A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement The Dead Reach

The Dead Reach is a role playing game supplement published by Monkey’s Paw Games. It is an Incursion, or adventure, for Trophy Dark.

The supplement is available as an 8-page PDF from itch for $5 although it was purchased at a reduced price thanks to a special offer. One page is the front cover and half a page the front matter.

The Theme for this Incursion is agoraphobia. It is a science fiction Incursion and the players are harvesting valuable materials from an extremely hostile planet. Time is limited as the planet will become significantly more hostile within a certain amount of time when the Algol nebula floods it with radiation (Algol is known as the Demon Star; that might not be a coincidence). There are the standard Conditions and Moments; the Conditions largely relate to problems with the player’s space suit and the moments to sights on the planet. It follows the standard five ring format, with Terrors and Temptations in each ring. The final ring sees the players having found a large amount of the valuable commodity they have come for, too much to store in their vehicle and bring every other player back as well.

The Dead Reach in Review

The PDF lacks bookmarks and, though it is short enough that they are not essential, they would have been appreciated. Navigation is okay. The text maintains a two-column format and appeared to be mostly free of errors. There are no illustrations beyond the front cover and page backgrounds. Presentation is okay.

Trophy Dark defaults to a fantasy setting and therefore lacks the character options needed to play a science fiction Incursion. Trophy Dark is needed to play this, which is not uncommon nor a problem, but unfortunately it also lacks suitable science fiction options to play it by itself. Another science fiction Incursion that does is really needed; The Icarus from the same publisher has suitable options and, indeed, has a similar feel to this. This results in The Dead Reach being difficult to play as-is. Either another Incursion with usable options will need getting as well, or it will be necessary to come up with some character options to play it. The Dead Reach can be found by clicking here.