put these trivialities into encounter tables? It might make sense for the Nebulith upper reach, where time plays tricks on adventurers, but not for the central Nebulith or the lower depths.

Zak, if I want to play Forbidden Lands (and I don’t want to), I play Forbidden Lands (I don’t)!

The country and its people

A hex map of the island is provided with locations of important sites like castles, temples, dojos and the like. The most important movers and shakers are described, along with some palaces or dungeons on the island and the Nebulith. The latter is modeled in three zones, and the reality distortion on its upper reaches is exemplified by a dungeon/exploration zone.

Considering certain powerful creatures of the bestiary, NPCs and dungeon dwellers, there emerges a complex web of plot and intrigue. Many creatures or NPCs are tied to each other, and they pursue certain agendas, some of which may endanger the island itself. However, the secrets of Awa Nikko shall not be disclosed in this review.

Addendum: Lord Falling Wave, the daimyo, asked me to clarify that he does not pursue any kind of sinister plans, and he absolutely did not threaten me by a nightly surprise visit of half a dozen ninjas (they never travel in groups of five).

Addendum #2: A certain concubine assures me king Shō Shishō is not involved in the Oni lantern conspiracy, however she cannot vow for the daimyo. I am very grateful she eventually handed over the antidote to her poisoned lipstick.

Karate

There are some general rules for grappling, knocking prone, etc. which provide a basis for the martial arts chapter. Four major dojos on Awa Nikko teach karate techniques, each their unique style. In addition, there is the temple style and some techniques unique to character classes. Characters of any class may train at a dojo to learn a random technique, all they have to do is pay a hefty training fee and spend 30 days training at a particular dojo when leveling up (the Karate Master class may train for free, only the training time must be invested). In theory, a character could thus acquire a new technique every level, though money will an issue.

Karate techniques include special maneuvers for disarming, tripping, grappling etc, but also bonus attacks or attack modifiers for martial arts attacks (which do 1d4 or 1d4+1 points of damage), and even the use of poison or rare bow-and-arrow techniques. This is pretty exciting!

Rant against a vice in game design

Now it is time for me to address one major bone of contention, which to my great consternation rears its ugly head again and again throughout this book: Martial arts, magic and some other effects in this book make use of a mechanic that should absolutely not figure in any edition of D&D or its derivatives. I speak of the deplorable advantage/disadvantage mechanic, i.e. you roll two d20 instead of one, and pick the most favorable/defavorable result, respectively.

Why is this bad? First of all, advantage/disadvantage breaks with the usual linear probability distribution of 1d6, 1d20, 1d%, where the chances of success or failure can instantly be grasped by the mathematically untrained mind. Understanding the probabilities of rolling two dice and keeping one, requires some math, which is not too complicated, yet for most players too much of a burden to be spontaneously done at the table.

Next, rolling under advantage/disadvantage is not just equivalent to receiving a modifier to a roll. Particularly easy or difficult rolls are accentuated by this mechanic to become even more likely or unlikely to the extreme. Let me do the math for you:

Rolling 1d20 (e.g. to hit) against a target number of 18 (e.g. armor class) has a chance of 3 in 20 to succeed (which equals 60 in 400, for comparison to the values below).

Rolling the same d20 with a modifier of -2 means you need to roll a 20 to succeed against 18. That is 1 chance in 20 (or 20 in 400). It won’t get any more difficult than this in classic D&D style games to hit in combat! Either you succeed when rolling a natural 20 or there simply is no chance you could succeed, so look for other types of actions to give you an edge!

Rolling under disadvantage 2d20 against an 18 gives you a chance of mere 9 in 400 to prevail. In other words, out of 40 rolls, expect one to be a success – if it is your lucky day!

Still, this is nearly half as good as needing a natural 20 on 1d20. Disadvantage can get worse!

Say you need to hit a 19 with disadvantage. Your chance is 4 in 400 or 1%.

If you need a 20 under disadvantage, your probability of success drops to 1 in 400. Is it even worth rolling the dice for 1 in 400? What is the minimum probability for a risk worth taking?

I don’t want to see this kind of shenanigans in D&D type games.

Having gotten this off my chest, I have to concede: Characters in LotFP have at least a +1 modifier in combat. The Fighter and the Samurai get more, and several other classes from the Nebulith books may also accumulate better attack modifiers. Armor classes above 18 are rare, and a disadvantage roll with only a 1 in 400 chance of success should not occur in practice. I guess I can get over the fact that the Nebulith campaign setting makes use of this deplorable mechanic.

Magic

A range of new spells is provided for the Yuta class. Most notable is the Summon Spirit spell, which is similar to the standard Summon spell, though it comes with less reality-shattering potential. The random tables for determining the manifestation of the spirit comprise an astonishing amount of entries which appear to be contradictory (like „no eyes“ and „cat eyes“ or „no mouth“ and „covered in mouths“). However, I made a few test rolls to see if I could explain away any difficult combinations, and I did not fail in my spirit lore: A dog-spirit, with extra eyes and spotted skin, consisting of two torsos linked like royal playing card, one having the legs of a spider, the other having snake tails instead of legs. A squishy-bodied, one-eyed fox spirit covered in fur striped in unnatural hues of violet and ulfire. A hunch-backed leopard cat spirit, having a mane consisting of fingers, and a pair of mandibles about what is not a mouth but a baneful eye. Perhaps I was lucky.

An erratum for the Summon Spirit spell can be found at the bottom of this review.

A ghoulish verdict

There is so much more in this 300 pages book I have not talked about: e.g. adventure hooks, sample dungeons, adventurer NPCs each with stats for different levels (which saves the referee much dice rolling), examples of using encounter tables, ready-to-use spirits, the hilarious Dogs Available Today Table, a 1d1000 random treasure table wherein treasure types are presented in blocks of 100, so that e.g. to roll specifically for potions you just roll 1d100+600.

Throughout the book, Zak S. has taken great care to present useful content in a way easy to access and to use at the gaming table. The table of content close to the front of the book, the two yellow ribbons, as well as the visual support by different styles in graphic design of its chapters are a great help – indeed I always managed to quickly find the game elements I was looking for (though the table of content is in terribly small print – not to be recommended to the venerable grognards who played OD&D in the seventies).

It is such a pleasure to read a game setting presented by an author who knows how to play the game (in stark contrast to the work of certain non-player artists). While initially I was reluctant to read „yet another oriental adventures setting“, I was quickly hooked to the particular feel of this fantasy Okinawa. Now I want to run this campaign! The first thing I would do is to hexmap the Nebulith exterior surface. That does not mean something is missing among the 300 pages (none of which is useless filler). This is how you play a so-called sandbox setting, you constantly add detail and expand the available material as fits your needs. My critical remarks, in the end, are of minor weight, none can withstand the majesty of the Nebulith!

My rating is:

5 poisonous sea snakes out of 5!

Oh by the way, Alex Hopson is working at his in-laws‘ traditional Okinawan poison sea snake restaurant, one of the last of its kind. Can it be that this enthralling setting he devised is actually nothing but a voluminous brochure for a culinary establishment?

Erratum:

Zak S. lets us know that the following sentence is missing under the Summon Spirit spell, Step 3:

„The spirit will have d4 Special Powers plus a number equal to the Yuta’s Wisdom bonus (if any). After all powers are rolled, the Yuta may re-roll a number of results equal to her Wisdom bonus (if any).“