A play report for a very special Forged in the Dark game, based on the 2000AD strip, The Mean Arena, this time the game is in Watford, Hertfordshire, where Slater’s Slayers come up against Watford Ravenclaws. Many thanks to Dirk the Dice for GMing such an excellent game and all my fellow players!

Sports Report: The Mean Arena Clash at Watford

Teams and Key Players

• Slater’s Slayers: Sourpuss, Napoleon, Screaming Sid and Hangman.

• Watford Ravenclaws: Steelspine, Reggie Regicide, Luthor, Troy, and the Ravenclaws.

Not The Human Torch, as my wife called it, this is a blast from the past, 1910. Written by Algernon Blackwood, he of The Wendigo.

This book has been a struggle, in the main due to the archaic prose and the dealing with fairly abstract concepts. I got it as part of a subscription to the British Library Tales of the Weird, so plenty more oddities on the shelf to check out.

It helped that I got access to this BBC dramatization which explained some of the more obtuse sections.

The Human Factor is a cold war spy novel by Graham Greene. It concerns a leak in M16’s Africa section. Things are quickly complicated by love, loyalty and an unpleasant drooling dog. This is an unromantic, slow burn book, little of the James Bond about this story.

Written in 1978, it perfectly mirrors the likes of Smiley’s People that I watched on telly in the 80s; slow, character-driven, moral choices aplenty and a great array of cold and unfeeling civil servants.

I thought I would struggle with this, but I managed to devour it in five days, a record. Perhaps it was the age of the main protagonist, Castle, and the parallels with myself coming to the end of my career too. It is at times depressing and you have to feel for Davis, but there are also comedic moments and the dialogue is classic Greene; understated, everyone saying less than they actually mean.

Robert W Chambers described The King in Yellow as “…a work of cosmic horror fantasy that explores the sinister nature of human curiosity.”

It is book three and week three of my reading challenge, and this is a triple whammy, to progress the challenge, prepare for a Grognard Files bookclub, and refresh my mind on the Yellow King RPG.

The book is divided into multiple stories, but I focused only on the supernatural ones.

Book two. I’m not 100% sure what exactly it is, it feels at its heart like a love letter to the film Stalker. It’s entertaining, heart-wrenching, insightful and feels important, even when I don’t understand it.

Zona is from Geoff Dyer, Geoff Dyer is an English author, as the Bomb Magazine says, “…our leading master of the undefinable memoir-essay-perambulation on diverse topics: jazz, DH Lawrence, photography, travel, …”

The footnotes need to be mentioned, at times the footnotes take over the prose, a couple of moments when I’m not sure if I’m still reading footnotes or the book. Just imagine there is a constant director’s commentary running through your head, in the background, as you read the main body of the text.

I’m reading a book a week in 2025, there are no rules apart from finishing it and it also has to be a physical book.

This is mainly a TTRPG blog, so I’ll review and assess the books for RPG potential!

Book One is The Honjin Murders by Seishi Yokomizo translated by Louise Heal Kawai.

Scene Five

They come. The cops. Nasty and Nastier. They saying nothing grab Leigh, leaving Donnie on the floor. Marched to a hole in the stone floor, bricks lead down, barely wide enough to fit. Shoved into it Leigh almost tumbles head first, puts out her hand on the wall, black liquid, damp maybe, the stuff clings to her, she wipes it on her jeans and descends.

Entering a chamber with a single chair and manacles upon it. A man hooded, mumbling, stumbles then almost warps towards her and back again. Leigh blinks, wipes her eyes. She remembers the black stuff, uses her sleeve, her eyes are dancing with lights. She turns back up the stairs, but it’s dark, something’s been pulled across the top, no way back.

“The Chair, sit.”, says a papery whisper. The hooded man is cast in shadow, only his mouth and jaw visible, teeth blackened and sharp. Leigh terrified goes forward but the hooded man whips around, “No, not yet! Him…” The force of the words has Leigh stumbling back against the wall, edging away. Another figure moves forward out of the dark, trance-like, dressed in a suit, he has to be a Fed. He moves like a puppet on a string, like he’s trying to resist but keeps getting drawn forward until he’s in the chair. He’s terrified. The hooded man returns with some molten liquid, the smell, so pungent, manure or skunk. The fed breathes it in, and starts giggling, eyes glassy then the hooded man forces the liquid down his throat, hissing, burning, the smell makes Leigh gag. The screams echo around the room, it is too much Leigh turns and falls into a side passage, roughly carved, she runs, she doesn’t look back plunging forward into darkness, hands outstretched, scraping and bumping as the passage twists and turns.

Our Discord has recently started a new community area - Story Games. The first of these is Lovecraftesque from Black Armada Games, by Becky Annison and Josh Fox. In it you tell the story of a single protagonist’s descent into madness and terror.

I'll not go too deep into the mechanics, suffice to say there are various rounds as clues are played and the mystery develops, the players take on the role of Narrator (setting the scene, directing the actions), the Witness (responding to the events and horrors that befall them) and Whisperers (adding flavour, answering questions from the Narrator and becoming NPCs).

