Sleepy Hollow - Review

 

I bought Sleepy Hollow because it's a version of Vaesen for the Americas. I really enjoyed Vaesen and wanted some adventures in Ichabod Crane's neighborhood.

The game is set in Sleepy Hollow 1810, 20 years after Ichabod Crane disappeared from the town. Sleepy Hollow has an annual Headless Horsemen Festival which is a big deal. PCs arrive to start a new life there during the festival.

Sleepy Hollow did an odd implementation of the Year Zero Engine (YZE). They went with a modified version of Alien RPG. Pushing added Stress instead of Conditions. And seeing spooky stuff allows a save throw from getting Stress. I've run the published scenarios and rarely did the PCs get enough Stress to Panic. In Alien, Stress just goes up, there's no save throw, but when you Panic, and roll low, nothing happens, so the Panic roll is really a modified save throw. So, I might ignore the Stress save throw as my own house rule. Sleepy Hollow also made combat a lot more deadlier. At zero Health or if an attack gets two successes or more against you, you get a Critical Injury. I ignored the second rule as being too deadly for PCs as half the Critical Injury table was Lethal (where you will die unless tended to) and 11% was Instant Death.

The bundle came with the following:

Sleepy Hollow Corebook - 180 pages total. Introductory scenario, The Headless Horseman Festival, 12 pages. The town of Sleepy Hollow, 30 pages, with 24 town locations and story seeds. Eight Archetypes: Wandering Minstrel, Hunter, Retired Hessian, Reverend, Schoolteacher, Barber-Surgeon, Butcher, Village Youth. 

Faithful Companion - 64 pages of session 0, including 12 more pages of useful info for the Headless Horseman Festival. Three more Archetypes: Gravedigger, Midwife, Gentleman. Seriously? This should have been part of the core book. Ah, I looked this up, it was a BackerKit/KS, so I guess they're trying to keep page counts down, but seriously, splitting this up into another book is terrible.

The Parish Ledger - 68 pages of 52 fleshed out NPCs. What's odd is there's are great character portraits except for 6 of the NPCs, a bit annoying, especially when one is the blacksmith and the other the town reverend.

A Little Darkness - 68 pages, 4 scenarios. All of them are single session scenarios, pretty straight forward to solve. The scenarios ranged in quality.

Dark was the Night, Cold was the Ground - 78 pages, 12 wilderness locations that can be happened upon. Includes rules for hex crawling outside of Sleepy Hollow. The locations are 3 pages each and are pretty interesting.

Folk Magic - 70 pages, spells and five spell casting Archetypes: Witch, Granny Witch, Hearth Witch, Acolyte of the Occult, Pilgrim of the Divine.

Ichabod Crane's Field Guide to Uncanny Creatures - 68 pages, 30 creatures.

Player Journal - 64 pages, character sheet and various player aids, and blank pages.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow - 17 pages, the story by Washington Irving. Written in 1820. A bit of an anachronism since the game is set in 1810.

The Devil's Nine Questions - 64 pages rules for solo play.

The art is great.

I found it odd that the town is full of occult happenings. "One thing about living in Santa Carla I never could stomach; all the damn vampires." It's the same with Sleepy Hollow. So, when I ran the game, I tried to fill the town with normal people and normal events. I made the population several hundred, so the 52 NPCs with their dark secrets aren't the only inhabitants. If Sleepy Hollow was full-on creepy town, why would you stay?

The introductory scenario, The Headless Horseman Festival, with the Faithful Companion additions made for a more interesting scenario (took 2 sessions). The scenarios in A Little Darkness were too simple (each took only one session). Almost all of the scenarios was a monster of the week where the solution was to kill the evil. More variety would have been better. Thornwood Manor is equivalent to Castle Gyllencreutz in Vaesen, so if the PCs need a place to stay, then I'd run The Haunting of Thornwood Manor, a scenario in A Little Darkness.

The NPCs, locations, and uncanny creatures are good inspirations for a GM to make their own adventures.

Overall, a nice package for building your own campaign, but not enough meat if you just wanted to run the published scenarios.

Dr Who 2e: The Secrets of Scaravore - Review

Pages: 112
Run Time: 7 sessions
Pre-gens: None

A campaign consisting of 4 scenarios, each giving clues to the finale, the 4th scenario. Since each scenario is about 20 pages each, they're a lot more complex than the ones found in A Stitch in Time.

