As you might expect from a Night Owl Workshop book, the art is top notch black and white pen and ink drawings - evocative of a by-gone era of gaming that we all imagine existed but is as elusive and substantive as the Wild West perhaps once. Nevertheless, it captures the imagination.

Looking through the book there is a lot of information on how a Freebooters adventure could be run using characters from the Treasure Island classic pirate book by Robert Lewis Stevenson. There are stats for all kinds of pirates and good guys from the books along with generic characters. There is also a summary of key locations such as a port city, a table for random tavern encounters at the port, a weather table, and a long random name of passengers. There are even stats for different kinds of ships as well.

There is a description of several plot ideas that would get the GM moving the story along either parallel to the Treasure Island story, or simply in the world of Treasure Island.

While the book has a lot to offer and it is a really great book, I feel it falls more into the category of a campaign setting and not a ready to play adventure. I was hoping to see locations with specific boxed texts to be a really table ready adventure. I also would have liked to have seen random encounter tables at sea with pirates ships and sea monsters - maybe also using the lengthy list of NPC pirates statted out in the book.

All in all a nice book, but the GM will need to do some work to prepare this for the table unless you are a modern type of GM who is good at doing things on the fly. I myself will probably fuss over how to turn this into a seacrawl and then a hex crawl on different islands. Or, at least some kind of point crawl. I will then end up making up encounter tables and a sea map....

This OSR is a very nice contribution to OSR Whitebox style games with some interesting additions. The game book begins by introducing the game makers.

The game itself contains the usual four classes of the original game, but the importance of the Cleric is stressed as they are the only character that can permanently destroy undead. The Mage, in turn, has clear rules for buidling a laboratory and creating magical items; this is something that is not explained in most short rulesets.

Each class has a unique set of special abilities, and the Cleric and Mage have 6 spells for each spell power (spell level) which is helpful for rolling a random spell.

The simply one roll resolution of the classes for saving throws or skills such the the thievery subterfuge is very nice and in keeping with the likes of OSR such as Whitebox: FMAG. The art is well chosen historical pen and ink which gives a good medieval feel.

Something else new in the game is optional race as classes - all of which are unque to Whitebox - the Antedlluvian, the clockwork Dwarf, and the Lizard-Kin at the end of the book.

Some other nice additions include an aging table (the formatting could have been tweaked a little but overall a nice find!), streamlined and easy to use encumbrance rules (finally!), and some random dungeon flavor tables (note: these are not encounter tables, but rather evoke mood and tell what objects are in a room...)

The treasure lists are very interesting as well, and include helpful random tables.

One minor quibble with the game is that it is not clear how many spells a day a Cleric can cast on page 8. But like other OSR rules, we can easily extrapolite using the Mage rules, but it does leave guess work for a novice gamer.

Also, the list of monsters is great with some unique ones though I prefer OSR games with random encounter tables for dungeons and wilderness like other Swords and Wizardry or Whitebox games to help cut down on GM prep and also allow for solo game experience. This is perhaps a design choice, and a GM can of course create their own encounter tables from the list of monsters provided.

Finally, I found a few minor errata that I shared with the creators. They are small ones, so the game is still completely playable.

Overall the book and content give the game a unique take on Whitebox. Despite a few minor hiccups that I found in the rules or editing, this is a very solid and playable game with well-thought out game rules. I recommend it strongly as an addition to anyone's Whitebox style OSR library!

Beneath the Sunken Catacombs at first glance looks like a another 0e clone or addition to the Whitebox family of games. I would say after looking more closely, it is, and it isn't. What is really outstanding about this game is the great diversity of character classes (archetypes if you will), and very very meaningful game play for characters of non-human heritages (aka races). The idiosyncrasies of 0e or BX types of D&D (such as level capping for demi-humans or accountant-like encumbrance rules) are addressed very well in this non-D&D OSR. All characters can advance and be adventurers to the 10th level, and items are cleverly described in terms of their bulk. Characters themselves can carry up to 10 bulk in items. Simple and easier than weights and measures I think! An outstanding innovation of this game is the rule of spellcasting which allows casters to use more than one daily spell slot to "overcharge" a spell for much greater effect. At first level, a sorcerer could really shine by casting an "overcharged" magic missile spell and send not 1, but 3 missiles at their enemy!

Monsters in the book are very nicely illustrated in pen and ink and succinctly described with three per page. They are grouped according to their Threat Level or difficulty level (basically how tough they are to fight!), and in the back are rules to even play as a player character monster! There are even encounter tables as well.

A nice section on equipment and henchmen, adventuring, and treasure are some of the other sections of the book.

What the book achieves in 100 odd pages is a complete old school type rpg with modern innovations. I will never, and I mean never part with my WB:FMAG, but this book is really up there with that type of game design.

By the way, I told the White Box Fantastic Medival Adventure Game ---acebook group about this game, and they were super excited! Expect several orders if you haven't already!

This is a very nice basic easy to pick up and play version of the old game. In a previous version of Eldrad's game, I complained to him that it was not well enough edited. It seems that Eldrad took my advice, got a team together to make something polished and it shows.