So on with the story… We Serve and Protect by Ken Hite.

The first game of Cold War season on The Raspy Raven, what better way to kick off than psychics in 1960s Berlin.

A bit of background, it was the day before a speech by President J. F. Kennedy and our precogs had received a chilling vision, Kennedy's death by a sniper whilst visiting Berlin.

We began the mission in media res, on a flying rust bucket on the outskirts of Berlin, smoke filled our nostrils, our ears popped as the plane went into a dive. Entering the cockpit, we found the pilots dead, the cockpit ablaze, hit by anti-aircraft fire. My PC, Pfizer, was calm, reading his notes and observing the ground, this was not his bag, let the others with brawn and muscle fix things.

A few months into my attempt to run five players through a play-by-post game of Alteregomania, the Gumshoe One-2-One adventure that shows Super Heroes in their least flattering light.

How is it going?

I decided to stagger the five players, and in the end, I’ve decided that running one player at a time is most sensible, given that I have a family, work, and more RPGs to run!

We are heading down the motorway at 8 am to visit Milton Keynes Premier TTRPG Con Concrete Cow.

I’d missed Owlbear and the Wizard’s Staff due to family celebrations, so was keen to attend this small but friendly gaming con.

Arriving around 9 am, we had time to browse Leisure Games goods and the bring and buy sale before a brief visit to Tescos to pick up provisions, then we laid down our gaming forms!

I was struggling to find a second session to finish off a Trail of Cthulhu game, The Dance in the Blood by Graham Walmsley. I offered the players two choices, just to cancel it and I’d summarise what happened, or to play through the second half by chat on Discord. We went with the latter.

I set it up as follows; a dedicated Discord Text channel, a dice bot, rollem. I then posted the description of a scene perhaps a picture or handout, along with an indication of any potential dice rolls that were needed. I used markdown to signify in-character and out-of-character speak or mechanics.

I then used hammertime for the deadline to post (24 hours), including a countdown. When the deadline was reached I would react to the actions of the players, perhaps calling for dice rolls and then summarising the key stat changes - stability, health.

I’ve just started a new campaign, run by Martin. It’s a fantastic take on Swords of the Serpentine, using Martin’s knowledge of the Byzantium Empire circa 1450.

I play Miguel Dias, a member of The Order of Christ, which holds the remnants of the Knight’s Templar. Of Portuguese descent, Miguel is an explorer, now down on his luck and looking for coin and secrets to uncover in the streets of Constantinople.

At Christos’ wine bar, he finds Exi and Atticus and invites himself to help them investigate the forgery and illegal production of books from the royal library.

Game or Gamer you’ll miss.

This is an odd prompt, but I’ll make a case for Golden Heroes.

It’s probably more accurate to say, “The game I miss”. Golden Heroes was I think one of the first games that I bought myself, rather than use second-hand from my brother or friend (AD&D, Gamma World) or got as a gift (Tunnels & Trolls, Traveller), yes it was my hard-earned cash as a teen (birthday money from gran!).

Person you’d like to game with.

I will go with KARTAS (Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff), I don’t mind if it is Ken Hite or Robin Laws, but one of them has to GM.

Having listened to the above podcast for many years, I’m always impressed with the stories from Ken and Robin, either how they’ve improvised an adventure as a GM, or taken an adventure in a weird and unique direction through their play.

Awesome App.

As a constant organiser of RPG games on Discord, I’ve selected Hammertime.

Hammertime does one thing and does it really well, it allows you to select a date and/or time and generate a code. This code can be posted into a Discord message and everyone will see the date and time in their timezone.

GREAT GAMER GADGET.

Let’s embrace technology and say the Virtual TableTop (VTT). Now I could easily say the internet, Skype, or any other tools, but I’ll take it to the extreme.

When I first came back to the hobby in 2015, after a break of 25 years or so, it was made possible by 1. reaching a certain point in life where things had calmed somewhat 2. the release of Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition and 3. VTTs, specifically Roll20 and that little thing the internet.

MARVELLOUS MINIATURE.

Kudos to Morgue Miniatures Fabio Vollono and Julie’s wonderful array of eclectic RPG minis.

I’ve particularly enjoyed their range of mouse critters, but they also did some fantastic Tales from the Loop adjacent 80s kids.

SUPERB SCREEN.

Again, I’m not big on stuff like this, but a mini-screen was appealing for con trips, and okay, I’m not the biggest Mörk Borg fan, but this is gorgeous.

It’s also a game where a few prompts can go a long way. So whilst it’s not that useful for a complex set of rules to look at because it’s dead simple, it does help if there are a few random tables for inspiration.

DESIRABLE DICE.

Okay, I’m not a big dice fetishist, so I’ll keep it simple. If and when I next play 13th Age face-to-face, I’ll put together a very large photo cube/escalation die.

There is a great example of one here from Pelgrane Press.