In my game, the PCs don't have the TARDIS, but they have the Hermit's Lantern, a scaled down version of the TARDIS. Since the Hermit's Lantern is slightly damaged, it sometimes takes them somewhere they did not intend to go to. This does two things:

• Deus ex machina. I ask them where they intend to go and then drop them in the wrong place/time. I can sometimes tie in their intention with their destination, sometimes not. So, now they have to figure out where/when they are when they arrive which is sort of fun.
• Since the Hermit's Lantern is unreliable, they can't use it all the time to just teleport around because they might end up somewhere unintended.

I have 2 small negatives:

• Pictures are lacking, most are stock images from episodes of Dr Who, there's not enough useful pictures. I had to do web searches for pictures and used some AI generated images for my game. 
• Some information is spread out in different scenarios, so GM has to read all of the scenarios to figure some things out.

My Players really enjoyed this campaign, and I did too. So, I highly recommend it.

Most of my sessions are 3 hours long. Different groups take different times, but my run times are here for comparison purposes.

I hide spoiler sections with JavaScript. If you have JavaScript turned off, you can skip the spoiler sections I have marked.

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The Sigils and Mandala of Scaravore

The issue is that the book doesn't really show what the Sigils and Mandala look like. You only find out by reading the last Chapter. And no examples were given in the book, so I made some myself.

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Aldersgate

Aldgate

Bank Station

Bishopsgate

Cripplegate

Ludgate

Moorgate

Newgate

I didn't make a Mandala, but it's a odd circuitous route going from gate to gate. Tracing various streets and also going through the central hub of Bank Station.

The Sigils and Mandala are patterns that follow the mental patterns (neurons) of the Scaravore. The streets were built following its mental pattern.

I made 8 Sigils. If the Sigil for the Scaravore (god) was needed, I used the Bank Station Sigil.

In Paradise Lost, I made an effort to tell the PCs that the Sigils were definitely not Silurian.

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Paradise Lost

Time Period: 2769
Location: Aridius
Pages: 20
Run Time: 1 session

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The Plot: PCs are dropped in a forest of Cretaceous and Holocene plants. They soon realize they're in one of three connected domed habitats. Outside of the dome is mostly a desert-scape with occasional dinosaurs. Inhabitants are educated Neanderthals (The Caretakers). Soon, the PCs realize the Neanderthals are clones and are a lower tech level than the domed city. At some point, the PCs trigger an automated sterilization of the city and the PCs have to leave the city and find the Masters and shutdown the self-destruct.
Foes: Security Drones, Dinosaurs (T-Rex), Myrka, Silurians.
Scaravore Clue: The Caretaker script consists of Scaravore Sigils. Silurians created the Caretakers as a docile servant race, but something (The Scaravore) modified their DNA and brain patterns to be more independent and rebellious.

Cretaceous Plants (and yes the PCs asked about the dinosaur)

AI generated Caretaker (I couldn't prompt it to remove the animals)

I used this for the Security Drones

In my game, one Player recognized the Sigils of Scaravore as London streets. I was gobsmacked.

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A Kind of Magic

Time Period: 2552
Location: Saphira
Pages: 27 pages
Run Time: 2 sessions

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The Plot: PCs get dropped into medieval forest. Tech doesn't work; magic does. Local knights are hunting "dragons" which the PCs learn are Draconians. Zygons have infiltrated Kelos Castle, hoping to learn the secret of "magic." Draconians have crashlanded and were investigating why there's an unauthorized colony on Saphira in the neutral zone. Zygon's bio-tech still works on Saphira. The Draconians have a standing order to bombard the planet from orbit if the Draconian scouting party isn't heard from. PCs need to contact the Draconian Dreadnaught before it sterilizes the planet.
Foes: Forest wildlife, knights with magic, Draconians, Zygons.
Scaravore Clue: The magic is psychic power. The human locals are from London 2152. Their DNA has been modified by The Scaravore. Due to contact with the mined crystals on Saphira, their DNA activate and psychic powers manifest. One lucky PC will gain psychic powers. This PC will have horrible headaches until they put on a Dreamcatcher which blocks out "the voices." The Dreamcatcher is a mesh with thread and crystals in the design of a Scaravore Sigil.

In my game, the PC picked Telekinesis, so I charged him 2 Story Points (permanent cost). I used the skill description from p.59, Archbishop Edwick Foss. Typically, a Distinction like this would cost 10 XP (p.62 core book).