This is by no means flashy and there is no pen and ink other than a rough hand drawn picture for the cover. But that is exactly the point.

It is intended to be a lose set of rules that allows game masters to make rulings in the old gaming style and you are not also hit over the head with an encyclopedia of descriptions of a world setting.

I would likely add information about the height and age of the various races. It's unclear if it is a section missed when you edited it or whether players are supposed to make it up. I'd even venture to leave it out if you don't define things there in the rules - enough to give a brief description of elves and how they live much longer than the other races.

So for 40 pages it does what it sets out to do.

This review will not exactly cover everything, but will highlight some of the major differences between the 2015 edition and the 2020 edition.

When I first had in my possession, the 2015 version of Xuhlan, I felt the writer was really on to something creating new races in a new setting, providing more rules for super-science gadgets, information about psionic battles, and a complete hex-crawl among other additions that were already meant to then, tack on to or replace rules in the Warriors of the Red Planet RPG. The layout of this earlier edition seemed to have just the right amount of nicely chosen art and tables to help organize the game.

In 2020, (I only realized there was a new edition recently) the new edition was carefully edited so that you wouldn't have to fiddle with rules about super-science gadgets "wearing down" when in the WotRP rules - it discusses an objects number of charges. So, altogether much less confusing, clearer rules for research and a rule kept from the first that gadgets could duplicate the effect of OSR type Magic-user and Cleric spells.

I quibbled a little over changes to the race rules. The rules for Terrans seem simplified, and other than back story, they don't seem to be much different than the Xuhlani Pure Strains. So I found myself going through the 2020 version of the races and thinking up my own rule set. The old ruleset had an interesting idea that Terrans were more suceptible to disease than Pure Stains. I ended up making my own random table to determine the Terran origin which is easy enough to make from the new rules.

I ended up doing the same for Robots, and added a rule about them running out of power if underground or in an enclosed space too long. I made up rules for robot healing, where they could essential heal themselves at the same pace as humans, but any damage from a critical hit (natural 20) by monsters would have to be repaired with new parts by themselves or with the help of a Scientist.

I hummed and hawed over the Formians being overpowered with stats, and even the Lizardmen seemed too overpowered! So I came up with rules to nerf these stats a little, and I ended up capping the level progression of Lizardmen. Mutants added a very nice table for mutations (instead of referring you to other books as the 2015 edition did!), and I ended up elaborating on this in my version with how long and how fast you could fly, and other very specific things.

The full explanation of psychic combat, and reworking of 2015's Witch Stones into 2020's more linguistically sensitive Wyrd Stones are some of the really positive points of this book. In 2015, the section Pyschic Combat directed you to a book you didn't have for the rules.

Another surprise was the edition of a mini-adventure after the hex-crawl which could set you on the path to gaming with inspiration.

A final note about the game is that I missed some of the pictures from the 2015 edition, but appreciate some interesting new ones in the 2020 edition. Overall, though, the 2020 ruleset is much more polished and in-line with the WotRP. Again, I have a some quibbles about the racial stat bonuses, but the fact that this game supplement got me that far to creating house rules says something about the overall content. After all making house rules is often what makes OSR great, and completely expected with a general ruleset such as these.

My overall verdict is solid 5 out 5, with a feeling that just a little more depth should have been given to Terrans and Robots, but for the length book, it provides an excellent jumping off point for gamers like me to fill in the blanks - which is exactly what I'm still working on now.

I think this game module is really at odds with how the Pits & Perils game world is described or implied in the rule books. The language and descriptions seemed gatuitous and much better suited for a game like Lamentations than P&P. I was disappointed.

This is a basic D&D inspired game with only 4 stats, that is incredibly concise with a number of yeah why didn't I think of that rules that seem to be dead on. With a simple combat system of rolling a D20 plus a Strength modifier and rolling over an opponent's Armor Class, you can battle without looking at charts. The book features an incredible vintage layout and hand illustrated pen and ink illustrations. In the short 56 pages, there is your basic D&D type classes and races (but with a modern twist of not having racial limits, equipment section, spells sections, monster section, random encounters and treasure, a starter solo adventure, and an adventure to be run by the Dungeon-Lord (Game Master). The game ends with a mentions of other volumes in the series such as one for the Dungeon-Lord on running games, but unfortunately, the only other one that exists is an additional player reference with character sheets, and many pre-made characters. What a fantastic game this would be if there were more materials! As it stands though, it is a completely playable game and would work well for one-shots and shorter campaigns.

A suggestion to the author of the game is to improve the search engine tags so that this gem is easier to find on Drive Thru RPG. And... please create more supplements for your fans!

This RPG in a word is quite original and throws you into the fray with a chance to role-play dimension travelling scarecrows, beaked men, tinkers, magic casters, and adventurers in a land that is connected closely to the folkloric other world with light and dark creatures and demi-humans. The reader is introduced to a setting of English hedgroves with portals that may mysteriously open into another time or place where you are called on to over overcome some fearsome evil. It has overtones of Narnia, but also could be suitable for games of a darker nature with adults. I look forward to seeing more developed for this series - particularly a setting or an adventure.