Ghosts in Machines by Robert J. Schwalb is a role playing game supplement published by Schwalb Entertainment for use with Shadow of the Demon Lord. This is part of the Victims of the Demon Lord series, each of which covers an ancestry in more detail, in this case, clockworks.
This is a sixteen page PDF that is available from DriveThruRPG for $2.99 but was purchased at a greatly reduced price as part of a special bundle. Half of the first page is an illustration and a quarter is the Credits.
There is a brief introduction to clockworks before it goes on to Tragic Origins, which is how clockworks game to be. During the Shuddering Pox, a brilliant engineer in Lij who never achieved his potential because of his devotion to his family lost said family to the plague. He built the first clockworks and summoned his family’s souls from the Underworld, through a spell told him by a devil in exchange for the man’s soul, and bound those souls to the machines. This did not have a happy ending; his family went mad and he killed himself. These first clockworks were dismantled, destroying them in the process, and how to build them was uncovered.
More clockworks have since been built, albeit rarely outside the Confederacy of Nine Cites, and most are purpose-built for specific tasks. Clockworks also have a key, which is placed somewhere they cannot reach, and when a clockwork runs down it ceases to move until wound up again. Unlike most entries in this series, the section on the background for clockworks is comparatively short, as there really isn’t much background – a mad inventor created them and then more were made. Clockworks have no pre-existing society.
The next section is Creating Clockworks, which has prices for doing so and the two new necromantic spells required. There are also a variety of upgrades that can be fitted to clockworks; free clockworks often improve themselves.
There is a d20 table of marks of darkness, caused by corruption, for clockworks, followed by how they get on with other races. Clockworks have no special love or hatred for most peoples, generally treating them as they are treated, and some they have very little contact with. Clockworks may get a little too much attention from curious dwarfs and clockworks also feel affinity with changelings and orcs, both being created peoples like the clockworks. In the case of the orcs, who were also created to serve, clockworks often support the recent rebellion and some have gone to Caecras to support it.
Next are the rules on creating clockwork characters, expanding on the core rules. These are the typical types of tables on appearance, life, events, professions, equipment and personality.
Ghosts in Machines in Review
The PDF lacks bookmarks and, despite its comparative brevity, there are enough different sections that bookmarks would have been useful. Navigation could be better. The text maintains a two column full colour format and appeared to be free of errors. There are a number of colour illustrations, including the half page title, as well as some black and white filler. Presentation is very good.
This supplement is slightly different from others in the series. There is rather more on making an improving a clockwork, and rather less on the history of the ancestry, than is seen in other supplements. Which does make sense as clockworks are not numerous to have a culture and by and large are made to serve specific purposes, and not in the sort of quantities that orcs were. Other supplements also have a new path whilst this one does not.
However, as with others in the series, this does provide a way of making a clockwork much more detailed than is provided in the core book – although the core book does provide everything that is needed. It will consequently take more time to create a clockwork using these rules; given the potential lethality of Shadow of the Demon Lord, this may not be a good thing; it’s down to personal preference. Ghosts in Machines contains interesting new material on making and modifying clockworks, as well as more extensive background tables, and it can be found by clicking here.
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