by Rachel Carpenter

Still behind on socials, but playing catch up. And writing too. Monday's post isn't quite ready just yet- the finale is giving me trouble. At least tomorrow's Friday!

Happy Thursday and happy playing!
-Rachel

Thank you for reading my blog. If you liked it; then please click the green thumb [microbadge=23724] at the top of the page. If you really liked it; then please subscribe. And follow me across social media with my Linktree:
https://linktr.ee/rachelncarpenter

A new episode has been added to the database: Pesky Cheats in your RPGs

A new episode has been added to the database: 72. Goblin Quest: Pt 1.

A new episode has been added to the database: 194 - (Attempted) Murder Most Fowl

A new episode has been added to the database: Gangs of Neo Galaderon - Ep. 11: Thin Jim

A new episode has been added to the database: Circle of Veritas, a Candela Obscura Realplay Episode 32: "The Style of Vengeance Part 11"

A new episode has been added to the database: The Dawning light Episode 2

A new episode has been added to the database: Delta Green: The Labor of Dogs – Episode 9

A new rpg item has been added to the database: Holy War

A new rpg item has been added to the database: The Millennium

by Dutys_Fist

Three Days to the Big Easy is a quickstart for the Arkham Horror RPG released as part of Free RPG Day 2026.

I've had fun memories playing Masks of Nyarlathotep (3rd & 4th edition), but the system is a bit too cumbersome for my liking, so naturally I'm intrigued by Cthulhu, especially in new systems that I know don't follow the indie mechanics-light path, so of course I picked this up.

Contents
This booklet contains the adventure, and QS rules, and characters: Everything needed to start this except for dice. Illustrations are nice, as always, both internally and externally, but some of the pagination is a bit flawed. For instance, the book starts with a warning to skip to pg 21 for rules and skip the adventure unless one is the GM. In reality, these start on page 19, and it's on the same spread as the final page of the scenario. Right beneath the warning on the same page is also the start of the adventure. Not ideal, not really major, but worth noting, because layout matters!

The Adventure
PCs are all constructs owned by a mad wizard who has made a pact with Hell. Their patron dies, and for very handwavey reasons, awaken when this happens. They're now trapped in Hell and must get out. A great premise for an adventure.

The Adventure
PCs are aboard a riverboat that's landing in New Orleans in 3 days, hence the title. PCs generally are employees who will be running music and the like.

Very quickly, there's a murder. PCs are tasked to investigate. They should be able to figure out who did it using very circumstantial evidence.

Then it repeats and repeats again, with different murderers each time. PCs are fed breadcrumbs leading to the problem being a specific item, that's affecting the bearer into committing murder.

Structurally, it's sort of sound. We start with some skill checks, then combat, and it ends in some bigger set-pieces. But there's a sort of ludonarrative dissonance here. In that we're tasked to solve some mysteries, but the adventure doesn't really expect us to - just interrogate a PC, find a suspect who seems suspicious, and move on. And that's sort of part of the intent here - the incompleteness I feel like makes the subsequent murders work, because it's weird that the first one was so easy, right? At the same time, it just seems very on-the-rails, and is awkwardly framed as a mystery such that it will fail players who actually want to investigate and dig deeper because there's nothing to latch onto there.

There's also not really a failure condition, which is a bit unusual because the scenario is almost set up to work really well free-form, with potentially more and more murders until PCs crack the case, but that's not the expectation.

I think a good GM could take this concept, the names and everything, revamp it, and make it a good mystery though.

Another issue is I'm not sure if I'm a fan of the macguffin in this setting. An ancient artifact that brings people to murder, yes! Some idol of greed in modern form causing the same? Absolutely! But a cigarette lighter? It just doesn't feel right in the setting. I'm glad there's a backstory to the item, but it feels weak, and the scenario as a whole lacks a lovecraftian vibe IMO.

The Mechanics
The part I'm mostly here for. This is a simple, but meaty system. D6 based.

Attributes tell you how likely you are to succeed on any given die roll. For the characters here, it goes from a rare 3+ to 6. But the number of dice that get rolled is up to the PC. It's scene based, so in every scene, they get 6 dice worth of actions.

This is actually really cool from a narrative perspective, because it helps balance out who does what. We can go and do some social scenes, and everyone is needed because even the most social character will run out of dice.

Taking damage means a reduction in the dice that you get each round, which is a nice way to make players want to avoid getting injured. Of course, the system feels a bit pulpy, because a character can convert any damage to an injury and get back to full. The injury lingers of course and can cause some problems, but frankly seems to heal easily enough with medicine-type checks by my reading. Still, it's cinematic, with PCs getting hurt, but then getting second winds and getting back into the fight.