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Westward Bound

Time Period: 1843
Location: Earth
Pages: 22 pages
Run Time: 2 sessions

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The Plot: PCs are dropped onto the Oregon Wagon Trail. They find a small stranded group of wagons and realize a fair number of the emigrants are aliens. Some have bounties on their heads. As bodies pile up, the PCs need to ferret out the shape shifting killers. What complicates this is that there are two sets of killers competing with each other.
Foes: Dysen Teri (alien bounty hunters), The Piyuri (alien poachers)
Scaravore Clue: One of the wagons has two humans, Scaravore cultists sent west to learn about mining techniques, especially tunneling.

I found it hard to tie in the cultists, so I put a few Scaravore Sigils carved onto one of the boards of their wagon. This got the PCs to talk to the cultists. I made up a story where they were told as a prophesy that in the future, the railroad would go west and would go through mountains. Also gold would be found out west and they should learn about mining. That they would need to learn these techniques for the Cult. I also told them it was foretold that Scaravore would rise again in 9 score 3 years = 183 years + 1843 = 2026.

Jax

Styne

Ben Connolly

Daniel Warner

Jim & Sarah Shankford

Swannson Family

Circling the Wagons when at rest

Campfire

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The Mandala of Scaravore
Time Period: 2026 (present day)
Location: London, Earth
Pages: 22
Run Time: 2 sessions

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The Plot: PCs arrive in London 2026. A walking tour guide sells them a tour of London, mainly around the old Roman gates. By now, the PCs should realize the Scaravore Sigils matches the modern streets near the old Roman gate locations. The only exception is the Bank Station. Under the Bank Station in an area under construction is The Scaravore's prison, a large metallic cube. Etched on the cube are instructions to lock away/free the Scaravore. What's needed is a key of 3 parts. The PCs need to find the 3 parts and lock away the Scaravore.
Foes: The Cult of Scaravore, Scaravore.

The scenario recommended that the PCs can do a statical analysis of the Sigils and figure out the 3 most likely locations of the key pieces. I didn't do that. I made them work for it. The PC who had gotten the psychic powers looked at the Mandala of Scaravore* and got flashes of 17 and the inside of a family home. PCs had to snap him out of it. With the 17 clue, they went from gate location to gate location, looking for houses with a 17 address and found the right location at about the third gate.

One Player noted that 17 Erovarac Street (backwards) = teert ScaravorE 71. After getting part of the key from here, the PCs had the psychic PC look at the Mandala again and got flashes of the church and tavern.

Scared Church of All Righteous Angels (Votive Order of Religious Ecumenical) = SCARAVORE (using the initials). How the PCs found this church was by going back in time to when the Roman wall was still present. They looked around for the other two parts of the key, but I wasn't going to make it that easy for them. I did let them notice the Christian church at Aldgate. They spoke to the priest, but that was about it. Back in 2026, they found a small church, surrounded by large buildings, the foundation of the church looked like old Roman stone. The Reverend tells them that luckily, the church owns the land since the Roman times, otherwise it'd be gone by now.

Unfortunately, The Rod and Vault didn't follow this pattern. The PCs tried two of the gates, looking at the spacing of where the key parts were found, and found The Rod and Vault at Ludgate, after spending hours going to various pubs and taverns.

The PCs got the Mandala of Scaravore* by following one of the PCs in a Street Taxi taking a ride to the homeless shelter (called the toll free number for a free ride). The other PCs followed in another non-Street Taxi. All the PCs made their mental save, but the non-Street Taxi driver didn't, so they realized the route was special. The PCs then made a GPS map of the route they took, and lo and behold, The Mandala of Scaravore. Oops!

In my run, out of the 4 PCs, only one made it to the Scaravore. The other three didn't survive the collapsing buildings (as buildings collapsed, I let them toss the key to someone else). I did think some of the tests were a bit one note, so I allowed them to use any appropriate Attribute + Skill to get past the Army of the Storm (p.106). I did follow the strict stipulation on p.108 for Final Confrontation as I wanted it to be a tough test, two successes were necessary to beat the Scaravor. The last PC succeeded, failed (lost 2 attribute pts), and succeeded (the even tougher test); and locked away the Scaravore.

I also used a lot of modern pictures of the locations, too many to post here, but here are some of the ones I used.

Walter Morrison - walking tour guide

Rochelle Baily - homeless advocate

The Simons

Tom and Barbara Ellison

Reverend Albert Collerson

Aldgate Pump

Aldgate

Bank Station tube entrance

Great Fire of London and Ludgate

Mooregate remains

Newgate Prison

Tube graffiti

Other graffiti

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