There's no skill system to speak of, but characters can have items or abilities that give them rerolls or free dice.

All in all, it's a really neat system. I'm a bit of a system grognards, and normally not excited about systems, but I have to recognize that on its face, this is a good system with significant strengths.

That being said, personally, I'm not a fan of its use for Cthulhu, because it's pulpier than I would like. Of course, I understand that pulp is in vogue, so it's understandable. I'm not complaining.

The Characters
The pulp is reinforced by the characters. We get one of our old friends from the Series: Arkham Horror Files (Fantasy Flight Games) board game series in Jim Culver, and wow, has he been power-levelled. His ancestral trumpet now summons ghosts, which is a bit pulpier than I'd like, especially at the start of an adventure, because the whole "characters encountering the mythos for the first time" is such a cool thing, and when characters can already do these cool things, in my view it takes away from the otherworldliness of their mythos foes.

Anyways, it's a genuinely nice set of characters - the archetypical bard party, something which is really hard to do in D&D, but which works well here - each character is differentiated, and there's a nice assortment. Beautiful character sheets as well, and we get 6 characters too.

What's also interesting is the variety of these characters. Not only do we get different roles, but the way they're built is very different. Some characters have poor stats, but a lot of abilities or items, and some are the opposite. It's neat, and I sort of want to see how it works in practice and whether the stat- vs talent-heavy characters feel balanced in terms of power.

Overall Impressions
I'm not sure if I'd run this. I'm of two minds here - I really like the system, and I'm a grognard who usually doesn't find most systems impressive. And yet this has reduced my desire to run this or play the RPG - the production quality is great, but I wouldn't run the adventure as written, and it doesn't feel very lovecraftian to me, and gets the vibe of Cthulhu all wrong from top to bottom.

Rating
Salvageable

by Dutys_Fist

Things go To Hell is a short Pathfinder 2e adventure for 4-ish level 7 characters, released as part of Free RPG Day 2026. It follows Paizo's annual tradition of releasing an adventure for Pathfinder for Free RPG Day.

I always pick these up because Paizo used to write some amazing adventures, but alas, those are distant days. I actually was excited because when I picked this up seemed that we had broken from the annual pattern of "We want lightning to strike twice and get something as big as We Be Goblins, so here's a new adventure with a new weird newly-playable race". But nope, we're playing as constructs this time. That being said, the adventure isn't as bad as they usually are.

The Adventure
The adventure here is a really quick jaunt. There's a tower with 3 rooms and 3 encounters. 2 Combat, one non-combat. Which... Wow. I mean, I guess Paizo actually is starting to realize how long upper level combat takes, and for what it is, it's a quick jaunt.

The Premise
PCs are all constructs owned by a mad wizard who has made a pact with Hell. Their patron dies, and for very handwavey reasons, awaken when this happens. They're now trapped in Hell and must get out. A great premise for an adventure.

The Dungeon
Alas, mechanically, we don't have time, so the escape from hell is a 3-room dungeon. It's very straightforward - they awaken, have a chance to do the RP where they talk about their character and do funny voices, and search around for a bit, until some devils pop forth trying to clean things up and combat ensues.

Then, the next room is their boss, who is a very big devil but is intriugued by them and wants to talk. Basically, they're property, but he'll let them go if they find the wizard's soul, which is missing. The PCs are supposed to negotiate here, and successes give them bonus loot.

In the next room is the soul of the wizard, who is hiding inside an animated statue. Do the PCs need to figure this out in a cunning puzzle? Of course not! He attacks! PCs hopefully win, and that's the end of the scenario.

All in all, this is 6 pages.

Thoughts
So, it's a fairly linear crawl. The adventure proper is very straightforward and boring. The middle RP encounter is interesting though, and the highlight of the 6-page adventure. But darn, is this premise such an interesting one for an adventure. Done competently, I would buy such a thing. But this..., this is the barest adventure I've seen Paizo put out.

Did I mention it's 6 pages? In a 16-page booklet? What are the other pages about? Well, 2 are front/back matter, and the rest are...

The Characters
There are 4 characters, each taking 2 pages, for a total of 8 character pages. The character statblocks usually take up a smidge over half a page, so the other half is backstory for each character. It's a lot, and though interesting, way too verbose. It would have made far more sense to devote more pages to the advenure proper.

Overall Impressions
So, it's the same formula as usual technically, but this adventure is a bit shorter, but also has a more interesting premise than usual. But I wouldn't run it. At best, I'd salvage the Devil middle encounter, and the premise as a whole. But the premise is good enough that I'll probably pick up next year's adventure.

Rating
Not Much to Salvage